Kara is very adaptable. Ultimately, it's the biggest tragedy of her life. She goes with the flow, her head never underwater for too long ; and no matter how hard the punches, no matter how deep the grief, she always rises again, her pain relegated to a little part of her heart. If there's one thing however that she never quite adapted too, it's the noise levels on Earth. Her hearing is always the first to give out when she panics, the first to awake when she rises from sleep. Here though, what bothers her is not the noise, but the absence of it. Apart from the light buzz of electricity that she tuned out quickly, it's eerily quiet behind the forcefield. There are no birds, no car horns, no hundred of thousands of heartbeats, it's just her, and Lena, and it's unnerving. She can't periodically check for danger, can't see if anyone is coming, and most of all, she can't hear Alex. She could get used to the rest, just peace and quiet and Lena ; but not hearing her sister, not knowing if she's okay and safe might be what tips her over the edge.
She looks down at her hands, covered in soapy water, and with a sigh, slowly straightens the fork she's just bent in two. A set of feet pads closer behind her and soon, two arms wrap around her, hands coming together just below her chest. Lena's head pops up over her shoulder ; she smells of toothpaste, and the clean citrusy smell that permeates everything here.
"What kind of atrocious book do you want to read tonight ?"
Kara mulls over it for a second, then puts the scrubbing brush down in the sink and swiftly turns around in Lena's arms. "Do you have anything about lesbians in lockdown ? Post-apocalyptic bunker romance ?"
She means it as a joke, but her tone is a little too acerb for it to land right. Thankfully, Lena laughs anyway, a graceful chuckle reverberating in her throat. She kisses her cheek, close to the mouth. "I'll see what I can find," she says. "Don't wash the dishes too hard, okay ?"
Kara makes no such promise.
Music starts crackling out of the living room ; Lena must have put on their sole record. Luckily, it's not one Kara dislikes, though jazz now always reminds her of her final hours at Luthor manor before Brainiac attacked. Definitely abandoning the dishes, she makes her way to the other room silently and finds Lena gently swaying in front of the almost barren bookshelf, engrossed in a back cover.
"Found anything good ?" she asks, matching the sway of Lena's hips with her own as she gently encases her waist between her hands.
"No." Lena puts the book back on the shelf. "This one is about straight people shagging in a lighthouse. Not really my thing."
Kara moulds her body against her back, kisses the crown of her head. In the background, Chet Baker starts crooning ; it's not a happy song. "What ?" she asks, "lighthouses or straight people ?"
"Ha ha, very funny."
"You don't sound amused," Kara muses.
"You think ?"
Even if she's turning her back to her, Kara can perceive Lena's patented eyebrow raise. "Shame," she says, twirling her until they're face to face, "I was thinking of writing you a romance novel."
Lena wraps her arms around her neck, smoothing her fingers on the shorn hair at the base of her head. "Humour me then."
"It's about this alien," Kara begins, "who's been on Earth for a while. She's doing good in life, she has a job, a family, but she's also very lonely. One day, as she's coming home, she stumbles, quite literally, on the most beautiful woman she's ever seen, in the whole universe."
"In the whole universe," Lena repeats, "of course."
"Don't interrupt me," Kara scolds lightly, briefly squeezing her waist, "it's a very good story. It has robots, and dogs, an epic battle between good and evil."
Lena smirks. "Sounds more like an action movie."
"Tons of sex," Kara continues, "like loads and loads of it. And sweet kisses and dates too, hand-holding-"
"The hand holding is very important," Lena comments with a laugh. She shudders when Kara slips her hands under her shirt.
"The hand holding is very important."
"How does it end ?"
"It doesn't," Kara replies softly.
"I think this is my favourite part."
"It's mine too."
Slowly, with intent, she leans in to kiss her, and Lena meets her in kind, mouth already open and welcoming, lips hot and eager. At once, nothing else matters. Not the record skipping loudly between two songs, not the fact that she can't hear anything beyond the forcefield ; she's not even afraid anymore. All there is, all she cares about, is Lena, her warm body pressed against hers, her feather light weight when she lifts her up by her thighs to carry her up to bed. There will be time later to finish doing the dishes, to fix the record player, to worry about a thousand big and little things ; right now, all Kara wants to focus on is Lena's pale skin against the dark sheet, her laugh when she gets caught in her sweater, the trail blooming down her lithe body, the blood rushing loud on either side of her head, when she wraps her legs tight around her.
