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Kara Danvers was one of those kids who was always almost dying. 

Eliza had told her so a hundred times: one day, Kara, you're gonna stick your head where it don't belong and lose it . She climbs trees to rescue old ladies' cats; she solves a playground fight with a swift punch to the nose; she gets a lowdown membership at a boxing ring; she gets a PI license and chases down the lowest of the low. 

But the closest Kara ever comes to death, truly, is when Lena Luthor pushes open her office door without a knock, in a black dress and with a face people start wars over. The next four closest times Kara comes to death are all because of that face. 

And what a face, really. Like a sculpture. Like an old conquering hero had a lover and had her immortalized. Lena Luthor’s skin was alabaster pale, jaw like marble, eyebrows a vivid dark on the paper of her face. And the rest of her was perfect as pie, perfect like heaven, curves like a mountain road too dangerous to go over thirty on. And Kara Danvers was always one of those women who was always almost dying:

“I need your help, Detective Danvers,” Lena Luthor said, that fateful day two years ago, and Kara Danvers had sat up like a marionette in her chair and smiled real big.

“Anything you need, Miss…”

“Luthor. Lena Luthor.”

--

Two years later…

Kara hits the deck hard. No one really expects to be running through the Boardwalk only to get clocked in the face with a toy gun, but her nose takes the brunt of it, and then she’s on her back looking up at the dusky purple sky of National City.

“Aw, jeez,” Kara spits out, rolling over just to see her perp in the wind, sprinting down the Boardwalk limbs akimbo. “Why’d you hit me, kid?” 

When she rolls back over, the game worker gives a shrug, hoisting the plastic gun onto his shoulder. He can’t be more than fourteen, the damned ankle-biter, but he looks a little less carefree about it when Kara sits up and starts wiping blood from her face.

“You’re a lady,” he says, looking around like he’s gone and murdered her. Feels about the same; her nose is still healing off an incident with a perp’s fist. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Kara says, hopping up onto her feet. “I know, it’s a lady in a suit, what in the good lord’s name, so on, so forth, I get it. You seen that guy before?”

“You a dick?” the kid asks, looking moon-eyed about this whole thing. Kara’s about done with it, to be quite honest.

“A private one. You gonna answer any of my questions or are you gonna stare about it a little longer?” 

“I like the suit,” the kid says. He stands up a bit taller, puts the plastic rifle down on the little bar between him and her. “You look nice in it.”

“Thanks,” Kara says, after a pause. It’s one of those things, like a dame at a club calling her handsome, that makes her feel tall. Kids these days. “You seen that guy?”

“Yeah,” the kid says. “He’s one of our mechanics. I think you could get a turtle to do a better job, actually, he broke the Ferris wheel last week. Mr. Edge was on him about it for hours, right in front of God and everyone. He hire you to track him down?"

Kara can’t help but scoff, reaching for her hat off the ground and dusting it off. 

“Kid, I’m not in the business of telling people what to do, but Morgan Edge is some of the lowest scum in this whole scummy town,” Kara says. Just saying it brings her back to that pipe coming down hard on the back of her skull, the dull ringing in her ears for days, the brutal feeling of her whole face pounding in time with her heartbeat. “If he writes your checks, you better hope it ain’t for too long.”

The kid looks shocked by the harshness of the whole thing, but Kara can’t be bothered. Her perp’s off and away, and she’s standing forty feet above the damn ocean on Morgan Edge’s pride and joy Boardwalk Promenade. 

“Which way to the hot dog stand?” she asks. She’s still got some counterfeits off some other perp a few days ago; maybe Morgan Edge will like them in his bank.

-

When she finally gets back to the office late, the sunset dipped away and gone, her lights are on, visible from the street. That’s a little odd.

Brainy and Winn are already off and gone, surely, probably drinking beers at their tiny little apartment down the street. Alex is at work, most definitely, doing the good kind of copping, chasing down murderers and such. That little reporter gal Nia has been in and out of Kara’s office all week about some sort of fabric shipment gone missing - Kara isn’t really in the fashion game, but she’s been poking around at it a little on the side, but no way she’d break in without invitation. Kara’s brain works hard and harder to try to arrive at who, exactly, it  could be up there in her office. 

There’s half an impulse of fear that Morgan Edge heard her chew that kid out at the Boardwalk and has finally sent a goon to finish her off. But Kara Danvers isn’t one for fear, and she ain’t one to back down from a fight.

She’s walking up the stairs slow, avoiding the creaky spots, when she realizes who it is. It’s one of those things that’s supernatural, like when she knows a crook just as soon as she spots them. She hits the landing of the second floor and knows with veracity that Lena Luthor is waiting for her in her office.

Kara Danvers isn’t one for fear, sure, but she’s got sense.

Morgan Edge had gone about as far on her as a person could without just dismembering them because of that woman up there, his wife. Sure, the two despise each other and live on two separate ends of the city, Morgan holed up with a harem of women on the south end and Lena in her massive penthouse at the National City Grand. But Lena Luthor as a wife was a commodity as much as money or the real estate Edge gobbled up like a noxious pig; the Luthor name carried weight in National City. Hell, it carried weight across the country even. Lex Luthor ran the electrical and the radio and he assisted the poor and he loved his sister more than anyone on the goddamn Earth.

So yeah, once upon a time, Kara Danvers and Lena Luthor had been friendly-like. The woman was smart as a whip, tougher than one, and on occasion, Kara had got helped out on a case by the bored heiress. And it had been something like a fairy tale, sometimes, taking the turns down the coast too-fast, Lena’s voice in her ear, talking over the details of a case, her head a mile a minute while Kara’s was as calm as a lonely night on the Pacific. But it wasn’t so lonely, being with Lena.

“Are you going to stand down there forever?” Lena asks. Kara is leant up in the corner of the stairwell, breathing deep, in the middle of a muck, but she hears that voice - that deep voice, amused, tinted with the little bit of Irish Lena got from her mother, and it’s like God whispering. She looks up before she can stop herself.

Lena is leant against the doorway to Kara’s office, wearing a deep red dress and red lipstick and hair coiffed like a pin-up. Kara’s seen pretty girls, has seen them all kinds of ways, but Lena Luthor is the pinnacle of them, just standing there with one eyebrow raised.

“I was thinkin’ about it,” Kara says. She stays in her corner of the stairwell, eyes trained on Lena as she steps free of the doorway and comes closer, her hands catching the dim light and forearms resting on the railing looking down over the stairwell. Kara Danvers is a liar; she’s got fear pounding out her heart so bad it might as well be a radio blasting.

“I need your help,” Lena says. This is the first time they’ve talked since two years ago; since Kara broke her arm on a rusty pipe; since she got her leg burned up with a hot iron; since Morgan Edge put her in a dingy basement and hit her with a phone and told her to stay the hell away from my wife. And Kara had crawled over to Lena’s like a dumb child, and Lena had looked Kara in the bruised face and told her that their very certain accord was over, and then she had kissed Kara on the corner of her busted lip and told her to get the hell out of her apartment.

Two years, and Lena’s asking for her help.

Goddamn her, but Kara takes a step up the stairs, and not down.

-

Lena looks a little less confident about this whole thing when the door is closed and Kara’s making them coffee out of her little kitchenette. She sits there on the office couch and looks around the room like it’s a foreign land; Kara’s seen her sprawled out asleep on that couch more than a few times. Kara’s seen her in the bed in the next room too, ensconced in Kara’s sheets while Kara tries to get her own sleep on that awful couch. 

They don’t talk. Kara makes the coffee and she drags a chair over to the couch. She doesn’t hand Lena the mug; she sets it on the coffee table made up of milk crates and she looks at Lena. She’s always been one of Kara’s favorite things to look at, and seeing her now, a whole two years after that fuzzy vision, is dreamlike in its own way. She’s dumb as a doornail. 

“Whaddya need?” Kara asks, finally, after at least six to seven minutes of damnable silence. Lena’s just managing to get her coffee cup into her hand, her short and clean nails picking at the chip along the rim. Kara hates herself, really, because she can’t help but ask: “You okay?”

“I had a prototype go missing this week,” Lena says, finally. She looks grave as a mausoleum. She’s prone to the dramatics, sometimes, but she looks dead serious when she glances her dark eyes up to Kara’s. “I’m...somewhat worried about its applications in less than scrupulous hands. And I suspect Morgan stole it from me.” 

It makes Kara’s head freeze up, return to bleeding out on the floor of one of Edge’s basement properties, struggling upstairs and collapsing onto the first pedestrian she could find. Poor guy’d damn near had a heart attack. It’s one of those things with her; her breath catches in her chest and it takes a few moments to kick her lungs back into action.

“Okay,” Kara says, reaching up to her head and pulling her hat off before she tosses it somewhere over to her desk chair. She’s wishing she had put whiskey in her coffee, or that she wasn’t trying to kick smoking to the curb. Sitting in arm’s reach of Lena again is making her grind her damn teeth. “What’s all that got to do with me?”

Kara gets up then, abandoning her shit coffee and heading for her desk. It takes some seconds to jimmy open the sticky drawer, but she manages to get her hands on a few butterscotch candies that Winn had bought from the corner store. She’s barely got them unwrapped before one’s in her mouth. It eases that itchy feeling, and she leans up against her window sill, where Lena used to sit and read files over her shoulder, her heels clipped on the arm of Kara’s chair. 

“Kara,” Lena starts, standing as if to follow. Kara feels the edge of the window sill dig hard into the base of her spine she backs up so fast. 

“I don’t go after mobsters,” Kara says. 

“Morgan’s hardly a mobster,” Lena says, rolling her eyes. Kara feels like shaking the woman, she’s so oblique about this whole thing.

“If he stole something from you, ask him for it back. He’s your damned husband,” Kara says. She wonders if she could track down where Winn and Brainy have stashed her cigarettes. Maybe she’s still got a cigar somewhere as a gift from a client; her eyes are flicking around everywhere but Lena. 

“You know as well as I do that we’re not nearly that congenial,” Lena says. “Or else he wouldn’t have stolen something from me.”

“Yeah, well, you know as well as I do he busted my brains in,” Kara says. “And to be honest, I’m just not in a place where I feel like giving him a chance to finish what he started.”

Kara hears Lena suck in a deep breath at that one. It’s the truth, plain, laid out on the floor between them. Kara and Lena spent months and months pretending that things were normal; that falling asleep in separate rooms and reading each other’s minds and staking out in Kara’s shit car and going to clubs together was normal. The thing about deception is that the worst of it is what you do to yourself; Kara let herself sit in a pile of lava and let herself think it was a spa. It took a few knocks to the face with a telephone to get her to feel the burn.

She wonders, right now, if Lena’s still sittin’ in the lava thinking she’s going in for a manicure after this.

“I wouldn’t have come to you if I didn’t feel like it was important,” Lena finally says, her voice uneven and hushed and tense. “I wouldn’t put you in danger if I didn’t think it was necessary. You’re the best investigator in the city, you’re not under Morgan’s thumb, and I trust you.”

“Three factors that end with me dead in a ditch, I assure you,” Kara says. “Jeez, Lena, you think you can walk in here and ask for my help tracking down God knows what from your damned husband after not saying one kind word to me in two years?”

“That was to keep you safe, Kara,” Lena says. “Morgan told me if I ever saw you again, he’d kill you. And I couldn’t - ”

“I ain’t your monkey, Lena,” Kara says. “Maybe I was once, but I ain’t now - ”

“That night. You told me you loved me,” Lena says. Kara sucks so hard on the butterscotch that her teeth clack. “Do you still?”

Kara has to breathe around it. The thing about ladies like Lena Luthor is that you don’t forget them, Kara’s learnt that in her years in this business. There’s always guys chasing girls they knew once, years ago, saw her on a train or in the street and couldn’t stop thinking about her. There’s guys with four kids and a house in the hills shacking up in the valley with their college sweetheart they couldn’t knock from their heads; there’s guys who end up dead because they fall in love with their hooker; there’s girls in clubs Kara meets who sit in the bar stool next to Kara and look right through her. Love is hell on Earth, and dangerous as. 

Gumshoes like her see ladies all day long. Ladies looking distraught, eyes wrung with tears, lookin’ like they never experienced happiness all their lives. And the PI’s, they fall for it. It’s a dime a dozen. 

Kara’s seen those ladies in her office twice a week for two years, and the thing of it all is, the sad thing that rattles her bones every morning, is that none of them are the woman standing in front of her. 

Kara’s the same as any old fool. She set eyes on Lena Luthor, and didn’t forget her for a second. Even when it was best she did. 

“No,” Kara says, as long as she can make it without sounding like she’s dragging it from her mouth like how clowns pull cloth up their throat. The butterscotch on her tongue feels acrid. 

It takes Lena a few seconds to respond, but she does, and it’s almost too funny, really. Kara thinks she could laugh for a few years.

“Good,” Lena says. “So we shouldn’t have any problems if we stay smart.”

Kara Danvers is like any other person in love. A damnable idiot.

“Yeah,” Kara agrees. “Okay.”

-

“The prototype I was designing is a small-scale air purifier,” Lena says. She’s got about thirty blueprints laid out on Kara’s milk crates, her heels still on. Kara is nursing her coffee again, this time with a healthy dash of whiskey. Lena had asked for a splash as well. “Well, at the moment, it’s small-scale, but ideally, it could clear whole buildings or city blocks.”

“So you’re calling me in on a marital grudge match over whose is whose?” Kara asks. Lena sighs, taps her heeled toes on the ground.

“The design works via air exchange,” Lena says. “Conceivably, it could be used as a weapon by changing the chemical compounds involved in the exchange.”

“And you think your lunkhead husband is smart enough to figure that out?” Kara asks. She’s feeling a mean spirit sitting on her sholder right now, hard to shake around the vision of Lena sitting in her office all over again. 

“I’d rather not take the chance,” Lena says. Her jaw clenches tight. “Like I said. I wouldn’t involve you if I didn’t think it was important.”

“Alright,” Kara says, leant back in her chair and watching as Lena flips through her fancy blueprints. Her hands are pale against the blue color of the paper, fingers long. Kara takes a big gulp of her whiskey with a side of coffee. “How do ya know Edge stole it?”

“He sent one of his cronies to check the security on my penthouse,” Lena says, shrugging. “And when I got back in, it was gone.”

“And you can rule out your doorman, your security people, you misplacing it, so on,” Kara says. Lena looks affronted at the suggestion. “I hate the guy as much as anyone does, but I ain’t gonna go after him if it slipped your mind and it’s under your bed this whole time.”

“The prototype weighs forty pounds and hasn’t left my workbench since I started building it. My doorman saw the man enter with a briefcase and leave with the same briefcase, and my security people say that he wanted to investigate the penthouse alone,” Lena says. 

“Anything else missing?” Kara asks. It’s nighttime now, the sun gone and went, moonlight starting to filter through the blinds and into the office. The only light in the room is the one Kara had reluctantly switched on behind Lena’s head. It’s got a halo effect that makes Kara want to laugh.

“Nothing,” Lena says. “I had jewelry out, other prototypes. I checked everything.”

Kara’s inclined to trust Lena on that; the girl’s smart as anyone Kara’s ever met, with a memory like a picture. She’d know if even a dust mite was out of place. Doesn’t help the haze in Kara’s head, though.

“Alright,” Kara says, finally. “You got a description of the guy?”

“Yes. Lucky for us, he’s got quite the identifiable face,” Lena says. She drops a picture of a guy standing stern, Air Force uniform tight on broad shoulders. He’s built like a Redwood, the monstrosity. And Kara recognizes him.

“Corben,” Kara says. He’s got a big old gash down his face and into his chin. No wonder no one had trouble describing the guy. Kara gets up out of her chair again and shuffles to her desk, rifling through the stacks on top of it. She knocks over an old cup of coffee and a precarious set of books, but she manages to nab the file she’s been working between actually interesting cases. “John Corben, Air Force mechanic.”

“Yes,” Lena says, her voice a little breathy. Kara runs her hand through her hair, flips open the file. There’s not too much, really, but enough to get her feet on the ground and nail him fast. She almost had him on the Boardwalk, even. “You’ve already been on him?”

“His wife thinks his behavior’s been real erratic ever since he went up north camping with his work buddies,” Kara says. She comes back to the coffee table and drops the file on top of Lena’s blueprints. “The missus thinks he’s cheating, but I’ve mostly just gathered the impression he’s a numbskull. I was chasing him around earlier today, even, but this kid bashed my nose in for running on the Boardwalk.”

“That explains the bruising,” Lena says, her eyes soft as they trace Kara’s face. There used to be times Lena’d look at her like that and Kara’d feel it like her hand, running circles around Kara’s bruises until they healed up right as rain. They hadn’t ever really touched much, and it was for the best. It made Kara crazy when it happened.

“I was gonna pop in to visit him tomorrow night,” Kara says. “He’s got a bout scheduled at the Roxy’s underground. Big money guy, I guess. Brainy’s been hittin’ up bookies all over town to track him down.” 

“Brainy’s still around?” Lena asks. She still sounds soft, distracted from the file in her hands, the grinning Corben peering up at her. Kara’s got a feeling like she drank a bottle of rancid milk.

“Sure,” Kara says. “Some people, this is their life.” 

She doesn’t mean for it to sound cruel, but it does, and she knows it especially well when Lena’s face winces.

“I’m sorry, Kara,” Lena says. “I didn’t know Morgan would come after you, and I’m sorry I - I’m sorry I couldn’t keep working with you.”

Kara has to breathe deep, wishes again for a cigarette, takes a heavy gulp of her coffee and whiskey. Lena’s looking like any girl on the verge of tears, pretty, intense, eyes bouncing all over Kara’s face.

“I knew Edge would come after me eventually,” Kara says. And it’s true; she knew enough before she ever met Lena Luthor that he was one of those guys who thought that people could be his property; that the guys he hired and the ladies he kept around were his little toys and that he wasn’t keen on other people touching them. Kara had endeavored to treat his wife like a person, had loved her like he never could without putting a damned finger on her, and she had known without equivocation that he wouldn’t let her get away with that for too long. It had been a matter of the shoe dropping. “I was - stupid. I should have told you to get lost. Like you told me.”

“I didn’t want to tell you that,” Lena says. “You have to know that. I wanted you around. You were my best friend.”

Kara, in the end, isn’t interested in hearing Lena capitulate. Women are always throwing doe eyes her way and she hasn’t been in the business of falling for it after Lena. In towns like National City, you get one mistake and then you get a bullet. 

“It’s done,” Kara says, waves her hand, shutting down the quiet watery eyes so fast it was like they were never there. It’s all the same. “I’ll go find him tomorrow, and I’ll get your prototype back, and we can go back to the way things ought to be.”

One of Kara’s very favorite things about Lena was how ice cold she was to the world, and how hot she ran with Kara. She’d go from talking a mile a minute sitting in the front seat of Kara’s car to sitting prim and pretty for a goon they’d be chasing. She was a lot of things all at once; a jawbreaker that Kara had the pleasure to slice all the way through. 

To tell the truth, though, it hurts to see the mask settle into place when Lena sits straight as a board and nods slowly, like she’s heard Kara loud and clear.

-

“You look like shit,” is how Winn greets Kara. He’s holding a cup of coffee up over her head, has just shook her awake. There’s sun streaming in through her bedroom window. She’s got clothes strewn everywhere, but things are especially haphazard today - because she took four shots of whiskey last night and threw darts at her city map for fun before she passed out. Her mattress seems as though it’s about to shiver its way free from her bedframe.

“Indeed,” Brainy adds. “You should wake up soon, Miss Danvers, as your sister is coming by momentarily.”

“She can come meet me in here,” Kara mutters, running her hand on her face to wipe away drool that’s accumulated there. “Christ. What time is it?”

“Around ten,” Winn says. “You have a bad night?”

“Bad life, feels like,” Kara huffs. “Lena came by.”

There’s a pause. A long one that has Kara pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Lena Lutessa Luthor, genius and millionaire, former colleague of this office?” Brainy asks. He’s got his tie tied so far up his neck he looks like he’s choking himself. Winn is in a loose bowtie, the both of them looking down at her like they’re starting to piece together why she looks like she shrivelled up and died last night.

“Very same,” Kara says. “Why’d neither of you tell me I didn’t have pants on?” 

“I kinda wanted to see how long it’d take you to notice,” Winn says, stepping back as Kara leverages herself out of the bed. “So Lena came by, and now you’re pantsless and you look like shit?”

“Seems it would be so,” Kara mumbles, shuffling around trying to find her pants without her glasses on. They appear in front of her face, held up by Brainy. “Why’s Alex coming?”

“Didn’t say,” Winn says. “Gonna assume you didn’t end up pantsless in the good way with Lena.”

“You’d assume correct,” Kara says, buckling her pants and shuffling over to her hanging rack of clothes to dig around for a fresh shirt. “She wanted help with a case, and I got cooked. Hey, where in the hell did you hide my cigarettes?”

“I flushed ‘em all,” Winn says. “You can thank me later.”

“I won’t,” Kara mutters, buttoning up the shirt she’s managed to find buried in the mess of clothes. “Brainy, can you do me a favor and find out who’s puttin’ on the fight at the Roxy underground tonight? And if you can, ask your bookie friend who’s betting big on that Corben guy.”

“I will reach out to my contact,” Brainy says, and then disappears to the front of the office as quick as can be. Winn lingers, still holding coffee and looking at Kara like he knows her head.

“Are you helping Lena with her case?” Winn asks, as Kara starts fitting her holster on and grabs her glasses where they’ve managed to land near her pile of ties. She doesn’t answer immediately, blinking as her world shifts into focus. “Kara. Edge almost took you out for getting anywhere near her - ”

“I know,” Kara huffs, reaching for a random tie before she thinks better of it and tosses it back into the pile. Who cares if Alex sees her without a tie on? She’d probably just view it as an easier way to choke Kara after Winn goes ahead and spills the beans. 

“He busted your arm, burnt your leg, and nearly bashed your brains through your skull,” Winn says. “Why in the hell would you even let her in here?”

“She broke in,” Kara mutters, grabbing finally for the precious cup of coffee in Winn’s hand. It rolls Kara’s stomach over and burns the hell out of her throat, but she nearly downs half the mug. 

“And you didn’t kick her right the hell back out?” Winn asks. He looks as though he might take her out before Alex ever gets hands on her. “She’s bad news, Kara.”

“She ain’t bad news,” Kara croaks, mindlessly defending against the same thought she’d had the second she’d laid eyes on Lena just last night. “Her husband’s bad news.”

“Her brother’s bad news, too,” Winn says. “The guys we know in the energy commision keep saying he’s runnin’ a racket. Shortages every other night in the poor areas, keeps upcharging tenants until they get run out. And then Edge walks in and buys ‘em up.”

“Lena ain’t bad news,” Kara insists, slipping her brass knuckles into her pocket and holstering her knife. 

“She’s reckless, then,” Winn says. “If she walked in here and asked for your help, she put you on the line. You really wanna go out and hang for a girl like that?”

“Can I just have one cigarette?” Kara asks, huffing and trying to tuck her shirttails in while she drinks her coffee at the same time. Winn looks at her like he’s lookin’ at a cat hit by a car lying in the street.

“It’s never just one,” Winn says. And then he walks out just as their buzzer sounds.

-

“You look like shit,” Alex says, first thing, as she strolls into Kara’s office. She’s got her whole shebang on, uniform cinched tight and buttons gleaming. Her baton and gun are strapped to her waist. Her sergeant had told her that she didn’t need to wear the uniform, being that she was a detective and all that, but Alex liked wearing it when making house calls. 

“Sure,” Kara says, adjusting her hat so that it cuts out some of the glare from the window. Alex snorts, slumping into the chair opposite Kara’s desk, dropping her hat on the hardwood. 

“We got an anonymous tip that a PI shot a guy uptown, on Cordova and Mullard,” Alex says. Kara hums, sipping her now-second cup of coffee. Winn had dumped extra sugar cubes in this one, thankfully. 

“He have a good reason?” Kara asks, blinking down at the open file of Corben’s in front of her. Alex sighs, shuffling in her seat until Kara looks up at her. She looks more than a little drawn in. “No?”

“The tip said it was a lady gumshoe,” Alex says, and then she tosses a photograph out onto Kara’s desk. “Said she came careening into the alley and blew a whole revolver in the guy.”

The photograph is familiar, and Kara feels her fingertips go a little numb.

“I know this guy,” Kara says, her mouth dropping open. “This guy’s wife called me a week ago asking for help tracking him down.”

“And he’s dead,” Alex says, and then she drops another photograph on Kara’s desk. The guy’s littered with bullets along his chest, blood seeping into his white shirt. “Look, Kara - ”

“I didn’t shoot the guy,” Kara says. “You know I don’t shoot people, Alex, that’s - I haven’t even worked his case yet, thought I’d wait him out a few days to see if he’d show up - ”

“He was a security guard at the Grand,” Alex says. 

