16. Chapter 16(2)
Not enough, however, to stop her from pulling her phone out the minute the two of them have left and dialing a number she knows by heart. As it rings she steps outside the bar and around the corner, finding a space against a brick wall with relative privacy as the call connects.
Kara’s voice is uncharacteristically hesitant as she picks up. “Winn got a hit on the bomb,” Kara says in lieu of a greeting and Lena nods even though Kara can’t see her.
“I know,” she replies and then realizes how that sounds – not willing to divulge that she was with Winn at the time if she doesn’t have to. “I mean I heard.”
“You did?” Kara asks, her voice sounding confused.
With a short clearing of her throat, Lena realizes she needs to divert the trajectory of the conversation. “Are you going after it?”
A pause. “Yeah. Alex, Mon-El and I.”
A persistent worry creeps across Lena’s skin. It’s hot and uncomfortable. “Be careful,” she says softly and Kara is equally as soft when she responds.
“Always.”
Silence stretches for a moment and Lena feels foolish, but she hasn’t really talked to Kara in what feels like forever and she has to close her eyes against the feeling of disconnect.
“I love you,” she decides to say, her voice impossibly low but she knows Kara can hear her. “I hope you know that.”
“I do,” Kara says, her voice lighter this time in a way that makes the ache in Lena’s chest a little less painful. “Me too.”
“Be care - ” Lena shakes her head, not wanting to repeat herself, but feeling heat in the back of her eyes.
“I will,” Kara says anyway and there’s a conviction in her voice that helps steady Lena just a bit. “Everything’s going to be fine. This is a good thing. It means Jeremiah wasn’t lying, right?”
Lena doesn’t know how to respond to that without starting another argument so she doesn’t, just lifts her eyes skyward and tells herself to chill out.
“I’m sorry about the other night,” she says softly and Kara lets out a noisy kind of exhale before responding with an equally quiet, “Me too.”
“Call me when it’s done?”
Kara’s voice is strong when she replies, “Of course,” and it’s the only thing that doesn’t make Lena’s fingers shake as she hangs up.
--
Hours pass and Kara doesn’t call.
Lena goes through a gamut of emotions. Worry over what’s happening, irritation that she’s incapable of getting any work done because of said worry and the lingering unease that comes from her sudden distance with Kara.
After a glass of scotch that does nothing to calm her nerves and a failed attempt at finding something on television to watch, Lena gives up and sends a quick text to Winn.
Status? is all it reads.
A reply doesn’t come for long anxiety ridden minutes. Minutes where Lena considers the virtue of getting remote access to the DEO mainframe just to check for herself.
Then her phone vibrates where it’s resting on her thigh and Winn’s reply makes her snap upright in her couch. Not good.
Seconds later she’s listening as her phone calls Winn’s and eventually connects. His, “Hey, Lena,” sounds tired and weary and puts her on edge.
“What happened?”
“What didn’t happen?” Winn says. “Has Kara not called you?”
A lump forms heavily in Lena’s throat and she stands to start pacing across the carpet of her living room. “No, she hasn’t,” she admits in a small voice. “Is she okay?”
Winn pauses. Far too long to calm any of Lena’s anxiety. “Yeah, I mean she’s like, physically totally fine.”
Normally, Lena thrives on being right, on the vindication of knowing she’d figured something out before others, but as she can see the pieces sliding together there’s nothing satisfying about it. “Jeremiah?”
“Turns out we were right,” he says and he sounds about as thrilled with the idea as she feels. “The bomb was a ruse. He stole something from the mainframe as soon as the team got to the site and then blew the whole thing up.”
“What?!” Lena startles, hand to her chest.
“Yeah. And beyond that he’s got like a cybernetically enhanced arm a la Hank Henshaw.”
“Oh God.”
“Apparently your mother likes her henchmen battery powered,” Winn says, punctuated by an awkward beat of silence.
Lena manages a strangled sounding laugh just as Winn hastily adds, “Oh, shit, sorry that was gross. I didn’t mean it like – I mean I don’t even – I’m sure your mother - ”
“You can stop now,” Lena interrupts, pinching the bridge of her nose, but slightly grateful at the way his comment has dispelled a bit of the tension. “Do you know what Jeremiah stole?”
With a slight cough, Winn sounds relieved to be moving on, but it’s clear he has no good news. “I won’t know until I can get the system back up and running and do a diagnostic. Could take minutes, could take hours. He literally blew the whole thing to pieces.”
