Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The words have been scrawled across Lena Walsh’s arm since birth.

It’s improper for someone else to tell you what your soulmark says—to take the words only your soulmate should say to you for the first time.

So Lena learns. She reads picture books with her mother. Every night until she knows all the words within them. She begins to recognize the simple, common words in her soulmark. I and and and you. And she decides that she likes that her soulmate will already be thinking of the two of them when they meet.

But those words are less than the knowledge she needs, and so she goes to the library and borrows older books, chapter books, with CDs in the back that tell her the story, and she follows them until she can recognize the words themselves, herself.

Lena looks over her mark, periodically, purposefully seeking the words in the wrong order, seeing what she still needs to study.

Until, with a shock that shouldn’t be such a surprise, Lena realizes she recognizes them all.

At once she feels her mind reorder it, putting the words where she knows they belong, but this isn’t where she wants to know it for the first time, standing in the middle of the library.

So she takes that part of her that thinks so well (that makes her different, strange, as unintelligible to the other kids as they are to her) and shoves it far enough into the back of her mind to pretend she hasn’t already put it together.

She runs home. She throws the front door open with enough force that it bangs against the wall and makes her mother jump, and Lena throws out an apology and I’ll be down for dinner in the lilt she is still learning because she can’t stop running.

Cannot stop at all, until she’s in her room, until she’s put everything down and turned on her favorite lamp, and she’s sitting on the edge of her bed with her arm cradled in her lap.

She can’t convince herself she doesn’t know what it says already, but she hasn’t allowed herself to think about what it means, and that’s good enough. It’s enough for butterflies to flit in her stomach and her heart to race in what is both nervousness and excitement.

Her soulmate will be someone who understands her, won’t they? They won’t run, as the other children do, when she approaches. Won’t stare, as the adults do, when she speaks. The odd girl who knows too much, sees too much.

Sees too much, indeed. Sees that even her mother doesn’t quite understand the all of Lena. And she knows her mother loves her, has never questioned it—

But her soulmate will be different, right? They would have to be?

She forces down a large breath. Forces herself to release it.

Her mark reads:

I looked for you, and could not find

how I had missed you for so long.

Lena reads it over three times. She likes it, she decides. She likes the flow of it—the way it sounds like the poems written above pharaohs and before treasures in the few adventure books she had studied.

Is it from something Lena can find? Will it make her soulmate happy if she knows the source when they meet?

Perhaps it’s rather formal, but Lena likes the idea that her soulmate is searching for the perfect first thing to say to her. That they’re as impatient to meet her as she is to meet them. And what if they write it?

Lena turns her focus back to the words themselves.

I looked for you… That’s simple enough. They’ll look for Lena. How, she can’t begin to guess, but she cares a lot less about that than she does the knowledge that they’ll look.

And could not find… Simple, and yet confusing. Does it apply to the first phrase or the second? I looked for you and, could not find you makes sense, but it doesn’t actually say ‘you’. And could not find how I had missed you for so long makes much less sense.

So does it belong to the first phrase or second? It’s separated from both. From the first by a comma, and the second by its line. What would the second phrase mean?

Lena huffs, frustrated. When all she wants is to understand.

Huffing again for good measure, Lena claps her little hand over the first phrase and marches out of her room.

She finds her mother in the kitchen.

“Mam,” she announces herself, “I can read it, but I don’t know what it means. Can you tell me what it means?”

Elizabeth smiles. Rinses the residue of her cooking from her hands and wipes them dry on her apron. She waves Lena forward, and Lena complies, lifting up her arm, still partially covered by her hand.

“The middle part,” Lena explains, “I don’t know if it goes with the first or the last. I know what it means with the first, but not the last.”

Her mother takes her arm gently in her hands, careful not to dislodge Lena’s own. She hardly needs to. She has known the mark since her daughter’s birth, has seen it every day since. She knows it as well as Lena, though it is now imprinted indelibly in the girl’s mind.

“I think,” Elizabeth says in her gentle brogue, her voice a lilt Lena hopes to have one day, “it means that they expected to find you faster. That they don’t know how—why they didn’t.”

Lena beams. Throws her arms around her mother and hugs her fiercely.

It’s absolutely perfect. Better than every story about princes and princesses.

After that, Lena learns everything she can about soulmarks.

She learns they’re written in your soulmate’s handwriting at the time of your meeting. Some pairs meet young and bear each other’s childhood scrawls. Some bear scribbles they can hardly read. Some bear elegant, looping scripts, and some bear tight, neat letters. Some bear characters in a language they can’t read and have to learn. And everything in between.

Lena’s mark is written with small, perfect letters. She’s oddly pleased her mark is in English. She would’ve learned any language she needed to, but it’s nice to think they might have something in common. That if English is a primary language for them like it is for Lena, they might comprehend the world in similar words. But Lena also understands Irish. Will her soulmate have another language? If they do, Lena will learn it. She wants to understand them. The way she wants them to understand her.

She learns that the color of your script is one significant to your soulmate. Lena’s is written in a deep red, almost crimson, and she wonders at its meaning. She wonders, also, what color her soulmate will bear. She borrows a book on art from the library, but none in particular stand out to her.

She learns that the marks only appear when both soulmates are born, and once they appear, you’re guaranteed to hear them. Lena was born with her mark, which means her soulmate is older. How much older? Lena doesn’t particularly care—they’re her soulmate—but she is curious.

She learns that when you hear the words, you feel a sort of shiver, a confirmation. Yet none seem able to agree on a description for the shiver. Some describe it as that of a cold wind. Others say that it’s as if someone whispered in their ear. Some even compare it to a great anticipation.

Still, they all agree, it’s unmistakable.

But Lena also learns that sometimes being soulmates isn’t enough.

It has always been her and her mother. She hasn’t really thought of her father. Her mother is everything she needs. Until one day she begins to notice that the other children have mothers and fathers. Begins to notice the husbands and wives who walk with their hands together. And she begins to wonder.

Lena finally asks when she sees her mother’s mark. Elizabeth tends to keep her forearms covered—hardly a challenge or an oddity in Ireland—but Lena had never considered that her mother might actually be hiding it until her question hangs in the air, and Elizabeth hastily shoves down the sleeves she had tucked to knead the dough. The flour that had been on her hands shines against the dark fabric with greater guilt than that written across her mother’s face.

“Mam, where is your soulmate?” Lena asks. “Is he my dad?”

She almost rescinds it, snatches it out of the air, at her mother’s quick reaction.

But then Elizabeth sighs, and she gestures for Lena to sit a their small table. She pulls a chair around to face her daughter. To take her hands.

“Sometimes,” her mother explains, slowly, hesitantly, “sometimes you can’t be with your soulmate. Yes, mine is your dad. But he had to go home, and we couldn’t go with him.”

“He left us?” Lena whispers, her little heart breaking.

Soulmates can choose not to be together. Somehow she had never considered that either. She had seen the marks like magic. Their happiness like fate.

Her mother squeezes her hands. “We don’t always get to live the life we want.”

How right her mother will turn out to be.

Lena watches her mother drown hardly a month later. She’s living with the Luthors less than a week after that.

Lena thought moving to America would be the greatest shock. She thought losing her mother would be the greatest pain. But living with the Luthors is like doing something wrong in every action. Like losing her mother every day.

Lillian Luthor is nothing like her mother. Lionel Luthor is doting, but distant. Lex tries.

Lena has never had a brother before. A brother who died or left or existed, and Lena doesn’t see shadows when she looks at Lex.

The Luthors don’t show their marks. They don’t accept things that can’t be explained. Things that aren’t entirely, purely human. Lena doesn’t understand how it isn’t human to love. She doesn’t hide hers.

The Luthors don’t like messes or laughter or sunshine in the hallways or warmth. Lena wears what is laid out for her, and doesn’t cook with the servants, or sing in the manor. She doesn’t paint or play games that weren’t invented to teach strategy. She doesn’t read folktales, only history and science.

The Luthors seem to like her mind. They like how quickly she learns and the things she understands that she shouldn’t yet. And it’s nice. To have that part of her understood. Even if she has to give up all the others.

They take away her bear and her clothes and her backpack and even her smile. They cut her hair and teach her to hide herself away behind her own face.

The only thing they cannot take from her is her mark. And so it becomes a sort of talisman for Lena. It’s the reminder she will meet someone who may like all of her—it is guaranteed. Perhaps her soulmate’s love isn’t certain, but the chance is. Lena will hear these words.

She begins to write—everything, everywhere, all the time. She writes things in a journal she knows the Luthors will approve of (because she knows that at least one of them will read it, even though it has a lock, and she wears the only key on a chain around her neck). She writes out plans and draws diagrams for inventions that have started to interest her, and honestly it does make her happy when Lex notices them. When he wants to help work on them, when they have something to bond over. She even writes the Christmas cards when Lillian thinks her “unusually” neat childish script is the perfect touch.

Lena keeps her mark uncovered. She ignores the cuffs they lay out on her bed in the morning, and keeps her sleeves rolled up. It helps her, to look at it. To read it. To trace her fingers over each letter.

She draws attention to it. And one day, Lillian sees it. Reads it.

She makes a small, almost sympathetic sound. “So, your soulmate won’t want you. How unfortunate.”

And Lena has mostly learned to brace herself against her new mother’s comments by now, but this is too close, too safe, too important, and Lena has no walls for it.

Fear, the very dread that heralds despair, squeezes Lena’s chest.

“What?” she manages.

Lillian gestures to her arm. “We miss people when we want them. Your soulmate will tell you they wondered why they wanted you.”

Lena’s gaze falls back to her mark.

If there had been something malicious in Lillian’s voice, something vicious, if she had sounded the way she always does when she wants to hurt Lena, to cut her, then Lena could have dismissed it.

But there hadn’t been. It had sounded more like pity.

And Lena’s hope cracks.

She bolts. Runs all the way to her room and locks the door behind her. She sits on her bed like she had the first time she had read it, but she doesn’t turn on a light. She doesn’t need it. And she can’t bear to see the words if Lillian is right.

And could not find how I had missed you for so long.

Lillian’s interpretation is every bit as plausible as Elizabeth’s. The physical definition versus the emotional. And just as Lillian would absolutely tell her the worst version to take her hope, Elizabeth absolutely would have told her the better to grant it.

Though for different reasons, the two women are equally unreliable.

And Lena… Lena doesn’t know how to choose. What to believe.

A knock startles her.

“Lena?” Lex calls through the door. “Mother said I should check on you.”

She lunges across the room and unlocks the door. Yanks it open.

Lex actually jumps.

“Come in, come in,” Lena insists, and grabbing his arm, she tugs her brother into the room, closing the door behind him.

He flicks on the lights. “Why were you sitting in the dark?”

She ignores the question. Shoves her arm, her mark, towards him. “What do you think this means?”

Lex gives her a strange look, but takes her arm in his hands to steady her shaking, and reads.

She can trust Lex, she decides. He’s smarter than Lillian, smarter than Elizabeth had been. And he’s an adult—he’s worked at LuthorCorp for a few years now. And he has always told her the truth, whether it hurt or helped.

His brow furrows, and Lena knows he doesn’t understand what he’s supposed to be looking for. What the importance is.

“Missed,” she tells him. “Do you think they can’t figure out how they didn’t find me sooner, or why they wanted to find me?”

Lex’s eyebrow raises. “I’m guessing Mother told you the second.”

Lena shrugs.

He sighs. “Honestly, Lena, it just sounds like a poem they’ll like. Maybe you’ll hear them recite it somewhere. But speculating now is useless. There’s no way to know for certain until you meet them.”

He releases her arm to put a hand on top of her head and ruffle her hair. She reaches up with both of her own to hold it there. It’s as close a gesture of affection as she gets, since becoming a Luthor.

She had never before considered that these words may not even be meant for her. That the first time she meets her soulmate, they may not even notice her, may not even look at her, unless she speaks. That unless she stops them, they could just walk right past her without another thought. And if they’re on a stage—Lena would have to chase them down after.

The words sit in the corner of her vision, her forearms equal with her face, and for the first time, Lena can’t bear to look at them. She releases Lex to push her sleeves back down.

Her brother frowns. Then he finds a seat on the edge of her bed and pats the space beside him.

When she sits, he says, “There are many more things in life to be excited about than just your soulmate, Lena. Your inventions, for one. Everything we’ll do with LuthorCorp when you’re finally old enough to help me.”

He nudges her with his elbow, and it makes her smile. Even if it’s small.

Lex hesitates. “Don’t tell her I told you this, but Mother’s soulmark never appeared.” Lena’s eyes widen. “But not having one let her have the life that gave her this.” He gestures widely to the manor. “Her prestige as a physician. The Luthor name. Endless wealth. A family.”

