"Kara's new neighbour is Lena Luthor," Alex says as soon as Kelly enters the apartment.
"I know that babe," her fiancée replies laughing. "It's written on her mailbox. But I do wonder what she's doing here."
"Probably has something to do with the dozens of articles written about her downplaying her work to focus on her lack of people skills and her supposed lavish lifestyle. 'Lena Ice Queen Luthor, Will The Cold Genius Snap Like Her Brother ?' 'Out Of Touch Luthor Heiress To Take Over Family Company' 'Everything You've Ever Wanted To Know About The Luthor Manor' 'Exclusive ! Lena Luthor Makes More In A Month Than You Will In Your Life' and my personal favourite 'When Will Female Lex Luthor Blow Up National City ?'."
Kara doesn't mean to be so virulent, but she's getting tired of people focusing solely on the Luthor part of Lena Luthor when the woman in question seems so amazing. She's only known her for a couple of hours, and maybe it's silly, but she's pretty and she wants to talk to her about stars. She's been keeping up with the Luthors, of course she has, for Kal's sake mostly, but also because LCorp is a leading technological firm, and Kara is very, very, into science.
Kelly shoots her a curious look silently asking Alex what's going on, but her fiancée only shrugs, a gesture that screams "She's been going on and on about this for the past hour, please don't ask."
"I take it that you've met her," Kelly prompts nonetheless, eliciting a desperate sigh from Alex.
"I did," Kara replies somewhat harshly before forcing herself to calm down. "She needed some help with moving in, decided she could do it on her own, probably forgot that human aren't built to carry such heavy loads in this weather. She's nice."
"You didn't fangirl, did you ?" Kelly asks with a teasing smirk that is so similar to her sister's that Kara can't help but roll her eyes.
"No I didn't," she says, turning towards the oven to retrieve, bare handed, a perfectly cooked zucchini and goat cheese pie.
"God I hate it when you do that," Kelly mumbles, averting her eyes.
"She looked distraught. I wasn't going to assault her about how much I like her thesis on the compatibility between alien prosthetics and the human body. I was just being a good neighbour." That last statement brings back vivid flashes of Lena in her tight tank top, glistening with sweat and out of breath and Kara shakes her head so fast to get rid of this thought that she nearly bangs it against a cupboard in dizziness.
"I'm sorry," Kelly says, reaching out to stabilise Kara. "I was just teasing."
"Well if you want to eat any time soon, I'd suggest less teasing and more setting the table," Kara mumbles, trying very hard not to thing about how her green dishcloth isn't unlike the colour of her neighbour's eyes. She fails ; if only because she has to berate herself for comparing Lena's eyes to something as mundane as a tea towel.
Kara doesn't hate the hot weather per se, she just hates the heat wave aspect of it. The reminder that this planet, her second home, is in peril, keeps her up more often than not these days. When she first came to Earth, summer was her favourite season, the warmth and the extended day light used to bring her a sense of comfort and safety ; now, she spends too much time dreading heat strokes from her loved ones and setting up water for bees to really enjoy it. As soon as the temperature goes above 100°F, she calls Eliza every day, making sure she's taking care of herself, and always ready to fly to Midvale before her Earth mum even has the time to pick up the phone.
She hangs up now, reassured about Eliza's state, and brings back her focus to other, less frightening, things ; insects, buzzing around in the roof's garden, the sun warming her and charging her body. This is where she feels most at home in National City, not in her apartment, not at Alex's, but here, surrounded by as much nature as could be fit on top of the building. Alex often jokes and says she must have been a plant in a past life ; Kara often thinks it's true, even if it's a bit ridiculous. Kryptonians did not believe in reincarnation, but Kara learned to adapt to her new planet, and if she did have a past life, she hopes she was a Dar-Essa.
The sky above her seems infinitely blue, she knows it's not true, of course, there's a limit to the sky, if only in terms of spacial laws and the Karman line ; but this hue, so particular to Earth, has always brought her a strange sort of comfort. They did have blue on Krypton, dozens of shades, though with names different from Earth's, but they didn't have this one. It's nice sometimes, to look at something that doesn't remind her of Krypton ; even though she does end up thinking about Krypton a lot. It's because of Alex and Kelly's upcoming wedding, she reckons, that she thinks so much about love, and family, and how things are so different here.
Her phone buzzes in her pocket, and she doesn't bit back her annoyed groan when she recognise the ringtone ; it's Sunday for Rao's sake !
