The following days go by slowly, very slowly. Kara is on mandated DEO bedrest on account of almost dying again and is forced into physiotherapy by Doctor Hoshi even if the sunlamps took care of most of the problem. She should not have mentioned that she can't bend all the way to her toes and never again will she be honest when asked how she's feeling.
Lena sets up a remote office in the med bay and spends the next seven days unwaveringly at her side, stepping out only for short bathroom breaks and late night conference calls. She's gotten remarkably clingy ; and it's not that Kara minds so much as she worries about her. Lena's always been strong and independent, and now, every time Kara is out of her sight, she can feel her heartbeat ticking up and up like it's trying to fracture her chest to get back to her.
Apart from Lena's constant presence at her side Kara gets very few visits, which if she thinks about it for a bit too long is both disheartening and a tad weird. For one, Alex literally works here and could stop by at anytime even for five minutes. And Taylor, Max and Ghim don't exactly have anything else to do. Kelly is the one who stops by most regularly, before and after each of her lunch breaks with Alex and her general inconspicuousness means it takes Kara a while to catch up on what is going on.
They are collectively trying to keep her out of harm's way by keeping her locked inside ; and once she figures it out, she's out of bed and storming Alex's office in a matter of seconds. It is nothing but a grave mistake.
"Whatever it is you're planning," she starts, kicking the door open in a blur, "I want in. You have no right to keep me away."
There is a delay, probably, between the moment Kara speaks the words and the moment Alex hears them, and it leaves ample time for her to see body parts that she's never had any wish to see in her sister's mouth.
"For Rao's sake ! Lock the door Alex ! Lock the door !"
Kelly jumps over the back of the couch, lands out of sight with a heavy thud while Alex scrambles to both put her shirt back on and wipe her hand on the nearest available surface. Kara's life will never be the same again.
"The door," her sister shrieks, "was locked. You just broke it."
Kara glances back at the door, the bolt is indeed bent but that's not the most pressing matter. "Be right back," she groans, swiftly turning around, "I need to find J'onn for an emergency mind wipe."
"Kara Zor-El you stay right here !"
Her sister's tone roots her in place, and Kara slowly revolves on the spot to look at her again, finding her pale and weary. Simultaneously, socked feet thunder down the corridor and Lena comes to a sliding stop next to her, grabbing her arm to avoid slamming into the wall.
"There you are," she huffs, "Kara darling you can't run away like that."
"Listen I love you," she says, steadying her with a hand on the small of her back, "both of you," she adds, looking at her sister, "but you can't keep me locked up and out of the loop. I want explanations."
Alex and Lena sigh in tandem. In the office, Kelly emerges from behind the couch looking as proper as ever. "Alex," she says, her voice a little rough for reasons Kara does not want to think about, "you know she's right."
Alex sighs again, and it's a wonder she doesn't just deflate like an empty potato sack. "I know," she says. "Come in," she adds to Kara, "I haven't been fair to you."
Alex motions for them to sit and they congregate around her desk in an oddly formal way for people who are respectively dressed in an inside out t-shirt, pyjamas and a business suit paired with rainbow fuzzy socks. Kelly quietly exits the room after pressing a soft kiss in Alex's tousled hair.
"Brainy has been trying to track them, the new Fatal Five or whatever they're called this time. I told you we recovered a piece of the axe in your back and we thought its radiation signature would lead us to the entire weapon and, by extension, its owner."
"I'll take a wild guess and say it didn't work," Kara says keeping her sarcasm to a minimum in the face of Alex's poorly concealed despair. Her sister has always been rubbish at hiding her emotions from her.
"It did work," Alex corrects quickly, "Brainy is nigh infallible."
"Then what ?"
"We found the axe in a dumpster behind Al's bar. No trace of anything else. No DNA, no radiation. Nothing. Nia had some goo on her suit that might come from the eye. We've ran an analysis but it traced us back to a place we have little information about so it's useless. Erkon or something."
"And you were simply what," Kara asks, coasting anger to stay on the side of polite firmness, "not going to tell me ? And it's Ekron. A solar system light years away, home to skilful telepaths. Which you'd known if you hadn't kept me out because I learned this in kindergarten !"
"I didn't want you to get involved. You've seen what happened back there," Alex replies, vaguely motioning to the near past, "the gang of shitty names and their royal leader want you dead. You're in danger as long as they're escaping us."
"Want us dead," Kara says. "We're all in danger and I'm not going to stand idle and watch any of you get hurt Alex."
"And I can't let you out of the DEO. They're using a cloaking device, we don't know where they are. Any second you spend out there is a second where you could die."
"And not you ?" Kara bites back, fully furious now. "Did you become invincible while I wasn't looking ? What about Lena ? She's been targeted before ! Or Taylor ? Or Ghim ?"
