Lena only managed to get a couple of hours of sleep despite her exhaustion. It's still sitting heavy in her bones and making her limbs feel like they're made of lead but she just can't sleep anymore. She woke up with a desperate need to pee so she ended up going into the bathroom to do so and then while she was there, she showered because honestly, she felt grotty.

She purposefully left the door open so she could hear if Kara woke up. She needs her now more than ever; she can barely even imagine the inner turmoil that must be burrowing into Kara's brain right about now.

On top of everything that has happened with Astra and The Rebellion, she's now got to think about the fact that Astra handed herself over to keep her safe. It's a bittersweet action, one that hurts Kara because of the implications but shows her true love for her niece in the self-sacrificial action she took just because she wanted to protect her.

That's just one side of things. She's also dealing with seeing her mother for the first time since she was a child and rather than being the overly loving, perfect mother she remembers, she's showing signs of the poor choices Kara only found out she made when Kara herself was an adult. She's seeing a flawed woman instead of the kind, nurturing one she remembers and that can't be easy.

As soon as she was done having a quick shower, one that made her skin red from how hard she scrubbed it to make sure she was properly clean, she climbed back into bed with Kara, just staring up at the ceiling and thinking about everything that they're up against and questioning her own decisions.

It's as she's still staring that Kara stirs.

"What are you doing?" Kara mumbles into Lena's collarbone, the woman is sprawled across Lena with a tight grip on her which means she's thoroughly pinned down.

"Just thinking."

Kara hums and Lena feels the vibration of it against her skin. "You think loudly."

Lena tilts her head a presses a gentle kiss to Kara's forehead, purposefully avoiding a little smudge of dirt still smeared across her skin. "Sorry, darling."

Kara hums again, shifting her body slightly to make it more comfortable for her to tilt her head upwards so she can press a kiss to Lena's lips. "It's ok. What are you thinking about?"

"Everything going on. We have a lot to figure out."

Lena feels a sigh against the skin of her throat and it makes her shiver slightly. Kara smiles at the reaction, just a tiny one in recognition of what just happened. "Yeah, we do. You smell nice though. Have you showered?"

"Yeah, not too long ago."

Kara leans back from her like she's been shocked. "Lena, you shouldn't have let me get you all dirty again after you just showed. I'll get you all mucky."

"I don't mind. I like cuddling with you."

Kara rolls her eyes dramatically. "You can have more cuddles once I've showered and brushed my teeth. I won't be long."

Lena grabs her by her wrist gently as she tries to back away out of the bed, pulling her back and pressing another kiss to her lips. "Take as long as you need, ok? I'll be right here when you get back and then we should probably go and see if the others are awake."

Kara nods, smiling again at Lena, always blown away by the way Lena always knows how to make her feel better and how she's always got room in her heart to be considerate. In a lot of ways it makes her feel less than because she knows that she could spend the rest of her life devoted to making the lives of others better but she'd still never be a fraction of how selfless and graceful Lena is. Mostly, she's just glad she gets to be so close to her, her light keeping her warm on the coldest of days, a privilege she's never going to knowingly take advantage of.

Unlike Lena, Kara closes the door softly behind her, Lena's eyes tracking the movement as she goes, a fact Kara is keenly aware of, Lena's gaze tender yet heavy on her spine. She is quick to strip down and jump in the shower, letting the warm water cascade over her shoulders and letting it warm her from the outside in.

There are so many thoughts running through her mind at once that she can scarcely focus on one because it's pushed aside for another one just a moment later, each one demanding her attention and making it impossible for her to properly think anything over.

There is one thought she keeps coming back to though, one that is especially insistent to be seen, one that is simply just her mom.

Alura is a challenge in and of herself. She knows a lot of what's going on now and while she's likely going to be willing to help them, she's not going to be helping Astra or even Krypton for that matter. Two things that are on the same level of importance to Kara as her team and their mission to save all of the aliens on Earth from Lex and his evil plan.

