The next morning, Kara decided to forego Quidditch practice to make a visit to the hospital wing.
Lena was asleep, and Kara was grateful not to have to look into her eyes. She sat for a while in a chair beside the bed, anxiously rubbing her thighs as she watched Lena rest. Watched every breath.
"Is she okay?" Kara asked Madam Pomfrey in a hushed whisper. "Did she hurt anything?"
"She'll be fine, Miss Danvers. She's only here for monitoring, just in case the concussion did any damage, but she's been fine all night and showed no signs of further damage," the nurse assured her. "Shouldn't you be outside getting ready for the big Quidditch match this afternoon?"
Kara hesitated, looking down, then reached beside the chair to pick up a vase full of lilies, asking, "It doesn't matter. Anyway, can I put these on the table? So she sees them when she wakes up?"
Madam Pomfrey sighed.
"Fine, fine. Just don't make a mess."
"Do you think…" Kara started shyly, rubbing her shoe on the floor. "Do you think she'll be able to leave soon?"
"Oh, yes. Without further complications she can leave in a few hours."
Letting out an audible sigh of relief, Kara smoothed her hand over her hair and ponytail.
Then, when Madam Pomfrey finally walked away, leaving her to stare down at Lena's peaceful expression, Kara whispered, "Feel better soon, Lena."
Kara wasn't worried about playing Quidditch outside in the winter. She didn't mind the cold much. Then again, she wasn't worried about playing Quidditch at all now, really. Still, she walked solemnly to the Quidditch pitch, very nearly dragging her feet behind her, and took deep breaths along the way to calm her worries – which didn't work at all.
Instead, as she walked further and further away from the hospital wing, she felt more and more anxious. She wanted to be there when Lena woke, just to be sure. Of course, Madam Pomfrey knew what she was doing. But she'd said without further complications. That could mean anything. Anything could happen. Anything. And Kara wouldn't be there.
But she knew she couldn't let Gryffindor down, so when she finally gripped the broom in her hand on the Quidditch pitch, she gathered as much energy and focus as possible to kick off the ground and into the air. Unfortunately, there wasn't much energy or focus her body had to offer her.
She flew around for a while, listening to the team captain's orders, but mostly thinking about Lena lying there in the hospital bed, alone. All Kara wanted to do was to get down and go back there. But she wasn't willing to blow off her duties as Gryffindor's only Seeker. She had no backup, no stand-in. She was it. The only one on the team even capable of catching the snitch. Unfortunately, though, her heart wasn't in it.
She spent the next hour warming up with her team, doing her best to stay on task, but the rest of them could definitely tell something was off.
"Oy! Danvers!" the team captain called out, flying close to her on his broom.
"Huh?" Kara answered, turning to the side to face him.
"Take a break and get your shit together. I don't know what's going on with you, but the game starts in forty-five minutes, and we can't lose it."
"I know!" Kara shouted back, scowling.
She wanted to say more. Wanted to tell him off, but knew she couldn't. It wasn't the time or place. Besides, taking her frustrations out on someone else wasn't her style. So instead, she sped towards the ground, landed, and slowly walked off the pitch, clutching her broom until her knuckles turned white.
Forty-five minutes, Kara thought. Not enough time to make it up to the hospital wing, visit, come back, and be ready in time for the game.
Sighing, she sat down on the bench and picked up her water bottle, staring down at it as she laid her broom beside her. After a minute or two of simply staring at the bottle and forgetting why she'd picked it up in the first place, Kara finally shook herself back into the present and took a small sip. The sensation of the cool wave of fluid sliding down to her stomach was a sensation that caught her attention and grounded her in the moment, and she was grateful for that, but it didn't take long for her thoughts to wander back to the hospital wing.
Before she knew it, the team was gathered around her, talking about their plan for the Quidditch match. Kara tried to listen – really, truly tried – but everything felt like she was watching the distortion of shapes through water, with light refracting and morphing just about everything she could see. Then, after an excessively long speech about the importance of the game from their team captain, it was time to start the match.
Kara watched as the snitch was released before immediately losing sight of it as it soared above her.
Shit, she cursed silently, looking around desperately for the tiniest piece in play.
In an effort to find it, she leaned forward on her broom and sped towards the other side of the pitch where the Slytherin goal posts were.
"Come on, come on, come on," she whispered, wanting nothing more than to get the match over with quickly so she could check on Lena.
Finally, she caught sight of it.
The snitch was hovering to the left of the nearest goal post, heavily guarded by the unknowing Slytherin keeper. Thinking nothing more than, Let's get this over with, Kara flew directly for it at full speed.
