Two days isn't as much time as you would think. The first day, the day when they found the antidote, they spend the day lazily rifling through the accommodation, having a lot of fun simply nosing through the excess of items in the place.
Lena and Kara spent most of that day together, sitting side by side on the tiled floor up in the hidden tower, a mere blanket separating their butts from the cool tiles. They pass items out of the cabinets to each other, sharing their cool findings and piling up information crystals to be searched through later.
"Hey, look. This is good." Kara takes out a paper that has what appears to be several drawings of what appears to be small scales of trees and information surrounding each image. "This shows all of the native trees around here and has some information on each, like this one in the top right corner, it has bark that can be ground into a paste for brushing your teeth with."
Lena looks incredulous. "I'm glad I brought plenty of toothpaste with me, if you want to brush your teeth with bark then you are more than welcome to."
"Where is your inner nerd? This kind of stuff usually has you salivating." Kara dangles the paper in front of her jauntily. "I know you want it really, come on…"
Lena snatches it from her hand with a smirk. "You're literally the most annoying person on this planet."
"You like it, just admit it."
Lena can't deny that, given the right time, she does enjoy the light-hearted teasing from Kara, but she would never in a million years admit it. She can't even fully admit to herself just how much she likes it, likes her.
As her eyes skim over the paper, Lena tries to look as flippant as she possibly can. "You couldn't even be bothered to translate it for me? One would think you have a poor work ethic."
"Hardy ha, very funny." Kara goes back to what she was doing before, grabbing more things from the cabinet and making a show of hiding the interesting things from Lena as she pulls them out.
In response, Lena waits until Kara is leaning forwards into the cabinet and takes advantage of her now exposed torso to jab her fingers into her ribs, tickling her without mercy.
"Stop! Stop! I'm gonna pee!" Kara gasps out in between laughs. Her arms come up to try and defend herself, but Lena manages to avoid them, unwilling to give in.
"Are you ready to apologise?" Lena slows down her tickles to allow her the time to respond.
Kara gasps at her. "Never!"
No more prompting is needed to get Lena to resume tickling the blonde, a devilish smirk overtaking her features as Kara devolves into little more than a giggling mess.
After a solid minute of precise and unwavering tickles, Lena finally ceases her attack, giving Kara a chance to get her breath back. "That was a low blow, Luthor."
"You knew what you were getting yourself into when you became friends with me, you have to deal with the consequences."
Kara is just about to respond when something made of leather catches her eye from the back of the cabinet in front of her. She has to unstack a few information crystals and random knickknacks from on top of it and then blow away several layers of dust, but she gets it out with relative ease.
"No way!"
Lena is left a little astounded by how short Kara's attention span seems to be and shuffles over to take a gander over her shoulder, a little intrigued at what could have possibly warranted such an exclamation.
Kara stretches the leather fabric in between her hands in front of her. She turns it in her grip so she can take a look at both sides and check the quality.
"Now, this is what I'm talking about!"
"A sheath, really?"
"If you think for even a second that I'm not going to pry that sword out of the ground and test to see if it fits, then you're officially insane."
Lena can't hold back the eye roll, by the time she was aware that her eyeballs were moving the momentum had already forced them to finish their journey. "Let me guess, if it fits, which it most likely will since there is only one sword and one sheath in this place, you're going to start walking around with a sword strapped to your belt."
Kara turns to her with an unamused stare. "…you have zero proof that I was thinking of that."
"But were you?"
"Yes."
Kara purposely ignores the triumphant look on Lena's face and clambers to her feet so she can begin to pry the sword from the tile. She grasps the handle with both hands and pulls as hard as she can, gritting her teeth and groaning as she tries her hardest to free the blade.
"What's wrong, Supergirl? Not quite as strong as you thought you were?"
Kara uses a very helpful skill called selective hearing to dismiss the comment and starts wiggling the sword, trying to gain more leverage and break down the tile so it will be easier to pull the sword out. It barely moves, she only gains the tiniest bit of wiggle room with each pull.
After a long minute of pulling and wiggling the sword pulls free, the release is sudden enough that she whacked herself under the chin with the hilt as it rose from where it was previously nestled. The force of it sent her back onto her butt.
She drops the sword and brings her hands up to her chin, groaning in pain as Lena comes shuffling over quickly from where she was sat watching her struggle before. Her hands herd Kara's away and take her chin in her hands, feeling the bone and checking her over for any major damage.
She leans back after a few moments, trying her best not to laugh. "You alright?"
"No."
