Current Day
"We'll take you live to the scene with our on-site reporter, Victoria Arredondo, when we return. Until then, keep it tuned to KJPT News for the latest."
As the screen darkens and the studio fades to black, the insistent drumbeat of the breaking news jingle fades along with it. In its place a new scene appears: low-quality, wide panning shots of cars and trucks lined up with military precision, every one with neon signs of green or yellow or pink in their windows reading "SALE!" or "0% DOWN!" The somber voices of National City's leading news reporters give way to a garish spokesman promising "a steal of a deal" at the top of his lungs to anyone in need of a new or used vehicle this weekend. The juxtaposition is jarring.
Not that Lena notices.
To be honest, the world outside her mind has all but faded from existence in the last several minutes. As the news drumbeat sounds again, signaling a return to the measured voices and stoic faces, Lena remains unmoving where she sits in a heap on the floor, her eyes unfocused, unseeing. Thumping heavily against her ribcage, her heart beats out a wild tattoo - quickly, too quickly. Blood roars in her ears in a constant hum. It's hypnotic, the rhythm, the noise, and she sinks into it willingly and lets it sweep her away on the riptide. A woman disconnected.
The human brain is a curious thing, able to vacillate between alarmingly masochistic in one moment and fiercely overprotective the next. In this moment, Lena finds herself in the latter category. Faced with a reality too sharp, a keen blade held firmly against her neck, her brain tries desperately to convince itself that it possesses the capability to bargain its way out of danger.
As if she could add enough weight to the scales, offer enough in compensation to tip them in her favor, to remove the point of the blade where it cuts into her skin.
On the desk across from her, the computer screen fades to black once more, but this time it remains dark, asleep after a stretch of inactivity. When the colors disappear, the screen drained and lifeless, the low lighting conspires against her, turning the sleek, shiny surface into a makeshift mirror. Lena finds herself looking into her reflection.
She's not sure how long she's been there on the floor behind her desk. Long enough for her limbs to stiffen, long enough for her eyes to dry. But she can see the remnants in her reflection, and when she raises her hand to her cheek, her fingers are able to trace the salty tracks down to her chin.
She blinks. Again and again. The specter in the screen, pale as a ghost, does the same.
With a breath that rattles like bones in her lungs, she pulls her eyes away, unable to face the haunted face staring back at her.
When she turns her head, takes in her surroundings - the open balcony door, the immaculate display shelves, the wide expanse of white desk, radiant like the moon in her shadowed office - the spark of familiarity is gone. She's a stranger waking up in a strange land.
Standing is a painful process, her knees screaming after the long minutes spent awkwardly on the floor, and her first few steps are unsteady, like a drunken partygoer after too much revelry. Reaching a hand out, she steadies herself on the threshold of the balcony.
The wind is light, but it carries the sound of sirens on its fingertips. Their number has grown, their warnings screaming into the night at different speeds and varying pitches like a dissonant post-modern masterpiece.
Standing in the doorway, the symphony washes over her, as bracing as an ice bath. It brings her back to life, calls to the glaciers in her veins, straightens her spine in an instant.
Its chilled fingers chase the ghosts from her eyes.
In two efficient steps she crosses to the railing, picks up her phone where it sits upended, face down from...earlier. The face is miraculously unscratched. With a tentative touch, she opens her contact list, finds Kara and her ridiculous photo.
But it doesn't make her smile like it did before. Instead, something clenches in her chest, sudden and painful, like a hand wrapped around her heart.
It robs her of breath, leaves her gasping into the burgeoning night.
She hits dial. It rings and rings and rings.
Her free hand clenches and unclenches against her thigh, and she closes her eyes, mutters a prayer under her breath, another attempt at a devil's bargain.
But the wind snatches away her words, throws them over the railing and into the streets below where the sirens swallow them whole.
In her ear, she hears a familiar voice, "Hi, you've reached Kara Danvers. Please leave a message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks!"
She hangs up. Redials.
"Hi, you've reached Kara Danvers. Please-"
Hangs up. Dials again.
As if it were a fluke. As if the outcome will change.
It has to change.
When she finally lets her hand fall, the phone dark and silent against the fabric of her dress, she pulls her shoulders back, raises her chin, her jaw set. She's a Luthor, after all, and Luthors don't just sit back and take what the world throws their way.
They take control.
