"Al—Al—" Kara slurred, hand emerging from the sheets in search of her sister. Her fingers collided with Alex's side first, pulled back until they were captured in Alex's own hand. "Alex," she whimpered. Her eyes still closed, writhing under the sheets as she had been for the past few hours, murmuring incoherent fragments of words.
"Hey, I'm right here." Alex squeezed Kara's hand and smoothed back her hair.
Though the afternoon sun was blaring into the control center of the DEO, only dim yellow lights lit Kara's room in the med wing. It cast a shadow over her face, easing the transition as she pulled her eyelids open and fought to focus her gaze on Alex.
"What's goin' on? You okay?"
Kara shook her head, teeth chattering, as she tried to look at Alex, fighting the drift of her eyes downward and closed. " 'm hallucinating again, 'cept it's more real this time. 's bad, I—I see my mom. I hear her, feel her stand n—next to me like she's right—right here."
"Oh, Kara." Alex ran her thumb over the back of Kara's hand, along the heated skin covering the ridge of her metacarpals, the slight tremble and weak grip. "You're not…" She shook her head. "Your mom's here."
"She's-?" Kara's arms shook as she tried to lift herself, squinting in the darkness and turning her unfocused gaze back in the direction of her sister. "Huh?"
"Look out there."
Kara followed the line of Alex's outstretched arm, past the room she was in and toward the hall where Alura and Lena were facing each other, scrolling through data on Lena's tablet.
Kara turned back to Alex, brows furrowed and skin damp. "I don't—I don't understand. How?"
Alex smiled and threaded her fingers through Kara's hair. "We did our research and found out you have Argo Fever, so with Lena and Winn's help we were able to contact your mom to see what she knows. She has the antibiotics you need, she's sent a pod to Argo City to get them so we're going to have you feeling better in a little bit."
Alex continued but Kara's gaze was trained on her mom, following her movement as she looked over and, seeing Kara awake, stepped from the hall into the room.
"Mom?" Kara breathed out.
"Oh, Kara." Alura was at Kara's side in a rush, brushing back her hair and pulling her into an embrace. "You've been asleep since I arrived, I was loath to wake you. I know you're not feeling well, my sweet daughter, I'm sorry I was not here."
"It's okay," Kara murmured into Alura's shoulder, unable to get more words past the lump in her throat.
She slumped against her mother, a wheeze exhaling from her lungs as her eyes slipped closed again. A swirl of warmth enveloped her like steam. Kara's fingers entwined behind Alura's back, holding her close as her grip on consciousness loosened and Alura's palm trailed up and down her daughter's back.
Behind Alura, Lena cast a glance at Alex and the older girl nodded, both of them exiting the room to give Kara space and receive the antibiotics as the pod landed on the DEO helicopter pad.
"It hurts, Mom," Kara whispered, voice raspy and muddled as her lip quivered and she buried her face in Alura's hair.
"I know." Alura soothed, pressing a kiss to Kara's forehead. "The same illness spread through our home years ago when you were very young. I remember how painful it was for many, but fortunately, we have a cure now."
Kara nodded. " 'm glad you're here."
"Me too," Alura assured. "Now rest." She helped Kara snuggled back into the sheets, keeping an arm around her waist, thumb brushing back and forth. "I cannot stay for very long, but I wanted to see you and be here when they administered the medication."
Kara managed half a nod before her eyelids sunk closed. "Love you," she murmured, exhaling as Alura repeated the sentiment back and continued her rhythmic strokes across Kara's side.
/
"Kara."
She shifted in the bed, burying her face in the thin pillow as a shiver racked her body. The ache in her head increased tenfold at an attempt to separate her eyelids.
"Kara."
The voice softened and fingers caressed the back of her head.
A groan escaped her lips with the final push into waking.
"Hi," Alex said softly, holding a plastic container in her hand, head tilted toward Kara.
The blonde turned her gaze to the fingers in her hair and found Alura standing at her side.
"We're going to start you on medication, but your mom has to go now, thought you might want to say goodbye."
Kara nodded, still struggling to process as her head swam. Her arms shook in her effort to sit up. The ordeal only lasted a second, before Alex was swooping in with steady heads.
"Easy there."
She lowered Kara back to her pillow and squeezed her shoulder.
Alex stepped back to give Alura space. Lena's frame, hovering on the outskirts of the room, slipped into Kara's peripheral and she vowed to herself, in her waning lucidity, to at least acknowledge Lena before sleep tugged her back away.
