It takes a second for Lena to catch up. She was just leaning towards Kara, fully intending on kissing her and maybe getting a bit of semi-public pre-dinner activity ; and now she's in the street below, ears ringing from an explosion, and the entire building is tipping forward ready to lay down on its flank, right where she's standing.
Kara zooms in and out of the building, a blur of blue and red, and the other residents blink into existence next to Lena, startled, afraid, but alive. The kids are crying. They must be if the way their faces are contorting is anything to go by, but all Lena can hear is a grating high pitched noise that makes her want to vomit. She needs to get a grip on herself, return to her senses and shepherd everyone out of the way of the falling building but instead she finds herself hunched forward, bile dribbling out of her mouth.
A sharp and short scream resonates from inside the building and a moment later, the entire first floor disappears, reduced to rubble between ground level and the rest of the structure. The distressed noise pierces through the veil clouding Lena's senses and she shakes herself up, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. The building is still tilting precariously, casting the survivors into its shadow.
"We need to get away from here," she croaks, her voice too low to be fully audible.
No sooner has she spoken that the building accelerates its course downward, and no one in its path is making any move to escape it. They all stand there, frozen in the face of impending doom, Lena included. Krypto is whimpering and pulling on her sleeve, teeth sinking into the soft fabric but even his urgency is not enough to get her to react beyond a few words. She knew it was going to happen, that it was only a matter of time ; but she still wasn't ready for disaster to strike again so soon.
Glass breaks, raining down on them as furniture starts pushing through the windows, precipitated forward by the sharper angle of the building. A plate, painted with lovely pink flowers and a gold trim, explodes right at Lena's feet. A second blast shakes everyone to the ground and a blink of an eye later, a geyser of flames shoots through the building. That, she thinks idly, must be the faulty gas conduct they voted to get fixed at the last assembly. She's proven right when a moment later, the ground floors of both adjacent buildings light ablaze.
In the distance, sirens, all around her, screams of fear and pain ; in her head, Lex's maniacal laughter.
Kara reappears, a limp figure held tight in her arms. She hovers in the air for a moment, face darkened by the smoke and body shaking from exertion, then, back first, her muscled shoulders colliding harshly with the brick wall, she takes the brunt of the falling building and attempts to slow its course down. This, clearly, doesn't have the desired effect and part of the building seems to fold in on Kara, falling faster and faster before the top collides with the one opposite the street with a thunder-like sound and everything becomes eerily still.
Lena's chest rises and falls rapidly, and it's the only thing she can concentrate on right now as the ashes settle around her. Kara lands at her feet, cracks spreading from her like spider web on the pavement, and gently, she lays down the figure in her arms. It's Mrs Meyer. Or whatever is left of her ; her face charred, her limbs crushed, and her blush pink bathrobe now a sickening blood red.
"I," Kara stammers. "She. I couldn't get to her in time."
There's blood on her gloved hands, and on her ashen face ; and a piece of flesh that isn't her own as gotten stuck to her torso. She looks frail all of sudden, not much like the giant she is, and she looks about ready to fall to her knees, lips already parted in the beginning of a heartbreaking wail, when a screeching sound causes all of them to look up to witness their building slowly continuing its descent, taking down the one opposite in the process.
Fuck Lex. Really.
More screams rise, coming now from all sides of the street as inhabitants begin to spill out of their own buildings. They need to act, and they need to act fast. But before Lena can reprise her role of maladjusted shepherd and get everyone away from certain death, a gust of glacial wind and a black blur cross the street at incredible speed. Sam skids to a stop in front of her, slipping on a patch of newly created ice, and readjusts her hood to hide her face. "Okay," she mumbles to herself, "okay, a little strong on the freeze breath, but not bad."
"A little strong," might be too much of a euphemism, the entire street is covered in ice. At least, the nascent fires are extinguished. Kara draws herself to her full height, finally averting her eyes from Mrs Meyer's limp body.
"Alex and the DEO are on the way," Sam continues, to them this time. "The two of you need to get out of here. Do you know where the car is parked ?"
"The car ?"
"Yes," Sam replies with urgency. "Your getaway car. To get to the safe house. Lena please, now is not the time to freeze."