Neither mention her obvious displeasure with parts of the last.

“And mine hasn’t shown either,” he continues affably. “But I’m glad. I don’t think I could love another person more than I love the work of LuthorCorp. Perhaps I’ll marry one day. Have heirs. But the work we do, that’s what I want with my life.”

Lena considers his words. Considers what it would take to change her focus. To, perhaps, live with her soulmate slipping away.

“And Father,” she can’t help but ask, “his never appeared either?”

Lex hesitates again. “No, actually. Father had a soulmate. She… died some time ago.”

“Oh,” is all Lena can think to say.

“We don’t talk about it,” Lex affirms seriously. “Any of it. Do you understand?”

She nods. She understands the warning.

Lex smiles, and ruffles her hair again, which makes her smile too. He makes to leave, but she stops him at the door.

“Lex? Will you have time to help me with the quantum processor tomorrow?”

That makes him grin. “Of course, Lena.”

And though she keeps her mark covered from then on, it makes her feel better.

Then Father dies. And as much as it makes her sad, it makes her scared.

Because Lionel loved her, and Lillian doesn’t. Because now Lex runs LuthorCorp alone, and suddenly he’s gone more often than he’s around. Because it’s just her and a grieving Lillian in one, empty, manor.

So Lena hides. In her room, and in her makeshift lab, and she works. She works so that one day she’ll be useful to Lex and to LuthorCorp.

Then Lex starts to come home again, and she sees him more often, and she’s happy for about a minute before she realizes Lex is getting paranoid.

He begins to say things about Superman that she doesn’t understand. And she doesn’t understand why Lillian is so quick to agree.

Lena had never thought much about aliens. The day Superman had revealed himself had been… strange, and the attacks alarming, but Father had just died, and it wasn’t the first thing on her mind.

Sure, Lena thinks it would be nice to know what someone is when she speaks with them, but she doesn’t think aliens are intrinsically evil. Yes, some of them attack humans, but so do some humans. As Lena sees it, aliens don’t do anything to humans that humans don’t do to each other. And if they want to worry about how advanced some other races are, perhaps they should think about the humans still drinking contaminated water. Those with the advantage never think about those who can’t keep up. They only care about surpassing the next.

So, no, Lena doesn’t think very much about aliens. But she doesn’t say any of this to Lex or Lillian.

Instead she tries to remind Lex about LuthorCorp. About the direction they want to take it in, the advancements they want to make. Tries to make him think about helping people again.

But he only seems to get further and further away.

He begins to fight with Clark, his closest friend. Starts to make strange things in secret at LuthorCorp.

He asks Lena to help, and for the first time, she says no.

She goes to MIT. She wonders if she can ever learn enough to help.

Lena studies. She calls Lex when she can, and sometimes he answers. And every time he does, he seems worse. She visits home on holidays and tries to distract him, to reach him. The gulf between them grows each time instead.

It only makes Lena want to help more. To do something.

She meets Jack Spheer, and they try to improve medicine. He doesn’t have a mark, and she does, but he kisses her anyway. And she lets him. And even though some soulmates do date around before meeting, it makes her feel guilty. But it’s a distraction, and she needs one, too. She lets him kiss her when he wants to, but she never lets him do more.

Then Lex boils over, and the villain she couldn’t prevent rises and falls, and the Luthor name becomes a curse. And it’s all too easy to leave.

Lena arrives home in time for Lex’s official arrest. She stands with Lillian and the cameras watch them. She doesn’t know what face she makes as Lillian sobs, doesn’t remember if she says anything when they push microphones in her face. She can’t bear to watch the loop of it they play all day on every news station.

Lillian unravels, and Lena works to take over LuthorCorp. To redeem the name she loathes and loves in equal measure. The pride she was raised with is too strong to let her walk away.

She has to conquer the board first. Old, entitled men who aren’t too happy to have a young woman telling them what to do.

She dares to reach out to Superman. Lena issues an official apology on behalf of LuthorCorp and its affiliates, and asks if anything can be done to mend bridges.

Superman’s resounding dismissal, his repudiation of the Luthor name, is a painful stumble.

But there’s another super, a woman, flying around National City, and Metropolis is growing increasingly hostile towards anything Luthor for the harm Lex did to their hero, so Lena initiates a move.

And she knows she has to make a concession, knows she can’t force forgiveness, so she plans another change. She cuts the Luthor name enough to let people avoid saying it. Tries to make it so that they can think of the mission before the name.

The move is quick, and relatively painless—there’s little money can’t do, and despite the falling stocks, the boycotts, LuthorCorp still has plenty of it.

Setting up a press conference is even easier. The requests for attendance endless, the invitations hastily accepted. Everyone wants their chance to throw stones at the invading Luthor.

Lena wakes too early the morning of the conference, restlessness driving her from the bed. But they’re still working on the new L-Corp building, still working on her office and the labs in the basement, and Lena had agreed L-Corp employees would stay out until it’s no longer a construction zone. Including her.

She has tours lined up for the rest of the week for various L-Corp affiliates, and an interview or two. Necessary fodder until the headquarters officially opens next Monday.

But that leaves Lena with too much time until the conference, and nowhere to go.

So, because she doesn’t want to sit in this room that long, because the coffee at this hotel—she’s still looking for more permanent accommodations—is acceptable at best, Lena applies a lighter cover of makeup than usual, dons her most reserved dress, and asks for directions to the best coffeeshop in the area.

She hopes, more than expects, not to be recognized as she makes her way down the sidewalk. The distance they named seemed safe enough to risk going on foot, and it would be less conspicuous than the town car dropping her off. Still, she keeps her head ducked, avoiding eye contact as she makes her way to Noonan’s.

She is, perhaps, a little to pleased to find it. A little too proud of herself. Thinking a little too hard about what she might order.

Because she opens the door and starts her way in just as someone makes their way out.

She isn’t sure whose shriek is louder.

But the other woman is the one with hot coffee soaking into her shirt, so Lena blurts, “Oh, I’m so sorry, darling—I ran right into you!”

The woman freezes, shining blue eyes wide.

“Are you alright?” Lena asks, concerned, after a moment of the woman’s silence. “Let’s get you some napkins. I can replace your blouse or have it cleaned, whichever you prefer.”

She puts a hand on the woman’s elbow and tries to guide her back inside, but it’s like trying to move a statue.

Lena frowns, looking back up to try and catch her attention.

But the wonder in those infinite eyes is startling. She’s looking at Lena like she recognizes her, and is glad for it. When had someone last been so happy to see her?

“I looked for you,” the woman begins in a near-reverent voice, a bright smile lighting her face.

And all the air in Lena’s lungs deserts her at once. Her heart is either racing, or has stopped, or is the new blockage in her throat.

Because she knows those words. Knows them in her dreams and in her nightmares. In her hope and in her dread.

And Lena wants to run just as much as she wants to stay.

The woman finishes before she can decide, “And could not find how I had missed you for so long.”

The shiver starts at the top of her spine and runs to the bottom. And it isn’t cold, or someone’s whisper, or anticipation. It’s warmth. Warmth after cold, that burrows into your blood and revives you.

And the way this woman—her soulmate—is looking at her is almost answer enough, but Lena has to know, so she remarks neutrally, “Interesting choice of introduction, considering it might just as easily mean you regretted the search.”

Her soulmate’s answering smile is soft. Gentle. Inexplicably happy. “That’s not what it means. It means, how did I not find you? The answering line is, ‘How did I not yet run right into you, as fate made us meant to.’”

The relief floods through her, every cell, and her knees nearly give out.

She’s almost embarrassed by the depth of it. For caring so much. She hears Lex telling her there’s more to life than soulmates. She thinks of everything she has accomplished, and all she still hopes to do. She is, inarguably, an impressive woman.

But she’s hated. Mistrusted and disdained for acts she didn’t commit. She has to hope no one identifies her when she goes for coffee.

And her soulmate is looking at her like she’s worth something anyway. She’s telling Lena poetry of how happy she is to find her, just like Lena has hoped since she was still with her mother. Even when she had convinced herself that she’d given up.

Will she still be so pleased when she knows who Lena is? Will she understand? Will she understand Lena, as Lena has always hoped her soulmate would?

She finds herself asking, “Is it from something? I’ve searched a few times over the years, but never found anything.”

And suddenly, her soulmate looks uncomfortable.

Lena nearly apologizes. Nearly asks what she said wrong.

But the other woman looks pointedly at the alley between buildings, then back to Lena.

Lena’s brow arches.

Her look turns pleading.

And though it definitely goes on the list of the most foolish things she’s done—soulmate or no—Lena turns and leads the way to the alley.

When she turns back to her soulmate, the woman tosses a cautious glance toward the end of the alley and fidgets with her glasses in a way that shouldn’t be so endearing.

Then, with a steadying breath, she explains, “That’s because it’s not from Earth.” And that’s enough, in Lena’s mind—her soulmate’s an alien, and her brother’s the biggest xenophobe on the planet—but she has to add, “It’s Kryptonian. It’s what we say to acknowledge our mate. To accept them.”

Not just an alien, but the very species her genocidal brother hates the most. Lena’s answering sigh is bone-deep and weary. “You’re Supergirl.”

She has to be. Lena’s not lucky enough for there to be a second, pacifist Kryptonian in National City. And if there was, Lena’s not lucky enough for that one to be her soulmate.

Supergirl fidgets with her—fake—glasses again. “Yes.” Then she blurts, “I’m sure being a superhero’s soulmate is—well, something—but I’m really careful, and I promise I’ll be—”

Lena holds up a hand, and she stops talking at once. A small amusement swirls in Lena—what super is ever careful with their own safety?—but mostly she’s just tired.

She came here for Supergirl. And she’s her soulmate. Does that count as irony? If not, it deserves an honorable mention at the awards.

It’s Lena’s turn to take a steadying breath, and she tells her, “I’m Lena Luthor.”

Supergirl’s mouth falls open, her eyes wide.

Then she releases an undignified snort that startles Lena so greatly that she nearly jumps.

“This is an entirely new page on Super-Luthor relations.”

A small, pleasantly surprised laugh slips out before Lena can stop it. “That’s all? You don’t…” She bites her lip. “Care? My brother tried to kill your cousin. He would try to kill you.”

Her soulmate’s brow crinkles. “Well, are you going to try to kill me?”

Lena blinks. Did she… really think Lena would say yes if that was the answer?

It’s so, utterly trusting that she can’t fathom it.

But the answer isn’t yes, so Lena answers honestly as she says, “No. Actually, I was hoping to work together. I want to make L-Corp—that’s the new LuthorCorp—a force for good. I’m announcing it all later today at a press conference.”

Supergirl’s smile is blinding. “Then no, I don’t really care who your family is. I only care who you are.”

Her heart races. Lena wants to save the Luthor name. Feels a sort of masochistic pride towards it.

But hearing Supergirl say she doesn’t care about what Lex has done, that she only cares about Lena—it feels like a benediction.

“Can I ask your name?” she wonders softly.

“Kara Zor-El,” she answers immediately. “But here it’s Kara Danvers.”

“Kara,” Lena repeats, just to feel it on her tongue.

Kara smiles at her. Can’t seem to stop smiling. “You have beautiful handwriting, by the way. I would trace the letters when I was first learning English.”

“I practiced,” she admits, and then instantly wants to smack herself. What fool part of her mind had decided that should ever be shared? Her cheeks burn.

But Kara looks so overwhelmingly delighted that Lena decides she can forgive herself just this once.

After a moment of them just looking at each other, taking each other in, Kara bites her lip. Fiddles with her glasses.

“I have to keep my identity a secret. It would be dangerous for my family if people found out.”

“Kara Danvers and Supergirl can’t share a soulmate,” Lena surmises.

Kara shakes her head, seeming relieved that Lena had understood so quickly.

“Which would you prefer?” Lena asks.

“Kara,” Kara answers easily. “If you’re Kara Danvers’ soulmate, then we can do things together.” She blushes. “Go on dates. Hold hands.”

And why do Lena’s cheeks feel so warm? At dates and holding hands?

Ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.

But there’s still a small, giddy feeling in her stomach. Her soulmate wants to be seen with her. Doesn’t want to hide being attached to a Luthor.

Her soulmate is choosing her.

“I’d like that,” she murmurs, a smile playing at her lips and warmth in her cheeks, and feels, for the first time in a long time, more like a Walsh than a Luthor.

Kara’s soft, happy grin feels like being held. “But if you want, Supergirl can come to your press conference today. She can stand on stage with you or wherever you want her.”

For a moment, Lena can only blink. “You would do that? You would stand by a Luthor as Supergirl?”

Her brow crinkles again. “Why wouldn’t I? Supergirl will have to be more distant, but she’s still going to support you. You’re my soulmate, Lena. I would do anything for you.”