“The Grand?” Kara asks, rubbing her aching head and trying to piece together what, exactly, Alex is trying to tell her. Just like last night, though, it hits her like a sack of bricks. “The Grand. What the hell are you asking me, Alex?”

“Were you at the National City Grand a week ago?” Alex asks. “Can you provide your revolver to evidence?”

“Are you serious?” Kara asks. Alex shrugs. “I haven’t been anywhere near the National City Grand in two whole years, Alex, you know that. And you know I haven’t shot a guy, either. You can look at my case files, even.”

“This guy was one of Lena’s security guards,” Alex says. “He’s dead, packed full of bullets the whole damn department knows you pack. There ain’t a cop in this town hasn’t been asked about what you’re doing around town by Edge’s guys, and you sure as hell know one of them’s gonna spill this tip - ”

“Are you here to arrest me?” Kara asks. Alex snorts, gathering up the photos and slipping them into her breast pocket.

“You think I wouldn’t give you a five hour head start if I was coming to arrest you?” Alex asks. “No, I’m just - letting you know. Someone’s playing games with your name. And if that don’t matter to you, they’re using Lena to do it.”

“Jeez,” Kara mutters, putting her face in her hands, pulling her hat low to rub at her eyes. They feel bruised, and it stings, but she presses hard anyway. “Does she know?”

“I was gonna go talk to her after you,” Alex says, looking soft. “Well, I was gonna let Mags talk to her and I was gonna just burn her up with my eyes while Mags talked.”

“She came here last night,” Kara admits, teeth grinding as she says it. Alex looks back at her like she’s gone and shot a man right in front of Alex, and then she looks like she might stand up and smack Kara with her baton. 

“Did she say anything about this guy?” Alex asks, finally, after many seconds of thought. Kara shakes her head.

“She wants my help with a case,” Kara says. “Thankfully, it’s something that had already crossed my desk, so I’m just gonna wrap it up and send her out on her way - ”

“She came here after two years of no word, after you got your can kicked over her, and had it in her to ask for your help?” Alex asks incredulously. Then, with significantly more warning, “ Kara .”

“Listen, it’ll be fine, I’ll wrap it up tonight and it’ll be done - ” Kara says, but Alex is standing abruptly. 

“You almost died because of her damned husband,” Alex whisper-yells. It’s the worst kind of thing that Alex does, all lecture, like Eliza when Kara came to live with them and she and Alex would start brawling in their shared room. “I’m sure she already knows about this guy gettin’ plugged in your name, and now she’s slinking around here again? You’ll be the next guy I’m sending to the morgue.”

“I ain’t going to any morgue,” Kara says. “I’m gonna go get this guy for her case, and I’m gonna tell her to get lost.”

Alex looks at her like she knows Kara’s chest is burning at the thought of telling Lena to get lost. She straightens up, puts on her cap, and looks all imperious down her nose at Kara.

“I need you to be careful, Kara,” Alex says, finally. “You’re my sister. If you get killed over her, I’ll drag you back to life myself just to kill you again.”

“I love you too,” Kara says, grinning. Alex returns it after a few seconds, sounding rough around the edges. She’s as careful as Kara knows how to be, really. Maybe that’s the problem.

-

“I got a call back from our betting friend,” Brainy says, just as he’s throwing his coat on over his shoulders. It’s late night, a lazy day at the office. Kara’s been pacing in circles, thinking over and over again about that guy all plugged with bullets, Alex’s grim face. If Alex had thought to come ask Kara to her face, maybe that meant there were people in the PD who thought she should be behind bars - and maybe they were under Edge’s thumb - and maybe Corben was just another little mouse for her to chase before she got her paw stuck in the trap. 

“Yeah?” Kara asks. Her hands are rattling a little bit as she flips the lid of her flask and dumps whiskey in. Winn’s already gone off to James’s to get a couple photos developed for a case they’ve been working for a few weeks. Brainy is one of those guys who doesn’t comment on things until they’re at their worst, like when Kara came home after going to Lena’s years ago and laid on the floor and bled all over everything. I think, perhaps, you might need to see a doctor. 

“Yes. He stated that the Roxy is owned by Morgan Edge, but that the fight is backed anonymously through a major donor. He said that the money is near split in his book,” Brainy says. “Though the bets on Corben’s opponent are higher bets.”

“Higher bets,” Kara hums. “Who’s he fighting?

“A man by the name of Hank Henshaw,” Brainy says. “Former Air Force captain, worked in Nevada at Groom Lake for a time and pursued boxing as a hobby in Las Vegas. From what I could gather from our sources there, he was a very good fighter. They were surprised his odds are so low.”

“And the odds?” Kara asks.

“Twelve to one. Corben’s odds are three to one. I’m not much of a gambling man, but even I’d consider placing some money on Henshaw,” Brainy says.

“Wonderful,” Kara huffs, reaching down to tighten up her boots and then tightening up her holster. “Seems like a damned powder keg. Anything else I should know?”

“Yes,” Brainy says. “Lena Luthor is waiting for you out by our desks.”

Kara nearly falls over as she’s pulling on her trench coat. Brainy’s mouth does not quirk, but there’s a hint of amusement in his eyes as she starts muttering under her breath. She doesn’t even know what she’s saying, just that she’s off-balance and riled up. She triple checks her pockets for cash, her nifty little badge, her brass knuckles, her knife, her other knife, her gun, tucked high in her armpit - and then she just stands there, staring from her bedroom to the cracked door leading to Winn and Brainy’s little enclave.

“Why?” Kara hisses.

“I did not ask,” Brainy says. “She looked rather distraught, so I offered her a tea, and then I came back here to see you - ”

“Distraught? Why the hell’d you leave her out there?” Kara asks, adjusting the collar of her trench coat where it’s got all tangled with her shirt collar and shoving her feet into her shoes before trying to shove past Brainy. He waivers just the littlest bit. “Brains. You kidding me?”

“I’m somewhat concerned about Miss Luthor’s presence,” Brainy says. 

“Not you too,” Kara says. Brainy still doesn’t move.

“I very much enjoyed Lena Luthor’s past work in our office. I believe she is the smartest person I have ever met, and my intellect is unmatched,” Brainy says. “But her presence is, on occasion, detrimental to you. And you are my friend.”

“Look, I appreciate that, Brainy,” Kara starts. She’s pretty unsure about how to finish, so she’s grateful when Brainy talks.

“I know you and Miss Luthor are entangled, somewhat,” Brainy says, looking queasy at the very idea of having to discuss this with Kara. “I understand your inability to step away. And normally I wouldn’t advocate for shutting away emotions, but I feel - ”

“I’m gonna go check on her,” Kara says, finally shoving past Brainy’s body and blustering her way to the door. She gives half a second to making sure her hat is properly on her head; then she’s stepping through the half-tinted glass door, and Lena is looking up at her, leant up against Winn’s empty desk. She’s wearing a long coat, her hair done up, lipstick on, heels perfect, eyes focused suddenly and intensely on Kara. 

It’s almost like Lena’s not even expecting to see her, in her own office, because her eyes go wide as dinner plates. Even from the short distance across Winn and Brainy’s part of the office to Kara’s door, Kara can see Lena’s hand clench tight on her crossed arms. She isn’t sure what to make of it, really, doesn’t even get a chance.

“I’m coming with you to the fight,” Lena says, standing up straight and squaring up to face Kara in total. There’s a little tingle up Kara’s spine that she should have thought this would happen. Lena had always never known where to keep her nose to keep it safe. Kara sighs as Brainy brushes past her into the office.

“I believe that would be inadvisable, Miss Luthor,” Brainy says. He’s gathering up his coat and briefcase and his hat, looking from Kara to Lena and back again like he’s watching tennis. 

“You ain’t going anywhere near any fight,” Kara says. 

“How are you planning to get in?” Lena asks, her hands white at the knuckles where she digs into the meat of her biceps. Kara’s gettin’ the impression that if she unwound, the pressure’d cause an explosion of some scale. It’s hard to judge where exactly it’s coming from.

“I know people,” Kara says. “Brainy’s got me a contact with a book, for one. Pretty sure I know one of them cleaning ladies at the Roxy. What’s her name again?”

“Siobhan,” Brainy supplies. “She’s Irish.”

“Right, right,” Kara says, even though she has no recollection of any Irish ladies in maid’s outfits. “Siobhan?”

“She hit you with a lamp when you were trying to get into a room,” Brainy says. Kara gives him a less than subtle glare, though the memory of the lamp smashing into her head followed by Siobhan making her coffee in the basement of the Roxy followed by Siobhan climbing into her lap does ring a bell or two. Lena makes a sound not unlike a growl.

“Siobhan, who hit you with a lamp, is your way in when you have the owner of the hotel’s wife standing right here?” Lena asks in a tone of barely controlled frustration. Kara’s getting the impression that Lena’s gone and wound herself up like a toy and set her own damn self loose.

“I ain’t trading on your husband’s name,” Kara says, adjusting the collar of her jacket and flipping her hat onto her head. “For one, if he found out, he’d have my throat slit. For two, you ain’t going anywhere near anything - you’re gonna go sit at the Grand and wait until I bring you your damned air thing back - ”

“It’s a purifier,” Brainy and Lena say at the exact same time. Brainy’s voice is low and calm, Lena’s an angry bark.

“I know what it damn well is,” Kara says. “Go home, the both of you.”

“I am not going to let you walk into the lion’s den alone, Kara,” Lena says and though it’s clearly meant to be a statement, the edges of Lena’s tone sounds like a plea. Her arms finally unclasp and her hand presses suddenly into Kara’s bicep, fingers tight on the muscle there. Kara feels each finger like a separate touch, and nearly recoils away. But it ain’t polite; she shuffles sideways as slow as someone would around a wounded animal.

“I do a lot of things alone,” Kara says. “That’s how it is. If I need help, I’ll get Brainy or Winn or Alex or uh - what’s her name? The gal who runs around electrocuting people?”

“Miss Willis,” Brainy says. He gives a brief smile to Lena. “She’s never electrocuted Kara, if you were worried.”

Lena seems distracted by the anecdote for a second before refocusing, eyes blazing back into Kara’s. 

“I can help you. You know that,” Lena says. Kara throws a look Brainy’s way as she feels anger come up her spine, hot and fast. She has an urge in her to shake Lena until she just listens, stops trying to throw herself into this after years of being away. Kara can’t handle that, can’t handle it if Lena just throws herself into this only to drift off again like she should. Brainy reads it well enough, hauling his things off and away. Kara waits until he’s gone before she bothers looking at Lena again. 

“I don’t need your help,” Kara says, finally, after she hears the front door thump open and closed and the building around them settles quiet. Down the hall, Kara can hear a radio playing soft, something romantic and slow that puts an urge in her head to wrap Lena up and forget about all this. That kind of thinking had almost got her killed though, is the thing. But that don’t stop it from floating in the back of her mind, like a threat. “Not only that, but I don’t need to have to track a guy and worry about you in that place either. So why don’t I just take you home - ”

“Alex came to see me today,” Lena interrupts. She’s standing too close, really, the space between them having shrunk over the course of the confrontation. Kara has to take a step away as she shakes her head.

“That’s -” Kara has trouble summoning the right word, but Lena charges through like a woman on a mission. Stubborn as all hell. 

“And you know what it’s about,” Lena says, with a mix of accusation and concern that has Kara’s insides twisting up. There’s sudden clarity in Lena’s whole demeanor, but the realization just makes Kara’s head feel fuzzy. 

“It’s nothing, Lena,” Kara says, leaning up against Brainy’s desk and checking out the ceiling. 

“It is not nothing,” Lena says. “One of my security members was murdered, and someone wants it to look like it was you. You have to let me help you, to protect you.”

“How can you protect me?” Kara asks, and she feels her head go all steamy as she raises her hands and looks Lena in the eye. “It’s just a fight night, Lena, not a war zone, and I damn well have been through worse without you. I ain’t taking you anywhere but to your penthouse so you can sit pretty and wait. ”

Lena fidgets and Kara can sense there’s a card up her sleeve, almost leaves before Lena can pull it out. But Lena’s chin lifts and she looks Kara dead on as she tips the world further on its axis. 

“I’ve been looking into how Clark died,” Lena says. It’s like some fool pulling in front of her high speed on the highway; Kara’s almost got whiplash she jumps back so fast. 

“If you think I wanna talk about that right now with you, you’ve got another thing coming,” Kara says, and she can feel her shoulders shake, hands too. She shoves them into her coat pocket and feels them rattle the butterscotch candies she’s got stuffed in there. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, coming here and asking me to help you and then playing this card, you know that? You can’t just come back and pretend - ”

“It was Hank Henshaw,” Lena says, looking at Kara like she knows she’s clubbing her on the damn head. “I’ve had to do a lot of asking around, talking to banks. A lot of Morgan’s people know him. I have a file on the case, if you want to look at it. 

“You have a file,” Kara says, thinking she might laugh.  

“I wanted to - I want to help you, Kara.”

“Hank Henshaw,” Kara repeats, slouching, feeling the lapels of her coat come up to her ears. “He’s fighting Corben tonight.” 

“I know,” Lena says, simply. “Look - ”

“Why are you telling me this?” Kara says, looking up at Lena, feeling her head like it’s underwater. Lena’s looking at her like she knows she’s gone and sunk.

“Because, I...I’ve been looking into this case for a few years. Ever since it happened. I know you said to leave it alone, but I care about you, Kara, and I didn’t stop caring about you when I had to send you away,” Lena says, shrugging like she’s not dropping a crate of bricks on Kara’s chest. “I’m tired of sitting around and letting Morgan ruin the things I care about.”

Kara can feel hope curdling inside her like milk gone bad, listening to Lena say all these things. There’s a part of her that had hoped to always hear them, had hoped that one day Lena would come back to her life and tell her that she loved Kara back, that she wanted Kara, that the things Kara had dreamt were things Lena dreamt too. This isn’t that, to be certain, but it’s as close to it as Kara thinks Lena could go without spilling her guts the same way Kara had years ago.  

But at the same time, there’s the part of Kara whispering that Lena’s saying the things she wants to hear. That if Alex or Winn or even Brainy was here, she’d tell Lena to get lost, and they’d call Kara weak. Because she is.

“We can be a team again,” Lena says. “If we catch him, and put him away, he’ll never get a chance to touch you ever again.” 

“The world don’t work like that,” Kara says. “You know that as well as I do.”

“I have to try,” Lena says, sounding like she knows she’s winning. “Look, I’m going to this fight whether I go with you or not. I need to see Hank Henshaw, I need to see Corben and talk to him. I can do that whether you take me there or not.”

“I could lock you in this office,” Kara mutters. Lena laughs, soft, and it feels like rain on Kara’s head. Warm and good. 

“I’d get out,” Lena says, smug. Kara is pressing her eyes closed, trying to think around the roaring in her head. Wanting to know more about Lena’s investigation into Clark, wanting Lena, wanting to get Morgan Edge out of the way and clear of her life, wanting all the things Lena’s saying to be real and possible. The thing about it is that Kara’s answers to Lena’s questions have always been the same damn thing. 

“You’re gonna be the death of me,” Kara says, eyes still closed. She can feel Lena move closer and closer until she can smell her perfume. Something sweet and tangy that had always made Kara want to duck her head closer and press her nose to its source at Lena’s neck. Lena’s hands arrive on either side of Kara’s shoulders, smoothing the wild lapels of her trench coat. The saddest thing in the whole world is that Kara feels the buzz in her head go soft and then disappear with the warmth of Lena’s hands on her.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Lena says. All the same, Kara can feel the sword dangling over her head. The best she can think is that if she keeps her eyes closed, she might not see it coming.

Chapter Text

The drive to the fight is quick, awful, and silent. Lena stays leant up against the opposite side of the car. She’s gorgeous, of course, lipstick a crimson red that will draw every eye in the room. On Kara’s worst days, when they’d be traipsing around town solving small-town crimes, she’d walk into a little store and say and this is my associate, and feel whoever she was talking to glance at Lena and then look back at Kara with a wide-eyed look. Kara’d feel tall. Like having Lena at her side made her something better than a gal in a suit knocking down doors.

She hadn’t known that feeling in two whole years.

“We’re gonna park a block away and go in the service entrance,” Kara says. “Siobhan’s meeting us. I’m gonna go upstairs to Corben’s hotel room, see if I can find the air contraption, and you’re gonna mingle in the crowd and see if you can’t get any gossip on him. He sure as hell’d recognize you, and if he knows you’re around, he won’t be thinking about me.”

“Do you think it’s smart to separate like that?” Lena asks with a frown, her arms crossed all over again. Kara doesn’t have time for that; she’s trying to parallel park on a Nat City street packed with ladies and gents in suits trying to look like they aren’t doing something so nefarious as placing big money bets on an underground fight. 

“Yup,” Kara says, the noise popping out like bubblegum. “If I don’t find it, I’ll head down there and wait it out. Pretty sure my face popping up will spook half the room.”

“How are we supposed to signal each other if something goes wrong?” Lena asks. She looks all sorts of put out. Kara is trying not to care much, shuffling in her pocket for a godforsaken butterscotch and popping one in her mouth. 

“Siobhan’ll run for me if I ask,” Kara says, around the candy rolling on her tongue. When she knocks the car into park, she takes a deep breath. 

“What about Henshaw?” Lena asks. The very mention of his name makes Kara’s chest go tight. Kara’d spent three years pretending her cousin was just dead, in the way people die, like he went to war and got shipped back in a box, or he went to some opium den and had too much. But Kara’s not dumb, as much as she’d like to be, and she had known since the minute she had been asked to identify his body at the morgue that he hadn’t died by any means natural. It made sense that it could’ve been a guy as big and strong as Henshaw to be certain, but it didn’t solve the matter of motive, and it didn’t solve the way thinking about it made Kara’s heart feel like it was about to explode.

“Leave him,” Kara bites out. 

“Kara,” Lena starts.

“Look, I don’t know a damn thing about whatever case you’ve got going on him,” Kara says. “And whether it’s true or not, if it is true - Henshaw’s a bruiser. He’s just a fist. If he took out Clark, then he did it on someone’s money. I ain’t gonna go after him in front of every big money roller in the city. I ain’t gonna go after him until I know for sure who it is I’m really going after. And I have half a mind to think you just said all that to get out here.”

“I don’t need your permission to go anywhere,” Lena says, haughtily, like the proper girl she is. Kara rolls her eyes, adjusts her hat, and squints down the street. There’s a girl in a shimmery knee length dress, holding a drink tray under one arm and smoking up a storm leant up against the corner of the Roxy. There’s people filing past her into the alleyway, men giving a glance over their shoulders her way and ladies looking less than thrilled about it.

“That’s Siobhan,” Kara says. “You need to work on looking like you’re excited to see two guys pummel each other on this walk over.”

“I’m thrilled,” Lena huffs, but Kara’s hopping out of the car and taking a glance at traffic before sauntering around to open Lena’s side. She offers her hand to Lena before she even gets her legs out. It’s a habit, is the thing. Lena places her hand in Kara’s, and a shiver runs up Kara’s spine at its warmth, the callouses on her palm where most women have no wear. She drops it as soon as it’s acceptable. “I didn’t lie to you, you know. It was Henshaw.”

“I’ll believe you when I look at your files,” Kara says. “And you better stop bringing it up, before it makes me so nutty I might try to pummel his face in.”

“I...apologize,” Lena says, voice soft as they step up onto the curb and amble down the street. Kara shrugs her shoulders, adjusts her jacket, doesn’t bother answering Lena. Lena, she tries to remind herself, can give her a thousand sob stories, but she doesn’t deserve Kara’s friendship or anything else of Kara. Alex would have told her to find her own way in; or clocked her in the nose more like. Lena had looked at her when Kara was all beat to hell, heard Kara pour her whole dumb heart out, and had told Kara to leave. And even if she had spent the last two years investigating her cousin’s death, that was still - that was still two years of Kara wondering if she’d wake up one night to find Morgan Edge’s knife at her throat. 

Siobhan looks altogether intrigued by Lena’s appearance at Kara’s side, in the way that people do whenever they see Lena. She stands up straighter, her chest sticking out, and she stubs her cigarette under her feet. Kara can’t help but mourn it.

“Kara,” Siobhan greets, stepping forward, one hand pressing into Kara’s bicep and her lips at Kara’s cheek. Siobhan’s got on fire engine red lipstick that’s surely now stuck to her face. “Lovely to see you again.”

“Yeah, same,” Kara says. “This here’s my client on the job - ”

“Mrs. Edge,” Siobhan says, one eyebrow raised as she regards Lena. It’s not often that Kara encounters someone who calls Lena by her married name, thanks in large part to the fact that Luthor is a bigger currency in most circles. Lena is looking right back at Siobhan fierce as a tiger, and Kara’s got the impression some sort of peacocking thing’s going on. No thing she has time for, that’s to be certain. 

“ - who requires some discretion, thanks to the circumstances,” Kara interrupts. “If you’ll oblige.”

“I’d imagine. I’m quite obliging,” Siobhan says, with a smirk, looking between the two in a way that Kara had always let go before from others. But this ain’t the place for such assumptions to be made, and she lets Siobhan know it with a heavy frown that has her rolling her eyes. “So, hotel room?”

“A quick look-see and I’m out,” Kara says. “She’s goin’ down to the fight.” 

“How will you even know what it is you’re looking for?” Lena asks. Kara turns to look at her, feels Siobhan’s hand slip on Kara’s bicep down to somewhere near her elbow. Lena’s eyes are dark, jaw tight, and she’s looking at Kara like she might try to finish what her husband started.

“I’m gonna look for some metal contraption that weighs a ton,” Kara says. “Corben ain’t smart enough to hide anything like that.”

“What if you set it off? Or someone comes?” Lena asks. She’s looking more harried now, hovering close to them. When Kara gives a glance around, a few people are passing by and doing double takes at Lena, whispering amongst themselves. 

“I got this,” Kara says, pulling the brim of her hat down further. “Look, you gotta go down there, and I’ll meet up with you at the car if I can’t find anything. Just, leave before the bout’s over. Alright?”

For half a second, Lena looks like she might step closer to Kara, her mouth half-open and eyes wide, beseeching. Kara’s got no damn idea what it is she’s trying to ask. But the moment’s gone when Siobhan’s hand clenches into Kara’s elbow and tugs her sideways, out of the shadow of the alley entrance.

“I’ll take good care of her,” Siobhan says. Kara doesn’t get a chance to see Lena’s face at that, but she can feel her eyes on the back of her skull hot enough that her hat might catch fire. Siobhan worms close to her, giggling like a schoolgirl, turning them quick into the service entrance. “Didn’t realize you were palling around with the boss’s wife.”

“I ain’t,” Kara mutters, glancing around. “Feel free to keep your voice down about it, too.”

“Even if you ain’t, ” Siobhan says, tugging at the collar of Kara’s coat as she jams the button for the service elevator. “There are about a hundred people down there who’d take one look at you with her and assume.”

“That’s why I’m going up here, and she’s going down there,” Kara huffs, knocking Siobhan’s hand away.

“You know, I’d heard rumors that she’s on our side of the street,” Siobhan says, musing, as Kara grabs for a clothed room service cart and the doors to the elevator slide open slowly. “I mean, the boss is kind of a creep, so no shock she doesn’t want to associate with him, but everyone’s always said she keeps to herself.”

“And that equates to our side of the street?” Kara mutters, sliding the cart in and settling in one corner of the elevator while Siobhan leans onto the damn thing, chest just barely hinted at with the cut of her dress. 

“I know one when I see one,” Siobhan says airily, tossing her hair over her shoulder.

“Then get your eyes checked,” Kara says, fiddling with her glasses and adjusting her hat, hunching her shoulders. “She’s about as far away as you could get from our side of the street. And get a new phrase while you’re at it.”

“You think a girl like that gives any thought to a girl like me flirting with her friend if she isn’t ready to climb you? She looked like she wanted to rip the hair off my head for so much as touching you,” Siobhan says. Kara sighs, tries to breathe through the pressing feeling in her chest. “And that whole squabble about who’s going where. You know, it reminds me of me and my ex-sweetheart.”

“I’m gonna go ahead and trust you’re gonna keep all these wild ideas to yourself,” Kara says. The door piles open, and she pushes the cart out, even when Siobhan hops on for a ride. It’s dead quiet in the hallway. The Roxy’s one of them small little hotels, more about its restaurant and ballroom than its living quarters. Anyone who had a room booked was surely already downstairs in some form or another; or else, drunk and missing the fun.

“I’m not in the business of cutting off anyone’s fun when it’s at the expense of a man, that’s to be certain,” Siobhan says. “Room twenty-three. He threw a big ole fit he wasn’t getting a corner suite, the lunkhead.”

“His wife thinks he’s messing around on her,” Kara says. “You see any of that?”

“All things said, he keeps away from the girls. And the boys,” Siobhan says. “Doesn’t sound like you’re here for that, though. What’s all this about a contraption?”

