19. Chapter 19(2)

It’s familiar and warm to be back with Jack after so long. Lena had always considered him a friend even before they ever became romantically entangled and she’s missed him, truth be told. He’s funny and smart and he understands some of her work in a way few others ever have.  

“This is nice,” Jack comments, pouring more wine into Lena’s glass.

“Are you trying to get me to say this was a good idea?” Lena teases, knowing she’s caught him fishing for just that.

“Still hard to admit when I’m right, isn’t it?”

She takes a sip of her wine, but shakes her head at him with a laugh that’s half exasperated, half fond. “I’ll admit it’s good to see you. It’s been a long time.”

“It has,” Jack agrees. His drift down her body a moment - not too far to be suggestive, but Lena straightens under the scrutiny nonetheless. “You look great,” he says. “Have I already said that?” He has, of course, but she allows the compliment regardless. The dress she’s wearing is an old one she hasn’t worn since Metropolis and she can’t deny the slightest twinge of satisfaction knowing she can still rock it.

“You look the same,” Lena replies in an overly dry fashion she know will make him smile. Her brow lifts at the end of it and she can’t stop her lips from quirking up. It makes him laugh.

“I suppose you’re still the same Lena I remember as well,” he adds, picking his glass up and sitting back in his chair. His brow quirks. “Though you’ve gone all corporate now.”

“As if you’re one to talk,” Lena replies, taking a sip of her wine.

“I was already very corporate when you met me. I wasn’t the one that hibernated in her lab for weeks at a time mocking anyone that would dare pick a cushy tower office job.”

“It’s not as if I picked this job,” she points out. Jack had been there, after all, the day Lex was arrested. As well as the day Lena’d decided to assume her position in Luthor Corp. She imagines it’d be hard for Jack to forget that day - it was the same one she’d decided to change the name of her family’s company, to move it across the country and to leave Jack in Metropolis. She can still hear his shocked you’re taking the position clear as day.

“You’re always saying that,” Jack says, voice soft. “Listen, Lena - ”

Jack’s attention gets drawn away by a laugh at the front door that Lena finds herself recognizing a second before she turns to take in the sight of Kara and Mon-El arm in arm strolling towards them with the fakest look of innocence she’s ever seen.

“Whoa, Lena, hey,” Mon-El says, sounding like Kara’d coached him to say that. “Are you guys eating here?!”

Kara laughs through an exclaimed, “Oh my God, so random, we’re eating here.” It’s so ridiculous sounding that Lena almost laughs.

“We are,” Mon-El adds emphatically and Lena doesn’t know what to do apart from blink at the two of them. When she’d suggested Kara was planning on crashing her dinner she’d been joking.

“What a complete and utter coincidence,” she says through her teeth, tilting her head at Kara in as much of a what the fuck as she can muster.

At the very least, Kara reacts to that, her smile faltering for just a moment before Jack pulls her attention with, “Miss Danvers, so nice to see you again.”

“Oh, call me Kara,” she says, adjusting her glasses before taking his hand. “And this is my friend Mike,” she adds, careful emphasis on the name as if trying to remind Mon-El of his moniker.

Mon-El steps forward on the cue and takes Jack’s hand. “Yes, Mike, I am Mike.”

Jack, for his part, doesn’t seem jolted by the sudden interruption, just smiles charmingly at Mon-El and makes an exaggerated tsk sound. “You know, I explicitly asked that I be the handsomest guy in the restaurant tonight.”

Mon-El laughs loudly, a pleased smile as he turns to Lena and points at Jack. “I like this guy.”

Before Lena can say anything, Kara’s coming around to her side, her hand brushing over Lena’s shoulder as she pulls out a seat next to her. “You don’t mind if we join you, do you?”

“Oh yeah,” Mon-El says, releasing Jack’s hand and mimicking Kara’s movements to pull out an open chair. “I’ll sit here.”

Lena furrows her brow and attempts to deliver a glare at both of them, but it doesn’t seem to work as Kara takes her seat and leans to the side to press a quick kiss to Lena’s cheek.

“What are you doing?” Lena whispers through thin lips the moment Kara comes close to her.

“Kissing you hello?” Kara answers, equally as soft. It doesn’t fool Lena one bit, but her cheek warms the slightest. From the corner of her eye, she sees Jack eyeing them with interest.

“Oh, sorry, should I have done the kiss too?” Mon-El asks, scrambling up from his seat. Kara pulls him back down hard enough that Mon-El yelps.

At least Jack looks semi-amused by the whole thing, his eyes bouncing from Lena to Kara to Mon-El. He was never disturbed by much, really. It was one of the things that had made him likeable to Lena.

“Can I look at the menu?” Mon-El asks. Lena rolls her eyes and hands him her menu, but Kara is already sitting about as far forward in her chair as one can without falling off it, her eyes trained on Jack.

“So, Jack, how’s the Biomax rollout going?” Kara asks, sitting forward at the table.

Jack’s leaned back in his chair, his fingers twisting together casually. “Trying to get me in your crosshairs?”

“A reporter’s job is never done,” Kara replies with a cheeky looking smile that has Lena pressing her toe against Kara’s calf in warning.

“I can respect that,” Jack says with a friendly chuckle. He reaches for his wine. “It’s going wonderfully so far, but surely there are more interesting things to talk about.”

“I disagree,” Kara says, the amicable curve to her voice dipping slightly. “I’m so curious as to how you knew it was ready. Did you do any trials? Human trials, maybe?”

“Kara,” Lena censures softly, her brow dipping at this sudden accusation she can sense in Kara’s line of questioning.

“It’s all public record if you’re really that curious,” Jack answers, shrugging and amused tilt to the corner of his mouth when he glances at Lena.

The curiosity Lena feels is undeniable, though it’s seemingly very different from the angle Kara’s approaching from. It feels like her brain has been idly attempting to figure out how Jack solved the nanobot problem ever since she realized he did. “How did you solve it?” she asks, unable to help herself.

“Is that why you agreed to have dinner with me?” Jack asks, brow arched.

Lena observes him a moment, lips thin as she truthfully admits, “Not entirely.”

He accepts that with a soft amused sound. “Well, I suppose you deserve some answer,” he says, and she lifts her chin with a smile. “A few months after you left, I stayed up all night just…thinking. And when the sun came up, I saw a flock of starlings fly by. In perfect harmony, completely in sync.”

His eyes go soft at this part and Lena feels her throat go thick, her heart tight at the look on Jack’s face and the feeling of Kara shifting beside her. “I had a realization in that moment,” he continues, his eyes darting to Kara for a brief second. “We’d been modeling the nano swarm after the wrong animal. Bees need a base, a queen to revolve around. We’d been trying to make a nanobot into a queen by programming a protective algorithm, but…”

It hits Lena in an instant as he’s talking and she can’t help but sit forward with the joy of something clicking perfectly in her head. “Oh my god, murmuration.”

Jack’s smile goes wide and he sits up towards her. A connection between them that’d always been there goes taut. “Yeah,” he replies, nodding in an encouraging manner.

“The nano swarm, it migrates,” she says, somehow not believing she couldn’t see this years ago. “It’s linked AI sentience.”