The next couple of days are strange. They pass by slowly, Kara trying her best not to worry too much while Lena grows incredibly nervous the more time they spend cooped inside. She's adapted too, and relatively well considering the situation, but it's not rare for Kara to walk into a room to find her obsessively straightening small objects while counting over and over under her breath. She also touches the wall next to the phone every time she walks past it then wipes her finger on her slacks. Kara doesn't think Lena's noticed she does that.
Kara packed her things, that's the main reason why she returned to their wrecked apartment, but she seems afraid of unpacking them, and they stay neatly arranged in their cardboard box, the frame around her birth mother's picture dented and the glass of Ruby's snowball cracked in several places. She's put small pieces of tape on it to avoid the sparkly liquid from seeping out but she'll have to find a more permanent solution soon. Somehow, this feels like a very shitty metaphor for the current state of their lives.
"Who do you think is taking care of Krypto ?" Lena asks late one afternoon, a bit too casually. She's been working on Kara's code for the past hour, trying to find a way to up her tolerance to Kryptonite, and she lifts her head from her tablet to ask her question, pushing her glasses up to adjust them on her nose. Kara forgot to grab the contact lenses cleaning solution.
"Alex probably. We might have some trouble getting him back from her."
"I'll buy her a dozen puppies," Lena grumbles, rather cutely, "but she's not keeping my dog." She puts her tablet down, presses her fingers hard on her forehead. "Sorry, I think I've hit a wall there. It'd be better if I could look directly inside you, but I don't have the right cable."
"You should make me wireless," Kara says, rubbing at the base of her neck where the scar never truly faded.
"If there's one thing we are absolutely not going to do, it's that," Lena says very firmly. "We can't risk every idiot with a cellphone and too much free time hacking you."
"I didn't think of this," Kara mumbles, properly chastised and feeling a bit like a four years old caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
"It's okay," Lena replies, gently kissing her cheek. "I can think about it for you."
Kara hums, rubbing at her neck again. "With your cute genius brain."
"Well my 'cute' genius brain is tired," Lena huffs, "I think I'm done for today."
A shadow passes over her face and for a second, she looks particularly upset, brow set into a heavy frown, before she smoothes her features and gets up from the couch, as proper as can be in her crinkly clothes.
"Do you want to get dinner on the roof ?" Kara asks, following after her immediately.
"On the roof ?"
"Yeah." Kara looks down at her feet, rubbing at the collar of her t-shirt. She found it in one of the closets and took it upon herself to cut off the tag but did so improperly and now it's itchy. Alex always cuts the tag of her clothes for her, having grown expert at it, but Kara supposes she had other things to worry about when she set up everything ; her sister might not have even been the one who took care of the safe house.
"I know it's not the same," she continues hesitantly, "but it could be nice. I'll make sure you don't fall."
Lena considers it for a second, then, leaning into Kara's arms, simply says, "okay."
"Okay ?"
"Yeah," she breathes. "It'll be nice. So far out of town, we'll see the stars better."
Getting out onto the roof as it turns out, is slightly more complicated than Kara had envisioned. It's steep for starters, and the tiles are rough and cutting, eliciting a good number of curses from Lena. Kara does offer to help, but her girlfriend seems to be in the mood to do things on her own, and in any case, her hands are busy juggling their noodles and an old bottle of wine unearthed from beneath the sink.
They settle high above the ground, Lena held in place in between Kara's legs, holding on tighter than necessary, and after a bit of rearranging, a spike of adrenaline when Kara almost drops the bottle of wine and another loud curse from Lena when some of it spills down her shirt, they finally take in the view.
The desert stretches out far in front of them, disappearing into the darkness as the sun sets behind them and the first stars of the night make themselves known above them. It's quiet, missing the sounds Kara knows are there, beyond the force field, small animals ruffling in the sands, crickets, the occasional spider biding its time in a carefully crafted tunnel ; but to make up for it, she's got Lena's heartbeat, her calm breathing, quickening when she leans in to kiss the crook of her neck, licking slowly and thoroughly where the wine spilled.