“Not at liberty to say,” Kara says. Siobhan groans, hops off the cart when they roll up to room twenty-three. 

“You’re no fun,” Siobhan says, reaching for the doorknob and slipping her master key in. She gives a lazy housekeeping call that’s answered with silence, before she slips the door open. “Speaking of, you wanna meet up at the club later? Think I’ll need some loosening up after serving champagne to the trolls downstairs for a few hours.” 

“Nice offer, but I’m gonna pass for now,” Kara says, peeking her head around the door even as Siobhan presses closer to her torso, hands creeping up the fabric over her stomach. “Think I heard my friend Leslie’s gonna be around though. You two might have some fun.”

“Friend like that gal downstairs is your friend?” Siobhan says. Her voice is all whispery, but Kara’s near-blocked her base instincts, head on high alert as she slips slowly into the doorway, even with Siobhan’s hand gripping her suspenders. 

“Leslie electrocutes people,” Kara says. “I ain’t in that business. Watch out for me, would you? Do one of them housekeeping calls if someone comes by.”

“Electrocutes people,” Siobhan repeats, sounding altogether intrigued. “Alright. Be safe, Danvers.”

She slips away, the door shuts, and it’s quiet as a grave.

-

Corben’s hotel room is a mess, in that way that people’s hotel rooms always get. Kara’s snuck into enough of them to know. He’s got a bottle of whiskey up by the little radio, a suit hung up by the windows, tape on the desk. The bed’s got a sheet coming up, like the guy’s been tossing and turning, or like he just rolled around in it to muss it up. There’s a pair of underwear with skidmarks on the ground outside the bathroom. 

It’s regular enough. 

There’s a small getaway bag dropped on the desk chair, spilling open with clothes and a little wallet. Kara plucks it up - there’s some cash, a few pictures of Corben’s wife and hideous children, a business card to an auto shop with tomorrow’s date written on it. She checks the safe; it’s unlocked and empty. She checks the bedside table. Next to the usual Bible, there’s a set of matches from the Grand. She checks the bathroom - no stashes of anything. If there ever was a big old shiny prototype in this hotel room, it seems like it ain’t here now.

She rounds back into the room, contemplates it real seriously. There are no picture frames, the bed is kicked all around, feels as soft as a cloud when she presses on it and the pillows. On her way, though, her foot catches something under the bed. When she pulls it out, there’s a briefcase, like how there’s always a briefcase. And it’s unlocked, the idiot.

When she pops it open, she feels her eyes nearly pop out of her head. The briefcase is packed with bills, neat little stacks like you get at the bank when you’re moving whole life savings around. Kara hasn’t seen this much money ever in her whole life, not even when she was given what was left of her parents’ money with a sympathetic wince. 

“Jeez,” Kara whispers, flipping the briefcase shut and flipping it over, looking for - 

“Aw, jeez,” Kara repeats, her fingers finding the grooves of the gold embossing into the fancy leather. LL. That is, of course, the way things go, when the damned thing lets out a buzz and sends a shock through her that has her falling back fast, her head hitting the wall hard enough she blacks out.

-

Siobhan gets her off the floor of the hotel room by dropping a cup of water on her face.

“Danvers, you alright?” Siobhan asks, her hands running all over Kara’s throbbing head as water seeps into her clothes. Kara’s spluttering like a dying engine; she also can’t quite see straight for a second. Her head is rolling. “I mean, you don’t seem alright, I heard you drop like a rock through the wall - ”

“I gotta go downstairs,” Kara says, slurring as she tries to lift herself up. Her hand feels numb. Siobhan helps her up, supports Kara with her tiny body. All she can think about is Lena. “Shit. Can you get me downstairs?”

Siobhan also gets her into a bowtie and vest like the bartenders wear when Kara demands it, agrees to get her down to the fight floor. It’s way down in the basement, dim, the elevator rattling loud enough that it feels a little bit like the building’s coming down. Kara’s hands are shaking. LL. The options, all told, are awful. 

“Listen, before we get in there - you’re rattled,” Siobhan says. “We walkin’ into a problem?”

“I don’t know,” Kara says. “I’m gonna get Lena and get the hell out. I got bad feelings.”

“You didn’t find your contraption then,” Siobhan says.

“No,” Kara says. “But I think she’s right, he has it. Did have it, maybe. I don’t know.”

She makes it four steps off the elevator and around the corner before the din of the room hits her. It’s loud, loud enough to hide a hundred gunshots. The fight’s already on. Something about it makes dread shake down her spine. She’s got to find -

Lena is settled a few rows back, next to a man Kara recognizes immediately. Lex Luthor is watching the fight with a placid face, an arm thrown around the back of his sister’s chair. They’re surrounded by six guys in suits who look like they’d be happy to bust every bone in Kara’s body. She’s never met the man, has never wanted to even if Lena talked about him like he was a genius who had basically raised her. Doesn’t really want to meet him now, her fingers shaking. Her fingertips are burned where they had traced those letters. Siobhan had made her put on one of the leather gloves stuffed into Kara’s trench coat. 

The damned Luthor family’s naming conventions, their combined technical genius, and the knot on the back of Kara’s head were conspiring to cloud her guesses. Lillian Luthor, as far as Kara knew, lived further up north at a vineyard, occasionally popping down to visit her children and harangue them, in Lena’s terming. But she was smart enough, rich enough, hated Lena enough to try to pay off a guy to steal an invention. 

But why? The damn thing was an air purifier that could technically poison people if someone could do something wonky with it. Kara feels like she can’t think around the buzz in her skull and fingers, or the roar of the crowd. She doesn’t know what to do. It takes her more than a few seconds to notice the man standing right in front of her with an easy grin.

“Kara,” he says, slow, giving a wave right in front of her eyeballs. She refocuses, on the sight of Mon-El Matthews, her former associate and now-FBI guy. She nearly decks him when she places name with face. “Whoa! Hey, Kara, you good?”

“I wasn’t great, but now I’m worse,” Kara mutters. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Underground betting, you think I’m not there like a fly on you-know-what?” Mon-El asks, giving a big wide white grin that seems to charm people. “Kind of my business these days. Why are you here?”

“Seems like the perfect place to do my own business,” Kara says, glancing sideways across the ring. Lena’s saying something to her brother, a half-smile on her face. In the ring between them, the guys are brawling loose and fast, fists flying. Corben is a stick compared to the squat solidity of Henshaw. 

“You know you’ve got blood comin’ out your nose, and you look like a waiter, right?” Mon-El says, shoving a handkerchief in Kara’s face. “Hey, sorry about last time.”

“When you took my perp’s wife to the Fed and left me stranded on Nat Island?” Kara asks. Her nose is bleeding, fresh and slow. She pinches it tight between her uninjured fingers. “When I thought you were helping me out the whole time?”

“Yeah, that time,” Mon-El said. “Hey, she was carrying four pounds of coke! Law’s the law.”

“She was carrying four pounds of coke because her husband threatened their kids if she didn’t do it,” Kara says. “Which you knew.”

“And he went to the Fed too,” Mon-El says, shrugging.

“And their kids?” Kara asks. Mon-El looks less blase about that, his eyes tight on Kara’s face for a second before he glances at something happening behind them and yanks Kara up against him, away from the ringside. In the seconds it takes for Kara to unwrap herself from his strong hold, the space where she’d just been standing is filled with the bulky body of Corben, crashing to the less-than-cushy concrete. The whole arena has one tiny second of silence before bedlam breaks out - shouting, jostling, people turning to shady looking bookies and demanding money back. Kara gets a glance at Corben, his eyes wide open as he looks up at her, before Mon-El’s yanking her backward again.  

The problems therein are twofold: Corben gives her a wide grin before his eyes are closing, body slumping. The other problem is that every eye in the room turns around to look at Kara. Or rather, Corben, who’s fallen unconscious to all seeming right where Kara was just standing. Less than ideal.

“Aw, shit,” Mon-El says, pulling her backward as a crowd of people begin descending around them to get at Corben. She nearly has to punch the guy getting out of his hold. People are going absolutely nutty all around them. Across the room, it looks as though Lex Luthor’s stood up in his seat and is watching the insanity with his arms crossed, a crowd of tall broad men surrounding him. She can’t see Lena. She can see, though, Morgan Edge, only a few feet away, his eyes wide as dinner plates as he stares down at Corben, and then looking up at Kara. It ain’t hard to pick up the rage on his face, and so she’s a little grateful when Mon-El re-grabs her. “Let’s get outta here.”

-

Mon-El gets them out fast, tipping his hat to another little maid in an outfit with a loose wink that has the girl giggling and Kara rolling her eyes. But all the same; they’re on the street into the dark, cool night of Nat City faster than anyone else. People are streaming out slowly, still shouting and drunk. Kara can’t stop thinking about Edge’s face, or Lex Luthor’s across the room, or the smile on Corben’s as he looked up at her from the ground before he blinked his eyes shut. 

“You got a ride?” Mon-El asks. “I took a railcar, blendin’ in and such.”

“I ain’t giving you any ride anywhere,” Kara huffs, crossing through traffic to get towards her car. Mon-El pals around after her anyway, doffing his hat and looking at her with big puppy eyes.

“I’ll buy you waffles,” Mon-El says. “A few blocks over, there’s this diner, they got some syrup like heaven - ”

“I can’t get any waffles, and I wouldn’t even if I could, with you,” Kara says. “I gotta wait around.”

“You and I both know that this place ain’t where either of us need to be caught, else we’ll be caught dead,” Mon-El says, trotting around in front of Kara before she can open her car door. “I saw Edge seein’ you. And I know you think we ain’t friends, but I know that ain’t good.”

“Friends don’t take perp’s wives to prison when they’re getting coerced into crime,” Kara says. “I’m gonna sit here and wait until my associate gets out - ”

“You talkin’ about Lena, right?” Mon-El asks. And Kara usually ain’t the type, but she grabs ahold of the lapel of his coat and presses him back hard enough that she hears the metal of his gun smack her window through his coat. It’s like seeing red; hearing Lena’s name, wondering where she is, if she’s alright, what the hell’s happening, the burn in her fingers as they dig on the fabric of his coat. There’s drizzle coming down all around them and Mon-El slip-slides against the driver’s side as he tries to back up. 

“Shut the hell up,” Kara spits. Mon-El is trying to extricate her hands from his coat, a frown on his face. “You’re scum. And I don’t need you shoutin’ her name to the rooftops.”

“Look, I know about the air - whatever it is,” Mon-El says, shoving at Kara’s hand until it lets go. “That’s what you’re here about, right? She roped you into it.”

“I didn’t get roped into anything,” Kara says. “I was just here trying to track a guy down.”

“Kara,” Mon-El says. His voice is all pity, and it burns like how Kara’s hand does, and how her head does, and how her heart does. She doesn’t know what the hell to do; she gets the impression she’s been in over her head the second Lena walked into her office. “Let me get you some waffles. Let’s start there.”

When Kara turns to glance at the alleyway to the Roxy’s basement, a cavalcade of cars with dark windows are pulling up. Lex Luthor is standing there, talking to one of his guys, holding his sister’s hand as she slips into the back of a car. And he’s watching Kara. LL. She can feel her blood hitting the ground.

“Alright,” Kara huffs. “Waffles.”

-

The waffles are delicious. Or they would be if Kara could get her taste buds to work. It feels like the briefcase singed her tongue, somehow, or her brain, and she can’t get more than two functions to process at the same time. Her hand moves in slow motion after she cuts the waffle up. 

“We had word there was a gas weapon on the market,” Mon-El says, after Kara’s stuffed her face full and started chewing. “And the sale was going down tonight at the fight.”

“It’s not a weapon,” Kara says, through a mouthful. “It’s a purifier.”

“Just ‘cause it ain’t meant to be a weapon don’t mean it ain’t a weapon,” Mon-El says. “Least, not in the Fed’s eyes. We were hoping to nail down whoever was buying, before old Corben fell out the damn ring. Henshaw’s got a mean swing.”

“He’s a bruiser,” Kara mutters. “A real fighter. Corben got put in that ring to get pummeled.”

“I figured,” Mon-El says, shaking his head and grinning at a passing waitress before looking outside. It’s starting to rain harder, drops trailing down the glass. “There ain’t a fight in this town that ain’t rigged.”

It sits there between them for a second, the sound of other patrons murmuring around them, the rain, the fry cooks along the bartop. Kara thinks again about that briefcase stacked full of money, the burn on her hand. Lena’s face.

“It’s Luthor, ain’t it?” Kara says, eventually. “He’s the buyer. He was the backer, too, on the fight.”

“Far as we can figure,” Mon-El says. “I mean, makes sense, right? Buy off the machine and pay Edge a small thing ‘cause he’s too dumb to realize how much it’s worth. Back the fight, rig the books, bet big on the thief to lose, pay him small to get him to throw. How do we know Corben was ever really just Edge’s guy? What if he was Luthor’s this whole time?”

“What if Lena is working with him and just got me involved to get noses out of the pie?” Kara asks, and the second her brain comes up with the idea, it’s already rejecting it. Some detective she is. It makes sense, but it don’t make since. “Get Edge out of the way, get me out of the way, help her brother in the meantime?”

“If that’s the case, Edge is a dead man,” Mon-El says, simple. “So’s Corben, for that matter.”

“I don’t think Lena could do that,” Kara says, watching as a guy darts across the street with an umbrella held above a lady’s head. “Get two guys killed, get me killed. Hand over a weapon. I don’t think she’s got that in her.”

And maybe that’s a hopeful thing, really, in the end. She hopes Lena’s not got that in her, the way Kara knows Edge does, her brother does. But the truth is, she ain’t feeling especially lucky right now.

“Maybe,” Mon-El says, and he’s looking at her again like he’s real sorry. It makes her bones rattle, almost. 

-

She sleeps on Mon-El’s couch that night, after he offers. He lives in a big house up in the hills now, with a gorgeous wife named Imra who bandages up Kara’s bloody, shocked hand and looks real sympathetic about the state of her. She even sneaks Kara a cigarette when she asks if they’ve got any, and Kara sits on the balcony they have off their sitting room and contemplates the whole sick skyline of National City.

“You got anyone to tell that you’re away from home tonight?” Imra asks, after Mon-El’s already gone to bed. Kara’s leant up against the railing, watching the humdrum of cars passing. “We’ve got a phone, if you need one.”

“Thanks,” Kara says. Imra’s hovering in the doorway, looking at Kara with a look that says she knows things Kara don’t. And it’s misting up here in the mountains, rain thumping down on the valley below. “But being honest, I don’t think it’s wise.”

“I remember when Mon-El was working with you every other night,” Imra says. It’s dark enough that the flow of her wavy hair reminds Kara in a certain kind of way of Lena, and it’s like - when she blinks, it is Lena, and this is a dreamworld where Lena is telling her to come to bed, upstairs, to put the cigarette out and come find some other way to spend the time. But when she blinks again, Imra is standing there, wry smile in the moonlight. “He always thought you were real brave. But I always wondered - is it lonely?”

It makes Kara laugh

“Not that I’m in the business of making such statements, all in all,” Kara says, gesturing down at her pants, shirt a little scuffed with blood, vest open and suspenders undone. “But that’s a womanly question.”

“Maybe so,” Imra says. “I just thought - a woman who everyone comes to with their problems, always chasing the baddies down. What’s there for you at the end of the night?”

“Nothing,” Kara says, one shoulder raising up and dropping in a shrug. “And that’s alright.”

“If you say so,” Imra says. She looks at Kara, and smiles a little, and Kara feels that half-second blink again of Lena’s face doing the same. “All the same. Phone’s there if you need it.”

And then she drifts away. Kara finishes her cigarette too damn fast.

-

When she gets to her office the next morning, Winn’s already there, sipping coffee. He’s looking at her with both eyebrows raised when she tromps up the steps and finds him. 

“You look like hell,” Winn says. Kara nearly drops her wet newspaper on his head. “Long night?”

“Too long,” Kara sighs, leaning on Brainy’s desk. She smells like she went and rolled around in a hog’s pen and her head feels like she got clubbed with a rock. The bandage on her hand twinges every time it moves. Winn looks the whole of her over. 

“Lena’s here,” he says. “In quite a state, too. Said Corben got thrown from the ring and you disappeared with some guy in pinstripes. Never would’ve thought that’d be your type.”

“Goddamn it,” Kara mutters. She starts shuffling through her pockets, pulling out the matchbooks and business card from Corben’s room, along with a muffin Imra had pushed into her hands just as she was leaving the house. Winn looks largely unimpressed about the whole thing.

“Siobhan was here as well, with your clothes,” Winn says. “Makes more sense now that I see you dressed like a penguin. You gonna make me a martini?”

“I’m gonna make myself a whole highball of Scotch is what’s what,” Kara says. “Where’s Brainy?”

“He’s out with that Nia girl chasing down some missing fabric lead,” Winn says. “It’s hard to tell when she talks as fast as an auctioneer and he agrees to anything she says.”

“He’s sweet on her,” Kara says. She holds out the business card towards Winn. “Can you call this auto shop and see if a guy like Corben works there? Tell ‘em you got your car fixed by a whiz on the side of the road and you’re trying to track ‘em down.”

“Sure,” Winn says, taking the card, but continuing to look her over. “You wanna address how you came here lookin’ like this?”

“Maybe when it all makes sense to me,” Kara says, pushing herself up off the desk and squaring her shoulders up to face the door. “Enjoy the muffin.”

She manages to make it into her apartment office far enough that she gets the door closed and blinks to adjust to the darkness of the room; and that’s as far as she makes it before Lena is barrelling into her, wrapping her tight.

“Oh my goodness, Kara,” Lena is saying, her hands pressing up and down Kara’s back and arm. “Are you alright? I tried to find you after Corben got knocked out, but you were gone.”

“You were with your brother,” Kara says. She manages to dig herself out of the grave of Lena’s arms and makes for her windowsill where she keeps all her office drinks. They’re all running plenty low, the damnable things, and so she settles for popping open the lowest of them: the whisky bottle with just enough for a few swigs. She doesn’t talk while she plucks it out from the mess and swallows a gulp of it; neither does Lena. Kara could very well hear the gears turning.

“I didn’t know he’d be there,” Lena says. “He’s never been interested in any of Morgan’s little side projects before.”

“And you just ran into him, coincidental as can be,” Kara says, taking a burning sip of whisky and leaning against the wall. She’s still got blood on her shirt, her hand thumping with pain. There’s an impulse to smack it dead into the wall just so it’ll stop for one second.

“He found me, while you were off with Siobhan,” Lena says. Kara doesn’t miss the curl of her tongue on that name, like she’s spitting out something nasty. Once upon a time, it might’ve felt a little bit invigorating. Right now, it grates. 

“Yeah, and I had a great damn time,” Kara spits out, tucking her bottle underneath her arm.

Her hand is still shaking as she grabs for the bandage there and starts unraveling it. The burn underneath’s stung deep enough that it takes a little bit extra to pull the cloth free and little patches of new skin come with it, bloody and brutal. Kara hisses, ignores Lena’s little bird noises.

“Kara,” Lena says. She takes a step closer, looking for all the world like she might set her gloved hands on Kara again, and Kara has gone through the wash the past night. She ain’t about to take another gander. 

“Look, I’ll call you if your thingmajig comes outta the woodwork. Maybe I’ll give a call to old Edge and ask if he’ll just give me the damn thing,” Kara says. She can feel tears in her eyes as she contemplates the messy, bloody expanse of her palm where it isn’t a ghost-white blister. “Man, he looked me right in the face.”

“Kara,” Lena says more insistently, her voice still somehow more gentle. 

Kara sucks in a breath as she grabs for the bottle of whisky and takes one last swig, before she dumps the rest on her hand.

“Christ alive,” Kara yelps, dropping the now empty bottle to the ground. It rolls off into the corner, a future home for a family of mice. “Look, you saw me, I’m here, I’ll call you.”

“Please - ”

“You know, why’d you have to tell me about Clark?” Kara continues, and now the tears in her eyes are on her face. She can feel a little bit of mania slipping up around her neck like a noose. “Wasn’t it enough that you were the one doing the asking on this one? You had to dig a little deeper on it? Edge saw my face in his building fifty feet away from his wife and then your brother too?”

“When did Lex see you?” Lena asks, like it doesn’t matter that Edge had her on the ropes once upon a time, or that Kara’s unraveling like a yarn ball.

“Who cares, it’s the same ditch to die in,” Kara says, grabbing for an old shirt draped over her desk chair and starting to press it into the bloody, stinging mess.

“Kara, you need to have that properly wrapped,” Lena says, and suddenly she’s right in Kara’s face. “How did this even happen? What happened last night?”

Her hand hits Kara’s elbow gentle as a lamb. Kara feels every finger spread apart and hold her in place, like Lena’s setting a broken bone. Kara feels as fragile as that, like a stiff breeze might knock her over. Thing is, Lena’s whipping wind in her like a tempest. 

“I don’t need your help,” Kara spits, yanking her elbow away and shouldering past Lena, toward the door, intent on getting the hell away from this infernal woman. 

“Kara, please,” Lena says, following, pleading. Her hand, again, in the center of Kara’s back, and Kara freezes in place. And then it slips up her neck, to the hair at the base there, and then, worst of all of it, Lena’s head pressing into the space between her shoulder blades. With no coat on, just the white shirt, it’s like Kara can feel Lena’s breath on her skin. For one second, she’s struck dumb by it, the pain in her hand and head forgotten. But it comes roiling back.

“Why won’t you just leave?” Kara grits out, and this is the moment where things spill sideways if they weren’t already: she spins as she says it, grabs Lena by the wrist with her good left hand, and pulls her until they collide. It’s the kind of thing she’d pull with a perp, intimidation proper, and she nearly immediately starts to apologize, hand gentle on Lena, but then her hazy eyes start looking. And the anger, pain, whatever - the whole mess of it drips off like water.

Lena is looking back at her. She isn’t scared - she’s never scared, is the problem, maybe. But she’s looking at Kara with eyes like a cat who’s got a little mouse in sight, the dark of them expanded wide enough that there’s only a little stormy green-blue surrounding them. Her chest is heaving against Kara, and Kara knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if Kara was treading water before, she’s drowning now.

She thinks, for a second, about giving into the moment, to pressing forward and into Lena and having her. There’s been a thousand moments before this one that Kara’s contemplated her death, but she’s never seen it quite so clearly before.

Kara lets go. For a moment, Lena doesn’t even move.

“I’m sorry,” Kara says. “I shouldn’t have touched you. I’m sorry.”

And she turns away, and manages to make it to a suitable fainting surface before she passes out on her couch.

-

While she’s passed out on the couch, she dreams of her life’s tragedies:

Her parents die in a tenement house fire, packed in like rats in cages while she’s across town with her cousin Clark, joyriding on the front handlebars of his bike. By the time they get back home, their home is up in flames. Standing there, across the street, screaming, getting held back by policemen, Clark’s face in jagged lines.

Jeremiah Danvers, her new pseudo-father, going off to war and getting shipped back in a box. 

Busting her ankle running out on the secretary job Alex had got her, lying on the ground and wondering if anything might ever go right for her.

Lena Luthor, looking her up and down a few weeks into knowing her, the two of them scrawling on papers taped to Kara’s office walls: You’re my best friend. The awful feeling of heat in Kara’s chest as she laughed and said, me too. 

Standing in the morgue, looking down at Clark’s body, praying to God and everyone that he was at least with their family now. Stumbling back to her office and drinking herself into a stupor, Mon-El bringing her a sandwich from down the street and Lena grasping her hand tight. Winn helping her that night when she puked her guts up twice.

Coming to in the darkness of some basement somewhere and seeing Morgan Edge’s face come swaying out of the shadows. Kara Danvers. You sure as hell are sick. Followed by a clean clock to her cheekbone that snapped her head sideways. 

Lena’s hand trembling as her fingers slipped on the mess of blood and tears and bruises on Kara’s face. Kara whining like a child: Please, we can go somewhere other than this godforsaken town. I love you, Lena. I love you. I’ll love you so good, somewhere else. And Lena, her hand withdrawing, her eyes wide, jaw tight. You should leave, Kara.

Mon-el at the pier, shrugging. It is what it is, Kara. 

Lena, standing at the door of Kara’s office like Marley’s ghost. Lena’s voice, you said you loved me once. Do you still? Lena’s annoyed face at Siobhan’s come-ons. Lena touching her elbow, voice soft. 

Lena eyes packed to the brim with want, their bodies caught together simple as puzzle pieces.

Chapter Text

She comes to with a wet cloth on her face and her hand stinging to high hell. She tries to yank her hand out of whatever the hell it’s submerged in, but someone holds it hard in place. She can’t see, is the thing, the cloth is dark and it reminds her of a dozen terrible things, but mostly that awful time in that basement, Edge’s goon ripping a blindfold off her face and grinning.

