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Chapter Text

Kara lets her fingers run along the blades of grass beneath her. She feels the way they bend and fold and give way to her touch. The night is quiet as it can be with the city stretched out in front of them. Beside her, Lena lies with one arm folded underneath her head, and her eyes trained on the sky above them. She lifts her hand and traces a silhouette among the scattering of stars and Kara follows the movement and the gentle lilt of Lena's voice as she gives each one a new name and a new story to add to those of the ghosts and gods she has carried with her from her past.

They're just far enough away here. It's just dark enough to see the stars with the faint glow of everything still within reach. And even if they both know they could look at the sky from anywhere else, Lena likes to look at it from here. She had told her once that when she looks at the lights of the city from here — almost indistinguishable from the faintest lights of the universe beyond it — she remembers how small a part of it all she really is, and that there is comfort for her in that kind of smallness, in the ability to lie there with Kara and for it to be just them for just that moment in the face of everything else that surrounds them.

Kara looks at the sky and how full of stars it seems. She remembers the things Lena has told her lying here. That there are 300 billion stars in this galaxy. That there are 200 billion galaxies in the universe. Things that must have been knowable and yet been inconsequential when she was a child on Krypton because they never talked about things like that. But they never talked about the immensity of space the way humans do either. But here, Lena would speak with her for hours about quantum mechanics and particle theory and supersymmetry with a reverence she has always been in awe of. Because Kara was never taught the beauty that can lie in an unsolvable proof or an elegant theorem, and she is certain that only the most human of endeavors would have found that the vibrations from black holes colliding harmonize with Elvis Presley. But again and again, Lena has shown her the best of humanity's efforts in the pursuit of such things, of trying to turn all this vastness into something knowable and beautiful.

But for as many stars as there are in the sky, Kara knows how empty space can truly be, that the Sun is just one of those 300 billion stars in a galaxy that is spinning and expanding, and that almost everything is moving farther and farther away from everything else every second. She knows that between it all, all the stars, and planets, and galaxies, there are distances unfathomable to those who look to the sky every night and think they can count them and name them and share their stories. She knows because she's seen it. The vastness of space stretched all around her, everything at its distance still spinning, still moving farther and farther apart and her at its center, nothing but alone.

Alone.

Empty.

Lena's voice pervades her thoughts again.

A discussion from weeks ago about the dark matter research and axions and a team in Italy needing her help.

Too often, it's too hard to equate what she knows into the terms humans use. To reverse engineer her understanding of things in a way that makes sense for the both of them. But they can theorize together still. Both having found in each other something they thought they lost.

She remembers the frustration that grew in her voice when she spoke about the evasiveness of nothingness. Kara had to hold in the laugh that threatened at how annoyed she quickly became during their conversation.

"But there should be more out there," Lena's hand gestured to the sky above them. flung open as if to command the obviousness of her words, "so much more!"

And Kara had tried to reply with as much seriousness as she could manage, but trying to ignore the adorable pout that was now firmly in place was nearly impossible.

"Roughly 95%."

But then Lena just turned her head to look at her, hands falling dramatically to the ground.

And Kara just shrugged her shoulders, failing finally to conceal the smile she had been holding back.

"What, I listen when you talk."

Lena squinted at her skeptically.

"You all have theorized that the universe is made up of 68% dark energy which can't be seen and 27% dark matter which also can't be seen, so," she gestured up to the sky, "about 95% more stuff should be up there."

Kara finally turned to look at Lena, who she was glad to see was, in fact, smiling back.

"Right."

She still reached over and smacked Kara on the arm for good measure, though.

"So, how do you find it?"

But even in the levity of that moment, a part of her had wanted to tell her that it wouldn't matter if they ever found those particles. That if they found them or named them or proved them in some perfect equation that in they wouldn't make the universe slow down or stop spinning, that the galaxies and the stars would still be just as far away and that space would still be just as cold and just as quiet and just as empty and she would have been just as alone for all those years.

But she thinks that after all these years here and after all the things that Lena has told her lying on the grass beneath these stars that she believes more and more in the beauty of science rather than just its purpose, that she believes more and more now in many things that she could only have ever hoped for at all.

Kara runs her fingers along the blades of grass again, reaching out until they grasp onto Lena's hand, her thumb running back and forth over her knuckles as if they hadn't already memorized the pattern.

The ground beneath them feels solid, but she knows it's mostly empty space, full of atoms and nuclei surrounded by nothing but the forces holding them together. Their strength coming from the work that it takes to keep them together and that prove they're there at all.