“It’s all controlled through the Spheerical lab mainframe,” he says, and they’ve shifted so close their feet bump into each other. It jolts Lena back a bit, but she can’t fight the breathless feeling of solving a problem she’d long thought unsolvable. “I would never have gotten there if…”

The end of that seems obvious, it hangs in the air between them and pushes Lena back into her chair, a flush creeping up her neck.

“Well,” Kara says, pulling her completely out of the moment and Lena doesn’t know what to feel at that point. “That’s a great story.”

“Thank you,” Jack says with a humble nod of his head. “But I didn’t come here to talk business.”

It’s delivered with a look for Lena that makes her take a breath as Kara sits forward.

“What did you come here for?” Kara asks, frosty enough that Lena’s hand travels to Kara’s thigh.

Jack’s smile is warm but reserved and his eyes glide to Lena with a shrug of his shoulder. “To reconnect with an old friend, I suppose.”

“Interesting,” Mon-El says, his tone so cold that even Kara is surprised by it, her face sinking into a frown as she looks over at him. He seems to be affecting his heaviest glare at Jack. “Have you ever tried boxing?”

Lena decides to distract Jack from whatever that line of questioning is before Mon-El can get going on it.

“I’m just…so impressed that you finally solved it,” Lena says, with as friendly a smile as possible.

“And pissed I did it without you,” Jack adds with the same knowing tease Kara had in her voice when she’d said the same thing.

Lena laughs, acknowledges the truth again with a shrug of her shoulder and reaches for her wine glass, taking a sip.

“We should probably go,” Kara says, standing so abruptly that Lena jerks back a bit in response.

Jack sends Lena a quizzical look before turning it to Kara and standing with her. “You haven’t even ordered,” he points out, but Kara waves him off.

“I just remembered that I hate everything on the menu here,” she says as if that’s believable, but before Lena can interject, Mon-El is standing too and pulling Jack into a tight hug with little preamble.

“Kara, what the hell?” Lena says under her breath as Mon-El speaks to Jack. Kara comes close and presses a kiss to Lena’s cheek, her palm warm on Lena’s arm.  

“Sorry, sorry, I’ll explain later, I promise,” Kara says, gripping briefly at the watch on Lena’s wrist. “I promise.”

“You better,” Lena says, before Kara is turning to shake Jack’s hand. Mon-El wraps his arms around her tightly, muttering something about the dueling conventions that she barely tracks, before they’re both off and away, out the door of the restaurant. Lena sees for a second, Mon-El turning and saying something heated to Kara and Kara waving it away, and then Jack distracts her.

“That was something,” Jack says, eyebrows raised.

“Sorry,” she says. “I’m not sure what that was.”

Jack’s lips thin with amusement. “I can venture a guess," he says. "You and Kara are…”

“Yes, we are,” she answers simply even though she knows he doesn't really need an answer. It's obvious enough, she's sure. Jack barely reacts to her confirmation nor to the fact that she's unable to stop the way her face reacts when she says it, her slight smile echoing the pleasant warmth she feels in her chest.

A look of consideration sits on Jack’s face a moment. “She’s the college ex, isn’t she? The one you’d never talk about.”

It still goes against instincts to confirm that. Lena’s not sure why, but she feels protective over the knowledge. Nonetheless, a small part of her feels she owes Jack this much. “She is,” she says softly, adjusting the napkin on her lap and fiddling with her watch. “What gave it away?”

“Your face,” Jack tells her and before she can unpack what he means, the waiter is back to take their dinner orders.

--

The rest of the dinner is uneventful. They discuss the nanobots again, Jack goes in deeper as to what makes them tick and how the mainframe works in controlling them. He talks about marketing strategies and large scale plans for distribution. Lena offers her two cents when appropriate and it almost feels like they’d never separated.

It’s friendly and warm and Lena’s suddenly very grateful she’d decided to take Jack up on his offer for dinner.

As they pay the check - Jack arguing with her over paying the bill for a good five minutes before she relents - and polish off the wine, Jack observes her a moment. “Well, we’ve had dinner and wine,” he says. “Surely post-dinner drinks are in order.”

Lena pauses, remembering how their routine used to go. Jack would pour them scotch at her apartment and they’d break down their days, eventually falling asleep together. It’s clear enough that Jack is remembering the same thing.

“I’m sure I have something aged and expensive in my office,” Lena offers, feeling more comfortable with that setting than her home.

Jack laughs and takes the change of venue in stride. “Spoken like a true Luthor,” he says and Lena can’t help but smile.

--

L Corp is thankfully empty when they arrive and they’re able to get to Lena’s office with little fanfare. She walks over to the small wet bar she keeps there and pours them both two fingers of brandy. It reminds her of late night celebrations in the Metropolis office when she and Jack would sneak into Lex’s office and drink his liquor.

“I forgot to mention how nice this office is when I was here last,” Jack says and Lena can hear a hint of mockery in Jack’s voice. “So fresh. So clean.”

“I’m sorry that it’s not quite the pigsty you’re used to,” Lena says, rolling her eyes. Jack laughs.

“You even have a balcony! Where do you keep the blowtorches?” Jack asks.

“You’ll find out if you keep on this track,” Lena says, and Jack laughs even harder, taking a sip of his brandy and glancing outside. Silence slips over them, comfortable and warm. But Jack interrupts it after a few moments.

“I must confess, I haven’t been completely honest with you,” Jack says, setting his glass down before his hands retreat to his pockets.

Setting her own drink down as well, Lena crosses her arms over her chest defensively, a spike of fear at what Jack could possibly be referring to. He must notice her reaction because he pulls his hands out of his pockets and puts them up as if asserting his innocence.

“Nothing bad,” he clarifies. “Just…” He laughs. “I suppose I haven’t been clear about my intentions as to dinner and after seeing the lovely Miss Danvers show up so suddenly, I feel it’s only right to come clean.”

It occurs to her quite easily what he’s trying to say and while she absolutely could have seen this coming, she’d been hoping it never would. “Jack,” she sighs, dropping her arms, but moving behind her desk just to put something between them and stop the obvious path he was about to take towards her.

“Hear me out,” he pleads, stepping forward nonetheless to prop his hands on the edge of her desk across from her.

There’s nothing he could really say to her that she’d find persuasive, but she supposes she owes him this much. A conversation she never allowed him to have when she was breaking up with him.

“Fine,” she says, clipping the word with a raise of her chin.

“I came to National City because I want you back,” he says plainly and though she’d been expecting it, it still hits into her chest like a shock. “And I think you should consider it.”

She lets silence extend between them for a moment, gives the words some gravity as she observes him before letting out a long exhale. “Is that all you have to say?”

A look of discouragement flashes on Jack’s face, but he straightens and finds some determination from somewhere. “If distance is the problem,” he starts and she scoffs.

“That’s clearly not the problem,” she says, wondering if maybe he’s hit his head and forgotten the girlfriend he’s met now twice. 

“But it was,” he argues. “Before Kara became part of the picture.”