“Kara, hey, you’re good,” Winn’s voice says, somewhere at her right. “Brains, can you - ”

“Yes,” Brainy’s voice responds. Warm hands press down on either side of her collarbones. “Kara, I understand you are in some psychological distress, but we are attempting to heal your hand without adding to it.”

“By ripping my skin off? Get the hell off me,” Kara says, wiggling her shoulders as much as he can. But Brainy’s strong, and Kara’s weak, right now, and Winn grips tighter at her wrist to keep it in the water. “Christ alive, you all can go find a ditch and lie down.”

“Very creative,” comes another voice. Kara has to think through the haze of pain and annoyance and the hovering memories in her head to sift through to its source. Nia.

“The goddamn reporter’s here? Who else is in this room?” Kara asks, trying to reach up to remove the cover over her eyes until her shoulder pops loud enough that she has to stop mid-air, breathing through the pain of that old thing. “Brains.”

“I will pop it back in when we feel you can sit up,” Brainy says. The shoulder was its own nice little side effect of Morgan Edge pummeling her with the rough end of a telephone, the joint loose and sore most of the time. It had been a little while since it had done this, and she had thought she was mostly healed from it, but - speaking of -

“Is Lena still here?” Kara asks. There’s a relative soundlessness for a few seconds.

“Yeah,” Winn says, eventually. “She’s in the next room, uh, fixing your kitchen sink.”

“Fixing my kitchen sink,” Kara repeats. It’s the funniest thing she’s heard in days, and it strikes her upside the head like a baton. She starts laughing a little, her shoulders shaking under Brainy’s hands. “Why in the hell?”

“I told her it was broken,” Winn says. “Which it is. She looked like she was gonna lose it and she nearly picked up her handbag and clocked me when I told her to leave. Gave her something to do.”

“She was quite fearsome,” Nia says. “You guys sure are a funny bunch. Is every day like this? Makes reporting on missing fabric swatches look like a dream.”

“Missing fabric swatches ain’t a dream?” Kara asks. Winn does something to her hand that makes her yelp. “Damn it, Winn, amputate the damn thing if you’re gonna be like this!”

“You have an electrical burn with quite a bit of slime oozing,” Winn says, airily, like he’s doing her a favor and the favor is making her lose her head. “You’re lucky you can feel it at all and that your heart ain’t stopped.”

“Wish it was,” Kara huffs. Brainy takes the moment to shove her shoulder back into place, popping hard. “Christ! You two, get your goddamn hands off me, or I swear I’ll - ”

“Hey, why the hell’s my sister screaming at you,” comes Alex’s voice, along with the steady thump of her boots. There’s another set of ‘em, too.

“Why the hell’s there so many people in this office?” Alex’s partner, Maggie. “Jesus Christ, is she awake?”

“I’m awake,” Kara groans. 

“What the hell happened?” Alex asks. “This is worse than the time you got hit by a boat.”

“Long story,” Kara says.

“Well, glad you survived,” Maggie says, and Kara thinks it’s her hand that taps on Kara’s boot. “You got any idea where the lady Luthor is? We gotta talk to her too, ain’t no one’s seen her since this morning at the Grand. Heard you two are all buddy-buddy again.”

“I’m right here,” now comes Lena’s voice. Kara finally whips the wash cloth off her eyes. She doesn’t have her glasses on, but she can sort of make out the shape of Lena, leant in the doorway to the apartment side of things, a wrench in one hand and a rag over her shoulder. Winn squeezes her damn hand.

“Winn, I swear on my goddamn grave that if you do that again I will pistol whip you,” Kara huffs. Winn does not look amused, his eyes trained on the two fine officers of the law in the doorway. Alex and Maggie both look stiff, relatively formal for a visit like this. Kara doesn’t miss Alex’s hand resting on her holstered baton. “Things alright, coppers?”

“No,” Alex says, finally. “We need to talk to you. Both of you.”

She looks from Lena to Kara with a grim face that makes Kara feel like puking. 

-

Kara and Lena sit down on the couch, Alex sits on the little chair and Maggie stands. No one looks happy about it, Kara’s hand still feels  like it’s seizing even after Winn’s cleaned it and wrapped it under the watchful eyes of the officers. 

“John Corben’s dead,” is how Maggie starts it. She tosses out a grainy crime scene photo onto Kara’s collection of milk crates. There’s an intake of breath to Kara’s right, and Kara’s whole damn stomach sinks through the floor. Corben is indeed dead, very much so, his whole damn chest littered with bullet holes and a mess of blood beneath him. Kara can tell what’s about to happen before Maggie even asks. “You got your pistol, Kara?”

Kara sighs, getting up slowly from the couch and grabbing for her holster draped over her desk chair. She hands the whole mess of it over to Maggie, who pulls the revolver out and pops open its cylinder. There’s a little bit of her that wants to feel some sort of indignation when there’s only one bullet left of the six rounds that are usually there. She had been so dazed on her way home she hadn’t ever thought to look at it.

“You wanna tell us what you were up to last night?” Maggie asks. 

“Are you accusing her of doing this?” Lena asks. Maybe that’s where all Kara’s indignation went. “That’s insanity. You know she - ”

“We know you were at the underground fight at the Roxy last night,” Maggie says, talking over Lena and not even bothering to direct a look her way. “We got a witness saying you broke into his hotel room. And we know you’ve had some less-than-pleasant encounters with some of the guys Corben runs with.”

“I broke into his hotel room because his wife paid me to find out if he was cheating on her,” Kara says. “And I was at Mon-el’s last night.”

“You know a Fed isn’t going to go on the record saying he housed you last night,” Alex says. Kara sighs, reaching up with her bandaged hand and brushing at the back of her head. Siobhan must’ve taken her bullets while she was out, or maybe even Mon-el last night. 

“Yeah, I know it,” Kara huffs. “Christ, but it’s the truth. Look, I was in his hotel room, and you can hang me for that, but I didn’t kill him. I was at the fight, I got spotted by Edge, and I ditched. Mon-el took me for waffles and I hid out at his place.”

Alex frowns so deep that Kara can’t help but wonder how the hell her face stays all cherubic in spite of it. 

“Edge is missing,” Alex says. Kara sighs, dropping her face into her hands. Her head and hand are throbbing. Lena shifts next to her.

“ What ?” Lena asks. “How is that - ”

“Mrs. Edge,” Alex says, cruel as a knife. “Your husband’s been missing for hours. He had a meeting scheduled with his brother-in-law at nine this morning and never showed. No one’s seen him since the fight last night.”

“Corben got plugged with four bullets,” Maggie says, holding up Kara’s pistol. “You wanna tell us where your fifth is?”

“Maybe I never load it with a full six,” Kara says, picking her head up and glancing outside. The morning’s hazy, the clouds heavy with rain that looks fit to drop at any second. She wishes it would. “I can’t tell you where any of ‘em are. I got knocked out by a goddamn briefcase in Corben’s hotel room and I assume your damnable witness took them.”

“I told you she was less than trustworthy,” Lena says. Kara has half a mind to get up and jump out the window. 

“You think this is the time for that?” Kara says, turning to look Lena’s way finally. She’s got her arms crossed tight over her chest, her dress cleaving and tight. Kara has to look away as sudden as she caught the courage to glance sideways. “Look, I didn’t do anything rough beside break into Corben’s hotel room, but if you want to book me, you sure can. I’m sure one of Edge’s plants at the jail will have me just as plugged as Corben by the end of the night.”

“We aren’t gonna arrest you,” Alex says. “Look - Detective Lockwood is working this one. We’re just here to collect your gun. He said you might be soft on a familiar face.”

“Lockwood?” Kara asks. “Jeez, should I just grab the slow boat to China now? I’m sure I got some friend in the marina.”

“You look guilty enough already,” Maggie says, pocketing Kara’s gun and looking sympathetic enough that Kara has to imagine she already thinks Kara’s in the grave. “You think running’s gonna help?”

“Sounds like the case is already closed,” Kara says. “Being alive doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It ain’t just you who’s got their head up for target practice,” Maggie says. “Maybe consider who else you’re putting on the line if you disappear.”

For a few seconds, there’s silence. Kara thinks back to the people out there, their heads probably pressed tight to the glass. But she gets Maggie’s intimation when Alex’s eyes track anxiously from Kara to Lena.

“Are you kidding me?” Kara asks. “You think she had something to do with this?”

“Half this damn town knows you two work together,” Alex says. “And everyone in this town knows she and Edge don’t like each other.”

“Plenty of women don’t like their husbands, but most of ‘em don’t get accused of facilitating his entrance to hell,” Kara says. “Lena had nothing to do with any of this. You can cuff me right now if you think I’m lettin’ you - ”

“You think standing here and shouting at two cops helps you look any better?” Alex asks, close to shouts, and now she’s standing, and Kara’s standing too. “You need to get your head together, Kara. We’re trying to tell you that you two could be on the hook for murdering two people, and you’re acting like an ass because you’re in too deep to see straight.”

“My head’s together perfectly fine,” Kara says, pointing with her bum hand somewhere in the distance. She’s not even sure she knows at what, just that she’s got to. There’s anger simmering up inside her, real anger. “Go ahead and tell Ben Lockwood that I’m here if he wants to book me, but I didn’t kill anyone, and no one else here did neither!”

“You’re a goddamn mess,” Alex says. “And you’re in one too, you know that? You had to stick your head somewhere it didn’t belong, just like Clark - ”

“Oh, screw off,” Kara says. “Clark was trying to help people - ”

“And he’s dead,” Alex says, flat as a board. Kara feels everything in her come crashing to a halt. Her shoulders drop, her hand thumping painfully into her side, and she scrubs her face with her good one, trying to make the pounding in her head stop as mercifully as possible. “Kara. You gotta stop this. Get a job anywhere sensible, get the hell away from anything to do with Edge, his hotels, his girls, his friends, his cronies. He’ll have you on the coroner’s slab if he doesn’t end up there first. You know that. He promised you that.”

“Thought I was meant to have killed him,” Kara sighs. 

“He’s termed missing for now,” Maggie interjects, her voice soft. “That’s why Lockwood hasn’t busted your door down to arrest the both of you. Corben’s one thing - he blew a fight with a lot of money riding on it, coulda been anyone with a grudge, even if you’ve got stuff stacked against you. But people know you and Edge don’t share much love. If he turns up in a ditch, it’s on you. Both of you.”

“I have access to Morgan’s accounts,” Lena says, finally. Kara looks to the window, feels her jaw clench. Outside, it looks like it’s finally starting to rain. “I can see if any money’s been moved around recently. I’d be happy to provide that information to the investigation.”

“We’d be grateful,” Maggie says. 

“We’d be happy to escort you back home, as well,” Alex adds. Kara nearly laughs, the effort’s so transparent. But she doesn’t; she’s not sure she’s got it in her. A part of her is still focused on that moment of Lena looking up at her, eyes wide and dark. She can’t turn around and share the glance she knows Lena’s directing her way. She can hear it like it’s words: do you want me to go? 

But she doesn’t move. And eventually, she hears Lena sigh.

“Alright, thank you,” Lena says. “Let me just finish fixing the sink?”

“Sure,” Maggie says. “I’ll uh, be out in the waiting area and after you’re done, I’ll take you home.”

The second Lena slinks away to the bedroom slash kitchen and Maggie steps outside, clearly knocking over Brainy and Winn wedged up against the door, Alex grabs ahold of Kara’s bum arm and pulls her close to the windows behind Kara’s desk. She flips the radio on, loud, and presses Kara tight to the wall. It’s all of a sudden like Kara’s a kid again, Alex pushing her around and trying so hard to help her. Kara was a sad kid, struck blind by the events of her existence, and she had built up a whole way of thinking that had been happy-go-lucky, steady-on. But Kara feels shook up, right now, knows that at the heart of all this is wanting and wanting something and knowing it’s not gonna end up hers. She can hear Lena just barely over the radio, clinking around. 

“You don’t have to tell me, I know,” Kara huffs, tugging at her arm in Alex’s grip. “I know, I know, I know - ”

“What the hell kind of case does she have you running?” Alex asks, her hand vicelike now. She looks a little crazed, like she’s been thinking all day about ways to disembowel someone. “You look like you got bounced behind a Bentley.”

“Corben stole a damned - I don’t know. Some thing , on Edge’s word, from her,” Kara says. “I was in his room last night looking for it, got zapped to hell and back by a briefcase, and when I woke up, my in must’ve robbed me of my bullets.”

“You have to get out from under her,” Alex says. “You know that. You gotta sit nice and solitary until I can get this figured out - ”

“Lockwood ain’t gonna get this figured out any type of way we want,” Kara says. “He’s a trick. Any time I have a client with him on their tail, they’re always these poor schmucks who ain’t ever hurt a fly. Whoever banks him just likes hurting people for sport. And he doesn’t care.”

“I know who banks him,” Alex says. “Christ - goddamned Christ - look, before Clark died, he came and saw me and told me to look into Lockwood, that he’d caught something in his corruption stuff. I brought it to the Captain, and he told me to keep it low, but that he didn’t have much trust - ”

“It’s Luthor,” Kara says. It comes on her like a wave. It’s Luthor, of the briefcase, of the fights, backing Henshaw, paying Corben to lay down, of Lena, who’s -

“I - think it’s fixed,” Lena says. Her hands are wound tight in a rag from somewhere in Kara’s kitchen, as she stands halfway between the doorway to Kara’s apartment and the doorway to the little desk area. To anyone else, she’d look perfectly herself, calm, cool, collected. To Kara, who spent hours logging the minutiae of Lena’s face: she looks all sorts of scared, tired, sad. Kara had never really gone out of her way to touch Lena, the way she knew ladies did when they were sweet on ladies. Their interactions had been about managing that desire, wondering if she might lose her mind one day and touch the pale, soft-looking skin of Lena’s arm. A flashback, then, of course, to her body pressed tight up against Kara’s.

Alex is breathing hard, somehow, but she gives a short nod, before she turns back to Kara, her hand loosening and leaning forward to press a kiss to Kara’s temple. 

“It’s Luthor,” Alex whispers, hushed and fast. “Please, just stay out of it, alright? Go sit at Winn’s and stay safe, away from her, away from all of it. At least until I can get Lockwood out of the way. I think Clark got - ”

“Yeah,” Kara says. Luthor killed him , is what she thinks. Her eyes glance to Lena, whose arms are drawn up around herself like she’s cold. Kara’s whole body aches and shivers at the thought of pulling her into Kara’s frame, letting their warmth bleed together. “Alright.”

“Alright,” Alex says, and then she wraps Kara into a hug that takes all of Kara’s energy reserves to join. She wraps her bad arm around Alex’s back, breathes in deep. Her head feels like it’s in circles. Lex killed Clark; Lena had been looking into it; Edge was missing. It was all a damn mess. It was all a sword dangling up above her head.

“Love you,” Kara says. Alex presses another hard kiss at her temple, and Kara breathes it in. She wonders what it is Alex is feeling, in her arms. Her sister? A fool? A child?

“Stay safe,” Alex says. “Please.”

“Okay,” Kara says. She’s not sure what promises she’s got left to give.

-

Lena had never talked much about her brother, or her father, or her mother. Kara wonders what kind of life it might have been to live in a house with a guy so cruel as Lex Luthor, who helped get Lena married off to a man anyone with a brain could see she’d despise. There’d always been some sense of some sort of existential sadness when it came to Lena, like she’d seen things and resolved to not wallow in them - it was one of the things Kara had always felt like she most loved about Lena, when she felt like acknowledging that she loved her. 

And Lex was a murderer. By his own hand or not, he had played every piece of this puzzle, until Kara was sitting at this desk wondering at the specific mechanisms of her life. 

A shadow appears in the doorway.

“Alex asked me to take you back to mine,” Winn says. He’s got his coat over his arm, umbrella in his hand. Kara supposes it’s raining again. “But I figured I might ask before I hauled you away.”

“She thinks I’m gonna get killed if I sit here alone,” Kara huffs. Her hand’s not feeling so busted, thanks to the mug of gin she’s been working on in the dark. “Some goon’ll come around with a Molotov, maybe.”

“She’s worried about you,” Winn says, coming in a little further and leaning against the seat across from Kara’s desk. She can’t see his eyes, it’s dark enough, just something like a hint of them. “You’re in about as sticky a situation as you’ve ever been.”

“Yeah,” Kara says. She can’t stop thinking about that moment with Lena, their bodies crushed together. She can’t stop thinking about Lex Luthor paying Henshaw to obliterate her cousin. She can’t stop thinking in general, really, and all she wants is to stop, pure and simple. “You think I’m a fool, too?”

Winn sighs, sets his coat on the chair, and sits in it, grabbing for the bottle of gin set overtop what are most likely things of importance, other cases of missing husbands or stolen cars. He takes a swig of it before he even opens his mouth to answer.

“You love her,” Winn says. Kara feels that one like a punch to the throat, but she doesn’t disagree. She hasn’t spoken it out loud, has never had anyone say it to her so plain. “You know, I think it’s burnt you up inside, not having her around. But I guess - I’m worried that having her is gonna get you burnt by something else.”

“I don’t think there’s a chance of me having her,” Kara says. “That’s why I’m a fool. I’m just beating down a door that’s never gonna give.”

“I don’t think you’re a fool,” Winn says. Kara sees the outline of his shoulders raise and drop, soft and quiet in the dark of her office. “I think - you know Jack Spheer?”

“The guy with those special lightbulbs?” Kara asks. She can picture his face, with the well-kept beard and dark skin, swoop of hair. “Partnered with the energy commission to outfit City Hall, British?”

“One in the same,” Winn says. “Nia was tellin’ me and Brainy earlier today, while Lena was skulking around your apartment and we were all waiting for you to show up, that he was sweet on her. Lena, I mean. Nia only knew ‘cause she’d seen him all up on her, whispering in her ear at some event at City Hall with Luthor and Edge. Said the whole bullpen at the paper had been gossiping about it for weeks, that he was so bold to do it all in front of the whole world and her husband.”

“You trying to make me spew?” Kara asks. Winn laughs, shaking his head and taking another gulp of gin and grunting after he’s swallowed. 

“Nah, I’m just trying to extrapolate. He ain’t dead,” Winn says. “An important, handsome man might as well have mounted her in public and he’s right as rain. Edge had you on the doorstep to Hades, and you didn’t even put a hand on her.”

“Maybe I’m just someone he could get rid of without causing a public to-do,” Kara says. 

“Maybe. But I’d bet big that he saw what I saw, what Alex and Brainy have seen,” Winn says. 

“What are you trying to say?” Kara says, taking a sip of her mug and thinking again of Lena’s face, staring up at her, eyes dark and focused.

“Just that I feel she’s just as gone as you are,” Winn says. “But as things stand - ”

“There’s nothing for it,” Kara says. 

“No,” Winn says.

Silence falls over them as soft as a blanket. They sit in the dark, and drink.

-

At some point, Winn falls asleep on Kara’s office couch, empty bottle of gin cradled in his arms. Kara’s drunk enough that she thinks about moving and it’s like swimming through tar, the very thought of it. So she just sits in her office chair and stares at the world before her. Her hand throbs, her shoulder throbs, her head throbs, all along with the sluggishness of her heart beat. Winn snores and Kara sits there. 

Eventually, she hears the telltale click of familiar heels on the stairs. 

When she glances at the clock, it’s four in the morning. When she glances down at herself, she looks like a damnable idiot. Her hand is wrapped in white gauze, to the point it looks as though it’s been mummified. Her shirt is hanging open to reveal her undershirt, stained with whiskey and blood and who knows what else. She put her glasses somewhere ‘cause her head was pounding and she thought maybe seeing a little less clearly might help.

She goes to meet Lena in Winn and Brainy’s half of the office.

“You ain’t s’posed to be here,” Kara greets, gently closing the door behind her. Lena regards her from the landing, her hand resting on the top post of the stairwell. It’s dark as hell itself, Winn’s little desk lamp the only light in the whole space. “How’d you get out from under the cops?”

“I found something while I was looking through Morgan’s books,” Lena says, holding up a yellowish slip of paper. Kara scoffs, sitting against Brainy’s desk and knocking his pen holder over. They go scattering, and Kara doesn’t care. 

“Ma’am, I ain’t in the game anymore,” Kara says, putting her hands up. She’s lucky enough she can’t really see Lena’s eyes, but she can guess based just on her shadow’s posture. Pitying and green, watching Kara careful. “M’sure the police would love to hear about it.”

“It’s a train ticket from National City to Vancouver,” Lena says. “One way.”

“Sounds pretty as a picture,” Kara says. It feels for a second like she might keel over and puke, but she manages to restrain the bile feeling in her throat to a loogie she hocks. “You think that means he’s done tryna kill me?”

“The train leaves in three hours,” Lena says. “I bought us tickets as well.”

“Not listening to a damn word I say,” Kara huffs. She watches her bum hand knock a little figurine Brainy’s got on his desk right over. It doesn’t break, but there’s an urge in her to bring her hand right down on top of it. 

“Morgan needs to be caught,” Lena says. “He needs to be brought back so he can face justice, for killing that man and taking my prototype.”

“Rich men don’t face justice,” Kara says. “You bring him back, I can just picture it, right? He was kidnapped, coerced, whatever, and you, his loving wife, drug him back. Maybe it’s best for Nat City that he rots in Vancouver.”

“If he rots in Vancouver, we can’t clear your name of killing Corben,” Lena says. “And who knows what he could do with the device. And - you heard Alex and Maggie. They think I’m a suspect in his disappearance.”

“Rich ladies don’t face justice, either,” Kara says, shrugging. “I’m sure you’d sit fine and pretty in that penthouse the rest of your days. That’s how it is. And if all that ends with me in jail then - I mean, at least I ain’t dead.”

“That isn’t an option for me,” Lena says. Kara laughs, and Lena steps closer, fire in her eyes. Women are wild creatures, sometimes, Kara could swear it. “Kara. I know how you’re feeling, but you - ”

“You don’t know how I’m feeling,” Kara says. Her dumb hand hangs there, looking like a q-tip, and she feels half-dead inside. “You don’t know how I’m feeling at all, you never - you ain’t ever asked me. And I don’t care about your - fucking husband. I don’t care about Vancouver, or your damned air thingmajig, or that my hand’s busted, or that Ben Lockwood wants to hang me. I don’t care. I cared too much, and what did that get me? I’m done with it. I don’t care a lick. Leave me the hell alone.”

“I’m not going to leave you alone,” Lena says, her finger in Kara’s face now, her words enunciated and sharp. “You need to snap out of this.”

“You already did leave me alone,” Kara says, her hand finally coming down and crushing Brainy’s figurine. It splits into tiny ceramic pieces, cracking under the hammer of her hand. Lena stares at her. “You - you know, it’s fine. It’s fine that you didn’t love me the way I loved you, it’s fine and I never expected that from you, never thought - but you left me. Alone.”

“Kara,” Lena says, and her eyes are filling with tears now. “I - ”

“And it isn’t fair,” Kara says. “It’s a cheap trick, you doing this to me. And I gotta stop laying my coat down over puddles just to get trampled. You left me on the vine, and you don’t - you don’t get to - ”

“I’m sorry,” Lena says, her hands gentle as they reach for Kara. “Kara, I’m sorry. I know it isn’t fair.”

“Please don’t,” Kara pleads. Whines, more like, drunk and exhausted and teary. Nearing the end of her rope. She doesn’t even know what the hell she’s trying to prevent. Lena’s hands land on her elbows at the crook, pressing upwards gently.

“When you told me that you loved me,” Lena says, her voice shaky and quiet and golden as sunset. “I - I knew that he knew, too. And I had known, before that, and I might as well have beat you myself.”

“You couldn’t ever do that,” Kara says, closing her eyes as Lena slips closer, her hands on Kara’s shoulders. It’s hot as a furnace, she’s so drunk on Lena and gin. It ain’t good, that’s for sure. It ain’t good, it wasn’t ever good. Death, but sweet, pressing close and wrapping her in. 

“I never wanted to leave you,” Lena says, and the warmth of her hands has Kara dropping her head, neck exposed to the guillotine. Kara feels her good hand reach forward to clutch the opening of Lena’s jacket. “I was terrified he’d kill you. I knew he’d try and I couldn’t - I couldn’t let that happen. And I won’t let you rot in a jail cell if I can help it, either.”

It’s quiet as the grave. Kara grips Lena’s coat, Lena’s hands meet at the back of Kara’s shirt. The space between them feels as wide as the ocean, but Kara can’t breathe.

“I know it isn’t fair to you,” Lena says. Her voice is so soft that Kara has an inclination to lie down and ensconce herself within it. “But, please. I need to bring him down. And I can’t do that without you.”

Silence falls again as Kara ponders the cliff’s edge before her, but her answer is already bleeding out of her, dropping between them before she can even think to stop it. Might as well look death in the eyes as it comes for her. 

“Yeah,” she says after a few beats, her voice soft to match Lena’s and with a wry huff of air. “Okay.” 