Click click click...she whips around, turning her back on the city. The air swirls around her legs like a phantom, the shadows cling to her shoulders like a cloak. Stalking back into her office, she passes the desk without slowing, past the coffee table with its delicate white flowers, past her coat where it hangs on the rack. Not that she grabs it. Nor her bag.
Armed with only her cell phone, she marches out the door and through the main office, passing deserted desks and dark computers, the open room filled with an expectant electric hum. Another set of glass doors and she's clear to the entryway, but instead of warm, inviting, tonight the wall of light is too bright for her stormy eyes. With a manicured hand, she presses the button for the elevator, and without delay, the door to her left dings, slides open expectantly.
When she reaches the ground floor, it's a short distance to the front door, one she traverses in record time, her heels echoing resolutely in the cavernous space. The driver's side door opens, her driver stepping out when he sees her hurrying down the steps, and he rounds the front of the car in a few swift steps so that he can open the rear passenger door - their usual routine.
But tonight she doesn't stop. Doesn't even slow. She continues purposefully around the bumper, and he closes the rear door in confusion, calling out to her as he follows, "Ms. Luthor?"
"Give me the keys."
"I...pardon?"
She wrenches the driver's door open, slides into the seat with ease, the leather warm against her back. Another moment and she shifts the seat forward to accommodate her stature. The driver stands to the side, unsure, looking at her like she's grown a second head.
Turning her head, she says coolly, "I need the keys, Daniel."
A beat passes. Another. And then with a nod and a hastily muttered "Yes ma'am," he reaches into his pocket and produces a sleek fob. Placing it into the cup holder in the console alongside her phone, she reaches forward, presses the start button on the dash. The engine roars to life, and the growl climbs up through her fingertips where they grip the wheel.
"Thank you," she says in response. He's still standing in the open door, and she looks at him, eyebrow raised. Still bewildered, he steps back, pushes the door closed, offering a quiet "Be careful, ma'am."
The tires squeal and catch, and by the time the smoke settles, Daniel is alone on the street outside of L-Corp, hands on his hips, watching the red taillights fade in the distance.
It's weird being behind the wheel again. It's been ages since she's driven herself. But here she is, no driver, no bodyguard, no security detail.
Supergirl...Kara is going to kill her for that.
Pushing the thought from her mind, she grips the wheel tighter, her hands grateful for something to do. It's cathartic, the movement, the action. It helps.
Up ahead the light turns red. She slows as she approaches the intersection, looking left, looking right, and then presses her foot harder onto the gas pedal. The engine growls in response, and she sails through the empty intersection in a blur of polished metal and chrome.
When she turns onto a surface street that will take her most of the way to her destination, she reaches down to grab the phone out of the console. Past parked cars, darkened windows and shops as bright as midday, the scenery slides by in a dizzying array. But she doesn't see it. The city goes unnoticed, all of it irrelevant.
The phone is bright in her hand, and she scrolls through her contacts to find the one she's after: Alex Danvers. This particular number is a relatively new addition to the phonebook.
As unrest has increased in the city, and as her mother's compatriots have been making themselves...known, the threats to her, her corporation have grown, a situation that has brought her more frequently into contact with the authorities. While there's only been one credible threat, so far, there's a promise of more to come. When the one last week had gotten uncomfortably close, the older Danvers had reached out, handed Lena her number. "Just in case," she'd said. Alex Danvers of the FBI.
When she presses dial, waits for the ringtone, it only just now dawns on her that it's entirely possible, even probable, that Kara's not the only Danvers hiding her identity. Her head spins at the possibility, and she bites her lip to keep her focus. So much subterfuge...it'll be ages before she can separate out the truth from fiction.
She huffs out a laugh, mirthless and quiet in the darkened car.
I'm such a fool.
"This is Danvers. Leave a message." Alex's voicemail message is brusque, a stark contrast to her sister's. Lena hits disconnect without bothering to leave a voicemail.
A scream builds in her lungs, climbs with sharpened nails into her throat, struggling to break free. It takes everything she has to swallow it back down, lock it away. She tastes blood on her tongue from the struggle.
She can still feel its claws, sharp and insistent in her chest. But if she lets it out now...if she starts to come undone…
No.
Up ahead the light clicks from green to yellow, but she doesn't slow. Dropping the phone into her lap, she presses her right foot even harder, and the car screams through the intersection like a banshee. There's a squeal of tires off to her right, a cascade of honks, but they amount to nothing.
Lena never breaks her stride.
