Current Day
+12 hours since terminal event (6pm-7am)
Emerging from the confines of the DEO into the burgeoning morning hustle of National City jars Lena's senses, causing her steps to falter slightly in their staccato beat on the pavement. The sun rises steadily in the distance, its rays fragmenting and multiplying against the steel and glass of the city, and Lena squints her eyes against the brightness. The sounds of traffic snarling nearby, the people passing on the sidewalk - it's all too loud, all too much, and her heart pounds in her chest.
Never has she felt more like an alien on her own planet, in her own city.
"Ma'am." Daniel's strong voice is a life vest, and as she approaches him where he stands beside the open car door along the curb, he fixes her with a long, searching look.
Lena knows what he sees. The red eyes, the shell-shocked visage, the grief clinging to her like a veil. Without a second thought, she reaches out to hug him, something she has never done before. After a brief hesitation, he holds her without a word.
The first stop is L-Corp, the need to get the lab equipment moved is the most pressing. This certainly hadn't been the original plan. It had taken Alex the better part of an hour to clear access to the kryptonite through J'onn and whatever circuitous channels lie beyond him. In the meantime, Lena had visited Winn in the lab, where she found him elbow-deep in debris from the explosive device, working feverishly to find something - anything - to help them find out who did this to Kara. He surfaced long enough to give her a tour of the DEO laboratory facilities, as they were. The lab was impressive, no doubt about it, but it's still a government lab, subject to the inevitable bureaucratic budgetary concerns, mired in miles of red tape, and held captive by the political whims inherent in the public sector.
In a word, it was insufficient.
She can do better.
And so she does.
Lena isn't prepared for the normalcy of it all, walking into her building, passing across the sleek, tiled lobby like any other day of the week, greeting her security as she does every day. Her palms grow clammy at her side, and when the doors of her private elevator slide closed, she begins to breathe a sigh of relief.
It dies in her throat.
The closing of the doors triggers the power to the TV panel inset in the wall, and the 24/7 news screams to life in front of her eyes, leading with images of last night. "Supergirl Dead?" the chyron asks, plastered against grainy photos of fire and debris. Lena's stomach lurches, and she screws her eyes shut, willing this damned thing to move faster, her heart climbing into her throat.
When the doors slide open, she rushes from the too-small confines of the elevator, her skin clammy, hands trembling. Her breath comes in gasps.
A moment passes. As do two or three more. Lena clenches her jaw reflexively, willing her spine to straighten, her heart to calm. This is her domain. She is in control here.
And so, with confidence she doesn't feel and a tight-lipped smile that doesn't reach her eyes, Lena passes through the noisy halls, greeting staff like normal.
Like the world didn't end last night.
No one notices that she wears the creased, rumpled version of yesterday's outfit.
Well, except Jess. Of course, Jess notices. Lena sees it in the extra beat Jess takes before standing from behind her stalwart desk and wishing her good morning. Sees it, too, in the slight raise of the eyebrows when Lena asks her to please cancel all of her meetings for the next week. But Jess keeps her tone even when she responds, "Will do," and Lena has never been more thankful for her than she is at that moment.
When her personal office doors close behind her with a soft click, Lena sinks back against them for a moment, treasuring the support of their solid weight pressing coolly along her back. This place is her sanctuary, her home away from home, but today its walls echo the harrowing memories of last night.
It's suffocating in the worst way.
Keeping her eyes carefully focused away from the windows along the outer wall, away from the images she knows she'll see in visceral technicolor if they stray too far afield, Lena shakily crosses the room, zeroing in on a wall panel beyond the far side of her desk. A quick press in one corner, followed by a series of others in quick succession in just the right spots, and the panel silently slides out and up, revealing a safe, which she quickly opens with the press of her palm. Its contents are sparse, and Lena reaches in, removing a flash drive from the cache. The small silver lettering along its side dances in the glow of the morning sun where it streams through the windows beyond the desk.
Lena's heart thrums in her veins as she holds the feather-light flash drive in her palm, weighing the significance of her decision. She feels it in her outstretched arm like a ton of bricks. Her jaw clenches over and over again.
And then the moment is done, and Lena's actions turn resolute and sure. When she strides out of her office minutes later, her head is held high, and the coat and bag she had forgotten in her hurried exit last night swing from her arm.
She doesn't look back as she reaches her elevator and punches in the number to a different floor.
When she strides into L-Corp's primary lab, the Director of Research is there, overseeing the dismantling and packaging of two specific machines. He glances at her, his expression is puzzled, his head full of questions regarding the instructions she'd passed to him during their brief phone call earlier. Lena didn't elaborate on the phone and doesn't intend to now.
"I just received confirmation that a contingent of black vans have arrived and are being cleared at the loading dock on the second level of the basement." He scratches at his beard unconsciously. "I've already relayed the timeline - ready to load within the half-hour. I've offered Nishav and Felix to assist with the set-up," he pauses, picking his words carefully, "wherever these are going." The way he says it is expectant, and he stares uncomfortably at Lena, his eyebrows rising hungrily, waiting for a hint.
"Good," Lena answers, nodding quickly. Disappointed, the Director of Research returns to his tasks.
"Good," she assures herself, quietly.
She's in an out of L-Corp in fifteen minutes.
Her apartment is still. It's not just the quiet of an empty room, the lack of other occupants that changes the way her home feels. It's as if an invisible fog permeates the space, filling every nook and cranny, leaving the air feeling as thick as the tomb. It's otherworldly, muffling the sounds of her movement through its depths, causing her senses to play tricks on her brain. It's her apartment, but it's not.
Or maybe she's not. Perhaps she's the one who has changed, the one who carries the fog and the mist with her like a cloak, passing through her surroundings like a shadow, there but not.
Entering her bedroom, Lena begins to silently shuck her wrinkled, worn clothes onto the bedroom floor, heedless of her usual fastidiousness. In bending down to remove her shoes, however, her eyes skitter around the room, catching sight of the reflection of her unmade bed in the mirror. Maybe it's the fog in her brain playing tricks, but she feels the phantom trace of Kara's skin against her own, hears Kara's voice in her ears, the raspiness of it when Kara wakes in the morning, her blonde tresses tangled, glowing in the morning light filtering through the window.
Lena screws her eyes shut, willing her mind to stop. Her breath is shallow, her lungs beginning to burn.
She rips the rest of her clothes off in a blind blur, needing to get free, needing to breathe, dammit.
