Chapter Text
ACT III
Chapter Twenty: Wherefore Art Thou, My God?
Kara pushed at the handlebars of her motorcycle, walking it towards the top of the incline outside of the large hatch doors. The steel entryway folded closed again behind them with that automatic whine it always made, the ringing -pop- from their tired hydraulic cylinders striking Kara with a feeling of loss already— should that be the last time she would ever hear it?
Would she ever come back home?
“Is everything alright?” Lena asked as she strolled alongside. She was eyeing the gremlin bell hanging from the bike’s slightly tarnished frame— an object to “scoop” evil spirits up from the road, trapping them inside and thusly protecting the rider. It had been a gift from Cat several years ago. Kara hadn’t any reason to remove it.
Kara nodded, “Yeah, it’s just…” She looked over her shoulder back at the cactus riddled hillside and then kicked the stand down for the bike, “I’m just realizing how much I’ll miss my books.”
Lena smiled with a well-timed tilt of her head. The moment smacked of the first time they had both left a place they shared together, both of them knew it. Kara’s dark-haired passenger was quick to ease her hesitation, “You’ll come back to them.”
“Yeah?”
“Mhm,” Lena tucked her chin with a sure nod, “A guarantee.”
The realization that those were only words born of wishful thinking wasn’t lost on Kara; even so, the determination in Lena’s eyes seemed to calm her restless spirit just enough. Kara hadn’t slept a wink the night before. It was all she could do just to watch Lena breathe throughout each of her fretful dreams. She was constantly surprising her in these little ways; proving that she was so much stronger than anyone ever gave her credit for. Lena simply wouldn’t admit that she was scared. Kara would do well not to even bring it up. The lamp of Lena’s courage would have to shine brightly for the both of them.
Kara walked over and thumbed at the smooth hilt of Lena’s sabre, “Are you prepared to use this?”
“I—” Lena stammered for a moment and then seemed to leap over her unsubtle dithering all at once, “For whatever is necessary, yes. I am.”
“We managed to slip past a lot of very real threats on our way towards Union territory, but you have to understand that they’re waiting for us, just on the other side of the Colorado.”
“I understand.”
Kara narrowed her eyes, but just to get one more good look at the features on Lena’s face. Such beautiful eyes she had, one barely green and one barely blue. Not a freckle in sight other than the few around her neck and collarbones— gifts sent straight from angel’s lips. Lena gave a small bounce forward and onto her toes…
“I mean it, Kara. I’m ready to—”
The sound of a thundering four-beat-gait came upon them all of a sudden, quieting Lena’s fervent insisting. There were two of them, in fact. Galloping hoofbeats from a pair of horses. Their riders came into view from around the hill and slowed upon their approach, kicking up a cloud of red clay dust in their wake.
Sara pulled at the reins of her dappled mount to turn him around in small circles, easing his eagerness to bolt into a gallop again. “Aw,” She said, “…thought we’d have some catching up to do. Oh, well.”
“See,” Ava replied with a careful lean out of her saddle, “I told you we didn’t need to take the flyer.”
Kara sputtered for a split-second, “What—” Then she threw her hands up in in confusion, “What are you guys doing here?”
“We’re coming with you.” Sara replied matter-of-factly, still reining in her rather proud steed.
“No… No, you’re not.”
Ava reached to pat at the neck of her white-maned palomino, “You know it’s pointless arguing with her.”
“Now, just hang on a second—” Kara smacked the sides of her legs with a huff, “You can’t just drop everything and come with us.”
“And why not?”
“Because- because Nat?! You want her to have some kind of a family, right? And also, who the hell told you we were leaving?”
Kara’s mind instinctively wheeled back to J’onn, but then she set her eyes upon Lena. Maybe the expression upon her face landed a bit too harshly; Lena immediately placed her hands skyward in defense of her supposed actions…
“As I said, there’s no such thing as a secret in the Infinite.”
“You didn’t…”
“Kara, they only want to help.”
“But Nat—!”
Ava responded then with a tone she reserved only for the battlefield; such a firm and unyielding sort of presence it held. “Don’t you yell at her.”
Lena merely gave a silent nod of “thanks” in reply.