"Yeah, you might have a bruise there later."
Kara rubs her chin once more before using Lena's outstretched hand as leverage to stand up and grab her prize, pouting at it a little because it essentially attacked her after she rescued it.
"Put that pout away, it's deadly." Lena smiles as she joins Kara in checking out the sword. It's longer than she had initially thought, about a foot of it must have been completely embedded into the floor.
Kara hands it over for a second so she can grab the sheath from the floor and presents it to her with a flourish, tipping it down bank so the opening is facing up and Lena can thread the sword in. Perfect fit.
"Yep. I'm keeping it." Kara snatches it back and takes off down the stairs, leaving Lena standing in the dust.
She races into the living area, disturbing the little family in there. "I'm keeping this!" She displays it for them to see, looking vaguely guilty as she sees the dirty looks she gets for talking too loudly when Esme is napping on the couch.
"You're keeping the sword that almost killed you? That's not healthy." Kelly mutters to her.
"Neither is my diet."
Lena comes storming into the room a little out of breath. "Please tell me you didn't run whilst holding a sharp object."
"It's in a sheath, it's fine."
Lena takes it out of her hand and places it down on the coffee table. "You say that like you didn't just hit yourself in the face two minutes ago."
Alex barks out a laugh at that. "Did you really?"
Kara fixes Lena with a nasty glare and steps into her personal space. "I'm going to make you regret ever saying anything embarrassing about me in front of my sister. You're not going to like what I'm going to do."
Lena doesn't look the slightest bit intimidated. "Sure, I'll remember that tonight when you ask for cuddles."
The gasp that comes from Kara's throat silences the whole room. "I can't believe you actually just said that."
Alex is watching the whole thing go down, wishing she either had popcorn or a notepad to write down all of the new information she is learning about her little sister. She is definitely going to remember that she forces the badass CEO, Lena Luthor, to cuddle with her at night.
Nia appears around the corner, freezing as she sees how close Kara and Lena are standing and how Alex and Kelly are merely watching them get in each other's faces.
"I don't have the slightest clue what I've just walked into."
She throws her hands in the air at the lack of reaction she gets so when she spots the sword on the table, she picks it up. It's heavier than she was expecting but it makes her feel like a ninja when she holds it. If only she had a watermelon to cut, that sucker would be halved in no time.
She brings down with a swoop in between where Kara and Lena are standing and where Alex and Kelly are sitting. That gets their attention.
"You know, I really shouldn't be able to literally cut the tension with a knife…well sword."
Kara and Lena finally back up from one another so they can send matching glares to Nia. Lena walks right toward her and takes the sword from her. "You're way too young to be playing with swords."
"I'm an adult."
Kara backs up Lena. "You're still too young."
Kelly watches on from the couch, her hand brought up in front of her face to hide her smile as Nia throws her hands up in the air angrily. She goes to talk but all of the attention has already shifted away from her, so she simply stomps her foot like a petulant child and takes a seat, crossing her arms to show her anger.
Kara finally breaks and moves to plop down onto the couch. "What do you guys want to do now?"
"Did you finish up in the tower?"
Kara shrugs. "Pretty much, just got to tidy up a bit and look through the crystals but that can be done tomorrow."
"Cool, that gives us plenty of time to force you to take us to the science labs downstairs and show us all of the cool shit they were doing here." Alex, being the mother she is, swears in a whisper so Esme doesn't hear.
Kara does a double take. "Downstairs? I didn't know there was a downstairs."
Lena has the same confused look on her face. "We couldn't have possibly missed a whole floor."
Alex and Kelly share an amused eyebrow raise.
"The stairs were right by the staircase that brought us up. The door to the second set of stairs opened when you lifted the first set." Kelly explains. "I guess you had no reason to use that hallway again after you came in, huh?"
Lena sends Kara a pointed glare and Kara immediately jumps in to defend herself. "It was dark when I went down that hallway, I wasn't on the lookout for extra staircases."
After an eye roll, Lena and Kara make their way to the original staircase that brought them up from the forest floor and to their surprise, there is in fact a door nearby that leads to a shorter staircase.
They follow the stairs down and find an absolutely massive lab space. Kara is immediately taken aback by the memories of being in labs just like this one with her father as a child. "This takes me back."
Alex must have followed them because she pops up behind them and makes them jump as she speaks. "It was very difficult controlling myself by not coming down here before, but I didn't want to accidentally kill myself by touching some weird alien shit that you could have warned me about."