When she can no longer hear the sirens, when their insistent cries have been swallowed by the city's twisting alleys and glittering skyscrapers, she finds the silence unbearable. While her voice may be caged, her thoughts aren't nearly as fettered. They raise questions, endless scenarios like morbid magicians.
With a press of a button, the radio comes to life, and she fiddles with the presets, one after the other, until she finds one carrying local news. Looking up, tail lights loom in her field of vision, and she jerks the wheel hard to the left, swerving and skipping wildly to avoid rear-ending a car daring to go the speed limit.
A tinny voice begins speaking on the radio, and she cranks up the volume until it fills the car, every surface echoing with sound. The broadcast is in progress.
"...receiving reports of a bombing attempt at City Hall less than an hour ago. Eyewitnesses say that Supergirl arrived on scene and removed the device, carrying it a safe distance out of town, saving the lives of hundreds of people who had gathered for the mayor's town hall meeting. There's speculation that the device may have detonated in the skies over National City, before Supergirl was able to get away, but we have no confirmation on the exact chain of events at this time, and no word yet on the condition of the Girl of Steel. In other news-"
Lena's hand hovers over the dial, ghostly white in the shadowed interior. Half of her wants to turn it off, to silence the voice confirming her fears in measured cadence, cool, as emotionless as if he's reading a grocery list. But after a moment she withdraws her hand, places it back upon the wheel. The voice drones on.
As the streets turn quieter, the outskirts of downtown giving way to a gentrifying residential area, its corners bright with kitschy shops and hipster restaurants, Lena's eyes are sharp. When the nondescript brick building comes into view, she slams on the brakes, her car screeching to a halt in the middle of the street. She throws the car in park and climbs out, barely managing to close the door behind her before heading inside, leaving her vehicle double-parked.
She doesn't run. She won't allow herself that. But her stride is brisk, her legs a blur as she hurries through the lobby door and up into the stairwell, and each step, each inch closer to Kara's place speeds her movements, as if pulled by a magnet. Her heart hammers wildly in her chest, the blood throbbing in her ears once more, and when she reaches Kara's door, she pounds on it with her fist in syncopated rhythm with her veins.
"Kara!" she shouts, heedless of the neighbors. She knocks again and again.
"Please, please be home…" she says more softly. A prayer.
But there's no answer. No "just a minute!" No creaking to signify the padding of feet across the wooden floor. There are no signs of life at all.
And she knew she wouldn't be here. She knew it, but she had to check, had to be sure Kara wasn't sitting inside on the couch in her flannel pajamas, a pizza box in her lap, ready to laugh deliriously at Lena's left field theory that she, a rookie reporter for CatCo magazine, was actually the city's beloved superhero.
The silence from the apartment is deafening, and she winces at the pain, her eyes fluttering closed for a brief moment.
Leaning her forehead against the door, cool and solid beneath her skin, she opens her phone and hits redial.
"This is Danvers. Leave a message."
The hall around her spins, brick and wood and glass spiraling together in a kaleidoscope that leaves her trembling.
She'd promised - promised! - that she could call her when she was in trouble, when she needed help. Alex had promised her that she'd respond.
Anger simmers white and hot in her veins. And she lets it.
After all, anger can be a useful tool, a catalyst when channeled properly. Now...now it provides the will to move.
Because if she's not moving, not seeking out a way to take back some control, then what's left?
Nothing.
Without movement, she'll fall apart at the seams, dissemble right here on the sixth-floor landing of a renovated loft.
And that's not an acceptable option.
Click click click.
Down the stairs, and out into the night, she slides behind the wheel once more. When the engine roars, its power resonating in her outstretched hands, she makes an illegal U-turn and heads west. Back toward the park on the other side of downtown, out to where Supergirl fell from the heavens.
The sky overhead has darkened considerably, the bruised purple deepening to uneasy black. There are no stars dotting the horizon tonight.
The drive across town is...eventful. Lena drives like a woman possessed, hurling invectives at drivers foolish enough to get in her way, swearing like a sailor at any delay, cutting in and out of slow moving traffic like a seasoned racecar driver. It's a minor miracle she doesn't get pulled over along the way.
Not that that would have slowed her any.
Even so, with every mile the symphony of sirens increases, the music building slowly to a crescendo. When she turns onto the street she knows will take her to the park, to the...crash site, she's forced to slam on her brakes, coming up short behind a sea of tail lights, red and innumerable. The whole area is choked with cars, and forward movement slows to a trickle, progress measured in feet, in inches rather than miles.