-

By the time Kara climbs into the seat of Lena’s car with her busted hand, she’s only sobered so much. She had taken enough time to grab her coat from the office, giving one last wince to Winn before she dug through his desk to grab his pistol. Alex and Maggie had left with Kara’s hours ago.

She’s drunk enough that she stumbles on the stairs, hits the wall with a thump that Lena registers and has her grabbing for the lapel of Kara’s coat with that coaxing, gentle smile. And Kara’s drunk, and stupid, and halfway to a coffin. She goes kindly.

The thing about Lena Luthor is that she’s like all the other girls in the world: she likes getting looked at. If there ever was a descriptor of Kara Danvers, it would be said that she likes looking at Lena Luthor. So she watches her, her calm hands on the wheel of her gorgeous car as Kara slumps against the window as far away from her as possible. Her hair is pinned perfect, coiled and wavy, dark. There’s rain pelting outside, drowning National City as they wind their way through to the train depot. 

“You’re staring,” Lena says, her smile still soft and pretty. “Exactly how much did you and Winn drink?”

“Was his fault,” Kara mutters. “Believe you me, I’d love to be a little less right at the moment.”

“So you could walk straight?” Lena teases. “We’ll get you some water when we hop the train. Maybe a cigarette.”

“Winn’s makin’ me quit,” Kara huffs, digging through her pockets to unleash one of her butterscotch candies and struggling with the wrapper before managing to pop it into her mouth. “And nah, so I could see straight enough to drive.”

“You don’t trust my driving?” Lena asks. It’s nice. It’s like banter, and Kara’s drunk and stupid enough to let it all be happening to her. She’s on the highway to hell and there’s no point caring about much anymore. 

“More like I trust mine better,” Kara says. “I was always the one driving before. Feel like it should be that way now.”

There’s a soft silence that has Kara resting her head against the window, rain drifting down it as they wind their way through town to the depot, her head big and pulsing and her hand almost numb under Winn’s studious tape job. The car smells like Lena, something flowery and soft, and it makes Kara’s chest ache. She’s such a damn fool. 

“I have a friend a few hours north who can help us get Edge back into town,” Lena says. “The train takes around five hours to get there, so we have time to track him down onboard. I’d imagine he’s in one of the rooms, so I booked us one that was available in that area of the train.”

“What kinda friend you got that’d be alright driving us hours south with your husband in the trunk?” Kara snorts, fiddling with the window roller and watching water leak inside the fancy leather interior of Lena’s car. Lena makes a small noise, but she doesn’t stop Kara.

“Her name’s Sam Arias,” Lena says. “She - well. She’s used to doing things a little less than normal.”

“She on my side of the street?” Kara asks. And then she laughs. She’s so goddamn tired, she’s spitting out Siobhan’s stupid words. Lena sucks in a breath, Kara can see, one eye open as she digs her forehead into the window and lets rainwater into her hair. Lena takes a deep breath, her spine straight, and she grips the steering wheel in her gloved hands tight. 

“I suppose she’s been on both sides,” Lena says. She sounds like a politician for a second, and Kara laughs more. Even though Lena looks as though she’d rather discuss anything else, her tense jaw lets a small smile leak through as she glances over at Kara. “Why are you laughing?”

“It’s just damn stupid,” Kara says. “My side of the street. Someone said it to me the other day. My side of the street, like it’s simple as choosin’ where to walk. Ain’t nothing choosy about it.”

Lena’s eyes fall on Kara as they come to a slow stop at a traffic light, her hands still grasping the wheel, leather creaking on leather. Kara feels like she could spew and cry all at the same time, but she focuses instead on the rain outside, making moves on the windshield. 

“She was married,” Lena says, after a few seconds. “To this awful man. A few years ago, she took their daughter and left him. I helped get her a job in San Francisco, a house, all that stuff. I think I told you I was leaving for a vacation in Utah for a few weeks, if you remember.”

“Yeah,” Kara says. She can remember missing Lena slumming it around her office, sipping coffee and smiling gentle as they talked over the details of cases or shot darts with Winn and Brainy and Alex. It had been one of the first times she’d been forced to confront how she was feeling. “You coulda told me the truth, ya know. I always told you the truth.”

Lena sighs, her head tilting as the light changes and she pushes the car forward.

“I didn’t want you to think it was something I could - ” Lena starts, then stops, then falls totally silent. Kara isn’t sure what goes in the gap, but it feels like it burns her ears all the same. How foolish she’d really been, how dumb she was now. The car is silent the rest of the way through the quiet city, to the depot. 

Kara flips her hat on, pulls the arm of her coat over her wrapped hand, and smiles nice for the guy who takes their tickets when Lena presents them. His eyes track Lena’s body, even hidden behind her raincoat, and Kara breathes around it. By the time they make it into their tiny roomette, one bed stuffed into an alcove and a leather chair against the window, Kara’s ready to sleep for days, her head pulsing. 

She feels the gentle push of Lena’s hand on her back, until she hits the sheets. 

“We’ve got some time,” Lena says, voice soft. Kara doesn’t turn her head to see her, but she feels Lena’s hands tugging at her glasses to pull them off her face. “I’ll wake you in an hour or so.”

She feels a ghostlike press of soft skin to her forehead before she falls asleep.

-

When she wakes again, the train is moving steadily along, and Lena is sitting in the leather chair by the window. Her arms are crossed, her legs crossed too, and she has a contemplative frown on her face as she simply looks outside. Kara nearly bashes her head into the wall sitting up, and Lena jolts in her seat, her eyes wide.

“I’m dying,” Kara huffs. Now that she’s half sitting up, it’s apparent how drunk she was and might still be. Her mouth is dry as the desert, her head is pounding, and her stomach is roiling. So she lies back down, closing her eyes and dropping her bum hand over them to block out what light is getting through otherwise.

“I went through the staterooms and other roomettes while you were asleep,” Lena hums. “Morgan isn’t in them.”

“You shoulda woke me,” Kara groans, digging into her eyeball a little bit to distract herself from the pain. “What if you’d have found him?”

She gets the impression Lena’s rolling her eyes during her response.

“As if Morgan would ever do anything to physically hurt me. He doesn’t have the gall,” Lena says.

“He stole your air purifier,” Kara says.

“Yes, and he nearly beat my best friend to a pulp, as well,” Lena says. “But he’s never laid a finger on me. He prefers to do his controlling from a distance.”

Kara snorts, rolling over and pushing her face into the pillow. It smells like a hospital bed, almost, and she feels her stomach pitch at the scent of it. She has to breathe deep and roll back onto her back to get away from it. 

“He’s an ass,” Kara says. “You know, you never told me about how you two met. Was it one of them cute kinds of things? Like, across a crowded room. Some sorta high society function.”

“I didn’t tell you because it was one of the worst times of my life,” Lena says, laughing a little. “And it was much better pretending it wasn’t true, solving cases with you.”

Kara hums. Her heart burns.

“Yeah, but how’d you meet?” Kara insists. She can hear Lena sigh and shift in her seat.

“I’d hardly call it a cute meeting,” Lena says. “Lex introduced us, when Morgan was still partnered with the Housing Commission. It was apparent he and mother felt our match would be good. It was - well. I hated him. He hated me. But I was always aware that I would have to get married, and I suppose when Morgan came along, it was at least a husband who would keep well away from me. Lillian still regularly asks when we’ll have children, but I at least have freedom.”

“Guess that makes some sorta sense,” Kara says, opening her eyes again to look over at Lena. Her eyes are blurry, and she realizes Lena’s clutching her glasses over by the window, looking at Kara with some mess of an expression she can’t piece together. 

“What about you?” Lena asks, after a few moments. 

“What about me?” Kara asks, sitting up and groaning as she puts weight on her hand. Her stomach turns, but it’s a little more manageable. She’s still in her trench coat, and it’s making her sweat, so she shrugs it off so she’s down to her suspenders and shirt sleeves. 

“I don’t know,” Lena says, voice soft and rough. Kara blinks into the sun, trying to make her eyes work against the shape of Lena. “Have you had any - lovers?”

Kara laughs, pushing herself up against the wall and groaning a little as her head swims. She tries to think if there’s anything worth telling to Lena, but the truth of the thing is that she’s not been in so deep with anyone as she is with the girl in this room. There’d been girls, occasional and fleeting, stolen nights and dances. But nothing that some poet might call a lover. 

“Guess that’d depend on your definition,” Kara says, finally. “But in my head, no. Nothing longer than a fling or worth writing home about. Have you had any somesuch lover? ”

Lena laughs when Kara raises both her hands to do little quotations in the air, something only accomplishable on one set of digits. 

“No,” Lena says. “I know Morgan has his whole harem, and I suppose I’ve had men wanting. But I’ve never been much interested.”

Kara nearly burns in half, wanting to ask what that means, why Lena’s still got Kara’s glasses, why her face is twisted up like that. She feels a little claustrophobic, trapped in this little room and talking this over, foolish and coming down from a bender. But at the same time, she’s lost her head: there’s a bit of her heart that still sees the want in Lena’s eyes, Winn’s words, Lena’s hands on Kara’s neck, and it’s tumbling it over like a rock polisher.

“I always figured I’d never get a chance at the things I wanted, too, I guess,” Kara says, shrugging even when her shoulder twinges. “So I chose freedom, same as you.” 

“You’re saying you didn’t want to get pummelled every few weeks chasing around dog snatchers?” Lena asks, amused, her voice light again. 

“I only did a dog snatching once,” Kara huffs. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be sort of like a cop, or a - judge, or a lawyer, or all those things at once maybe. And I used to picture that, coming home to a big dog, one of those retrievers maybe, and a wife and people thanking me for helping them, like how my parents were before it all burnt up. And when I grew up, I realized that was just a thing in my head. So I let it go, picked it up piecemeal instead. Got a P.I. license, got a family together. Got a couple plants. And it’s been fine.”

“It’s been fine,” Lena repeats. Kara nods, shuffling her head against the wall behind her. It’s hard to lie to Lena twice, so she doesn’t parrot it back.

“I thought I’d be fine, married to Morgan and working my whole life,” Lena says. Kara watches her hands unfold Kara’s glasses and close them again. “It took me a long time to realize that it wasn’t fine. That I wasn’t fine.”

“When’d you realize?” Kara asks, stupid as can be. Lena looks at her, and even without her glasses, Kara can’t breathe around the answer hanging in the air like a noose. 

There’s a knock on the door, thankfully.

“Food trolley!” comes the voice from the door. 

Small blessings.

-

“So, what’s your plan?” Kara asks, in the midst of shoveling a lukewarm Cuban sandwich into her mouth. Lena’d relinquished her glasses, so she can see just fine Lena’s frown as she bites into a cracker. “Why you makin’ a face?”

“You’re such a disgusting eater,” Lena says, sitting prim and pretty in the armchair. “I had forgotten what it was like. You’re getting mustard all over your bandages.”

Kara hums, looking down at her bum hand, where yellow mustard is indeed striped onto it. She reaches over to the bedspread and wipes at it clumsily. 

“Not my fault my hand’s bundled up like a baby in a blizzard,” Kara says. Lena laughs a little at that, and it sparks little tingles of joy up Kara’s own spine, like hearing wind chimes on a summer day. It feels like something is cracking open between them, something new and soft and painful. It feels like the kind of gift you give a dying woman, all things considered. But Kara’s content to lie in her grave if Lena’s gonna look at her like this. Her mind’s already cornered the bend.

“What happened to it, anyway?” Lena asks. Kara rolls her eyes, and her brain centers again on the little LL etched into the briefcase underneath Corben’s bed. 

“Got a couple volts is all,” Kara says. Lena frowns, like she wants to dig in more, but Kara wants to live in this moment, not the one after this, where she has to supposition Lena’s dear brother as a murderous thief. She makes that decision quick and clings to it. “You gonna tell me your genius plan or not?”

“It’s hardly genius,” Lena says, rolling her eyes. But Kara knows how much Lena loves a compliment on Kara’s tongue, how her cheeks pretty up with a blush. She’d always known that, had never thought too much of it other than the most gorgeous girl on this whole earth was humble to boot. But Kara had known, too, that wasn’t so true: Lena could be as arrogant as any man, just that she had the brains and money to back it up. Kara had let it all slide, so content to let it be, for fear it was all she’d ever get. Yet, now, she’s wondering.

“Sure it ain’t,” Kara says. “Tell me anyway?”

“I figured you could go scope out the business seats,” Lena says. “And if he’s close enough, we might be able to lure him this way - restroom’s just past us. We could nab him then.”

“Little more haphazard than your old plans,” Kara hums, but she nods anyways, shoving more of her sandwich in her mouth. 

“I’m somewhat out of practice,” Lena says. “And we’ve never exactly been in a situation this tight.”

“I’d disagree,” Kara says. “‘Member that crook who had us on his houseboat? You almost drowned, ‘cause I guess heiresses ain’t taught to swim.”

“I can swim, I was just also trying to support - you know what? You agreed that you would stop bringing that up after that woman hit you with a bowling ball and you cried.”

“She broke my foot,” Kara frowns.

“And I almost drowned because I was saving that kid,” Lena says, primly, adjusting the edge of her dress and then crossing her arms. The move pushes her chest up, and Kara has to laugh at herself at that one, eyes drifting anywhere else.

“I guess this situation is a little more tight,” Kara says, shrugging. She shoves the last of her sandwich in her mouth, dry as a bone and rubbing crumbs trapped in her bandages onto the bedspread. It’s lumpy and her back hurts from passing out drunk on it, but it still looks more than a little appealing.

“I missed you,” Lena says. It comes out like she never meant to speak it out loud. Kara looks back her way and finds Lena’s arms unraveled, resting on the armchair’s sides, her knuckles tight. There’s an awful sincerity on her face that makes Kara’s heart go soft as a marshmallow, warm as one held in a fire. She watches as Lena laughs a little, reaches up to wipe at her shiny eyes. “I just - missed you so much.”

“I - ” Kara says. Her voice drops away as Lena hunches forward a little bit, her hands pressing tighter to her face.

“I was so cruel to you,” Lena says. “And I was cruel to you again, asking you to help me. But I couldn’t - I missed you so much.”

“Lena, you’re fine,” Kara says. If it were Alex or Winn crying in front of her right now, she’d wrap them into a hug, but she feels frozen to where she’s sat, watching Lena unspool. A part of her wonders if it’s just another phase in the game, a securing of Kara’s loyalty. Lena’s smart enough to be one of those gals. Kara’s dumb enough to be one of those guys. But Lena picks her head up and looks at Kara, green-blue-grey eyes reddening and wet. And Kara forgets the whole sick thought. Lena’d never do that. She feels it so central in her soul that there’s no chance it ain’t truth. “Things are complicated.”

“They weren’t,” Lena says, her jaw so tight her teeth clink when she finishes the statement. 

“I mean, I don’t think anyone’d hear the whole yarn and not get tied up about it,” Kara says. Lena makes a noise that might have betrayed amusement, but she drops her face to her hands again, and then Kara feels her knees move before she has the conscious thought to move with them. She moves a foot to the left and kneels below Lena at the armchair, her bum hand reaching out to rest on the outside edge of her elbow. It’s smart; she can’t feel the heat of Lena so clear with a fried hand bound in bandages. “You’re okay. We’ll get your husband, and we’ll - I don’t know. I’m thinking about retiring to a villa up north, but you could visit on occasion if you wanted.”

Lena laughs, her hand reaching to slide over the bandages and rest there. 

“Visitor only?” Lena asks, and Kara has to hold her own thigh to get herself to not jump up and kiss the daylights out of her. Lena’s eyes watch hers, makeup smeared and dark around her eyes, and the quirk of her lips is clear as day and the tone of her voice sounds like waking up in the morning. Kara’s head near spins out on a rainy street, trying to piece together fast what that means.

“You’re right,” Kara says. Her voice is rough, and there’s no mistaking the drop of Lena’s eyes to her lips. She’s gotta get out of this room before she goes on and takes a bite from a black widow. “I can’t afford a villa. You can have half of it but pay for all of it.”

“Thank you for the invitation, darling,” Lena says. Kara has to avoid collapsing onto the ground, and instead, watches Lena’s face as she feels the barest sense of her fingers running over her bandages. It’s been a long time since she’s heard Lena call her that. It’s been a long time since that part of her chest felt warm. It’s hard to not just fall into it.

They sit there, for a longer time than is necessary, watching each other, close but far. 

“I’ll go do a run,” Kara says, soft, after who knows how long. Lena nods, her hand moving away from Kara’s, reaching up to wipe her eyes again, where messy makeup has caked in odd bits and pieces. The worst part is that Lena is still gorgeous.

Chapter Text

It takes less than a minute to find Edge. 

He’s scrunched up against a window, a coat over his body, an empty seat next to him. He’s dumb enough that he doesn’t look up when Kara walks past him twice to get a good read on his surroundings. The numbskull is traveling alone, far as she can tell - she’s seen enough of his goons to know ‘em by face. His ridiculous haircut sticks out like a sore thumb even though it’s as dishevelled as she’s ever seen it.  

As she passes back past him, she wonders if it’s really that easy. All they have to do is wait for him to go to the restroom. They have enough time until the stop where Lena’s friend is waiting for them. Kara can bag him legal if anyone bothers to cause a fuss over him getting cuffed. 

She thinks that, of course, until she gets cracked in the head with a suitcase as she’s about to slide open the door of their room. Her glasses get knocked off as she careens into the door, but she turns to try to catch the attacker with her hand, fumbling through her pocket to try to grab for her brass knuckles.

“Kara Danvers,” says the voice there, after her bum hand gets caught in their grip. She can hear movement on the other side of the door, Lena moving fast, and she tries to impart some sort of message for her to stay put. There’s blood dripping down into Kara’s eyes. “Y’know, Mr. Edge said you might come after him. Said you were a lost pup on a leash like that.”

“I’m sure that ain’t as polite as what he said,” Kara huffs, wiggling in her attacker’s grip until she can worm her way to seeing him. It’s, of course, Hank Henshaw. That’s the way things seem to be going. She gets her left hand around the knuckles just as Henshaw gets his big meaty fingers on her windpipe.

“You’re right, he said you were bitch in heat for his wife,” Henshaw says. “Figures. Seems like your family can’t keep your noses where they belong.” 

Kara can’t speak around the steady crush on her throat. Her reprieve comes when the door slides open and she hits the flat of her back, Henshaw on top of her and growling at the interruption. Lena makes a shocked gasp noise, skittering to the back of the small room, up against the window.

“Aw, jeez, sorry to interrupt the lovers’ hideaway,” Henshaw says. He picks Kara up by the front of her shirt and slams her back into the ground. Her vision goes black for a second, but she swings blind anyways, catching his temple with her left hand. Her right hand is almost useless except for its ability to function as a blunt instrument, but she uses it anyway, jamming it into his face even as it burns her hand. He grunts, of course, but keeps on manhandling her, kneeling into her stomach. 

Kara still can’t see, between the blood in her eyes, the lack of glasses, and the black of her vision, but she keeps trying to get at him, get him away from Lena. So it’s a bit of shock when his body goes slack and there’s a burning smell as he drops like a sack of potatoes on top of her. 

“Kara,” Lena’s voice comes, her hands shifting Henshaw’s heavy weight a little to the side as she grabs ahold of the fabric of Kara’s shoulders. “Are you alright?”

“What’d you do to him?” Kara huffs. She can’t quite breathe, her eyes are broke, and she feels a heavy bruise sprouting on her face and throat. But it’s not all bad; Lena’s hands are on her. 

“I shocked him,” Lena says. “Well, I hit him and shocked him. I have a prototype for a shock baton for police - I started making it when Alex got her arm broken by that robber.”

“You - shocked him,” Kara repeats. There’s a thousand things on her tongue at that, not the least of which is the burn on her hand that’s stinging mightily right now. But she somehow hears the mention of Alex and gets lost in that, and Lena’s hands brushing at her shirt until it settles on her shoulders better, leaning against the side of the little bed and breathing hard. “Christ. Didn’t I give you my pocket knife for bull like this?”

“I forgot it,” Lena says, which is most likely the kind way of saying she’d tossed Kara’s precious knife out with the garbage. What was a knife to a shock baton?

Kara has only a few seconds of breathing and staring at Henshaw’s unmoving body, crashed on the ground in front of her, Lena’s hands brushing her shoulders.

“Well, thank you for taking care of this lunkhead, my lovely wife,” comes a new voice in the doorway. It’s reedy, irritating, and it makes Kara feel like she can’t breathe all over again. There’s a clicking sound that she knows cold as a knife. 

When she looks up, one eye still bloody, Morgan Edge is standing there, stepping in, and closing the door behind him, a shiny revolver trained on her. 

“It’s a surprise to see you’ve wandered away from your penthouse. I can’t say I’m so surprised to see your hanger-on.”

“Morgan,” Lena says. She sounds cold, the little remains of her Irish accent disappeared. Kara tries to shuffle to her feet, but Edge’s gun presses suddenly into her temple. 

“I don’t think so,” he says. “Stay down, you nuisance.”

Kara sits back down again, caught between the two of them. Stuck down there, she reaches up with her gauzy hand to wipe blood out of her eyes, accidentally scraping the cut over her eyebrow and sucking in a breath. When she looks over to Lena, she’s leant against the window, her fingers wound tight around Winn’s pistol. Kara’s not even sure when she had lost it or how. 

“You think you can shoot me?” Edge asks. “Lena, sweetheart, I know you’re too good for that.”

“You don’t know what I’m capable of,” Lena returns, her voice icy. Kara feels Morgan’s shoe press into her ankle and lean down, sending shivers of pain up her shin. She tries to kick away, but can’t quite get traction. “Leave her alone.”

“ Leave her alone ,” Edge parrots back. “You know, I thought I’d seen the last of you, Kara Danvers. I thought Lena had enough sense to know that I meant it when I said I’d put a bullet through your skull if I even heard word of you two gallivanting around town, making a mockery of my marriage. How’s it feel to know she cares so much about her little toy that she accepted it meant you dead?”

It makes her mad, the confirmation that Lena’s fears were real and founded, that Edge, the man who had pledged on the Bible to love and protect her, had put Kara on the chopping block to hurt Lena. To control her. 

Edge’s words shine a different light on the crystal clear memory in Kara’s head, new shadows forming up. Lena’s hand trembling with fear and anger and unabashed tenderness as her fingers caressed the skin of Kara’s face. Kara’s voice, scratchy, Kara’s eyes, blue and rounded with bruises. 

“Please, we can go somewhere other than this godforsaken town. I love you, Lena. I love you. I’ll love you so good, somewhere else.”

And the look on Lena’s face, in that moment, the one that had taken Kara by the throat then and every night since. Eyes bold and wide, fingers withdrawing, still shaking. The way she had always looked at Kara disappeared into the ether like a lightswitch had taken her heart.

“You should leave, Kara.”

And Kara hopes, suddenly, for the first time, contemplating that moment.

“Where’s the prototype?” Lena says in the real world. Kara hears the gun in Lena’s hand clicking, the safety off. 

“In the hands of someone far worse than me,” Edge says, shrugging. “Listen. I’m feeling magnanimous.”

“Who has it?” Lena asks, heated. Kara gives a whimper when Edge leans down further on her ankle. She can feel the pressure start to be too much on the already fragile bones there. 

“You always were so prideful,” Edge says. “All you care about is that damned thing. You even put this beast in danger over it. I’m trying to give you an offer.”

“What’s your goddamn offer?” Kara huffs, kicking her leg in an effort to get Edge off her ankle. He leans off a little, but only so much, laughing as he looks down at her. 

“Let me go,” Edge says, simply. “That’s my offer.”

“I’m not letting you go,” Lena says. “We’re taking you back to National City, where you’ll face justice for framing Kara, for stealing from me, and you’ll get us my prototype back.”

“Let me go, and you two can go too,” Edge says, still looking at Kara. “Come on, Danvers. You know the game. Lena here’s living in a dream. You take me back, it ends with you in a cell or dead. You let me go - well, you can disappear too. We can all disembark from this train in Vancouver and start new lives.”

“You’ve killed people, Morgan,” Lena says, insistent. “And stolen a weapon, and given it away - ”

“Lena, you’re the one waving a gun in my face,” Edge says, laughing. “Think logically. This one will follow you wherever you go. You take me back to the city, she’s as good as dead. And I think you can’t stand that, same as you couldn’t two years ago.”

“That’s not how it will go,” Lena says. She sounds fierce, angry, and Kara lies there and loves her, even when she’s being silly. 

Lena’s always believed that things would be good, that her good intentions would bear good consequences. Kara’s not sure she’s believed that herself in a long time. She used to feel hopeful about things, that they’d work out even when they couldn’t. And it ain’t that the hope’s died - just, been jabbed a few too many times. It feels like a wound in her chest.

“You’re being foolish,” Edge says. “I’m offering you a chance to go do what you want, away from your overbearing mother and awful brother. I’m offering you her.”