“The tracker,” she says, crossing her fingers. “Were you able to-”
“Yeah,” he interrupts, but it doesn’t sound good. “Alex and Kara went after him, but he was prepared. He got away. Tracker went off radar the minute they got there,” An ominous pause stretches down the line. “Lena, Kara should really be the one to tell you all this.”
She can hear it clear as day in his voice. Doesn’t need Kara to tell her anything, and is in fact a bit grateful that she’s having this conversation with Winn. “My mother was there,” she deadpans and strangely something settles in her system. As if she really needed confirmation her mother would be the one behind all this – would be the one intimately involved in it.
“Yes. With Henshaw,” Winn supplies. “Listen you really should-”
“Where’s Kara?” Lena interrupts, already heading to her kitchen to grab her keys and find a discarded pair of flats.
“Home I think. She and Alex were in pretty rough shape.” Which is the likely explanation as to why Kara hasn’t contacted her, but she avoids thinking of other reasons.
“Thanks, Winn,” she says and doesn’t wait for his reply before hanging up.
--
Indecision makes her hesitate before knocking on Kara’s apartment door, her fist hovered mid-air for a long anxious second. Alex might be with her, after all. The sisters would likely want to lick their shared wounds together instead of apart. It’s not really Lena’s place to intrude on that moment, but her chest aches with the need to see Kara, to be there for her if she’s in pain.
It isn’t until Kara’s voice comes calling out, muffled by the door but understandable, that Lena startles out of her thoughts. “It’s open.”
At the invitation, Lena pushes the door open and quietly steps inside, her heart twisting at the sight of Kara burrowed under a blanket on her couch. Alone.
“I could hear you from down the street,” Kara says, barely audible and that at least makes Lena smile a bit as she comes forward. Kara’s head shifts on the pillow until she looks at Lena and she can tell Kara’s been crying. It makes her want to do something drastic – anything at all to wipe the expression of her face. “Is this an I told you so because I’m not super in the-”
“No,” Lena interrupts, emphatically and she moves until she sits next to Kara on the couch. “Not at all.”
Kara sits up, her face holding a hint of skepticism and then suddenly a twinge of apology. “I’m sorry, I meant to call you. I just got caught up in-”
“Kara,” Lena entreats, stopping the flow of words and reaching out to capture one of Kara’s hands with her own. The sleeve of her shirt is slipping over the fingers and Lena glides her own under the fabric until they join with comfortable warmth. “Winn told me what happened. I’m not here for any of that. I’m just here for you. For whatever you need.”
Something settles between them, soft and sure and familiar, and Kara’s face softens. It lasts a moment, the two of them just looking at each other, before Lena can tell she’s about to break.
“Come here,” Lena murmurs, opening her arms and waiting for Kara to shift on the couch into her. Without hesitation, Kara moves, snuggles down into Lena’s embrace and burrows her head against Lena’s chest.
Lena wraps her arms around her, strokes a comforting hand over her head and kisses her there. Kara sniffles, her face hot against the skin of Lena’s neck. “Do you want to talk about it?” Lena asks softly and Kara shakes her head.
“Just be here with me,” Kara says quietly and Lena tightens her arms around Kara, runs her fingers up and down Kara’s back and pulls the blanket around them tighter.
They lay there on the couch for long moments, Kara breathing in steadily against Lena’s neck and Lena cradling her as much as she can.
“You were right about Jeremiah,” Kara says after a bit, shifting in closer against Lena’s body.
“I didn’t want to be,” Lena replies, idly twisting a lock of Kara’s hair around her fingers.
“I didn’t mean it,” Kara says sincerely, picking her head up so they can look at each other. Her eyes lock with Lena. “About your mother. About you and your mother.”
Lena strokes an errant hair off Kara’s forehead, smiles. “I know you didn’t, darling,” she says as reassuring as possible, voice full of warmth and certainty because it’s true. The words may have hurt her – an instinctive reaction more than anything – but she knew Kara doesn’t think that. Kara had said as much almost immediately afterward. “It’s okay.”
“I shouldn’t have said it.”
“I said it’s okay,” Lena says, dipping her head to keep her gaze on Kara’s when it wavers. “You were right. It had been a long day and we were both on edge.”
Kara’s lips push together, her eyes still tinged with red and Lena wants to wrap them both up in wool and hide away somewhere. “Between fighting with you and then with Alex, I feel like I took a Kryptonite shower,” Kara mumbles and Lena’s heart aches.
“What happened with Alex? Winn said you guys were yelling at each other in the DEO.”
“Just...stuff. About Jeremiah,” Kara says, falling back forward into Lena’s arms. “I just hate it.”
