supercorp SOULMATE AU please? Thanks :)
-my first ask, thank you so much! have some slight angst (that takes place mostly in lena’s head) with a very happy ending :) send me prompts!-
“I didn’t really understand the concept when I first came here. Earth, I mean,” Kara says and Lena’s hearts plummets. It’s what she expected, really, but still she clenches her jaw as she nods and smiles and urges Kara to go on, to keep on talking.
Kara doesn’t say it, not in those exact words anyways, but it’s all that Lena can hear. I don’t have a mark. I don’t have a name. Lena, despite the revelation, cuddles closer. It’s pathetic, but she can’t help herself. She doesn’t have a name. Doesn’t have Lena’s.
Kara’s place is comfortable, calming. Where Lena’s walls are bland and white and adorned with nothing but burnt-in sad stares, Kara’s are yellow and full of smiling faces. Picture frames all over the place, in some of which Lena - proudly - has found herself in. She likes it better here, prefers spending her time here where everything smells sweet and of Kara. Far away from work and a building that adorns a last name Lena never wanted, far away from having to be someone she’s not.
It’s a hiatus, every Friday night - deemed movie night - a long, drawn out sigh of relief. The large bowl that had been filled to the brim with popcorn is now empty, their movie having ended some hours ago. But as always they’re still here, Lena in one of Kara’s sweaters and both of them partly covered by the same blanket, limbs sprawled out over a couch so comfortable that both of them have fallen asleep on it, rather than the bed, more than once in the past.
Their conversation gets interrupted, every now and then, by stifled yawns and eyes daring to fall shut, but Lena still watches Kara in the dim light as she talks of her home.
“Alex was the first to tell me about it, naturally. I thought it was exciting. Soulmates.” Kara chuckles, revels in the memory. “She showed me her mark immediately. Sam, on her hip. Back then she thought it was going to be a guy. She never shut up about it, ever.”
Lena smiles, her trembling fingers playing with the fabric of Kara’s shirt. She looks at her, knows what will come next.
“I would’ve done anything to have my own.”
Lena knows it’s not her place to feel like this, whatever it is. Disappointment. The feeling seems to be mocking her, almost, and Lena knows it’s deserved. She had known it’d be like this, she had always known. People with a name like hers don’t get granted a soulmate, not someone like this. Not someone this bright yellow, this good. It had been a pathetic thought to begin with.
Lena breathes quietly through the silence, not trusting her own voice, unable to stand that look on Kara’s face. Her features open, like a child’s, disappointment written all over them. Lena wants to reach out, instead grips her shirt tighter.
“So you don’t have one?” she asks eventually, though the answer had been clear as soon as the subject had been brought up. There’s no hiding the pain in Kara’s eyes, in her entire being, and there’s no hiding the fact that of course Lena’s name would never find a place on Kara’s skin.
“I don’t,” Kara sighs, asks the question Lena had been scared of. “Do you?”
Kara must know she does, that everyone here on earth does. It’s not what she’s asking, not really. “What does yours say, what name?” is the question Lena reads between the lines, between soft fingers now playing with her hair. Lena closes her eyes.
“I don’t have one,” she lies, whispers. Painfully so. Kara Zor-El burns on her shoulder.
//
Lena paces the DEO until finally Alex, with an eyeroll - more affectionate than annoyed -, allows her to enter the room.
Kara is positioned under a red sun lamp, no longer in her supersuit. Different parts of her body are adorned with bruises, blue and yellow like bold strokes across a canvas of skin. She looks weak, feeble. Human. After a day full of fighting aliens, Kara Zor-El looks like a little girl, soft features and shallow breathing, eyes closed only until Lena approaches and she opens them slowly, followed by an instant smile blossoming on chapped lips.
"You're here," Kara whispers through said smile, as if there'd been another option. "You were there."
Lena's cheeks redden as she imagines what Kara must be recalling. Fighting that alien, tumbling down 30 feet onto the hard concrete of the city below, Lena yelling at Alex to let her through.
Lena falling to her knees, Lena begging, Lena softly caressing her face. Lena telling her to stay alive. You have to.
Just like Lena needed to be there, needs to be here now.
"Of course I'm here. Kara, I…", Lena begins, but stops herself quickly. How do you tell someone that they're your entire world, when their skin doesn't even bear your name?
But Kara doesn't push, asks something unexpected instead. "Can I see it?"
"What?" Lena's heart sinks. She knows what Kara is asking for, her lie weak from the beginning.
"Your soulmate mark," Kara clarifies, just as Lena had expected her to. "Can you please show it to me?"
Lena does. She pulls down her shirt to expose her shoulder, but it feels like more than that. The act feels like undressing, like taking off her shirt, her bra, stepping out of her skin. Lena's never felt as naked or vulnerable, but all Kara does is gently trace her own name with soft fingers.
It's an intimate silence that follows, a comfortable one. Between them there's only soft breathing and a name, and Kara's tears.
"You're mine too, you know." Kara whispers, continues because Lena doesn't know what to say. "My soulmate, I mean. I can feel it."
"But you… -"
"Don't have a mark," Kara finishes for her, sighs. "I don't think I need one, to know that it's you. I just do."
The words run like fire through Lena's veins, spreading a painful warmth that she knows will not last. "How can you be sure? How-"
"Lena." Kara takes Lena's hand, playing with her fingers as she speaks. "I've never been more sure of anything in my entire life, trust me. I have no way of knowing that this is the right thing to do and yet, if you'll let me, I know I'll want to spend the rest of my life with you by my side."
There's another retort on the tip of Lena's tongue, tears welling in her eyes. Kara squeezes her hand, shakes her head.
"I don't have your name, but I want it. I choose you, Lena, shouldn't that count for something?"
Lena wants to say yes, wants to scream it, but they've just deemed words unfit to always convey the right answer, and so she leans forward instead to kiss Kara. To kiss her soulmate.
