AO3 Link (Continuation from Dress)
Kara sights her adversary on the wall just above one of the displays for artifacts from Indigenous tribes of North America. Despite the red cloak and ridiculously large hat, Kara knows it's Lena hanging there. Lena has carefully cut a hole in the glass enclosure, somehow turned off the alarm, and has the artifact in her gloved hand.
"Halt," Kara calls. She whips out her stun gun. "Don't make me shoot."
Lena raises a beautifully sculpted eyebrow. "Ah, I wondered when my favorite agent would arrive. Quite a dashing appearance I would say."
Kara tries not to preen at the compliment. She wears a suit and tie, mostly to blend in with the gala on the other side of the museum. Her team had been on high alert due to yet another invitation by LKW. Her boss, Alex, had been certain it was the jewels LKW sought, but Kara knows better.
Lena's past thefts had been highly specific cultural items from various Indigenous tribes throughout the world. Despite several of Kara's best contacts scouring the black market discreetly and preparing to buy any of the stolen artifacts, nothing Lena steals ever shows up in the auctions. Nor in private sales, at least the ones Kara's friends Nia and J'onn can access.
So where does Lena take them? It's haunted Kara for quite awhile.
"Why that artifact?" Kara asks. "It's just an old firestarter. Best you can get with that is embers."
Lena tucks the artifact into a pocket in the interior of her cloak. "Come now, agent, surely you have more imagination than that?" She swings to the next display. This one holds a set of fabrics, many intricately woven with dyed strands. She carefully cuts another circle and the embers of her torch sends sparks across the top of the glass.
"Are you seriously just going to continue?" Kara can't believe it. "I'm literally pointing a gun at you."
"You won't shoot it." Lena smiles and removes the circle with a flick of her finger. It flips over onto the other half of the glass top. "You never do. So instead of that tiresome posturing, play a game with me." She grins and reaches in to nab the next artifact. "Guess why I take these."
Kara frowns. "Toying with me now?"
"Oh I know you love it," Lena teases. She winks. "And I bet our last kiss has haunted your dreams."
Kara's face reddens. She will never admit it, but that kiss does indeed haunt her dreams and waking moments. In fact, she's half-thinking of it right now. Both of them dangling by rope as they make out-- "Dammit, stop that." Her face turns a darker shade of red when she realizes she said it out loud.
Lena laughs, and it's a gorgeous ripple of gold that sparks embers deep in Kara's gut. God, she wants to hear that laugh again and again.
"So the truth has been revealed." She tugs her bag to her side and carefully tucks the fabrics into it. "Now, our game? Or are you too flustered to think?" Another wink has Kara wishing she'd stuck to the other side of the gala.
Her gun lowers, while she struggles to regain an upper hand. "You poisoned me with that kiss." As much as it stings that the kiss had been merely to distract, Kara finds herself far more forgiving of Lena than she ought to be.
"Hardly," Lena scoffs. "My lipstick contained a trace amount of a phenylpropanoid derived from nutmeg, which can be hallucinogenic at certain doses, but it also has antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties. It's used in medicinal tonics in Southern Asia." She swings to the last display case in this exhibit. "I believe it important to the health of my favorite agent to occasionally loosen you up."
That's followed up with a wink.
Which only makes Kara want to kiss her even more.
"Well, I certainly did let loose," Kara says, her cheeks likely burning so red that she might as well be on fire. How does Lena stoke her so creepily well? Kara fights a spell of arousal after every conversation they share. It's maddening.
"Fine, I'll play your game. But after, I'm bringing you in. You're in a very disadvantageous position, Ms. Walsh, hanging from the ceiling."
"Am I? Oh, whatever shall I do?" Lena feigns a dramatic faint with one hand to her forehead. "My big bad agent will surely have to rescue me from this dreadful predicament."
Kara's face burns. "Big bad agent? Come now, I'm not that big."
"Tell that to your deltoids and biceps," Lena shoots back.
Which is a valid point. Kara does work out enough to have decently defined muscles, but she's not that beefy, is she? She flexes one arm, and to her amusement, Lena stares at her, her cutting momentarily distracted. The flame sizzles in the air above the glass.
"Oh, a muscle lover?" Kara teased. She flexes her other arm, and Lena bites her lip and quickly looks down at her torch.
The sparks glint blue as she completes her circular cut. "You have two guesses. I will reply with the truth for one guess and a lie for the other."
"One truth and one lie?" Kara puts her hands on her hips. "You don't make it easy, do you?"
Lena chuckles and slides the cut glass to one side. "And miss out on your famous detective skills? I think not. Dazzle me, agent."