She’s not sure how to tell him that Kara was always part of the picture and that breaking up with him wasn’t so much about distance and more about...things she’s not sure she wants to tell him. How she had tried very hard to love him and it had never been anything close to what she felt for a girl she hadn’t seen in years. How being with him had been more like a performance with a friend instead of a relationship.

“All the same,” Lena says, letting him get by with whatever he wants to think. “She is a part of the picture.”

“Yes, and she’s lovely,” Jack says, his hands raised in a wait-wait-don’t shoot pose. “But a bit scattered. And, well, a bit rude.”

“Are you really going to attempt to argue your way into breaking up my relationship?” Lena asks, reaching up to rub the bridge of her nose, feeling a headache coming on.

“I let you go once, and I’ve regretted it every day since,” Jack says, and she can hear how serious he is. “I love you, Lena. I have to try.”

Lena lets out a soft breath, is unsure how to avoid hurting him. “And so you have,” she says quietly, chewing her bottom lip when he winces.

“Look, I understand why you had to leave Metropolis, why you had to come and take on this company and do it on your own. I might not have understood it then, but I get it now.”

“I’m glad,” she says, hoping that’s the end of it, but from the look on his face she knows it’s not.

“I don’t want you to have to do this alone anymore.”

She barely stops the incredulous laugh that wants to bark out of her. “I’m not alone,” she tells him, marveling at how true she realizes that is.

“I get that you two have history,” Jack starts and Lena halts his words with a raise of her hand.

“Don’t talk about something you know nothing about,” she tells him, voice cold.

He reacts to that, straightening. “Fine,” he says, clearly set on arguing his point. “I’ll tell you what I do know. I know Kara Danvers got fired a month ago from CatCo Worldwide for breach of contract. I know that she’s been leaking L Corp information on her blog. I know she’s now disappeared twice, quite randomly, in my presence and if you ask me, seems flaky...at best.”

Setting aside the fact that Jack seems to know a lot more about Kara than he’s let on, Lena puts as much anger into her expression as she can. “You don’t know the first thing about her,” she says.

Jack doesn't so much as flinch under her glare and Lena shouldn’t be surprised - he’d never really cowed to her moods, angry or otherwise. “I just think you should weigh your options here, Lena. We’re both at different places in our lives and I think I’m due some consideration.”

What she’d like to do is throw her computer at his face, but she squashes the urge and tries to end this conversation as gracefully as possible. “I’m going to tell you this once and that needs to be the end of it,” she says, locking eyes with him. “As long as Kara is in my life, there is nothing else to consider. Period.”

He looks as if to argue further and she stops him again, palm outstretched. “Please stop,” she says, soft and pleading. “Before there’s nothing left here to salvage between us.”

That finally stops him, his posture leaking of fervor. “So it’s really that serious,” he says softly.

“It is.”

“You’d throw away all we had, all we could have, for some college girlfriend you hadn’t seen in four years?”

“You don’t understand,” she says, shaking her head and wondering if she should just press the button on her watch. Maybe Kara’d do a better job at explaining this. Internally, Lena winces at the thought. Kara would probably just punch first, ask questions later.

“I understand that you’re throwing away a chance at something real for a girl that can barely stick around for dinner, much less -”

“Jack, we’re practically married,” Lena finally says, seemingly incapable of finding a better way of saying it.

Shock crosses Jack’s face and his eyes dart so obviously to Lena’s left hand that she clenches it in a fist. “You’re what?”

“It’s a long story,” she says, kicking herself for saying it like that - no matter how true it feels.

A long silence stretches between them before he speaks again. “Well,” he says, a bitter sounding laugh dropping out of him. “I see things are a lot different than I expected.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” she says, knowing it comes out sounding insincere, but not correcting it. She’s not really sorry, more irritated at the direction the night had taken.

He looks at her, a sad expression that ebbs some of her anger away. “Can I just ask you why? Why her and not me?”

“I don’t owe you an explanation,” Lena says, voice tight. The audacity of him forcing her to defend Kara and their relationship from attack has made her feel irrational - like maybe she’s finally understanding why Mon-El constantly blabbers on about dueling conventions and mating rights.

“You don’t,” Jack agrees, all his earlier bluster gone from his voice and body language. “But I’m asking nonetheless. Consider it a selfish request from an old friend.”

Lena sighs, tries to find the parts of her that do truly love this man - who has done nothing wrong but fall in love with someone that’s cosmically unavailable. “I love you, Jack,” she starts, but it doesn’t seem to give him any hope, his frown dipping further. “I’m not going to pretend otherwise.”

He nods slowly, listening.

“It’s just...it’s not the same,” she says. “I can’t give you what you want. I couldn’t when we were in Metropolis and I certainly can’t now. It’s Kara. That’s just...how it is.”

He sighs, his face soft and resigned. “Well,” he says, hands at his hips as he makes a show of puffing his chest out. “I feel quite the fool.”

“I don’t want to lose your friendship,” she says suddenly, feeling foolish for saying it herself.

He laughs a little, smiles at her though the expression falls short of genuine. There’s a hint of anger in his face. “I have to be honest, Lena. It might take me a bit to get there.”

She nods, understanding. “I get that.”

For a moment it looks as if he’s about to say more, one last try for it, but as if reconsidering in a nanosecond, his face freezes, eyes going far away. When he says nothing else, Lena bows her head to get a better look at him. “Jack?”

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head and looking miles away from their present conversation. “I have to go.”

“Oh,” she says, taken aback by the sudden change in his tone. It’s as if all the emotion was sucked out of him and she wonders if it’s some kind of coping mechanism. “Okay.”

“Yeah, sorry,” he says again before turning abruptly on his heel and pacing quickly out of her office.

She watches him go with a mixture of confusion and relief.

--

“Oh shit,” Jack says, just before the thing he’s working on explodes in the partitioned area they’ve set aside for their more volatile experiments. It blows the glass partition back by a solid three feet, and Jack lands on his back. Lena barely musters the interest to turn around.

“You alright?” she asks, focused on the bit of Nth metal she’s attempting to machine into micro pieces.

“You’re so caring,” Jack says, sitting up. Lena glances back to see him reaching up to adjust his goggles. “The little buggers ran into each other again.”

The steel door to their lab opens then, and Lex steps through gingerly, eyeing the smoke curling up from behind the glass with a small smile.

“You know, this building monitors sudden shifts in air pressure,” Lex says, displaying his phone where an alert is indeed showing. “Your little explosions are only fun for a short time.”

“Sorry,” Lena says, finishing off the cut she’s been working for the last few minutes while Jack scrambles up from the floor.

“It’s fine,” Lex says, coming over to sit in the lab chair next to Lena. “Gives me an excuse to ditch a board meeting. Mother was going on and on about how we need to make further steps into weapons contracting, blah blah. You’d think a doctor wouldn’t be so interested in murdering people.”

“Sounds like mother,” Lena says, slipping the nanobot hulls under her microscope to take a glance at them.

“What have you two been blowing up in my building this time?” Lex asks, leaning over her shoulder to look at the digital display. “Fancy little metal bugs?”

“Nanobots, for healing injuries and illnesses at a micro level,” Jack says. “Or at least, that’s what it’s supposed to be.”