"I wish I could stay, Kara, but I'm afraid Argo requires my return."
Kara tore her gaze away from Lena, a stab of pain sparking behind her eyes, and set it as best she could on her mother. "Understand. 'S okay." Her words bled into one another in a slow stream of rattling breath. " ' was good to see you, Mom. Missed you."
Alura bit her lip, tears gathering in her eyes. "I miss you every day, my daughter. I love you."
"Love you, too."
Alura kissed Kara's forehead and lingered, heart heavy, before stepping away from the bedside. The moment disintegrated as Alura departed and the door closed with a thud.
"I'm going to start now, okay, Kara?"
The blonde nodded without opening her eyes. Her hand curled on her shoulder, in the space Alura's fingers had occupied just moments earlier.
Alex swallowed hard and fought through the tightness in her own throat. "According to the files and your mom's information, it'll take a few hours before this starts to kick in. So don't worry if it takes a while for you to feel better, all right?"
The sole response from the blonde was a wheeze of breath as she curled onto her side.
A distant clatter of metal against metal pressed into Kara's head, a rustling, plastic tapping against the bed frame.
She fought back against her closing eyes and focused on Lena's blurry form.
"All good. It's time you start healing," Alex declared and ran a hand over Kara's shoulder. "J'onn called me into a debriefing with a couple of agents, but I'll be back to check on you in a little bit. Tell someone if you need anything and I'll come straight here."
Kara gave another nod and watched as Alex double checked the machines before the door closed behind her.
"Lena," Kara croaked.
Lena straightened in her seat, surprise pulling across her features.
The sheets rumpled beneath Kara as she drew her arm across them, reaching out to Lena and focusing all her energy on wiggling her fingers.
A breath hummed from inside her when the hazy outline of Lena's body crossed the room in a heartbeat.
"Miss you," Kara whispered. "Too far 'way."
Lena entwined her hand with Kara's, raising them upward and kissing the heated skin.
"Don't be scared, Lena. None of this 's your fault."
Lena's head tilted as she looked down at Kara, lips sloping and tears accumulating. The CEO found that no sound could get through her throat. Words sometimes failed when it came to how she felt, but actions hadn't yet.
She hooked her leg on the chair behind her, dragging it closer and drawing a soft, wheezy laugh from Kara. With her free hand she situated it against Kara's bed, keeping their hands tangled the whole time.
It was only once she was sitting close enough she could feel the heat radiating of her girlfriend, that Lena freed her hand and moved it upward to caress Kara's face instead.
"Close enough?" she managed to whisper, leaning in close so the recovery room shrunk to just the two of them.
Kara nodded. "For now." A sloppy grin made light of her pale features and the sheen of sweat across her hairline. Kara turned her cheek into Lena's touch, kissing her palm—lips cracked but pressure still soft. "Just don't let go," she murmured, eyes starting to close again despite her efforts to keep them trained on Lena's green.
Lena ran her other hand through Kara's knotted hair. "Never."
/
"It's so loud. It's so loud. They're so loud." Kara's words spilled from her mouth like hot lava, blanket pulled up to her nose and warm breath beating against the sheets as she writhed in the inferno of her bed. "Help! They need help. Need help," she echoed. "Help."
Lena's head shot off the bed beside Kara's hand, bent over, as she snapped into wakefulness. She blinked in the dark, night having fallen over National City and darkness of the DEO halls matching the lull in activity, save the agony igniting Kara's room.
Lena's gaze immediately settled on Kara's contorted frame, hand thrashing weakly at the sheets.
"Kara… Kara, sweetheart…" Lena ran a hand over Kara's shoulder, repeating her name.
The blonde whimpered. "So hot. 's burning. Burning."
"Kara, wake up, babe, I'm going to help you."
Kara's attempt to turn ended with her flopped on her side but facing Lena.
"Lee?" Kara coughed, eyes still screwed shut and breath still weak.
"It's me, sweetheart, it's me."
The clatter of Kara's chattering teeth melded with the ragged drawl of her breathing.
"I'll be right back, babe," Lena promised, kissing Kara's outstretched hand. "You just hang tight."
The cool moisture of a damp rag against her forehead alerted Kara of Lena's return. A groan slipped from her lips and she leaned into the touch as Lena's other hand rose to cup the back of Kara's head, thumb stroking her hair.
With Lena's help, Kara sat upward while a run of coughs tore at her throat. When the tightness relinquished its grip on her lungs, she curled forward, arm slipping down to clutch her stomach and head falling forward against the knees pulled toward her chest.