Anger rises again, impotent and frustrated, and her hands tremble at the outrage. Her screams like wild things dig their nails into her throat once more.
The tinny voice on the radio breaks in with promises of news from bystanders, reports that an unresponsive Supergirl has been taken by a fleet of government type officials, that NCPD is on scene en masse.
Overhead, a new sound adds its aria to the score. Glancing out the window, she spies the source - a helicopter with NCPD emblazoned on its side.
And that's when she feels it, the mask sliding silently into place on well-oiled tracks, can feel its effect on her muscles, the small pull here, the stretch there, sculpting her ever so subtly to its exacting specifications.
She's transformed, her blood cooled, her face stone.
Save for the single tear sliding slowly down her marble cheek.
When she picks her phone up once more, the number she dials this time isn't one she's ever had need to call before - NCPD headquarters. Her voice is calm and even, but there's a threat underlying every tone, every syllable. Her rivals, her heads of department know this voice well; it frequently emerges during tense business meetings. It's the voice of a CEO, the one that brooks no argument.
The one that runs an empire like a machine.
After a few rings, a desk sergeant answers, his voice gruff and uninterested.
Lena pays him no mind. "Hello, my name is Lena Luthor. I need to speak with Detective Maggie Sawyer immediately. It's about tonight's attack."
Whether it's the name or the commanding tone that seals it, she can't say, but the sergeant doesn't put up a fight. "Hold please."
The wait is interminable. She stares straight ahead into the sea of red, barely blinking, barely moving, the mask cool against her skin.
There's a soft click on the line. Finally. "Sawyer."
"Detective," she responds.
"Ms. Luthor, what can I do for you?" Maggie asks. Her voice is drowned by sirens, shrill and incessant. But there's a ding of a car door, and the noise fades.
Lena doesn't ask. Not really. It's a demand. "I need to see her. Kara. Supergirl. I need to see her."
There's a pause before Maggie responds, a new tone in her voice, "I don't know what you're talking about."
Lena responds with steel, a crack forming in the mask she wears. "Don't patronize me, dammit! I know!" She pauses, calms herself with a breath before continuing. "I know. I need to see her."
"You're not making any sense-"
"It's just a fucking pair of glasses," her voice breaks, the mask splintering around her. "Just tell me where they've taken my girlfriend!"
The line is silent.
"Alex is going to kill me for this…" Maggie sighs, almost to herself. When she speaks again, her voice is more sure, "Where you at?"
"Stuck in a sea of cars three blocks from the park."
"Can you get out of there? Onto a side street?"
"I'll do what I have to do, Detective."
"Alright, can you get to Parker St. from there? Turn there and park. I'm coming to get you." There's a sound of an engine coming to life, and then the call goes dead.
The line of cars creeps forward, but Lena is in no mood to wait. Cutting the wheel hard to the right, she urges her car over the curb and finds herself skirting the remaining few vehicles between her and her turn. Horns and shouts echo off the surrounding buildings in a cacophonous tempest, and she gathers them like wind in her sails, using them to propel her forward.
Parker Street is gloriously empty, and she pulls over in the first available spot. When she kills the engine, the only sound that remains is the ever-present siren call. She breathes deeply - in and out - again and again and again, trying desperately to piece together the remains of her mask. It's a weak imitation, and when the sirens aren't enough to silence her thoughts, she reaches for her phone once more, runs her hesitant fingers along the screen before unlocking it.
"Hi, you've reached Kara Danvers…"
She sits, listening to her girlfriend's voice, concentrating with every atom of her being.
When she dials again, hears the sunshine through the speaker, the hand that has gripped her heart in a vice all night loosens ever so slightly. Even when she's not here, even when...even now, Kara Danvers manages to soothe her nerves where they're raw and bleeding. A balm. A cure.
Headlights approach from the opposite direction, and within seconds an NCPD car rolls to a stop as it pulls even with her own. Lena doesn't hesitate. While she unfolds herself from her car, Maggie rolls down the window, sitting in the driver's seat drowning in an oversized NCPD windbreaker, looking up at Lena with a furrowed brow, her head cocked to the side.
"You look like shit, Luthor." The words aren't meant to be harsh. In fact, the delivery is quite soft, the detective's eyes warm and sympathetic in the dim glow from the car's interior lights. "Get in."