"Consultant Zor-El speaking," she says into the phone, "what can I do for you Assistant Director Danvers ?"
"No need to be so formal Kara," her sister sighs on the other end of the line.
"It's Sunday and I was about to take a nap, I think I ought to be petty about it."
"And I was about to have mind blowing sex with my fiancée," Alex mutters to herself, though she knows Kara will hear her.
"You win this one," Kara grumbles, sitting up with discontent. "What can I do for you ?"
"We have," Alex starts before pausing, weighting her words, "kind of a situation here. It's hard to explain on the phone, but we need your help."
"Alright, let me put on a shirt and I'll be there in a minute."
"You were...?"
"I was sunbathing Alex, you don't do that with clothes on !"
Kara usually is a fan of walking, even to the DEO which isn't exactly close to her building. Whenever she can, she avoids tight enclosed spaces, cars, packed trains ; but the urgency yet strange hesitancy in Alex's voice compels her to take the fast route to the DEO, up up and away.
Nothing more than a blur, she's at the DEO in less than 45 seconds, flashing her badge to security and making her way into the control room where everybody is gathered around…
"What am I looking at exactly ?" Kara asks, coming behind Nia who doesn't so much as flinch at her quick arrival.
"Saw you coming," she confirms with a wink at Kara's silent question.
"That's the thing," Brainy says to answer the one she vocalised. "We don't exactly know. Director J'onn and myself thought you might have an idea."
"It looks like some kind of pill to me. Is it drug ?"
"That's what we're thinking too," Alex says, reaching out with a gloved hand to take a closer look at the pill. "But we had lab running tests on it and it isn't man made. Have you ever encountered anything like this ?"
"I wasn't taking drugs at 12 cycles," Kara replies snarkily, barely restraining an exasperated eye roll. "Do you have any witnesses ?" she adds in a gentler way, aware that most of them here also had to give up their peaceful Sunday to investigate another crisis. "If I know what it does, maybe I'll be able to help."
"More or less..."
"More or less ?" Kara repeats, "how can you more or less have witnesses ?" She does know what it means, but she needs the dreadful confirmation.
"We have three overdoses," Brainy cuts, exposing the facts in his usual clean and straight forward way. "And two apparent users who are unresponsive and can't help us in anyway. At this rate we have a probability of 13% of gaining information that way."
"Well I've never seen this in my life." Kara reaches out, motioning for Alex to pass her the pill. She brings the iridescent oval shape to eye level focusing on it until her vision goes around it and through her hand. "There's lead in it, so I can't do anything about this. I can ask around at the bar but I don't know if we'll get anything from this."
"Do you want to see the bodies ?" Alex asks, a bit too pragmatically for a Sunday evening.
"I guess I should." Kara grimaces, thinking about her leftover potstickers and the TV show she wanted to catch up on. "And I need to see the alive ones too."
Alex leads her into the depth of the DEO, to a place she tends to avoid when she's here. On their way to the morgue, she grabs a lab coat, emblasoned with the official logo, using it to cover what know feels like a very inappropriate loose white t-shirt. At least, she thinks, her jeans are clean.
The morgue is cold, and sanitised, everything Kara dislikes ; it reminds her of her pod, of the Phantom Zone. The bodies look peacefully asleep and she can't help but think that, if it weren't for the absence of breathing, they could, like her, wake up.
Alex briefly puts a comforting hand on her shoulder, its warmth cutting through the cold Kara doesn't normally feels.
She sets to work, x-raying the bodies, peering through brains and bones, shuddering at the motionless blood in the still veins. She even cradles one of them in her arms, checking its weight for any abnormal density.
"Nothing," she eventually says, turning towards Alex with a grim look. "Well, there are traces amount of lead, but not enough to be lethal. Have you ran scans on the others ?"
"We were about to, but I wanted to have your expertise first, in case we were to run tests that could interact poorly with the drug."
"Good idea."
"I've been known to have those from time to time," Alex teases, the tension seeping away as they step out of the morgue.
"Agent Danvers ?" Brainy's voice comes through the coms. "We seem to have a bit of a situation."
"What kind of situation Agent Dox ?" Alex asks with a sigh, her smile disappearing from her face.
"One of our patient is dead," Brainy replies matter-of-factly. "Our chances of finding out what is happening have dropped to 8%."
"Thanks you Agent Dox," Alex sighs, defeat weighting down the few words she manages to say. "Can you ?" she asks to Kara motioning between their bodies and pointing up.