And this time, when Lena’s heart breaks, it’s healing. It’s the kind of break that needs to happen so things can be reset.

Lena recalls. She adjusts. Then she looks into the eyes she knows she’ll soon love, and says, “I’m glad I ran right into you, as fate made us meant to.”

Kara answering smile is more beautiful than perfect equations. More right than the turning of the Earth.

And it’s already Lena’s new axis.

Chapter Text

Kara Zor-El is born with bare forearms.

And it’s fine. It’s not even noteworthy, because half of all matches are born without their mark. Kara’s match simply hasn’t been born. In the next year or so, in the next few batches from the codex, something will go right, and Kara’s words will appear.

These marks—they’re directions sent from Rao. Telling them whom to mix with and in which generation. Telling them how to create the greatest offspring.

And Kara Zor-El’s contributors are already greater than most. Zor-El and Alura In-Ze aren’t simply loyal servants of Krypton, they achieve. They are, in a word, perfect examples of Kryptonians. And with such great material, with any imperfections smoothed out by the codex, Kara Zor-El would be a paragon of Kryptonian excellence.

Surely, after bringing everything together to create her, generation after generation, Rao wouldn’t simply want her material to end.

But one year passes, then two, then four, and Kara Zor-El is learning so quickly, already looking for answers to questions they haven’t yet asked her, and they were right to anticipate her birth—but her arms are still glaringly bare.

None know where the comment came from—one day the rumor simply exists. That something is wrong with Kara Zor-El after all, and Rao is protecting them from her rot.

The House of El releases a list of matches with ten or more years between them throughout Krypton’s history, and says nothing else.

Kara hears none of it. She’s more interested in the things she’s learning, in the projects her father lets her play with. Kara learns she likes answers, likes searching for them.

Kara learns service. She learns that Krypton has reached its levels of success—its advancement, its civility—due to the service of all Kryptonians. Because Kryptonians understand that their first love, their first duty, is to the society. They can have nothing else without it, and to contribute is the greatest act. The utmost way to honor Rao for the gifts he gave them.

Learns, also, that she isn’t someone who can ignore the tremors. The desolation of their soil, and the rationing.

Her Aunt Astra is consumed by it, and Kara listens to her arguments with Alura from behind the door as she accuses her sister of not doing enough.

But her mother is, Kara knows. She must be. She knows her father’s in the lab every day, looking for solutions. They’re members of the House of El. It’s their service.

But she doesn’t blame her aunt for pushing. For fighting. Not when she serves the Military Guild, when fighting is her own way of honoring Rao.

She knows, that between the three of them, Krypton will be saved. There’s no one else she would trust more.

So she focuses on her studies, works toward her own induction into the Science Guild. Hopes, that one day she will be as great a servant as her family.

She sits in class as they learn about Rao’s gift of the marks and hears another student two rows behind mutter, why is Kara Zor-El here? Rao abandoned her. She pretends not to notice the students who look at her.

And she begins to wonder why she doesn’t have a mark. Her mother, she thinks, would have an answer—she always does. But what if—what if her lack of mark embarrasses her mother? Her father? The House of El, itself?

She cannot bring their attention to it.

So Kara goes to the archives on her own and asks for all the information on Kryptonians who never had a mark. There are very few records, and one simply states that such individuals are best left forgotten.

There are arguments in her defense. Arguments that state some beings simply do not get marks. That it’s a phenomena across all the universe, and has no deeper meaning. Another argues that some matches are never able to meet, and so there are no words to appear.

But these arguments exist in the archives simply to be refuted. That other races’ gods should abandon them as well is not forgiveness for displeasing Rao. It doesn’t inhibit a deeper meaning. And if two are never meant to meet, then they can’t be matched. It’s a ridiculous idea.

The rest of the materials agree—those who never gain a mark are somehow wrong. A mistake had been made in their creation that Rao wants to protect future generations of Kryptonians from.

And it’s… disheartening.

But it’s also something to do. If there’s something wrong within her, perhaps it can be fixed.

If there’s an error in her DNA, a weakness she has yet to discover, then she can rewrite it. She’s destined for the Science Guild, after all, and she’s sure they’d support any research into fixing people like her.

Kara works harder. She commandeers a small portion of her father’s lab and convinces him to let her take a little blood. Her mother lets her take some as well, and Kara compares their DNA against her own.

She learns the features she’d gotten from each—her hair, her eyes, and other things she can similarly see. Kara finds the loci for personality, learns she has a proclivity for openness that she can’t find in either of her parents, and she wonders if that’s what disappoints Rao.

It’s the only discrepancy, the only aberration she can find.

Kara wears a path into her life. She exists only at home, at school, and in the lab.

And part of it is focus, determination, the very sort of work that had made Kara Zor-El so highly anticipated to begin with—but part of it is the soundtrack that follows her near everywhere she goes: Kara Zor-El, genius, gifted, wrong.

There’s peace at home, and at the lab. School is a necessity.

She wears so deeply into her life that she doesn’t notice how small it is. How lonely.

When her mother encourages her to use the spy beacon to call Aunt Astra, Kara gladly complies. Her aunt has never cared that she doesn’t have a mark. Has never thought of Kara as broken or disappointing or wrong. She simply loves her.

Aunt Astra comes as she always does when Kara calls, and Kara’s so happy to see her that she nearly cries.

But that would be foolish, unbecoming of a Kryptonian, so Kara only smiles and tries the small alien candy her aunt gives her, and enjoys the way they talk. Without judgment.

Eventually, Alura interrupts and asks to speak with her twin. Kara departs with a cheery goodbye and a lightness in her step she hasn’t felt in months.

She wonders if her mother is going to ask her aunt to visit Kara more often, and normally the thought would embarrass her, but right now, she only feels grateful.

The next day her mother tells her Aunt Astra took a needed mission that will keep her away for some time.

Kara redoubles her efforts in the lab. Redoubles all efforts to fix herself because this thing in her chest shouldn’t exist, not when her aunt is only serving. Her aunt is serving Rao. As every good Kryptonian should.

Isolating the particular strands in the loci that make her so erroneously open is easier than devising a safe way to alter them. It’s possible to alter a subject’s DNA prior to the awakening of their consciousness—she knows that from the codex—but trying to meddle with a fully formed creature is proving… fatal.

Kara uses her own blood for each experiment—and she’s glad, at least, that her subject material is so easy to obtain.

But each agent she introduces to the cells attacks the DNA strands indiscriminately. And fails to bring them back together.

Kara watches with a dismayed sort of frustration as each sample corrodes before her eyes.

And with each loss, with each echo of her soundtrack, with the way her father’s new colleague whispers, should we be letting an un-marked in the lab?, a kind of obsession grows within her. A desperation.

She sits with her parents at dinner and asks her mother everything she knows about the codex, asks her father what he knows about how it works. She goes to class, perches obediently at her desk, but the only notes she ever takes are on the changes she can make to her serum’s formula.

She spends every other moment in the lab. Leaving only when her father drags her away at the end of each day.

She never makes any progress.

Her uncle Jor-El gets her aunt Lara with child.

And it’s surprising, but it’s mostly confusing, because, well, why? Why, also, would they risk it all by skipping the codex when there’s already one broken child of El?

The only explanation her uncle will give her father is that they’re in love. Kara thinks that if love causes people to act so foolishly, it’s good they had forgone it in Kryptonian society.

But it does her the small favor of stealing public attention. Now, instead of wondering about Kara’s lack of mark, they wonder what Jor-El and Lara were thinking. They question whether the pair’s action is illegal—or if it should be. They debate on what Krypton will do with the child—who, they say, will surely be little more than a barbarian.

And if Kara doesn’t let them notice her, she doesn’t have to hear them ask, what has happened to the House of El?

They don’t get very long to ask.

The tremors have become a part of everyday life. They know what every shiver means—all Kryptonian do.

But even dread, even terror, can become routine. They aren’t less afraid. They are simply used to being afraid.

The tremors become still more common—more and more until they barely stop.

And while they’ve lost a certain amount of reverence in the El name, their house is still influential. They are still full of means. Full of skills. Full of secrets.

Kara wonders, when her only cousin, Kal-El, is newly born, and their parents bring them both to a pair of pods, when the House of El gave up.

Her aunt and uncle are crying. They kiss their new son, and wrap him in his red blanket, and place him in the first pod, their hands lingering as if they can’t bear to let go.

Kara’s parents kneel before her with shining eyes, but they are good Kryptonians and do not cry about what must be done.

They tell Kara this will save her. They tell her about the destruction coming as if she hadn’t been aware, as if it hadn’t been their service to prevent, their solution to find.

But they tell her, also, that Kal-El is her responsibility now. Hers to protect. To raise into a proper Kryptonian. Their people will survive through her now.

They have already sent off Kal-El’s pod.

Kara’s father puts her in her own. Her mother presses a quick kiss to her forehead. Kara’s eyes burn, but she is a good Kryptonian, and there are things that must be done.

She looks back as her pod departs, hurtling through the atmosphere, trying desperately to outrun a dying planet.

It isn’t fast enough. To stop her from seeing her planet, her home, everything she has ever known and loved, force itself apart. To stop them from being hit by the aftermath.

Kara screams.

She screams because it’s gone, it’s gone, she can never get it back, because she was supposed to follow Kal-El, and did the shockwave hit him too, and if it did, how was she ever supposed to find him?

She screams until it turns into sobs, and she clenches her teeth, trying desperately to stop them because there are things she needs to do, but she doesn’t know how, she doesn’t know at all, and she’s racing through nothing to nowhere at the hands of a fate that has already doomed her again and again.

It offers no mercy now.

Kara has never seen it herself, but every Kryptonian learns of the Phantom Zone at a young age. It’s too—was too near Krypton to allow foolishness. A utility and a danger.

She doesn’t need to be gifted, genius. Doesn’t need her years of astrophysics or calculus. She knows with the first shift in her pod’s trajectory that her ending has already been written.

It’s almost a relief. To not have to be the one that remembers. To not have to survive the failure of her mission to Kal-El. He won't have to bear it as she would have. His burden will be the singular weight of the unknown, and not the individual weight of each memory.

Still, Kara sends a last prayer to Rao to let Kal-El land somewhere kind. To let him be safe.

Kara Zor-El faces the vortex. Watches herself descend into what is somehow salvation, and begins the funeral rites for the lives lost today. And once she has said them for every name she can remember in this moment, she says them for herself, too.

Then she wonders, as the universe itself warps, as she feels herself being pulled, squeezed, if her parents also faced their deaths with their eyes open.

The Phantom Zone is unending, in the way that darkness is always infinite.

She waits for the phantoms to find her.

Kara doesn’t expect the immediate, omnipresent, insatiable itch in her left forearm.

In one of the most foolish acts of her life, Kara activates the light in her pod. And stares, in abject disbelief, at the looping script writing itself into her skin.

She doesn’t recognize any of the words—or even the letters. A language she’s never known. One she may eventually speak.

A deep sob wrenches out of her.

And then she screams, and screams, and cannot stop, because why now?

Why now, why now, why now—

Why now, when it’s appearance is worse than its absence had ever been? When it’s only an unyielding affirmation that she’ll survive this, that she’ll have to carry this?

She screams because Krypton is gone, and her home, and the Science Guild with her father’s lab.

She will never again work through the day with her father so near, tinkering on his own project, quiet comfort, unfailing support. She will never again be held hy her mother while she cries. She’ll never again hear her stories or talk with her while she cooks. She’ll never see the jewel mountains again, or the fire falls.

Her screams give way to deep, unforgiving sobs that rip their way through her throat.

Everything she has ever loved is irretrievably gone—she’ll spend the rest of her life aching for things she can never have again.

She doesn’t know how long she’ll be trapped within the Phantom Zone.

She doesn’t think she’ll ever find Kal-El.

And she’ll have to bear all of it.

Time doesn’t pass in the Phantom Zone. There’s no way to track it. But there’s still a length to her experience in it, and time is the axis upon which she understands it.

Her cries taper out eventually. And she dares to look down at the mark on her arm again.

Is it a gift from Rao, or a resignation? Has he finally given her a match to give her hope? Or because his options are now so limited, and he wants Kryptonians to continue? Has he only decided her error can be overlooked in the face of extinction?

Or… perhaps it’s simpler than that. Perhaps, in this place outside of time, she now simultaneously exists in a time when her match will be born. Perhaps this person was always meant to be Kara’s match, and Kara was always going to find herself here.

Rao is a god. He could have seen what would come to pass. Might have chosen her to save.

But why?

These words guarantee she will leave this eternity one day. Or that someone will find her here. But it’s hope, whether she wants it or not.

She hadn’t turned off her light.