Kara decided just to reel her mouth shut again at that point. She didn’t want to run the risk of smacking herself upside the head should the volume of her voice go unchecked. Granted, she’d been made to do more humiliating things against her own will in the past, like hold her breath until the edges of her vision began to spot and turn white— some of her more “heated” arguments with Cat had required Ava’s rather unique way of intervening.
“You really thought we’d be fine with letting you go alone?” Sara hacked a laugh, “You wouldn’t make it two days without us.”
Kara clenched her teeth. Why did Sara always have to be so smug? She did it to ruffle Kara’s feathers, obviously, either to prepare her for the worst or to set her up for success. It didn’t matter which in the end. Sara knew exactly how to press Kara’s buttons, but all of the right ones, of course. Even when Kara didn’t want her to.
“Made it just fine for nearly two months on the road without—”
“Remind me,” Sara cut her off again, “Weren’t you practically half dead by the time you stumbled the rest of the way here?”
“Stop it!”
“No, you stop it!”
“Turn around and go back, Sara- I meant what I said, Natina needs at least one living mother.”
Sara shook her head, “She’ll have three when we get back.”
“Would you just listen?!” Kara saw Ava dropping her brow into her palm, rubbing lightly there at her temples to ease her disappointment. She’d seen worse spats, after all. “We need people here to protect everyone else. Wait… damn.” Kara bellowed a sigh, “Cat was right. Don’t… don’t tell her that I said that.”
“But so were you. Don’t you see that?” Sara replied, “You told me once that peace can only exist when there are people willing to wage war for it. That’s why we’re here, to go to war with you.”
Lena finally spoke up again, “Kara, people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf…”
“Please, babe, don’t quote George Orwell to me right now.” Kara replied.
“Suit yourself. And for the record, I didn’t ask them to come.”
“But you knew they would if they caught wind of it.”
“Well. I’m not going to apologize, if that’s what you’re after.”
“I don’t want—” Kara sighed at last and then dropped her hands to hang at her sides again, “That’s not what I want.”
“I’m glad.”
“I’ll go along with it, for now, I guess. But… that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Good.” Sara interjected with a roll of her eyes before leading her horse towards the beaming horizon, “Now she gets it.”
Kara grumbled and shook her head, “Alright, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing… Except for, you know, the fact that you’re not actually the boss of us…”
“Hey!” Kara shot back, “Why don’t you just—” Suddenly, she stumbled forward and fell onto her hands and knees, shocked for the way that her left foot had mysteriously tripped over her right. The ground had quaked upon her impact, and she brought a fist down with it to mark her frustration. Kara eventually dragged her head back up and then stood again, growling beneath her breath, “Dammit, Ava.”
Ava simply smiled as she led her horse around, “One more thing… Be nice to my wife.”
“Fine.”
“Great! Shall we get a move on, then?”
“I guess, but don’t come crying to me when none of us make it back!” Kara shouted on the tips of her toes towards the pair of fair-haired riders. She landed with a huff and then turned back to Lena, who wore a pensive, almost guilty sort of look now.
“Please don’t be cross with me?” She said.
“I’m not. I just… I can’t bear the thought of something terrible happening to the people I love. I mean, what if something happens to—”
“Stop that…” Lena pressed a finger to Kara’s lips and then hushed her all the way quiet with a kiss. “You just have to trust that everything will be okay.”
“You mean, you want me to have faith?”
“Isn’t that what that is?”
Kara shrugged, “Pretty much. Yeah.”
“Then yes, have faith in them. Have faith in me.”
Kara swept the seat of her motorcycle of its remaining dust and then gave it a small pat, “In you?” She smiled as she helped Lena to climb on, “Easy. You’re what faith is made of, beautiful.”
—Two Weeks Later—
“I’m sorry, my love.”
Kara frowned, tapping the road-weary frame of her motorcycle one last time with the steel toe of her boot. “It’s okay.”
“Are you sure?” Lena asked, rubbing small circles against Kara’s back.
“No. But, it’s just a machine.”
“What about this one—?” Sara shouted from where her head was craned beneath the hood of an old junkyard flatbed. She turned out of the truck’s engine bay to toss a small object towards Kara, who caught it with a gleam of hope in her eye. It soon disappeared, and her disappointed frown returned.