Lex. There's someone she's barely thought about the past few weeks. She's thought of the mission and their goals and the repercussions of what will happen if they don't succeed but she's not really spent a lot of time thinking about the man putting everyone she loves on Earth in danger. Lena must be thinking about him though, how could she not? She's on a mission to another planet, doing insanely dangerous things and pushing herself to her absolute limits because of someone she was once really close with, someone she once loved dearly, her own family, and Kara hasn't acknowledged that at all. Lena must think she's a terrible girlfriend.

Then, that's all she can think about. She's spent the entire time on this mission monopolizing Lena's love and care, taking all of the comfort she has to offer whilst offering her none in return. The very thought takes her breath away, the steam of the shower making it all the more difficult to breathe.

She stumbles back out from under the steady flow of water, her feet slipping on her way out because of her disorientation and her panic. She catches herself, just barely, and stumbles over to the sink, her butt pressing against the edge and her hands coming either side of her hips to hold onto it tightly.

Her breathing is heavy, coming out in pants but still, her lungs feel empty and she can't focus on anything other than her desperate need for air.

Her legs give way and she tumbles to the floor with a heavy thud, one that is loud enough for Lena to hear, even through the closed door.

"Kara? Are you ok? Did you drop something?"

When she gets no response, Lena gets up and knocks on the door, slightly frantically, each knock getting firmer and firmer when she doesn't get an immediate response.

"Kara? I'm coming in, alright?"

She still gets no response so she does exactly what she threatened to do and what she finds breaks her heart.

On her knees, naked and shivering, Kara kneels in front of the sink, her chest heaving, tears streaming down her face and her hand pressing hard between her own breasts, as though trying to forcibly stabilize her own lungs, something she's very clearly struggling with.

The room is full of steam from the shower, the water still running, so Lena makes a quick detour to shut it off, pushing the door fully open to let the steam drift out and clear the air as much as she can before she drops herself down in front of Kara, and pulls her into her chest. "I've got you, just breathe, Kara."

"I- I can't…" Kara trails off, her forehead pressing into Lena's shoulder sharply, the pressure calming.

"Yes, you can. Just in and out, you can do it, in and out." Lena grabs Kara's hand and presses it to her chest, "Feel my breaths, Kara, try and match them."

Lena purposely takes in deep gulps of air, making sure Kara can feel each one and prompting her to copy her. Over the course of a couple of minutes, her breathing gets better but not perfect but still, Lena is now willing to move Kara, grabbing her around her waist and hauling her up so she can direct her into the bedroom carefully, where she promptly sits her on the edge of the bed.

"You're ok, you're safe and I'm right here." Lena coos into her ear in a whisper, barely audible but strong enough that Kara can latch onto the words. Tenderly, Lena pulls the blankets up around Kara's damp shoulders, resting them there but not pulling them around her so she doesn't feel suffocated. "I've got you, just keep breathing nice and deeply for me, darling, there you go."

Lena's forehead is pressed against the side of Kara's head, her hair still sopping wet but she honestly hasn't given it a second thought, she's just kicking herself for letting Kara be alone when she knew this could happen, it happened with Astra and on the way to Krypton so she should have been expecting it.

"I'm so sorry I let this happen, Kara. I should have been paying more attention, I could've—"

"No." Kara's voice calls out. It's shaky but her tone leaves no room for arguments. "S'not your fault. It's mine."

Lena finds her head shaking vehemently before Kara's even finished her sentence. "Hey, no. You're not to blame for having a panic attack, you're really not. You can't help it."

"I'm sorry." Kara's lips tremble and Lena can see she's just seconds away from crying.

Lena pulls her into her side as tightly as she can and tucks the blankets around her tighter now she's through the worst of it. "You're not allowed to apologize for having a panic attack either. It's not your fault, baby. Not at all."

"But—"

"No buts, it's nobody's fault, let's just agree on that, ok?" Lena presses her nose into Kara's skin. She takes note that Kara is pretty clean so she must have gotten pretty far into her shower before she had her panic attack.