The water in the shower is scalding where it beats relentlessly against her skin, the steam curling and roiling overhead like a thundercloud. She stands under the stream, arms out and braced against the wall, head down, the water cascading across her reddening skin and pooling beneath her feet. Lena watches it swirl and disappear down the drain.
She hopes the heat will loosen the muscles in her shoulders where they sit tightly coiled or ease the persistent pain in her lower back from the nap in the chair next to Kara's bed. Hopes, too, that she's safe from the hauntings of her mind, hidden here deep within her home, walls of concrete and wood and steel surrounding her like a fortress.
But she closes her eyes again, and as the heat penetrates deep into her skin, flames bloom behind her eyelids. Streaks of orange and white and yellow carom past, and at their center, blackened blue and red. Supergirl falls to the earth again. Again and again, but this time Lena is there with her, intimately close. Kara's beautiful face, torn and aglow, her broken jaw open in a silent, agonized scream. A green bejeweled hand reaches out to touch Lena's face, and the fear in the steely blue eyes sears across Lena's skin like a brand. Lena can do nothing but reach back and hold her broken, beautiful girl in her outstretched hands, as they fall and burn together. When she screams, she breathes fire.
In the end, it's the scream that jolts her from her panic attack. It echoes in the tiled confines of the bathroom and reverberates deep in her bones. She struggles to breathe.
Then, only then, does she fall to her knees, quaking violently, the sobs racking her body uncontrollably. She coughs and sputters under the torrent of water, gasping desperately for air. Her lungs burn with the effort.
Eyes stinging, Lena trembles alone on the floor of her shower, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped protectively around them, watching her tears fall and swirl into the darkness at the center of the drain.
There's no one to check on her today. No one to rub her back, to tell her it's all going to be OK.
Her grip tightens around her knees.
She's always kept people at arm's length, careful not to let anyone too close. Too many times in her life she had let someone in, given them her trust only to have that trust broken, that closeness betrayed. Each and every time she had to piece herself back together, another wall went up, another layer of protection added to keep the world out.
Kara flew over them all.
But she's not here.
Lena is very much alone, surrounded by the prison walls of her own making.
The screech of metal on metal and the warning sound of raised voices shatter the morning stillness of the DEO lab like a siren, drawing both Alex and Winn into the adjacent hallway in a hurry.
Lena, her eyes flashing, her nostrils flared, leads a cadre of DEO security staff hauling dollies loaded down with bits and pieces of bulky machinery. Every one of them is dressed in solid black, their features solemn, giving them the look of pallbearers in a funeral procession. Lena is no exception, dressed in a simple black tee and black jeans, her hair long and damp around her shoulders.
Another screech, and a security officer, his face red, appears behind the group, adjusting the trajectory of his transport loader, guiding it away from the corner he had tried (and failed) to shortcut.
"Everything alright out here?" Alex asks in that way she has that isn't really a question. There's an undertone of warning, a threat lingering around the edges.
The officer in the back, having caught up to the rest, answers readily, anger twisting his lips into a sneer.
"Just helping Ms. Luthor with her equipment per the Director's orders, ma'am." The words themselves are an adequate response, but he puts an emphasis on Lena's surname as he speaks it, as if the shapes of the letters leave a bitter, repugnant taste in his mouth.
He says it in the same way that people have referred to Lena throughout her lifetime. "The Luthor bitch." The barb bounces harmlessly off Lena, clattering to the floor at her feet, and her face is now carefully neutral, her marble features unscathed.
He doesn't matter. He's not beneath her - nothing like that. There's no real judgment at all. Her breakdown in the apartment earlier forced a shift in perspective, a reckoning with truth.
Lena's reality is simple: everything is about Kara. Nothing else matters. Every atom, every breath, and every movement she exerts from here on out is in service to her mission to fight for Kara.
Kara would move worlds to do the same for her.
"Tone, Eriksson." Alex's response brooks no dissent, and the disgruntled officer swallows down any half-assed response he may have had ready on his tongue.
As the procession moves into the lab to begin unloading the L-Corp machines, a delighted squeal bubbles out of Winn, who is hopping from one dolly to another, his hands reaching and touching almost compulsively as he searches out the makes and models of the temporary new additions to the lab. He keeps up a steady stream of non-sequiturs, excitement meant mostly for his own ears but occasionally loud enough to reach Lena and Alex.
"That one alone is like ten million dollars!" he says in a stage whisper, not pausing for a response before he's on to the next one. He 'ooohs' and 'aaahs' before skidding to a halt as the last transport cart enters the room, its contents towering over him, the sleek metal reflecting blindingly in the brightly lit lab.
"Is this a...?" He starts, looking saucer-eyed at Lena. "I didn't think this was going to be available until next year!"
Lena's mouth quirks into a grin, and the words bubble out. "I know, it's just that 47BXD model you've got here has a known deficiency in its core heuristics that gets worse with each year of usage, and it looks like it's been here since the Bush administration. The new one is in beta, but it has far better output consistency. I've made a few other upgrades on it myself, including resoldering the connections on the fan controls and ramping up the power input s-"
"Still overheats?" Winn interjects, following her train of thought.
Lena nods.
"Amateurs," he adds.
"You said you were going to pick up something for your lab, Lena," Alex exclaims, eyebrows in her hairline. "I didn't think you meant you'd bring back your entire lab!"
Lena reaches into her front pocket, her long fingers closing around the flash drive she's brought, but she doesn't bring it out immediately.
Part of her, albeit a small part, struggles. Is this a betrayal? Will doing this be another damnation of her brother, the only friend she knew as a child? When he learns of it, he won't understand, the psychosis that keeps him locked in prison won't allow it.
She bites her lip before pulling the item out and holding it out to Alex.
"I didn't just grab equipment."
Alex looks back and forth between Lena and the offered flash drive while Winn waits expectantly.
Luthors are bold. Decisive. They forge legacies.
And this is the one she is forging for herself.
"All of Lex's research on kryptonite. Well, all I could find, anyway. To supplement whatever's in your database."
Lena doesn't think she will ever trust the DEO, with its ulterior motives and shadowy actors. But. "For Kara."
"Oh damn." Winn doesn't mince words.
Alex's eyes widen as she reassesses the Luthor standing before her, holding a whole damn olive tree in her outstretched hand.
"Never thought I'd say this, but I hope your brother knows his shit."
"I have one condition," Lena continues, her face carefully neutral, her tone even.
Alex looks dubious, perhaps even disappointed, but she doesn't cut her off.
"Name it."