Lena's hand followed the curve of her spine, rubbing at her aching muscles. "You're okay," she whispered. "You're okay. It's just a matter of time."
Kara nodded, watery eyes reflecting the dim hallway light as she looked at Lena.
The event repeated itself throughout the night, Kara waking from a tormented sleep, slurring her words and burning up, terrified of falling back asleep.
Alex held her hand in between check-ups and monitoring Kara's stats, silently begging with the universe for Kara's medication to start working.
After the fourth time, Kara found the words to ask for Lena and the brunette climbed into bed with her, slipping an arm around Kara, frame shivering now as she burrowed into Lena's neck and the tension in her lungs deflated with a sigh.
With Lena's hand brushing through her hair, some of the pulsating pain in her head dissipated and she let her eyes fall closed, fever breaking in the night and her sleep finally stretching through the late hours.
/
When the night shift switched with the morning crew, and the rising sun began striping the sky of its darkness, Alex made her way back from the lab to review Kara's improvements.
She eased the door open, but the soft whistle of its closing drew Lena's eyes open.
"Alex," she murmured, rubbing a hand across her forehead as she untangled her arms from Kara and sat up.
"Hey, you can get a few minutes of sleep if you want. You've barely slept at all these past two nights."
Lena shook her head and prompted a dull ache behind her eyes. "It's okay." She stood up slowly, feeling the severity of the past days physically run from her head to her toes in a series of twinges and heaviness.
"All right," Alex said with a nod. "Well I'm just checking to see if Kara's improved enough to send you guys home and let her ride out the rest of this there."
Lena froze, hand stuck over her phone where it'd been positioned to check emails. "I… That—I don't… Are you sure that's the best idea?"
Alex nodded, shuffling through papers and comparing numbers with those on her tablet. "I talked with J'onn and some of the doctors here and we all agree there's not much benefit for her staying at DEO, especially because Kara absolutely hates this med wing. There's no reason in keeping her miserable when all she needs is some time and care to get better."
Lena stomach tightened at the thought of having Kara back in her care, relying on her, when she'd messed it all up in the first place.
"What about monitoring her? In case anything bad happens."
Alex shook her head as she tapped a few buttons on her screen, scrolling downward through a cluster of charts. "She's through the worst of it now, it's really just simple recovery at this point. Of course, I'll talk to her when she wakes up, make sure she feels ready, too. But her stats are looking up and I know Kara, she's going to be elated about this. Usually I could go and keep her company myself, but sometimes she gets frustrated that I'm 'overbearing," Alex rolled her eyes before continuing. "Plus, J'onn needs me here until this evening to finalize some reports. And I figured you two would want some time away from all this together, anyway. You're good with that, right?" Alex's finger swiped at her tablet and the screen went black as she set it down and finally looked up at Lena.
All the CEO could do was manage a nod.
The uncertainty roiled inside her for the rest of the morning, but when Kara woke and the news had her beaming, Lena swallowed her worry and helped a freshly talkative and animated Kara down to the car after Alex ran through the results of her last test.
/
"Here," Lena said, breath warm against Kara as the brunette's arms swept beneath her, rushing to help her girlfriend settle onto to the couch.
"I'm okay." Kara breathed out a laugh and snuggled into the cushions. "I'm not going to break just from sitting onto the couch too hard."
"Can never be too careful," Lena whispered, turning away from Kara to assemble the arsenal of supplies she'd gathered between the DEO and a quick stop on the way home. The TV whirred to life as Kara flicked through the channels and Lena organized Kara's medication.
Kara's gaze followed Lena as her fingers fumbled with bottle caps, trembling around the locked lids.
"Lee-?"
"Shit!"
Water splattered against the floor, a belated thump followed when the uncapped water bottle bounced against the tile.
"Damn it!" Lena said in the middle of the puddle spreading further across the floor. One hand fumbled for something to clean the mess, while the other pushed against her forehead, shoving hair back from her face.
" ' Least it's plastic," Kara offered with the beginnings of a smile, eager to spark one across Lena's face, too. But Lena only swallowed hard and nodded while looking away, shooing off Kara's insistence that she could help clean up the water.
"I'm just going to go grab a towel from the bathroom, I'll be right back."
Lena scampered away and Kara forced her drooping eyes open, rubbing a loose fist against her face. Her phone lay in her lap and vibrated to life with a text from Alex, asking how she was doing, how Lena was doing, too. She freed her hand from the blanket to respond.