“That’s what it will be,” Lena corrects, turning around and showing Jack the display. He grins back at her with a happy satisfaction and she laughs at the way his hair’s been blown into disarray by the earlier explosion.

Lex picks a tablet up from the desk near Lena’s elbow and eyes the information with some interest, his curiosity clearly piqued.

“Interesting,” Lex says. “Applications?”

“Medical, largely,” Lena says. “Probably worth exploration in engineering fields as well. They could work to both fix tissue and hold off infections if they were outfitted with the right information and tools.”

“What are they made out of?” Lex asks, tapping at the display. “Your special metal?”

“Nth metal,” Jack says, proudly. Lex turns and looks at him with appraising eyes that make Lena roll her eyes at her brother.

“You’ve got enough funding to be purchasing Nth metal?” Lex asks, before whistling. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Jack says, the grin on his face betraying his happiness at Lex’s approval.

“Let’s have dinner tonight, yes?” Lex asks, looking from Jack to Lena. “Mother is not invited.”

“Sounds good,” Lena says, leaning into her brother’s loose arm around her shoulders in a hug.

“Please don’t blow up my building,” Lex says, a grin on his face as he makes his way back to the door. “It’s expensive.”

--

Kara is pacing the floor of her apartment when Lena gets back home and for a nanosecond she feels a pull of irrational guilt. As if she’s done something wrong and Kara’s found her out. Which isn’t the case at all, but her head is still reeling from her conversation with Jack and the look on Kara’s face is starting to concern her.

“Kara,” Lena says, dropping her purse on a sidetable and striding forward quickly. Kara startles as if she didn’t know Lena was there, which only further deepens Lena’s concern.

“Hey, hi,” Kara says, moving towards her, then stopping short. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing important,” Lena dismisses, feeling exhausted at the idea of rehashing her conversation with Jack.

“Tell me anyway,” Kara says, opening her arms for Lena to fall forward into her body.

Lena sighs, feels a renewed energy at the first press of Kara’s hands to her back. “Jack gave me a long-winded speech about why I should break up with you and get back together with him.”

Kara’s entire body goes rigid. So much so that Lena straightens to look at her. “I said no,” Lena adds as if that’s what has Kara so concerned - laughable as it may seem.

“I knew he was up to no good, but I didn’t think he’d go that far.”

The comment is odd enough to pique Lena’s curiosity and when she pulls back to look at Kara’s face she can tell her exhaustion is about to get worst.

“What do you mean you knew he was up to no good?” Lena asks and as if suddenly caught doing something wrong, Kara’s gaze turns from concerned to sheepish.

“I have to tell you something,” Kara starts, and Lena’s gaze goes narrow. This is the second time she’s had to hear this kind of confession and honestly she’s probably going to need another glass of alcohol to deal with all this. She didn’t even get to drink her brandy back at the office.

“Okay,” she says in a slow drawl, backing away slightly while her arms crossing over chest defensively.

Kara winces a bit, hesitation obvious in the way she fiddles with her fingers. “I’ve been investigating Jack,” she says, and Lena nearly barks out a laugh. Her irritation with Kara for her restaurant hijinks comes seeping back in.

“Uh, yeah,” she replies. “That’s no secret. Don’t think we won’t be talking about that stunt you pulled at dinner.”

“No, I mean,” Kara looks around as if searching for words somewhere in the room. “I’ve been investigating him like…a lot. That’s why Mon-El and I crashed your dinner.”

Lena has no idea what distinction Kara is trying to make and feels impatience start to get the best of her as she sighs, “Can we find the point here, darling?”

Kara takes a breath. “Lena, Biomax is dangerous and Jack’s covering it up.”

It’s not necessarily surprising to hear Kara say that – it’d been the angle Lena’d suspected Kara had been after this whole time – but instinctively she gets defensive. Biomax was a project she’d worked on for a long time after all, and Jack is, if anything, an old friend. Despite their last conversation, she still feels protective of what they once had - professionally if nothing else. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”  

“It’s true,” Kara retorts emphatically.

“You can’t know that,” Lena insists. “Jack wouldn’t–”

“He’s killed two people, Lena,” Kara says and at that, Lena nearly laughs.

“Jack would never hurt anyone,” she says, flabbergasted at the very idea of it.

“I’m not lying.”

“I don’t think you’re lying,” Lena says, standing up and moving over to the decanter of scotch on her counter. “I think you’re mistaken.”

“I’m not. During my investigation two whistleblowers were killed by a swarm of mechanical…somethings.”

“Kara, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Yes, I do,” Kara insists. “I was there when it happened. I saw the swarm - it was the same thing we saw at the press conference when he cut his hand.”

Lena’s brain starts to feel jumbled, her heart rate increasing by the second and she finds herself stammering to defend Jack despite how much she trusts Kara’s judgement. “That doesn’t mean it was Jack,” she starts and Kara huffs impatiently.

“You’re just defending him because he’s Jack.”

“Of course, I am,” Lena snaps, feeling her headache worsen and an instinctive desire to avoid any kind of reality at the moment. “You’re accusing him of something serious when he’s not even here to defend himself.”

“Because he’s dangerous, Lena.”

“You’re talking about a man that told me he cried when he had to dissect a frog in the sixth grade,” she says, almost laughing at the idea of Jack being dangerous. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“He’s not eleven anymore,” Kara insists. “And before this week, you hadn’t spoken to him in nearly a year.”

Lena turns and leans back against the counter to regard Kara with an arched brow. “And I’m supposed to think that a year’s absence has made him such a completely different man than the one I knew for nearly three?”

The room feels frosty, so much so that Lena pulls her sweater sleeves over her arms and keeps them close across her chest. Kara’s jaw is tight, her blue eyes focused and intent in a way that tugs something heavy and ominous in Lena’s gut.

Without another word, Kara pulls her phone out of her pocket and walks closer to Lena, holding it out as if in offering.

“What’s that?”

“My phone,” Kara answers.

“Yes, I see that. Why are you giving it to me?”

“Watch the video I have pulled up.”

Wordlessly, Lena takes the phone from Kara’s hands and does as instructed, her brow pulling down severely as an image of Jack starts to play on the small screen. “Biomax version 38,” Jack is saying from a seat at his desk. Lena takes in the injection gun in front of him with dread. “Human trial one.”

It’s heartstopping to watch Jack pick up the injection gun and hold out his own arm, to watch as he winces and pushes the syringe into his skin and then for his entire being to transform into the nano swarm. Her mouth goes dry and she doesn’t know what to do aside from hold her mouth in horror and blink up at Kara.

There’s a grim expression on Kara’s face along with a hint of worry around her eyes. “He faked the human trials – the ones on public record. That was what the first whistleblower approached me about and that’s what I’ve been trying to track down. Jack was the only human trial and he knew the nano swarm was dangerous from the beginning.”

All Lena can think is that she wants to talk to Jack, wants answers, wants to know why he did the one thing they agreed over and over again they’d never do.  

“I need to talk to him.”

“Lena’s he’s killed two people,” Kara says, but Lena can’t believe that. It’s too hard to reconcile the accusation with what she knows of Jack.