What Kara didn't see – or hear – was the bludger that was soaring directly towards her. Just as her fingertips touched the snitch, she heard the loud crack of her left arm snapping. Luckily for her team, as this was happening, her fingers were tightening around the snitch reflexively, and it was firmly in her grasp as she slid off the broom from having let go with her other hand. Nearly blacking out from the pain but kept awake by the sensation of rapidly free-falling towards the Quidditch pitch, Kara held her breath, bracing for impact.
But the impact never came.
Kara found herself floating just barely above the ground, halted slowly by what she assumed had to be magic. In too much pain to look around for who had stopped her from falling – it must've been Madam Hooch, the referee, she reasoned – she closed her eyes and waited.
Her arm, resting on her chest, felt as though it was in flames, and she knew it was shattered. A bludger was no joke, she'd discovered. It was the first time she'd ever been hit with one. Usually, she was quite good at avoiding them altogether, without help from the beaters, but today she'd been unfocused and had given a sub-par performance. So she told herself it was her own fault and willed herself to disappear to avoid the embarrassment of her team's judgment.
That judgment never came, though, because it was then that Kara realized… she still had the snitch! By some miracle, it was very nearly glued to her palm, tightly locked inside her fist.
"She got it!" she heard the Gryffindor captain shout from a distance. "She got the snitch! We won!"
At that point, Kara didn't even really mind that all he cared about was that they'd won the game. As long as her teammates weren't upset with her, that was what mattered. But she still longed to disappear. Longed to be somewhere else, where no one was staring at her. So, without opening her eyes, Kara weakly lifted her right arm, displaying the snitch to confirm her team captain's claim to victory, earning an eruption of cheers from the entire crowd – except the Slytherins, of course.
Barely listening the intense roars of victory, Kara realized she was still floating. She wasn't on the ground yet. She willed herself to open her eyes but couldn't. In too much pain to focus on keeping hold of the snitch, Kara's hand fell open, allowing the snitch to escape. Then, she felt her body sinking slowly, until at last, she was lying in the grass on the Quidditch pitch. Grateful to be on the ground, Kara let out a sigh of relief and shifted slightly, reigniting the pain in her arm.
Letting out a yelp, Kara moved to reach for her arm to touch it with her other hand, purely out of reflex, but felt her wrist gripped tightly, stopping her hand.
Eyes snapping open, Kara looked up as she heard the words, "Don't touch."
"Lena," Kara breathed, feeling her eyes water for the first time since the incident with the bludger.
Lena just nodded and supported Kara's head, just as the Gryffindor had done for her the night before. Kara felt the strange sensation of her body going soft and relaxed, while at the same time continuing to feel pangs of agony that assaulted her like repeated lightning strikes.
"Fuck," she moaned, after trying to hold in the complaint for too long.
She wanted to be strong. Wanted to sit up. Wanted to smile and claim victory of the game. But her heart wasn't in it, and it hurt too much, so she decided to drown herself in only what she could sense immediately around her. And that meant Lena. Lena's hands behind her head. Lena's bright, worried eyes. Lena's furrowed brow. Even the way she smelled. A scent dark and sensual that Kara couldn't place. In the end, she didn't care what perfume it was that Lena was wearing. She just cared that it was Lena's.
"It's okay," Lena hushed her, just as Kara's head began to feel like it was spinning from the pain. "I've got you."
"Can you walk?" a voice asked harshly, standing near them and casting a shadow over the two girls.
Kara wanted to say yes and wanted to stand. Wanted to walk herself back to her dorm, put a band-aid on, and call it good. And she almost said, 'I'm fine.' But someone else spoke for her.
"No," Lena said firmly. "She needs a stretcher."
"Nonsense," Madam Hooch said. "It's just her arm."
Just as Madam Hooch said this and leaned down to pull Kara to her feet, Kara saw Lena's eyes go dark as she growled, "Don't touch her! She needs a stretcher."
Was Lena seriously telling Madam Hooch what to do? Kara couldn't believe her ears. In fact, she was so shocked that even though she wanted once again to say 'I'm fine,' she stayed silent out of pure surprise at the way the situation was unfolding.
Madam Hooch looked at Lena for several long moments as Lena continued to scowl at her with intense Slytherin ferocity before finally conceding, "Alright, Miss Luthor. But you're escorting her to the hospital wing."
Madam Hooch summoned the stretcher and positioned it beside Kara. Lena didn't even bother to agree to her request before rising to her feet and helping the Gryffindor team captain lift Kara onto the stretcher. Unfortunately, the shift in her weight moved her arm, and Kara screamed from the agony of her shattered bones grinding together. Lena jumped at the sound as she quickly used a spell to make the stretcher float, bringing Kara closer to her.