"Kara..."
"No !" Kara slams her hand hard on the table leaving a deep indent in the metal. "No Alex ! This is my fault. I'm the one who's going to go berserk and kill someone's only family, I can't put my own on the line for that."
"I'm only trying to protect you," Alex says.
"Well then stop," Kara snaps. Alex's face falls, and she regrets her words immediately. They protect each other, have each other's back, always, and asking Alex to stop looking out for her is as good as renouncing her.
Her sister schools her features, a mask of blankness falling over her face. "What if it's an order from your commanding officer ?"
Kara tenses. That's a low blow, lower even than her own. She feels a lithe hand coming to rest on hers and she narrows her focus to this single point of contact for a few seconds, turning her hand over so she can thread her fingers with Lena's before she says, harsher than she wants to, "then I quit. I prioritise the safety of my sister, of my family, over the words of my 'commanding officer'."
Alex remains still and silent for a long moment, eyes lost somewhere on a strategy or another. Her hands twitch with the need to fidget but she doesn't allow them this liberty, pinning them to the top of her desk. "You're getting a 24/7 security detail. Anything even remotely bizarre has to be reported to me with no delay. We are on high alert until this threat has passed. I'm not letting you die."
"And I'm not letting you die," Kara echoes. "Nobody is dying for me."
"You're insufferable you know that right ?"
Beside her, Lena laughs. "Oh she knows," she says, rising from her seat and quickly kissing her cheek before making a beeline for the door. "I'll go pack our bags, we're sleeping in a real bed tonight."
After Lena has exited the room, the sisters remain locked in a lazy staring contest for a long moment. Kara refuses to give way and Alex has long since mastered this art.
"You're insufferable," Alex repeats at some point, then, sometime later, "I love you, please don't die."
"Don't die," Kara echoes. "I love you."
They ride home in a tensed silence in the back of a windowless DEO van. Lena knows the bad mood is entirely her fault, a logical consequence to her actions, but it doesn't help her find a way to fix it. She opens and closes her mouth several times, but everything she can think about saying starts with "I'm sorry" and ends with "but you can't be mad at me for wanting to keep you safe" which she knows is not the right thing to say. So she remains silent, head pillowed on a stiff shoulder, rigid arm wrapped around her back, and mulls over her own stupidity in silence. She did to Kara exactly what Kara promised she wouldn't do to her.
The van drops them in the underground car park and they are escorted to the last floor by a tactical team armed to the teeth in an elevator temporarily rigged not to stop on any over floor. Kara makes a show of carrying both their bags and Lena's laptop case in an aggressive display of casual strength and once they've reached the penthouse, she drops everything on the couch and disappears in the master bathroom. Lena wants to follow, but instead spends the next ten minutes convincing her newly appointed bodyguards that they'll defend the apartment as well from the outside and absolutely do not need to invade her private space. She does consider inviting all twenty of them in for a moment, if only to act as a buffer between her and Kara, but ultimately decides against it, and not only because their muddy boots would ruin her white floors.
Kara stays shut in the bathroom for a very long time, the water running only for a short portion of it. Or not, Lena can't be quite sure of that because they've been back for less than half an hour when the sky opens in a downpour that drowns out any other sound. She busies herself with making tea, one strong cup for herself, one milked down for Kara, that miserably cools down untouched on the kitchen counter, and one overly sugary for Ghim that she carries out to her bedroom.
She finds her cocooned on her bed, engrossed in a thick orange hardback covered in the sigil and typical cheap plastic cover of National City's downtown library. She's lit a few candles to combat the moodiness of the weather and the sight of her, glowing in the light of the flickering flames, grip at Lena like a vice. Suddenly, she's overcome with the need to apologise for a thousand things, and she almost falls down with the way her legs start shaking underneath her. She makes it to the bed, half collapses on top of it like an easily impressed Victorian lady, and presses the two warm cups to her chest, eager to stave off the void that is threatening to open inside of it.
"You are not okay," Ghim states in her usual simplistic manner.
She manages to both sound extremely concerned and like she's discussing the weather and this conflict in her tone is enough to open the floodgates in Lena.
"I'm sorry," she says, "I'm so so sorry. I."
She gasps, loses all of her words and Ghim seizes the opportunity to take her cup of tea, gingerly sip from it and say, ever so gentle and cautious, "there is no need for you to apologise for something that is not your fault."
"You don't know what I was going to apologise for," Lena whispers, her own cup still firmly lodged between her breasts.
"I can guess," Ghim replies with a crooked little smile that is entirely her own and bears no trace of Kara. "You are very predictable Lena Luthor."
"Am I ?"
