Current Day

She hears nothing.

Not at first, anyway.

Not the high-pitched electric hum of the machines lining the walls, their screens alight with a litany of readings and measurements, the numbers in a constant state of flux.

Not the subtle sounds of grief - the sniffling, the ragged breaths, the unsteady shuffling of the four other people crowded into the room beside her.

Nothing.

It's as if the laws of the universe have been suspended. The lights overhead seem to flutter and flicker, and the edges of her world turn gauzy. Indistinct. Like she's caught in a terrible dream.

This isn't real.

For a moment she feels nothing. Her body lies in a shattered heap on the floor, the shards jagged, innumerable, and they gleam dully where the hazy light catches their edges. She has no limbs to weigh her down, no heart to break. There's nothing left to feel. Lena Luthor exists in tatters, empty and numb.

Some would call it shock. Not that the name matters. Not really.

This isn't real. It can't be.

She clings to the thought with the tenacity of the truest believer, as if sheer will alone can bring a wish to life.

But it doesn't last. It never even stands a chance.

In actuality, it's exactly that thought, that wish that sows its own demise. It's the cruelest of ironies that the act, the desire to refute reality so often serves only to drag it further into the light. By closing her eyes, she calls it into being, gives it shape, breathes life into its twisted limbs.

It grows teeth, claws.

And when reality creeps into her periphery, insinuates itself around the edges, it drives a wedge into the cracks until it breaks her wide open.

It starts with a heartbeat.

At first, it's a dull thing, the distant bleat of an alarm, obscure and indeterminate, barely discernible in the background. But with each second it grows, like the footsteps of an invading army, the ground trembling with a promise. A threat. Closer and closer it marches - thump, thump, thump - until, finally, it cannot be ignored. It pounds in her ears, clatters against her ribs as if trying to break free. Her heart beats like timpani, thundering in her veins, vibrating in her limbs. It shakes loose the gauze covering her eyes, which flutters to the ground in ribbons.

The dream disintegrates, and she wakes to a nightmare.

A half-dozen lamps hang suspended above the bed against the far wall, an entire sky full of suns orbiting Supergirl, who lies unmoving at the center beneath their yellow rays, encircled in a blinding corona of light.

An alarm sounds, high and insistent, its piercing note too shrill in the close confines of the room, and she winces at the pain in her ears. But it's gone as quickly as it came.

Lena takes a step closer without intending to, and the warmth that greets her is solid, full-bodied. Her skin crackles, and though her lungs burn with every inhalation, she takes another trembling step forward, unable to stop herself, a victim of gravity. She stands alone at the foot of the bed, spine straight, eyes dry, her face aglow with fire along the edge of the ring.

The body beneath her gaze is wrong. It's all wrong.

Kara's hair spreads behind her head like a tarnished halo, matted with dried blood, darkened with soot, its golden radiance impossibly muted. Her suit, the vibrant symbol of hope for an entire city, is almost unrecognizable, ashen, the colors drained from its fibers. Entire portions of the fabric are missing, burned away to reveal a patchwork of angry skin, spattered with crimson, streaked with black, with gray, speckled with luminous green.

Lena's stomach turns at the kaleidoscope, and she drags her eyes back to Kara's face in search of refuge. In search of familiarity.

But it, too, is wrong. Kara's face has always burned white-hot, sometimes with happiness, sometimes with fury, always with passion - the kind of face too dazzling for mere mortals such as herself to gaze upon for any length of time. But the brightness is gone, and in its place is a shadowy imitation, her cheeks soot-stained, hollow. An eclipse. And still Lena finds herself unable to look too long upon her face, but for altogether different reasons than before.

She's an angel fallen, her halo stained, her wings burned, tattered. Her body broken.

Smoke swirls in the air, and brimstone burns acrid in Lena's lungs. She tastes ash on her tongue.

Her gaze falls on the blackened red of a mangled boot, a leg bent at an impossible angle, and as she feels her stomach lurch, she takes a deep breath, tries to focus on a single detail - a speck of green embedded into a field of blue. It's one of dozens, hundreds, a tapestry of emeralds sparkling beneath the circle of lights like crown jewels on display, their blinding radiance a stark juxtaposition to the charred setting.