She reaches inside to take out a clay vessel that has the shape of a frog with a tall snout sticking out of its back. To Kara's surprise, Lena takes her time gently wrapping the vessel in a massive amount of cloth from her bag.
"The items you steal never show up on the black market, so either someone commissions you to steal them or you have private dealers to avoid detection." It's been Kara's best guess for awhile now.
Lena raises an eyebrow. "Interesting guess. What evidence do you have that I'm selling them at all?"
Kara frowns. "It's the typical reason for theft. Usually those who frequent museums and university antique libraries like you sell on the black market or were commissioned by a wealthy collector."
"Wealthy." Lena laughs, but it's different than the whimsical laugh earlier. This one is darker, more dangerous, and her green eyes glint with an intensity that leaves Kara feeling incredibly parched. "Indeed, I expected a bit more imagination, Kara."
It's the first time Lena used Kara's first name only, and her intense gaze has Kara squirming.
She feels suddenly inadequate, simply because it never occurred to her that Lena might not be selling the artifacts at all. "The other possibility is you seek to gather an illegal collection for your own amusement."
Lena sighs, and that alone fills Kara with shame, as if she'd failed a test she hadn't known she was taking. "Kara, look at what I'm holding." She holds up the heavily wrapped vessel. "This is an extremely rare frog vessel from the Anasazi tribe in Southern United States. Descendants of the Anasazi live in reservations, forced off their lands, and often considered an extinct tribe."
"Okay, so you know your history, but why steal it?" Kara asks.
"Let me ask you this," Lena says, her voice suddenly serious. "If your agency raided an illegal black market auction that had thousands of stolen artifacts, what would be the fate of those artifacts?"
Kara frowns. "Hey, I thought I was the one to ask questions here."
"Answer the question, agent." The sharpness in Lena's voice takes Kara by surprise. This doesn't feel much like a game anymore.
"We put them in evidence bags and that goes to the department that handles artifact storage and analysis..." she trails off, her mind spinning at the implications.
"And once that department analyzes them, where do they go?"
"Often to museums..." A sick feeling curls through Kara's stomach.
"And where are we currently?"
"A museum in San Francisco..." Kara meets Lena's gaze, and for the first time, doubt curdles through her. "You're not taking these to sell them, are you? You're taking them to return them."
Lena smiles and tucks the frog vessel into her pack. "Perhaps you have a brain after all."
"But why do this? If you're caught, no one is going to care that you are returning cultural artifacts to their respective tribes." Kara frowns and crosses her arms. "The risk feels too high for the relative value--"
Lena loosens the carabiner on her rope and drops to the ground in front of Kara. The movement startles her, and Kara breaks off midsentence.
Tenderly, Lena reaches out to touch Kara's face, her glove warm. "And if I ever let love go, / because the hatred and the whisperings / of a phantom dictate I obey," Lena whispers, her eyes searching Kara's as if Kara herself held the artifacts she sought. She leans closer, her breath warm against Kara's skin.
Her words ignite a fire so deep, that Kara feels like she's burning from the inside out. Her right hand disobeys her and lightly touches Lena's waist.
"... then let love freeze me out," Lena continues, "I must, I must become a menace to my enemies."
The last line hits Kara like punch to her gut. "That's by June Jordan," she says, stunned. "My Aunt Astra loved that poem."
"Astra El, a brilliant strategist and freedom fighter in the Kaznia war against Russia." Lena's heterochromatic eyes pierced Kara's like daggers. "A war they lost brutally, their country pillaged and left in severe poverty. A great many refugees lay scattered throughout Western Nations."
"How do you know all that?" Kara says, her eyes wide. She's never talked about her past before with anyone. Not even Alex, Nia, or J'onn. Her and Kal-el survived only because Aunt Astra smuggled them out when Kara was ten years old and Kal only three.
"I seek what is lost and restore it." An answer that tells Kara next to nothing. Lena smiles, sadly, her thumb rubbing against Kara's cheek. "We must become a menace to our enemies, Kara."
Kara takes in a sharp breath. Her hand moves to her belt. "I should handcuff you right now and drag you in."
Lena steps back and holds out her wrists. "Then do it."
Kara's hands shake as she pulls out the bulky handcuffs. They dangle from her right hand, but she can't bring herself to do it. Lena's words, the poetry, and most of all knowledge of Kara's beloved Aunt? Too many questions dance in her head.
Lena drops her hands to her side with a smile. "I thought so." She leans in close and kisses Kara's cheek. "Now as much as I enjoyed our chat, I really must be going."