And Lena does.
The kryptonite shines intensely against the sterile white of Lena's nitrile gloves, but as she holds the shard up, grasped tightly between her thumb and forefinger, the color changes subtly from blinding to dull to blinding again. It feels alive, almost, a heart pulsing irregularly in her hands.
This isn't the first time she's handled kryptonite. Not even the second. Back when Lex was still himself, back before she lost him completely to his psychosis, he'd brought a sample out while she was over for a visit. The glow entranced her; it had lured her closer like a fairy light. But when Lex's lecture on its fascinating properties took a turn, digressing into a tirade against the "Supers'' and their powers, ranting about evening the playing field, Lex's eyes glowed green, the poison already coursing through his body, the madness and obsession taking root. The dazzling green lost its luster that day.
Eyeing it now in her outstretched hand, revulsion sticks at the back of her throat. For all the pain it's wrought, for all of the lives it's destroyed. It's a siren, luring others to crash themselves on its jagged edges. Kryptonite might as well be on the Luthor family crest, the way it is intertwined with the fate and fortune of the whole Luthor fam-
Fuck.
It strikes Lena then and only then that she knows where a small amount of kryptonite can be found.
Downtown. At L-Corp.
"Fuck!" she yells aloud. That gets the attention of the other white coats in the lab, the ones who have kept their distance, leaving the Luthor well enough alone.
The revulsion in her throat transforms into guilt, hot and leaden, and her stomach heaves at the implications.
The cache isn't listed in any log or inventory. No one, save herself, knows it even exists. Lex had left some in his personal vault, and she simply secured it away when she took over, turning her focus instead to rebuilding the company, on creating a legacy of her own, not taking up her brother's.
Lena's confident this hasn't moved. But the guilt doesn't abate.
Fuck fuck fuck.
She needs to talk to Kara. Not Alex. Not the DEO. Just Kara. If they-
When they get her back.
It's something akin to madness, this feeling churning in her veins, a dark brew of guilt, dread, panic, and self-loathing topped with a sprig of fatalism. It threatens to overwhelm her, to bring her to her knees, resigned and defeated. For all she's tried, for all of her work, she can't escape her familial ties.
Kara. She needs Kara.
One breath. And another. And another. Bit by bit, Lena steps back from the edge, letting herself lean on the one thing that matters. Kara.
She's got work to do, and there's one thing for sure:
Lena's going to make sure she's the last Luthor to ever lay their hands on this fucking green nightmare.
After the machinery is reassembled, Lena begins system recalibrations. Over the years she's found that the more expensive the equipment, the more time it takes to ensure that each sensor and each setting are properly aligned. The tasks she requires of each piece are so precise that any mistake, any mistake, and all of her efforts would be for naught.
The other staff in the lab give her a wide berth, and for that she's grateful. It gives her the space she needs to focus.
The hours pass unnoticed as Lena progresses through a battery of tests against the samples of kryptonite pulled from Super-
From Kara. Pulled from Kara.
She checks off all the usual boxes along the way, hitting it with everything she's got to test the way it reacts to various stimuli and conditions. Radiation - check. Electrical current - check. Intense pressure - check. The tests are rigorous because they have to be. On the most basic level, she needs to be able to understand what makes the samples tick and to notate it in obsessive detail. Using a doppler cooling technique, she was able to get a sample cooled to conditions far beyond those found on Earth, and the machine is currently measuring the changes occurring as it slowly warms. At this moment, Lena is perched on a stool in front of a different machine testing the opposite scenario: the effect of superheating on a sample of the kryptonite. It's not unlike watching a batch of cookies in an EZ Bake Oven, impatiently waiting on the little bell to ding.
Without warning, food mysteriously slides across the black table and into her field of vision where she sits.
She looks at it, bewildered, her mind struggling to switch gears. Following the movement, Lena looks to her left to see Winn slumped on a stool next to her, dark circles underpinning his eyes. Sitting back, she removes her gloves and takes a moment to sit up properly, feeling the stretch pull deliciously through her neck and shoulders.
"Hey, Winn. Thanks."
Winn nods in response. He must have finished his explosives analysis. Not that she asks. It's outside her focus.
But Winn offers anyway. He's good at filling spaces with sound, she's found, whether it's for his audience's benefit or his own, though, of that she's unsure. While she listens, she grabs the water he brought and takes a long sip.
"So. Nothing earth-shattering. IED packed with a potent chemical mix and kryptonite. Radio detonator." He pauses, taking a moment to wipe his eyes with the back of his hands, the weariness clear on his features. "Explosive itself is crude, but the detonator components seem sophisticated."
"Military?" Lena asks.
"Most likely."
She simply nods her head. "Cadmus fits that bill. My mother is good at selecting talent, and from what I've been able to learn about them, there's a lot of crossover with ex-military."
She takes another sip as they sit in silence for a moment while another thought occurs to her. Lillian Luthor doesn't need to outsource something so simple as constructing an IED. She certainly has the knowledge and skillset required to build it herself.
"So, where are we at?" Winn asks, leaning closer, eyeing the gauges on the machine in front of them.
Lena walks him through her checklist, noting the progress of the testing and pushing her notes on the samples' reactions his way so that he can read for himself.
Unwrapping the granola bar Winn had brought with him, Lena indicates the machine in front of them with her head.
"Superheated a sample to 2700K. It's in the cooling process now. Should be ready to handle in a few minutes," she offers, eyeing the sensor panel, and noting the changes.
Winn whistles.
"I made the mistake of rigging up my computer with a notification sound like a microwave beep once," Winn offers, watching the gauges as they track steadily downward. He takes another bite of the candy bar he'd brought with him for his own snacking.
Lena side-eyes him.
"It got to where every time whatever program I was running at the time completed, I'd hear the alert and get hungry."
Lena's mouth twitches at the corners, and she blows air through her nose in what might possibly be a slight indication of amusement. If one was to pay attention.
"I really thought I would be Pavlov, you know?" he continues. "I thought I'd be the one leading the studies. The one doing the research." He pauses a moment, taking another chocolatey bite.
Speaking as he chews, he grumbles, "Turns out I'm actually the dog."
The twitch at her lips expands, and without intending to, she gives Winn a lopsided smile. He smiles softly back at her.
And just like that, Lena and Winn settle into an easy partnership in the lab. He has a brilliant analytical mind, and two brains, two sets of hands mean efficiency, faster turnaround. Means someone to check her deductions.
It means that maybe, maybe they can get this solved.