She feels her pod jostle first. Then there’s a screech of something scraping against metal, and Kara doesn’t need to see them to know what’s found her.

But she switches off the light of her pod, and allows her eyes to adjust to whatever strangeness allows her to see in such perfect darkness.

The figure comes slowly into focus as Kara’s heart pounds in her ears. It’s pressed itself against the glass. It’s gaze on her, unrelenting.

The phantoms are nothing like she’d expected. She’d been told they’re wraiths. They’d been banished to this desolate wasteland by Kryptonians in an age long past, and left to rot.

The creature leering at her is unmistakably corporeal.

Kara and the phantoms seem to realize in the same moment that they can’t penetrate her pod. It brings her relief.

It incites their rage.

They beat against the metal. Against the glass. They scrape their claws against it all, and though they cannot pierce it, the screech reverberates around her again and again.

She knows of the visions they can create in one’s mind. Had believed, perhaps, with the confidence of someone who expected to never experience them, that she wouldn’t be fooled.

But when her vision fills with light, when she feels the familiar sheets that adorn her bed, and it feels as though she’s just sitting up, as though she’s just awoken and it was nothing more than a horrible dream, she realizes believing them isn’t the danger.

The vision shifts. She’s in her pod again, and she’s free of the Phantom Zone, but it isn’t a kindness. Because she’s looking at Krypton, whole and complete, and trembling. And she knows what’s coming, she doesn’t want to watch it again, but she can’t turn her head, can’t force her gaze away, and please, please—she might be saying it. But Krypton forces itself apart before her eyes all over again, and she can’t stop screaming.

The vision shifts again.

They show her Kal-El’s pod—crashed, broken and burning.

They show her a vague form, vague sounds, and somehow she knows it’s her match and she’s hearing the words she can’t even read yet, and she believes it. She can feel the sunlight and taste the air.

She only knows it’s fake because they cannot convince her she’s felt the flood. The overwhelm of sensations each Kryptonian has reported after meeting their match.

They show her vision after vision, and though they delight in the way she screams, the way she cries, they cannot lure her from her pod, and their interest wanes.

Not entirely—they never fully forget her, but their attention ebbs and flows. At times she has peace from them, and at times they beset her with paradises and nightmares in equal measure, and she doesn’t know which is worse.

But just as the dread of Krypton’s ending had become routine, so do the phantoms.

Mostly, Kara drifts. Or perhaps she’s still. There’s little way to tell.

It’s almost as though she’s half asleep. She feels no hunger, no thirst. There’s never any discomfort in her muscles from the cramped pod, and no lessening of their mass as there should’ve been. She doesn’t need rest, not physically, but she sleeps from time to time anyway, just to alleviate the pressure of being so perpetually awake.

Sometimes she can only bear to count the seconds as they should happen. Sometimes she can only trace her new mark with her fingers and her eyes. Sometimes she activates the light of her pod when she can no longer stand the constant darkness—but that often draws the phantoms’ attention back to her sooner.

There’s a kind of horrible monotony. A boredom tinged with vigilance and anxiety.

The shift, when it happens, starts small.

It almost feels like rocking—like the way her mother would hold her when she was small and sad, or scared.

But it only takes her a moment to realize her pod is moving.

She looks for the phantoms, but there’s no scraping, no hint of their horrible faces, no distortion at the edge of her vision that she’s come to recognize as a sign of their visions.

Her pod is actually moving.

She has no way of guiding it, no way, really, of even knowing what direction she’s moving in or how quickly. Neither is she aware of the depth or width of the zone itself. Is it actually as endless as it feels?

It very well could be—and while the words upon her arm ensure she’ll find someone, there’s no assurance on when. She could be alone for another thousand cycles of her awareness.

There’s little else she can do but wait and watch where this momentum takes her.

Kara monitors the space she moves through, but there’s nothing by way of landmarks for her to measure. Truly, she only has the vibrations of the pod itself to confirm her propulsion.

She doesn’t know how far she travels, doesn’t know how long, but the light that builds in the distance is unmistakable.

It isn’t a pure light—that of a sun or star. The light distorts—it seems to shift and dance, as if moving over water, and Kara—

Kara can’t breathe when she realizes it’s a portal. A vortex like the one that had brought her into the Phantom Zone. And she continues right to it.

The space around her distorts. She feels a pull that starts in her stomach. There’s a sense of being squeezed.

And then she’s simply free.

A sob works its way up Kara’s throat as she looks upon the stars. How long has it been since she’s seen them?

It isn’t any part of the universe Kara recognizes, but she doesn’t honestly care. She’s never cared about anything less, frankly, because she’s free.

Her pod’s momentum isn’t hampered by the vortex as it was the first time. Indeed, now that she has points of comparison, she can see that she’s hurtling through the cosmos. Moving even more quickly than she had when she first left Krypton.

And though she has no clue where her trajectory leads, though she has no way of affecting it, Kara feels nothing but giddy with the situation.

It’s not a euphoria that’ll last, but it’s strong for now. After so long in the Phantom Zone, the stars are a wonder to Kara. She turns this way and that as she flies past them, delighted by their light and the constellations she can’t see from among them, but knows must exist. She passes asteroids and planets and nebulae, and loves them all. She passes by galaxies and through them.

The speed with which she crosses the universe is fantastical, but the distances she’s crossing are still great enough for her pod’s stasis to adjust her faculties. Her heartbeat and breathing slow. Her digestion. Her muscles loosen and relax.

It feels like falling asleep, but Kara fights the impulse. She isn’t ready to face the darkness of her dreams with so much light around her.

Still, her awareness is slowed—and so, when her pod catches in a planet’s gravity and begins to fall, Kara faces the rapidly approaching ground with a lazy interest rather than alarm.

She barely feels the impact. Why would she? Her pod has protected her from so much already.

Stasis disengages as her pod sweeps the planet’s atmosphere for Kryptonian compatibility. She’s pleased when she hears the pod’s seal release, when air, true, fresh, new air floods around her for the first time in so long.

But even as the glass cover rises, a figure descends from the sky. From the sky.

Kara watches the figure—the man, by her estimation—approach with wide eyes. But when he comes close enough to be clear, when she looks upon his strange clothes, and there, proudly displayed on his chest—

“The Crest of El,” she blurts, and her gaze snaps back to the man’s face. Her uncle’s strong nose, brow and jaw. Her aunt’s curling, dark hair. The El eyes. And Kara can’t stop the sob that works its way up her throat as she breathes, “Kal-El?”

When kryptonese—kryptonese, broken and stilted, but still her language, their language—falls from his lips, she can’t stop the tears either. “You know El? You know me?”

“I’m your cousin,” she tells him eagerly. “Our fathers were brothers. I left Krypton just after you, and I’m here to—”

Kara stops. Stops, because he’s looking at her with uncertainty and confusion, and it’s clear he doesn’t understand her. Because she was sent to protect a babe, and a man stands before her instead. Because she has found him again, the last son of Krypton, and Krypton is a stranger to him. She has failed in her last remaining task.

Discomfort crosses Kal-El’s expression as the anguish pours down her cheeks, and he’s right. She’s a proud Kryptonian, and this is nothing more than a waste of their time.

She had found him across an endless cosmos after so long. It could only have been the guiding light of Rao. And if Rao still has plans for her, Kara will finally meet them.

Kara takes several deep breaths and swipes away her tears. When she can, she says, “Family,” and places her hand on the crest detailed across her own shirt. “Kara Zor-El.”

His eyes widen in surprise, and she smiles when he repeats, “Family.”

She gestures to him. “Age?” she asks. How long had she been in the Phantom Zone?

“Twenty-five cycles,” he answers, and she sucks in a sharp breath. He gestures to her the same way she had to him.

“Thirty-eight cycles.”

Disbelief and confusion war in his expression, and she explains, “Frozen,” adding when he nods his understanding, “in time.”

His brows tick upward, but she ignores it. It’s not something she can explain with his mediocre grasp of their language.

Instead, she gestures around them. “Where?”

“Earth.”

Kara nods. Then she slides her hand through the air and says, “Flying. How?”

“More than flying,” he admits, making her brows tick upward. But they draw together, forming a crinkle, and a frown settles on her lips when he points to the sky and simply says, “Sun.”

Kara allows her gaze to lift. Lets it pass over the named being, and finds with great surprise that she can look directly upon the strange yellow sun without pain.

She’d never been to a yellow-star system before. Never knew anyone who had and had spoken of it. Those that had—had they experienced strange abilities? Is it in Kryptonian cells? Or has Kal-El been blessed by the yellow star god?

As if reading the question in her expression, Kal-El sympathetically adds, “You’ll feel it.”

The sympathy is concerning.

She turns back to him. She isn’t sure he could answer most of what she still wishes to know, so she asks instead, “What now?”

“You have to hide,” Kal-El says gently, and her brows flick upward again.

Kara watches the consternation in his expression as he rifles through his too-small Kryptonese vocabulary, trying to find a way to communicate whatever complicated thing this is.

After a moment, he sighs. Steps closer to her and holds out his arms. “May I?”

She frowns at him in confusion.

“Flying,” he elaborates.

Kara blinks at him. Twice. Then nods.

He scoops her up with surprising ease, one arm supporting her back, and the other, her knees.

And then, without any push, any build up of momentum, they are, quite simply, flying. Kara yelps and clings to his neck. He squeezes her gently.

Kal-El flies them over forests and grasslands and oceans. He flies with greater speed than she would’ve ever imagined for his strange ability. And normally either would hold her attention, but neither feel as strange as the air around them.

It should be cold. At this height and with this speed. And it should feel like a battering, exposed as she is.

She can feel the cold. The strength of it against her skin. But she feels no discomfort. And the force against them—it’s little more than a caress.

The ocean below them turns into a world of white. Strange creatures dot the landscape, living among the cold and ice.

Finally, Kal-El descends, and places Kara down in a field of powder.

Kara knows of snow. Knows the possibility of it and the cause. But she had never seen it.

A small laugh slips out of her, the delight of both a scientist and a child.

“Come,” Kal-El says, and she turns to him.

Something must show in her expression, perhaps some shameful amount of pleading, because he smiles.

“I will return in one minute,” he says, and when she nods, he darts back into the sky, and back the way they came. The powdery snow lifts and flurries at the force of his takeoff. She hadn’t felt anything.

Tucking that observation away, Kara allows herself to marvel at the way it falls around her. She opens her mouth and catches a flake on her tongue, and it makes her giggle. She kneels in the piles of it at her feet and feels it soak into the fabric of her pants, but remains unbothered by it.

The way it compacts so quickly when she presses on it fascinates her, and she presses her hands everywhere she can reach—

Until a squeak sounds, and she had heard it the first few times, but it’s suddenly cavernous, and she has to clap her hands over her ears.

She stays there, gritting her teeth against the way it seems to echo in her mind, until it sounds again. Kara flinches away, turning to find Kal-El placing her pod down in the snow.

Her cousin looks at her and sees something he must recognize, because the sympathy returns to his expression.

“Come,” he says again, quietly.

Kara flinches at every squeak of their steps, and, noticing, Kal-El lifts himself off the snow, floating forward. She flashes him a grateful smile. Still, she winces with her own, unable to fly, herself.

Yet, a small voice whispers.

Kal-El lifts a conglomeration of metal that must weigh more than any man should be able to carry, and holds it to the iceberg they stand at the feet of. Her eyes widen as a door slides open and reveals a piece of Krypton. A command center, a lab, an archive—it seems to contain anything and everything a lost Kryptonian might need. She follows her cousin in eagerly.

He calls something out in a strange language as the door closes behind them. And her jaw drops as a kelex presents itself. It and Kal-El speak in that same language until the kelex turns to her.

“Greetings, Kara Zor-El,” it says, and even though it’s only a kelex, the kryptonese makes her grin. “Welcome to Earth. Kal-El has asked me to translate for you both.”

“My thanks,” she tells it. “I would be glad to speak.”

It relates her small statement to her cousin, and he turns to her.

“Family?” he repeats in amateur version of their tongue.

Kara turns back to the kelex and tells it everything. Krypton’s downfall. The pods. Her mission. The shockwave that knocked her off course. Her imprisonment in the Phantom Zone and its place outside time. Her landing here.

And when it turns back to her cousin, telling him that same story in an accurate approximation of her voice, in that strange language, she listens. She listens for each syllable, tries to identify each word, each sentence. When she hears the same ones again and again, she compares their placement.

She finds she remembers it all. She has always had a good memory, but she remembers every syllable in its exact pronunciation, in the exact order she first heard them. she realizes, also, that she remembers every second since her landing here with startling clarity.

She pushes that thought aside for now. Kal-El’s expression has twisted in a sort of anguish. The kelex copies her inflection, her stress and emotion, and it’s another clue into the translation.