She takes a breath. Hopes Lena will remember the words she said under these stars as well as she does.

"5 percent is still a lot, you know." She keeps her eyes still on the sky. "I mean 5 percent is all these stars, and it's earth and Argo, and it was Krypton. It's every one of those buildings down there and every one of these blades of grass — she tightens her grip on Lena's hand — and it's you, and it's me. It's us."

She lets the words have their moment, allows Lena to be the one who turns onto her side, their hands still held together, and places them over her heart.

She thinks again about how you can't see dark matter or dark energy. How you only know it's there because of how it affects the universe.

Because the ground beneath them is solid.

Because the stars above them are bright.

Because the galaxy around them is expanding.

She thinks about how you can't see love. How you only know it's there because of how it makes you feel.

She thinks of the strength of the things that have held them together against the weight of the things that have tried to pull them apart.

And then Lena leans in closer still, their bodies angled together, and their hands still pressed between them as she whispers into the only space left.

"It's more than enough."

And Kara thinks not for the first time that of all the things in the universe she has seen humans try to prove, love is by far most beautiful.

Chapter Text

The weight above Kara is heavy, heavier than anything she has ever carried. She isn't sure exactly how it happened. Like all things that happen quickly, it happened all at once, happened because Lena had promised to stop her brother and Kara had promised to always protect Lena. And now, they are pressed together underneath the weight of those promises to which they were fated.

Lena's hands pull against the front of Kara's suit, her fingers digging into the edges as she tries to pry away the dented sigil from her chest, to try to fix the damage underneath. But Kara can feel all the things Lena's hands can't reach, can feel the pain and the cold, and the way it's getting harder to breathe.

Kara's gaze shifts from Lena's hands up to her face. Her helmet is lying broken somewhere on the ground, having been knocked off and scattered among the rocks and concrete.

She tries to get Lena to look at her.

She needs Lena to look at her.

There are things she needs to say.

Kara shifts the weight on her shoulders. The slab of concrete settling further down on them. Lena's hands still suddenly at the movement, steadying themselves against Kara's chest as if she is trying to push back, to add whatever strength she has even if she must know it won't work.

And then finally, finally, Lena looks into her eyes.

And she is scared.

And she is angry.

And Kara hates it.

"If I curl myself around you..."

But Lena cuts her off, her hands turn to fists, and she knows this is one last fight they will have. "No."

She tries again. "Lena..."

Lena hits her fist against Kara's chest, dust falling down onto both of them. "No."

"Lena, please, I don't know how much longer I can hold this up, I-I don't know how close the others are..."

There is no space between them. Kara's back bearing the load of everything above them and Lena shielded underneath her. It's the closest they have been in months. And Rao, how desperately she wants to hold her one more time.

"No," And it's quieter this time, still no less defiant, but more resigned, "It's okay, Kara. It's going to be okay."

Lena lifts her hand to Kara's cheek.

"I can't," Lena whispers, and Kara lets her head fall toward her touch as the words trail away, "I can't..."

But Kara knows the rest.

I can't save you.

I can't let you go.

She has said them too many times to too many people.

She feels Lena's hand drift down following along the edges of her jaw, lingering as long as her quiet refrain and the chaos around them allow it.

"…"I-I-mm s-sorry". And they are words meant just for them, but not just for this moment. They are one last chance Kara has at forgiveness.

And she can hear Lena crying then, the soft sound resonating in her head.

She can see the ghost of tears that trace lines in the dust that covers them both.

She wonders if they ever could have loved each other without all this agony.

She thinks of how she had tried.

She thinks of how the world had always failed them.

But maybe they were meant to have loved each other despite all the pain. Maybe that was the ending she hadn't seen.

And maybe it's cruel, but she lets herself imagine what it could be like.

She closes her eyes, and she imagines the movements in her head, a steady hand on the back of Lena's neck pulling her down close, the flex of fingers threading through her hair. She imagines the press of lips and the frantic wanting for more. And she imagines the words unwavering as she tells her finally that she loves her.

She imagines all these things with one of Lena's hands still curled around the torn metal pressing into her chest and the world above them, pressing down.

She imagines them until Lena's thumb shifts just enough to trace the corner of her mouth.

Imagines them until Lena lifts herself up and she feels what it is to know both agony and love in equal measure when Lena kisses her and she can taste both their tears on her lips.

And then it's all at once real.