“I know,” Lena murmurs, returning her fingers to trace errant patterns on Kara’s back.
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t know who I am without her.”
Suddenly, the sound of Kara’s phone ringing breaks the moment and they both startle to look towards the sound. “It’s Winn,” Lena says just as Kara’s detangling from Lena’s embrace, reaching for the phone and answering it quickly.
“Did you figure it out? What Jeremiah stole?” The question comes out stern and steady – at odds with the soft, sad woman wrapped up in Lena’s arms seconds before. Now, Kara’s sitting straight up on the couch, shoulders back and voice even.
Lena can sense that the answer isn’t good by the way Kara’s spine seems to go even straighter even as her hand comes up to rub tiredly across her forehead. “Okay, I’m coming in,” is all Kara says before hanging up the phone and tossing back on the coffee table.
“What is it?” Lena says, sitting up and searching Kara’s face for the answer.
“The National Alien Registry,” Kara tells her. “Cadmus has a list of all the aliens in National City and then some.”
Icy fear pours down Lena’s chest at what that could mean. The kind of coup that would be for her mother. “Let’s go,” Lena says without further questioning and with a burning need to do something.
“Lena,” Kara says, standing when Lena does and reaching out to grip her wrist. “You don’t - ”
“I’m coming with you,” Lena says in a tone she knows will get through to Kara. “If anything I can help Winn get the mainframe back up and running.”
Kara’s expression wavers as they stand in front of each other before it relents into a soft grin. “I really do love you, you know,” she says, sounding almost amused by the prospect.
Lena hasn’t heard Kara say that in what feels like countless hours and the words wash over her with a warm feeling – like coming home after a long day. “I really love you too,” Lena says and she pushes into Kara’s personal space to kiss her, arms wrapping around Kara’s neck while Kara’s hands settle on her hips, lifting her up into a kiss in a motion as familiar as breathing.
--
Heading to the DEO ends up being largely futile.
Lena does give Winn some help in piecing back together the central mainframe while Kara debriefs the situation with J’onn, but there’s nothing else to do. The registry is in Cadmus’s hands and they have no idea where they’ve gone.
“It’s not like we exactly caught them for any other reason because they wanted us to last time,” Winn grumbles, slapping the side of a half-cracked monitor to get the picture on it to focus.
“Comforting,” Lena replies, picking up a keyboard that’s been shot to pieces and throwing it towards a growing pile of useless parts. A few pieces of loose plastic come flying free from it, but she ignores it.
“If I ask you a question that upsets you, can you promise not to bean me with a broken mouse?” Winn asks. Lena can’t help but laugh a little, shaking her head as she digs through a mess of a former server stack.
“Go ahead,” Lena says.
“Was your mom always shitty?” Winn asks. “I only ask because - you know. My dad was always a little weird, sure, but it takes a special kind of crazy to start sending exploding teddy bears to people. Or you know. Wanting to kill all aliens.”
Lena considers the question, shaking loose some of the wires hanging off one of the servers and tugging the largely untouched CPU free. She settles it carefully on the cart they’re collecting workable tech on.
“She was never very nice to me, I suppose,” Lena says. “Or most people. But I never would have thought that she would do this.”
Winn makes a humming noise, tossing another broken monitor over to the trash pile. She doesn’t notice him coming closer until he’s just at her side.
“Hey,” Winn says, reaching out to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get them. The good guys always win, right?”
It tugs at Lena’s lips and something good and purposeful settles in her chest at being so firmly classified as the good guys.
--
They’re at dinner with her mother and Lena’s just grateful that this meal is going far more smoothly than when it had been Kara next to her, instead of Jack.
Then again, if someone had offered an unpleasant dinner conversation with Lillian Luthor in exchange for having a life with Kara Danvers in it…well. No use dwelling on that impossibility.
Everything is going great. Jack is charming and her mother is actually taking to him fairly well and Lena’s able to stay quiet and sip her wine. Until, of course, the conversation topic turns abruptly to Superman and everything goes quickly downhill.
“That Kryptonian,” her mother all but hisses, a nasty looking snarl on her lips. “Is a symbol of everything wrong with this city.”
A wary look crosses Jack’s face and he looks at Lena. She knows the expression. He’s trying to decide if falling out of Lillian’s favor is worth standing up for his beliefs. Lena just quirks a brow at him – she can’t make that decision for him.
With a quick sip of his bourbon, Jack looks straight at her mother. “Respectfully, Lillian, I disagree.”
