Welcome back everyone! Thanks for sticking with me. As always I don't own Supergirl or related characters. I just enjoy borrowing them.

The Auction Chapter 12

"Fuck." Lena felt like shit, literally and emotionally. She spent half the morning vomiting up yesterday's liquid diet, leaving her stomach uneasy. She had a head ache that felt like a nuclear warhead detonated in her skull making concentration nearly impossible. And to top it off, Kara and her had fallen into some sort of awkward silence. It wasn't the silent treatment per se, just short, straight to the point responses making conversation feel all sorts of wrong. This was odd because Lena had always found it so easy to speak to the blonde. It was speaking with other humans that was always so difficult. She thought it was because humans always had an angle, something selfish they were angling for.

Not Kara. At the end of Lena's days, she would always come home and unload to Kara's listening ears. Kara always inputted at the rights spots but never pushed. She never judged. Maybe it was simply the fact Kara didn't know enough about human culture to feel she could interject one way or another. But for Lena to have someone's ear, someone who didn't associate her last name with evil, or pre judge her for her family connections and money, it was obviously a luxury she hadn't appreciated until she felt it slipping.

She and Kara were at L Corp. This wasn't a surprise, she had told Kara about finishing up testing on L Corps larger equipment the day she told her she had booked overnight rooms at a hotel. Tests like a cat scan, which was too large to have at her home. It being a Saturday meant staff was down to a minimum, mostly janitorial and Lena could keep their access from the lab. Right now, Lena sat at one of the lab's desks papers spread before her. Her computer screen was set to an excel spread sheet but she wasn't paying attention to any of it. The garbage can was next to her because her stomach was too uneasy and the more Lena thought about it, she was getting the sinking feeling it wasn't upset over last night's alcohol consumption. At least not totally.

Lena leaned over her desk, head being held up by a hand and an elbow. Angled to the side so she could see Kara on a surveillance style monitor. Lena had taken care of the tests she could do while Kara was still powered up, but now she needed the comparison results of Kara being powered down. So, Kara sat. She sat on a thin mattress with a red sun light lamp beaming down on her, making her weak. Perhaps looking a little down, but not once hesitating or complaining about being in a room with too many similarities to a jail cell.

And Lena HATED it. Hated seeing Kara in that cell, that room which reminded her of a slightly brighter more sterile version of the Fort Rozz prison she took Kara from. Hated that this reminded her of Kara's vulnerability. That at any point if she crossed the wrong Senator, got on the news for the wrong reason, stepped out of line somehow in some way, even unknowingly, that Kara could be taken away. That she could be put in something like this permanently. Or worse.

Maybe this feeling was because of timing. Because she and Kara had had… she didn't even know what to call it, a fight? A Spat? Argument? None of those words seemed particularly right. But on a personal level, things felt unbalanced between them. It felt like that the wall that was meant to keep red sunlight in, that the lock that was meant to hold a depowered Kryptonian… that all they were actually doing… was keeping Lena out.

Lena, head in her hands, rubbed her temples, frustration taking its toll. She pulled up, hands clasping before her, she sighed. She saw the glint of shiny metal on her wrist, the Nth metal band that tied Kara to her. The thing that took Kara's abilities and freedom and left her with no choices. She flicked her wrist, turned and twisted the non-removable Nth metal bracelet. The bracelet felt heavier today for some reason. The baggage coming with it finally coalescing into a weight that was beginning to put strain on her… 'her what?' she thought, 'heart'? If Lena would have been asked six months ago, hell… one month ago if she even thought she had a heart she would have guffawed in the face of the asker.

So why now. Why is what's supposed to be a straight forward business investment blurring every line, every emotional safety barrier she's ever erected to protect herself. Looking at the screen again… Kara. She supposed that summed it up. A sweet beautiful vulnerable innocent blonde, ejected from her life and left at the mercy of too many selfish people, including herself. The only people in her life that had EVER done anything unselfishly for the girl was her parents when they shot her into the stars to save her, and if you were to ask most people, maybe even Kara herself, most would probably say that they failed miserably.