"Smart move," Kara mutters as she wanders further into the lab, looking over at some of the equipment and smiling. It's the exact same equipment that her father used to use to show her how to do fun little experiments on and let her watch as he did his super important work experiments.
Lena and Alex are practically following her around the room like lost little puppies begging her to give them any titbits of information she can on the sciences of Krypton.
When Kara turns to look at them she has a fright at how intently they are looking back at her. "Oh, um…I guess you want me to show you something?"
The resounding nods she gets in response kick start her muscle memory as she heads right to the storage shelves and grabs multiple things but mostly ores and wires.
She spreads them across the first available surface and explains what each of them is and how each can be used. Some of them, they already know of or at least have a general understanding of thanks to either files from the Fortress of Solitude or from similar elements on Earth.
With steady hands and an impeccable memory, Kara rebuilds a little project that she did when she was training to be accepted into the science guild. She commentates on what she is doing with each movement.
Alex and Lena watch with awe as Kara slowly but surely builds a little bio shield with the items. "The aim of the shield was to help repopulate some of the insects that were, or rather are, dying out. You probably noticed the lack of insects when we were walking. The shield was supposed to help regulate the water and oxygen around their nests to give them a steady atmosphere and permeate growth."
Lena shakes her head at her, completely blown away. "That's incredible."
"Thanks, I don't think my father had it in him to tell me that by the time I'd made it, the specific insect that I'd designed it for, had gone completely extinct. I only found out because I was going to submit it towards my entrance exam for the science guild and he had to stop me so I wouldn't make a fool of myself. I redesigned it for another type of bug after that."
"Make a fool of yourself? Kara, if this could have been used on a much greater scale then it could have saved Krypton." Alex flicks her eyes between the bio shield and her little sister.
"I doubt it, the very core of Krypton was breaking down, nothing could have stopped it really, not unless everyone on the planet suddenly upped and stopped everything they were doing to harm it and you can see based on global warming on Earth that that's just not going to happen."
With one on either side, they envelop her in a tight hug and hold her, determined to lighten the mood.
Lena can't help herself though, she has to ask. "Can I keep this so I can recreate it on Earth when we get back? There are plenty of species of bugs that would appreciate it and with a few tweaks we could probably use it for other animals too."
"Sure." Kara gives her a kind smile, but it doesn't quite meet her eyes.
Kara promptly changes the subject and spends the next couple of hours taking them around to each piece of equipment to explain what it does. She even has a sneaky glance at the computer to see what the previous scientist was working on, but all of the data had been wiped. She's not all that surprised.
Kelly shouts them up for dinner not long after that and they all head up to enjoy Kelly's first attempt at a true Kryptonian dish. Kara definitely approves and which earns her a beaming grin from Kelly.
Lena wakes up before Kara the next morning, a rarity.
She allows herself the gift of spending several sweet minutes of uninterrupted gazing. It's not often that she allows herself the time to simply just, look.
It's also not often that Kara looks so totally at ease, free of the burden of her home planet and her new planet, but here she is at peace. The corners of her mouth tip up ever so slightly, clueing Lena in that she is dreaming. She always smiles when she dreams, except for the bad ones.
Bad doesn't seem like a strong enough word to describe how utterly terrible those nights are. Lena has only witnessed it twice in their entire friendship and one of those was on the second night of the mission. Kara must have sensed that it would be a bad night because she set up their tent a little further from the others.
The memory of the heart-wrenching cries still fills her ears when she thinks of it. For Kara's sake she doesn't bring it up, she learnt that lesson the first time she witnessed it after she stayed over because she had indulged in one too many glasses of wine after game night. When she tried to talk about it the next day Kara had completely shut down and avoided her for the next week until she agreed not to talk about it.
She brushes the memories from her mind, not wanting to taint the image she is trying to paint in her head of the way Kara looks right now, soft and cute. She's all snuggled up into the duvet, hair fanned out on the pillow and a tiny smile on her face. Her hands are clinging to Lena's shirt to keep her close. She looks utterly content.
Lena congratulates herself on her acting skills when Kara starts to stir, pretending that she was also just waking up too. Kara doesn't even second guess it but perhaps that's more to do with her still half-asleep state than Lena's acting choices.
Kara climbs right out of bed, sending her a mumbled "good morning" as Lena sits up, groaning from the effort, then heading for the bathroom.
With a deep sigh Lena flops back into the pillow and closes her eyes tightly as she hears the shower click on. She's still pretty tired, she could have gotten a better sleep if she had just turned back over instead of watching Kara sleep but sometimes you just have to prioritise.