“At the cost of lives,” Lena says. But she sounds weaker. Kara feels that little flame of hope sear beneath her sternum, tries to breathe as Edge leans down and looks Kara in the face. 

“How on earth can you love a woman like that?” he asks, laughing like he’s said something hilarious. Kara grits her teeth, kicks her leg up with all her might, sending him off balance, scrambles up, and clocks him square in the temple with her brass knuckled hand. He goes sideways fast, knocked out as he piles half onto the bed in a heap. 

She sits there then, breathing hard. She feels tears in her eyes, her throat tight. God, she’s a fool. 

“Kara,” Lena says, voice soft. Kara closes her eyes, and breathes. 

“I’ll get the cuffs out,” Kara huffs, after a second, wiping at her face. “Just - give me one sec.”

It takes more than a few seconds, and the click of the handcuffs sounds like gunshots, but like always, she does what Lena wants.

-

Kara has to show about forty people her license as they disembark the train. The cut above her eyebrow had healed up for the rest of the hour it took to reach San Francisco; Edge had woken up some twenty minutes in, kicking and screaming behind his gag before Lena had used her shock baton on him to shut him up. Kara had sat there, next to his prone body on the bed, after she had shoved Henshaw’s body in the bathroom and wedged it shut.

Lena’d tried to talk to her. But Kara’s head was busted and her hands shook when she unwrapped her bad hand to reveal her skin shock white and blistered. It still stung, like the skin underneath the dead top layer was chafing, but she pulled on the leather driving gloves she had shoved in her coat pockets anyway. Moving her fingers around stung too, but she dug them into Edge’s collar and tugged him off the train, trailing behind Lena and giving a loose, painful smile to anyone who stared. 

Her hopes ain’t high. But they sink to the bottom of the Pacific when she walks into the parking lot and finds Lex Luthor leaning against a blood red Imperial car with a smile drawn across his face. He’s got no coat on, even in the rain and doesn’t seem bothered by it in the least. It’s unsettling. 

“Lex,” Lena says, sounding surprised. Kara wishes she could muster surprise, but all there is in her is dread. When she looks to Edge, his body slumped standing next to her, his eyes meet hers with the same dead feeling in her gut. This is what he’d been running from, what he’d invited them to run from. “What are you doing here?”

“I heard from Officer Lockwood at the PD’s office that he couldn’t locate you,” Lex says, looking congenial as he leans forward to pull Lena into a hug. She returns it. “So I called your friend Sam - she said she was planning to meet you with your wayward husband here, to bring him back for justice. I told her I’d take her place. He’s a criminal, Lena, you shouldn’t have gone after him even if you had help.”

And then Lex’s eyes flick to Kara over Lena’s shoulder. The smile on his face goes sinister as it glances from her to Edge and back again. Kara thinks about unlocking Edge right now, the two of them turning tail for the train lingering on the platform. But a hand claps onto her shoulder.

“Mr. Luthor,” says Hank Henshaw. 

Kara blinks her eyes open and shut, glances to Edge again. He gives her a look that belies his resignation. She gives a brief apology to the poor train attendant who’s surely stumbling into a destroyed stateroom, bathroom door off its hinges.

“Sorry I was delayed. These two little ladies sure pack a mean punch. Edge here set me on them, and I was trying to talk to them before your sister took me out.”

“Well, I’m glad you two can at least protect yourselves and are naturally paranoid,” Lex says, jovial and kind as he pulls his arm around Lena’s shoulders. “I sent my friend here, Mr. Henshaw, to bring your husband back. You needn’t have gotten involved, Lena.”

Kara grits her teeth through her smile as Lena looks over to her, her own small smile blooming on her face. 

“Let’s get out of this rain, and get home,” Lex says.

Kara feels Edge get ripped from her grip, her skin shifting painfully under her leather glove, and she thinks again, about turning and sprinting for the train platform. But Lex is already ambling around to the driver’s side of the car, uncaring, and Henshaw is manhandling Edge into the car as he kicks and yells. Lena moves to the passenger door and stops, turning to look back at Kara. 

“Darling?” Lena asks, her voice soft and calm in the face of Kara’s bubbling anxiety. Kara blinks, rain seeping into her hair and into her jacket, and she follows Lena.

-

The drive is long. Henshaw sits his massive body between Edge and Kara in the backseat, and doesn’t care to be kind about it. It’s reflected in the spread of his legs, the mean smirk on his face when the car takes a turn and he leans to and fro with gusto, crushing them both into the sides of the car. He’s also got a gun trained against Kara’s ribs, pressing in hard for the entirety of the time. 

Lex and Lena talk to each other like this is a normal thing. They chat about Lena’s stun baton prototype, and about how Edge is an animal, and about how Lex will put in the good word with Lockwood. Lex asks her questions, sometimes, about how Kara’s business is going, or how he had heard about Clark’s tragic death. Mentions how he’d met him a few times. 

And Kara takes it, grits her teeth, thinks about survival. If there’s nothing else, there’s at least surviving - she had learnt that young, eating scrappy meals with Clark and then with the Danvers. She had learnt it all over again when Lena left her. And she was remembering it now. 

Lena is gorgeous. She laughs with her brother and occasionally looks back at Kara, a gentle smile on her face. Kara knows she’s in the jaws of a lion, that Lena’s led her there unknowing or not, but she smiles back every time.

“Mr. Luthor,” the bellhop greets as Lex pulls up at the National City Grand. Kara remembers him, in a vague way. She’d been inside the Grand all of four times at most, but she remembers him most from his gentle hand on her arm as she stumbled out the door that night two years ago. He’d been kind. He looks surprised when she swings out the door. “Miss...Danvers, was it? It’s been a long time.”

Kara gives him a genuine smile, reaching out to shake his hand with her gloved one. Lex is at her shoulder as the rest of the car exits, and she can feel the bellhop’s eyes drift over the group.

“Nice to see you again,” Kara says. “Y’know, I never got your name.”

“Quentin,” he says, his eyes wide as he takes in Edge getting hauled out of the car by Henshaw. 

“Quentin,” Kara repeats. “Thanks for your help, last time I saw you. I wasn’t quite in the right mind at the time. But you were a good egg.”

It’s an odd choice for Kara’s last act of kindness in this world, but Quentin takes it in stride anyway, his smile big and bright and his grip tightening as he invests in shaking her hand.

“No problem, Miss Danvers. I try to help when I can,” Quentin says. 

“Then I’ll have to ask you for a spot of help, Quentin,” Lex interrupts, his hand resting on Kara’s shoulder and a bright smile on his face. “Would you mind calling the police for us? We’ve got a wanted criminal on our hands.”

“Of course,” Quentin gasps, turning and nearly sprinting back inside. Lex falls into step beside her as they start following, Edge making tons of noise as Henshaw moves him forward. Kara can hear Lena’s heels behind them, comforting in its own way as Lex leans over to whisper to her.

“You make a move to run, Henshaw will take her out,” Lex says. “And then all the others you have running around your office. Including your sister, the damned bitch.”

“You’d kill your own sister?” Kara says back, weaving past Quentin frantically gasping on the phone at the lobby’s desk toward the large caged elevator. 

“Miss Danvers, I know we’ve never had the pleasure of meeting before, but I know you’re smart enough to know that I’d do whatever I needed to get what I wanted,” Lex says, shrugging boyishly. His hairline’s receding but slicked back anyway, dark like Lena’s. “This whole mess over one silly air exchanger. If she’d left it well enough alone things could’ve continued on as they were. But I suppose - neither she nor you were happy with how they were.”

“Mr. Luthor, I know you’ve never met me before, but you don’t know a thing about me,” Kara says. “You might know about the facts of things, but you don’t know me.”

“I know enough,” Lex says. He strides into the elevator, Henshaw and Edge piling in after him. Kara holds the gate for Lena, letting her pass by before she willingly steps into her cage. It’s like a lobster crawling into its coffin, caught on the scent of something enticing.

-

Lena’s penthouse is a mess. The workbench that dominates her living room is massive and strewn with mechanical equipment and scraps of paper, blueprints and notes. Her kitchen has dishes piled in the sink, and there are clothes thrown haphazardly around the couches. Lena has a little blush on her face as she enters, and it deepens when Lex raises an eyebrow at her. 

“Left in a rush, did we? Imagine what mother would say,” he says, gesturing absently at Henshaw to push Edge into one of the plush armchairs. Kara feels Lena’s hand press into her elbow, leading her to the large leather couch, and Kara goes, sitting into the couch and pressing her gloved hand to her face. She had left her glasses on the train, shattered as they were by Henshaw’s attack. 

“Mother needn’t know,” Lena says, laughing. “Listen, Lex, Morgan said that he gave the prototype to someone else. We have to find out who it is.”

“We do,” Lex says, looking deadly serious. Kara leans her head on her hand and feels the skin squelch and burn as Edge squirms on the armchair, still gagged and muttering and in Kara’s handcuffs. 

Lex turns towards him, gestures at Henshaw, and then, there’s a loud bang, followed by another one in quick succession. Edge slumps forward, Lena gasps, her body moving sideways into Kara, and Kara can feel Lex’s smile on her as Kara regards Edge’s body, chest bloody. “Lena, I think that what would be best is you washing this situation from your hair.”

“Oh my God, Lex, what - he knew who had the device!” Lena says. She stands up, crossing to her brother. In the meantime, Kara feels Henshaw’s hand grip her by her bum shoulder and pull her hard enough that it dislocates again. “Wait - Kara!”

Kara doesn’t get a chance to respond, because she’s getting a strong right hook to her jaw that has her bouncing off a wall and falling into the next room in the penthouse. 

She pulls herself up off the ground with soft fabric, clambering halfway onto a surface that must be a bed. It’s amusing on a cosmic level, to be in Lena’s bedroom and in the midst of a brawl. There’s the barest hint of Henshaw’s shadow in the darker room. She climbs onto the bed, reaching for one of the pillows and hoping against hope -

She pulls a familiar shape from under the pillow, and feels her old, trusty pocket knife come springing open just as Henshaw’s gun goes off. 

Kara feels the bullet zip past the outside of her shoulder. It’s all flesh and feels more like a cut than iron, but it still makes her yell as she lunges and digs her knife into Henshaw’s neck. She feels his blood fly into her face, but he drops fast, no sound even. 

“Kara!” comes Lena’s yell again, more frantic. It’s fuzzy as all hell, Kara’s ears ringing from the gunshot and her arm stinging like a whole hornets nest got a square spot on her arm. Kara can hear a ghostly Lex, his voice gentle and patchy around the buzz.

“Lena...leave...grudge match...not safe...here,” Lex says. Kara falls straight off the bed when she tries to scramble away from Henshaw’s slumped, seeping body and curses about her own damn misfortune when her other shoulder - the dislocated one - sings like a soprano at curtain close.

“Kara, can you hear me? Let go of me,” Lena yelps. Kara vaults to her feet, pitches forward to the light coming in the doorway. Her gloved hand is covered in Henshaw’s blood, and so it slides down the doorframe. She crashes down again, hits the door on the way, and lies there. “Kara, oh my God - ”

“It’s time to go, Lena,” Lex says, insistent. Kara breathes in the funny scent of the carpet under her, and can’t help but laugh. Lex has done an amazing job, as things go. It’d be easy to pass this off, and jail the last one left alive, covered in blood. She thinks she can hear sirens.

“I’m not going to just leave her there,” Lena says. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What the hell is wrong with you? I’ve set it all up for you, Lena. Your awful husband’s dead, you’re free of this place, you can come work with me. Just let the vermin rot,” Lex says. Kara keeps on sort of chuckling at that one. Vermin. It’s a good word. Good in a crossword puzzle. Reminds her of Winn and Brainy racing to complete the Planet’s puzzles.

“I - Lex, what are you saying? What are you doing?” Lena asks. She sounds lost. If Kara felt like she could get up off the ground, she’d go to her and try to help her. She tries to leverage herself up. It almost sort of works; she ends up sitting against the wall, breathing hard through the pain, watching as Lena turns from her brother to Kara. It’s hard to make out the expression on her face. The sirens are growing louder, filling in more of the sound space left by the gunshot.

“I’m doing this for you,” Lex says. “But I’ll leave you here if I have to.”

“You killed Corben,” Lena says, fast. “And you have my prototype. You bankrolled the fight - did you - did you kill - ”

“You’re a Luthor, Lena,” Lex interrupts, his voice harsh. “She’ll sink you faster than cinderblocks. And Luthors are meant to fly. So let’s debate this some other time, and get out of here.”

“No!” Lena shouts. The sirens get loud enough that they must be pulling up outside, shouts starting all the way downstairs. “You can’t get away with this, Lex!”

“I can’t?” Lex asks. “The NCPD is in my pocket. Oh, my poor sister, she was so caught up with her lover that she contrived to murder her husband and kill his henchman. Tell me what I can’t do, Lena. I’ve done all this. Do you think your word, or that thing’s word will hold me? Let’s go, Lena.”

“No, I won’t - I won’t leave - ”

“I’ll come retrieve you from your jail cell, then,” Lex says. And then both Kara and Lena watch him disappear, sweeping out the door. It almost makes Kara laugh.

It’s hard to track Lena’s movement, but one second she’s across the room and the next she’s crashing into Kara’s side, one knee landing on Kara’s thigh, and the other jamming into her hip. Kara’s got Henshaw’s blood all over her, is afraid to reach out and touch Lena even though she desperately wants to. She can hear officers downstairs yelling at each other. 

“Kara, sweetheart,” Lena says, and Kara feels her head get turned to face Lena. That’s when she realizes Lena has her hands on either side of Kara’s face. “Can you hear me? Can you stand?”

“M’fine, you should go,” Kara says, fiddling with the knife in her hand and trying to fold it up between her slippery glove and her other hand. “You should get outta here, gonna be cops up the…”

She sort of loses her train of thought, because Lena’s leant forward and is grabbing at Kara’s arm where the bullet apparently tore a hell of a hole through her jacket. She looks focused, intent, her eyes shimmering, and so Kara tries to talk again, worming her body sideways. She doesn’t succeed in escaping Lena’s grip. She’s not sure she could really put in that effort.

“Okay, it’s a surface wound,” Lena mutters to herself, pulling a handkerchief from somewhere and starting to wrap it. “It’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”

“Lena, you gotta go,” Kara says. “I’ll be fine, get outta here.”

“Shut up,” Lena hisses. “Can you stand?”

“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” Kara says. “Just - it’ll be fine. Go get Lex. Just go.”

“I’m not going to,” Lena says, and Kara feels the pulse of pain down her cheeks when Lena’s fingers press in. “Listen to me. I’m not leaving you here. Either we’re both going to jail, or we’re both getting out of here. So get up.”

And then Lena reaches an arm underneath Kara’s dislocated one and starts yanking. It makes her yelp, but Lena keeps pulling, the stubborn woman she is. Kara’s forced to help Lena, leaning on the wall and scrambling her legs to support herself. By the time she’s standing, she’s not quite sure how - more likely than not Lena is carrying her weight. 

“Lena, please,” Kara says. “I’m dead weight - ”

“I’m not leaving you,” Lena says, angry in Kara’s ear as Kara leans her head against Lena’s. “I’m going to get you out of here. Come on, walk with me.”

“This is ridiculous,” Kara hums, but she lets her legs start falling, Lena’s arm wrapped around her back and holding tightly to her ungloved hand. “Lena - ”

“Don’t you dare tell me to leave you again,” Lena says, voice heavy and sharp. It’s shot through with all the angst of a teenager, edged with tears, and Kara reacts to it like a dog hearing a command. She shuts the hell up, tries to reorient herself. Tries to be good for Lena.

“Back stairwell. It’ll take longer for ‘em to find,” Kara mutters, and Lena starts moving them again, slow, Kara’s head rung like a bell. 

“You had my dad’s knife,” Kara says, conversational and gentile, bringing her gloved hand up to show Lena as she takes them to the service stairwell down the hallway, away from the spiralling main staircase and elevator, where Kara can hear people shouting. “You kept it.”

“Yes, I did,” Lena agrees, gently easing the stairwell door open and closing it softly behind them. Kara watches her take a deep breath, has an urge to reach out and hug her. “How fast can you move down ten floors?”

“Never know until I try,” Kara huffs, starting to take the steps while leaning heavily on the handrail. It’s more falling than walking, but it’s impressive none the less. Kara’s ears are starting to handle the echo of the concrete stairwell. “We need a car.”

When she hits the first landing, she slams her dislocated shoulder into the wall to pop it into place. Lena looks over at her like she might puke, her eyes so wide. Kara, on her side of things, feels at least one corner of her brain clear up immediately. She takes a deep breath around it. “S’better.”

“Well, that’s - something,” Lena says, grabbing for Kara’s hand and pulling her down the next flight of stairs. “I have a car around back. We just have to move fast.”

“Alright. We can drop you somewhere, and I’ll split,” Kara says, wincing when her gloved hand smears Henshaw’s blood on the wall as they turn the corner onto the ninth floor landing. Some detective will have a field day with that one. “Does it got gas?”

“We’re not splitting up,” Lena says. “You’re covered in blood and can barely walk.”

“I’m walkin’ just fine right now,” Kara hisses. “Look, I’m dead weight, you know it as well as me - ”

“Shut up!” Lena half-yells, turning and spinning on Kara so fast that Kara trips backwards. They’re thankfully on another landing. Lena’s hand in hers keeps her from hitting a spare pipe running down the stairwell, but she looks furious, eyes rimmed with red. She drops Kara’s hand, grips her fingers into the grimy, bloody lapel of Kara’s coat, and tugs until Kara stumbles back towards her. “Shut up. Okay?”

“Okay,” Kara says, voice soft. “Okay.”

Lena’s eyes go a little less furious and wild then, like a balloon bled of its air. Kara’s not really got time to think about anything but looking at her; Lena’s hands are wound tight in her coat, her breath heaving, and Kara has a converse urge to pull her closer, despite the blood on her, despite the circumstance. Lena’s near tears, prettier than the morning sky, looking like she might slap Kara if she says another word that isn’t an agreement.

“Okay,” Lena repeats. She unclenches her hands from Kara, grabs for her hand again, and starts taking her down the steps again. For fast work, it’s quiet - Kara’s spent time trying to be both quick and quiet, and Lena’s heels, for once, aren’t making thunderstrikes on the cement. 

Kara hears, in some measure, the door on the first floor slam open, voices huffing and puffing as they start ascending the stairwell. She doesn’t even get a chance to look over at Lena and gather a plan before Lena shoves Kara behind her on the third floor landing and is pulling Winn’s gun from her purse. The footsteps stop abruptly right as they get real close.

“Lena,” comes the voice. Kara has to thunk her head against the wall. Of course. “Lena, what the hell?”

“Let us through,” Lena says, voice like steel. Kara shuffles from where she’s been forced against the wall and peeks her head around Lena’s frame. Alex and Maggie are standing at the bottom of their set of stairs, guns drawn. Kara feels Alex’s eyes run all the way down her, like how she used to when Kara’d come home from the lake with mud all over her.

“Kara,” Alex says, voice strange. “What did you do?”

“She didn’t do anything,” Lena answers for her. “Lex did this. Lex did all of this - ”

“Miss Luthor, put the gun down,” Maggie says, voice much calmer. Kara can see Lena’s knuckles on her gun go whiter than white. It’s a surprise Kara can’t trace the minute bones of her hand through her skin. “Let’s just talk. We can go to the station - ”

“You can take me in, but you aren’t taking her,” Lena says. Kara frowns, makes a noise of disagreement. “But you should let us go - Lex is dangerous, and we have to stop him.”

“If your brother is bad, it’s our job to stop him,” Maggie says, gently, gun still trained still on them. Alex’s is half-lowered, her eyes bouncing from person to person. “Not yours, not Kara’s. Come on, let’s just go to the precinct and get this figured out.”

“Please, Alex, let us through,” Lena says. She’s pleading suddenly, the first Kara’s ever heard anything like that coming from her mouth. Alex looks from Maggie to Lena to Kara, her gun now completely dropped at her side. “I can get us out of here. I can keep her safe.”

“Alex,” Maggie starts, looking in confusion over at her partner. 

“I’m gonna let ‘em go,” Alex says, sounding spaced. “She’s right. They’re the ones who can stop Lex. Lockwood’s in his pocket.”

“Alex,” Maggie repeats. “That’s - ”

“It’s the truth,” Alex says. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Mags.”

Maggie looks shocked enough that when Lena grabs ahold of Kara’s wrist and starts tugging at her, she doesn’t move to stop them. Kara slides along the wall, surely dragging Henshaw’s blood in her wake, surely the picture of a murderer - which she is, funny enough. It’s awkward and heavy, the stairwell, and Kara can feel every second tick by as they pass by each other. 

“Luthor,” Alex says, sudden, her eyes focused and vibrant again. Kara watches her hand go tight around her gun. “You let anything happen to her, I’ll kill you myself.”

“I know,” Lena says. She sounds firm. Kara feels...slow, emptier somehow, watching this moment. Alex’s eyes land on her, softer, more love in them. 

“Be safe,” Alex says. “Please.”

“Yeah,” Kara agrees. “Love you.”

-

By the time Lena scrambles to unlock whatever car she’s got parked in back and begins hotwiring it, Kara feels like her brain might be starting to recover. She’s soaked; it’s raining goddamn cats and dogs, enough that their twenty second sprint to Lena’s sleek black car got them through to the bone. At the very least, it means it’s harder for anyone to take a looksee in their car; at the very worst, it means Lena’s shivering.

Lena grips the wheel tight and peels out of the parking lot, zipping past a growing conglomerate of coppers. Kara’s balance is out of whack; she slips along the seat and slides before she grabs ahold of the window handle.

“You know, I coulda driven,” Kara mumbles. Lena gives her a hard look that brokes no argument.

“Where are we going?” Lena asks, after a few seconds. Converse to Kara, she looks rattled, worn, her body curling in on itself where she can and hair plastered to her head. It’s one of the few times Kara’s really seen her unraveled, maybe beside the houseboat adventure. She’s shaking hard, from the cold or from the shock or what, Kara doesn’t know, but she rolls to a stop at a light and breathes in heavily as she glances over at Kara. Kara wracks her brain in the meantime.

“I know a place up in the hills, a cabin,” Kara says, soft. “I solved this lady’s case of a missing garden gnome and she told me I could go stay there any time I wanted. Bought it for her dead son and never sold it.”

“What are we gonna do?” Lena asks. This time, Kara hears the break on the tail end of her words, the fierceness faded well and true now. 

“We’ll figure it out,” Kara says. She doesn’t quite believe it, but she believes it for Lena. “We’ll get Lex.”

“He has the device,” Lena says. “And now - he must have control of Morgan’s properties, and money, and people - and he’s framed you.”

“Not much to frame when you stabbed a guy,” Kara says, flexing her hand out and groaning.  

“How’s your arm?” Lena asks. Kara can feel it throbbing, knows a piece of her skin got stripped clean away, but she shrugs.

“A graze,” Kara says. Lean’s hand reaches out then and presses tightly into the upper bicep where a little blood has impressed itself on Lena’s handkerchief, and Kara hisses and winces. 

“I’m sorry,” Lena whispers, her hand dropping and leaving cold skin in her wake. Kara glances her way, her head ducked as she regards something beyond Kara’s guess. “I’m so sorry, Kara. I didn’t - I knew Lex wasn’t...good. But I never thought - ”

“It’s okay, Lena,” Kara says. She’s been a fool enough times that she gets it.

-

The cabin Mrs. Grant had given her the keys to is dusty, drafty, and damp when Lena skids the car to a stop in the mudslide acting as the drive. It’s secluded enough that Kara is pretty certain it’d take a crew of cops at least a day or two to find them; okay for them to rest at, at least for the night. 

It’s funny, to think that Kara’s on the run, that Lena’s her Bonnie and Kara the Clyde.

Kara hasn’t been to this cabin since it was summer proper, on a lark with Winn to go hike in the day and drink at night, practicing their aim on tin cans lined up along the patchwork fence. But there’s crummy stuff jammed into the drawers, canned food in the cabinets, and a bottle of whiskey that’s more than singing her name. It’s tiny, the whole thing all one room almost, and Kara can hear every breath they take.

Lena sits on the edge of the bed lookin’ as lost as Kara’s seen anyone ever. 

So she jogs to the little mudroom at the back of the house, grabs a few rough towels she and Winn had scrubbed up and let dry on the clothesline outside. When she trots back into the living room, shoes squelching the whole way, Lena looks at her with big, wide eyes.

“Lex tried to kill you,” Lena says. “He tried to frame you.”

“He didn’t do a good job of killin’ me,” Kara says, kneeling on the ground in front of Lena.

“You aren’t surprised,” Lena says. Her jaw tightens up then. Kara sighs. Lena’s shaking like a leaf, poor thing, her body looking thin and gaunt somehow even though Kara knows it’s not as such. 