“Too short.” Kara tossed the spark plug away, right along with any hope of fixing her bike. The plug was rusted shut at its gap, anyway. There was no chance of it supplying any kind of electricity. Not in this century. And besides that, she had no real way of knowing what the issue even was to begin with. The bike simply wouldn’t start again. It was long-since tired, and now, it was apparently done.
Sara continued her mechanic-laced grumbling and stomped back over towards the first ancient contraption that she’d picked apart in search of an answer. “Why do they all have to look the same, anyway? ‘Spark plugs’… How can you tell the difference?” She asked as she dove up to her elbows in engine parts again. Spare pieces came flying over her shoulders, tossed directly behind her without any care as to where they might land.
“I just can, that’s all.”
“Pitiful design, anyway, these engines. I mean, what idiot looked at millions-of-years-old dinosaur soup and thought, ‘hey, that’s a good idea for—” Sara stopped as soon as Ava cleared her throat. Her head came back up, a hint of rust over her left eye, and she laughed apologetically through her teeth, “…Um, sorry.”
Kara couldn’t stand to look at her cherished chopper any longer. She dropped her eyes to the ground and turned away, ready to make for the pass up ahead on foot. “Thanks for trying.”
“Yeah. No problem.” Sara replied as she dusted her hands.
Ava soon took to disrobing the horses of all their tack and saddles, and one by one clapped them away with loud stomps and whistles. Surprised, Lena immediately went to protest…
“What are you doing?” She called after Ava, “Wait!”
Kara caught Lena by the waist just as she went to bolt after the escaping equines, “They have better chances of surviving on their own from here on out, just relax.”
“But—!”
“The canyon path is too treacherous up ahead. It’s too eroded away and steep in some places, trust me.” Kara hugged Lena as she continued to wrestle herself free, “Let ‘em go, Lena.”
“But… Kara.”
Sara rolled her sleeves down and glanced back at the horses running with the wind, “Don’t worry, Gary’ll probably make it all the way back to Laredo. He’s not as dumb as he looks.”
Lena ran still, blinking idly to herself, “What kind of name is Gary for a horse?”
“…I have no idea, actually.”
Deciding to let loose of Lena’s waist now, Kara hoisted her own saddlebag back over her shoulder and then nudged her chin towards the pass, “C’mon, we should take the trail north into the canyon. Once we’re clear of the outskirts we can find a place to camp inside where there’s more cover.”
Sara seemed to agree. At first, anyway. “Any reason why you’re still taking us around the buttelands?” She asked, staring intensely at Kara. Kara shirked her head away in an instant. She wouldn’t hold still long enough for Sara to get a clear picture of what was in her head. She’d have to piece it together from the fading wisps of her memories as they trailed out of her mind. “Alright,” Apparently, Sara caught on just as she always did, “What are you hiding?”
Kara shook her head furiously, needing to take herself away from the subject as quickly as possible— lest her mind land on the hard gnashing of teeth, and the sounds of a near-century-long grudge. “Nothing. You’re just nosy.”
“Call me nosy all you want, but it’s not me who’s trying to hurl every other memory on top of the one she doesn’t wanna admit to. You’re giving me a damn migraine over here—”
“Then mind your own business?” Kara shrugged.
Traveling for two solid weeks together in an effort to avoid the Sonoran had taken enough convincing, to be sure. Kara had explained that she simply wasn’t so eager to enter the desert again, not after her last unfortunate trek through it. The tall, red flash of a butte and its surrounding plateau burst to the forefront of Kara’s mind again, yet entirely against her will. It was like the more she tried not to think about him, the more he fought to make himself known. A bewildering scream of anger echoed between Kara’s ears at that point, and a face twisted up with vengeance appeared behind the lids of her eyes. Squeezing them shut hadn’t helped at all.
“Jimmy—”
“Don’t call me that!”
Sara reared her head back, almost as if she’d been punched. “Ow- What… who…?” Seemingly out of patience, she took several steps towards Kara and went to swipe at her hand in order to see for herself. Kara dodged her completely, but was now forced to at least admit that there was something she was hiding. Sara drew her pale blue eyes into daggers at once, “What’s going on with you?”