With only a nod for confirmation, Kara gathers her sister into her arms and shoots through the corridors, stopping only to swipe her card when necessary, the armoured doors frustratingly slowing them down. They reach the med bay in twenty-seven seconds.
"What can you tell me ?" Alex asks as soon as Kara's put her down. She clasps her arms behind her back, fighting a wave of nausea induced by their hectic travel up. Only Kara notices that ; to others, she looks as calm and collected as ever.
"There was an increase in brain activity a minute away before the death," a tall woman with vibrant pink hair says, swiping at her tablet until statistics appear on the far wall. "It spiked up then dropped down to zero, and the organs who already had a lower than usual activity shut down immediately. The heart was last."
"How much of an increase are we talking about ?" Alex asks, looking at the numbers in confusion.
"It tripled. I think it's safe to say his brain fried."
For the first time in months, Kara doesn't think about Lucy when she lays awake in bed. No, to keep her mind of the dead bodies, that she doesn't see much, but still too often for her liking, she thinks about Lena. Not the Luthor part of her, just about Lena ; what she knows about her, how little it is, and how much she'd like to know. She knows that there is more than meets the eye. Lena is more than her alluring body, and much, much more than what they show on TV. Kara heard it in her silences, her fumbled words turned sharp questions infused with infinite wit ; saw it in her measured gait, her guarded posture, and the way her eyes seemed to follow her everywhere. Her neighbour is enticing, mesmerising in the best of ways. The way she moves, placing herself in the world with caution, the way she looks at things, with genuine curiosity but a hint of restrain. She wants to know what books she reads, what her favourite colour is, if she likes autumn better than summer, her opinion on donuts and the semicolon.
Two sets of moans and panting reach her ears through the wall.
She can get to know Lena in a friend way. Friend is good.
Snapper is yelling. About what, Kara isn't quite sure exactly, but his voice sounds like shrapnel and the office smells like sweat and hot dust, and she really, really wishes she could go back to just twenty-four hours before. She wonders what it would take for Brainy to let her borrow his time ship. Maybe if she asks Nia to ask him...
"Danvers !" Snappers roars. "Are you listening ?"
"Yes sir," Kara replies, straightening her back out of instinct.
"Then what was I just saying ?"
"Less gossip, more news," Kara says, in the practiced way of someone who's had to repeat this exact sentence a lot. "And you'd like for someone to report on LCorp next big release, I'd like to volunteer for that."
"What do you even know about science Danvers ?"
"I minored in Astrophysics sir."
"LCorp's new product is a solar powered high capacity emergency generator."
"I could work on that," Kara says, hope brimming in her voice.
"I'm giving it to Dey," Snappers cuts, already turning away to go about his day. "You're covering pelicans eating dump at the new recycling factory. I hope your nose isn't too sensitive."
"But..."
"And your tie is crooked."
With a wave of the hand, everybody's dismissed, and Kara is the first one out, courtesy of enough superpowers to be fast but unnoticeable ; there's no point of hanging around when Snapper won't let her prove herself anyway. Shouldering her messenger bag she makes a beeline for the elevator, straightening her tie in Cat's empty office's window. At the last moment, she makes a sharp turn, nearly colliding with some intern or another and taking the stairs instead. She doesn't feel like being trapped in a metal box right now, now matter how short the trip.
She spends the rest of the day wading in dumpsters, interviewing workers and specialists. Her head is going to explode from the smell and she has a feeling she'll never be able to get the stench off her favourite shirt but she'll be damned if this isn't the best article about garbage eating birds. At some point, a raccoon jumps out of nowhere and decides her tie would make a perfect lunch, ripping part of it and running away faster than Kara can dare to react.
By the time she finally makes it home, she's definitely convinced Rao must be having a laugh about her, because when she shoulders the stucked door, she bumps straight into Lena. Lena and her girlfriend, both impeccably dressed while Kara herself has dirt in her hair and her unsalvageable tie slung around her neck.
"Kara," Lena breathes out in greetings with a radiant smile.
And despite her bad day, despite everything, Kara can't help but smile in return. "Hi," she says quite eloquently, sheepishly rubbing her neck.
Lena's girlfriend clears her throat loudly and the bubble they weren't even aware they were in, bursts.
"Oh, right," Lena says, her face melting into a scarily blank expression. "Kara, this is my girlfriend Veronica Sinclair, Ronnie, this is..."