"The keys are in my satchel," Kara whispers, looking around like she's surprised she doesn't have her bag with her, "up there," she then adds, pointing at the roof of their building that now stands several storeys lower and at a dangerous angle. "But I can't leave now, people need Supergirl."
"Lex Luthor tried to kill you ! Again !" Sam shouts. "You can't stay here !"
"I don't think he tried to kill us."
Sam whirls around to look at Lena again with furious astonishment. "You don't what ?"
"Look at the way the building collapsed. He wanted to give us enough time to get out."
Loud screams derail the train of Lena's thought, and before she can assess the situation, she finds herself sprawled on her ass a couple of feet away from where Kara now stands with a piece of collapsed railing on her shoulders. The hero stares at the piece of metal for a moment, looking almost bewildered by its existence which, Lena supposes, is an appropriate reaction to having something crash on you, invulnerable or not.
Then, like the proverbial light bulb just came alive above her head, she shoots up from the ground, starts tearing the railing of all the windows, and with a little help from heat vision, solders them between the two buildings to stop the imminent collapse. The awful creaking finally stops and Lena can finally hear in the distance loud sirens and the screeching of tires.
"Good thinking," Sam says when Kara lands back down, "but you need to get out of here now, you've lingered long enough."
She's barely done talking that Kara has disappeared again, wafting in and out of the closest buildings to get people out in the street and away from immediate danger. She slows down her speed to something humanly manageable, no need to have everyone barfing over each other from superspeed, and the sight twinges at Lena's heart, especially when she shoots back in to get a family cat and a teddy bear. This, the person who went back inside a near-collapsed building to rescue of little kid's plushy, is who her brother wants to kill.
She briefly lands next to them again but flies up before Sam can open her mouth and returns with two backpacks filled to the brim, a crooked cardboard box and their respective laptops.
"I couldn't get everything in one go," she says sheepishly, toying with the handle of Lena's briefcase.
"It's okay I-" Lena starts, suddenly very aware that this isn't okay at all.
"I'll recover whatever I can get from your place and keep it safe for you, okay ? I promise." Lena nods at Sam's words, looking up at her apartment. She isn't sure much is salvageable from it. "Now you get in the car, and you drive, and you don't stop, and when you get to the house you don't come out until Alex tells you it's safe. Okay ? Alex and no one else."
Sam briefly clasps Kara's shoulder, then draws Lena in for a tight hug and when she lets go, pushes her in the general direction of the car. She breaks into a clumsy run, staggering until Kara scoops her from the ground and dashes to their vehicle. The DEO storms the street right when they get to it, car doors flying open and loud voices attempting to bring a semblance of order to the scared and recently homeless crowd. For a strange infinite second, Lena can feel Alex's hawk-like gaze on her through the SUV tinted window ; then the engine roars to life, and the car peels off the pavement.
They drive for a long time ; long enough that Lena would have normally fallen asleep by the time Kara finally slows down on the very edge of National City's suburbs. She turns in the last street before the desert, the vast stretch of sand disappearing beyond what her eyes can see. Most of the houses look worn and unsafe, and the street lights flicker ominously as they drive by. Lena can't possibly fathom how they'll be safe here.
The car comes to a stop in front of the most decrepit of houses, the structure closer to a ruin than actual shelter, and Lena is starting to wonder how something that looks like it has carpeted mouldy walls could be a safe place in any sense of the term when Kara stops in front of the house and a thin translucent barrier flutters in Lena's sightline. Kara leans over the dashboard, enters a quick command and only after that turns in the driveway, a loud pop welcoming Lena to an almost completely soundless world on the other side of what might have once been a prime and proper white picket fence.
Kara exhales slowly. "I knew I could trust Alex. We'll be safe here."
It's the first words she's spoken since they got into the car.
"Great," Lena mumbles to herself, sarcasm dripping from her low voice, "the other collapsing building didn't get us, but this one surely will."
"Alex wouldn't send us there if it weren't 100% safe," Kara says, slamming the trunk of the car vigorously.
"I know. I'm sorry. I just-"
"You've had a long day," Kara interrupts softly before Lena can fully descend into frustration. "It's okay, I understand."