“It’s not something I wanna talk about!” Kara protested.
“If it’s that loud inside of your head, Kara, then you need to!”
“No!”
Sara swiped at Kara again, earning her a word of caution from her wife standing nearby and at the ready. “Sara, let it go sweetie.”
“Not until she tells me who—”
Kara dodged again, “Quit it! I’m warning you!”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah!”
It was Lena’s voice that time to thrust a wedge between them, “Oh…” She glowered, “That’s it.”
Before Kara realized it, Lena had snatched her up by the wrist and went to simultaneously grab at Sara’s shoulder with her other hand. She had forced herself in between them like a conduit, jolting stiffly at the string of chaotic memories being channeled through her. Kara had no choice in the matter, pull like a vacuum out of her, they did… Screaming, aching.
“…we’re not supposed to be like this!”
“Like what?”
“Wrong!”
Kara grit her teeth hard at the way James’ voice raked through her mind, clawing over it as if to tear it clean from one incorporeal end to the other. It was the way he towered over Lena, one move from killing her in an instant.
“…Human.”
“James!”
The ring of Lena’s sabre blade lashed out next, making Kara wince.
“James, don’t!”
His oversized hand was around Kara’s forearm again before she knew it. The pain… Oh, it was just as horrible as she remembered…
“Agh—!” The -snap- from the bones in Kara’s arm dropped her to her knees, knocking Lena off balance and breaking the connection altogether.
As soon as Kara’s eyes were open, she fumbled for her injured arm, realizing seconds later that she was not, in fact, injured at all. It had only felt that way. Such was a regrettable (though sometimes useful) trait of Sara’s mental ability; to inflict the pain again without suffering the original damage.
Sara stumbled backwards and then blinked her own eyes open, stunned. “Was that…” She jawed openly for a moment, “Was that a remnant? I thought… Wait, you said that all the men of your kind were dead. You- you lied to us?”
“No, no I only thought he was—” Kara couldn’t help the way the pain had so quickly translated itself into anger. Her brow gathered tightly as she swiveled back towards Lena, “Whose side are you on?!”
Lena was just as taken aback as Kara expected her to be. Seeing it, though, hurt worse than any bone break Kara had ever suffered. Human or remnant.
“Yours, Kara.” Lena replied with a wounded tone.
“I… wait. I didn’t mean- I’m sorry.” Kara wanted to kick herself. Lena wouldn’t so much as look at her now. She turned to walk out of the lone junk lot and towards the winding trail, and Kara felt her heart all but leap out after her, “Lena?”
But instead of Kara’s voice being the thing to make her stop…
…it was one new face after another, slowly descending upon her like a pack of hungry wolves.
Half a dozen at first, then half a dozen more, all of them rising from behind broken highway pedestals and decayed building remains. There weren’t many ruins to hide amongst this far out from civilization, so Kara was shocked to see how many of them had snuck their way around to gather so closely together.
Even worse, they had guns.
Kara hated guns.
“Woah—” Ava was the first to remark at their uninvited guests.
-whip-
-slock-
Sara’s staffed stance was a thing of beauty. Her wife, of course, went to throw her arm in front, urging Sara to hold off. There was an accompanying -tink- from the pinky ring on Lena’s sword hand as it went to the handle of her sabre.
“No—” Kara called out amidst the growing tension, “No, no… Let’s everyone just calm down, there’s no need for—”
As soon as a figure to her left raised the muzzle of their gun, Kara wheeled her back to them and subconsciously threw herself around Lena, shielding her from gunfire.
Much to everyone’s surprise, they didn’t so much as get the chance to squeeze the trigger.
-pop-
-thwip-
-thock-
A pained shout rang out into the mid-morning air, and Kara threw her eyes over her shoulder, afraid of what she might find…
Nyssa was nocking another arrow from the sleek quiver at her back and drawing her bow arm for another shot.
“No—!” Kara yelled suddenly. She didn’t wish for anyone to die. Rightfully so, that was usually where her mind went whenever Nyssa decided to make an appearance. “Nyssa- don’t!”
