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As with most things related to her erstwhile friendship with Kara, it was an accident. Not learning from her despicable brother that she was Supergirl – Lex had clearly been planning that. Not having Kara lost to the Phantom Zone – he had suddenly concocted that plan too. It began with Kara’s laptop. Lena would normally never have gone near it but someone had to write to CatCo that she was taking an extended leave of absence. No one knew Kara’s password and it was a small thing... a tiny thing she could do for Kara after all the pain she had caused her, after condemning her to unimaginable horrors in that place. So like a fool she had volunteered. Alex had a tight look on her face as she bore the emotional holocaust of losing her sister. The elder Danvers handed her the extra key to Kara’s apartment.
“And Lena…” Alex said quietly. “Stay as long as you like. I know since the crisis things have…changed… for you. I know Kara would want you to stay at her place.”
She left Lena open-mouthed and dumbfounded. Because how could anyone think that Kara would want Lena in her space? After… after all the pain they had caused each other. Granted, Lena didn’t exactly have the same lifestyle after Lex cut her off from the Luthor assets. But she’d made enough investments on her own since she was 18. She had always been conscious of the power that her family could wield over her not to think they would try this: to use the wealth as leverage to manipulate her. Lena's penthouse was still hers and she didn’t deserve to be at Kara’s place. Lena was just going to hack into Kara’s laptop and send an email.
Kara had lied to her. For years. She didn’t know why. What strategic end could it have possibly served? Lena knew that sharing her secret identity with a Luthor would have been foolhardy, Supergirl had said so herself when they had gone to get Reign. Which meant Kara had said so. Which meant everything thing she had said when she was Kara Danvers was a lie. Everything she had done. The way Kara had made caring for her seem so easy – what would have been the point if not to hurt her? Every random compliment, every laugh, each and every hug that in her quiet moments she admitted to herself she longed for… even now. Even after all this. It had all been false.
Lena unlocked Kara’s door and stepped in, and a tsunami of feelings crashed into memories she had buried in the little boxes of her mind. Then the wave drew back and brought sensations she no longer wanted to feel – no longer deserved to feel – that she had banished from her heart. The warm smell of vanilla and cinnamon assaulted her and she felt like she had been stabbed. Lena staggered to the kitchen counter.
“C’mon Lena, it’ll be fun.” Kara’s voice echoed in her head distantly. She was holding up a box of 256 crayons and a coloring book. In fairness, it was an adult coloring book. And it did look nice. And a part of Lena she despised wanted to do it, wanted to sit side by side with Kara and just color. Just play. Because when you are not fed love on a silver spoon, you learn to take it where you can get it. You learn to lick it off knives. She could have friends, good friends like Sam – but Kara was different. Kara had always been different. And they had sat here at this counter, hips and legs slightly touching, and Lena had felt herself drift. All the worries of the day had bled off her, because she was always worried, all the time. Luthor Corp employed over a hundred thousand people and she had an obligation to them, to keep the company afloat, make the right strategic decisions, and build a better future for everyone inside and outside the company. Especially those that Lillian and Lex had hurt. Her mind was bursting with thoughts but Kara always quieted them, always took her gently to this space where she felt safe and… good. Like a good person who was deserving of protection, and softness, and… and love. Kara had given that to her, tentatively at first – stumbling over her sentences as if her thoughts were racing too fast for her words, then confidently as Kara would wheedle and pout and coax her into that headspace… and eventually into her arms.
Lena could start fires with what she felt for Kara. Her heart still belonged to the one who broke it and Lena detested herself for it - for needing Kara so badly and simultaneously hoping that hurting Lena would haunt her for years. Lena hated herself. For so long, Lena hadn’t remembered what it was like to not feel broken, to not feel cast aside like an outgrown toy in one of those Disney movies Kara loved, to not feel enough for anyone. When Kara stumbled into her life, shining like the sun through the cracks of her all too careful façade, Lena had believed her. She had really expected her to stay. Lena had broken her own heart. Loving Kara wasn’t a mistake but thinking she loved Lena back was. There was never a single honest moment in their friendship. You couldn’t expect loyalty from people who couldn’t even give you honesty. No one really stayed. And as usual the joke was on her, because now Kara can’t stay even if she wanted to. Lena had lashed out, helped her psychotic brother, and now Kara was in the Phantom Zone.
She sagged against the counter heavily as tears sprang to her eyes and Lena brushed them away angrily. Her feelings don’t matter. All her misplaced affections, her stupid yearning for Kara, the desperate tears in the long silence of the night – none of these things would bring Kara back.
What are these tears supposed to do, Lena? Only infants and weaklings cry. Stop that at once.
