Summary: Kara and Lena discover the beauty of their scars and learn that sometimes a simple touch is enough.
A/N: Thanks to everybody for giving these stories a chance and for all the feedback and follows. This is something a little new for me and I hope you all enjoy reading them.
Kara wakes to the warmth of sunlight and the weight of Lena's arms around her as they lie tangled together in the pale morning haze that leaks through the window. It's a feeling no longer unfamiliar, but still she finds herself memorizing every detail of it. Because for so long she had wanted to let herself be held by Lena this way and she knows how easily she could have never have known it at all — is reminded how easily she could never feel it again.
She grounds herself in the rhythmic motion of Lena's breathing, her chest rising and falling against her back. She lets herself relax into the feeling, into the gentle touch of fingers tracing along her side and around the margins of the skin still healing there.
She can still feel the heat of the explosion, still smell the sulfur in the air as she wrapped her body around Lena's.
She remembers the distant sound of her sister's voice as she looked up at the green embers that fell against the darkened sky. Remembers the feeling of Lena's hands, the desperate pull and distant pain as they worked to remove the shard of kryptonite from her side.
She looks at Lena's hands now, held against her skin with a different kind of desperation, no longer trembling, no longer stained with blood.
She had long since memorized the feeling of Lena's touch, but it was different like this, the barrier of her imperviousness gone. She could feel the calloused skin of her fingers, could feel the warmth left behind as they moved back and forth. She wondered what Lena felt when she held her like this. If it felt as safe, as comforting. Because her own hands had always felt clumsy and awkward, restrained by their need to be careful, but she hoped they were capable of making Lena feel this loved.
Kara shifts slightly, her body finally protesting her stillness as it tries to alleviate the pain of broken ribs and weakened muscles. She carefully turns in Lena's arms and lies on her back, blue eyes meeting green in the growing light for the first time, letting out a deep breath as Lena settles against her once more, head resting on her chest and hands warm on her skin where her shirt had ridden up.
They stayed like that, silence persisting as they held each other until Lena's voice breaks them both from their reverie.
"It won't scar."
Kara looks down to where Lena's fingers had stilled over the carefully stitched wound on her rib cage, the feeling there still dulled in a way the rest of her body wasn't.
But there isn't any sense of awe in Lena's words, no doubt, just quiet contemplation.
"No, it won't."
Kara thinks of the scar on her forehead, the only physical reminder she has of the past she left behind and the home she had lost. She thinks how her body bears no other proof of her pain. Thinks how it will not let her remember this pain either.
"But sometimes I wish it would. Sometimes I wish I could look at my body and see the reminder of how strong it is, how much it has endured, what it is capable of surviving. Because some days it is too easy to forget."
She lets her fingers trail along the set of scars on Lena's shoulder, the remnants of another close call, another explosion that had littered her skin with shrapnel and left her with the permanent reminder of her Brother's betrayal.
Up close like this, it was impossible to see Lena as the rest of the world did — cold, hard, unbreakable. And a part of Kara wished that they could see her like she does, but Lena did not owe the world her pain. It did not deserve it.
"Is that what you see when you look at me?"
Lena's words are hesitant and quiet, muffled by the fabric of Kara's shirt.
She sits up slightly cupping Lena's face gently, her chin lifting so their eyes meet again, and then she takes one of her hands in her own.
"I look at you and I see all the things you've fought for."
She lets her thumb run over her knuckles, the fractures long since healed, but the reminder of them still there.
"I see all the things you've fought against."
Kara pushes Lena's hair away from her face revealing the small scar above her eyebrow.
"And I see all the ways you are even more beautiful for having survived."
She turns Lena's palm over, and she places a kiss over skin that will soon bare a scar of its own.
"But mostly I see them and I feel thankful. Thankful that you are here, that you are strong enough for the things I can't protect you from, that you are strong enough to love me."
And then like every other touch that she had let prove the evidence of her words, Kara places a hand over Lena's heart, closing her eyes to imagine the familiar sound of the pattern she felt underneath.
It's then that Lena's bandaged hand moves up to trace the angle of her jaw, thumb wiping away tears she hadn't even been aware of. She leans into Lena's touch in awe again of how different it feels, how the feeling is all at once so familiar and so new.
Kara lets Lena guide her back onto the bed, the blankets pushed down around them so that there is nothing left between them, and when they finally come together, the kiss is so full of need and want and promise that it leaves its own kind of scar. And in that moment, Kara tries to memorize the feeling of her heart beating underneath Lena's hands. Because her heart is the only part of her that is capable of scarring, the only part of her that reminds her she is strong enough. Strong enough to lose everything, strong enough to love despite of it, strong enough to risk losing even more.
There will still be days when she worries about forgetting her strength.
Days she has to carry the hidden burden of surviving.
But today she doesn't have to bear the weight of feeling nothing.
Today she can be vulnerable and broken and imperfect and be reminded that there is comfort in the pain of living and beauty in the cost of surviving.
Because today she will trace the lines of Lena's scars and she will share the stories of her own. And together they will lean into the feeling of each other's touch and the contours of each other's bodies. And when they finally fall asleep again in each other's arms, they will have found solace in the realization that neither of them is as fragile as they feared.
Thanks again for reading. Each of these stories is meant as a stand alone but I am hoping that together they can form a picture of Kara's life and how she relates to the world through the relationships she has with the people she loves and the things that she feels.
Please let me know what you think. I am always up for feedback and ideas and comments.