And it isn't a loud proclamation of love.

But when Lena whispers in her ear.

"You mean too much to me, Kara Zor-el. Don't you dare make me lose you too."

It's enough to believe that the universe isn't done with them yet.

It's enough that she is able to carry the weight of another promise until her shoulders finally feel as weightless as her heart.

Chapter Text

"I can't."
"I'm sorry."
"It's just too much."
"You just need to let me go."
"It's better if we just let each other go."

The syllables grew longer and longer as the hope that reached between them stretched farther and farther apart until it drew so far it turned into silence.

Kara tried to breathe, but it just seemed to go in and out of her, slow and meaningless.

Lena's expression had changed from one of anger to one of grief.

Then there was only one word left, a quiet, whispered, unanswered..."goodbye."

And then she was gone.

After everything, she was just gone.

And Kara had just stood at her door, her feet weighed down by her too heavy heart, and for once, she wasn't fast enough to reach her.

Lena leaves on a Thursday. Lena leaves on a Thursday, and it's cold and grey, and it's everything a day like that should be. For everyone else, the city is quiet, but for Kara, she can't let go of the sound of Lena's voice, of the words she said right before goodbye, "It's better if we just let each other go." She wonders if there are other words Lena had held onto. Words she had wanted to say but had been too scared of. She wonders if she isn't the only one who had just still been too afraid of the things left unsaid between them. On better days, she lets that wonder turn to hope. But on other days, it breaks her heart to think that they will never see each other again. And on the days that feel impossible, there is the certainty she has that Lena would be happier that way. And it's those days that keep her from the sound of Lena's heartbeat, that remind her of the promise she made to protect her even if it has to be from herself.

Friday comes soon and Monday follows and after it, another Thursday. Each day slowly follows as if trying to return to what came before, but like everything that happened with Lena, watching her go had happened so suddenly, so completely, so irreversibly that it never can. There are still better days and bad days and days that feel impossible, but the better days have more hope and the bad days have less certainty, and eventually, she lets herself listen for the sound of Lena's heartbeat again. It's quieter than it had been before, but still the same, still there — in the same spot as hers. Lena's words come back again, "It's better if we just let each other go," and she hates herself that she is either still too selfish or foolish enough not to.

Lena leaves on a Thursday. Lena leaves on a Thursday, but it's a Tuesday when there's a knock at Kara's door. Soft and hesitant, its echo barely reaching across the space it's meant to cross, but the heartbeat that accompanies is unmistakable. Kara finds her own heart beating in time with the frantic rhythm as she steps closer, unsure if her feet ever really touch the floor as she wonders briefly if, after all this time, this Lena will feel more like a ghost or a dream. But when Kara sees her standing there in the doorway, it's as if she forgot what she looked like, as if all those memories she had of her never existed, because all the sudden she can't remember the last time she stood in that same spot, or wore that same coat, or wrung her hands together in that same way — it's as if every other moment was replaced with just this one. Kara barely looks at her face, misses the dimple that pulls at the corner of her cheek as she says her name, her focus ruined by the little details in the creases of her hands and small freckle at the base of her neck. She jolts in surprise at the fingers that land on her wrist. The connection cutting through her skin, and her breath catching in her throat as she sees Lena's eyes for the first time.

"Lena," Kara says, a soft smile fighting its way through a mix of disbelief and heartbreak, her hand reaching up to touch Lena's cheek, to force this image of her into its place with all the others that are slowly coming back. She closes her eyes for a second, so Lena doesn't see the tears that sting against her lids. Her face reddens when she notices how close they are, how much she missed touching someone like this — how much she missed Lena like this.

"I don't know what to say, I-" Lena says it as a question, and Kara can still feel her fingers against her wrist, the slight movement making her feel whole again in a way she hasn't for months. And Kara thinks that's okay because there are so many things she wants to say, things she should have said months ago, years ago, but she can't get the words out. Words to say, I miss you. Words to say again, I'm sorry. Words to say, I never stopped believing in you. Words to say, I love you. She stares at their hands and tries to think of how to make her voice come out. Hates that for every word they used to say goodbye, she can't find one now to tell Lena to stay — wonders if they could ever be as good at loving each other as she feared they were at losing each other.

She hears Lena's voice in her head.

I can't.
I'm sorry.
It's just too much.
You just need to let me go.
It's better if we just let each other go.