Kara knows this is her last chance. Sure, maybe she can't bring herself to handcuff Lena Kieran Walsh, but she can flip an alarm by hitting the signal on her walkie-talkie. The rest of the agents will flood the room and secure their adversary finally. Kara will be heralded a hero instead of yelled at for failing yet again.
But their conversation unnerves her so much that Kara does nothing.
Instead, she watches as Lena climbs up the wall, walking as if it's a floor, her hands on the rope. At the ceiling, she proceeds to push a tile to one side. Darkness looms in the resulting hole.
Lena glances down at her with a sad smile, and her right eye glints a bit more blue than the other. "There's a cozy, Vietnamese restaurant in San Diego that has an excellent view of the Pacific Ocean. I hear the potstickers are to die for."
"Oh?" Kara wonders why Lena is telling her this.
"Think about it, Kara," Lena says softly, and her gaze holds Kara's with an intimacy that takes her breath away. Framed by the ceiling lights around her escape hatch, Lena looks almost like an ethereal angel. "Don't hush," she recites a poem that tickles Kara's memory, but not enough to identify it, "don't throw away, / the most persistent truth, / as our hard-headed brethren / sometimes do."
Kara raises her hand in response, but words fail to form on her lips. With one last lingering glance, Lena slips into the ceiling and the tile is replaced as if she'd never been there.
A silence descends on the room, and a heaviness wraps around Kara's heart.
She looks up at the cameras in the room, and wonders what they captured. Turning, she walks back the way she came, but instead of joining the gala again, she turns toward the security office.
Inside, she finds two men, one of them half-asleep, and the other typing into a computer. They look up at her entrance.
"Agent Kara Zorel of Interpol," she says and flashes her badge. "May I review your footage for the last fifteen minutes?"
"Don't see why not." The man at the computer gestures to the wall of screens. He taps out a command, and Kara watches each of them carefully.
But none show her and Lena talking. The room Lena had burglarized looks as if no one had stepped in it for ages.
Which means Lena either works with someone, who aids in altering security footage, or she set this up days in advance to disguise her tracks. It makes sense considering how useless past security footage always proved to be. The drones they set to fly the perimeter sometimes catches glimpses of her get-away vehicle, but each one turns into a dead-end, the name on the rental a nonexistent person.
"Thank you. My superior may be by again to review further footage." Kara nods to the men and exits back toward the gala. She sights several agents spread out discreetly throughout the large ballroom, and her boss, Alex, lingers near the stage, where the artifact sits. The one her team had been certain was LKW's target.
She wonders what Aunt Astra would think of her working for Interpol. Kara thought she did this in her Aunt's honor, but Lena's words darken her thoughts and litter them with a gnawing doubt.
Alex corners her only five minutes later at the drink table. "And where have you been for the last twenty minutes?"
Kara sighs. "Bathroom and a check with the security feeds." This is technically the truth since she did go to the bathroom after the visit with security, but it leaves her with a mounting guilt and confusion.
Why is she protecting Lena Kieran Walsh? Sure, she enjoys their conversations, the flirting, and definitely that kiss, but she's a thief, and a dangerous one at that. What does she owe Lena? And yet, she'd somehow known of her Aunt, and spoken of her with reverence. Why?
"And you've seen nothing?" Alex searches Kara's face as if trying to read her mind. "No parting diatribes with our darling thief?" A hint of sarcasm filters into Alex's tone.
"No, nothing." Kara picks up a glass of water and drinks it, her eyes on the stage, where a band plays and the newest piece for the museum sits on display. Some sort of silver calf with carved symbols that mean nothing to Kara.
But they likely meant something to the culture from which that calf came.
"I think this might have been a diversion," she says. "Send us here while she goes elsewhere."
"I hope not, but I'll put in feelers for any suspicious activity within the region." Alex places a hand on Kara's shoulder. "I know this case has been hard for you. Just remember, as charming as Ms. Walsh is, she's also a dangerous fugitive. We must bring her to justice."
Kara nods and manages a smile. She drinks her water instead of replying. Is what she's doing justice?
Or is Lena Kieran Walsh's thefts a truer justice?
An unanswerable question.
Disturbed, she finds a quiet corner to watch the gala attendees. But her attention lays scattered like the petals on the red carpet stage.
Lena's last worlds pulse in her head, and she can't help herself. Kara performs a search on her phone for a specific restaurant in San Diego that serves potstickers.
When the theft is discovered two hours later, she aids the others in the investigation, but Lena Kieran Walsh, as usual, left no fingerprints, and no clues other than the three precisely cut holes in the glass enclosures.
stormborns
prguitarman
romaincrisis
annaxmalina
titsay
baratheonpilled
izzy806
discoholicmusic