The air at the table chills uncomfortably and Lillian’s eyes narrow so abruptly that if Lena weren’t prepared for it she might have flinched. “Is that so, Jack?”
“I think Superman does a lot of good things,” Jack says. “He stands up for people who have no one to stand up for them.”
“He’s an interloper,” Lillian says, her eyes taking Jack in in a completely new way. Lena can’t help but frown into her wine glass as she watches the scene unfold. “The people can stand up for themselves.”
“If the people could always stand up for themselves, why do organizations like the Luthor Foundation exist?” Jack asks. “Just last week, Superman stopped a sweatshop fire in China and then flew to St. Roch to help with hurricane relief. Is it so bad that he helps where he can, just like you do?”
“He plays God,” Lillian says. “What if one day he chooses to turn on us? He could destroy everything. Not to mention what all these other aliens coming out of the woodwork are doing. They suddenly want to be naturalized as citizens just because they crash landed on Earth?”
“All the aliens I’ve met have been good people,” Jack starts. Lena nearly feels her eyes roll into her head as Lillian glares heavily.
“People,” Lillian spits, shaking her head. “Typical of my daughter to continue to associate with alien sympathizers,” Lillian adds with considerable distaste.
“It’s the first thing on my dating profile,” Lena says, breaking into the conversation and offering a strained smile her mother’s way. Jack lets out a laugh that seems to release some of the tension in his shoulders, slumping backward in his seat and unclenching his hands. He reaches for one of hers, squeezing it tightly. Lillian regards her for a few moments before a calm smile slips back onto her face.
“Perhaps you ought to delete that profile, Lena,” Lillian says. “Jack here seems like a perfect match.”
Lena suspects she should feel something other than disgust at her mother’s approval, but her thoughts only stray to the cold reaction she had offered to Kara. She sips her wine, grips Jack’s hand, and smiles blandly through the rest of the dinner.
--
It takes two days for Cadmus to take action on the alien registry.
At first, no one seems to make the connection, but when the DEO gets alerted about the fourth abduction just that week, everyone starts to put it all together at once.
And it doesn’t stop at four. Suddenly it seems like all Kara is doing is following leads on a new abduction. Lena barely sees her and when she does, Kara’s face is always tired and weary.
“Fifteen abductions since Cadmus got the registry,” Kara says one night after landing on Lena’s office balcony. It’s late, but Lena is still at the office and can’t fight the flutter of pleasure to see Supergirl making an impromptu visit. It’s long past when she should have probably gone home and Kara’s arrival is as good an excuse as any.
Kara flops down on the couch of her office, red cape swishing out around her and providing a vivid picture of color against the stark white fabric.
“I’m sorry,” Lena sighs, flipping a binder closed on her desk and observing Kara for a moment. A wave of guilt and responsibility floods through her – it’s her mother that’s causing all this after all – but she tries to repress it.
“It’s not your fault,” Kara says, letting her head fall back and rubbing tiredly at her eyes. “I just wish we had something else to go on.”
Standing up from her desk, Lena walks quickly to the door of her office, making sure it’s shut and flipping the lock before settling next to Kara on the couch. It takes a bit of rearranging of red fabric, but she manages it and strokes soothing fingers over the lines of tension in Kara’s forehead.
“How about we go get some ice cream,” Lena suggests, thinking of things that could distract the worry out of Kara’s face.
It does the trick – only slightly, but enough. Kara’s face relaxes a bit and she shifts closer to Lena. “I should probably go back out on patrol.”
“Kara, you’re exhausted,” Lena points out, watching as Kara’s eyes flutter sleepily as Lena’s fingers continue their stroking over her hair. But she looks like she might protest, so Lena continues. “You’re no good to anyone if you’re asleep on your feet. Let’s go get a pint of that weird ice cream you like with the pecans.”
Kara laughs. “It’s not weird. It’s New Carthage Super Fudge Chunk,” she says and Lena just shrugs it off even though she knew exactly what it was called. Kara had made her store multiple pints of it in her dorm fridge in college.
“So let’s go get some of that and go home and we’ll put on really comfy warm socks and just destress on the couch.”
“That sounds really good,” Kara admits, her head falling to the side and her body curling towards Lena.
“Tomorrow’s a new day,” Lena says, her fingers reaching out to play with Kara’s. She can see the telltale little bump in the fabric of Kara’s suit at her wrist – her bracelet, now always on. “We’ll find them.”
Kara sighs, but doesn’t disagree and after a few more seconds of just resting together on the couch, stands and takes them home.