But before it can get to goodbye, she feels the barest pull against her wrist, sees green eyes painted bright with tears but also something else, and with every bit of hope she had let herself hold onto, she pulls Lena into her arms, hands tangling together in each other as she turns to press a kiss to the side of her head, "I couldn't let you go," and Lena answers her with another kiss, the soft press of lips and a quiet confession of her own..."I couldn't let you go either."

Chapter Text

Home was one of the first words Kara learned on Earth.

With Kal's steady hands on her shoulders, he uttered it first in broken Kryptonese and then in harsh English.

Zehdh.

Home.

But they were just words, and the ground beneath her feet just a place — somewhere she could learn to call home, but nowhere that felt like it.
Kara looks over the water at the back of the house as she thinks about the last time she and Alex were here.

'I remember thinking I would never feel at home on Earth.
I still don't, in a way.'

The air is colder now than it was then, and the sky too dark to tell the difference between the stars and their reflection. The wood creaks underneath her hands as she leans forward, worn under the weight of the years it has weathered but not weak enough to give way.

She thinks how fragile places are. How in our hearts they feel unbreakable but that we lose a little bit of them each time we leave them and our absence doesn't stop them from fading away. She wonders how long it takes to lose them completely.

She thinks of Krypton, how it still sits low in the sky, a ghost made of light caught in the passage of time.

She thinks of Argo and the different version of herself it is meant for, the one who doesn't exist anymore.

She closes her eyes as Red daughters' voice echoes in her head.

'You have all these things. You think they will make you whole?'

"Are you cold?"

Her eyes open, starlight blinking back to fade into the night sky as Alex's voice cuts heavy through the layers of thought that have settled around her, and even though Kara can see the puff of air in front of her, she shakes her head, hiding the way she had pulled her cape around her shoulders just a bit tighter.

Alex's hands grip the railing next to hers. Fingers, opening, and closing — hesitating.

Dipping her head, Kara turns her face toward the sky, her lips slightly pursed, defiant in her effort not to worry her sister any more than she already is.

"I'm not cold."

"Then why are you shivering?"

"It's...

She looks at her hands, shivering no, shaking maybe, trembling a little probably. The adrenaline finally wearing off from almost dying and all that as the bit of sunlight she managed to absorb had only been enough to keep her heart beating. The rest of her would have to wait until morning.

"I'm cold." A laugh, bitter and full of pain, escapes her lips.

"I'll get you a blanket."

"I'm fine. I can handle the cold," she says, forcing a smile.

"Okay, but-"

"Alex, it's okay." She throws an arm around her shoulders, tucking her into her side and pulling her cape around both of them. "I'm fine."

"Just because your cape used to be a blanket doesn't mean it counts, you know." Alex leans into Kara. "What are you doing out here?"

"Just thinking," Kara says softly.

"Kara," Alex starts, but her voice drifting as she places her head on her shoulder.

Kara's eyes shift from the sky to her sister. Can see the guilt that has settled on her shoulders and the fear that she still has in her eyes ever since she dragged her out of the woods with blood on her hands and a lifetime of memories warring with each other in her head, and she thinks that if she could, she would ask J'ohn to take just that one back from her. So it's all she can do to take the words from Alex before she can give them to Kara herself.

"I'm sorry."

"Why?" Alex asks, confusion etched into the shadows that have settled under her eyes.

Kara leans back, tucking her hair behind her ear, fingers grazing past the still healing skin of her cheek.

It'll be gone soon.

It's always gone soon.

"When I saw you lying there." It comes out in a long breath that Alex tries to release as she speaks.

"Alex," Kara tries.

But she shakes her head, her voice cracking, "I... I made a promise, a promise to protect you."

"You did. I'm still here," Kara says, voice breaking just a little in the way she always feels while she waits for her body to be put back together.

Alex takes in a ragged breath and then pushes it out as if it's been held in her lungs for far too long.

"I know. I. But there was a moment where I didn't, where — where you weren't."

Kara looks at her sister's hands twisting in the fabric of her cape, Alex had spent so long carefully helping her clean away the blood from her face, but her own hands still held some its reminder as if in a kind of unconscious penance.

"I'm still here," Kara repeats.

"I... I..." A rough sob escapes in her attempt at a response. "I kept asking for you to get, up but..." She swallows down the tears and starts over. "You thought you were alone." She looks up, her cheeks wet with tears.

'You can't go now.
I remember everything.
Kara, we're here, we're here.
We're here together.'

"And I thought, I thought maybe you'd given up because you thought you were alone and... I'm so sorry."