Outside the bathroom, Lena turned the handle and a jolt ran through her. She set her jaw, opened the door, stepped inside, and pushed the door closed behind her, back pressed against the frame.
Kara's blood streaked the lower corner of the wall.
Lena's heart seized in her chest.
Her hand dropped away from the hand towel on the counter, fell dangling at her side as a cage tightened around her lungs and her stomach flipped.
She squeezed her eyes closed until bursts of white sparked against her lids, counted to ten, matched her breathing to the numbers, tapped her hand against her thigh.
She opened her eyes and the strip of blood was illuminated by the morning light streaming through the window.
Lena yanked her phone from her back pocket, pounded the numbers.
"Alex, I can't do this."
Her voice whirled breathless over the line into Alex's ear. A sob bubbling up against the tightness in her throat.
"I need—I need you to come over, I'm not—I'm not ready, I'm not— I just, I can't. It's too-"
"Lena." Alex's steady tone was a wall for the wave of Lena's worry to break against. "I need you to slow down and take a breath for me; can you do that?"
Lena bit her lip in a halfhearted attempt to smoother the cry ripping through her throat.
"Just for ten seconds. One deep breath and then we can talk about whatever you want."
"Okay," Lena whispered, eyes tethered to the blood on the wall. The crimson contrasted the cream paint and even as it caused nausea to churn in her stomach, riding on a tsunami of guilt and worry, Lena couldn't tear her gaze away as she forced air into her lungs.
"Good. You okay?"
Lena nodded, head clouded and swimming. "Yes."
"Kara okay?"
"Yes, but—"
"No, Lena, listen," Alex's voice softened impossibly so. "You don't have to add anything to that. Kara's okay and you're doing all right. No need to worry until anything happens."
"But Alex, her blood," Lena choked out. "It's on the wall. In the bathroom. From the… from when she hit her head."
The murmur of the telephone line was the only barrier left against silence. The static stretched for a millennium in Lena's head, her thumb pressed against her lip.
"Lena, listen to me, okay?"
"Okay."
"Don't worry about the blood right now, we can clean that later. That's in the past. Just focus on today. On what you can do for Kara right now."
Lena nodded, twisting the fingers of her free hand.
"Which probably isn't too hard," Alex said, a lightness spilling into her words as a smile flickered across her face. "Kara's pretty easy when she's sick… just needs blankets, and snuggles, and movies, and food, as I'm sure you know." A voice in the background occupied Alex's attention for a moment. "Sorry," she returned. "Maggie just got home and she wants me to tell you she says hi and she loves you and also, she's gonna kick your ass if you're too hard on yourself."
Lena let out a watery laugh and wiped a stray tear off her cheek. " 'kay"
"You're doing just fine. Kara trusts you, J'onn trusts you, Alura trusts you. Lena, I trust you. And if anything goes wrong, just give me a call. It's not going to be your fault."
Lena nodded. "I just—I'm worried I'm going to mess up and hurt her, I don't want to make things worse. I—"
A soft knock sounded against the door before it was pushed open, Kara appearing in the doorway. Her blue blanket trailed over her shoulder, excess fabric spilling from her hand. She leaned against the frame, one arm slung across her waist.
"Hey, come here." She reached out to Lena and the blanket moved with her, spreading like a wing. Lena's bottom lip quivered at the sight of Kara in front of her. The brunette's head ducked as she stepped closer and Kara's arm curved around her.
"I'm gonna let you go, okay? Call if you need anything," Alex said. Her voice barely pressed into Lena's conscious as she nodded and hung up the phone.
"You're doing everything right, Lena," Kara said with a soft laugh as Lena turned into her embrace. "You always do."
"I don't want to let you down again," Lena confessed. Warm breath tickled Kara's collarbone and she rubbed Lena's back.
"Nothing you do could ever let me down." Kara pressed a kiss to Lena's forehead. "Literally nothing. I love you to a fault. Except it's not bad, because you deserve all the love in the whole world and then some, Lena."
The CEO raised her head from Kara's shoulder. Her misty gaze hung onto Kara's and she let a smile overtake the downward tug at the corner of her lips.
"I love you."
Kara grinned, nose scrunching up. She pressed a kiss to Lena's cheek. "I love you, too. Now help me walk 'cause my legs are still a little wobbly."
Lena laughed, threading an arm around Kara's waist and pulling the blonde to her own side. "Of course. You're going to be okay?"
Kara smiled and caught Lena's eye. "With you here? I'll be more than okay."