“What do you mean he’s killed two people?”

“I said I’ve been investigating him,” Kara starts and before Lena can interrupt she puts a hand up to stop her. “A whistleblower approached me telling me the human trials on public record were being faked. The car we were meeting in blew up before he could tell me the entire story.”

“What?” Lena says, startled even though Kara had mentioned this just moments before.

“Then a second lead I followed led me to a guy that was supposed to have been one of the people in the actual trial. Snapper went to interview him and a huge swarm of nanobots ate him alive. I barely got Snapper out of there in time.”

There’s a bubbling indignation in the back of her throat as she tries to piece together why this is the first she’s hearing of all this. She ignores that in favor of focusing on the problem at hand. The easy connection here that Jack’s controlling the nanoswarm and that he’s used it to kill two people.

“Who else has seen this?” Lena asks, indicating the video on Kara’s phone.

Kara shakes her head, her hands on her hips. “Just us,” she says and then as if reading Lena’s mind adds, “but you cannot go talk to him until we get to the bottom of this.”

Ignoring that for the moment, Lena continues with simple questions hoping at least those will have simple answers. “How did you get it?”

Kara’s lips thin. “From his office. There aren’t any records of human trials like the ones filed in the official records. Just this video.”

Lena blinks, still trying to process as quickly as she can. “You broke into his office?!”

“Not technically,” Kara says, hands up defensively.

“What do you mean, not technically? I can’t imagine Jack just gave this to you.”

Sheepish looking, Kara’s eyes dart away. “Mon-El swiped his keycard when we were at dinner. That’s why we left so suddenly. I wanted to get to his office while I knew he was otherwise occupied.”

Pinching the bride of her nose, Lena shakes her head, exasperated. “Kara,” she sighs.

“I didn’t want to tell you anything until I knew for sure,” Kara says, shifting close enough that Lena can feels her warmth. “I know what he means to you. It’s part of why I wasn’t worried about leaving you alone with him - it’s pretty clear how he feels.”

Lena makes a short noise of surprise. Frankly, if that was so clear even to Kara in the few minutes she’d met him, Lena would have liked a little more heads up so as not to be so blindsided by his sudden confession at his office.

Nonetheless, that’s so far from what’s important now. “Then you know I have to talk to him,” Lena says. “At the very least maybe he’ll confess to me and then we’ll actually having something more substantial to go on.”

“I can’t let you do that,” Kara says quietly, her voice more like a plea than anything else. Lena feels her jaw go tight, bristling visibly enough that Kara backs off in the slightest. “Not without me.”

“You can wait outside, in earshot,” Lena concedes, knowing it’s the quickest way to get what she wants. A bit ridiculous considering in earshot likely means anywhere in the entirety of the city for Kara. 

Lena expects a fight, expects Kara to protest and insist she stay home where it’s safe, but instead Kara nods, drops her hands from where they were perched against her hips. “Okay, yeah.”

“What?” Lena says before she can stop herself. “Just like that?”

“You’re right,” Kara says. “Maybe you can get him to confess.”

“You don’t want to encase me in bubble wrap first?” Lena asks. Kara sighs, looking down at the ground between them before she reaches hesitantly for Lena’s hand, where her watch rests.

“We agreed that we would take risks together, right?” Kara says. “Not apart. I mean, preferably no risks at all, but - it seems like we’re having trouble avoiding them.”

“Fair,” Lena says, watching Kara finger the face of her watch.

“There are laws, you know, about what being a mate means,” Kara says, softly. “It means you don’t have to be alone. Always, no matter what. You’re determined to talk to him, so I’ll be there.”

It makes Lena’s exhaustion flow away from her like water and a warm strength take hold of her limbs. “You don’t have to be alone either,” Lena tells her, locking on to soft blue eyes. “You should have told me about the whistleblower, about what you were doing. Even if it would have hurt me. I trust you.”

“I know,” Kara admits. “I’ll do better next time.”

“Good,” Lena says, feeling something fundamental click into place between them. It makes her feel like she could take on anything.

Kara takes a deep breath. “Okay. If you can narrow his location down, we’ll go when we’re ready.”

Lena nods in agreement, but when Kara makes to walk away she just steps closer and tugs her back into a tight hug, holds the embrace for long moments until letting her go.  

--

Locating Jack is fairly easy. There’s a Spheerical owned lab on the outskirts of town that Lena’d heard Jack talk about before. After ruling out his offices and his hotel, it’s the next logical step. Kara flies them there swiftly and lands discreetly next to a back door into the large structure.

“Listen to me,” Lena insists, as stern as she can be as she rechecks the small device behind her ear that will record her conversations. “You do not come in there unless I’m in actual, real danger.”

“You’re already in danger just walking in there,” Kara points out, eyes like steel, her acceptance clearly coming up against the weight of her fear. It makes Lena want to press into her until both of them soften, but she takes a deep breath and focuses.

“You know what I mean,” she says, reaching out to circle her fingers around Kara’s wrist, the fabric of her suit feeling rough against her palm. The strength of her bracelet still presses up against her palm underneath it. “Let me get it all out of him before you get in there. We don’t have nearly enough information and if you come busting in there it might just lead to a fight.”

Kara looks determined to argue with her until Lena adds a soft, “Please. This is Jack. Let me just talk to him. I’ll let you know when I need a rescue.”

“Be careful,” Kara says, pulling Lena in close and kissing her firmly.

“Promise you won’t come in unless I absolutely need you to?”

Kara takes a breath, nods. “Promise,” she says before whispering I love you in Kryptonian.

-

Jack’s looking through a microscope at something when she approaches and she calls his name out until he turns, a surprised look on his face. He’s clearly come straight here after their conversation, judging by the glass of whisky set out on the counter next to him and the frown on his face.

“Lena, what are you doing here?” He asks, looking behind her, a confused furrow in his brow. “How did you get in here?”

Declining to answer his question, she goes straight for the heart of it. “I know about the nanobots,” she says.

He looks taken aback, even more confused. “What about the nanobots?”

“The human trials,” she clarifies. “I know they’re faked.”

“What do you mean they’re faked?” Jack asks, looking offended now. “No. They’re not.”

“They are,” Lena retorts. “You’ve been trying to cover it up, but there weren’t any human trials. Not really.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, but Lena feels all the accusations come bursting out of her, incapable of stopping the stream of words.

“You injected that stuff into yourself,” she tells him. “How many times did we say we’d never do that? How many times did we talk about how dangerous this project was, how it could be used to control people? We agreed, Jack. I can’t -”

“Lena,” he interrupts, in a firm, desperate voice. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Jack’s expression hardly changes as he enunciates each word forcefully and the open look of innocence and confusion on his face is far too genuine for Lena not to believe him. “Oh my god,” she says, breathless as the truth starts to become more and more apparent. If Jack’s in the dark, that means someone else is controlling the nanoswarm. “You’re telling the truth.”

The second she says it, his face goes dead, a kind of lifelessness behind his eyes that terrifies her and a voice echoes behind her that has her fist clenching. “Miss Luthor,” it says and behind Jack steps Beth Breen, whom she recognizes immediately from the press conference, a glowing earpiece tucked on one side of her head and a smarmy look on her face Lena feels drawn to punch off her.