When recognition hits her, Lena stands stock still, and her breath leaves her in shaking gasps.

"Kryptonite?"

The sound of her voice surprises her, raspy and broken, all jagged edges, and she winces at the pain woven into the words, at the vulnerability underlying the tone. It hangs suspended in the thickened air, half question, half accusation, and it shatters the funereal silence like crystal. Everyone blinks, drags in a labored breath, as if they're all waking at once from a dream.

Ripping her eyes away from the circle of light, she looks at the ragged crew around her, her gaze jumping from one to another and back again in a disjointed orbit, too agitated to land, to rest. Each wears their devastation a little differently - flared nostrils, slumped shoulders, white knuckles, a hand held in suspense over a mouth.

A solitary tear rolls silently down Alex's cheek. It drops to the floor unnoticed.

In the end, it's J'onn who meets her eyes, who manages to gather the strength to speak. "Yes," he begins, swallowing harshly, his jaws clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing. "We need to run tests, but...yes."

His eyes break away, slide back to Kara, bathed in sunlight. He continues, "It was a dirty bomb, carrying shrapnel and Kryptonite, designed to cut down everyone there...human or otherwise." Pain flickers like flames across his face. His jaw tightens again.

Lena's heartbeat cracks like thunder in her ears.

"But...but where would they even get the Kryptonite?" The words spill from her unchecked, too quickly to stopper, and as soon as she hears them spoken aloud, as soon as the shape of them touch her ears, she grasps what's she said.

They. Not who. Her mind has already settled the question of who. The realization chills her to her core. It's an odd sensation, a perversion, to be standing beneath a ring of lamps, to know objectively that the heat of the sun warms her skin just as surely as it warms Kara, but she feels none of it. Ice floods her veins, and chilled fingers plunge into her chest, wrap themselves around her heart with the shocking ease of familiarity.

She wants to fold, wants to splinter into a thousand shards of ice and disappear into the floor. But still, she remains standing. Unblinking. Her shoulders pulled back, her jaw tight, she's frozen in place.

Not even the too-fast thrum of her heartbeat can shake her loose.

"That's what we intend to find out," J'onn growls, the threat in his voice sharp-edged.

Winn moves with the suddenness of a man with a purpose, hand dropping from his mouth resolutely, and Lena blinks in surprise at the movement. Stepping quickly to the far side of the room, he slings open a drawer, thrusts his hand inside and sifts through the contents impatiently before pulling back a petri dish and something akin to tweezers, the stainless steel glinting in the harsh overhead light.

There's an economy of movement that's mesmerizing to watch, a smoothness that stands as a stark contrast to his usual jittery, twitchy motions. The difference is startling. Efficient, purposeful he snares a sliver of Kryptonite with the medical tool and pulls firmly, placing it in the petri dish with a dull clink. "I'm gonna go get this analyzed, see if it was from the stolen shipment a few months ago or-," he trails off as he gets closer to the door, and he leaves the room behind without once raising his eyes.

The smoke-thickened air swirls in his wake, and when he leaves it's as if he pulls the remaining vestiges of fog and uncertainty with him, exposing the raw wounds, the deep reds, the dazzling greens, the piercing beeps of the medical machinery. The sharpness cuts like a blade. The room wakes from its slumber, and time resumes its course, an eternity passed in the blink of an eye.

But his exit does something else as well. The movement calls to Lena's cells, to her atoms. She can feel them realigning in her limbs, bending and jostling and vibrating with energy. She feels it like a phantom caress across her skin, a whisper in her ear. It's a catalyst. A spark. And it ignites a fire in her veins, one that urges movement of its own. A need to act.

She's a Luthor, after all. And Luthors don't stand still.

Each heartbeat rattles in her limbs like a hammer striking a forge, the sparks white hot in her veins. Steel knits itself across her brokenness, not mending it, not exactly, but holding her together nonetheless.