I've had a long life, is the reply on the tip of Lena's tongue, but instead of voicing it, she snatches the keys from Kara's outstretched hand, and stalks inside the house.
The house is less decrepit on the inside than it appeared to be on the outside. The walls are still carpeted, in a swirling pattern of mauve and plum, but the abomination doesn't extend to the creaking floorboards, and a strong scent of citrusy cleaning products thankfully permeate the air. The windows don't open, but thanks to the shield protecting the house, they'll at least be able to take a breather on the front porch.
Yellow light floods the living room from an antiquated chandelier, casting everything in unsettling shadows. Lena does a quick check of the house, poking her head in the kitchen to take notice of a very dangerous looking gas stove. There's not even a microwave and in fact, the only somewhat modern piece of equipment seems to be a pistachio plastic corded telephone glued to the wall in the entryway. When Lena picks it up, it doesn't emit a tone. Upstairs, a crooked corridor leads to a single bedroom, in which the sheets don't appear to have been woven in this century, and a bathroom with an old bathtub and an overhanging shower head that has been tentatively cleaned with what smells like white vinegar.
The water pressure is terrible, and the temperature knows no in between between scalding and freezing but she still welcomes it with tears of relief. She lathers herself with the soap Kara speedily packed for her and relishes in the familiar clean smell that, for a second, tricks her mind into thinking she's okay. She feels like she hasn't breathed properly since her building collapsed, and it's probably true. She tilts her head back under the thin stream and closes her eyes, opens them again immediately when the semi darkness of her closed eyelids brings about the bloody image of Mrs Meyer's corpse. She'll never get to see the progress Lena made in her robotic help for seniors program.
With no access to the outside world, there's no way of knowing if she was the sole victim of the collapse, but whatever the final death toll, Kara is sure to be beating herself up about it downstairs. Regretfully, Lena turns off the water, and after towelling herself dry slips on a pair of sweatpants and one of the two hoodies Kara grabbed from the wreckage, she pads her way downstairs, her socks almost sending her to an early grave when she slips in the slanted staircase.
She finds Kara in the kitchen, engrossed in the back of a pack of ramen as she tries to make sense of the tiny writing. From afar, Lena can see it's old, probably dating back from before harmful additives were banned from processed food, but she's ravenous enough not to care. She frowns adorably at the packet, and when she notices Lena's presence and raises her head to look at her, a grim smile stretches sadly on her face.
"How's the shower ?" she asks, nearly hitting Lena in the head with the ramen pack when she wiggles in between her arms for a hug.
"Terrible."
Kara sighs. "If I fly out very quickly, I can get a hold of Alex and have us move somewhere better."
Lena's chest warms a little at the proposition and she looks up at Kara, at this woman she loves so much and who would ruin everything for her. "No," she says with not an ounce of regret. "They're right. Alex, Sam, all of them. We need to stay put until the DEO has done its job. I won't risk you for poor water pressure." She kisses the bottom of her jaw, the only place she can reach since Kara is still in her suit and her shock absorbing boots give her a nice height advantage. "I promise you I'll be fine. It'll be like a holiday."
"In the shittiest house in the history of houses."
"Reminds me of a guest house I stayed at in England actually," Lena muses, "carpeted walls are very British."
"What's up with that anyway ?" Kara laughs, "it's giving me the creeps."
"No idea. But you get used to it, it's homely."
"I'll keep that in mind for our future ho-."
Kara stops abruptly, but the damage is done, and she sags in on herself, the brunt of her weight suddenly resting on Lena who staggers a little in surprise. She straightens up just as quickly as she deflated, but doesn't carry herself with the same strength.
"I'm going to go," she points at the ceiling, "take a shower. Don't wait for me if you're hungry."
"I'm sorry," Lena says as Kara retreats through the door, "about Lex."
"It's not your fault. I'm the one who didn't want to move out."
There are many other words on the tip of Lena's tongue, but before she can string any of them together, Kara has disappeared upstairs, and the water pipes start creaking menacingly. Shaking herself up, Lena wipes an angry tear before it can fully spill, then sets to boiling some water in a dented pan. She doesn't know how much more they can carry before they definitely break.
