It's the scent rather than the sight that catches Alex's focused attention when the warning buzz of the lab door slips open.
"Did you bring enough for the rest of us this time?" she asks writing out another line of notes without looking away from the eyepiece of the microscope.
"Yes, grumpy pants I did." Kara laughed as she pulled up a spare chair next to her sister. "and I even stopped off at that truck in Chicago for you just to show how good of a sister I am."
"You're the best." Alex sighed salivating hungrily at the scent of food on the air before she blinked a few times in confusion at her own reaction. "Hang on I have a favorite Chicago food truck?"
"Apparently." Kara shrugs passing over the food-stuffed bag. "All I had to say was I was trying to order for my sister Alex and the girl working the window was like "You've got an Alex too huh? Well, here's a few yummy picks from one of our regular Alex's let's see how yours likes them for comparison' then she started making up all this." Kara says tapping her finger at the steaming take-out bag.
"Humm, I'm not complaining." Alex sighed digging into the offering with an agreeing groan. "Aren't you going to eat?" the teen asked talking around a large mouthful of her meal noticing a second fast food bag sitting untouched in her younger sister's lap.
"Huh? Oh no this….this is for Lena." Kara says hugging the takeout bag just a little closer. "I'm…I'm just waiting for the right time to go give it to her."
"Aaww someone's got a crush." Alex teased
"Shut up. I do not." Kara waved off before jabbing a finger towards the set-aside notebook and microscope. "What are you doing anyway?" the blonde asked by way of distracting her elder sister from any more jibes at her obvious affection for the stunning Luthor woman.
"An experiment." Alex grinned now sporting an obvious smearing of sauce from her burger at the corner of her mouth as she chews her next bite slower than her last. Savoring the flavoring against her tongue. "Seemed the best way to take my mind off of going off after Mags myself and risking Mom or someone else tracking me down and tossing me into containment for the rest of time."
Kara rolled her eyes at the dodge whilst Alex used a French fry to catch the lingering trace of sauce from her mouth. "Finally breaking out the Kryptonian." Kara smiles in appreciation noticing a few more legible lines of her sister's notes.
"Not that it'll help given how well-versed some folks around here are with it." Alex grumbled around another bite of her food.
"Yeah but at least, you're trying to be all cool secret agent." Kara shrugs glaring out the separating glass wall at the other occupied lab housing the half-assembled whatever it was that had apparently been used to turn her and Alex into teenagers in the first place. "Besides with your handwriting, it's a wonder even you know what any of this means." Kara adds with a playful grin.
"Hey, it's not that bad." Alex groaned but Kara did notice with a grin the nervous way her elder sister made another reading of her own writing a tad self-conscious as she tugged on a fresh pair of gloves after making a quick wash of her hands in the offered sink. "Just for that, I might not ask for your help." Alex threatens as the door to the lab chimes open ushering an angered-looking Lena into the space.
Its only after the Luthor had finished raiding one of the bio-locked drawers of snacks stashed in the corner of the sterilized room and fished a chilled can of soda from a more hidden paneling of the more cold storage fridge that the worn-out woman turned towards the bickering teenagers with interest. "Oh no, what's she done now?" the Luthor questions noticing the full force of Kara's pouting expression as she tugged open one of the foil-wrapped snacks intended for a fuller-grown Kryptonian. "Oh, don't give me that look Alex after all you're the one who hides all of these in the first place. And come on it's not like I'm unfamiliar with the goings on of a lab like this." Lena scoffs around the first few savored bits of her chosen snack food.
Not at all what she would have picked for herself by the way of a 'nutritious' snacking choice but sometimes Kara's more indulgent between meal choices more than appealed to the health-conscious Luthor. However, unlike Kara not everyone can indulge in junk foods like they'd kicked over a vending machine every other day and still maintain such an oh-so-tempting figure.
"It's not that at all." Alex argues much to Lena's quiet thanks before her thought spiraled into a more scandalized daydream of how she very much longed for a more up-close admiration of her Kara's hero-toned body.
Her fingers physically aching in her longing to touch that sun-warmed skin. To feel the steely muscles flex and jump under her fingers. To feel her super's delicately strong arms wrapping around her when Kara would hold her. Intimately or not. And Rao help her was she missing the feel of Kara's kisses against her mouth bluntly missing the pointed elbow in her ribs Alex was giving when it looked as if Kara wasn't going to act on her own anytime soon in passing over the withheld meal still resting uneaten against teenaged Kara's lap.
"Huh?" Lena questioned at Kara's surprised squeak at the action despite the move hurting more Alex than herself.
"Oh, I—erm…I picked this up for you on the way back." Kara says holding up her offering with a timid smile. "Thought you'd be hungry." She mumbles.
"You thought correct." Lena sighed with a hero-worthy effort to drag her mind back to the fact Kara wasn't at all the proper age for any of the thoughts painting themselves behind the Luthor woman's eyes. Even the innocent ones where all their respective clothes would stay on. "Oh, you really are super Kara." The Luthor sighs in gratitude after spying the familiar burger joint logo decorating the offered bag.
"I… I try." Kara says with a deeper blush coloring her cheeks. Almost as if for a moment the young Kryptonian had been able to read Lena's mind for those few short moments.
"Humm. And I also love Streaky's new outfit." Lena praises pointing with a ketchup-coated fry at the plushy cat Kara had shifted into more of a sitting position on the tabletop at the teen's elbow.
"Well, Alex says she'd ban me permanently if I got cat hair in her lab. Even when Streks isn't you know a real cat." Kara laughed reaching over to straighten the makeshift goggles she'd slipped into the plushy cat's nose then ran her hand down the toy animal's back straightening the hastily stitched lab coat Eliza had helped her create.
"Adorable." Lena smiles "but really. What's wrong Kar?"