When every inch of her vibrates, she feels it climbing up her arms, itching along her skin, and gathering about her shoulders, but not as the heavy armor she's so used to hiding herself under, the kind that weighs her down and pinches and cuts at the delicate skin beneath.

Not this time.

It settles about her, a cape. Like Kara's. Like Supergirl's. To her, it's strength, not protection. And when the hammer falls again, she answers the call to action.

She turns to Alex, who looks up with red-rimmed eyes. Ghosts linger behind her lashes, lurk in the hollows of her cheeks. Alex is a woman haunted.

Lena's question is simple: "What needs to be done?" There's a steadiness in it that she doesn't quite feel herself, and she latches onto it, sinks into it, lets it insinuate itself into her bones.

And Alex hears it, too - it calls to her like a lifeline. A purpose. A mission. Lena can see it in the way her eyes clear and focus, the shadows receding. Something stirs and solidifies there. Her shoulders pull back, her spine straightens, and she takes a deep breath.

Her fingers are still entwined with Maggie's, and her knuckles are white where she grips, but the woman standing in the center of the room is entirely different than the one who was here a moment ago. This is Agent Danvers, Lena thinks to herself.

"We were making a plan when you got here a minute ago," Alex says, nodding at J'onn. At the reminder, he stirs, moving toward the exit, presumably to begin the task they had laid out before, but when he reaches Alex's side he pauses, pulling her into a gentle hug. There's no warning, no fanfare - he simply engulfs her in his arms, and she sinks into the embrace with the totality of a child, the gun against her hip shifting slightly where his arm knocks it askew.

The moment is familial, and Lena stands on the periphery feeling like an interloper, an intruder into a private grief. Her eyes fall to the floor. Footsteps sound, but rather than pass her by she watches the boots, large, authoritative, stop in front of her. A warm hand grips her shoulder, and looking up, J'onn's eyes are soft where they watch her. He doesn't say a word. Doesn't have to. A quick squeeze and he's gone, his back retreating through the door.

Alex leaps into action with a renewed sense of urgency, crossing to the far wall and pulling out a laundry list of supplies with the calculated calm of someone who knows this room, this routine like the back of their hand. The noise of metal instruments clattering on metal trays is almost enough to cover Alex's quiet sniffling.

Almost.

When Alex finally turns and makes her way to Kara's side, she carries a tray piled high with gear in her outstretched hand. "First things first-," she barks, all Agent again, nodding vaguely toward Supergirl lying before them, "-this shit's got to go."

With the tray deposited on a moveable cart, which she then rolls to a stop near the foot of the bed, Alex grabs a couple of items off the top, tossing something at Maggie without even looking up. Maggie catches it with ease. And then it's Lena's turn. She nearly misses, nearly drops them, the speed catching her off guard, but when they sit securely in her outstretched hands, she realizes what they are - latex gloves.

With a shuddery breath, she unballs them, sliding them over her trembling fingers with a calm she doesn't feel. The fit isn't right. The edges sit loosely against her wrist.

Maggie and Lena receive their marching orders in clipped sentences and firm tones, authority lacing every syllable. Lena marvels at it. In all honesty, she recognizes the tactic as a familiar one. After all, it's one she's used on a nearly daily basis for well over half of her life. Lock away the emotion, at least for awhile, in order to manufacture order out of chaos. A grin twitches at her lips, the sensation strange, almost foreign, and she fights the urge to raise her hand to it, to verify its existence. The spark of kinship flickering in her chest only serves to reinforce it, however, and she allows herself a second longer to watch Agent Danvers taking control before reaching for the forceps or tweezers or whatever the hell they're called, along with one of several metal containers.

Stepping around the cart, she moves toward the head of the bed, her heels clicking resolutely against the tile. With the final step, her hips flush against the edge of the mattress, she crosses fully into the ring of light, another body in orbit. The suns above beat mercilessly against her neck as she looks down at the center of her galaxy.

It happens slowly. So slowly. But she finds she's powerless to stop it.

She doesn't want to.

So near to Kara, her right hand holds the forceps, its mission defined. But her left hand aches with emptiness, and it reaches for Kara by rote, drawn to her with the familiarity of routine, a movement she's made in one form or another day after day for the past six weeks. It's like coming home.

