Their hands clasped over the gearshift on the short ride back from the grocery store. Any loss of affection now seemed like too much too soon. Every second mattered and they would make it count.

"Let me drive," Kara offered. One last gesture of her love. She felt so brutally responsible.

They drove in silence as every song on the radio seemed handpicked for maximum heartache. Kara hadn't thought about Gotye's "Someone That I Used To Know" since her junior year of college, but suddenly it was blasting through the speakers - taunting them both. When Adele's voice bounced over the console, Lena finally jammed the power button off.

"Enough of that," she huffed. It would have been funny if it didn't hurt so much.

They brought in the groceries together, one last time. Put them away together, one last time. They lingered on the last item - a can of Pizza Pringles that made Lena groan.

"I don't know how you eat these. They're vile and completely unidentifiable."

"They're good!" Kara defended, "And they're not supposed to taste like pizza anyway."

They smiled at the familiarity of the debate, finding comfort in it. It was so normal. (This was the part where Lena, like clockwork, always said, "But they're pizza pringles!") As the brunette placed the canister on the countertop, folding up the paper bag that housed it for later use, her eyes settled sadly on Kara. The levity of the moment was gone as the reality of their situation was suddenly crackling through the room in screeching clarity.

"So…" she started, unable to bring herself to finish the thought.

"I can take the train back," Kara supplied. Helpful, supportive…down to the last second. "You can take the car, if you need. I mean, it's your car. So…obviously." She felt so stupid. She didn't know how to talk to Lena like this, like they were supposed to be strangers.

"Are you sure?"

She nodded. Not at all.

—

Kara stared numbly at her phone for days, waiting for a text from Lena that never came. Any sign that maybe this wasn't the end, that maybe this wasn't her fault. She watched as the internet exploded with - her girlfriend? ex? - Lena's name and she saved a screenshot of the epicenter of it all to her phone. Sure, it was a little weird, strangers commenting on their relationship like it was a sideshow, but their words warmed her heart in a way she hadn't felt since Lena vacated the small ranch-style home.

The initial tweet that ignited this chaos in her life was simple enough. It didn't seem possible that 150 characters or less were capable of upending her relationship with Lena. It read:

bottomfeeder (11:14 PM on 02/03/2020):

lena luthor is at pat's being cute as shit with this hot lesbian

they're literally slow dancing to robyn, like u cannot?

The picture attached to the thread was nearly blurred beyond recognition - the lens fighting against the darkness of the room - but Kara remembered the moment well. Lena was smiling fondly as she gazed down into her calming green eyes, one hand resting on her hip…heart-achingly familiar. They stood close together on the dance floor - too close to be Just Friends!, like the retraction TMZ published at the thinly veiled threat of Luthor Corp's legal entourage.

When Cat called her it wasn't to check in on the article or to see how she was holding up. No, she ranted for long minutes, "We may not be The Daily Planet, but I will not stoop to that level. I cannot believe that sorry excuse for a news outlet. That rat. Outing someone? He's gay! Bastard."

Kara wanted to interject that, though TMZ ran the story, they hadn't in fact been the initial source, but she stopped herself. She hated TMZ just as much as Cat and the argument still stood for their source. Though she was angry, she couldn't help but feel just as angry at herself as her boss' words shot straight to her heart.

Lena never would have been in that bar if it wasn't for me.

Nevertheless, she'd been on the receiving end of one too many Cat Grant certified diatribes about the (lack of) journalistic integrity at other publications in their demographic and knew better than to interrupt.

Cat gave her the week off anyway.

"I don't want you moping around. It's bad for morale."

—

She spent the next week doing exactly that. She moped around potstickers, donuts, popcorn, pizza, and even some ill-advised gas station sushi. Everything in her apartment reminded her of Lena. The couch where they curled into one another, bodies perfectly matched, on movie nights. The kitchen where they baked cookies after throwing half a bag of flour on the floor in an impromptu food fight. The bedroom where Lena's clothes had just begun to find a home in her bedside table. The bathroom where the businesswoman's spare toothbrush and toiletries laid, now collecting dust.

What once served as gentle, comforting reminders of the brunette as she moved through her apartment now felt like barbed wire around her heart.

She moped around those last few episodes of The L Word she promised Lena they would watch together and she moped around Game Night. The thought that Lena was meant to be there with her, really there, echoed in her mind relentlessly. And sure, it was nice to see her friends, but the shock of the news got the best of them.

"Lena Luthor…the billionaire?" Winn's eyes were wide with excitement.