The question brings back the full force of the legendary 'Danvers pout' as Kara gives her answer. "Alex won't let me help with her cool lab experiment."
"Cause it's my experiment." Alex argues having gone back to sneaking glances into the eyepiece of her microscope as the other two had, had their quiet blushing staring match. "and last I checked it wasn't your name on the door Kar."
Lena rolled her eyes at the more gloating teenager undertone of the rebuttal. Not that she blamed Alex so much considering how she'd heard the same phrasing used by elder Alex a few times herself since she'd become friendlier in her relations with both the Danvers sisters as well as with the DEO in general.
"Not yet its not." Kara says "I mean yeah, the door does have your name on it, but you heard what Winn said when he was showing us around. This was meant for well the older more adult version of you."
Lena was about to say something more than the rushing of an oh-so-familiar figure rushing past the window.
Kara.
Her Kara.
And right behind her a fatigued-looking Alex.
"Well, that explains the outfit." Lana sighs to herself. She'd never much cared for Kara wearing anything pink. Blue was much more her color.
Lana remembered all too well the afternoon she'd gotten Kara to open up to her about the afternoon her elder sibling was kidnapped by a former schoolmate. How they'd almost been too late to save her. After waking up after her rescue Alex had looked so similar in description to the copied clone Lena was watching now calling instructions to a few waiting agents. She'd also demanded to be shown the DEO security recordings of the punch Alex had given that sleazed Rick in his gloating departure before J'onn had whipped his memory.
"What….Winn?" Lena demands in her own attempt to keep from throwing her arms around the more age-appropriate Kara Danvers standing only a few slim steps away from her. She didn't even care that it was Megann's voice, not Kara's coming from that intimately known mouth. "what's going on?" Lena asks catching the more computer-savvy man now dressed in his own set of DEO grade protective equipment joining the small band of waiting agents.
Winn seems about to answer when his eyes flick to the two listening teenagers who had followed Lena from the smaller of Alex's designated labs. "We… we might have gotten a lead on where to find our teenaged runaway, but we have to move like yesterday cause she might be doing something incredibly dumb if it goes wrong."
"What do you mean dumb?" Kara asks her hand braced against her elder sister's arm to keep Alex from jumping on the man if he didn't answer soon enough.
"Let's just say she's about to cross a line none here want to see crossed again."
Again, Lena had to clench her fist to keep from strangling the copied version of her Kara in a hug if not more when the 'Last Daughter of Mars' answered for an answer starved Winn as the man shrank back a few more steps under teenaged Alex's glowering stare.
"I know you want to help Lena, but the best place for you right now is here," J'onn says still wearing the more adult Alex's skin instead of his own.
"Maggie's my….."
"We know how much you care for her." Megann steps in her hand resting on Lena's shoulder "and we don't need to read your mind to see she cares for you just as deeply."
"Only reason I'm going with them is they need a guy in the van." Winn tags on when Lena's gaze falls back to him in the carefully selected clustering of agents. "Seems Mags has some pretty high teched tricks up her sleeve to sell this ruse she cooked up for old Ricky boy, but if she goes too far as we're dreading she might it she's pushed hard enough then certain safeguards inside Rick's head will give way and well….."
"He's not taking her away from me again." Kara snarled her eyes even glowing with the warning threat of heat vision as she stood tall and even for a teenager very imposing in front of her now trembling elder sibling.
"And that's why we need to go make sure of." Winn attempted to calm.
Not that Lena gives him long to try as she spins around on her heels to storm back towards her own temporary lab set up in one of the lesser-used wings of the DEO.
Eliza shadowed her cautiously in her movements.
"What's the point of it all? The money, the influences, my own genius-level intelligence? What does it all mean when I'm not even allowed to try and help anyone I truly care about when they need it most?" Lena breaks down not even bothering to wait until the following Danvers mother had closed the door behind them both before she spoke.
"Lena…"
"I love her, Eliza," Lena confesses. "I love her so much it terrifies me most days, but I can't not care for her."
Eliza nodes staying quiet for the moment allowing Luthor to speak her mind.
"and Alex, well Alex is like everyone's protective elder sibling so of course I care for her too in my own way."
Again, Eliza nods along in encouragement. Her hand reached to slide slowly thought Lena's less than perfectly kept-up hair.
"Maggie and I. well we have a lot more in common than either of us realized until we started really opening up to each other."
Lena had crossed to the worktable where she'd taken a few of the more complex-looking parts of the mangled time weapon Winn was still attempting to piece back together again. Not that the upset Luthor was aware of her own movements as she made them whilst she spoke.
Eliza was quietly impressed with the progress the Luthor was making of reattaching the trigger mechanism and a few limply hanging attachments trailing from it from the much larger weapon also in pieces in the room across the corridor.
But then Lena's hands slam harder than anticipated down onto the tabletop in her frustration sending the delicately pieced-together weapon to tip on the work stand. The hard curve of the holder pressed against what little was left of the trigger.
"Eliza…. Watch out."
The noticeable glow as well as Lena's panicked shout was all the warning the mother had before Lena was slammed into her knocking her out of the way as the low-powered but charged blast fired towards the spot the elder woman had been standing.
"Get him secured in the med bay first the rest of you with me." Eliza heard the dimmed voice of Vasquiz shouting around the buzzing clogging in her ears as the door to Lena's lab hissed open allowing her rushing daughter entry.
"Mom?"
"I'm….I'm fine." Eliza waves off still cradling the other figure against her double-checking Lena's pulse and her even breathing as she steadied the now unconscious woman against her side.
"Hey, Luc tell Hamilton we might be adding one more to the teenager roster soon." Vasquez called out seeing the sparking flickering of draining power from the rocking weapon on Lena's worktable.