Her hand lands softly on Kara's bicep, her fingers tracing a line in the soot-covered fabric of her suit. It's wrong. It's all wrong. Kara is cold beneath her touch, and Lena jerks her hand back as if she's been burned. The cold creeps with clawed fingers up her outstretched arm, marks her skin with frost. The hair on her neck stands tall.

With a harsh swallow, she attempts to regain her composure, but the tremble in her hands give her away. Placing the forceps around a sliver of Kryptonite embedded firmly in Kara's arm, she pulls. It pulls back, offering a resistance she didn't expect. Whether it's caught on the fibers of the suit, or whether it's pulling on the skin beneath, she doesn't know. God, she doesn't know and she doesn't want to know. With a final tug, the object comes loose, and her hand cuts quickly through the air until it hovers above the metal basin, where she releases her hold.

The crystalline mineral rattles harmlessly against the stainless steel with a shrill clatter, the sound ringing acutely in her ears. Its jagged edge is dark with blood, but it quickly transitions to iridescent green, and the combination of the two is jarring. It's the blood that disturbs her most of all, though. It's not something she's ever associated with Supergirl - all of the times the Girl of Steel has fought on her behalf, all of the times she's been knocked down, battered, and gotten up again, she's never seen a drop of it. Seeing it now-

She tastes iron, and she thinks how strange, only to realize too late that she's bitten her lip too hard. Again.

She bleeds, too.

Looking up, she finds Maggie's eyes on her. They crinkle at the corners, and a sad smile ghosts around her lips. Breathing deeply, ignoring the smoke in her lungs, Lena lifts her forceps once more and sets to work.

The room fills with sound - soft exhalations of effort, the occasional shuddering breath, but above all the soft ping of dozens of shards of Kryptonite rattling noisily against stainless steel. Each one an aria, each one an opus.

Lena works with a focus normally reserved for time in the lab, her attention to detail meticulous, her mission singular. Her hands have long since lost their tentativeness, and her movements are those of a scientist long since used to working with impossibly minuscule subjects with surgical precision.

She maintains her focus reasonably well, working around the wires and electrodes laced to various stretches of skin, taking measurements and reporting back to the machines keeping watch along the wall, numbers and lines flashing across their faces with regularity.

Lena pays them no mind.

But when she reaches the crest on Supergirl's chest, the symbol of family, the symbol of hope, her focus breaks, and her heart constricts impossibly in her ribcage, robbing her of breath. Half of the "S" is so charred it's almost unrecognizable, the other half's color muted to grayscale by layers of soot, and throughout littered with dazzling emerald green.

All she can do is stare.

Until fingernails dig into her palm, sharp and insistent, and she blinks back the tears threatening to form. An uneasy breath knocks in her lungs, but it's sharp, raw, as if they, too, glitter in terrible green.

"What happened?" she finally asks. Her voice is quiet, but in the hushed room it's almost deafening. It's been almost thirty minutes since anyone has spoken. And still she can't quite look away from the charred symbol emblazoned on Kara's chest.

Next to her, Alex blinks - once, twice, but no words come. Instead, it's Maggie who speaks, her eyes warm, her words halting.

"There was a big, um, political rally tonight at City Hall-"

"The mayor's reelection bid?" Lena asks, and Maggie nods.

"It was a pretty good sized crowd. Hundreds of supporters. And of course a few dozen protesters out front behind the barricades. The usual for National City these days."

When Alex speaks, her voice is a whisper. "Kara was there for work. She-" Alex swallows, focuses on pulling another shard of Kryptonite from her sister before continuing, "-she radioed in that she saw someone suspicious leaving a restricted area. Someone she thought looked familiar."

The mineral drops against the stainless steel container with shrill finality.

"She and Winn both ran scans of the building. There was a...a bomb." The words begin to tumble out more hurriedly, and Alex's voice wavers with the effort, her hands stilled against her sister's outstretched legs, her task momentarily forgotten. "We mobilized but when she found it, she said there were only 30 seconds left on the clock."