Kara stays in the bathroom for a long time, the shower running only for a short portion of it. Lena considers joining her for a second, just to forget for a moment all the fuckery happening around them. In the end, she doesn't, and instead sets to preparing dinner, finding in a cupboard a stash of protein bars that might be Kara's only chance to keep up her high calorie intake. She sniffs one by curiosity and has to fight back the urge to vomit ; protein bars are not exactly a choice meal, especially when the chocolate covering has gone grey and stale. She sets a handful aside with two packs of ramen and what was once a brand new bottle of Tabasco ; with a bit of luck, it hasn't gone bad yet and will revive the rest of their food.
None of this bodes well with her. She can see how this place would be part of the DEO's arsenal, strangers things have happened with that organisation, but she doesn't understand why Alex would agree to send her sister to a place like this, with too little food to sustain her, and a security system less complex than what Lena came up with on a regular basis in her teenage years.
While she mules over this, she brews herself a strong cup of tea, the only thing that isn't in short supply here. She finds ten bright red boxes of her favourite brand, still wrapped, and an unused electric kettle, free of any limestone, that immediately beats the corded phone for most recent working device in the house. Kara did pack her phone and tablet, but the house's security system is jamming them and they're unusable. She tries not to think about it too much, about the way they're effectively cut off from everything, but the cellphone she's slipped in her pocket out of habit is heavy, and refuses to be forgotten.
When Kara finally gets out of the bathroom, they eat dinner in companionable silence, legs tangled under the table. Dinner in the broad sense of the term, their meal qualifies more as a mid night snack and by the time they're done and Kara declares that she will do the dishes in the morning, dawn is already peaking through the hastily closed curtains. They go to bed with some hesitancy, both afraid that they won't be able to sleep ; but the sheets have a nice comforting lemony smell that Lena can't place and despite herself, she quickly succumbs to slumber in Kara's tense arms.
/Lena can't get the acrid smell out of her nose ; she's convinced that the deflagration charred her sensitive nostrils. She would have sworn the capacitor was soldered on properly when she checked but clearly, it wasn't. If Lex hadn't been here, well, she'd be in a much worse state than a burnt palm and a new haircut. Her pride really is much more wounded than she is. How could she be so careless in her work ?
A soft knock on her door drags her out of her impromptu pity party and Lex pokes his head in without waiting for an answer. His receding hairline is really starting to show, even with the impressive amount of gel he's used to arrange his hair.
"Can I come in ?" he asks though he's already inside. "I brought some tea."
Lena sighs, then nods, and it's enough of an invitation for him to come sit on the bed next to her on top of the heavy comforter.
"It's Barry's," he says when she takes a sip out of her mug.
She presses the tea to her chest, letting the warmth seep inside of her, and mumbles her thank yous.
"Everybody makes mistakes Lena," Lex continues, tenderly brushing away a strand of her shortened hair. "Failure is a part of invention, it's how you deal with it that matters."
"I know," Lena whispers.
"And how are you going to deal with this mistake ?"
"Sleep on it. Work twice as hard tomorrow."
Lex smiles, ruffles her hair gently. "Excellent."
Lena leans against her brother's shoulder, taking in the clean zesty scent of his suit that breaks through the stench of smoke in her nose, and wonders where she would be without him./
The first few days pass by in a strange manner. There's not much to do around the house, and Kara spends an inordinate amount of time sitting by the phone, waiting for Alex to call. She blames herself, that much is clear, and being cut from the outside, not knowing how many people made it out, how many died, doesn't help. She stares at her hands often, clenching and unclenching them nervously. There's still blood under her fingernails that hasn't been completely washed out. After conducting a deep inspection of the house, Lena finds a couple of battered old books, romance mostly, and decades old science journal, as well as an old record player with a single Chet Baker vinyl.