By the time the echo of her own voice ends, and Kal-El makes his response, Kara has grasped some of the more common, basic words.

Her cousin tells her his story in return. How he was found by a family named the Kents and taken in as their son. How his senses expanded. How his powers revealed themselves. He speaks of hiding, of revealing himself, of the decision to become Superman. He talks about battles and wins and losses and a woman named Lois Lane, and he talks about it all like he is human. He doesn’t speak of Krypton as a world, but as bits and pieces scattered around this one. The fortress they are in. A strange rock that will weaken them. Her.

She doesn’t think he realizes that he doesn’t include himself.

And so, when it’s her turn to speak again, when the kelex waits for the words she will give it to translate, words Kal-El will only then understand, Kara doesn’t probe. She doesn’t want to know any more about how greatly she failed her task. About how she allowed the last son of Krypton to become human.

At least he serves. At least there’s enough Kryptonian in him to use his abilities as a defender. Perhaps he would have joined the Military Guild.

Kara only asks, “What now?”

Kal-El seems confused by her abrupt shift, by the brusqueness the kelex conveys, but he dutifully answers that there are people they can trust, people who help aliens, he has friends among them, and he’s sure one of them can take her in. Raise her.

And Kara has a lot of opinions on whether there’s still enough child left in her to raise, on whether a planet remedial enough to barely accept the existence of aliens could teach her anything of use—yes, she needs a place on this planet, but her duty is Kal-El, and she doesn’t need anything more than a place to sleep and food to eat to watch over him.

Kara looks at her reason for surviving, the last member of her family, of her species, and asks, “I can’t stay with you?”

His hesitation is answer enough.

She speaks before he can. “Talk with whom you need to. I will be useful wherever you place me.”

His brows draw together—confusion, or concern perhaps—but she turns away from him towards the fortress’ interface. Kal-El moves forward, as if to help her start it, but she’s scrolling through the archives before he can take two steps.

He stops. Says something in his strange human language.

And the kelex tells her, “I’m going to speak with my friends. You’ll be safe here until I return. I’ll make sure to bring food.”

Kara’s stomach growls, but she doesn’t otherwise acknowledge his words.

She is hungry. Has never felt hunger like this, in all honesty. As if all the meals she’d missed in the Phantom Zone have come calling at once.

She hears Kal-El leave. Hears every soft footstep, every scratch of fabric, the swish of his cape as he walks. She hears the door, and the squeak of the snow, and the force of the air as he takes flight. She hears his heartbeat, which she shouldn’t hear at all, fading, long enough that it alarms her. She knows the speed of his flight.

Kal-El had told her of the growth in his senses. She thinks there may not be enough words in either of their languages to describe the actual experience. The disorientation. The pain. The distraction.

She hears the kelex’s ticking. She can taste the air puttering through the fortress. Can feel the small, vibrating hum of the interface.

Kara scrolls through the archives. There’s much on Krypton’s history and culture and language. She can see what Kal-El has accessed, and she’s glad, at least, that her cousin is learning it. But she doesn’t need any of it herself.

There’s little about Earth in these Kryptonian archives, which she finds disappointing, but not surprising.

So she calls the kelex and asks it to begin teaching her Kal-El’s strange human language.

Her cousin is absent longer than she expects, and she begins to wonder about his friends. Whether she’ll be welcome anywhere on this planet.

But he does return, and brings several thin boxes with him. The scent radiating from them is unlike any she’s encountered before, but it makes her mouth water.

“I’ve brought pizza,” he announces, the kelex translating.

“Pizza,” she mimics, trying to wrap her tongue around the strange word.

Kal-El blinks. Then smiles. “It’s very popular here.”

He places the boxes on a sort of table and opens the first one. Doubtlessly as a sort of explanation, he picks up a triangular cut and bites into it. Kara copies him.

But once it hits her tongue, she can’t stop herself from shoving the rest of the triangle into her mouth. Kal-El laughs, and she reaches for another.

She eats and eats, but her stomach never fills. She wonders, at first, if there’s something lacking in human nourishment, but Kal-El tells her as she starts on the fourth pizza that she will always need to eat this much. That the physical costs of their abilities demand it.

It isn’t ideal, but whether it’s her hunger, or the flavor of Earth food, or some enhancement to her tastebuds—or perhaps just the absence of eating for so long—Kara looks at the prospect of all that future food with something akin to joy.

While she makes her way through the seventh and final pizza, her cousin hesitantly informs her that he’s found a family to take her in.

Her chewing slows, and she asks in broken English, “Family… who?”

At his startled look, she gestures to the kelex. Her stomach twists at the proud smile he gives her.

Kal-El tells her of the Danvers. Of their work in xenobiology and the way they helped him with his abilities. He tells her they have a daughter only a couple years older than Kara. He tells her they’re good people. She wonders what he told them about her.

When the last bite of pizza is gone, her cousin scoops her into his arms again and flies her as he had earlier. But where they had primarily passed over forests and oceans before, they pass over cities now. Some so grand that the sound of them is nearly an assault, and she has to cover her ears with her hands. Some so small that it seems as if the city itself is sleeping.

They land in one of these smaller settlements, near one of the planet’s oceans.

The Danvers are waiting for them, standing on a collection of vegetation in the last light of day. The mother and father offer her warm and welcoming smiles. The daughter, however, is looking at her with barely concealed distaste, and it’s familiar. Kara can almost hear the echo of genius, gifted, wrong in her gaze, and it shouldn’t be comforting, but it is.

Perhaps something broke in her in that pod.

The mother steps forward. She kneels before Kara, and Kara can hear her heart beating. She doesn’t know how fast a human heart should beat. Doesn’t know if the mother’s is fast or slow.

But it beats in twos, as Kara’s does.

The mother places a hand over her chest. “Hello. My name is Eliza.” She gestures behind her. “That is my—” she uses a word Kara doesn’t know, “Jeremiah, and our—” another unknown, “Alex.”

Kara places a hand over her own chest. “Hello. My name is Kara Zor-El.”

Her pronunciation isn’t nearly as smooth, but Eliza still beams. She says something more, and Kara recognizes some of the words, but not enough to understand the statement. Kara blinks at her, and the mother’s smile softens.

Eliza turns to Kal-El, and they speak. Kara hears her name more than once, and comprehends more of the words. She tries to parse out the remaining unknowns, tries to grasp the meaning.

Finally, they both turn to her.

“The Danvers will help you,” Kal-El says in his pitiful kryptonese. “If you need more help they can contact me. I will visit.”

Kara’s jaw sets, and she nods, ignoring the pinch in her chest at the distance between them. He doesn’t need her.

With a slightly uncomfortable look, Kal-El takes a few steps back, giving himself room to take flight.

But Kara lurches forward before she even thinks to. “Wait!” she calls in her own tongue. She rolls up her sleeve to bear her mark to him. “Here?” she asks, keeping the question simple and hoping he’ll understand.

She just needs to know—needs to know if her match, the only other soul left that means anything to her besides her cousin, is within reach.

Kal-El takes her arm in a gentle grasp, despite the strength she knows thrums beneath his skin. His gaze passes over her mark, and then he grins. His blue eyes meet hers, and he happily answers, “Yes.”

She lets him go with a smile of her own. It’s a purpose.

Kara hears the bending of grass as someone approaches, and turns to face Eliza. The woman offers her another soft smile, and gestures to the house. Kara doesn’t hesitate before following the family inside.

The first few months with the Danvers are only a continuation of her troubles.

She doesn’t speak their language very well—isn’t learning quickly enough to feel anything but frustrated. But it’s difficult to learn—to focus on anything at all—as her senses continue to expand. Every light, every sound, every dust mote against her skin is an assault. The taste of the air as it brushes her tongue. The smell of all the perfumes in all the bathroom products they use.

Her strength and speed grow as well, and she can’t touch anything without breaking it. Can’t bump into anything without shattering it, and yet she can’t take a step without putting more force behind it than she means to and making herself stumble.

So Kara sits on the edge of the bed they’ve designated for her with her hands clenched over her knees, and doesn’t move. It’s safer for everyone.

Kal-El does return and gives her a pair of glasses that helps stop her vision from flickering through things.

Sometimes she wakes two feet above her bed, and collapses back down onto it when she realizes.

And sometimes the weight of what her life and her body have become builds within her until it boils through her eyes like fire, and she claps her hands over her eyes to keep from burning anything else. Eliza always finds her when she screams—her voice shattering every window in the room—and sits with her until the fire stops. She rubs a cream into Kara’s palms to cool the raw skin until it heals a few minutes later.

Eliza tries to speak with her, to help her, but even the mother’s whispering hits her ears like shouting, and when Kara does speak, it’s at a volume she can stand, and Eliza can’t hear her.

And the night is still worse. Kara doesn’t experience the blinding aspect of night anymore—she can still see every detail as if in the height of day—but that dark sight is too much like the Phantom Zone. And when she does sleep, though she needs less of it, but when she is able, her dreams are always the phantoms’ visions.

With paradises, she only wakes and silently cries. With the nightmares, Kara jerks awake and her own screams pierce her ears. Her eyes burn and damage her palms when she covers them. Every touch feels like needles twisting beneath her skin.

It isn’t until Alex learns that she can pull Kara’s head against her chest and cover her other ear with her hands, that they find a way to calm her. It makes Alex’s heartbeat, her pulse, the loudest sound. The confirmation of another life.

Even the paradises they taunted her with never included that. It calms Kara’s screams into sobs, the water putting out the fire.

But Kara is a proud Kryptonian, and even when she suffers, she continues.

She learns to balance her senses. Learns their language. And when Streaky enters her life, she learns to control her new body.

It’s only then, when she can hold a book without shredding it, that she learns to read.

She never shows the Danvers her mark. She never looks for theirs, despite the ease.

Though spelling remains a challenge, she learns their writing quickly. The letters are simple, and the sounds more patterned than kryptonese.

And one night, when she can hear the family’s slowed heartbeats and measured breathing, she sits in the dark of the room she shares with Alex, draws back her sleeve, and reads her mark for the first time.

Oh, I’m so sorry, darling—

I ran right into you

Kara blinks at the words. Reads ran right into you again and again and again.

Kryptonians didn’t meet their matches by chance or luck. The time of appearance of every soulmark was carefully catalogued, whether at birth or after.

Due to the consistent and patterned nature of the birthing groups, match officials were then able to bring together all those whose timelines met and introduce them to each other across the group until their match was found. These meetings always occurred when the younger subjects reached their fifth cycle, and matches were then separated until they both reached majority.

But the phrase used in each introduction, the phrase each Kryptonian learned near the moment of their first words, is achingly familiar to her mark.

The use of the phrase was a tribute, a way to honor the first match.

The first potential match made Nightwing’s confession. Offered his first words to his beloved Flamebird. And once the bond was felt, once the overwhelm receded, the discovered match would give Flamebird’s own response. Her acceptance.

It’s not the same language, and not quite the same words, and it’s entirely probable they will be said in the aftermath of a true, physical collision, but a small, small part of Kara can’t stop from wondering if her match could possibly be Kryptonian. If the similarity is deliberate.

Perhaps some others fled Krypton before its dissolution, and her match is an heir born while she lingered in the Phantom Zone. Perhaps.

But it isn’t enough of a possibility to hope for.

Still, the phrases become a project for Kara. The direct translations are awkward, and clumsy on her tongue, so she finds synonyms, reorders segments, and repeats them to herself again and again, until she likes the sound of them. She includes what she can of her match’s words.

She finally knows enough, can control herself enough, that they send her to school. It’s a relief just to have somewhere to go, something to do.

There’s a lot about the human school that she doesn’t understand. It’s chaotic, and divided, and simple. But some things are painfully similar. Kara can hear the whispers about that odd, foreign girl—where’s she from again? Poor Alex.

It isn’t as difficult as she’d thought it’d be to pretend ignorance in her math and sciences. The classes are embarrassingly primitive, and often, the truth is so advanced as to seem incomprehensible, so she gives it anyway.

Then Jeremiah dies. Kara misses his kindness, and Alex’s grief is a reflection she understands too well.

But the depth of Eliza’s grief surprises her. They were matched—Eliza and Jeremiah’s marks led to each other. It’s natural to miss such a heavy presence in one’s life, but Eliza’s distress is clearly more.

Kara asks, and Alex yells, calls her a damn robot, but Eliza offers her a sad smile and asks about Kryptonian traditions. It’s the first time Kara truly answers.

And when she’s done, Eliza tells her of a love as strong as family, as the greatest of friendships, but made of and entirely different from them both. She tells Kara about meeting Jeremiah, about their courtship, and Alex pretends she isn’t listening just as intently.