“I had more than one person try to tell me he was bad news, past few days,” Kara says. “Never expected it’d all come to this at his feet, but turns out I’m not so good at following the thread of things anymore.”

“Why did you work with me?” Lena asks, fierce and proud as Kara unfolds a towel and leans up to wrap it around Lena’s shoulders. “You should have told me to stay away from you.”

“Think I tried that more than once,” Kara says, shrugging as she unfolds the second towel and settles it on Lena’s lap. “You know how I told you once about how I fell out of a tree when I was a kid?”

Lena rolls her eyes.

“The time when you couldn’t walk for three days and Eliza yelled at you so long you lost hearing in an ear?” Lena asks. “What does that have to do - ”

“Thing is, I liked climbing trees,” Kara says. “Kids were always gettin’ kites stuck up there, cats, balls, and you could see the whole block, you know? Never mattered much to me that on occasion I’d fall. That’s how it feels, with you.”

Lena blinks at her, water slowly running down her face as she regards Kara. The towel on her shoulders is still loose, untouched by either party. Kara can see every curve and turn on her body that isn’t covered, thanks to the rain. She’s tryin’ not to look, but when you’re near death as such, it’s best to keep your eyes on pretty things.

“You told me that you didn’t love me still,” Lena says, soft. Kara laughs, shrugs, feels her eyes fill with tears and her chest fill up with heat. 

“I lied,” Kara says. 

Lena’s fingers reach out slowly, her hand landing first on Kara’s bicep, where the bullet wound is covered with Lena’s handkerchief. And then it moves slowly up Kara’s shoulder, dragging on the wet fabric, before it slides up the skin of her neck and cups at her jaw. Lena’s eyes are focused as a tiger’s, bold and bright. 

“I’m scared,” Lena says. Her fingers are slipping on Kara’s skin. 

“Me too,” Kara says. 

Lena leans forward, then, and kisses Kara.

Kara’s never been struck by lightning, but if she had to guess the feeling of it, it must be something like this. It feels like the core of her is lit up bright as the sun, her ears rolling with instantaneous thunder. For a few moments, the feeling hits her even before physical sensation does. And then, she’s getting whacked by it: Lena’s perfume, mixed with rain and blood and sweat. Lena’s lips, waxy with her gorgeous lipstick. The taste of her, cold and hot and everything all at once. Her hand on Kara’s skin. 

She’s never been one to look gift horses in the mouth, but this one seems altogether unreal, impossible. She spent years telling herself so, and even if the last few days has shook her hard, this is beyond her. She kisses Lena back, of course, breathes in through her nose and slides their lips together, half-up off her knees. The burn in her hands to touch, to press closer, is hot as a furnace.

But it’s like lookin’ at a pure white marble statue at a museum. Kara always got the inclination that her hands were too dirty to touch anything so perfect.

The kiss keeps going. Lena’s other hand comes up to clutch the collar of Kara’s shirt, slumped against her neck from the rain and blood. Kara feels the tightness of Lena’s grip pull the fabric across her, shifting and sloughing like a dead skin. But Lena’s hands are cold-warm, and Kara kisses her, feeling Lena’s nails bite a little at her neck. 

“Are you going to touch me?” Lena asks, briefly, between kisses that are growing more heated. It’s getting harder to breathe. 

“Didn’t know if you wanted me to,” Kara replies. The noise Lena makes is kind of like a laugh caught up with a moan and a sob. It makes Kara draw back and look her over. She nearly falls on backwards over the sight; Lena looks wrecked, her chest heaving and lipstick patchy, dragged all over. Her eyes are dark, too, watching Kara with something awfully familiar in her gaze. 

“I do,” Lena says. Her fingers in Kara’s collar are still there, still tight. Kara watches Lena watch her. “I do want you to touch me.”

“You want me now that I’m a dead man?” Kara asks. Lena’s eyes stare on steadily.

“I’ve wanted you any way you came,” Lena says. She says it like she’s been holding it in like pent-up air. Her fingers press into the wiry muscle of Kara’s formerly-dislocated shoulder, drifting focus there. Under Lena’s hand, it doesn’t hurt at all.

And the thing is, Kara is a P.I. She’s got a license in her soaked coat pocket that says as much, that she can carry a gun and that she can aim it. Kara’s been lookin’ liars in the face for years now, has believed less and less in the good of the world because of it. She keeps herself in the company of people who act with love, cuts herself from people that don’t. And she knows that on the whole of it, Lena’s brought her ruin a hundred times over the past few years, past few days. Intentional or not, Kara stands on the steps to the gallows with Lena’s firm hand guiding her noose. 

Lena could be lying to her, about anything and everything. She could be lying to her, about this, same as the rest of it.

And Kara knows she’s gone on the woman sitting above her, shivering and soft. She’s been gone since the moment she set eyes on her, she’s certain, lost herself the second she saw her twin soul in another human. 

And that’s the other hand: Kara feels, when she looks at Lena, that she sees past the goddamn mess that they’ve made for themselves, and sees the naked truth. Lena’s never lied to her, has never tried to. She’s kept her safe as well she could the whole time they’ve known each other, and Kara’s done the same. All the rest of it was confetti. 

So Kara moves her hands in coordination with the thump of her heart, and places one on the fabric clinging to Lena’s thigh, and the other gloved one on Lena’s cheek, and kisses her again.

The noise Lena makes sears itself into Kara’s ears as she manages to shift off her knees and press forward, until Lena is falling back on the huge bed, Kara shifting overtop her. Lena gasps and Kara settles her hips against Lena’s, presses tight. She’s been in bed with women plenty enough, but this feels new, shiny. Lena is a whole other creature, an angel caught under her, something worth worshipping. 

“You’re gorgeous,” Kara says, feeling Lena’s hands thread through the wet mass of hair at the base of her neck as Kara kisses her cheek, her jaw, her neck. That pleasant little freckle Kara’s thought of running her tongue over on drunken nights. “Perfect.”

“Touch me,” Lena whines. Her hips roll underneath Kara’s, and Kara can’t help the grunt that escapes her at that. “Please, touch me.”

Kara moves her hand north, moving along the curve of Lena’s side until it settles just next to her chest. There’s no longer any sense of question in Kara’s mind; no longer any hesitation. She grasps at the weight of Lena’s breast, prompting a harsh moan that Kara becomes addicted to in that very second. She does it again, and Lena does it again, and then Kara captures her mouth, her tongue threading to slip along Lena’s lips and then a little whine again. She can feel under her hand Lena’s nipple is hard, and she plucks it through the fabric of the dress. Kara’s head is unspooling faster than she can follow it. 

“Take your dress off for me?” Kara says. It’s half question, half command, but Lena nods into the kiss as fervent as can be either way. Kara’s barely rolled off Lena when she’s clambering up to unzip. Kara’s meaning, in that moment, to take off her shirt, or socks, or something attached to her body, but instead, she’s stuck with her mouth gaped as Lena’s back reveals itself, pale and delicately interrupted by black satin to the north and south. Her dress is on the floor in maybe eight seconds flat, but when she turns to come back to the bed, Kara is standing. 

“Kara, what - ” Lena starts. Kara’s wrapping her arm around Lena’s waist, drawing her as close as two humans could be without nudity. She knows she’s gripping tight, but Lena seems to like it anyway, a little noise of surprise leaking from her. Kara’s gloved hand drags on Lena’s skin, and she thinks for a second that she should take it off, but she’s not even sure what kind of injury she’d find under it -

Lena is pulling at the button of Kara’s shirt, pushing her suspenders down her arms, moving urgently against her. It makes Kara feel full wild, like she might bust a wall if she were to run right now. It makes her press forward, doesn’t even give thought to where they’re going. She just wants to be closer, to feel Lena as deep in her as she can get.

Her lips are perfect. Soft, pressing hard, and Kara can feel her tongue slipping into her mouth, and her body is divine, gorgeous as the sunrise, and skin soft if damp. There’s no shivering in Lena now, unless you count the way her body rolls against Kara’s when they bump into the solid wooden wall of the cabin. It’s frantic, desperate, and Kara’s fine with all of it, happy as a goddamn clam. Lena’s fingers yank her shirt from where it’s tucked, buttons coming undone in some order Kara can’t fathom, because Lena’s hands are on her and hot.

“You thought about this?” Kara asks, half into Lena’s mouth. Her voice is low and more of a growl, all things considered, and Lena’s hands grasp tight in her shirt, to the point a button collapses under it. She whines, too, and some dark corner of Kara’s head presses her advantage. “Tell me.”

“Of course I have,” Lena says, exasperated and huffy, and it’s so Lena that it makes Kara laugh the slightest, her hand smoothing up the glorious expanse of Lena’s skin to grasp at the clasp of Lena’s brassiere. She’s practiced enough in the art that it comes off quick, but she leaves it between them, less than eager to move away even a millimeter.

“‘Course you have,” Kara repeats, kissing again at Lena’s neck and biting down, prompting another whine. “God, I do love you. I love you so goddamn much.”

“Kara,” Lena says, soft even as her hips grind into Kara’s stomach. “Kara, darling, please - ”

“What?” Kara asks, feeling Lena’s hands shove at her stomach until she has to take a step back. Lena’s fingers finish the work of her button down then, start pushing her back again and moving the wet shirt from her shoulders. It makes the bra on Lena’s chest go lax, and Kara reaches for one, palming it, running her thumb over the hard nipple. 

“God, please, just - make love to me,” Lena says, her body following after Kara’s, pressing in, pressing her breast into Kara’s hand. She captures Kara’s lips in a hot, heady thing of a kiss, and Kara is certain more than ever that she’s comfortable with dying, having had this. 

“Okay,” Kara says, and she turns them back around, until Lena is climbing onto the bed, her legs kicking off the scrap of fabric covering her lower half. Kara watches her, trips on her own pants and underwear, until she’s naked as the day she was born, staring at the woman she loves in the same state. 

It turns soft then, in her head, and she knows Lena feels it when she kneels on the bed and reaches for the skin of Lena’s thigh and makes contact. It’s like skipping the kiddie pool and jumping straight into the deep end. Four days ago, Kara was pretty certain she’d never see Lena ever again, and just now, she put her hand on her naked thigh. 

When Kara lies next to Lena, she reaches her arms around her to draw her close, kisses her quiet. It isn’t burning hot now; the feeling in her heart is effusive warmth, like wrapping yourself in five blankets. Lena kisses her back the same way, deep and certain, and that feeling that fills her up, more than anything, makes her sure. 

“Can I - ” Kara starts, but Lena’s already nodding before Kara finishes the thought. She always could read her mind. Her hand skates inland on Lena’s thigh, feeling the coarse, beautiful hairs there, and then she dips lower, and feels that perfect, silky, endless wetness. Lena’s wet as a river, all for Kara. She ducks her head down to the side of Lena’s neck, the hotness in her chest so overwhelming she feels tears in her eyes. “I love you.”

She feels Lena’s hips roll slow against her hand, a kiss dropped to her temple, Lena’s nails digging tight in the skin of Kara’s neck. So she kisses Lena’s neck once, breathes her in deep, and dives.

Chapter Text

She wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of the rain, loud. It’s dark, but there’s an orange glow in the corner of the cabin, where the back door is open just the slightest to let the smell of water on earth in. The bed next to her is only just cooling.

“Lena?” Kara asks, groggy. Lena had fallen asleep on her chest, hair curling cute as a button, one hand resting over Kara’s sternum. She had drooled, and Kara had fallen asleep with a smile on her face. 

“Here, darling,” Lena says. She sounds soft, contemplative. The tableau is completed by the cigarette curling off smoke in the armchair she’s settled in. As Kara’s eyes adjust to the dark, she can see that Lena’s wearing her dried-out, wrinkly button down, legs curled under her. She thinks she might grow cartoon sized eyes at the sight. “Go back to sleep.”

“M’awake,” Kara mutters, swinging her legs up out of the bed. Her body feels bruised all over, having exerted itself in every way possible the last few days. The last few hours were pleasant enough to make it seem worthwhile, though. “Y’need anything?”

“No,” Lena says. When she turns her eyes from the half-open door, where rain is slamming down onto the concrete slab just off the house, she looks at Kara with an expression she can’t piece. “Let me patch you up.”

“M’fine,” Kara says, even though Lena is stubbing out her cigarette, getting up out of the chair and walking barefooted toward the little kitchenette where a tin emergency kit is taped to the wall. Kara stands up to follow after her, isn’t sure for a second if it’s okay to touch her, but tries anyway like a damn fool. 

The second Kara puts her hands on Lena’s hips, so close to the surface in the fabric of Kara’s worn dress shirt, Lena’s shoulders relax and her body leans backwards into Kara’s frame. It sends a signal flare of happiness blooming up her spine. 

“Go sit,” Lena says. She sounds calmer now, and that’s all that convinces Kara to blearily grab for her undershirt and underwear and a blanket and climb into the armchair. It is admittedly pleasant to sit by the door, air and water aromating her. Her eyes blink shut, and she might doze off for a second, only to blink open again to see Lena standing above her. “Mind if I take up residence?”

“By all means,” Kara says, pulling the blanket up and allowing Lena to move into her lap. It’s perfect, is what it is, and her eyes close all over again once Lena’s shoulder is pressed into hers and Kara’s arm has wrapped around her waist. She doesn’t even remember why she’s sitting like this until Lena gently prods at the graze on her arm. It makes her jerk, a little.

“Sorry,” Lena says. Her fingers run a cold little dab over it that makes it sting even more, which makes Kara hiss even more. “I’m sorry.”

“S’fine,” Kara says. She lets Lena work, tries to not wiggle even when it twinges in pain, even when Lena ties a piece of fabric around it and pats it. Kara blinks her eyes open just long enough to see the frown on Lena’s face.

“Can I see your hand?” Lena asks, now grasping for the leather glove resting on her knee. Kara lifts it even though she gets the feeling that it’s gonna be gross as all anything. She’d let Lena take anything she wanted. Trusts her. “What happened?”

“Money briefcase shocked me in Corben’s hotel room,” Kara says. Lena’s frown deepens.

“It shocked you…” Lena says, tugging gently at the tip of Kara’s middle finger. Kara grits her teeth; it more than feels like the glove has stuck to her skin in the raw bits, but she lets Lena keep tugging. “Like my baton?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Kara says. She shrugs, and then yelps when a piece of skin gives way and the glove comes slipping off. Whatever’s under it doesn’t smell all that good, and she can tell Lena doesn’t like it just by the small noise she makes. 

“I gave Lex a prototype of it to see what he thought,” Lena says, reaching with a washcloth and moving it slowly over the mess of Kara’s hand. It stings, of course, but Lena sounds so messed up over it that Kara is forced to focus on her. “He must’ve rigged the briefcase to shock whoever tried to open it. This is all my fault.”

“It’s not,” Kara says, trying to be firm even when her voice shakes around the pain rattling up her arm. 

“It is,” Lena says. “This is all my fault. How many times have you nearly died because of me?” 

“M’always nearly dying,” Kara says with a shrug. “Eliza told me as much when I was a kid.”

“Kara,” Lena says, switching to the swab of alcohol that sends freezing, awful shivers up Kara’s arm.

“Lena,” Kara hums. Lena blinks her eyes shut again, clenching at the tail of Kara’s shirt and breathing in the rainy air.

“I can’t let you die because of me,” Lena says. “I couldn’t do it two years ago and I can’t do it now. I - I love you. So that’s just not something I can do.”

She sounds like she may just bury her face in Kara’s neck and cry, and Kara sits up a little, pressing her face into Lena’s neck, leaning her forehead against her temple. It’s awful, terrible, no-good, but she’s happy, somehow. Lena loves her. Whether it’s a lie, or a gift you give someone who’s about to die, she’s happy enough to believe it to be the truth. And that’s enough.

“I thought for a long time that all I had to do in life was get by,” Kara says. “Survive whatever the next thing was. You know? To take things as they come. But I want you. I want you enough to make sure it happens. To hope for it, at least.”

Lena sighs, her fingers gentle as she begins wrapping a fresh bandage around Kara’s hand, her head tilting to rest on top of Kara’s head. 

“I want you, too,” Lena says, her voice cracking. “I never thought I’d get to say that, but I do.” A soft pause. “I can’t - let Lex do this. To you, to us, to the city. He’s crooked, and I don’t know what he’ll do with that air exchanger.”

“I know,” Kara says. “I’m with you, alright? End of the line.”

“You should go to Canada and get set up, and I’ll come join you when it’s done,” Lena says. “Winn and Brainy would help me catch him.”

“I mean, they’ll help, but I’ll be there too,” Kara says, yawning. Lena ties off her bandage a bit too tight, making Kara jolt again. 

“That’s not a risk I’m willing to take,” Lena says. 

“Don’t care,” Kara says. 

“Kara,” Lena says.

“Lena,” Kara replies. “Stop arguing and come back to the bed with me.”

Lena sighs, hard, her breath shaking as Kara’s hand slides up her thigh and rests high there. Kara isn’t sure what kind of reaction she’s trying for, but Lena shudders against her when Kara’s digits make landfall at the apex of her thighs. 

She starts shifting around then, until she’s straddling Kara’s lap, her wetness impressing itself upon Kara’s underwear. Jesus God almighty, Kara might be chaining herself willingly to a sinking ship, but the view just now is gorgeous. She shifts her hand to match Lena, finding the little bead just above her opening. Lena’s hips move quick when she does.

“This is not the bed,” Kara says, laughing the slightest. Lena doesn’t pay her any mind, chasing the promise of Kara’s fingers. She feels settled, somehow, in the proof of Lena’s wanting, smearing on her fingers.

“I don’t care,” Lena huffs. “If you’re going to be an idiot, at least get inside me.”

“Rude, to call the girl you love an idiot, you know, especially when she’s been recently shot at and electrocuted,” Kara says, sliding one finger into the delicate clutch of Lena. It’s maybe the best, most precious thing, the way Lena’s mouth drops open. “Kinda makes me feel like you don’t love me for nothing more than my hands.”

“Have you seen your hands?” Lena mutters. She’s rocking on Kara’s lap now, whining when Kara’s middle finger slides along her lips, gathering wetness, and she’s clearly unsatisfied at how Kara’s not moving. “Kara.”

“Tell me you love me again,” Kara murmurs, letting Lena lean in and kiss her. She’s needy. It’s the kind of thing Kara likes in a girl when she’s in the throes of it, but on Lena it’s like spun gold.  She gets distracted just by kissing Lena, her breath coming in pants between kisses. “Tell me.”

“I love you,” Lena says, harsh, and Kara takes the opportunity to slip the second finger inside her and take her apart.

-

She wakes up on the floor. It’s still raining, but the light outside is grey instead of black. The rug she and Lena had passed out on is scratching the hell out of her back, but she don’t feel like moving when she opens her eyes to find the mass of Lena’s hair dried natural on the shoddy pillow Kara’d grabbed from the bed for her. Lena’s warm in her arms, her backside pushed up against Kara’s front. It’s worlds away from sleeping in separate rooms after a long night on a case.

Her arm is sore, her hand is sore, her head is sore, but at the core of her, her heart sings. Lena’s gorgeous in her arms, even with the little bit of drool coming out of her mouth. The rough blanket thrown over them has moved low, revealing the slope of her side, all the places they’re packed as close as sardines. 

Kara knows without a doubt she’d do just about anything to keep this woman in her arms, now that she’s got her there. Kara’s got a helluva bone to pick with Lex Luthor, but the dark part of her would thank him for taking Edge out of the way. 

It takes some maneuvering, and a lotta cute little grunts from Lena, but Kara manages to get off their makeshift bed to wander into the kitchen area. On the way there she pulls on her pants and undershirt, still a little bit damp and still a little bit stained with blood in various parts. The coffee tin in the cabinet’s gotta be rancid, but she starts brewing it up anyway, putting the kettle on and watching the rain and Lena.

“Why’re you making so much noise?” Lena asks, eventually, when the kettle starts to gently hiss and Kara takes it off premature so as not to really wake her. 

“Had to get up sometime,” Kara says. Now that’s she’s up and out of Lena’s bubble, and the light of day is drifting in around the raindrops, it’s a little harder to look her over. She loves the woman lying just there on the rug, loves her as hard as she could love anyone, she’s pretty sure. And she’s had her, probably for the first and last time. Her head can’t help but wonder what comes after. She crosses her arms, runs a finger over the soreness of her bicep where Lena’s wrapping is still wound tight.

“Did we?” Lena groans, pulling Kara’s pillow up and onto her face. Kara can’t help but watch her nude upper half as she does it, can’t help but laugh. It’s funny, knowing that Lena’s not a morning person. She should’ve assumed as much. It fits perfect into the puzzle, pieces she had thought she’d never fit together coming into focus.

“Unless you want your brother rampaging or whatever he’s gonna do,” Kara says. The coffee is disgusting when she brings it to her lips, but it’s coffee and it’s better with the little bit of whiskey she dumps in. Lena groans on the ground, and Kara watches her and listens to the rain, and tries to keep the loud thoughts knocking on the door of her mind out.

“I have to go back into town and stop him,” Lena says.

“We do,” Kara agrees. Lena tilts her head up from the ground, eyes still half-asleep, and looks over her. Kara can tell she wants to start the fight all over again, but Kara knows, too, that she and Lena together are better than anything they’ve got alone and apart. For now, in the morning rain of the room they made love in all night, Lena’s face settles into something like understanding, and she nods.

“Make me a cup, too,” Lena groans, and Kara sets to it.

-

“What in the goddamn hell are you doing here?” Winn asks, yanking Kara in by the lapel of her coat. Lena gets yanked right along with her, the three of them piling together right in the entryway. Winn tries to get his arms wrapped around her so tight that her head might as well pop off. 

“Can’t breathe,” Kara huffs.

“I don’t give two shits, you moron,” Winn says. His big old head is tucked into Kara’s shoulder, his voice a little too teary for Kara to really deal with. She drops Lena’s hand to join Winn in the hug. 

“Kara,” Brainy’s voice says, coming out of his bedroom. He looks shocked, when Kara picks her head up to look him over. He’s so shocked he drops the mug in his hands, and it crashes into the floor hard enough that it shatters into about a billion pieces. “Why are you here?”

“Whaddya mean, why am I here?” Kara says. Winn is still gripping her real tight, so she can’t exactly hold a normal conversation. But Brainy’s eyes are flicking over to Lena at Kara’s side.

“Winn, Alex, and I had assumed that you and Miss Luthor had disappeared, as you’re being pursued by the law,” he says. “However, do not mistake my confusion for lack of happiness at your being alive.”

“Alex was here?” Kara asks. Winn finally drops his arms from around Kara and turns immediately to throw his arms around Lena, who looks more than shocked to have his rampant affection turned her way. Lena had always got on like gangbusters with Winn and Brainy, but it’s the most Winn’s thrown her way in the last few days.

“Yes, with Detective Sawyer,” Brainy says. He shuffles over the remains of his coffee to enter into the living room. “She was fairly certain she had seen the last of you.”

“Woulda taken a little more than a little framejob to get me outta her hair,” Kara says. 

“Indeed,” Brainy says. “I must say, I’m surprised. Returning to National City is not something I would predict having a positive outcome.”

“Brains, let’s operate with a little glass-half-full,” Winn says. “We ain’t never been in a scrape we couldn’t get out from.”

“Would you call Kara having her body and spirit broken by Miss Luthor’s now dead husband a scrape we escaped from?” Brainy says, cocking his head curiously as he moves to sit on the couch in the living room, his hands steepled together.

“Body and spirit? Jeez, bud,” Kara says, coming over to join him on the couch and watching Winn and Lena still locked in a hug. “Dramatic.”

“I am never dramatic,” Brainy says. “It’s a true statement. Just because you and Miss Luthor have clearly reconciled in some fashion does not mean the past has been forgotten. It would be smartest for you to separate, or at least, not be here.”

“Lex is planning something with my air exchanger,” Lena says. Winn is still wrapped around her tight as a damned octopus. Brainy hums next to Kara. “I repeatedly told Kara to let me handle it, but she refused.”

“Foolish,” Brainy mutters. “There is no logic in that, Kara.”

Kara shrugs, throws her arm around Brainy’s shoulders. There’s no logic in much of anything in all Kara’s life, never has been. If there was any logic, her parents wouldn’t be dead, Clark wouldn’t be dead, Lena would have never told her to leave with blood all over her. Things are what they are; all Kara’s got is the little chances to make them better. It’s taken a lot to get to that kind of thinking, thought she’d lost it somewhere. 

“Well, you know how we always used to say that every case was a chance to make one little thing better for someone?” Kara says. Brainy hums again, his fingers twisting his big old brass ring on his finger. “That’s all it is. Logic or no.”

“It has been a long time since I’ve heard you say that,” Brainy says. “I didn’t realize it was a code we were still operating with.”

“Brains, shut the hell up,” Winn says, letting go of Lena finally and jumping up and down loud enough that there’s an answering thump from the apartment downstairs. “Why don’t we celebrate the return of Kara Danvers, good guy private eye? Kara, you got any of them butterscotches I been force-feeding you?”