Kara sniffs, wiping her nose on her wrist. "Ok."

"Now, how far did you get with your shower? You're not dirty anymore so you did your body, did you manage your hair?"

Kara shakes her head sadly, a little ashamed that she didn't even manage to get through a single shower without having a breakdown.

Lena sees the embarrassed blush spread rapidly through Kara's cheeks and the way she turns her head down towards the ground. "That's ok, let me help you."

"I can—"

"I know you can, but you don't have to and I want to help so come on, let's get you up and back into that shower and then after, you can have a nap, I know you get tired after you have a panic attack."

Kara sucks her lips into her mouth, sniffs again, and nods, her cheeks glistening with a few errant tears. "Ok."

Lena smiles, triumphant. She gently eases the blanket off of Kara's shoulders and wraps her arm around her waist, helping her into the bathroom and beside the shower. She starts the water and while it's going, she quickly strips off, amused by the way Kara's eyes grow wide but never move away from her boobs.

"Come on." She guides Kara into the water, stepping in behind her and trying to ignore the way the cold air feels on her butt where the water doesn't reach.

Kara goes to turn towards her but Lena stops her, immediately pressing her fingers into Kara's hair, gently detangling it and scrubbing at her scalp with her fingertips. It still feels strange that they can shower without a million different bottles of shampoos and conditioners and shower gels and moisturisers because it's all in the water but Lena likes it, it's a lot less clutter free and it makes her want to find a way to add it into her own home when they get back to Earth.

Kara relaxes beneath her touch, the tension rolling off her shoulders and being washed away with the water. It makes Lena smile once again at the sight of it and then she presses a kiss to the back of her shoulder. "Almost done."

Lena scratches at her scalp for longer than she needs to before threading her fingers through Kara's long, soft locks, making sure it's all completely tangle free. "There we go, all done."

She steps out and lets Kara turn the water off a minute later, giving her the chance to catch her breath and take things at her own pace. By the time Kara has emerged from the tube-shaped shower, Lena has already dried her front off and slipped her clothes back on and is waiting for her with a towel.

With it stretched open, Kara gets the message and steps into it, allowing Lena to wrap it around her snugly. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Lena pecks her cheek.

Lena steps away from her again, this time to get her toothbrush ready with toothpaste squeezed across it in an obnoxiously neat line. "I know you're only supposed to use a splodge but I can't resist the aesthetics at times like these."

"If you can't have good mental health, then have good aesthetics, sounds healthy." Kara nods, have face showing nothing but seriousness and agreeance.

Lena has to resist the urge to kiss her again. She loves it when Kara lets herself delve into her darker humour, something she rarely lets herself do because she likes to keep to her image of being the paragon of hope and light and optimism. It's cute when she lets herself be herself, much more attractive than a woman with a never-ending smile and a half-baked personality, that's for sure.

"Brush your teeth while I grab you some clothes, you never brought any in here with you."

"I figured I'd let you see the goods, you've seen them now, that's for sure." Kara bites out a self-deprecating laugh that makes Lena frown.

"Ok, I'll just be a minute." Lena leaves, a little confused and a lot worried.

As she goes through Kara's pack, she purposefully digs out the softest clothes she can find. They are all pretty similar but she tries anyway because she knows how overwhelming rough textures are for Kara. It can affect her at any time but she's especially sensitive after a panic attack or when she's overwhelmed, something she most definitely is at the minute.

Because she's searching through all of her clothes, Kara ends up finishing up in the bathroom before she's gathered all of her clothes and she perches back on the edge of the bed while she waits for Lena, half-heartedly drying herself off with the towel.

Lena drops the clothes next to her on the bed and takes the towel off her, gently drying her hair for her.

"You're too good to me." Kara sighs, her eyes slipping closed under her tender attention.

"Nobody is good enough for you, Kara." Lena mumbles, her focus on the towel and Kara's hair, purposely trying to make sure she isn't being too rough.