And the pain on her face hurts Kara more than any of her own as Alex desperately tries to wipe at her eyes with her hand.

"Hey, hey." Kara reaches out and grabs Alex's hand, pressing it against her cheek instead.

"I know you say I never listen to you, but I heard you, okay, I heard you, and I knew you were there."

Alex forces out a broken laugh, full of weary relief finally let go. "yeah," she says, squeezing Kara's hand. "probably just because Mom was there, though."

And it's Kara's turn to laugh, pulling her sister in fully into her then, ignoring every but of discomfort left and grateful for the chance to hold her just a little tighter.

Kara looks up at the clouds, at the sky, at the darkness covering so much of it that it's hard to see anything now, and if she didn't know it so well, everything around her would seem as indistinguishable from every other corner of the Earth she has come to know.

But it isn't.

It's home.

"Alex," she says, voice hoarse and rough, finally feeling her body starting to give in to its exhaustion.

Alex pulls back, straightening her shoulders. "What is it?" She asks, already accepting a little more of Kara's weight.

"I knew you'd remember."

Chapter Text

To fall.

To descend freely by the force of gravity.

There was a time before Newton when gravity was nothing more than a feeling of graveness, of solemness, when we believed objects only fell because of the weight that they carried with them— a time when Lena could have stretched her arm out toward Kara's falling form and not known the name of the thing that was trying to take her away from her.

But Lena did know, and still, she chose to try and bend the will of the laws of the universe to keep her.

She felt rocks slip beneath her feet, felt the edge of the earth gave way under her weight, and then nothing. Nothing but the air around her, nothing but the weight of Kara in her arms. Kara whose blood was spreading through the fabric of her suit, Kara, who she would always choose.

Over logic. Over science. Over self-preservation.

The water parts with a hard crack, and it's like the whole world falls away in its wake.

She wants to take a deep breath but knows she can’t. The hollowness in her chest grows every time the water lurches, pulling her up, trying to pull her away. Her arms tighten against the current. Knows she can’t let go— won’t let it take Kara away from her.

When the water finally settles Kara's tattered cape tangles around them, and it still feels like falling.

But something about being this close to Kara always feels a little bit like falling.

Kara's arms float upwards, and Lena holds on tighter still.

And they're falling again.

She thinks of how she once stood on the shore of the lake where her mother died and tried to imagine how cold the water would have been, what the silt and rocks would have felt like under her feet.

She imagined all the things she could have done.

She imagined all the things that would have changed.

She thinks of how she had taken off her shoes and waded into the water just far enough to let it come to her knees, just high enough to remember but not near enough to let herself be forgiven.

But it isn't forgiveness she's asking for now.

It's a second chance.

To save Kara like she couldn't save her mother.

Like she couldn't save Jack.

And maybe something else too, something more, something she couldn't yet admit to.

She shifts herself around Kara, trying to lift them both up, her arms moving from around her chest to her waist instead, the blood on her hands mattering less and less the deeper into the water they fall even as it spreads more and more.

Kara feels heavy in her arms, the weight of everything above them pushing down, the pain of running out of oxygen pushing in.

She kicks against the water and against the pain. The pain of watching her mother die, the pain of fighting against the darkness of her name, the pain of so many lies and so many broken promises — the pain of all the people she's lost.

She tries to pull them upwards with one arm too, the other still tight around Kara's waist, and Lena is sure it's just the force of the water, but she thinks she feels Kara's arm settle against her, thinks she can feel her trying to hold onto her too.

The edges of her vision begin to blur, but she can feel it, just the faintest hint of the sunlight above her, just out of reach, and then, as suddenly as she had been pulled down, she feels herself comes to the surface, feels her arm stretching up out of the water, her head emerging for a split second — gasping for breath, for the air that had been absent too long from her lungs before she turns over onto her back, pulling Kara up with her. And she wishes just for a second that she had time to just breathe, to just feel the sun on her face. But Kara is still bleeding, still broken. She pulls Kara onto her so that she is lying on top of her, arms wrapping around her as if that alone could keep her together.

She can feel the desperation of her own chest moving up and down as she tries to catch her breath, thinks she must imagine it when she feels Kara's start to do the same, but then she hears her take in a sudden ragged breath, and it's raspy, and she can hear the water that rattles in her lungs, but it's the most beautiful sound she thinks she's ever heard.

And then finally, finally, the feeling of falling stops.