And when Eliza’s done, Kara says, “I don’t understand how you can love so simply in the way of gods, but I understand grief, and I understand you feel it. So I will watch over this family, until you are better.”

Alex huffs and leaves, and Eliza’s eyes fill with tears, and Kara thinks she’s done something wrong. But then the mother stands and pulls her into a hug that Kara allows, and Kara—Kara feels useful.

Eliza heals in time, and Kara makes a friend.

But that friend is taken from her, and, somehow, it gives her Alex.

Alex makes everything better. She becomes Kara’s first real family since Krypton. A sister, like neither of them had ever had before. Alex teaches her how to be human and a teenager. She teaches Kara about rebellion, and even though Kara isn’t very good at it, her attempts make them both laugh.

And that’s the greatest thing Alex teaches her. To laugh again.

Alex also teaches her to cry. Alex is the first to whom Kara tells her full story since Kal-El, and when she cannot bear it, when the sobs rip through her, Alex throws her arm around Kara’s shoulder, cries with her, and listens.

Alex goes to college, and Kara starts to wonder what she’ll do with her human life.

She wants to serve. Wants to be a defender, as Kal-El is—it’s not a job anyone else can do. If they don’t, it won’t be done.

But Kara Danvers needs to make her way just as Clark Kent does.

She sees the way Clark’s responsibilities give Superman opportunities. That’s what she needs. A way of knowing when and where to help.

She goes to Stanhope without a clear plan, and studies. But Alex settles in National City, and Kara follows. She works odd jobs, and gets a degree in Marketing from the university, and every day she hears the sounds of people suffering, and she does nothing.

CatCo has a job opening, and it’s mostly a fashion magazine, but they still pursue news. She gets the position.

Years pass too quickly—time has felt strange since she left the Phantom Zone, like a chase she can’t keep up with—and she remains anonymous.

Kara doesn’t know how to don the cape—and moreover she doesn’t even have one—when Alex and Eliza are so staunchly against it. When Kal-El remains so purposefully quiet on the subject.

But Alex’s plane begins to fall, and pushes her decision.

Telling Winn is a gamble that pays off. Learning of the DEO and Alex’s place there is unsettling—it feels almost like a betrayal, but Kara understands, too. James comes and brings Kal-El’s approval.

And bearing the Kryptonian fabric on her shoulders is almost like feeling the light of Rao again.

A challenge she doesn’t expect is the politics. With the DEO, with the Army, even just with Cat Grant. But she learns.

Aunt Astra is a challenge she doesn’t expect either, and the cost is great. Kara is overwhelmed, overjoyed at the sight of her, at the sight of more living family, and another true Kryptonian.

But they fight, and when Astra dies, Kara’s angry. She’s angry that Krypton was almost alive again, and now it’s gone again. She’s angry about the lies her mother told her. And she’s angry that it was Alex who killed Astra, and she can’t even hate her for it.

But work helps. And being Supergirl helps. And even Alex helps.

Ms. Grant offers her a promotion. Tells her to choose her new position.

And Kara is, perhaps, thinking too much about it, focusing too little on what’s ahead of her, because the door opens, and she makes her way out just as someone starts their way in.

She has enough time to stop it. With her abilities, the brief flash, the horrible realization as they’re only an inch apart, is the only warning she needs.

But it’s too late for any human to stop this, so Kara relaxes instead, softens as much as she can from the brick wall she normally is. With a sudden thought, she tips her cup towards herself, so the hot coffee will spill on her impervious skin.

They collide, and Kara doesn’t even shift, but the woman’s shriek makes Kara shriek because she thinks she hadn’t softened herself enough.

But the woman catches herself with surprising grace, staring at Kara’s soaked shirt with a wide-eyed horror. Then she says, “Oh, I’m so sorry, darling—I ran right into you!”

And Kara’s awareness explodes. She didn’t think she could feel more than she does as a Kryptonian under a yellow sun, but all at once, the woman before her is brighter than any sun has ever been.

Kara can see every facet in her beautiful green eyes, like the folds and edges of a crystal lit from within. Her hair holds the perfect darkness of the Phantom Zone, but instead of that horrible absence, it reminds her of the night she and Alex would lay in as teenagers, talking into the late hours.

Kara can taste the mint on the woman’s teeth as she breathes, can feel the warmth of her skin despite the foot between them.

She doesn’t need an explanation. She understands at once.

The concern in her soulmate’s expression increases with Kara’s continued silence, but Kara has to reorder her mind back into English, when she wants to confess everything as herself.

Her soulmate is undeniably human. Kara doesn’t feel even the smallest shred of disappointment.

“Are you alright?” the woman asks, worriedly. “Let’s get you some napkins. I can replace your blouse or have it cleaned, whichever you prefer.”

And Kara thinks she’s never cared about a shirt less, but then her soulmate puts a hand on her elbow, and Kara can feel the tides of her pulse, the softness of her skin, despite the fabric barrier.

There’s an infinitesimal pressure on her arm, and the woman frowns up at her in confusion.

And Kara finally says, “I looked for you, and could not find how I had missed you for so long.”

She sees the recognition in her soulmate’s wide eyes, hears it in her breathlessness. She hears her pounding heart, and sees the shiver that makes its way down the woman’s spine.

She sees the hesitation that takes over. The nervousness. And, beneath it all, the hope. Her soulmate answers with surprising steadiness, “Interesting choice of introduction, considering it might just as easily mean you regretted the search.”

Kara wonders, for just a moment, what made her soulmate so afraid. But comforting people who are afraid is a particular skill of hers, so she smiles, and allows her joy at their meeting, the kindness she’s promising, to show.

“That’s not what it means,” she explains gently. “It means, how did I not find you? The answering line is, ‘How did I not yet run right into you, as fate made us meant to.’”

The obvious relief that floods her soulmate’s expression fills her with greater pride than anything Supergirl has ever done.

The woman’s heartbeat eases. Her expression softens, interest brightening her eyes, even as some anxiety lingers.

“Is it from something?” she asks curiously. “I’ve searched a few times over the years, but never found anything.”

Her soulmate’s inquisitive, Kara thinks with pleasure, but she also realizes that this is something she needs to know, something she has the right to make a choice on.

But the doorway of Noonan’s is not the place to tell her.

So Kara throws a pointed glance to the alleyway she has undressed in enough times to be arrested for, and looks back to her soulmate.

A dark, perfectly sculpted brow lifts.

Kara gives her best pleading look—the one that always gets Alex to let her have the last potsticker or cookie.

Pursing her lips, the woman acquiesces, leading the way.

Kara follows quickly, tosses a guarded glance to the alley’s opening, and fiddles with her glasses, before explaining, “That’s because it’s not from Earth.” Her soulmate freezes, but she continues, “It’s Kryptonian. It’s what we say to acknowledge our mate. To accept them.”

The woman sighs, and it seems to come from the core of the world itself. As if she’s only the channel.

“You’re Supergirl.”

Not the best reaction, and not one she had been expecting. Surprise, yes. Joy or excitement, hopefully. And she even would’ve understood anger, if she was somehow matched with an alien-hater. But this is… resignation.

She fiddles with her glasses again, suddenly the anxious one. “Yes.” Then she blurts, “I’m sure being a superhero’s soulmate is—well, something—but I’m really careful, and I promise I’ll be—”

The woman holds up her hand, and Kara gladly stops talking. It definitely isn’t the right time for the and I promise I’ll be home every night that was about to fall out of her mouth.

The woman takes a weary, steadying breath, and says, “I’m Lena Luthor.”

Oh. Kara feels her mouth fall open, her eyes widen. But then she imagines Superman—suit included—and Lex Luthor at a Thanksgiving table trying to make polite small talk, and she snorts.

“This is an entirely new page on Super-Luthor relations.”

A small, pleased laugh seems to surprise Lena as it slips out. “That’s all? You don’t…” She bites her lip. “Care? My brother tried to kill your cousin. He would try to kill you.”

Kara’s brow crinkles. “Well, are you going to try to kill me?” She’s already rather sure the answer is no, but might as well ask, she supposes.

Her soulmate blinks, looking baffled by the question. Kara waits. She sort of thinks Lena is the one that needs to hear the answer.

“No,” Lena finally answers, the honesty clear in her voice, “Actually, I was hoping to work together. I want to make L-Corp—that’s the new LuthorCorp—a force for good. I’m announcing it all later today at a press conference.”

Kara beams. “Then no, I don’t really care who your family is. I only care who you are.”

And finally, the last of the anxiety, the nervousness, the hesitation, leaves Lena’s eyes.

There’s light in her expression as she looks at Kara now. “Can I ask your name?” she poses softly.

“Kara Zor-El,” she answers immediately, wanting to smack herself for not introducing herself properly. To her soulmate. “But here it’s Kara Danvers.”

“Kara,” Lena repeats, as if trying it out, and Kara swears her cheeks hurt from smiling.

“You have beautiful handwriting, by the way,” Kara says, because the way her mark has helped her is a longer conversation than this one in the alley will be. “I would trace the letters when I was first learning English.” And before.

“I practiced,” Lena admits, a blush covering her cheeks immediately.

And Kara is just so overwhelmingly lucky, so completely happy, that she can’t speak.

She can only look at Lena. At how beautiful she is. At how inquisitive her eyes are, and how intelligent Kara knows she must be. At how even just this quiet joy makes her brighter than the sun.

But a thought hits Kara, and it’s not something that can wait.

She bites her lip, unsure how to say it. Fiddles with her glasses, as if that’ll give her some inspiration.

“I have to keep my identity a secret,” she finally says, silently begging Lena to understand. “It would be dangerous for my family if people found out.”

And you, she doesn’t say. She will always, always protect Lena, but she gets the impression Lena can protect herself too.

“Kara Danvers and Supergirl can’t share a soulmate,” Lena surmises, and Kara shakes her head, relieved. “Which would you prefer?”

“Kara,” she answers easily. “If you’re Kara Danvers’ soulmate, then we can do things together.”

Kara had seen Jor-El and Lara’s closeness. Had seen Eliza’s grief. Has lived on this planet almost as long as she lived on Krypton, and seen their romances, their traditions and notions and love.

This is the first time she thinks… she might start understanding it.

So it’s with a blush that she adds, “Go on dates. Hold hands.”

But Lena blushes too. And there’s a small smile on her lips as she murmurs, “I’d like that.”

And Kara feels, simply happy. Not that joyful euphoria which recedes, leaving an absence, a furrow. But a gentle contentment that she knows, already, will last.

As long as Lena’s there.

She wants more time with her already, so she offers, “But if you want, Supergirl can come to your press conference today. She can stand on stage with you or wherever you want her.”

For a moment, Lena only blinks, bewilderment written across her face. Then she asks, “You would do that? You would stand by a Luthor as Supergirl?”

Kara’s brow crinkles again. She wonders when someone was last nice to Lena. Wonders if the idea of a loving soulmate is as novel to Lena as it is to Kara.

“Why wouldn’t I? Supergirl will have to be more distant, but she’s still going to support you. You’re my soulmate, Lena. I would do anything for you.”

And Kara will tell her, show her, until she believes it.

Lena looks at her with hope. With wonder, and a small amount of awe.

Then her jaw sets, determination covering her features. Kara can see her mind working, and quickly.

Lena meets her eyes, and in a voice like a promise, says, “I’m glad I ran right into you, as fate made us meant to.”

It’s an acceptance of Kara and her culture, and Kara at once understands why the Kryptonians failed.

They served Rao, but they made service a duty, a responsibility, an obligation. Service isn’t about any of that, Kara thinks, as she realizes that she will always do anything that so much as conveniences Lena, because it’s about devotion.

It’s about love.

Chapter Text

Lena had come to National City to be the Luthor who shares her home with a Super. And for most everyone, professionalism is the precise nature of their relationship.

Sure, some do wonder at Supergirl’s easy acceptance. Her enthusiasm in working together. But, they seem to decide, that’s simply Supergirl. She’d give even a Luthor a chance.

Little do they know that Lena’s on Supergirl’s couch at the end of each day, wrapped up with a very affectionate Kara Zor-El Danvers.

It’s disorienting at first, how open Kara is. Her touch is freely and frequently given. Her clothes are instantly offered for Lena’s comfort, for her warmth, for her to sleep in because it’s already late, Lena, why don’t you just stay the night? And her words… they are as foreign to Lena as another language, and if Kara wasn’t so earnest, so honest with soft and adoring eyes, Lena would almost accuse her of empty flattery.

It's almost too much at times. Almost like trying to fill a teacup with a firehose.

But Lena doesn’t want any of it to stop. Wants, instead, to become something that can hold the unending water.

Lena learns about Krypton, and she’s surprised—and oddly grateful—to hear that Kara doesn’t know what she’s doing either. That affection is something she likes to give because she wasn’t allowed to before.