She spends the major part of these first few days sitting with Kara, reading, sometimes aloud to distract the both of them. It's better than colour coding the meagre pantry to make up for her new and terrifying lack of routine. She wishes she could do more, or anything at all really, but she finds herself stuck, rooted in place on the other side of the rift Kara is attempting to dig between them. She can't really hold it against her, she understands why Kara is reacting the way she is, she simply wishes it weren't so. After the first day, where they slept so well, the nights aren't so kind anymore, and Lena seldom sleeps through them, more often than not lying awake and cursing Lex for what he did. Cursing herself too for what she let him do to them.
She finds a modicum of hope and solace in the little things, in the way Kara will sometimes drape most of her body weight around her while she's cooking, or slip in the shower with her in the morning. In the fact that she still holds her at night, and always, always leaves room for her to sit next to her by the phone, or on the porch when she steps out for fresh air. This is how she knows not all is lost, how she knows Kara is trying, and she can keep on trying too.
"I'm sorry," Kara finally says one evening as they're eating in the relative silence of cutlery scraping on plates. "I know I'm scaring you and I know it doesn't look like it but I'm really trying not to."
Lena sets her fork down delicately. "I understand," she says, "it's hard not to shut someone out." She means no harm by this, but Kara still winces at the reminiscence of recent days. "Do you want to try and talk about it ?" she asks, as gently as she can manage.
She's gotten used to Kara's prolonged bout of silence, though they've been happening less often the further away they've gotten from her return to life and Earth ; she most often gets out of them on her own, but this time, maybe she needs a little coaxing.
"I can't stop thinking about them," Kara whispers eventually after another stretch of silence. "I just can't. All these people they've-"
She stops, twirls her noodles on her fork angrily. Lena reaches out slowly, taking her hand in hers to stop the carnage before the ceiling accidentally gets painted a new unfashionable colour.
"They've lost their homes because of me. Nothing I can do will ever fix that."
So, here's the root of her current round of anguish. Lena's heart breaks a little at the realisation. Kara's relationship with home as a concept has always been fraught ; she's lost hers so young, and to such a web of lies and trauma, and she's been clinging to the every place she's lived in with something not unlike desperation ever since. It's only natural, now that Lena thinks about it, that she would react so viscerally to her failure to keep her neighbour's homes safe ; but it's not her fault, or not solely, and Lena doesn't know how to explain that without starting a fight.
"I should have known better," Kara continues, seething, "than to think we were safe. I should have trusted Kal, and I should have listened to Alex, and I could have, I could have wrapped myself around the bomb or-"
"Should haves aren't going to get us anywhere," Lena interrupts gently. "There are a lot of things I should have done differently too. And Alex no doubt thinks the same, J'onn too probably, hell, President Marsdin is probably up to her neck in 'should haves'. But looking back isn't going to do us any good right now, we can only look forward and do our best. And we can't let Lex break us." Lena barely breathes, carried away by her own words. "I can survive a lot of things, but I wouldn't survive losing you because of him, and if we let his scheming and bullshit get in between us, that's exactly what's going to happen. My home is not a place, it's a person and that person is you. I'll let him take everything away, I'll give it up without a fight if I must, but not you. Never you."
She stops. Feels strangely compelled to shovel noodles into her mouth to prevent herself from going on another grandiloquent rant ; but Kara smiles at her sadly from the other side of the table and she puts her fork back down.
"You're right," Kara whispers, "I can't let him win." Her brow furrows, and she looks down at the content of her plate with intent, like it holds some kind of prophecy. "If you're okay, here, with me," she continues eventually, "even though we don't have a home anymore, do you think all these people are too ?"
"What do you think about when you think of home ?"
"You," Kara replies without missing a beat. "Alex, Krypto, the sound of his tail on the floor when he's happy, Eliza, her hugs and cookies, Sam, and playing cards with Ruby and- Oh."
"There it is. You've got your answer," Lena says, feeling wiser than she really is. "They'll be upset. I know I am. I know I'll miss our apartment, and our roof, and the way the sun crossed the room. But they're alive, and together, all thanks to you. Ultimately, that's what matters."
Kara rubs a weary hand on her face. "You're right."
"I know I am. It's exhausting."
Kara laughs, just a little but enough for Lena to know her quip fulfilled its intended purpose. She glances at the phone in the hallway, doesn't say anything, but her silent question is deafening anyway. When is Alex going to call ?