"You think you have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders and that when anything, anything at all, goes wrong, it is your sole fault and you have to bear the punishment. But this is not true. Nothing could be farthest from the truth." Ghim marks a pause then, takes a long sip from her tea as she seems to steel herself for what she'll say next. "What Lex did, to me and to the world, was never your fault. And you do not have to apologise either for the feelings I have for you. I am happier here than I have ever been, and the only thing that could possibly increase this happiness would be for you to stop carrying the load of what was never your fault."
"You are too wise for your own good," is the only thing Lena can think of saying. She feels like something has been lifted off her chest, something both small, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, and incredibly heavy and unbearable.
"Kara is still in the bathroom," Ghim says. "Do you want to read with me for a while ? Taylor took me to the library. I borrowed many books about dragons."
This is how Kara finds her when she finally deigns exit her bathroom retreat, clad in the most unfair of loungewear, sweatpants low on the hips and soft heather grey men t-shirt tucked into her waistband. She nods towards the living room in a silent question but remains on the threshold, hand going to fidget with glasses she isn't wearing and ready to go away if Lena so much as hints she wishes her to. She's happy and comfy where she is, being read to in a sharp Russian accent, but the apology she owes Kara is not a figment of her imagination and she regretfully leaves her nest behind to carefully follow her love to the living room.
Kara drops on the couch and frowns, immediately getting up to sit down again. She pats the cushions, runs her hands on the soft grey fabric and looks up at Lena with a questioning gaze. "You've changed the couch ?" she asks, endearingly stating the obvious.
Lena shrugs, goes to sit at the other end of the new furniture before correcting course to hesitantly settle on Kara's lap instead. "You hated it," she says.
Under her, Kara is stiff for a moment, uncharacteristically cold. Then, after a deep breath, she wraps her arms around Lena, one hand on her shoulder and the other on her thigh, heavy and settling. "I need to apologise," Lena whispers in the crook of her neck, all her previous fears appearing silly faced with Kara's reassuring scent.
"You do," Kara replies with disarming honesty.
"I shouldn't have been complicit in keeping you locked up and out of the loop," Lena says, setting her hand on the one that rests on her thigh. "I should have been honest with you and I shouldn't have done to you what you said you wouldn't do to me, it was not fair." She breathes out deeply, pushing down her tears. "I just. I hope you can understand I was scared. And I, I know I said we shouldn't live in fear but it all happened so fast and I can't let them take you away from me. I can't ever lose you."
"I understand, and I forgive you," Kara says very softly. "It doesn't mean that I'm not upset, but I understand. I know what it's like to be scared, what it's like to do things out of fear, and I wish neither of us would have to do any of this, but the other alternative would be to leave you, and I don't want that either."
Gently, she starts stroking Lena's hair and everything that has been askew between them in the past few days falls right back into place.
"I wish I could protect you from everything," Lena murmurs.
"You already protect me from everything you can. Your suit saved my life countless times. And your love, your love is the most perfect of shelters." At that, Lena shudders, and Kara holds her tighter. "We have to be honest with each other," she adds. "Honest when we're upset, honest when we're angry, or we risk going down a terrible path again and I'm not sure we'll be able to turn back this time."
"You're right."
Kara playfully nudges the side of her head with her nose, lays a soft kiss on her temple. "I know," she says, "that's often the case."
"Don't be an ass about it," Lena grumbles in reply
They lapse into silence for a moment, content to simply exist together and listen to the hefty patter of the rain on the roof.
"Are you okay ?" Kara asks eventually, the question asked in the shell of Lena's here.
In the spirit of honesty, Lena has to answer by the negative. "Not really," she says. "I would like to say I am, but I'm not."
She pauses, breathes then stammers, "you saw, I mean, did you understand what." Frustrated, she stops, clenches her jaw hard in the face of her incapacity to lay out a simple sentence.
"You've been avoiding the subject all week, but I assume Selena showed you your mum's face," Kara says. Softly, she drags her thumb across her cheekbone, soothing the angry bone.
"Most of the time, I don't even remember what she looks like," Lena admits. "I don't even fear I'll forget her, because that's already the case."
"I'm sorry you had to see her face again in such circumstances. I'm sorry I keep on bringing such sadness to you."
"It's not your fault."
"Is there anything I can do to make it better ?" Kara asks tenderly, "anything at all ?"
"Just," Lena squeezes her eyes shut, breathing in deep before she opens them again, "never become a face I could forget."
Kara frames her face in one big strong hand and turns her slightly so they can look at each other. The intensity of her gaze almost burns Lena raw. "I won't," she whispers, and everything about this makes Lena want to kiss her so she does.