Kara starts spooling them out of the pockets of her trench coat, tossing them at Winn and dumping them in Brainy’s lap. Winn makes a whooping noise, followed swiftly by another thump into the floor from downstairs. He unwraps the things fast as lightning, shoves them in his cheeks like a chipmunk before he grins ugly and brown with them in his teeth.

“Okuh,” he says, the idiot. “Was da pla?”

-

The plan’s about as haphazard as any they’ve ever come up with. 

“You have to appeal to his ego,” Lena says, as Nia nods and writes way too many notes in such complicated shorthand Kara can’t make heads or tails of it. Winn is going over the plans for the air exchanger while Brainy hovers near his girl and Kara watches her own, a gas mask slung around her neck while the phone rings in her ear. “He falls for it every time.”

“Men,” Nia says, nodding. Kara snorts, shoves her newly-regloved hand in her pocket when someone answers on the other side.

“Hello?” comes Imra’s distorted and crumbly voice. 

“Hey there Imra, this is Kara Danvers,” Kara says. “Mind if I talk to your husband?”

“Oh - Kara? I thought - Mon-el! Kara is on the phone for you!” Imra says. There’s a loud yell, followed by more than a few crashing noises. “He’s on his way. Are you alright? He couldn’t tell me everything, but it sounded like - ”

“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Kara says, just as the phone clearly shifts hands.

“Kara, you great goddamn fool,” Mon-el says, huffing. “Why in the hell are you calling me? Thought you were halfway to Monaco with your gal. Half the city’s lookin’ for you.”

“I was calling because I figured your line was tapped,” Kara says. Across the room, Lena and Nia are still spitting ideas back and forth, but Lena glances up just in time to see Kara looking at her. “For what it’s worth, Lex Luthor’s framed me. Only person I killed was Hank Henshaw, almost entirely because he shot me. I got the bullet wound that proves it. I know the Feds, the cops, whoever - they wanna catch a big fish only when they know it’s on the line, and that’s why you let guys like Edge and Luthor run the little guys over. But the little guys - they count too. More than, maybe.”

“Kara - ” Mon-el starts. She ignores him.

“My parents died because of bums like them,” Kara says. “My cousin died because of Lex Luthor. And if I go that way too, that’d just be a damned shame, huh? But I can’t just lie down and let it happen. And I won’t run away, neither. And I wanted you, and the Feds listening in on this call, to know. Do me a favor and let Alex know too.”

“Kara,” Mon-el says again. “We can get this figured out.”

“I know we can,” Kara says. “I’m gonna get it started. You just gotta finish it, you and whoever else is listenin’ in. Nice talking. See you sometime.”

She hangs up before she can hear him yelp her name again, the way he’s always doing when he’s shocked over something. What a funny guy, all things considered. She can’t quite believe he’s gone and become a fed. She turns to lean against the counter of Winn and Brainy’s kitchen, fiddles with the little dials on her gas mask while the apartment is quiet but busy all around her. 

“You sound something like your old self,” Winn says, leant over as he is on the blueprints. “If only I had known it’d take you getting electrocuted, shot, and seduced.”

“Shows what you know,” Kara says, shrugging. Her shoulder grinds in its joint, but it’s hard to care. Her whole damn body hurts, but she’s alive. It’s something more than nothing. “You got all my documents, right?” 

Winn frowns, fiddling with the edge of the blueprints before he looks toward Lena, Nia, and Brainy. 

“Yeah,” Winn says. “Filed at the office and copies here.”

“I ain’t plannin’ on using them or anything,” Kara says, reaching out to palm Winn’s shoulder. He relaxes the slightest, his body going less tense. “In fact, I’m gonna try not to bite it. New thing I’m doing.”

“Jeez, was she that good?” Winn asks, laughing loud. Kara shoves at him, but she’s laughing too, and while she ends up on the ground with Winn in a headlock as he kicks at her shin, it’s not nothing. Better than it’s been in a long time.

-

“Hey there, James, my buddy, my pal,” Winn says. His voice is crackling over the little radio Lena and Brainy had taped down to the dashboard of Brainy’s big hunk of junk car. Kara winces, while Lena gives a loud laugh. They’re sat low on the front seat around the corner of the building, ready to peel away at a moment’s notice.

“Winn,” James says, sounding both exhausted and confused. “Brainy. Why are you here? Isn’t your employer on the lam?”

“We’re takin’ up the mantle of Danvers Investigations,” Winn says. “The big moron left us the company in her will and testament, and though she ain’t dead yet, you know how it is. Gotta get your boots on the ground.”

“Right,” James says. There’s a spike of static that runs high-pitched that has Lena reaching to fiddle with the dial, the awkward conversation fading in and out while she does it.

“We shoulda let Brainy do the talking,” Kara says. She presses her hands on the warmth of Lena’s back as she leans forward, feels their thighs shift against each other. 

“Moron seemed a bit strong,” Lena says, laughing. 

“And so to be honest, we’re in need of your west window,” Winn says. “Got a case. Think someone corrupt is working City Hall, gotta get an eye on ‘em and use Brainy’s lip reading to sort of check in. You know how it is.”

“Right,” James says. 

“We brought pie,” Brainy adds. Kara hears the creak of the front door to James’s apartment then.

“Where do you think Lex would want to test it all out?” Kara asks. Lena settles into her side, warm as a furnace, and hums.

“I don’t know,” Lena says, softly. “I feel like I don’t know him at all.”

“Okay, uh, if you two lovebirds can hear us, we’ve got eyes on the office,” Winn says. Kara tilts her head against the window of the car and watches the rain slide down the glass as Lena’s hand fiddles with the fabric overtop Kara’s knee. “Looks like Nia is already there. He’s talking about - Brainy, what’s he talking about?”

“Housing,” Brainy says. “My late brother-in-law had a vast empire of real estate across the city and in the surrounding area, and so I am looking into ways we can improve the quality of life for the citizens of National City.”

“What a wad,” Winn mutters. Lena snorts in the seat next to her.

“Obviously, my position on the Energy Commission allows me to have a little more vision than Morgan had. Miss Nal is now asking if he will be resigning his place on the commission due to the conflict of interest - no,” Brainy says.

“Of course not,” Lena says, rolling her eyes. “This isn’t helping. Let me go talk to him - ”

“No,” Kara says. “He’ll have you locked in a tower or something.”

“I’m not Rapunzel, Kara, I would certainly be able to avoid being turned into a damsel,” Lena says, huffing. Before Kara can turn and sink into the argument further, though, the static of the radio spikes suddenly and Brainy’s words get drowned out.

“ - electrical outage in Southtown. Transformer blew on Semaphore and Palladium. Unit 7 and 9, could we get eyes - ”

“ - I won’t allow myself to be a lesser version of what I could be to simply fit what people expect me to be. I can be the most powerful man in this city, and I can do good work. Oh - someone else has walked in the room and is relaying a message to Mr. Luthor - he is smiling.” 

-

Kara barely has the car slowing down near a curb before Lena is trying to throw the passenger door open. It thunks a fire hydrant, but Lena doesn’t stop moving as Kara climbs out after her, her feet near tripping over her as she runs up to the stoop after Lena. The tenement house is big, one of the bigger ones in the area - Kara used to live just down the block, before her building got burnt.

“Where do we start?” Kara asks, bumping into Lena’s hip and yanking the door open. The second she steps in the building she can feel how off it is. She feels unbalanced, and Lena seems to feel it too, grabbing for Kara’s forearm, eyes wide, teary. “Lena.”

“The best place to put the air exchanger would be in the maintenance area, with access to air ducts,” Lena says, like its rote in her head. Kara nods with her, glancing up as a thump sounds from down the hall. It feels quiet as hell. “The basement, most likely.”

“Alright, you get to the basement,” Kara says, pulling Winn’s gun from her holster and shoving it into Lena’s hand. Lena tries to push it back into her hands, head shaking.

“No, Kara, what if - ”

“I have to get people the hell out of here,” Kara says, gesturing up the stairs. “Way more likely you’ll run into a goon guarding the exchanger.”

“Kara,” Lena starts again, her fingers tight on Kara’s arm and her hand still refusing the gun.

“Take the gun,” Kara says, as gentle as possible. “It’ll be alright, Lena. Just go turn the machine off, and I’ll get everyone out. It’s simple.”

“I should’ve sent you to Vancouver,” Lena says, voice soft. Kara presses forward again, forces the gun into Lena’s hand, reaches to press her own fingers to Lena’s gorgeous face.

“I wouldn’t be here if I was in Vancouver, huh?” Kara says. “Go. I love you.”

“I love you,” Lena says. She takes one step away, then another. She half-turns away, and when she glances back, Kara is pulling her gas mask up over her face. Lena does the same, looks to her one more time, and then turns her way down the stairs, gone from view and into the darkness below. 

Kara takes the time to send up one prayer exactly to anyone listening that the love of her life doesn’t get shot down there, and then she reaches for the fire axe mounted to the wall.

-

She starts at the top. 

Most everyone she runs into is lethargic, confused, yelling about her pounding on their door and how they were just about to drop off to sleep. It don’t help none that she’s carrying around an axe. But when she says she’s with the fire brigade and that they’re being asked to evacuate, on account of their power being out, they go easy enough. There are a few doors she pounds on with no response, takes an axe to their doorknob to find the small room empty. There are a few she does the same and finds a body or two lying motionless. There are maybe twenty apartments on a floor, people crammed on top of each other.

It makes Kara sick. Reminds her of what it was like to be a kid in a place like this, coming home to find it on fire and knowing there was nothing anyone could do, Clark holding her back and trying to keep her from running in.

And she’s in it now, thing is. Clark ain’t here. Alex would be obliged to arrest her the moment she saw her. Who knows where Winn and Brainy are. 

The only good thing about the whole mess of it is that Lena is here, fixing it all. The parents she yanks from their ratty couches and sends down the stairwell - their kids who are out riding bikes or playing baseball in the street in the rain won’t have to come home to find their parents cold and gone. That’s not nothing. 

She makes it from the fourth floor to the second fast enough, ushering people out and getting a few plucky teens she finds in one unit to wrap their faces and run down the hall alerting people. 

She opens windows when she can get at them. She stumbles in the dark and she thinks about her life. 

It takes a little while for her to find a goon, like she’d thought she might. He’s leaning against the wall outside a unit on the second floor, wheezing mightily with a bandana wrapped around his neck. There’s a gun at his feet. She ain’t sure what’s happened to him, just that he’s pale and sweating, his dark hair matted down like he’s been outside. 

When he looks up at her, after a few seconds of her standing stock still and looking him over, she can see his eyes go wide.

“The hell’s that thing on your face?” he asks. He starts digging at his waist like his gun’s still there. He’s rattled, and Kara grabs for his arm. The mask restricts a lot of sound, so she shouts.

“You have to get out of here,” Kara says. “You’re getting poisoned.”

That’s, of course, when his big wide eyes go wider, and he shoves at her hard. She thumps the opposite wall and her shoulders spark with pain. The kids down the hall are shouting, pounding on doors while one makes a run down the stairs to the first floor. 

“What the hell are you?” the guy asks again, still trying to find his gun on his person. Kara’s not about to alert him it’s on the ground. She tries again, reaching for his shoulder and trying to force him toward the stairwell. He shoves her again, but this time, he reaches out and grabs ahold of the filters sticking out of the front of the mask. It snaps clean off her face and he stares at her when she falls to the ground, hair going everywhere and her mask dangling from his hand. 

“Just get out of here before you pass out,” Kara says, scrambling to her feet and trying to move past the man to knock the doors down the hallway. But he grabs her again, gathering up the collar of her shirt.

“You’re the girl,” he says, and then he puts his fist into her face. The second pair of glasses Winn had scrounged up for her smash to pieces, digging into her face as she splutters and tries to get out of his grip. She’s sucking in air fast now, trying to scrabble free, and she can feel how lightheaded she’s getting in the seconds it’s taking. “You’re the scum trying to take the boss’s sister.”

He punches her again, and she hits the ground. He’s unstable enough that when she kicks out and sweeps his ankle, he falls hard too. When she climbs up to her feet, she starts down the hallway, hitting doors and glancing over her shoulder. He’s shifting around, but not going after the people shuffling into the hallway in confusion. It seems like a lot of the building’s heard the ruckus from the floors above, or the sirens outside that Kara can hear when she drifts close to a window. So she opens her mouth up and hollers, tells everyone to get out. 

He takes her down the stairs when she moves to clear the first floor.

She can feel blood and bruises spring up all over her body when they come tumbling to a stop in the lobby, her head woozy and light when she hoists herself up off a radiator. He comes after her again, grabs her by the collar. 

“You ain’t nothing,” he spits. “Ain’t nothing.”

She shoves him, not even strong enough to punch, and when he falls again, he stays down. She turns down the wing of one hallway, and starts pounding again, shouting.

She knows she’s done for. 

Kara sees her parents, first, their heads sticking out of a doorway and coming into the hallway slowly, skirting against the wall to avoid her rumble down the hall. Her father is so tall, her mother so beautiful, and they clutch each other as they stare her down. And then there’s Clark, and her Aunt and Uncle, the three of them crying as he stumbles and falls, his eyes closing and body going limp every few seconds. 

At the very end of the hall, Winn grabs her by the shoulders while Brainy tries to hold her up.

“Hey, we’ve got this,” Winn says, a bandana wrapped around his face, reaching to untie it and force it onto hers. “Let us get you out of here. Cops and fire are outside.”

She shakes them off, hits the next door. There’s Alex, lying on the floor, not moving or breathing. She falls to her knees, pukes up whatever’s in her stomach. It feels like she’s on fire, like if she stopped moving she might stop forever. But she knows that she has to keep going, has to save everyone, has to make it all worth it. Has to get to Lena.

Winn is still running down the hallway, screaming for everyone to get out. There’s a steady stream of them moving past Kara and down the stairs. There’s Ms. Grant, and Mon-El, and James, and Nia, stopping to press a kiss to Brainy’s cheek. There’s Henshaw and Corben, stooping to grab the prone body of the goon and lift him out the door. More than a few people stop to ask her if she’s alright, and she keeps going.

Kara keeps going.

She keeps going until Lena comes up the stairs of the basement after Kara’s stumbled down the hallway and back, carried a screaming baby to Siobhan’s arms. And then Lena is pulling off her gas mask, eyes wide as she grips Kara’s face.

“Darling,” Lena says, tears in her eyes, and then, finally, Kara can stop.

Lena gets under one shoulder, and helps her out the door of the apartment building. There’s a mess of people outside, but the blue shape that comes hurtling at her the minute she steps into the rainy world is Alex, alive again, shouting for a medic. 

“Kara,” Alex says, reaching for her just as Kara tips forward, and feels Lena’s hand slide across her waist, and then she’s flying, and gone.

-

She wakes up in the cabin, Lena curled up in the armchair they’d made love in, her head pressed against her knees. There’s sunlight streaming in from the outside. She can hear the low murmur of voices outside, the porch door propped open, and birds chirping.

If this is heaven, it’s perfect. She shoulda never thought to question God.

Her whole body aches when she moves, the flannel sheets dragging on her loose undershirt and underpants. But she manages to roll over and put her hand, shaking and bruises and stinging, on Lena’s shin. She watches and smiles as Lena jerks awake, her loose hair in soft curls that Kara wants under her fingers so bad she might cry. Lena puts her eyes on her and does start crying.

“Come to bed,” Kara says, voice in-and-out, patchy. “Feel like if I’m dead I deserve it for all eternity.”

Lena is still crying, but she grabs Kara’s hand and squeezes it so tight Kara winces, and then she wonders why in the hell there’s still pain in heaven. Lena leans forward, her hand still tight to Kara’s, and cries and kisses Kara’s forehead, her other hand roaming over the curve of Kara’s shoulder and down her back. It’s nice, is what it is, so she tugs at Lena’s hand, tries to pull her into bed even if she feels like she ain’t got enough strength to harm a fly.

“What’s wrong?” Kara murmurs. Her voice sounds like it got drug through a wood chipper, but she tries to impart warmth all the same. “C’mere, baby. It’s all good.”

Lena keeps crying, kisses her head again, and then pulls away to yell, “She’s awake!”

Kara frowns, uncertain who has to be alerted that she’s arrived when Lena could just be in bed already - and then the porch door slams open so fast that she does actually yank Lena into bed with how fast she pushes up against the wall. Alex and Winn are trying to get in the door at the same time, tripping and shoving at each other. Lena is shifting on the bed, moving to back up against the cradle of Kara’s hips where her body is pressing against the wall. Alex manages to get into the cabin finally and shoves the armchair out of the way before she too climbs onto the bed and starts kissing all over Kara’s head.

“You numbskull,” Alex says, crying too now. “You absolute moron, I could kill you if you didn’t seem so deadset on doing it yourself.”

“So I ain’t dead?” Kara asks, looking over to Lena as she gets pulled into a hug by her sister. Lena is on the receiving end now of a hug that’s coming from Brainy, shockingly. It sends a mixed message on whether she’s in heaven or not. 

“Still kicking,” Winn says, pulling himself up onto the mattress and grabbing at Kara’s shoulders. Kara’s not sure if the damn thing can support this many people, to tell the truth. “You did sort of go into a coma for a few days, but you seem put together just fine.”

“Yes, we should conduct the medical tests,” Brainy says, still gently patting Lena on the back as she cries into his shoulder. 

“Is - is Lex - ” Kara asks, reaching to slip a hand up under the back of Lena’s shirt, just to feel her skin as Alex sits down next to her and Winn massages her shoulders, which hurts about as much as slamming a sledgehammer to her skin. 

“Under arrest, courtesy of the Feds,” Alex says. “Mon-El and his gorgeous wife stopped by and dropped some muffins off at your office,” Nia says.

It makes Kara’s stomach growl, the thought of muffins, which makes Alex laugh.

“We can go get ‘em,” Alex says. “We gotta pack you a bag, anyway.”

“Why?” Kara asks, uncertainty climbing up her spine as she looks over at Lena again. “Are you - is there something else? If Lex is put up, I don’t have to leave, right?”

“The woman who owns this cabin, I guess, owns a luxury trip line, wanted to give you a gift,” Alex says, shrugging. “Two tickets, train ride north to Vancouver for a week-long stay, all-inclusive. How on earth you always find rich ladies to pay for things for you, I’ll never know.”

“We can ascertain whether you are capable of taking your trip after you’ve passed the medical tests recommended by the doctor,” Brainy says, as Lena pulls away from him.

“We can talk about who you’ll be taking, too,” Winn says. It prompts laughter in the group, as they all start to disband, climbing back off the bed. Lena stays, leaning back against Kara’s waist.

“We’ll be back in an hour,” Alex says. “You promise not to try to save the world and nearly die again?”

“Sure,” Kara says. There’s big smiles on their faces as they rush out the door, waving goodbye for now. Kara’s alive, a nice surprise. And it’s even nicer when Lena slowly slides down and lies beside her, in front of her, reaching up to brush her hands across Kara’s hairline. There’s some sort of bandage there, over her eye, that scratches on Lena’s fingers.

“You thought you were dead?” Lena asks. Her eyes are still teary, blue and green and grey and perfect. Kara feels like she can’t breathe around the love in her chest.

“Well, I woke up and saw the love of my life curled up in the sun,” Kara says. “Ain’t that how heaven goes?”

“Maybe,” Lena says, a small laugh eking out as she sinks closer to Kara, her body so warm and good in Kara’s arms. 

“This is real, though, right?” Kara murmurs, ducking to press her nose against Lena’s hair and kissing it. The scent of Lena runs her through with calm, and she feels her eyes droop. “You ain’t a dream?”

“No,” Lena says. “I’m right here. Not going anywhere.”

“Good,” Kara says, her voice like a whisper. “Love you.”

“I love you,” Lena returns, and Kara feels her curl up against her chest, her face pressing into Kara’s collarbone. It’s perfect, is what it is, the sun on her skin and Lena in her hands, and she’s alive and she solved the case. It’s a dream that never should’ve been possible. Her body hurts like she got run over by a truck.

She falls asleep. She doesn’t dream of anything in particular, but there’s warmth, and Lena’s smile.

-

One year later…

The boardwalk is packed. It’s always packed. The new Ferris wheel is practically gleaming in the National City sun, kids and adults squeaking like lambs when it lurches through its motions. More than that is the roar of the big lumbering roller coaster that Lena had demanded be named Polaris against the wishes of its designers. The ocean is calm today, blissful blue, and Kara has two hot dogs in her hand while she sucks on a root beer.

“You’re abusing your discount,” comes Lena’s voice, amused and reproachful, as she arrives at the bench Kara’s been sitting at. She’s in one of them dresses that makes Kara’s head spin, heels, red lipstick, the whole shebang. Kara almost drops both of her hot dogs.

“Is it a discount if I can get everything for free?” Kara asks. Lena sits primly next to her, one hand settling gently on Kara’s thigh as she crosses her legs and glances up at the creak of the Ferris wheel in front of them.

“Carl at the hot dog stand says you’ve been taking eight at a time and giving them to the tent city living under the pier,” Lena says. Kara huffs.

“Carl at the hot dog stand is a snitch,” Kara says. “I ain’t stopping, by the way.”

“A regular Robin Hood,” Lena says, smiling. “I talked to Jess about finding a way to divert some finances to providing them with food, anyway, and maybe finding jobs for them around the boardwalk. Also, has the wheel been squeaking like this the whole time you’ve been sitting here?”

“Don’t go bother Ellen about the wheel squeaking,” Kara says, bumping Lena in the shoulder before she does something like order the operator to shut the ride down just so it can get greased. “We agreed about lunch times being no work times.”

“I have a lot of work,” Lena says, crossing her arms. But her smile is big and luminous, eyes soft as she regards Kara shoveling a hot dog into her mouth. “And if I remember correctly, you like the benefits it provides you, Miss “I Think We Should Get the Ranch House.””

“Oh, tragedy that our home has a pool and a whole room just so you can build little doodads,” Kara says, around the hot dog in her mouth. Lena rolls her eyes.

“How’s your morning been?” Lena asks, after a few seconds of comfortable, warm silence. 

“Had a call the second I got in the office for a nineteen year-old kid missing a few blocks thataway,” Kara says, swallowing her hot dog and pointing off in the distance. “Mom worried sick, thought he’d been kidnapped or some such. Turns out he just got bombed on whiskey and marijuana. Found him passed out on the beach about an hour ago. Smelled like a skunk.”

“I can only imagine my mother’s reaction if Lex or I had been brought home in such a state,” Lena says, laughing. It’s nice that she laughs now, when she says Lex’s name. For the past bunch of months, she’d say it offhand like she wasn’t thinking, then crawl into Kara’s arms.

“I think Eliza would have cold-clocked Alex or me,” Kara says, shrugging. “She paid me a cool twenty for it, though. And he paid me a ten to stop at a corner shop and get a cola before dropping him at home.”

Lena does one of her cool, appraising looks, one eyebrow raised. Kara never does well under that look, her grin slipping away as she tries to measure the propriety of jumping her woman on the property she owns and manages. It’s probably not great, right? But she continues on, plugs away.

“Figured I’d take the rest of the day off and let Brainy and Winn work on small cases,” Kara says. “The pool needs cleaning. Thought I’d ask if you wanted to join me at home.”

“I have a meeting with the housing commission about the Roxy getting turned over to apartments in an hour,” Lena says. 

“Then I guess by the time you get home, the pool’ll be clean and I’ll be in it,” Kara says, shrugging. Lena smiles. And her fingers drift back to Kara’s thigh, further toward the apex of them, finding the catch of the line of her underthings and following it inward on her thigh. 

“Guess so,” Lena says, voice low. Kara is closer to jumping her than not.

“Then I’ll see you in a few hours,” Kara says, leaning forward to press a kiss to Lena’s lips. It burns hot as ever, distracting. More often than not, Kara forgets she ain’t a teenager necking her girl. Thankfully for their dignity, a loud screeching noise grinds out in front of them, followed by noises of discontent from the riders on the Ferris wheel. Lena is already halfway to the ride operator stand by the time Kara realizes they’re no longer kissing. “Well, bye, gorgeous!”

Lena throws a grin over her shoulder, a little wave of her pale fingers.

She stays to watch as Lena starts working to fix whatever’s gone wrong mechanically, laughing a little when a kid she helps hoist out of a lower car clings to her while sobbing about how he’s gonna die, so on and so forth. Then she ambles off the boardwalk, saying hello to a few people who say hello to her. 

It’s nice. She’ll head home, clear away leaves in the pool, wait for Lena to come home and strip down, make love to her, and most likely, somewhere in all that, she’ll thank whoever that she’s alive, and that her life is hers. Theirs. 

She’s whistling by the time she sets out on the road home, the tingle of Lena’s lips still lingering on hers, and it’s only a matter of time before she feels it again.