She closes her eyes and lets the water push them gently back and forth as her teeth rattle. She knows Alex is on her way. Knows she just has to keep them both floating here just a little longer. Is thankful for the sun that is doing little to keep her warm, but everything to help her keep Kara alive.

And when she hears Kara's voice again, hears her whisper, "Thank you, thank you for saving me," with her head cradled softly against her chest, she cries; she cries because she realizes what she couldn't admit to before, that in saving Kara she had finally saved a part of herself as well.

Chapter Text

Kara wonders what they must look like.

Lena pressed against her side, her hands braced around Kal’s fallen frame, their feet sliding together as they try to find purchase on the rubble underneath as more threatens to fall on top of them.

Truth and hope and humanity huddled together at the edge of the universe.

But Kara doesn’t feel like the saint of any virtue now.

She is just scared.

And it’s a fear so familiar, so haunting, that when she closes her eyes, she feels 13 again. Feels her mother’s arms around her under a sky that is still red and a world that is still burning somewhere light-years away and decades in the past. She hears her father’s last words again, hears his broken promise reaching through all that time and all that space until it fades into nothing but the faint sound of her name echoing in its place.

“K-Kara?”

She feels Kal shift beneath her, and she opens her eyes, the two worlds now burning as one again as she feels her strength starting to falter, and she knows whatever has to happen has to happen now. She looks down, Kal’s blue eyes, hazy and pained but as familiar as the day she first saw them — as innocent as the day she first promised to protect him — and as much as she hates herself for it, she can’t stop herself from repeating her father’s words as she wipes away the sweat from his forehead.

“It’s okay, Kal.”

And even if she still can’t forgive him for leaving her behind, maybe she finally understands why he did.

She looks over her shoulder, sees the Anti-monitor trying to make his way through the fallen debris, armor half torn and steps faltering but still stronger than he should be.

“It’s okay. I-I know what to do.”

She has time, but not much.

Because she had been sent to Earth for one reason, and then she had chosen another, had decided to protect the Earth like she never could Krypton.

She lets her head fall, allowing the weight of what’s about to happen settle on her shoulders.

Knows she can’t look at Lena when she asks her to let her go.

“Take Kal, find the others, get out of this universe as fast as you can.”

Not after everything it took to get her back.

“Kara?”

And she hates the way Lena says her name with all the pain she promised never to cause her again.

“Lena, please, I need you to help me save him.”

But she just needs her to understand.

Because she had been sent to Earth for one reason, and then she had chosen another, had decided to protect the Earth like she never could Krypton.

“What about you?”

And they both sound so desperate, so tired, so angry at the things that put them in this place, that forced them to make this choice.

“Lena, please, there isn’t time; this is how it has to be.”

“How it has to! —” And Lena knows then. Understands what was in the book of destiny that Kara hadn’t wanted her to see, that she had been too much of a coward to tell her herself.

And still, Kara can’t look at her. Because if she does, she’ll see just how selfish she had been again, just how much pain she had caused again. All those moments, she could have said something and didn’t. All those times, she told herself she was doing the right thing. Kal had been wrong; love wasn’t always the most unselfish thing in the world; sometimes, it was the most.

“No! You promised!”

And Kara can feel Lena’s hands on her chest as she tries to push her away.

“You said no more lies!”

Feels them push harder as Lena tries to make her look at her.

But Kara keeps her head down, keeps hold of Lena’s hands, keeps them pressed against her chest, her words quiet and gentle among the chaos around them.

“I know.”

And as she steadies their hands together over her heart, she tries to hold onto that one last piece of proof of how they fit together, of how they had ever existed in the same place at the same time.

And Lena suddenly sounds so lost, her anger so quickly turning into desperation, to bargaining, to anything but acceptance.

“It doesn’t have to be you…I mean I wasn’t supposed to be a fucking Paragon. It was wrong then. It could be wrong now.”

And Kara sends one last prayer to Rao that she’s right, but she doesn’t dare lie. Not again. Not now.

So she doesn’t say it’s okay.

She doesn’t say everything will be fine.

And yet, she still can’t bring herself to say goodbye.

“I have — I have to go.”

She moves to stand, pulling herself to her feet, Lena’s hand sliding off of her shoulder and down her arm, but as she steps forward, Lena’s hand stays in hers, and she is forced finally to look up at her one last time.

“Ple-”

But her desperate plea to be let go — to be forgiven — is cut off by the urgent rush of Lena’s body into hers, by the hesitant press of lips and the quiver of fingers against her cheek that seek for so much more time than they are given.