"... Kara Danvers from CatCo Magazine," Veronica cuts with a slightly terrifying grin. "I really liked your article on high waisted jeans, will you write a follow up ?"
"I didn't know you were a journalist," Lena says with a frown.
"Honestly Lena, do you ever pay attention to anything that isn't right under your nose ?" her girlfriend says sharply.
"I am," Kara replies, speaking exclusively to Lena and trying to not pay attention to whatever is going on between the two women ; she doesn't remember ever feeling so uneasy. "I was Cat Grant's assistant for a couple of years then she gave me a shot as a reporter. But I work at the National City Tribune now."
"I only read the science column," Lena says softly, half thinking to herself while she's speaking. "And the book report."
"Books and science, that's my Lena," Veronica chimes in with what is probably meant to be a smile but is leaning more toward a grimace.
"I'll ask Jess to give me the full paper next time," Lena muses to herself. "Have you published anything recently ?"
"I have a story on the new recycling plant going out tomorrow."
"That's reassuring," Lena says with a bright laugh, "I was staring to think your office was in the sewers."
Kara can't help but join in on her laughter, tension from her hard day seeping out of her body as her neighbour's face scrunches adorably.
"We're going to be late Lee," Veronica's voice cuts in, her cold tone rendering the term of endearment meaningless.
"Oh right," Lena says, straightening up and smoothing invisible wrinkles on her tight dress. "I'll see you around," she shoots at Kara as she follows Veronica out the door.
"I live right next door," Kara replies with a sudden burst confidence, "you'll see me plenty."
She earns a smile right before the door slams shut.
Late that night, late enough that it's already tomorrow, the door from Lena's apartment slams, causing Kara to jolt awake from a feverish vision of Veronica Sinclair eating her favourite tie. She's taken three showers and washed her clothes two times but still smells like a sewer rat.
No matter how much she tosses and turns, she finds it impossible to fall back asleep after, her hearing tuned into every single noise coming from Lena's apartment. It's a relief, because she isn't sure she can handle another dream of her neighbour's girlfriend snacking on her clothes ; but the longer she's awake in the heat and the lingering stench, the farther away the morning seems.
Thirty-seven minutes pass before she decides to get up, wrapping herself in a plaid shirt, more out of habit than because it's really necessary, and makes her way to the roof.
The night is quiet, and there's a whiff of breeze cooling it down just enough for the air to be breathable again. The night sky is clouded, making it difficult to see the stars, and though she could see past them if she wanted to, Kara doesn't feel much like looking for Krypton tonight. Every passing day could be the day her planet finally stops shining and if it has to be today, she'd rather not know it yet ; not when she's confused and smells like gunk.
"Can't sleep either ?" Lena's voice rings out from behind her.
Kara doesn't mull over how she already knows by heart the voice of a woman she's only met twice, she simply pats the spot beside her on the edge and scoots to make more room for her.
"Hard day," she says, "and now my brain won't shut up. You know," she dismisses with a careless wave of the hand choosing instead to focus on Lena. "Why are you up there ?"
"Just life keeping me awake," Lena replies with a sigh.
There's an edge to Lena's voice, something between sourness and exhaustion that warns Kara that she shouldn't pry, so she doesn't. They sit side by side in silence, wrapped in the peculiar comfort brought by someone who is not quite a stranger and not yet a friend. The city sleeps below their feet, cars occasionally passing by, planes flying up above. They breathe, focusing on nothing at all and everything at the same time, until Lena speaks again.
"I'm sorry about Veronica," she says softly, trying not to disturb the air around them. "She tends to be a bit harsh, but she's not a bad person."
"It's okay", Kara replies, though she isn't sure it really is okay. "I have a thick skin." Thicker than you could possibly imagine.
"Still, it wasn't very nice. I tried to get her to apologise but..."
"Don't sweat it, I won't get mad at you because your girlfriend was mean to me. People are mean to me all the time and I still get up every morning. It's just the way things are."
"It shouldn't be this way. I'll get her to apologise."
"It's okay. Honestly. Don't ruin your relationship over someone you barely know." Kara winces at the unintended double meaning of her words. "But if it makes you feel better, I accept the apology you don't owe me. And if you're happy with her and she treats you right then I don't care that she doesn't seem to like me very much."
"She's the right person for me," Lena says, averting her eyes when Kara catches her looking at her. Her statement answers Kara's question more than any other words could have.