Her face twists, turns, her jaw quivering as she explains, "There wasn't enough time. So she took it as far away as she could. We thought-, we thought we had more time." The tears perched precariously along the rim of Alex's eyes spill over when she shakes her head, as if unable to believe the words she's saying. She sniffles, fighting to regain control before continuing. "It must have malfunctioned," she clarifies, dragging in a ragged breath, a death rattle in her ribs. "It, um, it went early."

Maggie sets down her forceps in the metal container she's been filling along her side of the bed, and she steps silently around the end to Alex, pulling her into an embrace. Alex's shoulders rise and fall as the quiet sobs rack her body, and Maggie places soft kisses in her hair, brushing it away from her forehead where it rests against her own shoulder.

Lena's own tears fall quietly, marked by no one.

Save for that small betrayal, the salt marring her cheeks, her grief is internalized. It cuts savagely into her lungs, screams tearing at her throat with sharpened claws and gnashing teeth. It's smoke burning in her nose, ice racing up the length of her arms, wrapping around her heart.

She tastes salt, and it mixes with the iron of her busted lip. It's the grief of the solitary.

When she looks down, she finds that her tears have landed along Kara's sleeve, tracking shaky lines through the soot. The deep blue shines through in glimpses and flashes with the brilliance of a star flickering in the bruised evening sky. She places her hand on Kara's arm and closes her eyes.

It's another minute before they return to work, Maggie trading out the forceps for a tin of water and a stack of sterile rags, working behind the two of them to clean Kara's skin where she can. Quiet settles around them like a shroud, and no one dares disturb it.

At least for a little while.

But something nags at the back of Lena's mind, it itches and wriggles and makes itself known. Turning Alex's words over and over again, examining them backwards and forwards with the fastidiousness of a scientist, analyzing every sentence, every scenario - she keeps circling back to the same question.

They thought they had more time, but Kara wouldn't have made a mistake...she would have known when to let go.

"Did you have your own clock running?"

Her question is sudden, and Alex looks up at her with narrowed eyes. The agent doesn't require context, however. She simply nods in the affirmative.

"How much time did you have when it, um,...when it exploded?" Her voice breaks at the end, and she finds it hard to maintain eye contact.

Alex's brows furrow when she responds, "It wasn't right. It went early. Winn's clock still had nine seconds."

The equation plays out in Lena's mind, the factors aligning and realigning, shifting into position until it clicks with startling finality. She stills, forceps held mid-air in her trembling hand. Her jaw drops slightly, her lips parting, and the words escape on a breath held too long.

"What if it was manually triggered?" Alex's eyes shoot up, fasten on her own with startling speed. "What if she was the target all along?"

A sharp intake of breath, and Alex's jaw drops as well. Her eyes widen.

"Goddammit," Maggie says softly across the bed. "Alex…"

Nostrils flared, jaws clenched, Alex's voice is steel, cold and unyielding, when she speaks again. "An assassination attempt. But not on the Mayor. On Supergirl."

"Did Cadmus do this?" Lena asks quietly. The question feels superfluous. She feels the answer in her hollow of her bones, in the way guilt slip-slides in her belly. But she asks for the sake of asking. For the sake of certainty. "Did my mother-," she swallows, gathers her nerve, "-did she do this?"

Alex sighs shakily, starts to reach her hand up to run through her fingers through her hair in an anxious gesture, but she stops midway, remembering the gloves. Her hand falls to the bed, frustrated, where it balls into a fist. "I don't know. Cadmus isn't the only player in the game anymore. They inspired others. But…" She doesn't finish the thought, doesn't need to. She presses her fist into the mattress, the material dimpling and caving around it.

"Look, my lab is state of the art. Whatever you need. L-Corp is at your disposal. Just name it."

Alex simply nods, and they return to their tasks once more, their movements sharper than before, more urgent. They work in silence, save for the soft clink of Kryptonite skittering harmlessly across steel, the slow drip of water when Maggie rinses the cloth of soot and dirt, or the steady hums and whirrs of the machinery along the wall, Kara's electric guardians.