But when Lena finally lets her go, it’s with a simple confession.

“I didn’t want there to be any more lies between us.”

The look in her eyes is all at once everything Kara feared and everything she always hoped for. A moment of clarity unmasked by both of their pain — every doubt she ever had that Lena could love her, had loved her, gone, replaced by the proof of Lena in her arms that no matter how brief and no matter how fleeting she could keep in her heart forever.

And it’s all she can do to hold onto that feeling as the ground underneath them shifts again, forcing them apart on last time.

When it settles, the anti-monitor stands in Lena’s place. The sky behind him slips between red and purple as explosions fill the air with the smell of ozone and sulfur and burning carbon.

His words echo through the rubble.

“I will wait no longer! You will die. And your Cousin, your family…your worlds. All shall die with you!”

And there is something in his vengeance that seems so mortal to her, so human. Even as he stands there with his chest heaving with light and his hands glowing with embers, she knows he is not the god he proclaims to be, that he was born from the same stars as her — maybe he can be broken the same as her too.

“You have sealed your fate. As have I.”

He steps forward, unconcerned about the building inferno around them as he mocks her.

“Do you wish to die, Kara Zor-El?”

Kara can’t bring herself to answer him, throws herself at him instead, forcing her body to move faster than her mind, to push past all the hope that still lingered to the anger that lay underneath.

She tries to stay just out of his reach, tries to be smarter and faster, but all it takes is one moment in the wrong place and —

“Kara! Watch out!”

She feels the Anti-monitor’s massive hand tighten around her, pulling her toward the ground, her cape fluttering uselessly behind her as Lena’s voice echoes in her ears along with a pain that makes it impossible to breathe, to think.

She was out of time.

She could see Lena and Kal on the other side of them. Could see Lena holding onto Kal with one hand while the other gripped the extrapolator, thumb shaking as it hovered over the button that would pull them out of this place.

She tries to look at her, to ask her to forgive her one more time, to thank her for helping keep the promise she made to her parents all those years ago, and for saving the world together one last time.

She sends one last prayer to Rao, ignores the agonized protest of her heart that is telling her it’s not ready to let go as she pushes her fists into the center of the anti-monitor’s chest until she feels all at once the weightlessness of space the impossible heaviness of sun.

It was like touching every part of the universe.

And for a second, there was something beautiful about it.

But then she feels it all come apart.

Every cell.

Every atom.

Colliding and combusting — breaking apart over and over and over.

She could feel the Anti-monitor’s chest give way, feel it replaced by nothing but emptiness.

She pushed harder.

Every part of her, becoming a part of him.

Light and dark matter warring for the same space.

It could only end in destruction.

She tries to look back one last time, to make sure Lena and Kal are gone, but all there is a blinding light and then the feeling of being pulled, of falling, and then nothing.

—- —- —- —-

Lena feels the cool metal of the ring against her finger. Its weight different now than when it had been hidden in her pocket. Brainy’s instructions and calculations and warnings ringing in her ears as she watches the Anti-monitor hold Kara a loft.

Her thumb skims the button on the extrapolator she had modified.

She looks back at Clark, at Kal.

She’s running out of time.

Kara’s running out of time.

She can hear Alex’s voice in her ear, asking what the hell is happening.

If they’ve destroyed the machine?

If they’re ready to come back?

If everything is okay?

She thinks how the answer is yes to every one but the last.

Because she is sitting here deciding whether or not to leave Kara to die, and so no, everything is very much not fucking okay.

Kal moves behind her, trying to stand, to help, but she knows he’s still too weak, and fuck what would Lex think of her now if he could see her, the fate of two Supers in her hands. She can’t help but offer a cursed smile to the not-so-subtle irony of the world.

She holds on tighter to the extrapolator just as she finds herself knocked off of her feet.

Lena goes blind for a second, but when her vision clears, she sees them both still suspended in the sky, Kara and the Anit-Monitor surrounded by a bright light as they fall through the sky.

She manages it get to her feet again just in time to watch as the light around them starts to collapse, manages to pull Kal up with her, hanging onto his cape with the hand now bearing Brainy’s legion ring, and it’s all adrenaline and weightlessness and a feeling she’d never be able to describe again as she feels her feet leave the ground.

But fuck she still hates flying.