Everything after that was a blur…. All except for the not-so-hidden nucleus of their group, who remained a monolithic presence amongst so many moving parts. It all happened so fast…
“Ack—!"
“Ungh!”
-thunk-
-thud-
-fwump-
All who were standing opposite their small group were now lying upon the ground, unconscious, seemingly ragdolled onto their limbs as if their strings had been cut altogether. Each of them had taken blows of some kind, but either by their own hand or from the person standing directly beside them.
Slowly, Kara’s eyes made their way over to Ava, whose hair appeared windblown, and cheeks tinged with a rose color as if she had exerted herself to a great extent. After that, Nyssa began her irate shouting to be released. As per usual.
“Agh- let go of me- witch!”
Sara placed her hand at Ava’s cheek, and then, like the cool crash of a clear blue waterfall, the hardness in Ava’s eyes began to fade. Nyssa shook herself free of Ava’s influence and scowled angrily, almost shrugging herself off as if she’d been covered with a foul-smelling blanket.
“Did I not tell you that I would kill you should you ever do that again—”
Sara was quick to interject, like always. “What are you doing out here, Nyssa?”
Nyssa washed the contempt clean from her face, yet almost too fast to be deemed “sane” by any means. “Why, saving you… beloved.”
“He’s alive, if anyone cares to know.” Lena said from the nearby heap of downed raiders. Kara had spun around so quickly at the sound of her voice that she’d nearly fallen over. Lena wrenched the arrow tip out of the man’s chest and grimaced at calm flow of blood which came forth. Astonishingly enough, it was a shallow wound. How very unlike Nyssa to miss… Impossible, actually. Lena began to wave them over for aid, “Rags, a shirt, somebody—”
“Oh, just leave him, dear. What’s one less vagabond in the world?”
Sara dropped her head into her hands, and Kara would have done the very same— if not for the swift rush of wind and the untimely skidding of feet. Everyone stopped and looked towards the sudden vortex of swirling canyon dust, wherein its middle, stood none other than Barry.
He blinked happily as he coughed and swiped the dirt and dust from his eyes, “Dang,” He said with a -snap- of his fingers, “Missed it.”
Everyone shouted at him together, surprised and unsurprised all at the same time…
“Barry!”
Barry Allen, the Fastest Man on Earth, stood there with his mouth held slightly agape and with one hand raised in question while the other pointed at the very obvious bad guys lying face-down on the ground, “Wait, why are we yelling at me?!”
Never was there a more disorderly hive of remarkably skilled individuals. They bumbled around each other like clumsy bees, helping and not helping where and when they could.
Nyssa avoided gathering wood to stoke their fire in an effort to hover around Sara, who avoided Nyssa in turn like the deadly wasp that she was. At least all was forgiven now, or so Kara hoped. Having to explain James after doing her best to keep him secret was a rather long walk for a short drink of water. She hated admitting it; the fact that he hated her.
All she ever did was love him like a brother.
Her closest confidant… turned enemy.
“James… James- why does that name sound so familiar?”
“Wasn’t he one of the founders?”
Barry was always one to remember the details, even if he wasn’t exactly supposed to know them in the first place. He was a skilled investigator, to say the least, never missing the drop of a name under any circumstance. Bit of a history buff, as well. He held a great interest in learning as much about the Infinite as possible.
“But why does he hate J’onn so much? And you, for that matter?”
Sara was enthralled, having moved well past her hurt feelings. Kara had no choice but to guard the rest of her life’s biggest secret…
“It’s… a long story.”
“You know I hate it when you say that.”
“You were right.” Lena’s voice came from behind the small -crackle- of their own fire. She was wringing the last drops of water from her impossibly dark hair and smiling at Kara with that heaven-sent dimple of hers, “A dip in the spring was a good idea.”
Kara’s hand landed upon the small reader which she’d forgotten to stuff back into Lena’s pack. She hadn’t known it when she’d first started scrolling through one entry after another— it was Lena’s journal, and she realized (all too late) that she had violated that small, yet unspoken boundary. At least, that’s what it had felt like… Kara had read more than she was prepared to admit. Thankfully, she managed to scoot it behind some of their shared bedding.