Her eyes dart back to Jack, to the blank look on his face as more and more dots connect.

“He can’t hear you,” she tells Lena.

“It’s been you the whole time,” she says for lack of anything better to say. Her brain starts scrambling around so quickly she can barely keep up.

“Keen observation,” Beth says dryly, coming to stand next to Jack’s stiff body. There’s a glowing blue earpiece in her ear that Lena’s seen before but is only now realizing the purpose of. It makes her want to kick herself.

“You killed those people,” Lena accuses her directly, wondering how long Kara’s going to wait before busting through a wall. A flash of blue appears in her peripheral, idling outside the large windows of the warehouse and Lena makes a motion with her hand as subtly as possible, hoping it staves Kara off just a bit.

“I didn’t kill those people,” Beth says with a quick tsk. “Jack did. He might not have chosen to, nor does he remember doing it, but…he did.” At the end of it, she touches her earpiece as if Lena can’t fucking see that’s what’s controlling the swarm. The skin of Jack’s face ripples with evidence of what he’s become and Lena feels like her heart might crack out of her chest.

“You’ve been controlling him this whole time,” she says, waiting for the opportunity to punch this bitch in the face.

“Well, not the whole time,” Beth admits, shrugging. “The bits where he was all moony-eyed over you were all him. Figured I’d let him make his shot. But now that you’re here, I can control you as well. Two massive titans of industry under my thumb.”

The skin on Jack’s face ripples with the nanoswarm’s presence as if sensing Beth’s intent. That’s probably exactly what’s happening, Lena thinks as she searches for a solution to her current predicament.

“And to think,” Beth continues, clearly committed to the whole supervillian monologue thing. God, it reminds her of Lex. “Poor sweet boy wanted to scrap the whole thing. All because of a pesky little side effect that removes free will. Said it wasn’t perfect yet.”

“Jack was right.”

“Jack lacks vision,” Beth corrects in a snap. “We’re about to make billions with Biomax in every home, hospital, school. Think of the military contracts. Only an idiot would turn down the possibilities.”

Beth looks Jack up and down, walks around him and runs a hand down his arm. It makes Lena’s skin crawl.

“You know it’s true what they say,” Beth starts with a smirk. “Behind every great man is a strong woman.”

“Oh I wouldn’t know,” Lena retorts, a snarky look on her face she’s sure. “I’ve never stood behind a man.”

“No,” Beth says, “You just clean up after your brother.”

The comment hits a bit, but Lena’s careful not to let that show.

“You’re an idiot,” Beth continues. “You walked away from the breakthrough of a century.”

“It doesn’t work,” Lena replies, mentally calculating all her options. Shut off the swarm, maim Beth, control the swarm, have Kara arrest Beth...

“See, I think it works beautifully. I have a brilliant figurehead that will do whatever I want, completely under my control.”

“You’re repulsive.”

Beth laughs. “You’re certainly one to talk.”

Arching a brow, Lena crosses her arms, feels the cool metal of her watch slide under her bicep. All she has to do is keep Beth talking until she can figure out how to save Jack. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“As if the world isn’t watching while you’re trying to get Supergirl under your thumb.”

It surprises Lena, and the shock must show on her face because Beth laughs again.

“I haven’t the faintest what you’re trying to say,” Lena says even as she can feel her heart start to race.  

“Oh, please,” Beth says, condescension dripping off her. “Maybe other people can’t see it, but it’s almost pathetic the way you suck up to Supergirl to make up for the sins of your brother.”

The absurdity of it almost makes Lena laugh. She’d never once considered that angle before - that she’d work with Supergirl to improve a public image tarnished by Lex’s vendetta against Superman.

“I don’t suck up to Supergirl,” Lena says, amused despite the situation. It clearly irritates Beth, her lips pushing together in an angry line.

“Clearly not well enough or your little protector would be here right now,” Beth points out with a smirk.

Lena chuckles, unable to help herself.

“What’s funny?” Beth asks, brow furrowing.

“You know what they say,” Lena says, smiling and glancing towards the wall where Kara’s waiting, sure Kara can see and hear her clear as day. “Speak of the devil and all that.” As if on cue, a burst of breaking glass precedes Kara’s entrance to the warehouse and suddenly she’s next to Lena and slightly in front of her, hovering over the ground and hands at her hips.

It makes Beth flinch backward, cowering at Kara’s sudden presence and a wide-eyed look in her eye.

“Oh come on,” Lena taunts, knowing she needs to keep Beth – and the nanoswarm – occupied until she can find a way to deactivate it. “I showed you mine,” she says, nodding to where Kara’s hovered, a dangerous glow to her eyes. “Now you show me yours.”

Beth continues to level a steely gaze her way for a moment longer before tapping at her earpiece once. Jack’s hands move to his side, his chin lifted as a swarm of nanobots ascend out of his body.

“Keep them occupied,” Lena whispers for Kara’s ears only and though Kara turns to her as if to protest, she wisely says nothing else before zooming in front of the swarm and then away, leading them on a chase across the warehouse.

As soon as they’re away, Beth’s eyes glued to the chase, Lena makes for Jack’s body. She’s so intent on it, she doesn’t notice that Beth’s spotted the movement. It isn’t until she’s receiving a painful kick to her gut that she knows she’s been caught. It knocks the air out of her so hard she almost falls over, but she knows she can’t afford to. Especially not as Beth is mocking her with a, “Did I mention I’m a black belt?”

Lex was the first person to ever teach her how to throw a punch and so when she clenches her first and rears back up to smack Beth across the face, she can’t help but reply, “Did I mention I was a Luthor?”

The hit knocks the earpiece out of Beth’s ear and it skitters across the floor away from them. Lena doesn’t pause, just smacks Beth as hard as she can until the other woman is slumping to the floor with a painful sounding thud.

Before she can do anything else – like maybe kick the woman in the face – Kara is zooming past them, the swarm hot on her tail until Lena can only watch, horrified, as the swarm catches up to Kara and pins her to a nearby structure.

Kara’s name nearly chokes out of Lena’s throat, a strangled, “Supergirl!” thankfully comes out instead.

For a heartstopping second, she freezes, her eyes caught on the way the swarm is enveloping Kara. The image mixes with that of Kara bleeding out under her palms and anxiety feels like it might take all the air out of her throat.

“Lena!” Kara yells out, snapping her out of her thoughts. It spurs her back into action.

A glance to Jack shows he’s still completely out of control of his body and likely his mind. Just behind him she spots a computer terminal and rushes towards it. Maybe if she can get into Spheerical’s mainframe she can try to override the nanobots.

Mentally crossing her fingers, she uses her old admin codes to login and can’t help but smile. “You should really change your passwords, Jack,” she murmurs to herself.

Just as she’s combing through the terminal, she hears shuffling behind her and turns to spot Beth, groaning in pain as she tries to move. Her aim is clear, and Lena nearly kicks herself for being so stupid. The earpiece lays dormant on the ground and just before Beth and can reach for it, Lena scoops it up.