"Does she have a private jet? How big is her apartment?" That was James.

"So…what's she like…?" Nia was smirking when Kelly jumped in to graciously divert the conversation, telling a story about her sister's haphazard drive to the apartment that night.

She moped until Alex dragged her to the bar - you need to get out - and she moped when she opened her phone to see Lena's name trending on Twitter once again. This time, next to National City's preeminent creep - Maxwell Lord.

The article smeared across her phone read: Business Or Pleasure For Lord Tech and Luthor Corp? Underneath was a photo of Lena on the CEO's arm, stepping out of a restaurant Kara could never afford and onto the sidewalk toward a waiting car.

She wanted to scream, to cry, to do anything but continue to exist in the reality laid out before her. Kara couldn't hate Lena, no. But she could certainly try. Later, after half a glass of wine and another half an hour on the phone with Alex, she calmed down enough to be curious. She looked up the restaurant. As she perused the menu she wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Both? A salad and two drinks cost enough to make her short on rent.

—

In what seemed like a different universe but was mere miles, Lena was doing her best to simply make sense of the week from hell. She was certain Dante added another circle just for her, stuck in the back of Satan's throat to forever burn on acid bubbling up from the pits of Tartarus.

If only. That would be a vacation.

She was brutally, unerringly awake as she drove back to National City, replaying the last twenty-four hours in her mind. As desert shifted into cityscape, her anxiety built and her adherence to the speed limit decreased. She was desperate to prolong her journey back to the city, dreading what lay ahead. Lena knew the minute she entered the Luthor manor, she would be held unyieldingly responsible for…well, existing.

For remembering she was no longer a child, that she was free to live as she pleased.

For being honest enough to love Kara and brave enough to do so in public, howsoever fleeting.

There would be no room - in a house seemingly endless - to mourn the loss of her girlfriend, the best thing in her life to date. So, she drove slower than necessary as cars hummed past her. In the car, she was safe. Kara's scent lingered in the upholstery and, for a moment, it was comforting. Until it wasn't. It wasn't long before she could feel her heavy heart crack wide open in her chest and tears began to stream down her cheeks. Her eyes drifted to her phone like it was magnetized - maybe she'll text me. A harsher voice reminded her, Of course she won't. You're on your own. You did this to yourself.

It was that voice that guided Lena through the outskirts of National City, down a familiar driveway. She steeled herself, retouching what little makeup she had applied that morning. She assessed the casual outfit she selected for their otherwise domestic trip to the grocer's, feeling utterly underdressed for her own lashing.

—

It was nothing she hadn't heard before. The same patented Luthor disappointment which could only be met with one of two responses: submissive silence or a yes, mother. So, that week when Lillian requested she attend a business dinner with Maxwell Lord, she agreed without second thought.

The Luthor matriarch stopped her just after a staff meeting. "Oh, Lena? I was supposed to meet Maxwell Lord for dinner tonight…discuss various proposals, joint ventures." Her eyes narrowed, but her voice was edging on sweet. "The vendor the museum contracted is absolutely horrendous. Can you manage?"

"Yes, mother. Send me the details."

It was only when Lena arrived at the restaurant that she realized how masterfully her mother had manipulated the night's events. She plastered on a smile as she slid into the seat reserved for her at the CEO's table, thinking back to late nights in bars with men she couldn't will herself to love.

"I took the liberty of ordering," he attempted to charm. "I know the chef."

She grinned in acknowledgement - "Thank you, Max, may I call you Max?" - but when a gaudy lobster tail, smeared with an ungodly amount of butter was placed in front of her she could barely hold back a grimace. Did he somehow think she, a billionaire in her own right, would be impressed by lobster?

"It's lovely," she lied through her first bite as he tucked into a cut of Kobe beef across the table.

Kara would have ordered her the biggest salad on the menu, teased her about the sight of a vegetable ruining her appetite, and then ordered dessert "to share," that she would take one bite of before allowing Lena to finish it as she stared on adoringly.

Maxwell Lord was not Kara - not by a long shot. It was kinder to spit in Kara's face, to replace all of her donuts with wheatgrass, to tell her she could never watch Spotlight again, to make her listen to "You Are My Sunshine" on a loop in the tennis section of Dick's Sporting Goods - anything, anything was kinder than comparing Kara Danvers…loving, kind, thoughtful, endlessly joyful Kara Danvers to slime like Maxwell Lord, but Maxwell Lord was her new normal.