"This…isn't right," Lena whispers to herself, tearing her eyes from the microscope to read Lex's notes on kryptonite's properties again, trying to make sure she hasn't gotten something mixed up in her head.
As both she and Winn have studied the samples post-experiment, they have been relying on Lex's notes as a reference point for a control group, so to speak. His notes reflect what he had become: a megalomaniac obsessed with someone he viewed as an archnemesis. As a scientist, though, there's power in fully knowing and understanding the thing that can bring an enemy to his knees, and these notes capture almost every knowable property of kryptonite in fanatical detail. Lena inherently trusts the accuracy and meticulousness of Lex's scientific work.
So when she rechecks them, checks for the observations made by her brother on his samples of kryptonite after the hot/cold stress test and compares them with what sits beneath the lens of the electron microscope right in front of her, there's only one conclusion she can draw.
"It's synthetic," she squeals in a rush.
Winn looks up from nearby, his head cocked, waiting for more.
"Lex had a boatload of the real deal when he made these observations, that much I know. And this isn't it."
Winn is up and at her microscope in a flash.
"With all of the samples I've gone through, I've noted some slight differences in reactions to stressors between this sample and Lex's kryptonite. They are remarkably similar, but still, there are differences. But the sample structure after heating? Night and day." Reading from Lex's notes on her computer screen, she continues, "Kryptonite shows no chemical or structural change due to temperature stressors. The structure remains trigonal with no inclusions."
Pulling away from the microscope, Winn's eyes grow wide.
Pointing excitedly at the sample beneath the lens, Lena practically buzzes. "That's clearly a beta structure, not an alpha structure. The symmetry is hexagonal. It's clearly gone through a displacive phase transition - a transition that didn't happen when Lex tested the kryptonite he had in his possession."
Winn is bouncing on his feet by the time Lena pauses, and he jumps in with his own observation. "Did you see the inclusions?"
Lena nods vigorously. "Inclusions mean water, but kryptonite, true kryptonite, isn't formed through a hydrothermal process. It's anhydrous, which makes it far more stable in response to temperature changes."
"But we've got water molecules. Holy shit, Lena."
They pause a moment, the excitement of discovery electrifying their corner of the lab. A few of the white coats eye them surreptitiously from their own stations, curious enough to listen for scraps, but not curious enough to approach the pair.
Little by little, the excitement drains from Winn's face, and Lena's eyebrows draw together, confused about the change, worried about the thoughts cascading through his big brain, knowing full well the seeds of doubt that fear and anxiety can sow to choke out even the brightest blooms.
"It's synthetic. Sure. But it still did what they wanted it to."
Oh.
Lena doesn't let that stop her, and she won't let it stop Winn, either.
"Don't you see? If it was engineered to imitate the appearance and function of kryptonite, then there's a chance we can reverse engineer it." Lena is thrilled, her enthusiasm growing, but Winn looks at her like he's scared to hope, and unconsciously, she slips into her executive voice, the voice of authority, the voice that silences any argument.
"There's enough here to find a mistake, a trace, something that will tell us who did this. No one creates without leaving a signature."
Reaching out slowly, Lena gently places a hand on Winn's forearm. Her voice softer now, she looks directly into his eyes, making sure that he's hearing her, that what she says is actually making it through to him. "Winn. This is the breakthrough we needed. You and I - we are going to crack this open. We're going to get our girl back."
His eyes are watery, but he nods - once, twice - each movement more sure. He takes a deep breath, and she knows he's back.
In one smooth movement, Lena is off her stool and grabbing another shard of the synthetic kryptonite for testing. When she turns back around, Winn is already standing, awaiting orders.
She's happy to oblige.
"Can you compare our notes against other elements, chemicals, substances," she asks, waving her hand in the air in an implied 'et cetera,' "in similar external stress tests to see if there's any overlap in the variance in our results from my brother's?"
"Done," he responds, already reaching for the laptop he'd brought to the lab with him, ready to work. Not even ten seconds later, Lena hears the frenzied clicks of his fingers flying across the keyboard.
Prepping the samples takes time, the work requiring painstaking precision and focus. So long, in fact, that when she finally stands to bring her work to her baby - the machine Winn had geeked out about when it arrived hours earlier - he's sliding up beside her to report in.
"Nothing concrete. There are a few that might play a role, but without more to go on…" He simply shrugs.
Lena lets out a puff of air in disappointment. "OK. Had to try." Gesturing across the room to her destination, she suggests, "Want to take the beast for a spin?"
"Oh my god, can I?" He practically vibrates with excitement, and it changes the entire atmosphere around them. There are times like this when he reminds Lena of Kara, of how the two of them, together in the same room, bring an infectious level of bubbly energy that can take down any bad day. It's like being in a room with a herd of golden retriever puppies.
"I don't think I could stop you if I tried, Winn." Lena's grin is easy, but there's a line of sorrow beneath it that Kara isn't here to join in.
They move, together, to the impossibly large lab machine in its temporary home jammed awkwardly into what might have once been a classroom or large conference room on the far side of the lab. After placing the samples in their respective compartments, the pair of them ensure the recalibrations were to their satisfaction, and when it gets Lena's seal of approval, they meticulously set, check, and recheck the operating parameters and settings.
"I feel like I'm always getting told not to push the big shiny button on things," Winn sighs, his index finger at the ready. "Finally my time to shine!"
He presses the button resolutely before standing back like a proud parent, listening to the whirrs and beeps called into action by his hand.
Lena rolls her eyes with a grin, settling in for the wait, and they pass the time discussing the improvements in this model versus the decades-old version the DEO runs down the hall. She also boasts, subtly, of course, about the in-house modifications she designed and implemented to make this a one-of-a-kind machine. The two of them are in the middle of a heated discourse over what modification she should make next when preliminary results begin to show on the screen.
Going into this knowing it's synthetic, knowing that this "kryptonite" is lab-grown, there are compounds and elements Lena knows to expect - like the hydrogen and oxygen, even the carbon. All of those fall within expected levels.
"Beryllium aluminum silicate…and chromium?" she mutters, before clicking on the display panel to drill down for further details.
"That's brilliant," Winn responds, clearly having worked it out already. When she looks at him expectantly, he straightens up and explains. "Trivalent chromium ions are what gives emeralds their green color."
She stares at him, at once amused and impressed. He simply shrugs, affecting an air of nonchalance. "What? Sometimes I know things."