They barely speak when, as a team, she and Maggie each grab an arm, and gingerly they pull Kara forward, allowing Alex access to scour her back for shrapnel, adding to their collection. In the end, they fill three deep instrument trays with jeweled slivers, some coated in blood, some blackened and charred, but all still somehow shimmering in the harsh light of the overhead lamps like some sort of fool's treasure.

Alex steps back, evaluates the situation with military efficiency, and when she speaks, it's with the voice of Agent Danvers once more. "We need to set her bones."

She doesn't elaborate, doesn't need to. Lena can connect the dots. With the Kryptonite removed, the poison sucked from her system with painstaking care, if Kara's body is going to heal, if she's going to recover at all, then it starts now. And everything needs to be in place.

Alex repositions herself over one of Kara's calves, and without looking up, she gestures with her chin, "Lena, hold her right there." She speaks with the confidence of someone who has done this before, and Lena doesn't dare question her. She wraps her hands around Kara's leg as Alex mutters, "Hold it still!" The muscles beneath her fingers are dense, and her brain works against her, calling up memories, images of the last time she'd traced her thumbs along this thigh. Her eyes close, and she wraps herself in it like a cape, sinks into its safety, her heart beating a wild tattoo in her veins.

The crunch of bone, the sickening scrape and pop travel through her fingertips, up her arms, past her heart, and settle like lead in her stomach, puncturing the warm memory along the way. Her skin pales, and her knees weaken disloyally below her. Sweat beads along her brow and falls to the bed in mockery.

Her heart remains lodged firmly in her throat, pulsing too hard to be of any comfort.

She takes a shaky breath. And another. And another. They move to the next one, and the process repeats.

Throughout it, Kara remains unmoving beneath them.

When they've done what they can, when Kara's limbs no longer stick out at impossible angles and the soot has been washed away where possible, they step back, their feet falling outside the ring of light, and after so long spent in the sun, their eyes take a moment to adjust, the rest of the room seemingly deep in shadow in comparison.

The shadows only serve to illuminate Lena's pallor, and Maggie eyes her critically, her eyebrows narrowing. A look passes between Alex and Maggie, followed by a touch, soft, telegraphing a decision. Alex nods

"C'mon, Luthor, you look like you could use some water." It's not a request, or at least Lena doesn't read it as such. Maggie's tone doesn't leave much room for such an interpretation.

Lena doesn't resist. Her feet move of their own accord, one after the other, and she pads shakily across the room to the door, her heels scraping slowly along the tiles. Only once does she pause to look back, and a fresh tear tracks down her cheek as she exits the room.

The path the detective leads them down is every bit as labyrinthine as the one they took upon arrival - a right, a left, and a left again. Every hallway frustratingly uniform. But it's different this time. She knows where Kara is, and there's an unspoken certainty that no matter how long they walk, how far they go, she'll be able to find her way back.

Gravity will pull her back into orbit.

The next turn leads the pair into an open area, some sort of command center, if she had to guess. Banks of terminals and monitors ring the center of the room, and agents huddle around them, their focus total. J'onn catches sight of them when they enter, and he moves with surprising speed to intercept.

"Detective. Ms. Luthor. I-"

"Lena. Please. Lena." Her voice is tired, but the rawness of before is absent, her tone much more the polished businesswoman than it has been at any other point tonight. The walk seems to have done some good after all.

"Lena. I just wanted to offer you the use of our barracks." He gestures toward the opposite door before continuing. "It's nothing fancy, and it's not private, but I understand your...situation, and I wanted you to know that you're welcome to use them."

"I-," she begins, but words fail her, her heart beats too hard in her ears, in her throat. She settles on a watery smile, a shaky nod. It's enough.

Another minute, another hallway, and Maggie slows, stops, points toward a nondescript door. "Ladies room. Think you can find your way back if I go ahead and get back to Alex?"

Lena nods, and Maggie mirrors the movement in her own response. The detective opens her mouth again, looks uncertain, as if she's about to say something else, but in the end she closes it wordlessly, turning back the way they came, her steps quick and purposeful.