They eat in quasi silence, Kara with the dented fork she's come to see as hers and Lena with a pair of wooden chopsticks that has seen better days. They're not home, and their lives have really taken a turn for the worse lately ; in fact, Kara knows there's a good chance she'll wake up in the middle of the night, afraid, a cry on the tip of her tongue. But they're together, and Lena is warm against her, and she laughs at her shitty desert jokes, and she's pliant under her fingers, and most of all she's right, home is not a place, it's a feeling, a person, and Lena is the only home she wants. She's wormed herself into every nook and cranny of her crooked being, erasing all prior occupants to become the only one Kara has ever known.
She's thinking of telling her as much, maybe not in so many words, knowing she'll butcher them, that they'll be pale in comparison to the night and the stars, that they won't be enough to describe the little flutter in her heart when she thinks about her. She's thinking of going for a simple foolproof "hey, I love you," when inside the house, the phone starts ringing.
They're downstairs in less time than it takes for either of them to point out the shrill ringtone, remnants of their meal tumbling down the roof, bottle of wine crashing pitifully in the sunburnt grass. Kara trips over the last step, rights herself immediately but has to put Lena down lest they both crash through a wall. She's the first to reach the phone, almost ripping it off its base in her hast to pick up.
"Alex ?!"
The line crackles for a second and Kara starts feeling faint, nauseated. The voice that comes out of the receiver is not her sister's.
"Well, technically not untrue, but I usually go by Lex."
The phone cracks loudly in Kara's hand, the cheap plastic bending under her sudden access of strength.
"Kara ?" Lena approaches slowly behind her. "Kara darling what's going on ?"
"Is my dear sister with you Supergirl ?" Lex continues into the phone. "Put me on speaker will you ?"
"Kara ?" Lena asks again. "Is Alex okay ?"
"Oh your sister is fine Supergirl. She's not my current target."
The voice is not coming from the phone anymore, instead, it resonates all around them, reverberating on every wall and corner of the house.
"Lex ?"
"Hello Lena. How do you like your new home ?"
On its own accord, Kara's hand shoots out to steady Lena before she can fall, her sudden shivers seriously compromising her stability.
"I'm very disappointed in you," Lex continues, tone light like he's commenting on nothing more than a bad grade or a small act of misbehaviour. "I honestly thought you would figure it out on your own. I got everything right, the tea, our old maid's laundry detergent... Hanging out with aliens," he spits out the word with such disdain that to Kara it feels like a slap in the face, "didn't do wonders for your intelligence."
"Why ?" Lena asks, looking up frantically, searching for a camera, a microphone, a speaker, anything. "Lex, why ?"
Lex sighs, his exhale dragging longly and disturbingly out of the crackling hidden speakers. "Is the why so important Lena ?" he asks wearily. "You have fifteen minute to find a way out of the house before the Kryptonite overloads your Supergirlfriend. I would say good luck, but I don't really mean it."
Silence follows his words. Dead silence. The line stops crackling, and then room by room, the entire house powers down, leaving them in almost complete darkness. They stare at each other for a long moment, Lena's face frozen in shock in a ray of moonlight ; the countdown has already started, but neither of them seem to remember how to move. In the ghostly quietness, it's impossible to miss the next sound, a soft clang followed by a deep low hissing ; Kryptonite has been released into the vents.
Kara knows it's coming, yet, it seizes at her throat, and she almost doubles over in pain, catching herself on the wall before she can fall. Lena is at her side in a second, trying to support her weight as best as she can, which isn't much.
"Remind me to go to the gym more," she groans coughing a little as the air around them becomes foggy with green fumes.
Kara wheezes. She can acutely feel every part of her body, mechanic and organic, working double time to protect her ; but the level of radiation is rising much much faster than when Lex irradiated the entire planet and even her enhanced body can't keep up. She feels Lena tugging at her and she follows blindly, barging out of the house after her, to no avail. The dome shielding them from the outside world is also filled with Kryptonite, and when she throws herself at it, she finds that she can't get through, the barrier having turned solid since they entered.
"Where's your suit ?" Lena asks with urgency, her voice coming from someplace close to her but her silhouette nigh invisible through the toxic cloud.
Kara pats at her pocket, looking for the phone shaped box that contains her new nanite suit. It's not there. Of fucking course.
