Little Lena Luthor contemplated her family's heirloom chessboard. She studied the beautifully carved chess pieces that stood up on the black and white tiles of the board. Without even meaning to, she began to see parallels between the chess pieces and her family. Mother and father were the king and the queen, of course, but it really amazed her just how much her parents really matched up to their respective chess pieces. Although father, of course, was head of the house, as powerful as he was, he was perhaps the least ambitious and most relaxed of all the Luthors. He was still a very driven man with a deadly intelligence and enough money to buy up half the world, but compared to the other three Luthors, he was not a very outwardly active man. He preferred to work from behind the scenes and take things easy. It really did remind Lena of the king in chess: an important piece, but not particularly powerful, all things considered.

Then there was the queen, the most terrifying player on the board. The queen was the most powerful, capable of moving in any and all directions however many spaces she wanted. If that didn't remind little Lena of her cold adoptive mother, nothing else would. Lionel might've been head of the house, but Lillian was the "brains", so to speak. She was cunning, clever, intelligent, strategic, and any other word associated with having a deadly wit. If the Luthors, collectively, thought four steps ahead of the game, Lillian thought five. Like the queen, she was the most aggressive and ambitious player of all. She was the only Luthor Lena ever truly feared and, likewise, in chess, the queen was the only piece that Lena ever considered truly dangerous. The rest could be challenging, but not like the queen.

Then that left Lena and her brother, Lex. Although Lena used to insist that Lex should be the knight (he was her big strong brother after all), Lex claimed to prefer the rook. He preferred the castle. To him, knights were far too cliché for young males to aspire to. What's more, a knight, though a courageous fighter, fought with physical strength. Lex preferred the deadly elegance of a sharp mind over a sharp blade. Additionally, to him, the rook didn't just symbolize a mental ability, it also symbolized a consolidation of power. The castle was where everyone else gathered. The knights were mere menial labor in place to protect the castle. Vital though they were, the castle was the end goal. The castle was what was being protected. The castle was where the king lived. To Lex, the rook symbolized luxury, protection and consolidation, as well as intelligence and raw strength and power. Maybe the knights were strong, but they followed orders, typically from the man in the castle. Lex wanted to be that man.

So when Lex chose the rook, this left Lena the choice between a pawn, a bishop or a knight. Refusing to be called a pawn and not seeing herself as religious enough to be a bishop, Lena chose the knight. Besides, although she understood why Lex preferred the rook, Lena personally preferred the idea of going out there and being a more direct influence. She preferred to be active, and on the front lines: a knight. To her, getting her hands a bit dirty was a lot more fun than sitting away alone in a castle somewhere, shouting orders from a terrace. She wanted to serve and protect. She wanted to work. She wanted to be out there. So she had chosen the knight, while Lex took the backseat as the rook. Thus, the four Luthors each had a special piece on the chess board. But then the game fell apart.

First, the king died, leaving his queen all alone as the leader of the Luthor clan. Next, the opposing king captured the rook. For all of Lena's life, Lena had never really "seen" the colors of the chess board. Of course she knew it was black vs. white, but those colors had never meant more to her than simply being a way to tell the difference between pieces. As she grew up, however, the world around her began to insist that the white pieces stood for the good kingdom and the black ones for bad. After what Lex did, they ascribed the entire Luthor family to the black side of the board. The man who brought the rook to ruins, Superman, was dubbed the white king, the hero. The white king captured the black rook.

It was after the black rook was removed from the chess board that the knight followed suit. She was still in the game, but she remained inactive and hidden away. Because of what the world branded the rook as, she was forced to become a black knight. All of the negative ideas surrounding that image followed Lena around, no matter how hard she tried to prove that she was good, that she could be a white knight, that being a Luthor did not automatically condemn her to being a black chess piece. But no one listened. Except one.

Kara Danvers. Lena's first and only friend. Kara Danvers. The one who never lost faith in Lena no matter how bad things got, nor how badly everyone else insisted that Lena was not worth believing in. Kara was the one who made Lena feel like she still had a shot at being the white knight no matter what stood in her way. But still, as Lena found herself once more in front of the Luthor family chess board, this time about 20 years later, she still didn't know what to think about it all.

She set the pieces idly up on the board, doing a rerun of her family through chess pieces. Father was dead, so mother had become the new "king". Lex had remained a rook. Even though he had admitted to wanting to be a king, he had no intention of being king of the Luthor family. That is, he had no intention of overthrowing his parents to become a leader. He wanted to be a king of his own kingdom. For that, he remained a rook, and Lena a knight. But of what color?

Lena eventually picked up the white knight. She looked over at the white queen, the one she'd ascribed to Supergirl if Superman were the white king, and she wondered... But no, in the end, Lena turned her eyes back on her half of the board: the black side. She had brought Lex's rook back to the game, though it had not moved from its starting position. Lex was still in jail, but as he was not dead, like Lionel, he was not yet totally gone from the game. A few squares away was the new black king, Lillian. Lena set her white knight down beside the black rook, and she wondered.

Alternate Ending:

Lena eventually picked up the white knight. She looked over at the white queen, the one she'd ascribed to Supergirl if Superman were the white king, and she wondered... Although the rest of the world had written Lena off as a black knight, Lena, herself, still heavily identified with the white knight. She understood that her family name was dark stain that would never truly come clean again, but she was still adamant that she had done a lot of good on her own. Even if the rest of the world didn't see it, Lena knew that she was good at heart (for right now at least). But even if, God forbid it, that would change one day and Lena would come to embrace her societal status as the black knight, for right now, Lena was still firm in her identity as the white one.

Lena looked back and forth between the black pieces and the white ones. The white queen had become her friend, despite the bad blood between their lineages. The white queen had befriended the knight even when she was still in the gray space between black and white. Finally, Lena sat the white knight down beside the white queen. If she was going to be the white knight, she was going to have to start living up to the title. No matter what anyone else thought or said, today, the white knight would stand by the white queen. Lena would stand by Supergirl, forever.

AN: The second of the unrelated chess one-shots, this is based off 2x12 again. The original ending is what happens in the show, the alternate is the idea that she places her piece, the white knight, beside Supergirl instead of Lex (metaphorically speaking).