The bathroom is blessedly empty when she enters, her steps echoing off the hard surfaces all around. She intends to run some cold water, to lean her weary limbs against the marble countertop, but with each step the room spins further and further out of focus, the lights overhead blurring and shifting. Her legs, her arms drag her down like anchors, and she can feel herself pulling away from consciousness with each passing second.

Her shoulder slams into the cold door of the first stall, and she falls to her knees just in time, her stomach clenching painfully, emptying its contents into the bowl. As the heaving eases, she leans her head heavily against her arm, lacking the energy to hold it high any longer. Hot tears spring from her eyes. They fall unconstrained. The hands gripping the bowl in front of her are clammy, dotted with sweat, but they're clean, she can see that.

In the end, it doesn't matter. The mere sight of them calls up phantoms, the feeling of bone crunching beneath her fingers, of skin torn, broken. She heaves again. Again and again.

Eventually, there's nothing left.

It takes a few moments for the chill of the porcelain to seep into her skin, for her stomach to settle to a dull growl. But when her thoughts finally regain a semblance of coherence, she stirs, leverages herself up and out, ignoring the ache in her knees.

The water in the sink is refreshingly cold, and it soothes the burn her throat where it trickles down. A few stray drops drip down her neck and dampen the collar of her blouse when she stands. The fabric sticks to her skin uncomfortably.

Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.

There's a vibration against her thigh, insistent, and slipping her hand into the hidden pocket of her skirt, Lena withdraws her cell phone, long since forgotten.

A handful of texts, dozens of emails, none of which matter. But the two missed calls from Daniel blinking red across her screen leave a rivet of guilt, hot and leaden in her stomach.

The eyes staring out at her from the mirror are red and swollen, and the effect against her porcelain skin is haunting. It's wrong. All wrong.

With a shuddering breath, she pulls her eyes away, pulls up a new text message, Daniel's number showing on her screen.

I'm so sorry. I'm fine. Will explain later. Car on Parker near city park. I'm sorry.

The response comes within seconds.

Please take care Ms. Luthor. Call if I can be of any assistance.

Before she can turn off her screen, a breaking news alert pops up in her notifications: Drummond Organizes Supergirl Vigil

She feels it then, pulsing hot in her veins, pounding against her ears, a fury so complete it staggers her. Her hand cramps around the phone, her knuckles white. She wants to throw it. Wants the satisfaction of it.

But her eyes fall to her text screen, to the message below Daniel's, the one she sent to Kara earlier tonight. The anger withers, recedes, washed away on the tide. It leaves only longing in its wake.

Instead, she pushes a button, and holding the phone to her ear, she listens to Kara's voicemail. Again. But she turns away from the mirror to do so, unwilling to watch the shadows in her own eyes.

Unable to.

By the time she returns to the makeshift hospital room, her eyes are dry, the swelling around them subsided, at least partially. Maggie stands with her arms around Alex by the side of the bed, and Lena hovers in the doorway, unable to shake the feeling that she's intruding on something private, something she's not privileged enough to see.

But when Alex raises her eyes, a quick nod of the head is all it takes.

Alex must have been busy while they were away. Kara lies on the bed beneath her lamps, but the suit is gone, replaced by a pair of comfortable looking DEO sweats, the fabric bulging in spots around mountains of bandages.

Moving to the far side, Lena drags a stool close to the bed, settles herself atop it, her spine straight, her breath even.

"I'm sorry," Alex begins. "About earlier. I…" The words trail off, and Alex stands there looking lost. Broken.

Lena nods, waves it off. "I meant what I said. Whatever I can do."

On the other side of the bed, Alex pulls her own chair, and Maggie stands behind her, arms wrapped protectively around her shoulders. Silence settles around them once more, and they let it.

With tentative movements, Lena reaches forward, her fingers sliding across Kara's hand, wrapping slowly across Kara's wrist.

And so it starts with a heartbeat. At first, it's a dull thing, distant and thready, but as soon as it vibrates into her fingertips, stirs the atoms under her skin, her own heart picks up the rhythm, carries it to every vessel, down to every cell.

She hears nothing else. Not anymore.