A comfortable sigh rolled out between them as Lena crossed her legs to sit beneath the moonlight. Their small, rocky outcropping overlooked the rest of their party down below, where Sara and Nyssa continued to stare at one another from across the glowing amber of their campfire. Kara knew the questions were close at hand… It was only a matter of time, the longer they watched the unspoken tension circling right below them. Ava was used to it by now; this gut-twisting dance of theirs. Barry slept lopsidedly inside of his makeshift hammock, and Lena huffed a laugh through her nose as she took them all in.
“What’s the deal with those three?” She asked at last.
Kara gazed lovingly upon the side of Lena’s curious expression. “You mean Sara, Ava, and Nyssa?”
“Well,” Lena replied, tucking her bare legs beneath the layers of their thin blankets, “Surely Barry’s not involved with… whatever that is.”
“No, he’s usually just along for the ride. No matter how bumpy.”
“He’s sweet.” Lena smiled. She obviously held no fear of him overhearing her from such a distance, as they were rather high up and out of sight upon their little canyon cliff.
“Yeah, he’s a good kid. But as for the other three—”
“Nyssa called Sara her ‘beloved’… I assume that means they used to be together?”
“Oh, yeah.” Kara leaned back onto her elbows where she laid stretched out, forgetting all about Lena’s journal. “They were… um, ‘intense’ is a word I’d use.”
“Intense how?”
Kara shrugged, “It’s not really my place to say—”
“Oh, come on, you know I’m too afraid to ask them directly- but oh my word- is it obvious!”
“I guess it’s sorta like asking about another metahumans’ powers.”
“That reminds me,” Lena perked up at that, “Ava… Way more terrifying than I pegged her to be. And she seems so calm and collected all of the time, too. What do you call it?”
Kara sighed finally, resolving just to come clean about it all. Besides, she figured that Lena would learn everything eventually. At least this way, she’d be far less surprised down the road.
“The power of possession.” Kara explained, “Incredibly rare, but it’s sorta why Nyssa hates her so much. She’s convinced that Ava used her powers to force Sara to leave her.”
“But Ava doesn’t seem that manipulative… That can’t be the truth.”
“You’re right, it isn't. The truth is actually a lot darker than that.”
“Really?”
Kara gave a sad nod, “Sara and Nyssa were killers, once upon a time. The story goes, Nyssa found Sara near-death when they were younger and took her home to her father- who trained her to be an assassin just like Nyssa. They ended up falling in love, waging a bloody, romantic war on the rest of the world and making lots of enemies along the way, until one day, Sara decided that she’d had enough of the violence. She left Nyssa somewhere in the Balkans and made her way to the Infinite seeking refuge, which was where she met Ava.”
“I see… and I suppose Ava’s ability to control other people’s bodies was where Nyssa placed the blame.”
“Instead of her own darkness, yeah.” Kara replied.
Lena leaned closer to the edge to look further down towards the two in question, “Then why does it look like they still have feelings for one another?”
“That’s because they do.”
“They—” Lena snapped her eyes back towards Kara, stunned, “They do?”
“You said it yourself, it’s obvious.”
“Then…” Lena began to sputter, at a loss for words now.
“Sara knows she can’t be with Nyssa.” Kara shrugged in a hopeless fashion, “Nyssa knows she can’t be without Sara. It’s all a big triangle of pain, if you ask me. Ava’s got a big heart, and an even bigger well of patience to forgive Nyssa’s attempts to kill her.”
“She what—?!”
Nyssa suddenly struck her eyes past the campfire on the ground below, looking around for the source of the sound that was Lena’s exclamation of surprise. Lena fell back on her haunches and then covered her mouth as she breathed, both eyes wide with disbelief. She unclasped her fingers from her lips after a moment of quiet huffing and blinked away her amazement…
“And they all just exist around each other,” Lena gestured down the small cliffside, “…just like that, day in and day out?”
“Mhm.” Kara hummed, “Where Nyssa comes from, being somebody’s beloved isn’t a thing you- or anyone else, for that matter- can control. She’s bound to Sara for the rest of her natural life. She swore it so, upon pain of death.”
Lena reclined by then to lay alongside Kara, stretching her hands out wide. “Wow. That sounds like a lot of honor for an assassin.”
“You’d be surprised at how often those things go together.”