She tries to remember where she might have left it but her hazy mind comes up blank. "Bedroom ?" she mumbles. "Bathroom ?"
"It might be in your other trousers," Lena says, or maybe shouts, Kara isn't sure. "I'll go check. Don't move okay ? I'm coming back I promise."
Kara coughs. She wouldn't be able to move even if she wanted to.
Lena is gone for what feels like a long time. Huffing and puffing, Kara manages to get back to her feet, leaning hard on the force field. It crackles under her touch, but she still can't get through it. Shouts come in from the other direction, and she turns to where the house disappeared in the fog ; she can't even see her own hands. Lena slams into her and she in turn slams back into the force field before sliding to her knees, what little breath she has knocked out from her lungs.
"Found it," Lena says. Her voice sounds weird, distorted, like Kara is hearing it through several layers. She tries to look in her direction, can barely see her face, haloed by a strange light. Kara fumbles before her, trying to grab the suit, but she keeps missing Lena's hands and it's getting harder and harder to breathe and- Something brushes her chest and a second later she feels the suit anchoring itself to her with a jolt. "There," Lena whispers, or maybe her voice only seems low because Kara still can't hear her properly.
She perceives an immediate change. It's probably psychosomatic, she's most probably still dying, but with the suit coming to life on her body, she feels invincible again, convinced somehow that everything is going to be okay. Gauntlets snap into place, and Lena takes both of her hands in hers. "I'm sorry," she says, her voice clearer now that the suit is helping Kara's body against the Kryptonite. Before she can figure out what Lena is sorry for, a helmet closes around her head.
Panic rises instantly and she finds herself transported back into her pod, suffocating, face inches from the deadly void of space. She's not going to make it out, no one will find her there, at least not before her air supply runs out and when her air supply runs out she'll die in that flimsy capsule, she'll-
Lena squeezes her hands harder.
She focuses hard on the solid ground beneath her feet, trying to feel each individual blade of grass through the sole of her boots. She's not in space, she's not alone, Lena is here.
She forces her eyes to open, and beyond the thick glass of her helmet, crowded by a digital display, she finds Lena's face, blurred by the torch she appears to have taped to lab goggles. She's wrapped a scarf around her nose and mouth and what little skin is on display is paler than usual but she's here, with Kara, and together they can get out of here. They have to.
"Can you hear anything ?" Lena asks urgently.
"Define 'anything' ?" Kara coaxes her head to the side, finding her hearing sharper. She can hear many things, Lena's heartbeat, the Kryptonite fumes in the house's AC, the humming of the force field ; but none of these can help them get out of here.
"Something electric. Like a battery," Lena says, pointing out the obvious. "Or a dynamo," she then muses to herself, "though that would be primitive of him."
Kara listens harder, choosing to ignore for now the way the display on her helmet blinks with various warnings. "There's nothing," she says, shaking her head in disappointment.
"Fucker. It's probably beyond the shield."
"There has to be another way."
"It's Lex," Lena snaps, "there is another way. I'm just not smart enough to figure it out."
"Hey," Kara says, "hey !" She grabs Lena's hands a little too roughly, stopping them in their frenzied course. "You are smart enough. You're the smartest person I know. Your brother is just a twisted asshole with a god complex. There is a way out, and we're going to figure it out."
"There is a way out," Lena mumbles, looking all around them though Kara can't figure out what she's looking for, or even at, the air around them is still thick with green fumes. "There is a way out... The phone !"
"The phone ?"
"Yes, the phone !" Lena grabs her hand, yanking with all her strength and Kara follows out of habit, her body kicking into action before her brain can figure out what's happening. "The phone's our only contact with the outside, this has to be it."
They make their way inside again with some difficulty, Lena's torch and Kara's headlights cutting a timid beam through the fog. The phone is where they left it, receiver hanging pitifully, and after retrieving a pen knife from her pocket, Lena starts prying it open, exposing a mess of wires and a lone electric circuit that looks like it's been soldered on by a middle-schooler.
"That's not it," she grumbles, peering at the inside. "That's not it, that's not it. Kara ? Can you ?"
She vaguely gestures at the wall, and, hoping that she's interpreted that right, Kara tears off the drywall in one clumsy motion, sending bits of paint and plaster raining down on them. What she finds behind is fucked up, supervillain level of fucked up.