Lena wished she could do something for her. She didn't know what exactly. Something to show not everyone is selfish. That there are good people out there. People who act without expecting a return. But she wasn't someone who believed that most of the time either. Being a business woman and a Luthor she was trained from a very early age to do whatever it takes to stay in the black. Never give without getting more. Take right now for example, Lena was using her position, her power to take from Kara. No, she wasn't hurting her but the knowledge from the studies would benefit herself years to come.

Then there was last night. The kiss she should never have took. A kiss that took this business investment, this study to better medical treatments over the line into something bordering unethical, subjugation. And here she sits, ruminating over this blonde, this alien. Wishing she could have her, wanting nothing more than to do it again. And to make it worse, apparently the alien is thinking the same thing. But appropriate conduct and power balances are preventing her from acting on it. It's so damn frustrating and there is nothing that she can do about it. The bracelets… they assured Kara's subservience, and with them nothing REAL could ever be reached. Or at least not trusted.

Then a thought hit her like a ton of bricks, she sat up straight, eyes wide, she needed to figure out how to remove the bracelets. It was them that caused the power imbalance. It was them that caused this nauseous feeling in her stomach.

Lena jumped up from the desk she was at and moved to her lab equipment. She began examining her bracelet with microscopes, she tried chipping it to get any sort of flake off of it to further her testing but couldn't even leave a scuff mark. There HAD to be a way though. The DEO managed to shape the cuffs, to insert Kryptonite, to create the retracting wall on the inside of Kara's. If the DEO, an uninspired underfunded clandestine government organization could figure out how to manipulate the metal then by God, so could she.

Lena spent every minute she could while Kara was absorbing red sunlight to research the Nth metal bracelet on her wrist. She ran a fine edge around its entire circumference hoping to catch the slightest divet, the place where the two sides may have been welded together in some fashion, it's weakest point. No luck, its surface was completely smooth and uniform. She tried heat to soften it but the thing didn't even seem to warm up with the fire and all she accomplished was burning herself with a Bunsen burner. At that point she was thankful she hadn't tried a blow torch. She tried a vice, but that didn't have any effect what-so-ever and stopped when the vice started creaking, sure it was about to break.

Reverse engineering how the DEO manipulated the metal was going to take time and research, secret research. The kind she wouldn't be able to do in front of Kara or at her L Corp lab with employees coming and going. And hers would have to come off first. She couldn't risk doing a sloppy job of removing Kara's because if she only damaged it and didn't remove it completely the Kryptonite exposure could kill her. This was something she was going to have to do on her own, away from prying eyes. And there was only one place that came to mind that had the resources she would need.

Kara and Lena were home eating a silent meal of take out from cardboard boxes they had brought with them from the city. Lena had ordered a sampling of nearly everything from a Chinese drive thru knowing Kara's repowering cells required a lot of calories to rejuvenate. Lena watched across the table as Kara devoured 'her half' of the order of pork potstickers and stared at what was remaining in the box, being too nice to take what she felt wasn't hers. Lena grabbed one from the box, put it on her plate, then slid the rest of the box toward Kara, "Go ahead, there is more than enough here for me."

Kara gave an uncomfortable smile and a quiet, "Okay" and grabbed two more from the box but Lena knew as long as she didn't show interest in them again Kara would finish them off. Which she did. They still weren't quite up to as chatty as they normally were. But there was a little improvement on the ride home, she was hoping so anyways. "Since we did what you needed at your work lab, does that mean all your testing is complete now?" Kara asked.

Lena smiled and scoffed, "I wish." Then she noticed Kara's face, disappointment. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean… I do wish. But unfortunately, that's just not how research works. There's tests and retests, then you test the retests. It's just a huge cycle of double checking your work."

Kara released a breath and nodded in reservation.

"Are you okay, Kara?" Lena asked a bit hesitantly.

Kara leaned forward in her chair, like she was about to make her leave from the table, "I'm tired. Do you mind if I go to bed?"

Lena looked at Kara with a bit of shock. Kara was always full of energy and it was barely 7pm. "If you really are tired Kara, of course I don't mind if you go to bed… But if this is about something else. If something else is wrong, I really wish you'd tell me."

"What could be wrong? I'm a very well-kept test subject." Boom! And there it was, the words hit Lena like an anvil and Lena couldn't even be upset because she asked for them.

"I… uhm…" Lena stammered.