Kara's mouth twists to one side as her emotions bubble up once again. "I'm sorry I've been such a shitty girlfriend."

Lena is taken aback. Her eyebrows raise and her eyes widen as her jaw drops. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I've been making everything about me for weeks now, I haven't even been asking how you're doing. When I was in the shower the first time, I realized that I had stopped thinking about Lex while we have been here and that you're probably always thinking about him and the pain you must be feeling. I haven't been there for you in that way and I should have been. I'm sorry."

The words are wet and stammered by the end and Lena once again scoops her up into her arms, holding her as tight as she dares to with a woman so fragile in her clutches.

"There's only one person on my mind all the time and that person is right here in my arms. It does hurt to think about Lex and what he's done, what he's pushed us to do, but at the same time, I'm almost grateful, in a weird kind of way, because we came here, I've gotten to experience so many incredible things and I've had the chance to do it with the woman I love, there's nothing more magical than that and I wouldn't change it for the world."

"Really?"

Lena hums the affirmative. "I just wish I could take away all of the pain and feelings being dragged up for you, I know it can't be easy seeing all of your family again, especially your mother."

"It isn't." The words are hesitant like she's only just now admitting it to herself as well as to Lena. "I just remember her so differently. I learned about all of these things she's done a lot later in life and by then they were just words, stories even, it wasn't real. Now it is."

Kara begins unfolding her shirt as she speaks, busying her hands. Lena watches her shrug her bra over her shoulders and clasps it while trying to find the right words to respond to Kara's admission.

"That makes sense. A lot of sense actually. It's a see-it-to-believe-it kind of situation. Now, you've actually got the proof rather than a silly story you didn't really want to believe." She helps Kara tug her shirt over her head, helping her arms through the armholes, doting on her as much as she can get away with despite knowing that she's fully capable of doing it all herself.

Kara eases her panties up her legs and then tosses the pants on the floor, she's not putting them on now, she's getting back in bed as soon as she's got her socks on. "You really get it?"

"I do." Lena moves across the bed to her own side to give Kara the space to get in beside her.

Together, they lean back against the pillows. Kara presses herself into Lena's side, her arm lying across her midriff and her fingers gripping at her shirt which causes little wrinkles to form in the fabric but Lena barely spares it a second thought, if it makes Kara feel better then it's worth it, she can always throw a jacket over the top of it anyway.

"Do you think my mom knows too much?" Kara asks after a while. "We told her a lot."

"No, I told her a lot. I let my mouth run before rather than thinking it all through properly. I guess coming out of a life and death situation and then being confronted about top secret information isn't my strong suit."

"To be fair, I don't think that's anybody's strong suit, except for maybe Alex's, she seems like the kind to be able to deal with that. We should have let her do the talking."

Lena presses soft kisses into Kara's hair. "I think she was too busy holding her wife and daughter, thanking every god that's even been believed in that she managed to get back to them in one piece. She's a lot softer than we give her credit for."

"Probably." Kara hums and when Lena looks down, she can see Kara's eyes fluttering closed. Moments like this always drain Kara and so she's in desperate need of a good nap.

Lena squeezes her tight. "Just go to sleep, darling."

Kara nods, just barely against the skin of Lena's collarbone, already halfway there.

Lena lies there for a long time, long past Kara's point of no return where she's well and truly asleep, mostly because she doesn't really want to do what she's going to do but she has to, for Kara, she has to.

With careful movements, Lena eases herself out from under Kara and smooths out her clothes, throwing a jacket over her wrinkled shirt, and heads out of the room, closing the door behind her as carefully as she can so it doesn't bang and wake Kara up.

She wanders back out to the living room where Alura is sitting, her head in her hands and hunched over in a rather undignified position for someone of her standing.

"Alura?" Lena calls out quietly so as to not startle the woman.

Alura sits up but makes no pretence that she wasn't just sitting in a pit of her mind's making. "Lena, how are you? How is Kara?"

Lena sits down on the couch beside her, her body angled towards her. "I'm doing well and Kara is…well, she's handling things as best she can."