Beth falls back to the floor, defeated, but stays looking at Lena. “You can’t override the nanobots,” she tells her, as if knowing Lena’s aim. “It will destroy them, and it’ll kill Jack.”

Kara draws her attention away with a painful sounding noise, muffled by the swarm climbing up her face. “You don’t know that,” Lena says, scrambling for a way to save everyone.

“They’ve merged,” Beth says, pushing herself up to stand as if she’s regained the upper hand. “You kill them, you kill him.”

Lena’s fist clenches painfully on the earpiece in her hand and with lack of something better to do, she punches Beth in the face yet again, satisfied when it drives the woman back down the ground, blood coming out of her nose. Her knuckles ache with abuse, but she doesn’t care.

Looking back at Kara and then at Jack, Lena’s not sure what to do, but she knows she’s running out of options. Beth might not be trustworthy, but Lena knows enough about the technology to know she’s probably right. A full override of the nanobots might kill Jack.

A choice between Kara and Jack is painfully easy to make, but Lena doesn’t want to have to make it all.

So, she does the only other thing she can think to do. Her understanding of the nanobots may be outdated, but she and Jack got far enough for her to have an idea of how this earpiece might work.

It’s worth a shot at least.

As soon as the piece slides into her ear it feels like her brain goes impossibly tight, stretching in on itself so quickly that she has to shut her eyes and rub her temples against discomfort.

A beeping sound resonates from the terminal by her side and she turns to look at a pop up window just as her brain feels like it unclenches.

Authorized User Detected it reads and she inhales sharply to see her own name written under it. “God, I love you, Jack,” she exhales, turning towards the nanoswarm holding Kara and needing only to think get the fuck away from her before they’re zipping off her body and rushing back towards Jack.

They hit into him so hard that he slumps to the ground, coughing with the force of it and gasping for air, his eyes going wide as he comes back to it.

“Jack,” she exclaims, falling to her knees next to him and gripping his cheeks. “Are you okay? You in there?”

His eyes are unfocused a moment before they stop on her and he grips one of her wrists where her hand is on his face. “I’m good,” he says even though he’s wincing and making a sound of pain as he sits up.

“You okay?” Kara’s voice comes from behind her and Lena shoots up, turns to rake her eyes over Kara’s form and check the same for herself.

“You?” Lena says softly, moving closer than she normally would when Kara’s Supergirl, but mindful of the anxiety still thrumming across her skin over Kara’s wellbeing.

“All good,” Kara replies, equally soft as she reaches out to squeeze Lena’s wrist quickly. It’s a fast touch before Kara’s turning towards Jack and reaching out a hand to help him stand.

“Thanks,” he says, but it’s clear he’s having trouble supporting himself. Lena darts forward when it looks like he might fall and drapes his arm over her shoulders to keep him upright.

“I can take him,” Kara says, moving forward as if to take Jack from Lena, but Lena stops her with a jerk of her head towards the prone body nearby.

“Get her, we need to get them both to the DEO,” Lena says.

Kara’s eyes dart back and forth a moment, indecisive, before she finally agrees with a nod, scooping Beth up and without any preamble zooming out of the broken window she’d entered through before.

“I think I’m okay,” Jack says, moving his weight off of her and leaning against the table behind him. “Just winded.”

“Sorry,” Lena says, scanning him with her eyes.

“Don’t be,” he replies, but his eyes go wide as he observes the scene and seems to start putting things together. “Christ, what’s happened?”

“Beth has been controlling the nano swarm,” Lena tells him, mindful of the shaky way he seems to be holding himself together. "She's been using it to control you." 

Jack starts to blink at an alarming pace, his breath starting to quicken. “I killed people,” he says and Lena wonders if having control over the swarm herself has started to give Jack some of his memories.

“No,” she tells him, reaching out to touch his arm. “That was Beth.”

“It was me,” Jack says, his eyes wide and an all-consuming guilt covering his face. “I can see it happen. I can see myself doing it.”

“It was Beth,” Lena reiterates, shaking his arm to bring his attention to her. “Don’t think for a second otherwise.”

There’s a look on her face that Lena understands acutely - it makes her think of Lex and his warsuit, of knowing she’s had a hand in something terrible even if she didn’t orchestrate it.

“Jack,” she says softly, as soothingly as she can, but before she can say anything else, Kara’s zooming back into the building to land at Lena’s side.

“Ready?” Kara asks, looking to Lena.

“Yeah,” she tells her quietly and Jack makes a groaning sound.

“I don’t feel so great,” he admits and Lena can only watch as his eyes roll back into his head and he starts to slump forward.

Kara catches him before he falls over completely and hefts his body over his shoulder deftly. “Let’s go,” she says to Lena, holding her free arm out.

Adrenaline is starting to leave her body and Lena’s feeling like she might faint right along with Jack. Kara must notice because she doesn’t wait for Lena to step forward. Instead, she moves herself, scooping Lena solidly into her side and looking down at her.

“You’re okay,” Kara says, kissing her forehead. “You did great.”

“Thanks,” Lena murmurs, allowing Kara to take all of her weight and grateful for the way she can sag against Kara’s body. “Let’s go.”

And with a slight bend of Kara’s knee, they’re up and off into the night.

--

They put Jack in one of the many medbays across the downtown DEO base. Alex and Winn meet them there, with Lena explaining the basics of what’s happened - the nanobots, their basic function, her ideas on how to solve the problem. Kara doesn’t stray too far from her side as she runs through simulation after simulation with Winn - and it takes hours, but they finally come to an agreement on their first steps.

She’s tasked with explaining their plans to Jack, who sits gamely through mentions of brain surgery and time under twenty-four hour watch and rehab before he glances to the window of his room, where Supergirl is standing. When Lena sets eyes on Kara, she disappears down the hallway with a small wave. Jack laughs a little.

“She’s Supergirl, isn’t she?”

Something heavy pulls in Lena’s stomach. “What? Who?”

Jack smiles, shakes his head. “Kara,” he clarifies. “She’s Supergirl.”

Doing her best to school her expression, Lena furrows her brow and tries for a quizzical smile. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A moment passes, and Jack just stares at her, his smile knowing. “You should work on your poker face.”

“My poker face is fully operational, thank you very much,” Lena replies without thinking twice and Jack laughs, though it comes out sad.

“Not about her, it’s not,” he says, and Lena’s chest feels oppressively tight. “At least I know you’re throwing me over for the most powerful being on the planet.”

“Jack,” she starts, soft and worried, but he waves her off.

“The secret is safe with me,” he says, shrugging a shoulder. “Not that you’ve really confirmed it or anything.”

“She’s not – I don’t –”

“Honestly, Lena. I mean neither of you any harm, I’m just trying to inform you that you might want to practice a bit more neutrality when it comes to Supergirl lest people start to connect the dots.”

A certain kind of creeping anxiety starts to make its way up the back of her neck and it must show on her face because Jack puts his hand on her shoulder, warm and sure. “It’s okay,” he says in a low voice. “I’m sure it’s only because I know you so well.”

Her eyes go back to the window Kara’d just left and she tries to think of something to say. He laughs softly.