They continue watching the screen for new information, occasionally narrowing things down and gathering more detail. Both she and Winn ignore the minute traces of blood, soot, and ash that register on the readout.
They already know with startling clarity where those came from.
More trace elements appear on the list before the machine signals the completion of its analysis, and judging by the levels existent in the sample, Lena hypothesizes that one particular set of chemicals are likely from the water inclusions, meaning not only are they dealing with homemade kryptonite, but they're also looking at dirty, homemade kryptonite.
"I'm going to work on isolating one of these inclusions, see if I can come up with a purer sample of this water mixture to make sure we aren't jumping the shark," Lena mutters as much to herself as to Winn, her mind ten steps ahead already.
Winn has a plan of his own. "OK. I want to do a little research on these traces, see what commonalities we're looking at." Rather than head back to his make-shift station at Lena's lab table, though, Winn hits the door in a blur.
Lena presumes he's headed to his actual workstation so he can work more efficiently, but she feels the loss of her lab partner all the same.
It's the work of at least another hour or two to get the samples she needs and start to see results from the analyses. Not that she notices. There is no concept of time in the lab. Just work. The lights are always on, the machines always running. Not unlike a casino, in a way, fostering the urge to never get up, to never leave. Just one more game. Just one more test.
The lights flicker slightly overhead as her machine's fans kick into overdrive, the noise deafening in the enclosed space. Using the touch screen, Lena sends a digital copy of the results to her laptop, all the while speaking to her baby as if it were a real child, telling her it's done great work.
Turning, she finds Alex skidding to a stop in the doorway, and she's never been so grateful for the roar of that damned fan than she is at that moment. Being caught praising her lab equipment isn't something she would likely live down, at least not in this lifetime, and definitely not if Alex Danvers was the one to catch her.
"Everything OK?" Alex shouts over the fan, and Lena nods as she reaches her, signaling that they should talk outside. Where it's quiet.
"Had a report of circuits being overloaded - flipped over to auxiliary power," Alex says by way of introduction, eyeballing the great beast of a machine locked up in its glass cage again, its roar dulled. "I'm guessing this thing's to blame?"
Lena ignores her question. With the analysis complete, the fans will finish their work in short order, and things will normalize. Besides, she would have thought the DEO had a more robust power grid than this, given what else must be going on in this covert complex.
"Have you spoken to Winn?" Lena asks, curious about her lab partner's progress. They walk over to Lena's temporary station, where she pulls up the detailed analysis she'd just completed.
"Only in passing. He was unusually tight-lipped."
When Lena responds, she does so without pulling her eyes from her screen, her mind racing as she digests the results in front of her.
"Well, for starters, it's synthetic. Lab-made. And sec-"
Alex cuts her off there. "What? How the fuck…? How is this not real kryptonite?! Look what it did to…" She stops, her eyes automatically looking upward, three stories above the lab where Kara lies unconscious in a hospital bed, a system of sunlamps in orbit around her.
"I know!" Lena replies forcefully, before repeating herself in a normal tone. "I know. Look, Winn can back me up. But it's crystal clear that this is an imitation. An insanely good imitation, but still."
Alex runs shaky hands through her hair while she processes the news, taking several slow, controlled deep breaths to center her focus.
"What else?"
"It's dirty."
Alex shoots her a confused look, but Lena points to several notes on her screen.
"Initial testing revealed that the synthetic kryptonite was made via a hydrothermal process, which left water molecules within the crystalline structure, making it unstable in extreme heat or cold and causing inclusions to form under stress. We've run multiple samples - one of an entire cross-section, one focused primarily on a sample containing obvious water inclusions, and another sample small enough to be relatively free of water."
Pointing to the screen, Lena indicates the side-by-side comparison between the latter two samples, highlighting the difference in trace amounts for each. "Look here at the water sample. Large amounts of bromide, chlorine, trihalomethanes. Christ, that's a lot of radium. But in this sample, which was primarily of the crystalline structure, those chemicals still exist, just at a fraction of the amount."
"So what does this mean?"
"It means we're going to take down these motherfrackers!" Winn shouts as he trots over to them, a little out of breath.
"Did you just say motherfrack…fracker?" Lena repeats, trying to understand if she misheard him or if he was just being, well, Winn.
Alex just gives him a love tap on the shoulder in response.
"C'mon, it ruins the joke if I have to spell it out," Winn sighs deeply.
Lena continues to look back at him as if waiting for the punchline, and Alex crosses her arms over her chest.
"Kara would have loved that joke," Winn complains, but once the words are out of his mouth, he freezes. The words hang heavy in the space between them, and each one of them has to swallow the pain all over again before they continue.
"May I?" he asks Lena, gesturing at her laptop. She nods.
"The water used to artificially grow these crystals is, in a word, toxic. We're looking at water that's been heavily contaminated from a fracking operation."
Alex makes a noise that resembles a chuckle, muttering to herself, "motherfrackers."
"You don't get to decide it's funny now, Danvers. You had your chance." Winn eyes her pointedly before turning back to the screen.
"OK, so we've got very high concentrations of salts, thallium, and trace metals, among others. All of these indicate contamination by fracking wastewater, which means we're looking at someplace either nearby a spill site or downstream from one."
"That explains the radium," Lena says, chewing on her lip.
"Right," Winn responds, his fingers busy on the keyboard.
"So we look for spill sites," Alex concludes, looking between the two of them, but Lena shakes her head.
"It won't be quite so easy. For every company or operation that reports a spill to the regulatory agencies, there'll be three more who quietly sweep theirs under the rug. Given the proliferation of fracking around the country in the last 10-15 years, this could be a needle in a haystack."
The clacking of keys stops as Winn swivels on the spot. "If I may?" Without waiting for an answer, he continues, "The use of strontium isotopes to geotrace water samples has made a lot of waves in the last few years, and I believe we can apply that here. The ratio of 87Sr to 86Sr in the fracking wastewater carries a distinctive signature of the rock formations in the location where it was produced. By measuring these isotopes in the water we've extracted here and comparing with known geological samples,-"
Alex cuts him off. "We can narrow down the physical location where this shit was made."
"That's brilliant, Winn." Lena smiles. Genuinely smiles. It feels foreign to her. "You good to keep going?"
"I got this."
And she can tell he does. Can tell by the set of his jaw and the hard edges around his eyes. She can tell, too, by the way he squares his shoulders, standing ever so slightly taller. Kara would be so proud.
As Winn and Alex walk away, Lena grabs her laptop and leaves the lab for the first time in almost twenty-four hours, feeling more awake now than she has all day.