Lillian’s voice was in her head again and she drowned it out before she spiraled. She threw her head back and stood tall, marched into the living area and plugged in the flash drive with the alpha-numeric randomizer forcefully into Kara’s laptop. She knew it would take some time so Lena decided to clean up. She picked up a dish cloth from the sink and dusted some surfaces obsessively, purged Kara’s fridge of some milk that was expiring today and some left overs that seemed way beyond food safety guidelines. She avoided the bedroom, knowing instinctively that Kara’s bed still smelled like her. Lena didn't trust herself not to throw herself onto it and bury her nose in Kara’s pillow.
She's sitting on the couch when she finds it, wedged between the cushions and the back. A moleskine reporter’s notebook with the L-corp logo, some grab bag give-away from one of her corporate events, only it has her name. Her name is seared into it in Kara’s penmanship – can you call it handwriting if she clearly did it with her heat vision? It’s jagged and uneven, but it is her name. And against her better judgment she opens it.
It's unlined, as Lena prefers her moleskine swag to be, with some scorch marks from the heat vision on the cover. Kara has sketched on the first few pages in pencil – Lena in profile on Kara’s couch, Lena at CatCo at that belated catch-up lunch when she had been working with Rhea. The next few pages are her name, repeated over and over, in precise ball-point ink. Then more sketches of places they’ve been, their table at Noonan’s. And then there are Kara’s words, so intimate, as if the words had nowhere else to go so she put them down here.
It’s so hard not talking to you.
I thought of you today. I wish I could remind you that you are such a good person, Lena. No matter what anyone says. At the core of it all, you always try to make a difference. I wish you would believe that, to me, you are the difference.
Heard you finished the biosensor for diabetics. I wish I could tell you how proud I am of you. I accidentally punctured my finger once when I solar flared (long story) and anyway it wasn’t pleasant so I can’t imagine having to do that multiple times a day to test your blood sugar. Not having to do that anymore must be great. Your idea was genius. You’re a genius. I didn’t tell you that often enough, did I?
I hate being strangers again, Lena. I miss you. I wish you missed me like I miss you.
I couldn’t help it. I flew by your office. I hovered behind the First National Bank tower to check on you. You look really tired and angry and hard. I worry you’re drinking too much. I wish I could drop by and bring you dinner like I used to. I wish I could ease the knots out of your shoulders. I wish I could lose these feelings as fast as I lost you.
It hurts to know you would never remember the things I will never forget.
I’m so sorry Lena. I tried to fix everything, I did. But every timeline was worse than this one. I never wanted to be just another person who broke your trust. I didn’t mean to hurt you but I did. I did. I’m so sorry.
I finished reading Dune. I can see why it’s your favorite. But it’s so sad, Lena. Do you think you’re a Harkonnen? You’re not. You’re not a villain. Even though I said you were. Even though I treated you like one. I have so many regrets, so many things I need you to forgive me for. And if I was Sam, I'd tell you not to forgive me because I don't deserve it. I'm such a hypocrite.
I know this is stupid and I’m not really talking to you. I wish I could be talking to you. Especially now. You hurt me. I know it’s because I hurt you first. I know you. I know you hurt so much on the inside you have to hurt someone on the outside. I know all this but there’s just so much pain, it’s not even the kryptonite... just the way you look at me now hurts me. I have tried so hard to fix my mistakes. I've tried to come through for you. Nothing works. All you want to do is hurt me. I broke us. I broke you. And maybe I just have to live with that.
It's been months, Lena. I was just learning to live without you when you came through my door to tell me about Non Nocere and how you built it out of fear and pain. When are you going to learn that the end doesn't justify the means? That your Machiavellian behavior is preventing you from getting the things you desperately want? Why can't you see how much your betrayal hurt me? How your complete and utter indifference wounded me to the core? Sometimes I think I can’t forgive you. But then I remember how deeply I betrayed you. You never need to apologize for how you chose to survive that. I let you plummet into darkness but you still came to my door. Still chose to do what was right. Every time I think I can't forgive you, I remember all that you are. I still think the world of you, Lena Luthor. I still believe in you.
And Lena collapses into the couch, into the pillows that they had always used to lean back on as Kara held her in that soft, sure embrace. Her tears stain the notebook, and she can’t bring herself to care, can’t bring herself to read another word but she hugs the notebook to her chest as sobs heave through the emptiness of it all - the hopelessness of a world without Kara.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise when Kara’s password is Lena’s birthday. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Kara’s desktop screen is the view of her office balcony from the air. It shouldn’t be a surprise when Lena finally walks into Kara’s bedroom to curl into her bed in tears that there are canvasses of angry and heartbroken abstracts leaning against the wall and that there is a photo of Lena and Kara underneath the pillow. Lena held the soft Darth Vader blanket close as she cried out in anguish because it shouldn’t be a surprise that Kara missed her… that Kara loved her. But it is. It is. She never trusted it, sheltered it, or deserved it. And now it's gone.