“It might also be because I’m especially sensitive to the way you look at other people,” he admits and she lets out a soft breath, but lets a tiny smile grace her lips. “I’m sorry about the way I acted before. I was hurt, but that’s not an excuse.”

Lena can read the sincerity there, feels closure on an important chapter on her life as a new one seems to open. “I’m willing to put it behind us,” she says quietly and he grins.

“I’m amenable to that,” he says. “Especially considering what you could do to me if I step out of line.” He gestures to the piece of tech she still has in her ear. She’d refused to take it off at the DEO lest it leave her sight and put Jack under someone else’s control. If anything, he was her responsibility now.

“Don’t forget it,” she jokes and he puts his hands up as if in surrender.

“Oh I won’t,” he replies mirthfully.

Their laughter ebbs into silence as the control bug in her ear hums and Jack’s heart rate monitor pumps along.

“There’s something else I should tell you,” Jack says, the smile fading from his face. “About Biomax.”

Lena isn’t sure what could possibly be worse than her friend being permanently merged with a swarm of nanobots and her currently being in control of it, and she isn’t sure she really wants to find out.

“What about it?”

“If you look at our books, you’ll see numerous amounts of donations from various benefactors,” he says. “We had a lot of interest in the project.”

There’s nothing odd about that, but Lena can see something ominous forming in Jack’s expression. “I can imagine.”

“Yeah,” Jack acknowledges wryly. “The thing about it is...some of those donations never felt quite right.”

“What do you mean?”

Jack shakes his head. “I can’t really explain it. Just a gut feeling maybe, but I always thought…”

“Thought what?”

“There were big donations, Lena. Right after you left for National City, I suddenly had a mysterious benefactor. For a bit there, I thought it might actually be you.”

Lena starts to sense what feels so off to Jack, feels it coming like it’s in slow motion.

“I always felt a little off about Beth. Right from the beginning. I don’t know if you remember her, but I poached her from Luthor Corp.”

Lena has no memory of such a thing, but then again, Lena never really paid much attention to the company at large back then. “I didn’t know that.”

“When Lex was arrested and then when the company was moved, there were a lot of people that either wanted to stay in Metropolis or were looking for a change. Beth was doing low-level risk-analysis at Luthor Corp so when we offered her a promotion at Spheerical she jumped at the chance.”

“What are you saying here, Jack?” Lena says though she can see it plain as day.

“Those donations? Lately, I’ve started to think they might be from someone we both know.”

Silence for a moment before Lena takes a breath. “Lex is in prison.”

“I know,” Jack says and it does nothing to make either of them feel better, Lena can tell.

A headache spikes between her eyes and Lena pinches the bridge of her nose against it. “Great,” she breathes out.

“Something to think about is all,” Jack says quietly and Lena almost laughs. She’s sure it’s the only thing she’s going to think about for the near future.

--

It’s likely Jack will spend the better part of the next month at the DEO. Once she’s assured herself that he’s settled and under good care, she allows Kara to fly them both back to her apartment. Exhaustion has taken an even stronger grip on her brain and she almost weeps when she see the clock on her microwave glow a taunting 5:37 AM.

“Let’s go to bed,” Kara says, coming up behind her and pressing strong fingers into the tense muscles at her shoulder.

“Go to bed?” Lena jokes, sinking into the feel of Kara’s expertly working fingers. “I have to be at the office soon.”

“No,” Kara says, sounding firm as her hands retreat from Lena’s shoulders only to scoop her up and off the ground. “Neither of us are going to work tomorrow. We’re taking sick days.”

“I don’t believe in sick days,” Lena points out, her arms circling Kara’s neck on instinct.

“I know you don’t. That’s what you have me for.”

“Ah,” Lena says, feeling sleep pull heavily at her brain. “I knew it was for something.”

Despite a very real insistence on not playing hooky from work tomorrow, Lena succumbs to the fatigue clambering all over her body. “Set my alarm,” she manages to say before truly giving in and just as everything goes black around her she thinks she hears Kara laugh.

--

The next morning, she wakes up hours past her usual alarm and only spends about five minutes berating Kara for contacting Jess without her approval to clear Lena’s schedule before giving into the desire to spend a lazy morning in bed, recovering.

By the time she makes it out of bed and into the kitchen, Kara’s already zipped off to get them donuts from a place they used to frequent on campus - a perfectly made bear claw is waiting for her next to a steaming cup of coffee.

It’s quiet and calm and rejuvenating to sit in the kitchen with Kara and let time pass by them. Kara idly discusses her plans for a blog post regarding Biomax - what to divulge and what to keep secret. It reminds Lena to check in with Winn and see how Jack is holding up at the DEO.

Eventually, she gets restless enough that she has to break away from the calm and actually do something.

“I might not be going into the office, but I still have work to do,” she tells Kara, taking a new cup of coffee into her office and sitting at her desk.

“Okay, well, I’m going to watch Netflix, so just let me know if you want to chill,” Kara calls out, poking her head into Lena’s office for a quick second.

“I will,” Lena says on a laugh, waving Kara off lest she get distracted.

With a deep breath, Lena opens up her laptop and starts to work on her inbox. The first e-mail she has gives her pause. It’s from Lana and it’s seemingly benign, but Lena can read through the bland language.

It’s about the lead they have on the vault. Lana’s clearly uncovered something new and is eager to talk about it. That much can be gleaned from the fact that Lana’s sent her an e-mail at all.

It makes her think about what Jack had said. About the possibility of Lex having financed part of Biomax.

Her head starts to swim with what that could mean - with the implication that Lex is far more involved in her life than she’d ever realized. And just that thought alone sparks another memory that has her eyes drawing to the bottom drawer of her desk on the left side.

After a moment of hesitation, she stands up and walks to a bookshelf on the side of her office, looking for the right book and pulling it out to find a key she’d hidden within the pages.

The key unlocks the drawer and she maneuvers around until the false bottom pulls out.

There’s not much there, but the clean white envelope she’d put there months ago stands out starkly. After she’d taken it from the vault her mother had taken her to after abducting her, Lena’d mostly forgotten about it. Set it aside as a problem for another day.

As she turns it over in her hands, a creeping sensation pulses up her spine. The kind she’d gotten looking at Lex’s warsuit that day, or watching her mother throw a grenade at Kara that’d incapacitated her. It’s almost as if she can still see the radiating glow of John Corben’s Kryptonite heart.

It isn’t until Kara’s knocking softly on the open door that Lena realizes just how heavily her heart is beating.

“You okay?” Kara asks quietly, eyes darting to the envelope in Lena’s hand.

“I don’t know,” Lena admits, not sure what she’s about to find out - if she’s even about to find anything out. When it comes to Lex, she’s come to expect the unpredictable.

Kara seems to understand what she means, her face sympathetic as she leans against the door and keeps her eyes steady. “I’m here if you need me,” she says and Lena lets that simple statement steady the rapid thud of her heart.

Without any other discussion, she flips open the envelope to peer at what’s inside. When she finally gets a glance at its contents, she can’t help but think, oh Lex.

She pulls out the blank sheet of paper and laughs.