Kara stood, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to come out like that… It's just… this place, you, the freedoms that you've given me. I'm grateful for. But I let myself get too far ahead, I let myself think it could be more." Kara held up her wrists displaying her shackles, "But it won't ever be, will it?"

"Kara," Lena, tried to interject.

"It's alright. I'm fine, really. I'm just disappointed in myself for thinking I could be someone I'm not." Kara started to walk away from the table, "I'm just going to lay down."

Lena jumped up from the table making her way quickly over to the alien, grabbing her wrist to stop her forward movement. "Kara." Turning her so they were face to face. Lena placed her hands firmly on either side of the blonde's neck and kissed her. Lena latched onto Kara's bottom lip and it only took a moment before Kara had latched onto her top. The kiss was deep and Lena only pulled away to catch her breath, "YOU are amazing. And I'm sorry I pulled away from you last night. I didn't mean to hurt you with my rollercoaster of emotions. I'm not used to… feeling quite this way." Lena traced the super's muscular arms down to the shackled wrists, holding them at the bracelets. "I don't want these for you. I want you to have a choice. And I know right now, you think you'd choose me but… that's because there's only one choice in front of you." Lena gave a small disbelieving laugh as she pulled away, the tears coming down her cheeks completely contrasting what she was trying to project. "And me… me... I'm a Luthor… and you're a Super." Lena began shaking her head, "You don't know me, Kara."

"I've been living with you for weeks… I know you don't like to have conversations in the morning before you have coffee. Black." Kara began listing things off, "I know where YOU think your hiding the harder alcohols from Estella. She knows by the way. I know, before I landed you never cooked for yourself, ate out every night. But now you make a point to on the weekends. I know to bring you a sandwich when you're in research-mode, otherwise you forget to eat. I know your scared of flying, made me put you down when we were barely ten feet off the ground. I know…"

"What's my Mother's name?" Lena cut her off.

Kara, open mouthed began to rack her memories for Lena's Mother's name. "I… uhm.."

"My Father?... How about my brother?" Lena asked.

Kara swallowed and was a bit lost for words. "Uhm… I didn't know you had a brother."

Lena nodded, "You don't know me Kara. Because I haven't let you in… Please, don't hold it against me? But, I liked that you didn't hate me for things my family has done. That you didn't know the crimes that Luthor's are famous for. I liked that you only saw me for Lena… But you're only seeing a part… If you knew… Kara, you wouldn't choose me... You wouldn't even want to be here."

"That's not true," Kara countered.

Lena shrugged uncommittedly. She looked at Kara's silver bracelets again, "This," Lena made a motion pointing between them both. "This thing. I don't know if it's right… or if it's wrong, or some sort of grey area in the middle where it's right, but only if it works out… and wrong every other time. But what I know is, you don't have a choice. Because you can't walk away, Kara. You don't get the option to. So, whether you'd stay or go, we can't know. Not with those on."

Kara looked to her wrists again and bowed her head glumly.

Lena crossed her arms over her chest and set her face into a serious fashion, "I need to go away this week, last minute business trip."

Kara's eyes bolted from the floor up, "What? Why?"

Lena struggled to find words that weren't lies but remained vague, "I just do Kara. I run multi-billion dollar company and there's something I have to take care of."

"Take me with, please?" Kara begged.

"You can't, Kara. It's across the country… and business meetings, and boring. There's nothing there for you."

"So… you're there. I'll wait in the hotel room. I'll…"

"No," Lena cut Kara off. "It's safe here. You have the Park. You have Estella. I can't leave you alone in a city, Kara."

"I had control of my powers yesterday. You saw…" Kara countered.

"Please, I need you to listen to me!" Lena begged Kara to see reason. Reason she even knew was flimsy at best. "I'm trying to do something that will hopefully make things better. But I need you to trust me."

Kara answered too quick, "Trust? You just got done telling me I know nothing about you." Immediately Kara's mouth snapped shut covering it with her hand, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean…"

Lena held up her hands to stop Kara's apology, "No… it's fair." There was a pause, "But it doesn't change that I need to go this week. This next weekend I'll take you to Metropolis. Hopefully, under better circumstances. I will find the time. I promise."

This time Kara hugged her arms over her chest, her lips pursed tight with disappointment and gave Lena a reserved nod. "I think I'm still going to go to bed early tonight. I'll see you in the morning Lena."