And when she’s finally close enough, she reaches out, fingers just touching the fabric of Kara’s cape, her hand just close enough to feel its heaviness, but then there’s a flash of light, and then there’s an unbearable wave of heat. And she pulls, she pulls unknowing if it’s enough, she pulls with nothing to stop her body falling backward, the heat and atmosphere and dust and ash all passing over her as she lands, sharp rocks digging into her back.

There’s a quietness that follows the chaos. She watches the muted explosions above her give way to only sharp white light before she finds herself staring up at the first blue sky she’s seen in what feels like years.

She doesn’t remember pushing the button on the extrapoltaor.

But she must have.

If they are here.

If they are any place that isn’t there.

But where is the question now.

She rolls to her side, can feel the blood that follows down the side of her face as she does.

And fuck, that hurts.

She sees the back of Kal’s cape in front of her; it’s red so much brighter now that the world has been thrust back into its normal vivid hues.

But something still feels wrong.

And it’s then she sees the way his shoulders shudder with each breath he takes.

It’s then she sees Kara’s head cradled against his chest, her cape torn and hanging from her shoulders as if its weight alone might pull her from his arms.

“No.”

She says it first in disbelief.

“No!”

Then again, in resolution.

She says it to herself and to the universe and to the god she knows Kara prays too and the god she stopped believing in when her mother died.

This is not how this ends.

She presses up onto her elbows and then onto her knees, the world tilting at every angle. She isn’t sure she ever even makes it fully to her feet before she is next to them, before somehow Kara is in her arms instead of Kal’s.

And she is everything the world isn’t.

Quiet.

Still.

Cold.

“Kara,” she whispers.

And for some reason she Lena feels the overwhelming need to be gentle with her — wants to push away the hair that has fallen across her face and wipe away the streak of ash beneath her cheek.

“Kara,” she whispers again.

“It—It’s over now. It’s okay now.”

She looked back at Kal. His head held in his hands, broken, hurt, but still breathing. She hears Alex in her ear again, hears her saying that they are on their way, hears her asking for coordinates.

She had helped Kara keep her promise to everyone else but her.

“Lena?” It was Alex again. “Lena, what’s going on?”

It can’t be like this.

It can’t.

“I-I need a, I just, I need —” She tries to breathe, she tries to think, she tries to talk, she rips the comms from her ear when she can no neither.

And with the warmth of the sun at her back and tears falling onto her hands, she feels for the steady beat of Kara’s heart.

It won’t end like this.

It won’t.

—- —- —- —–

The sky isn’t red.

The sky is blue.

The sky is blue, and the sun is warm, and Lena’s eyes are green, and the world is still standing.

Kara can see Lena’s comm hanging from her ear, bent, and dented in on one side, barely held together by the wires through which she can still hear Alex’s frantic voice.

“L-Lena—please—.”

But Lena doesn’t look like she can hear her.

Instead, she’s looking right at her, tears making her eyes that much more green.

“Kara? Kara, can you hear me? Kara please.”

And there’s a layer of dirt over both of them, and Lena has a streak of blood along the side of her face and staining the top of her shirt. But still, she can’t help but think she looks beautiful despite it all— that she’s never looked more beautiful.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and she doesn’t know where those words come from or even what they mean right now. But she has so many things to be forgiven for, she supposes.

Lena reaches out to touch her face, fingers slipping through her hair and resting on the base of her neck as her head falls against her chest.

“You’re sor—, you’re an idiot.”

Kara closes her eyes and lets the touch try to take away some of the pain.

She feels Lena let out a deep breath, shaky, and unsteady as if she had been holding it in for too long.

“I think that the gods sent you here to punish me.”

Kara opens her eyes slowly, her voice quiet as she lifts her arm, trying not to wince as she reaches up to wipe the tears from Lena’s cheek.

“You told me you didn’t believe in God.”

But Lena just shakes her head and shifts closer, her hand moving to brush the hair from Kara’s forehead as a gentle laugh tries to mask her pain.

“Well, the universe then, the universe and the stars, and every atom and particle, they all conspired together to send you here to punish me.”

Kara smiles and kisses the back of Lena’s hand, thinking not for the first time about just that, about everything that should have kept them apart that somehow brought them together … “but you decided to love me instead.”

Lena nods, resting her head again on her chest, their bodies pressed together… “Yes, I’ve decided to love you instead.”

Kara knows they won’t be alone much longer.

She knows they will have to share each other with the world again.

Knows all the other people they have both missed that are waiting for them.

But for this moment, they are in each other’s arms, and the universe is not a vast place of infinite worlds; it is only here and only now, and it is only them.