“I can imagine—” Lena sat up again, this time drawing her still-illuminated reader along the tops of their blankets, “What’s this…? Kara, were you reading my journal?”
Kara leapt at the very first chance of an apology, “I’m so sorry- I didn’t know what it was until I started reading it but by then I couldn’t stop- I just miss my library so much and I was wondering what the hell ‘ferrokinetic’ means and then you came back from your—”
“Kara, Kara…” Lena giggled and then snuggled herself closer to Kara’s side, pushing her to lie down flat again, “Slow down. It’s alright, I’m not upset.”
“Y-you’re not?”
“No, handsome. You can be so silly, sometimes.” Lena admitted with a small kiss to the end of Kara’s nose.
“…So?”
“So, what?”
“What’s a ferrokinetic?”
“Ah, you mean Alex.”
“Yeah… is that what you’d call her? What does it mean?”
Lena draped her leg comfortably over Kara’s lap, allowing the blankets to slide off from her body completely. The paleness of her skin shone like a lone moonbeam, divine enough to rival the celestial body hanging above them. The babbling spring nearby surely pushed back and forth upon its small shore for her and her alone, because in Kara’s mind, Lena was responsible for all things. The sun, and its decision to rise each morning… As well as the moon, and the wind, and the water for the way it flowed. Lena pecked small kisses along Kara’s jawline with her answer…
“It’s the psychic ability to locate and manipulate metals found in nature. I’ve met others, from… before.”
The tone of Lena’s voice had turned sullen, something which Kara desperately sought to correct. “You’re amazing, do you know that?”
“Hm?”
“I think you know more about metahumans than any other living person on earth, meta or otherwise. You could singlehandedly write the world’s first complete compendium about them- Haven’t you ever considered it?”
“I… I have.”
“Then, what’s stopping you?”
Lena nuzzled her face closer to Kara’s chin, almost as if she was sad to admit it, “The fact that I can’t be sure what the world would actually do with it. That kind of knowledge… I think a part of me always knew, Kara. Deep down, at least.”
“Knew what?”
“About men like my father. That they couldn’t be trusted with that kind of power. I just never wanted it to be true…”
Kara turned to catch Lena’s still-falling gaze, cupping her by the underside of her perfectly shaped jaw, “It was an unfair and cruel task to give you. I don’t blame you for any of it.”
“But it’s why I took so much time with you, I think. I didn’t want to give you to him…” Lena sniffled quietly, burying the threat of her tears back into the warm comfort of Kara’s neck. “I couldn’t let him take you away from me.”
“Well,” Kara scooped Lena up by her chin again and kissed her proudly, humming a few sweet notes against her lips before speaking again, “You’ve got me forever, now. Nobody’s taking me anywhere.”
Overcome with a sudden urge to right herself onto her knees, Lena swung herself the rest of the way across Kara’s lap and then brought her arms up and over her head, bringing her large, patchwork shirt up with them. Kara froze at first, but then quickly followed suit. She rolled herself upward to rid herself of her own clothes, fighting to kick her dusty jeans away from her ankles just as Lena pushed her down onto her back again. Kara landed with a satisfied “oof” and the resulting rumble from beneath a nearby slab of granite—
“Shh, shhh…” Lena hushed with her hand across Kara’s mouth, “I want you so badly- but I’d hate for the rest of them to hear us.”
Kara swiped Lena’s hand away and pulled her down towards her mouth roughly, begging just to be kissed, “Fuck them- they’re all too involved with each other to notice, anyway.”
The way Lena sometimes bit her lip into her teeth whenever Kara cussed a certain way… It was like being struck by lightning.
Lena purred with one quivering lurch of her hips after another until they found purchase between Kara’s— rather, by straddling Kara’s thigh and squeezing there tightly with her own. She found that whenever she rocked herself steadily enough, and downward enough, the growing wetness of her apex met Kara’s in the most heavenly way possible. Lena gasped and lurched her hips forward again.
“Ah—”
“…Oh, my God.”