The shock never abates, seeing Kara lying still, blazing bright beneath a score of sunlamps while cables connect her to machines that whirr and click and hum around her. A strand of hair lies flat against Kara's forehead, the tips tickling her eyelid.
Lena's brow furrows. It doesn't matter that Kara isn't awake to notice. Leaning forward, Lena carefully brushes the wayward strand away, her fingers delicately skimming the skin beneath. It isn't a conscious thought that propels her ever forward, but a natural one, as effortless as drawing her next breath. She places her lips against Kara's cool skin, once, twice, as tenderly as a prayer.
Her fingers find the pulse point at Kara's wrist and press there, feeling the faint but persistent flutter of a heartbeat against her fingertips. She breathes deeply, her own body setting its rhythm to Kara's.
Memories flash sudden and bright for Lena. The morning sun filtering in through the window in Lena's bedroom, its rays catching and bouncing off Kara's golden waves splayed across the pillows and crowning the room in amber diamonds. She remembers, too, the feeling of Kara's warm skin beneath her cheek, beneath her palms, naked flesh pressed flush against her body as she danced along the edge of wakefulness wrapped up in Kara's arms, the steady beat of Kara's heart a comforting rhythm against her ear.
The flesh beneath her fingertips now is cool, almost clammy, and Kara's pallor has changed. She's paler than before.
It's wrong. So wrong.
"I'm working on it, darling. I promise you. Just please…please stay with me."
Standing, Lena sits in the steadfast bedside chair and pulls open her laptop, positioning herself so that she can keep both the screen and Kara in her sights. There's a relatively new folder on her desktop marked "Confidential," and it's this that she delves into now. When she had handed over all of Lex's research regarding kryptonite to the DEO, she had struck a bargain, a quid pro quo. Alex had kept her word. The folder on her laptop contains all of the data known to the DEO regarding Kryptonian anatomy and physiology, including Kara's complete medical history, and Lena dives headfirst into its depths, looking for something…anything that might give her an idea of how this synthetic kryptonite managed to convince her Kryptonian physiology that it was the real deal. If she finds that, then maybe…
The hours pass unremarked upon. Lena stands in the cramped space at the foot of Kara's bed writing complex formulas on a whiteboard that she had liberated from god knows where. Her wrist and arm are covered in dry-erase dust where she's used them to remove her mistakes from the board's expanse. She couldn't be bothered to find an eraser. While she works, she talks through her thought process aloud. To Kara. At times, especially after erasing a wrong turn from the whiteboard, Lena takes a moment to sit on the edge of Kara's hospital bed, letting the closeness ground her, remind her of the stakes. Remind her what she has to lose.
She and everyone else in National City have been full of hubris, relying on Supergirl to save them, to be their strength and salvation all in one, and Kara held them all together more times than anyone can count. But now Kara needs them, needs all of them to be the strong ones, to be her salvation, and at that, Lena reminds herself, she will not fail.
Lena has her hands behind her head, staring at her work on the whiteboard when a voice jolts her where she stands.
"You got a little something-" Maggie says, pointing to a spot on her cheek, but when Lena lifts her hand to swipe points to her cheek, Maggie notes the streaks of marker dust covering her forearms and palms as well.
"You know what? Nevermind."
The detective takes a beat to look at the board, at Lena, at Kara.
"There's a briefing starting in-" Maggie pauses, checking her watch, "-now. Right now. Alex thought you might want to be there."
When they step into the control center, they find J'onn, Winn, Alex, and a dozen agents circled around the large screen at the center of the room. A diagram of an explosive device looms large on the screen as Agent Vasquez finishes updating the assembled group on the work being done to trace the ingredients of the IED to specific manufacturers and persons.
Alex acknowledges the arrivals with a quick nod of her head as she moves to speak.
"Based on work done by Ms. Luthor and Agent Schott, we've come up with thirteen industrial sites of the right size for this kind of lab operation in the desert that are downstream from old fracking sites that are all consistent with the chemical tracers noted by Agent Schott. The fracking operations are all closed down. Some of the industrial sites are, too, but every one of them is to be checked."
Lena nods. This is good, but it's too broad.
Maggie must have been thinking the same thing. "Anything in the property records to narrow this down? That's a lot of manpower we're going to need to hit thirteen different facilities."
At this, Winn speaks up. "Currently processing. None of the names on the legal documents stand out. We've already ruled out five sites, still tracking the rest. A couple have multiple layers of shell companies and holdings and have clearly used some tricks to obscure or protect owner identities."
"Can confirm that five sites appear to be legit, and we've knocked them down to the bottom of the list." Alex is no-nonsense in front of the troops, her voice commanding, her presence taking up half the room. "We've got ops going over surveillance on all remaining sites, and the drone flyboys are currently in the air doing recon, ascertaining layouts, etc., for boots on the ground."
"Ms. Luthor?" At Jonn's indication, two dozen sets of eyes swivel in Lena's direction, and she swallows hard at the sudden spotlight.
"Any updates you'd like to share?" he presses.
"Erm," Lena hedges, unsure how much to reveal. She chooses her words carefully. "I'm working to deconstruct the synthetic kryptonite down to its base materials so that we can gain an understanding of how it was able to do what it did. What it continues to do."
"Good. Keep us informed," J'onn says, his eyes clear and sharp, before turning her attention back to the assembled group. He doesn't keep them long after that, advising them of their tasks while the legwork is done to generate a final list of targets.
Maggie and Winn stay with Alex in the ops center, but Lena doesn't dally. After a few moments in Kara's room, studying her notes, grabbing her things, she kisses Kara's forehead again, whispering a promise over and over again, knowing in her bones that Kara can hear her words, can feel her lips against her skin.
When Winn shuffles into the lab, a half-eaten candy bar in his hands, more than ten hours have passed since the briefing in the ops center. His steps slow, then stop when he sees Lena, her head resting on her arms where they're spread on the table before her. The heavy, even breathing is a dead giveaway. She's asleep.
The laptop screen is dark, and in the reflection, Winn can see Lena's face, her brow wrinkled, her expression anxious. When he takes a step closer, his shoes make a discordant crunching sound that echoes in the nearly-empty lab, and when he looks at the screen again, Lena's eyes are wide and wild.
She startles awake, her breath coming in gasps as she bolts upright, and a small, high-pitched squeal escapes from Winn's lips. He slaps his hand over his mouth, looking sheepish, and he and Lena stare at one another, unsure how to proceed.