Lena released a breath not pleased at all where this conversation ended up but not wanting to push anymore. "Good night, Kara."

"Good night, Lena." Kara walked up to her room and put herself to bed.

Kara groggily made her way down the stairs the next morning, the lure of the thick scent of coffee in the air being too much to be ignored. Kara rounded the corner to the kitchen where the island came into view and stopped in her tracks. A beautiful woman sat there and hadn't noticed Kara yet. She was sitting at the island, newspaper spread out, cup of coffee in hand, brunette hair and deep look of concentration on her face. But it wasn't Lena.

"Dr. Danvers? What are you doing here?" Kara asked.

Alex smiled looking up from the article she was reading and turned to the blonde who strolled up behind her. "Morning Sleepy-head."

Kara pressed, "What are you doing here? Where's Lena?"

Alex's eyes narrowed just slightly, she supposed she was hoping for a slightly more enthusiastic welcome. "Uhmm… I don't know. She called last night. Said she had to go away this week for board meetings or something last minute and asked if I could stay and watch over you. I told her sure, I'd love to see how you're adjusting. I showed up last night and she had a driver already waiting, then she went to the airport." Alex let a pause sit between them for a moment while she watched Kara's confused face. "You didn't know?"

Kara's shoulders slumped and she made her way over to the coffee pot to pour herself a cup, adding the cream she'd grown to like it with. "No, she told me yesterday that she had to go away this week. But she didn't say it was RIGHT THEN… I thought Monday morning when she normally would have gone back to work." Kara made her way to the island to sit near Dr. Danvers, clearly disappointed.

Alex sat there trying to shrug an apology, "So, you didn't know I'd be here in the morning? That she wouldn't be?" Kara shook her head. "Sorry, I guess. I don't know why she wouldn't say something."

Kara released a breath. "I think I do. We had fight. I think, sort of…"

Alex looked at her confused, "Fight? She didn't look hurt or anything Kara. Walked out fine… and against you that'd…."

"Not that kind of fight?" Kara interjected.

Alex looked confused again, "Why would you two have a fight? I mean, what's there to fight about…." Then Alex's lips when into a silent 'Oh' thinking she was catching on, "That kind of fight? Really?"

Kara shrugged, "I don't know. I'm not sure. And that's the whole problem."

Alex leaned over coyly bumping her shoulder into Kara, "Well, unload on me. Maybe I can help you figure it out."

Kara looked to Alex and smiled a little shy. Then after a small pause added, "You know, I think I missed you."

"Well of course you did. I was the best prison guard EVER!" Alex joked back.

Lena stepped out of the back seat of her rented shiny Rolls Royce to her driver who was holding the door open for her, "Here we are, Mam."

Lena acknowledged the driver but didn't say anything. Instead she took a look at the building she was standing in front of. The yellow police tape was old and faded but still criss-crossed in front of the building doors. There was graffiti and garbage strewn along the sidewalk from lack of upkeep and the building looked dark and abandoned.

The driver spoke again, "Are you sure this is the address you wanted to go to, Mam?"

"Yes, this is it." Lena answered not wavering.

The driver wasn't wholly comfortable leaving her there but she was the one footing the bill so he simply asked, "Is someone meeting you here, Mam?"

She looked at him, "There is no need. I have a key." It looked like he wanted to say something but he stopped himself seeing her determination.

He nodded. "Of course, Mam."

"You may leave." Lena began walking toward the building, "I'll call when I'm ready to go to the Hotel. But I'm sure I'll be here most of the day." Lena began ripping the yellow tape off the doors of the building. Inserting her key and turning it, the door gave an awful whine from disuse over the years when she pulled it open.

Lena stepped inside and motion sensors tripped turning on the lighting in the lobby. The whole place was covered in dust but you could tell that at one time it would have been a very beautiful lobby. Greyish white marble lined the floor and walls. The ceiling used abstract art styled fixtures making your eyeline flow right to what stood in front of Lena. Before Lena was a large white receptions desk with glass top and behind that, was a wall that had the company's old logo hugely displayed leaving no question about where you were. "Welcome home." Lena muttered to herself as she stared at the huge logo, 'LexCorp Laboratories' Metropolis.

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