She does not go about it softly, but crashes their mouths together in a searing kiss that steals all breath from her in a matter of seconds. She pants against her lips, twists on her lap until she can straddle her and kiss her with a fervour that could end the world. Outside, a flash of thunder briefly illuminates the sky in white before it reverts back to an intense slate grey. The room is almost dark around them, Kara's features visible to her only thanks to the soft glow of the light coming in from the kitchen. Lena however, does not need to see her to know her lips are pink and glistening and her pupils are dilated enough that her eyes have taken on a midnight hue ; she does not need to see her to know what she's thinking when she feels her hand slip under her shirt and her nails start scratching softly at the small of her back.
Later, much later, after a dinner of pasta, the only savoury thing Lena can cook without burning, they find themselves in bed, in the room which, Kara realises, is theirs more than it is solely Lena's. This doesn't mean that she won't go back to her own apartment at some point, but for now, she isn't particularly troubled by this part of their current predicament. Outside of their little slice of the universe, rain is still falling in heavy sheets, dulling Kara's senses. The curtains are improperly closed but all she can see through the sliver of window is a blurry and muted grey, like they've been removed from the world and now exist in their own small pocket dimension.
They lie next to each other in near complete silence, content to just stare at each other in the dark, to feel each other's eye roam over dips and curves visible only when thunder flashes. Something is bothering Lena, Kara knows it, can feel it radiating from her. It's something that has been bothering her too, all week, but for some hard to understand reason, she knows she won't be able to talk about it unless Lena brings it up herself.
She tells herself that the fact no one has attempted to talk to her about it, the fact everybody has been skirting around the subject, even Brainy who isn't known for his subtlety, is the reason she hasn't been able articulate it herself ; but truly, it's because she's scared. Scared of what it entails, her going berserk and killing someone in the distant future, scared of what it implies, because there aren't many things that could drive her crazy, and one of these things is lying next to her.
To be fair with her close ones, it can't exactly be easy for them to approach her with a craftily worded question such as "Hey Kara ! Any idea of why you might go cuckoo in the far future and kill random people ?" It sounds stupid even to her, and it's not the way Lena chooses to phrase it. Instead, she says, in a voice so soft it makes Kara want to die, "we should talk about it. About what's going to happen."
"We should."
"How long, exactly, are you going to live ?"
Kara should have expected this question, she did not. She was expecting for Lena to ask about her killing policy or to inquire about Red Kryptonite, even to ask if losing her would make her lose her mind ; but she didn't expect anything regarding her longevity. It's one of the things she tries the hardest not to think about.
"It could be time travel," Kara replies, poorly deflecting the query.
"Kara," Lena whispers, "please."
Kara waits before answering. She lets an unknown amount of seconds trickle by, hoping against reason that someone will pop out of nowhere and answer for her. Eventually, she does have to speak. "A, a long time," she says, voice a little crooked, a little hollow. "That's actually one of the only times Kal agreed to let the DEO run tests on him, he wanted to know if there was a chance he would die at the same time as Lois."
"And what was the conclusion ?" Lena probs softly, hand travelling in the dark to come rest on Kara's cheek.
"No," Kara answers simply.
A flash of lightning illuminates Lena's face and Kara can see, plain as day, her lips falling open in a silent gasp.
"I'm still going to age, just slower. Eventually, I will get wrinkles and grey hair. Or maybe white. We get white hair in my family. But unless I, unless I." She stops here, can't bring herself to speak the next words. Instead, she grasps at the hand that lays on her cheek, squeezes it hard, up to the limit human bones can handle, because it's the only thing that can prevent her tears from falling.
"Unless you kill yourself," Lena finishes for her, merciful and terrible, "you won't die for a very long time."
"I tried to made my peace with it. I discussed it with Kal, we made plans, but I, I just can't. How can I live on if you're dead ? How can there be a world in which Alex is gone, and Kelly, and Brainy and Nia, and I'm still here ?" Her voice cracks. Lena brings their intertwined hands to her lips, kisses the centre of her palm. Her mouth is wet with silent tears.
"And it's not exactly a conversation I can have with everyone, is it ? 'Hey ! FYI when you're dead I'll stab myself with Kryptonite on your grave. Are we cool ?' No one wants to hear that." Unwillingly, she laughs. A dark and heavy chuckle breaks past her lips and she wonders, with little concern, if it's the beginning of her descent into madness. "Except apparently I won't even do it. I won't immolate myself on your tomb or Alex's. Because the only reason the Fatal Five would travel back in the past to take vengeance on my family would be if I don't have one by the time I kill Emerald Empress' father. The only way that's possible, is if I'm still alive long after you're all dead."
There are many things Lena could say, the amount of bullshit that would leave anybody else's mouth then and now is infinite, but she's always been much wiser, and much more broken. "I'm sorry," she says, "I'm sorry you have to live like that. It should be enough that you've lost a world, without knowing you're going to lose another." She lets Kara's unbreakable body curl against hers, and together, they cry.