"You and my daughter are courting, I presume?"

"We are," Lena says with a hint of joy dancing behind her eyes. Introducing Kara as her partner is something she's going to have to get used to when they get back to Earth.

Alura looks her up and down a couple of times and it takes everything in Lena to not fidget under her gaze. After a moment of obvious judgement, Alura nods. "You treat her well, yes?"

"Always."

"Good," Alura says. "Now, I presume there is something you want to talk to me about? You probably wouldn't have wandered out here to have awkward small talk with me so what do you need from me?"

Lena clears her throat. "I told you a lot of things before, things you shouldn't know. Things that can affect the timeline and put the future in danger. Your actions that follow that knowledge being bestowed upon you can make or break an entire planet so I need you to be willing to work with us to prevent catastrophic destruction."

"It could be that bad?" Alura's eyebrows pull together in a rather Kara-like manner, or rather, Kara sometimes pulls her eyebrows together in a manner learned from her mother.

Lena swallows down the lump forming in her throat when she thinks about the damage that they have probably already caused. "It could, or we could salvage this mission and everything could be ok. I'm hoping for the best, Kara helps with the whole optimism thing but I can see that at the minute, even she's struggling to find hope."

"Kara has always been able to see the best in things. Everything she's ever done has come from a view I wish I had of the world. I'm not sure where she got it from because it's certainly not from me or Zor. He's got a better outlook on life than I have but neither of us could ever match the wonder Kara has for the planet, even when she sees the miserable side of things. We could show her a hundred broken things and rather than dismay, she would simply spend as much time as we would allow trying to come up with solutions."

Alura gets a look across her face that Lena can only describe as a look of pure, unadulterated love, one only a mother can get when talking about her daughter. Lena can't help but wonder if her birth mother once got that look upon her face when talking about her, or maybe, even if Lillian ever has, just when she was sure Lena couldn't see as to not expose her softer side to her. She'll just have to wonder.

"Kara told me about an experiment she did where she created a project she was working on, an artificial environment to try and save species of bugs from extinction. She even built it for us so we could see it. It was truly remarkable. There are not many young people around that are smart enough and kind enough to come up with something like that."

"My Kara has always been one of a kind." Alura can't keep the grin off her face. "She's got such a big heart, I've always been afraid of the days when it gets broken because the world is much crueller than she can handle."

Lena shakes her head, a movement so slight that Alura barely catches it. "She's a lot stronger than you think, she has survived things you can't even imagine and fought with dangers that neither of us can comprehend. She's had a hard life, one that you can't protect her from, no matter how hard you try, and she is one of the strongest people I've ever met, probably the strongest. Her heart though, it might splinter or crack or get bruised but I've never seen it broken, not even once, and with what she's lost, it's truly remarkable."

"Did she lose us? Zor and I?"

"She lost everything," Lena responds in barely more than a whisper. "She lost everything she ever loved and somehow, she managed to come through on the other side, a little broken, sure, but she's made herself stronger for it. I can't say anything more than that but I need you to know what an incredible, resilient, kind, loved woman Kara is. She may have lost everything but she is my everything and I will do what it takes to protect her, including telling you what I need you to do so you don't mess up the timeline and make her lose her home in the future in the same way she lost her first home so please, listen to me and work with me."

Alura looks down at the ground, another movement that is just a mirror of those that Kara is known for. She sighs loudly before looking up. "We can discuss it. I can't make any promises but I also have my Kara to think of. Your Kara may also be my daughter but I haven't seen her grow up yet, not the way I have with my Kara, my twelve-year-old daughter."

"That's all I ask." Lena accepts, biting her tongue so she doesn't say anything more because Alura doesn't seem to grasp that there is no 'yet'. She's never going to see Kara grow up beyond the point she's at and that very fact makes Lena want to curl up in a ball and cry for them.

Alura takes a deep breath. "Alright, tell me what you need me to do and we can discuss."

"Ok then. Let's start with Astra."