"You think you might be more comfortable sleeping in an actual bed?" he asks, by way of introduction while Lena runs shaky hands over her face.
"I think I might be more comfortable without the nightmares," she whispers to herself, her palms trapping her voice, keeping her secrets safe.
Across from her, Winn is standing on one leg, gingerly trying to extract something from the bottom of his shoe. "So, uh, what happened here?"
As her nerves calm and her brain shakes loose the grips of despair brought on by another nightmare, Lena looks at the wreckage of glass around her, dazzling and damning, and lets out a slow, shaky breath.
"Oh, umm," she starts, blinking repeatedly. "Failure."
The word tastes like ash on her tongue and weighs heavily upon her.
"Pfft." He swipes a steel instrument tray off the table and onto the floor, where it clatters noisily before coming to rest, still fully intact, and he beams at Lena with unabashed pride. "Failure shmailure. No big deal." The few lab techs across the room titter and leer at the noise, and Winn simply gives them the stink eye in return.
Kicking a path through the debris with the side of his shoe, Winn settles into a chair next to Lena and sits down next to Lena.
"So, boss lady, how can I help?"
"Well, I…" Lena starts, but she pauses when she notices Winn's eyes darting back and forth between her and the floor. Chuckling, she continues, "You're thinking about cleaning up the floor aren't you?"
"OK yes, I am, but after that, I promise it's mad scientist time."
Lena and Winn work ceaselessly. Lab techs come and go, but the two of them remain fixtures, wearing footpaths into the tile. There are no clocks; no one marks the passage of time. When fatigue threatens, they take turns napping in a nearby chair, but the work never stops. Alex passes by from time to time, always with purposeful footsteps and a scowl marring her face. When the recon teams finish their work, she updates Winn and Lena in situ rather than dragging them to the ops center.
They don't see Alex for long hours after that.
There are wins and losses, advances and setbacks. Winn celebrates both with glass smashing, followed inevitably by a quick sweep. It's remarkably cathartic, Lena finds, noting that the physical act helps ease the frustration looming just beyond their vision, helps reset their minds to try it again.
After noting the specs of her current test, double-checking the equation scratched across a pad of paper nearby, she proceeds once more. "Number 74…" she mutters.
She watches.
She waits.
The synthetic kryptonite in the machine in front of her dulls first, its green now flat, unremarkable. "Good…good." They've been here before, and she notes the change in her logs.
But when the green gives way to a dull, flat gray, she freezes. The readings on the panel indicate the specimen is now inert.
She moves in a blur, her actions swift and certain, snagging the specimen from the machine and loading it under the microscope.
"Winn," she says quietly, unsure if she's actually seeing what she's seeing or if her sleep-deprived delirium is taking over.
"Winn?" This time she's louder, but there's no answer, save the soft, even breathing of her lab partner.
Turning to face him, she shouts, "WINN!"
Winn wakes with a jerk and promptly falls out of the chair where he was napping. It takes him a moment to untangle his limbs and get his bearings.
"What?" he replies automatically. By the time he meets Lena's eyes, however, he's caught her tone, the urgency of it, and he closes the distance to her station. "What is it?"
"It's…just…LOOK!" Lena can barely contain herself, and she all but shoves the microscope under Winn's nose.
There's silence in the lab for a few moments, until Winn pulls his head up, returning Lena's excited stare. "Holy shit!"
Lena doesn't say anything. Doesn't dare.
Winn looks into the microscope again. "Holy shit!" He repeats. With gusto this time.
Still struggling to put the breakthrough into words, Lena grabs a glass tube from the table and hurls it against the floor.
"What the fuck, Lena?"
Both Lena and Winn stand up straight, looking for all the world like high schoolers caught smoking in the bathroom by their teacher as Alex strolls toward them.
"Sorry. It was a, um, a spasm."
Danvers is unimpressed.
Winn shrugs his shoulders, nonchalantly adding, "Lack of sleep, am I right?"
"You know what?" Alex answers, running her hands through her hair. "I don't even care. I came to tell you both that we're getting ready to hit our targets. Intel has narrowed it down to the two most likely, so we're going to hit both simultaneously. They both appear to be abandoned, but only recently. My money is on Site Bravo. The legal maneuverings and shadow companies we've found related to the licensure feel criminal to me."
"That's…that's amazing," Lena responds, stepping forward, ignoring the crunch of glass on the tile beneath her feet. The right location means evidence, which means more data to work with.
"Agent Schott." Winn turns and looks quizzically back at Alex. "There's room on the transport for you. Sure would be good to have you on hand to help collect and test samples for validation. You in?"
He looks between the women, completely unsure what to do and uncharacteristically at a loss for words.
So Lena encourages him. "I can't think of anyone more qualified."
"OK." He begins to nod, first at Lena, and then at Alex. "OK, I'm in."
"Great. But first, hit the showers."
Winn just blinks slowly back at her.
"I'm serious. You've been at it for two days now, and everyone can tell. That is unless you want the squad to give you a fun new nickname."
Although he grumbles, Winn makes his way to the door and, presumably, to a shower beyond. As Alex turns to leave, she stops. Then smirks.
"That goes for you, too, Luthor." At Lena's scandalized reaction, Alex's smirk turns into a shit-eating grin.
Once Alex has left the lab, and Lena is sure she's alone, she pulls at her shirt, bringing it to her nostrils before pulling back quickly, a frown forming on her face.
Fine.
When Lena returns to her worksite later and unlocks her computer, she finds a message from Winn letting her know that he updated Alex en route regarding their progress in the lab, and that Alex will be sending her a message.
Sure enough, the screen updates and alerts her to an unread email, stating simply: "This should help. Please…wait for me."
Lena wastes no time and opens the attachments Alex included with her message.
The first is an excerpt from Kara's medical file detailing the medical treatments given to her after exposure to an infectious alien disease two years ago. As this was included in the confidential files given to her earlier, she's read through it once before, but she does so again more slowly, pouring over the considerations made specific to Kryptonian physiology. The second attachment contains a set of lab notes covering the work done by the DEO to synthesize a series of biomolecular agents for another species in their care.
Sitting back, Lena's pulse picks up. This is it. The research, the precedent - it's all there right in front of her, packaged up nice and neat, and with this as her starting point, the DEO has just cut the work down to hours rather than days. The attachments are the blueprints, laid out in crisp black and white
Twisting her neck first one way, then the other, Lena stretches her muscles, ready to bring this home.