"You're okay," Lena said hurriedly, her voice cracking and betraying her emotion. "We're gonna get you to the hospital wing, and you're going to be okay."
Kara felt tears stinging her eyes but refused to let them fall in front of Lena. She wasn't going to cry. Not like this. Not in front of her. So she tried to nod, but that didn't work either, which resulted in Kara simply squeezing her eyes shut to stop the tears and to keep the world from spinning quite so fast.
Soon, they were at the hospital wing, to the tune of Madam Pomfrey huffing, "Well, now look who's here! Fancy that. Should've been at practice this morning, young lady! Maybe you wouldn't have fallen off your broom like that!"
Lena scowled at her, then registered what the nurse had said.
"You weren't at practice this morning?" she asked Kara quizzically, feeling absolutely certain that Kara wasn't the type to miss practice for anything in the world.
Kara couldn't speak – couldn't even open her mouth without crying out – so Madam Pomfrey happily jumped in and blurted, "No, of course not, silly. She was here bringing you flowers."
"What?!" Lena gasped, gaping at the wounded girl as she was being laid on the hospital bed. Then, more gently, she asked the blonde, "Those flowers were from you?"
Kara moaned as she was once again shifted while being adjusted on the bed, not daring to open her eyes long enough to watch the room spin. But more than anything, she wanted to see Lena. Needed to see Lena. On the other hand, she was far too embarrassed to brave seeing the look on Lena's face. In fact, Kara quickly noticed her own cheeks burning with the heat of embarrassment.
"You missed practice for me," Lena whispered, dropping to her knees beside the bed and resting her hands on the edge of the mattress, close to Kara's unwounded right side.
Staring down at Kara's hand, wanting nothing more than to touch it – both to comfort her and to express her own gratitude for what Kara had done for her – Lena went quiet, waiting for Kara to say something. Anything. Even an affirmative nod would've been fine.
But Kara said nothing.
"Move aside, Miss Luthor," Madam Pomfrey ordered shortly, giving her a gentle nudge away from the bed.
"Please, let me stay with her," Lena begged, her eyes suddenly softening into a desperate, pleading expression that even Madam Pomfrey couldn't ignore.
"Alright, but don't keep her awake. She needs rest."
"You can heal her, though, right?" Lena attempted to confirm, her voice portraying just how anxious she felt.
Hearing the desperation in Lena's voice, Kara finally braved opening her eyes. Her own locked onto Lena's face and took in her worried expression, and Kara quickly felt her heart constricting with the same longing she'd felt before the game. Except this time, she had the person of her desire directly in front of her to stare at, which made everything more intense.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, Kara scolded herself, slamming her eyes shut as tightly as she could, her face scrunching up in pain and concentration. Don't look. Just don't look.
"Yes, Miss Luthor," Madam Pomfrey answered gruffly. "I believe that's what they pay me for here."
With a nod of gratitude, Lena looked back down at Kara's hand, never noticing that the girl had actually opened her eyes briefly to look at her. She stayed quiet as she watched Madam Pomfrey work.
"This is going to hurt, Miss Danvers," the woman told her, finally looking at least somewhat apologetic.
Lena winced as the woman waved her wand over Kara's arm, and even had to close her eyes for a fraction of a second when she heard Kara's cry of pain.
"Is she okay?" Lena gasped, reflexively grabbing Kara's right hand.
"Miss Luthor!" Madam Pomfrey snapped. "If you cannot be quiet, you will simply have to leave. Do I make myself clear?"
Frowning with concern, Lena went silent, still protectively holding Kara's hand, and looked down at the blonde, who she noticed had one large tear dripping down the side of her face. The Slytherin hesitated but found herself unable to refrain from reaching out to wipe it away. To Lena's surprise, when Kara felt the girl's fingertips touch her skin, her expression relaxed somewhat.
"Let her rest, Miss Luthor," Madam Pomfrey told her. "She needs peace and quiet."
Nodding sadly, Lena moved to stand up and give the other student her space and time to heal, but as soon as her fingers began to slip free from Kara's, she felt the blonde squeeze her hand tightly, almost to the point that it hurt. Kara wasn't letting go.
Eyes widened in surprise, Lena knelt back down on the floor beside the bed, stroking the back of Kara's hand with her thumb, and whispered, "It's okay. I won't go."
Madam Pomfrey rolled her eyes and let out an annoyed little huff before announcing, "She'll need to stay for the rest of the day but should be just fine this evening, after some rest."
"I'm not leaving, as long as she wants me here," Lena asserted.
Before hearing Madam Pomfrey's response to this claim, Kara, feeling the overwhelming dull ache pounding through her in waves, finally sensed herself losing consciousness as everything around her faded to nothing.