720. Chapter 720

It’s not that Lena doesn’t know what to do for her girlfriend; she knows Kara well enough by now, intimately enough by this point, to know that she needs soft blankets and something even softer to fidget with; that she needs old-school musicals and an endless supply of food; that she needs silence and touches and reassurance that can be offered with no words.

And she’s more than happy to give all of these things to the woman who keeps saving the world and insisting that she needs no one to save her.

But sometimes, Lena knows, she also needs to call in the cavalry.

And tonight is one of those nights.

Because saving the world is old hat for all of them by now, and the DEO has checked and cleared Kara’s body, and J’onn has her – has them all – in mandated therapy sessions, but sometimes those sessions aren’t enough.

Kara gives, and she gives, and she gives, and not just of her body.

Holding up entire buildings with her bare hands is exhausting, but it’s nothing, Lena knows, compared to the rest of what Kara gave today. What Kara gives every day.

Because Supergirl doesn’t just pose for pictures and stop to revel in the applause.

She also visits the people she was too late to protect from burns, from compound fractures, in the hospital.

She visits the homes of the people she hadn’t been able to save; she holds the siblings and the parents and the cousins and the lovers of the people whose bodies she brought home, but without any breath left in them.

She wipes the tears and she listens to the screams, because she can’t not hear them, can’t not bear witness to the pains she can’t prevent.

She gives, and she gives, and she gives, and she acts like she has an endless supply of hope; an endless supply of optimism and kindness and empathy; but Rao, Lena knows that even superheroes have their limits.

Especially ones that are this unfailingly kind, this futilely forgiving, this inspiringly generous.

So she shoots a text off to Alex, and it isn’t long before she hears her hopefully-one-day sister-in-law’s key scrape into the lock of Kara’s apartment.

Kara doesn’t turn around. She hasn’t moved, except to bring popcorn to her mouth, in over an hour.

“Hey sis,” Alex announces her presence, with a tilted head she’s acquired from Maggie.

“Hey, Little Danvers. Little Luthor,” Alex’s wife smiles softly, holding Alex’s hand.

Neither of them take offense when Kara barely acknowledges them.

They just bring the pizza and potstickers right over to the couch, grab a blanket, and nudge Lena over.

Alex kisses Lena’s cheek as she squeezes next to her, and Maggie encourages Kara wordlessly to shift so Kara’s head rests in her sister-in-law’s lap. Alex reaches over Lena’s torso to take her little sister’s hand, her free arm wrapped around Lena’s shoulder.

“Hi Maggie. Hi Alex,” Kara murmurs after a long few moments, after relaxing into the way Maggie runs her fingers through her hair, the way Alex’s thumb strokes her hand while Lena’s hand wanders gently underneath her t-shirt, tenderly massaging the new scar Kara got from saving the world today.

“Your sister brought you potstickers, Kid Danvers,” Maggie tells her softly, and Kara blinks in response, but doesn’t move.

“Weren’t you two supposed to have date night tonight?”

“What better date night than crashing my little sister’s date night?” Alex smiles softly, and Lena scoffs playfully, quietly.

“Your wife is a nerd, Detective,” she tells Maggie, who grins.

“You don’t have to tell me that, Luthor.”

They continue their banter, their voices soft, plenty of silences stretching in between to make sure Kara doesn’t get overstimulated.

To make sure Kara knows they aren’t trying to force her to laugh, to participate.

That they’re offering her normalcy, comfort, togetherness; not trying to elicit insincere, pressured responses from her.

When Alex’s stomach rumbles, Maggie holds Kara’s head tenderly in her lap even as she leans forward to grab a slice of pizza to pass to her wife.

“It must run in the family,” she jokes with Lena, and Lena laughs as she leans down to press a kiss to Kara’s torso.

“It does,” Kara pipes up, her voice a little rusty from disuse. “You brought potstickers, too?”

“Of course we did,” Alex passes them to Kara with deliberate casualness, as Kara finally sits up and reaches for food.

They continue to talk gently around her, so she doesn’t feel stared at, so she doesn’t feel like she’s under a spotlight – like she’s weaker than the rest of them, somehow, because she’s the one who needs to be cared for tonight – and eventually, it makes her feel safe enough, stable enough, to speak.

“Is there a point to it, anyway?” she asks around a mouthful of pizza. Lena, her hand on Kara’s thigh, stiffens slightly, and Alex and Maggie exchange a quick glance.

“To what, darling?” Lena asks, less a question than a prompt, an encouragement to continue.

“Any of it,” Kara gestures toward her phone; the one that summons her to save the world, to watch people die, to save people who don’t deserve it and to lose people who do. “I mean… my planet’s gone. This planet’s gonna be gone one day. All we’re really doing is just stalling until we die anyway, right? So… isn’t trying so hard kind of… pointless?”

Lena and Maggie both shift their gaze to Alex, who squeezes Lena’s hand before rising from the couch to kneel in front of her little sister.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Everyone dies. People. Planets. Everyone, everything. And that’s exactly why you’re wrong, too, Kar. Because if…” She reaches one hand up to tuck errant strands of hair behind her little sister’s ear, twining the fingers of her other hand through Maggie’s.

“If everybody dies, it just makes our time here that much more precious. It makes what you do that much more important.”

“What? Delaying the inevitable?”

Alex and Lena exchange glances while Maggie sighs patiently, sadly, and kisses her sister-in-law’s temple.

“No, darling,” Lena pitches in, her index finger gently encouraging Kara’s chin to rise so she can meet her eyes. “Not delaying the inevitable. Making people’s lives richer. Giving people love. Hope.”

Kara scoffs slightly. “Hope,” she repeats in a whisper.

“Yeah,” Alex continues from Lena’s train of thought. “Hope. Because if we’re all only here for a little while, we’d damn well make sure we’re taking care of each other. And that’s what you do. And that’s… that’s our job, to do for you. You don’t have to always be okay, Kara. That’s what we’re here for. And J’onn, and James, and Winn. Sam. You don’t have to carry all this alone, Kara. Never ever. Okay?”

Kara raises her gaze to meet Alex’s, and tears flood the eyes of both sisters for a long moment. Maggie squeezes Alex’s hand as Lena squeezes Kara’s, as Kara and Alex squeeze each other’s.

“Can I have the rest of the potstickers alone, though?” Kara asks, and her voice is still shaky, but there’s a spark reigniting in her eyes.

Courtesy, of course, of family.