Anyone passing by the lab over the next six hours might note Lena's focus or the way she never looks away from her task. But it's so much deeper than that. Lena is pure concentration, her mind fully trained on equations and ratios. Numbers and variables ricochet behind her eyes with each blink while she continuously tweaks her work, searching for the right combination.
The first couple of trials are good, but not great, the biomolecular agent not aggressive enough in its interaction with the synthetic kryptonite for her liking. She's not here to negotiate a detente between two warring parties. She's here to wipe one of them off the face of the earth.
Having secured another sample beneath the microscope, Lena breathes deeply before injecting a measured dose of her serum.
The sound of boots marching toward her on the tile floor catches her attention, and she pulls away from the microscope.
It's Alex, still decked out in her field gear, dirt smudging her face. There's weariness in her eyes, but just around the edges, just where it can barely be seen, there's a hint of something else.
It might be hope.
There are no "hi's," no "hello's." Just Alex, asking simply, "Please tell me you've got something."
Lena nods before returning her eyes to the lens of the microscope, anxious to see how this particular trial is progressing. "Just a sec."
Lena doesn't shout. She doesn't scream. She doesn't even throw a glass slide at the ground. Instead, she slides over, flashing a broad, toothy grin at Alex.
"See for yourself."
Alex does, and her face is transformed.
Current Day
+108 hours since terminal event
"Fuck."
Alex Danvers doesn't need flowery language to get her message across when four letters will suffice.
Although the sunlamps still shine bright in their orbit around the hospital bed where Kara lies prostrate, her skin has lost its pallor now, and in the areas surrounding her wounds, dark lines begin to spiderweb out and away, mapping routes inch by inch over her broken body.
Even though they had removed all of the kryptonite shards days ago, and had cleaned the wounds to the best of their ability, they couldn't completely remove the microscopic pieces that had found their way into the blood or into the organs.
In a word, Kara is dying. Slowly, yes, but dying all the same.
Swallowing the bile rising in her throat, Lena hands the syringe to Alex. "I think you should do the honors."
It's just the two of them in Kara's room. Winn is busy processing evidence from the abandoned lab, and Maggie is working. J'onn…well, he's been keeping himself to himself.
Job complete, Alex steps back, making no attempt to hide the desperate tears gathering in her eyes. They stare greedily at Kara's unconscious form, waiting for a sign, for something dramatic and miraculous to take place before them.
But nothing comes.
Of course, nothing comes. This isn't a movie. There's no miraculous moment where Kara leaps out of bed to do a song and dance number. It doesn't work like that.
And so they stand there together, side by side, saying nothing, just listening to the hums and whirrs and beeps filling the void around them, eyes focused on the woman they both love.
But the world doesn't stop turning. When Alex's phone buzzes a few minutes later, the agent cusses under her breath and checks the message. Turning pained, frustrated eyes toward Lena, she relays her orders. "I've been called on another op. We've got a lead from the lab that I need to track down." There are more words, an ocean of them, that Alex leaves unsaid, but Lena knows them anyway.
"I'll watch over her. I promise you. Any changes, anything, and I'll call."
Alex nods, turning to look at Kara one more time before leaving the room. Lena is still in the same spot, watching and waiting when another DEO staff member appears at the door wheeling a narrow hospital bed behind him.
"Agent Danvers ordered this to be moved here."
Together they clear enough room, pushing the Chair of 1000 Neck Aches to the side and positioning the bed a few feet away from Kara's before he takes his leave. As soon as the door closes, Lena unlocks the wheels of the new bed and pushes it flush against the other before popping her shoes off and climbing in. It's hardly anything to write home about, but Lena sinks into the mattress, all the same, the weariness returning to her bones with startling speed.
Not ready to succumb just yet, Lena props herself up on the meager pillow and grabs her phone. She's been cut off from the outside world here - her own choice, admittedly. Ignoring the missed calls and texts, she goes straight to the news, hoping to see what's happened on the outside in the wake of the attack on Supergirl at the mayor's function.
When she notes the date, she nearly drops her phone in surprise. It's been almost five days since the attack. It reinforces her belief that the DEO is a liminal space where time moves differently, where the laws of the universe bend.
National City is in political and social turmoil. Councilman Drummond has attempted to use the attack as a political weapon, posturing and presenting himself as the only way forward, continuing to preach and evangelize for an alien-free National City.
But he has misread the citizens on a very basic level.
In articles, op-eds, and social media screenshots alike, the populace seems to have coalesced around one overarching sentiment: Supergirl isn't an alien to National City. She's a citizen. She's a friend. She's a neighbor. And she is loved.
Bouquets of flowers, powerful in their numbers, can be found by the droves at the crash site, alongside homemade posters and get-well cards, candles and mementos.
The tears come hot and fast down Lena's cheeks, and she makes no attempt to wipe them away as she continues to read.
Another article outlines the mayor's reactions, how he's treating the attack as an assassination attempt. "Not on myself," he's quoted as saying, "but on Supergirl, the hero who has saved this city - our city - more times than we can possibly know."
Hope is a fragile thing. She can see it clearly in the delicate petals of the flowers placed lovingly around the place Supergirl fell to earth, can see hope in the flame where it flickers against the wind. Reach for it too hard, too fast, and it is liable to be crushed or to disappear like smoke. Putting the phone away, she curls into herself in the uncomfortable bed, as close to Kara as she can be, an outstretched hand placed tentatively on Kara's bicep.
"I'm afraid." It comes out in a whisper, a thing barely heard above the hum of the machine near their heads.
"I am so afraid, Kara." A tear drops to the mattress unnoticed, where it leaves a damp rivulet. "Whatever's happened in the past between us, it doesn't matter."
The tears begin falling freely now, silent but steady, and the damp spot on the mattress grows, a river between them. "Nothing matters but this," she confesses, squeezing Kara's arm, feeling desperation in her movements. "But you. But us."
On the tail of a long, shuddering breath, Lena whispers to Kara, "Please. Come back. Come back to me. I can't do this without you."
She lies quietly for a long while, her tears drying, her eyelids getting heavier and heavier as she watches the silent form beside her. When she begins to drift away, she holds Kara's hand in her own, ignoring the cold skin, willing some of her own heat to distill down to Kara's bones. But as Lena's breaths begin to even out, just before she slips beneath the tides and is swept away to dream, a prayer falls from her lips, earnest and pure, a wish of gossamer.
"Come home."
Lena is miles away when the hand she holds twitches in her own.