Lena tells her about her own lack of knowledge, about the coldness of the Luthors, even about Jack. Kara’s brow crinkles, and Lena’s worried for a moment that Kara will be upset before she begins to explain about the matrix, and her culture’s bans.

It’s a relief to them both to be able to take their time.

They’re having dinner, tucked together on the couch in Lena’s office, and it isn’t uncommon by any means, but it feels different. Perhaps it’s the way the setting sun sits behind Kara, lighting her golden curls into a halo through the glass walls. Perhaps it’s that laughing no longer feels like an unused muscle. Likely, it’s because that feeling of comfort she’d had in Kara so quickly now has the backing of familiarity.

No matter the reason, Lena finds her gaze falling to Kara’s lips more than once, wanting to close the distance. Heat coils low in her belly when she notices Kara’s gaze falling to her own.

They lean forward, almost pulled, and Lena’s heart pounds in her chest. Kara’s breath brushes her cheeks.

And then Kara’s pulling back, her gaze snapping to the world outside the windows.

Lena breathes a rueful laugh. “Time to save the day?”

The Super turns back to her, looking contrite. “It’s a fire.”

“Go,” Lena says softly, putting a hand on Kara’s knee.

A slightly pained expression crosses her soulmate’s face before she darts forward, pressing a gentle kiss to Lena’s cheek—and then she’s gone.

She finds her way back to her desk, and the hours pass as she goes over proposals and plans. And normally these would hold her attention with an unrelenting focus—but she cannot help looking to the city again and again.

She surrenders around midnight. Pouring herself two fingers of her best whiskey—what Kara doesn’t know won’t get her puppy dog eyes—Lena makes her way to the balcony.

She’s wondering about the experience, the advantages and consequences, of hearing everything when a voice calls, "You should be at home sleeping, Miss Luthor.”

Lena smirks at Kara’s playful grin. “My, my, Supergirl. Are bedtimes part of your patrol, now?”

Kara floats closer, but she stays lower than the railing. She comes close enough that she’s clear to Lena’s human eyes, even in the dark, and Lena’s looking down at her from the balcony.

“O Romeo, Romeo?” she teases.

But Kara changes the script.

It’s a simple propulsion, a gentle rise, and Kara’s lips are on hers. They’re warm, and surprisingly soft. And Lena doesn’t think about anything else for the rest of the night.

Supergirl emergencies become a frequent guest to their time together, but Supergirl emergencies can also give them time they didn’t expect, unhappy though it may be.

Lillian is particularly generous in this regard, and while Lena has often wondered at her mother’s thoughts, being thrown over a balcony is painfully clear.

The scream as she falls is involuntary. The arms that catch her are a relief.

Relief from the fear of death, yes, but also from the idea of being targeted. These men her mother sent will never stand against the woman holding her now.

But Lena still clings to her desperately, adrenaline flooding her reason. Her heartbeat thunders in her ears, and she almost doesn’t hear Kara’s frantic murmuring.

You’re okay, you’re okay—I’ve got you, you’re okay—I love you, I love you, you’re okay.

Lena tucks her face into the curve of Kara’s neck, murmurs her name.

Kara’s grip tightens. Her shoulders shake. And then a kind of snarl rolls up her throat, and they’re rocketing back up to the balcony.

Her mother’s goons are still standing there, and whatever they see in Supergirl’s face makes one of them take an instinctual step back. She dispatches of them with a single breath, throwing them against the glass with enough force to render them unconscious.

She doesn’t put Lena down—Lena doesn’t complain. They cling to each other until the DEO arrives and collects the goons, and Kara reluctantly lets Lena go. Lena regretfully steps away.

Lena tells Agent Danvers everything she can remember, and ignores the awkward feeling of meeting her soulmate’s sister like this. They call each other Miss Luthor and Agent Danvers, and only refer to Kara as Supergirl. They don’t speak of a single thing unrelated to the night’s events.

Kara looks a little mutinous when Alex tells her she’ll need to go back to the DEO with the caravan, but relents when Alex hisses that Supergirl doesn’t need to stay with Lena, that Kara can be called instead.

They leave agents to search and patrol the building, but Lena sits alone in her office, waiting, and remembers what Kara said.

She doesn’t have to wait long. She waits so little, in fact, that she knows Kara didn’t get here the human way.

Kara’s already looking at her anxiously as she closes the door. She crosses the room quickly, joins Lena on the couch, and pulls her into her arms. She isn’t sure which of them needs the comfort more.

But the question doesn’t linger in her mind, because she remembers what Kara said. Kara had come for her at once, had kept her from falling.

She had forgotten what it felt like to be safe.

“I love you, too,” she murmurs. Kara smiles into her hair.

Most of Kara’s family and friends are not as easily accepting. The suspicion they meet her with is more akin to what she’s come to expect under the Luthor name. Still, they’re polite—an expectation Kara clearly set, given the wary looks they occasionally send her.

But then she and Winn talk software and hardware for two hours, and she sways him. Then James goads her into a conversation about Superman and Lex, and she tells him,

“Lex’s issues aren’t my own. I was raised by the Luthors, but I’m still myself.” Something Kara is helping her to accept. She continues, “I held no animosity toward aliens even before I met Kara. Though I wouldn’t mind a word or two with Superman about his very thorough repudiation of the entire Luthor name, based solely on Lex’s actions.” She sighs. “And well, I wouldn’t trust Lillian with a piece of string, but my father wasn’t like them. I aim not to be, either.”

Kara’s arm slips around her waist. Her lips press a kiss to Lena’s cheek.

James glances to Hank, and the older man nods. Lena thinks it’s just the agreement of two men judging together, comparing impressions, and hopes the nod is in her favor.

But Kara makes a loud, exasperated sound in her throat and exclaims, “Were you reading her mind?”

“Only her honesty,” Hank answers evenly.

Which is, alarming. She gives Kara a slightly betrayed glance. Why hadn’t she warned her?

“I’m sorry,” Kara says, looking genuinely contrite. “It wasn’t my secret to tell. But you’re my soulmate, and if he’s going to invade your mind, all bets are off.”

She smiles at Lena as she says it, but the warning is clear enough that Hank holds up a hand in surrender.

But they must have gotten the truth they wanted, because they’re warmer to Lena from then on.

When it comes time to meet Eliza—the byproduct of a Thanksgiving invitation she accepts with thoughtless ease (and doesn’t realize until she’s no longer looking into Kara’s beautiful, pleading blues)—Lena’s so nervous that she thinks her knees will give out as she exits the safety of the car.

And Eliza just… stares. Just looks at her, or through her, for a long minute. Long enough that Kara squirms a little in discomfort.

But whatever inspection Lena’s under, she passes. Eliza’s expression dawns with a warm smile, and she pulls Lena into an even warmer hug. The kind of motherly hug she hasn’t experienced in twenty years.

Tears prick in the corners of her eyes, and she blinks desperately to clear them.

They stay through the weekend—a decision they’d agreed to postpone until Friday to allow Lena time to judge her comfort.

It’s the first holiday she can remember with a real family. Too much of her time with her mother is lost, and holidays with the Luthors were worse than non-holidays. And Kara’s family isn’t technically her family, not yet at least, but Lena still sees what could be.

Still, the holiday doesn’t win her Alex’s acceptance. Nothing, it seems, can.

And Lena understands. She does. She’s a Luthor, and Kara’s not just Alex’s little sister, she’s Kryptonian.

Has there been any worse enemy to the Supers than the Luthors?

But what will it take to prove Lena’s own devotion? Whether at L-Corp or the DEO, Lena doesn’t go home unless Kara’s safe. She alters Kara’s suit endlessly. Every weakness that reveals itself, she hunts for a way to counter it.

An anti-Kryptonite shield. Dampeners to her already-used DEO earpiece that filters sounds above a certain, painful decibel. A mask that can be pulled into place if she faces an aerosolized attack.

In the end, it isn’t anything she does for Kara that wins her Alex’s approval.

It’s a muted game night after a particularly grueling series of battles, fending off a Daxamite invasion. Kara has solar-flared, after keeping an entire fleet at bay while they figured out how to flood the atmosphere with iron.

And Lena has never cared—in a make-or-break kind of way—that Kara has all these abilities, never been particularly impressed by superheroes (until she found out this one is Kara, at least—Kara will always impress her), but she hadn’t realized how much comfort her abilities brought.

Knowing that Kara’s strong, knowing she’s impenetrable, knowing that in most situations, she’s relatively safe, is a reassurance sitting in the back of Lena’s mind that she can’t wait to have again.

So Lena’s a little on edge, a little more worried than normal, and more than a little tired since she and Kara only slept for five hours after days of being awake. They’re all tired—sleep is more of a luxury than a guarantee for this group, and there’s always more to be done.

Still, the dust settles, and as tired as they are, there’s this need to know that everyone’s survived this, that they’re all still here.

So Lena’s sitting in front of a gameboard when all she wants is to curl up in bed with Kara and hold her until the Kryptonian is safe again. And perhaps she’s not paying the best attention, perhaps she’s spending a little too much time staring at Kara, but Kara’s talking and excited and her eyes are bright and she’s here, and it all makes Lena feel like she can breathe again.

But Alex makes a comment, as she always does, and Lena snaps. Snaps back.

She doesn’t quite know the words even as they pass her lips, forgets them immediately, but the whole room freezes.

Lena and Alex stare at each other with an equal, wide-eyed shock.

She won’t take it back—whatever she said. Alex is never shy or apologetic about what she throws at Lena. But she does allow the trepidation to settle over her features.

Until Alex finally grins, and quips again.

Lena hesitantly answers.

And then it’s like they suddenly figured out they speak the same second language, throwing gentle digs and benign insults at each other over the sound of their own dramatic gasps and laughter. They go until Alex cracks a joke about the Luthor fortune and Kara’s appetite that makes them both look at the woman in question.

Kara’s dumbfounded, gaping surprise makes Lena blush, ducking her head, and Alex snorts. Alex leans across the board to press on her sister’s chin and close her mouth. It snaps Kara out of whatever spell she was under, a dopey grin overtaking her features, and it’s adorable how hard she tries not to mention their new camaraderie through the rest of the night, as if it’s too fragile to be spoken of.

But it doesn’t break, and Lena comes to love having someone to trade quips with that are filled with affection instead of thinly-veiled disdain.

The Superfriends were always polite, but when she’s one of them—the acceptance is unlike anything she’s ever had before. It’s almost like having Lex back.

It’s almost better. The affection is free and generous. Their time together, in abundance. And the truth, even undesirable, is given kindly. Lena hadn’t known an unhappy truth could be heard without making it worse.

It isn’t easy to be fixed. Isn’t quick to smooth over years of jagged edges, to be healed.

But every day, Kara still loves her.

And Lena finds herself sitting on Kara’s couch with a falsely innocent, simply curious expression, and no small amount of impish glee, as Kara struggles to find a way to ask her to move in.

Because she’s pouting.

Kara has work for the DEO—an auditory stakeout that’s much closer to her loft than Lena’s penthouse. Lena, on the other hand, needs a collection of devices currently at her penthouse for work the next day, and it would be safer to port them directly to L-Corp. She’d have simply woken early and made the stop, but the devices need some prep-work tonight.

And they both agree it would be best not to risk someone noticing Supergirl taking Lena from her penthouse at night and returning her in the morning. Especially with the public knowledge of Lena Luthor’s bond to Kara Danvers.

This is the first night in months they’ll have to spend apart, and Lena isn’t particularly happy about it, but Kara is downright grumpy.

It isn’t difficult to notice when Kara wants to say something—she isn’t exactly a subtle person—and between the circumstances and the Kryptonian’s incredibly conspicuous glances around her own loft, Lena can guess the subject.

But it isn’t until Lena stands, when she really does need to go home, that Kara blurts,

“You should just stay.”

Lena frowns, bemused. “You know why I can’t stay.”

“I don’t mean tonight,” Kara mumbles, reaching up to fidget with glasses she isn’t currently wearing. She says more strongly, “I mean stay-stay.” She stands. Takes Lena’s hands in her own. “I want us to live together. To have one bed. One place where we keep our things. One home.”

Kara’s nervous smile is so sweet that the teasing Lena may have done falls away. She steps into her soulmate’s arms, and while this night isn’t theirs, the rest of their lives can be.

They look for a place that fits them both. A place with sunlight and security, with rooms for art and science and perhaps even a child somewhere far down the line. They need a front room large enough for game nights and movies with all their friends. A closet big enough for both their wardrobes. A kitchen that can fit all the food Kara needs.

For the most part, it’s Kara that takes care of Lena. Protecting her from attacks, yes, but it’s the way she rewrites things into hope, the way she reminds Lena that there is more to goodness than simply fighting evil, that helps her most.