Kara’s eyes rolled to the back of her head, and just when she’d felt that she’d lost herself to the feeling of it entirely, Lena’s body jarred unexpectedly with a pained sort of noise; something like the squeak of a kitten whose neck was bit too firmly between its mother’s teeth. Kara threw her eyes open and glanced down toward her hands… They were gripped tightly around the crests of Lena’s hips.
She was hurting her.
“Fuck- shit- no, no, no… I’m sorry,” Kara panted as she let go, “Are you okay?”
Lena licked at her lips and nodded, “Yes- yes, I’m fine. Here…” She took each of Kara’s wrists and then brought them to lay above their heads, keeping them held there with all of her strength. “How about this?”
Calm again, Kara blinked, “Okay… yeah.” She took a deep breath, still reveling in the shared slickness between them a little further down, “You realize I could have broken you like that, don’t you? We have to be more careful—”
“Let me fuck you, baby...” Lena mouthed warmly against Kara’s cheek, kissing her over and over again, “Let me take it. I want to feel you fall apart beneath me.”
The knot that had foisted itself into the middle of Kara’s throat had prevented her from answering. If only she could shout it directly into the wide bespeckled blanket above them, then she would. She’d scream it from every mountain top, every snowy peak that she could find…
Yes.
God, yes…
In lieu of such a grand and loud gesture, Kara simply nodded with a faint whimper through her nose. Then, Lena did exactly as she said. She took her pleasure with no holds barred.
“Hm…”
“Hmm…”
“Mm-hmm…”
She uttered every blissful moan into Kara’s mouth, too worried still that the others might hear what they were up to. Kara didn’t care. The way their hips rolled against one another put all the working clutch parts of Kara’s late motorcycle to shame— they were a finely tuned thing of wonder. Moving like water, or tumbling gears in the effort of gaining speed… The angle was just right. God, it was devastating.
It was all Kara could do just to funnel all of her held-back strength into the lengths of her arms, right where they wouldn’t do anyone any harm. Never did she think it would ever be possible to be pinned down like this. No one had ever dared.
But that was her God, wasn’t it? The love of her whole life: Absolutely fearless.
“Hah—” Lena huffed quietly, ricocheting once again from the feeling between her legs. Kara knew that she was close. The way her spine stuttered and racked itself from top to bottom always gave it away.
The sickly-sweet beginnings of Lena’s undoing ran down the inside of Kara’s thigh, and she thought to herself for a spare moment, what a better way to die— than for her heart to burst wide open from so much long-deserved and overdue love? Lena was indeed much stronger than Kara generally gave her credit for. Kara would need to put forth real effort in the event that she wished to take her hands back… Which she didn’t. They would stay right where they were held if it meant Lena were to come crashing down upon her… Which she did. It was more than Kara could take at once. That tightly wound coil snapped clean, and she arched her back with a long groan out from her mouth…
“Oh, Lena- you’re gonna make me- I’m gonna—”
Finishing that sentence was futile. Its meaning came with every agonizingly drawn-out buck of her hips. Lena had caught her by the mouth again and was sucking the last of her cries straight from the fullness of her bottom lip.
“God…” Kara breathed, feeling the dampness of Lena’s temple against her own a few moments later.
Wait, was she actually sweating?
Chest still heaving, Kara finally took back the use of her own hands and dragged them down the slender arch of Lena’s spine. It was in that moment of dwindling heartbeats that she felt it; the slow trickle of a truly formed bead of sweat running down from her own hairline. Kara huffed a few quiet laughs, which drew Lena’s face back up with a slightly confused expression.
“What’s so funny?” She asked with a growing smile.
“You made me sweat.” Kara took one great big breath and then let it go with an air of satisfaction, “Holy shit, you do the most incredible things to me…”
Lena laughed along with her, an earned sense of pride with each happy bounce of her ribs, “I can’t help it. I love the way you feel.”
“Mmm…” Kara murmured as she rolled herself out from under Lena’s smaller, more delicate frame. She took her by the backs of her legs then and draped them around her shoulders, settling lower to lick slowly towards Lena’s still throbbing cunt. Lena keened almost too loudly for her own liking, if the way she clapped her hands over her mouth was any indication. Kara smiled against the inside of Lena’s thigh and sighed, “Quietly, remember?”
Lena shivered, letting her arms fall back down against the blankets. “Oh, God—”