Chapter 36 - Pain

A week has now gone by since Kara ended things with Lena, and Lena has remained absolutely devastated, she is simply broken. Lena has been through so much in her life, so much torment, and so many threats that have been made against her. Lena has experienced the years and years of abuse from her mother, and no matter what she did, she did not break her, Lena just wouldn't allow it. Then after that, Lena experienced the torment at the hands of Lex, who she found out for years, throughout her entire childhood, had been manipulating her for his own amusement, with the pièce de resistance being Lex's attempts on Lena's life. Despite Lena being completely traumatised by Lex, throwing her whole childhood she had experienced with him on her head, and then with her brother, who she thought loved her, attempting to kill her, and not just on one occasion, even that didn't break Lena. In fact, after everything that Lena has experienced thus far in her life, she didn't think that anything could truly break her, not anymore. Lena thought that she had built up enough tolerance throughout her life, even though she is only in her 20s, to last her a lifetime, to make sure that no one could hurt her ever again, and no one could break her. But, through all those years, Lena had always been looking outwards. Lena always thought that the threat that could break her would come from someone else, from Lillian or Lex, or some businessman or woman. Lena never, ever, thought that she would be the one to break herself. It just wasn't even a possibility in her mind. But here Lena is now, completely and utterly broken, her heart shattered into a million pieces, and it's all her fault. Lena has successfully accomplished something that Lillian and Lex never could. The only solus Lena takes from it, is if they find out how broken she is now, they will be completely infuriated that Lena did to herself, something they could never do. But that's still really not much comfort.

Ever since Kara walked out of Lena's office a week ago, Lena just hasn't been able to get it together. Lena obviously has experienced much heartbreak, stress and emotional tolls, throughout her entire life, and because of that she thought that she had a handle on just how to deal with her emotions. For years and years Lena had just been compartmentalising her emotions into small boxes, planning to deal with them later, but later never came, there was always another thing, one after another, that Lena needed to attend to, instead of unboxing her emotions. Although, admittedly, it is not like Lena was actually eager to unbox all her emotional trauma and baggage. In fact, Lena may have actively sought out work to stop herself from having to unbox her emotions and trauma, and have to deal with them. So, Lena tried to do the same for her emotions now, what she is experiencing because of her actions regarding Alura. Lena took the previous Thursday, after Kara walked out, just to wallow in her sadness, going home and crying for hours and hours. Then the next day Lena awoke and planned to just box up all her emotions again, and try and focus on work, and try not to think about how she had ruined the best thing to happen to her life, and lost the two people she loves the most in the world. But, when Lena awoke on that Friday she couldn't contain her emotions, her compartmentalisation just wasn't working anymore.

After Lena was unable to get herself together on Friday, she just called Jess and told her that she would be working from home, and not coming into L-Corp. Of course usually anything like this from Lena would have absolutely shocked Jess, but Jess happened to overhear the yelling the day before, and therefore was well aware that her boss must be upset over it all, and still recovering, so she didn't make a big deal of it, just agreeing to rearrange Lena's schedule. Lena for her part then just spent the Friday trying to do work, but it just wasn't working. Lena just kept breaking into tears, and thinking of how much of an idiot she was/is, and how much she hates herself for what she has done. Lena truly and honestly felt absolutely sick with herself, she just wanted to puke, just because of how bad and awful she was feeling from everything, and so overwhelmed.

Due to Lena's emotional state, she was unable to get any meaningful work done on the Friday at all, her eyes not focusing enough to look at a computer screen, with tears just getting in the way. Lena then decided that for the weekend she would just try and get herself together, not attempt to do any work. Lena would then just try and focus on her emotional state, and get all her tears and sadness, and utter heartbreak and devastation, out of her system, just so that she could move on for the next week, and try and get back to some semblance of normality. But as Lena's weekend progressed, she realised that that wasn't going to be the case. Lena's emotional state wasn't getting any better, in fact, focusing just purely on it, was making Lena so, so, much worse. This resulted in Lena trying to dull her pain on the Saturday with a lot of alcohol. Lena just began drinking a glass of scotch, hoping that it would maybe dull her senses a little, and make everything hurt a lot less, but it didn't really help, at all. Lena being in her emotional state wasn't just about to call it quits and decide that the alcohol wasn't going to be of any use, so she drank another glass, then another, and another. Eventually after a few hours of drinking, and a large portion of the bottle of scotch, Lena honestly felt a bit better. The alcohol hadn't been able to dull Lena's heartache, from the pain which she caused Kara, Alura and herself, but what it had been able to do was turn down her brain, making her unable to focus on her heartache. It was much like Lena just shut off the link that connected her brain to her heart. So, Lena just kept like this, drinking some more glasses, until she couldn't function anymore, just completely blacking out on her living room floor.