It’s hard to explain this when they find their perfect haven, and Kara balks at letting Lena buy it outright. Hard to explain that the fairness she’s worried about has always faltered in the opposite direction.

How is it fair that Lena had to learn to show the affection Kara gave so easily? How is it fair that being Lena’s soulmate harmed Kara’s reputation, ruined the only anonymity she had? How is it fair that Lena could buy the building without expending even one percent of her wealth, but the rent of its smallest apartment is more than Kara makes in a month.

Lena survived the Luthors, and she runs L-Corp now—is fighting to save it—but she didn’t start LutherCorp, is only attached to the Luthors at all by the roulette of birth.

Nothing made Kara a hero but herself. She chooses to take the hits, to fight anyway. Chooses others, over herself.

But the more she tries to explain this, the more Kara disagrees. The more she speaks as if Lena is the hero, proof that goodness can survive true pain. That goodness is strong.

In the end, they agree. Lena pays for Kara’s half of the new penthouse in a sort of mortgage loan that Kara will pay off in increments she can afford without spending all of her earnings. Lena sets up the loan in a contract that Lena’s completely divorced from. It’s rate free, and goes to a fund that’s disseminated to various charities of Kara’s choice.

There’s peace for a while. Long enough for them to move, to build a routine, to enjoy it.

They fight, of course they do. They’re two separate, different people building a life together. But they’re benign fights, safe ones that end with a kiss and I’m sorry, and sometimes even thank you.

Their first real fight, the first one that makes her feel like a Luthor again, secretive and unyielding, is about her friend Samantha Arias.

And it scares her. Makes her fear, reasonable or not, that she might lose Kara.

But Sam is cursed, and only Kryptonite can contain her.

Sam is her friend. One of an infinitesimal number that she had before Kara, and Lena can’t abandon her. Won’t hand her off to an organization that’ll treat her like Sam herself is the risk.

Lena knows Kryptonite can hurt Kara. How can Kara think that Lena would ever let it?

Things grow tense enough that they don’t know how to speak to each other. That there is a divide in the bed when they lie in it.

But Kara still makes sure to stand next to her. Still reaches across the divide to hold her hand.

And it lets Lena explain. Gives her the strength she needs to argue with Kara until the hero remembers that there’s little she wouldn’t do for a friend. Remembers that Lena built her anti-kryptonite shields, that she would never let anything hurt her.

This isn’t about Kara. She’s vulnerable, yes, but so is Reign, and Sam needs a hero. She understands the pressure Kara feels—she is one of only two Kryptonian allies, and there’s so much work between them that even they, functionally gods, are overwhelmed. Any vulnerability is a risk to more than herself.

But neither Clark nor Kara are alone. Superman has his Justice League, and Kara has Alex. Has J’onn and Winn and James. And Lena.

She didn’t fight the prisoners of Fort Rozz alone. Didn’t expel the Daxamites alone. Doesn’t face CADMUS alone.

She’ll never have to face anything alone again. She can be vulnerable.

It isn’t easy, but it’s better.

Then Lena creates the Harun-El and divorces Reign from Sam. It isn’t the end of the Worldkiller, but that comes soon after, and there’s retribution in Sam being the one to land the killing blow.

Lena destroys every last particle of kryptonite before she even returns home that night.

She and Kara talk. They lie in bed with their arms around each other and their foreheads pressed together. It’s the closest they’ve been in weeks, and the relief of it seems to hit Kara with all the strength it hits Lena.

They discuss secrets and trust, vulnerability and pressure. The pressure to be a hero, the solitude of it, Lena had understood. Kara’s fear surprises her. A fear for herself that Lena hadn’t known she was capable of.

But that Kara would covet a sense of safety so fervently after everything she’s been through—it’s something Lena’s familiar with.

Lena tells her as much. Explains how a sense of safety had become little more than a memory. And how she had found it again the day she knocked a stranger’s coffee back onto them.

It has never had anything to do with the Kryptonian’s abilities. It doesn’t even really have to do with their bond.

It’s Kara. It’s the way Kara loves, the way she cares. It’s the way Kara hopes even when she has every reason to despair. The way she throws herself into pain and danger for no other reason than she thinks it’s right.

The yellow sun was never the cause of Kara’s goodness. It’s simply the outlet.

They each murmur apologies as they kiss away the other’s tears. She isn’t sure who kisses whom first, but it starts with tongue and teeth and a kind of desperation that has everything to do with love.

They spend the rest of the night relearning each other’s touch.

In the morning things are different. But not the kind of different it would have been in the Luthor house. Where every weakness was an opportunity, and conflict lingered like a pall in the room, waiting for a chance to strike again.

This difference is a kind of comfort. An assurance they had faced the fire and survived. They could disagree, even fight, and still hold on.

And Lena begins to think.

But before thinking can become any sort of plan, their next crisis reveals itself with a Kara-who’s-not-Kara.

Not-Kara has a soft spot for Lena that Lena finds amusing, and her Kara seems to find equal parts relieving and irritating. And it’s silly. It makes Lena smile and kiss her, and it’s almost like she can forget they’re surely damned.

A Luthor and a Super. Neither can offer any sort of normalcy, and throwing their lots together guarantees and abundance of chaos.

Kara is an alien. A hero. A scourge to many—and yet it’s Lena’s family that’s so often the issue. Discovering Lex is behind this particular gift is less surprising, and more disappointing, than it should be. It shouldn’t be something one expects from their brother. It isn’t something she should doubt from her own.

There’s shame in facing Lex. In her own family being the most ardent opposition to peace.

In still missing him.

But as the Luthor family fades, her new family grows. Brainy and Kelly and Nia come, and though Winn and James leave for new things, it doesn’t feel like losing them.

And it’s only thanks to this new family that she survives.

They reunite Kara and Red Daughter. They defeat Lex.

It isn’t a decision she regrets. It isn’t one she really even questions. He isn’t going to stop. He will never stop.

Kara is her soulmate. Moreover, this is her family. They love her, they care for her—and she does the same for them.

They are good.

Too good. There’s only one way to stop a Luthor, and while they may have the drive, they possess too much moral character.

There’s only one way to stop a Luthor—perhaps it takes a Luthor to do it.

But losing Lex isn’t the worst of it. Even knowing it’s the true end, no more chances for sanity, rehabilitation.

Almost as if he knows, almost as if it’s on purpose, she sees her brother again. Sees the same smile he’d given her a thousand times when she was still a child. Sees the same happy laughter in his eyes as had brightened them the night Lillian had been away and they’d stayed up late watching cartoons she didn’t approve of.

Lena thinks Kara will be angry when she tells her she killed Lex. The Supers are pretty insistent on the No Killing rule.

But the image of the brother who used to spend hours with her in her makeshift lab flashes behind her eyes as she delivers the news, and she breaks. Kara’s arms are around her with the first tear that rolls down her cheek, her soulmate whispering apologies into her hair. She feels Nia’s hand on her back, Brainy beside her, both standing in silent support.

Alex comes and asks gently, “Where’s the body?”

“Not the time, Alex,” Kara says with a glare.

“We’ll take care of it so she doesn’t have to.”

So Lena gives her coordinates, directions, and lets herself fall into their care.

It isn’t the end of their troubles—there will never truly be an end—but there’s knowledge, a certainty, that they can face whatever comes.

Lena talks to Alex and Eliza. Asks for permission and information. Gets more from the Fortress. She even asks Clark, in a painfully awkward conversation they somehow both survive.

And for once, there’s a benefit to being a Luthor. Because she has exactly the resources and training she needs to make the bracelet herself. She’s had Kara’s measurements on hand for years, working on her suit. Shaping the bracelet is like molding a coil cover—even with the added durability of the alloy.

Harder, but only slightly, is determining the color. A color unique to them, by Kryptonian custom.

That it should be a shade of red is immediate. Rao. The mark that had given Lena so much hope. Kara’s suit. Lena’s lipstick that Kara likes so much. Her only hesitance is whether it’s technically heresy to make jewelry for solely romantic purposes based on Kara’s god. There are no other true believers in Rao to ask, so in the end, she takes the gamble.

The most difficult part is the design. There aren’t any example images in the existing Kryptonian archives. The Luthors don’t have a family crest—not in that way. And, as the intent is for Kara to be able to wear this with her suit if she so wishes, stamping Lena’s name on it, in any recognizable way, isn’t the best idea.

But she knows Kara, knows herself, knows them—and she realizes there’s only one thing it can be.

Engraving metal isn’t like sketching a blueprint, but she manages something she’s proud of.

The moment, the question, isn’t nearly as difficult. It’s frighteningly easy. She doesn’t mean to find it so quickly.

But she pockets the bracelet before leaving the lab, meaning to keep it hidden at home.

And perhaps proposals are like Chekov’s Gun, because Lena has only barely stepped in the door, Kara meeting her with an excited, “Lena!” as if they hadn’t seen each other only a couple hours earlier, and Lena steps forward, pulling Kara into a kiss that leaves them both breathless.

Her hand is already in her pocket as she takes a single step away, panting, smiling at Kara’s happy, dazed grin. She can’t get on one knee in this dress, she doesn’t have a velvet box to open, but she knows Kara won’t ever care about that. Not for this.

Lena cradles the bracelet reverently in her hands as she reveals it to Kara, and the Super sucks in a breath, wonder growing in her expression like the sun rising.

“I didn’t mean to do this now,” Lena begins softly, “but I don’t love you on special occasions. I don’t want you for ceremonies. I don’t need a reason for us.”

She looks at the wonder still dawning, and smiling at Kara isn’t like the curve of her lips when she truly laughs, or the proud grin when she succeeds. Smiling at Kara is like opening her eyes when she wakes up in the morning.

She professes, “I love you always. I want you endlessly. And if there has to be a reason for us, then those are it. We may be soulmates, but fate or no fate, I would have loved you anyway.

“I don’t want to wait for a moment. I don’t want a direction from the universe. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, starting now.” Fondness swells within her. “Starting from the moment I knocked your coffee all over your shirt.

“Kara Zor-El Danvers, will you marry me?”

A sob works its way up Kara’s throat, but with the light in every one of her features, there’s no doubt of its feeling.

She reaches out with a shaking hand and runs her fingers over the design. Another sob forces its way out when she recognizes it.

It’s the cityscape from the L-Corp balcony. The balcony of their first kiss, which caused their first I love you. Of countless lunches where Kara soaked in the sun while she simply made sure Lena ate. Of the gentle evenings spent leaning against the railing, sharing everything.

It’s imperfect—flattened and abstract enough to make little sense to anyone else. But still accurate enough to be unmistakable to the two of them.

Kara’s gaze rises back to Lena’s.

“Wait here,” she blurts, her voice cracking.

And Lena might’ve been confused, but Kara uses superspeed, and she’s back in front of Lena before her hair has even settled from the force of her departure. Lena might’ve been confused, but Kara cradles the small velvet box with infinite tenderness.

She doesn’t kneel either, and Lena’s glad because she doesn’t want any more than this foot of space between them.

Kara cracks the lid carefully, and Lena sucks in a breath. She knows at once that Kara designed it herself.

There are two gems, held close by curling bands of platinum. Close, but not cramped. There’s a sort of togetherness in the gems that makes her heart ache. The colors only amplify the feeling—one in the green of Lena’s eyes, and the other in Kara’s cerulean.

“I didn’t mean to do this now,” Kara teases with an impish grin, and Lena laughs wetly. “But I don’t need to wait. There are no better moments than the ones we spend together.

“When I accept your proposal, Lena Kieran Walsh Luthor, will you accept mine?”

Lena can’t stop the tears that roll over her smiling cheeks and through her dimples. She doesn’t want to.

She takes the small box gently from Kara’s hand and puts it and the bracelet onto the table by the door. Then she closes the distance between them. She cups her soulmate’s face in her hands, brushes away her own tears with her thumbs.

“Every time,” she promises fervently.

The bracelet fits Kara perfectly, just as the ring fits Lena. They’re the only things worn that night.

Lena Luthor marries Supergirl in a small ceremony attended only by those who have earned the title family. Kara wears traditional Kryptonian robes made in Earth fabrics. Lena wears an off-the-shoulder white dress with a sort of cape attached to the back, bearing the Crest of El detailed in lace.

The ceremony is as mixed as their outfits, as their life will be. Lena has never wanted Kara to be anyone but herself.

Their life will never be simple, rarely be easy.

But in a few years, they will use cloning technology to mix human and Kryptonian. They will use the endless Luthor wealth to build another story to their penthouse. They’ll get a dog and a cat, and they’ll teach their daughter to be the best of both of them. They’ll give her the childhood, the happiness, they didn’t have.

It doesn’t have to be simple, be easy, to be good.