"How did I not hear that ?" she whispers, taking in the clean organised panels of circuits and microphones and what looks like an old-timey recorder. There are clear pumps and tubes, filled with a green gas, flashing lights, and amongst this, a bright red button marked : "PUSH ME."
"We are not going to push that," Lena decides wisely. "Or are we ?"
"No we're not !"
"Shhhhh," Lena whispers in a peculiar, somewhat maniacal way, "I'm trying to think like Lex. He wants to see if I have the guts to push it."
"I don't have the guts to push it," Kara comments, taking a minute step back.
"Whatever happens next, I love you."
Lena slams her palm on the button.
For a second, nothing happens ; then, the wall bursts into flames.
Only Kara's quick reflexes save Lena from the scorching heat as she snatches her and shields her with her body, leaping feet away from the fire. She stays curled around her for the longest time, afraid to move so much as a finger, and in turn Lena clings to her with an appropriate amount of terror, heart beating loudly in her chest.
"Okay, that was a bad idea," Lena remarks lightly.
A sarcastic adrenaline fuelled reply is on the tip of Kara's tongue but before she can say anything unnecessarily mean, she hears something ; a police siren.
"It wasn't," she whispers.
Lena raises her head from where she's hidden it in the crook of Kara's armoured neck. "What ?"
"It wasn't," Kara repeats slowly. She focuses hard on what she can hear beyond the roaring fire and finds that where her extended hearing met nothing but silence before, there's now a plethora of sounds again. Sirens, screeching tires, birds, heartbeats, creatures in the desert. Something pops into the wall and a gust of flames shoots their way ; Kara makes a run for it.
She runs out into the garden, Lena held tightly in her arms and doesn't stop until she's well into the middle of the street, stopping abruptly and stumbling to her knees in her hast to get away. The house is ablaze in the night, flames now licking at the roof they were lounging on not an hour before.
Kryptonite dissipating into the air, Kara deems it safe enough to rip the helmet off her head, not taking the time to understand how she might make it recede into her collar or something equally as technologically spectacular. She takes big grateful gulps of acrid oxygen, chest heaving painfully and ears ringing loud enough to make her nauseous.
"Well," Lena says, "overall not the worst thing that has ever happened to me."
Barely a second later, she rips the scarf covering her face, hunches forward, and throws up on her feet.
Kara remains still for a moment, not for the first time wondering what she ever did to Rao for such bullshit to befall her. Then, slowly, she makes her way to Lena, cursing the lack of pocket on the suit. She needs water, a clean handkerchief, possibly mints. Mints are good against nausea, right ? Before she can get to Lena, three black figures materialise out of thin air in between them.
She reacts before thinking, grabbing by the collar the first one she can reach and lifting them clean off the ground. Rage courses through her vein ; in this instant, she thinks she could kill again, and doesn't even fear it. "Whoever the fuck you are," she groans, "now's really not the time."
"Kara ! Kara put me down !"
"Sam...?"
"Yes. And Alex. And Rojas !"
Slowly, Kara lowers her friend to the ground, though she has no doubt the other Kryptonian could shake off her grip if she really wanted to. A smaller, thinner figure, slams hard into Kara and she takes a step back, absorbing the shock to prevent the very fragile human from snapping to pieces in her arms.
"We looked for you everywhere. I- You weren't in the safe house and Sam couldn't hear you and I was- I was so scared Kara I-"
Her sister sniffles, attempting to crush her in her weak embrace. Kara holds on tight to her, a low sense of panic simmering inside of her. She inhales deeply, filling her lungs with the familiar smell of her sister, lavender, Kelly's body wash, Sam's shampoo.
Alex shakes herself into composure, discreetly wiping a stray tear on her cheek. "What happened ? Are you okay ?"
"It was Lex," Kara said, then, very softly, she adds, "I don't think we're okay."
With no time for pretence or property, Alex launches at her again, wrapping her tight in her arms once more. "We're gonna get you home," she whispers. "We're gonna get you home I promise. You'll be safe. I'll stop at nothing to keep you safe."
Kara doesn't really have it in her to keep herself together, and as she looks over her sister's shoulder, at Andrea helping Lena up, at Sam extinguishing the fire, the sleeve of her black hoodie smocking from a stray ember, she starts crying.