Lena woke up on the Sunday, and everything hit her with full force again. Not only did Lena wake up with her brain registering her heartache again, but she also was in so much pain from the incredible hangover she had. It honestly was so bad that it took Lena several minutes to even attempt to get up off of the floor and onto her feet. Then finally when Lena did, she took one step, felt giddy, and fell to the floor again and blacked out. Lena then regained consciousness several minutes later, she again tried to move, felt her head pounding, puked on the carpet, then blacked out again. It wasn't until an hour later that Lena was successfully able to crawl herself all the way to her bathroom just so she could rest her head on the toilet, and throw up all the remaining alcohol, and the food she ate, from last night. Lena thinks that it was the worst hangover that she ever had, but she knew that she deserved it. In fact, Lena knew that she deserved so much worse, she wanted much worse to happen to herself, as it was all her fault. Lena ruined everything, and she not only hurt Alura, someone she adores, but she hurt Kara too. Lena honestly doesn't know how she could even begin to cope with knowing that she hurt two of the nicest and best people on the planet. If Lena was able to hurt them, then how would she have a chance with ever not hurting anyone else. Lena thought that perhaps the punishment that she deserved was to lock herself way again, and be the mysterious Luthor that people rarely see, and just have Sam do all the public announcements, just so she doesn't have to be an active part of the world anymore. But, of course, these were just all thoughts that ran through Lena's head as she was laying her head on the toilet seat, hungover as hell. But that isn't to say that Lena didn't actually believe any of what she was thinking.

Lena's Sunday progressed from there, and as the late morning slowly turned into afternoon and Lena began to feel better, being able to actually stomach food, Lena came up with an idea. Lena decided that she needed to go over to Kara's. She needed to make an effort and attempt to apologise again, and try and show to Kara and Alura that she was really, really, sorry. The preferred outcome of it all being that Lena and Kara get back together, but at this point Lena would have just settled for being able to tell Alura she is sorry, and explain to her that it is all her own fault, and that nothing was on Alura. Lena just wanted to tell Alura that she loves her, more than anything. Lena honestly thinks that she would die for the young girl. But it's these thoughts and realisations about Alura that just made Lena hate herself even more than she already does. Lena still just doesn't understand how she could do something as stupid and foolish, and frankly evil, as she did to Alura, all while she claims to love her. Lena knows that she can point to her screwed up childhood, and the words of Lillian in her ear, but that really isn't a good enough excuse. Lena doesn't think there will ever be an excuse good enough to explain what she has done. All that Lena hoped for is that she could apologise to Alura, and then go from there. Beyond that, it was completely out of Lena's control, and that frankly made Lena even more nervous.

Lena eventually got herself together on the Sunday, just after 4PM in the afternoon, managing to actually walk on her own two feet, although she didn't feel well enough to drive, so Lena just called her driver to take her to Kara's. When Lena arrived, she told her driver just to wait for her, as Lena knew very well that the likely outcome, even in her best-case scenario, was that she would only be there for a very limited amount of time, before Kara sent her away. All Lena hoped is that she would be able to at least see Alura to try and apologise, to at least make the five-year-old feel better, to not make Alura blame herself for anything.

Lena got out of her driver's car and went into Kara's building complex. Lena then made her way over to the elevator and pressed the button, waiting for the doors to open. However, after about 15 seconds, what Lena did not expect was for Kara to appear to her left, coming from out of the stairwell, with anger still on her face.

"You need to leave!" Kara basically growled.

"Kara please.... let me... let me see Alura..." Lena attempted.