#alex danvers

The syllables ripple through her—delicate, devastatingly beautiful. She knows what it means. God, she knows. Knows that it’s one of those tricky words that doesn’t translate cleanly, but always carries the same weight: attractive, lovely, captivating. The kind of word that leaves your mouth when you're not trying to be careful.

She hadn’t heard it in years.

But now Kara’s voice is curling around the word like it’s a secret, like it’s a spell.

Lena thinks about answering. The words are right there on her tongue: you think I’m beautiful? but she swallows them whole. Because of course she understands it, but she can’t explain to Kara Danvers why.

Not without telling her that she studied Kryptonese as a teenager. Not without explaining that once upon a time, she was trying to impress a brother who only cared about aliens if he could control them. That she buried herself in the language Lex found important, until she understood it better than most diplomats. That she kept studying even after it stopped being about Lex at all, because there was something about it. Something beautiful and sacred. Something that told her she would need it. Something more. 

Now—now she knows exactly why she felt like that.

Lena’s breath stutters. The moment stretches too wide, too bright, like a spotlight turned inward. Kara leans in again, tucking a strand of Lena’s hair behind her ear like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like she hasn’t just upended everything.

Lena blinks. Swallows. Commands her heart to behave.

But it doesn’t.

It keeps whispering it back to her all throughout the games. On the ride in the back of the car. On the elevator ride up to her penthouse. In the hush of her bedroom when all the lights are off and sleep betrays her—and her heart does even worse. It hopes. It beats hope and love and Kara’s name so loud, she doesn’t know how to keep it a hushed secret anymore.

Zrhureiao.

Gorgeous.

Her fingers brush her own ear like maybe the sound is still caught there. Like maybe she could press it back into her skin and forget it ever happened.

But she can’t. She won’t. 

Because Kara said it in her mother tongue.

And meant it like a vow, not something wrong.

And Lena understood it perfectly—like it was hers all along.

It happens again a few weeks later. During an argument this time, of all things.

Lena’s pacing in her lab, fury simmering beneath her skin like static before a storm. Kara made a last-minute decision on a joint mission—something reckless, heroic, infuriating. Something that could’ve gotten her killed.

Kara stands in the doorway, sheepish, trying to explain. But Lena won’t let her.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to do that,” she snaps. “You just flew off like—like you didn’t think I’d be able to handle it!”

“I trusted you to—”

“No,” Lena cuts her off. “You didn’t trust me, Kara. You protected me. Like I’m some fragile piece of glass you can keep on a shelf and hope I never crack. I'm not a damsel in distress!”

Kara’s eyes widen. She steps forward, hands raised in surrender—open palms and soft breaths, always trying to deescalate what she doesn’t understand.

“Lena—”

“No,” Lena says again, sharper this time. “You don’t get to ‘Lena’ your way out of this. You don’t get to look at me like that and expect it to just... disappear.”

But Kara does look at her like that. Like Lena is the axis the universe turns around. Like she’s the only truth left in a world full of chaos. And then, softly, barely more than breath:

“Ta- rrip zrhureiao rrem rrip doshai?”

Lena freezes.

She knows that tone. Knows the weight of those syllables like they were stitched into her ribcage. She wishes she didn’t know what it meant. Wishes Kara didn’t say it like it hurt to hold it in.

Why are you so beautiful when you're mad?

The anger vanishes—like breath on glass. Like it was never real at all.

Lena opens her mouth, then closes it. Looks away before Kara can see what’s breaking loose across her face.

She clears her throat, soft and sharp. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” Kara blinks, confused—genuinely. Like she didn’t even notice the way the words escaped her. Like Kryptonese is just muscle memory now, leaking truth where silence used to be.

Lena shakes her head. “Forget it.”

But Lena, herself, doesn’t forget. She can’t.

Because Kara keeps doing this—speaking in Kryptonese like it’s safer than English. Like it’s a secret place she can feel everything she’s not ready to admit. A language where nothing is casual, where every word is laced with truth.

And Lena… Lena keeps understanding. Keeps translating Kara’s tenderness like scripture. Keeps collecting these slips like sacred footnotes in their history together. Keeps falling a little more, every time.

It’s late. The kind of late that softens the world, that stretches shadows across the walls and melts time into something unmeasurable. A kind of late where it feels like the night might stretch on forever, and Lena wouldn’t mind if it did. Not from where she is standing.

They’re curled together on Kara’s couch, draped in a blanket that clings like the last trace of a dream: light as air, heavy as comfort. The TV flickers with some old rom-com neither of them is really watching, its dialogue a distant hum against the quiet ache of something unspoken.

Lena’s head rests against Kara’s shoulder, her legs tangled in Kara’s like ivy curling toward sunlight. 

There’s peace here—but it’s the dangerous kind. The kind that settles in your chest too gently, makes you forget how fragile it is. A stillness that feels earned and borrowed all at once, like the universe is holding its breath, just waiting to take it back.

Lena tells herself not to notice. Not to register how perfectly they fit—how easily Kara’s hand could find hers if it reached, how natural this could all feel if she let it. Like puzzle pieces. 

She glances at the clock. A breath drawn in quiet defiance of what comes next. A slow, reluctant untangling.

“I should go,” she murmurs. Her voice is steady, even if everything inside her bends around the words.

Kara doesn’t move. Doesn’t pause the movie. Doesn’t ask her to stay.

Instead, she whispers. Soft. Unarmored. The words barely more than a breath, so fragile they might splinter in the air:

“Khuhp zhind ao rrip zhadif awuhkh vagem.”

Lena freezes.

The syllables roll over her like a tide, salt-rich and moon-drawn, ancient and aching. A language that should feel foreign but lands instead like home. Like something buried under her ribs, waiting to be spoken back into existence.

She doesn’t have to ask. She knows. She always knows. I wish you’d never leave again.

And something in her breaks. Quietly. Cleanly.

It isn’t fair, the way Kara says these things.

Like she doesn’t understand the gravity of them. Like she doesn’t know they could crush Lena just by existing. Like her words aren’t made of stardust and glass and every wish Lena ever folded small enough to hide.

She could answer. Could let it spill.

But the reply burns too deep. And if she opens her mouth now, everything will come rushing out—untamed, untranslatable. It would sound too much like love.

So she laughs. Or something like it. Something thin, breakable, and kind. 

“You’re getting sleepy,” She shifts back just enough to let the cold seep in. A punishment. A shield.

Kara blinks slowly, still somewhere between dream and meaning. “Mm. Yeah.”

Lena rises.

She draws the blanket tighter around Kara’s shoulders, tucking her in like a farewell. Like a promise she wishes she were brave enough to make. Her fingers linger longer than they should, then pull away.

She reaches for her coat without looking back.

“Goodnight, Kara.”

She doesn’t see Kara’s eyes trailing after her like she’s the last light in the room. Doesn’t hear the soft, stunned echo that follows her like a ghost.

“Goodnight, baby.”

But she carries the Kryptonian all the way home. Feels it settle into her skin like stardust. Like a prayer. Like a wish Kara never meant to speak aloud—and Lena can’t stop hearing it, replaying it in her mind like music written just for her.

Like maybe, in another life, she would’ve stayed.

They’re somewhere deep underground, far from the city—old stone, slick with moss, wires cutting across ancient architecture like veins through skin. Kara’s hovering just a few inches off the ground, too impatient to walk. Lena’s beside her, shoulder brushing Kara’s tights when she leans to examine the wall. And Alex is a bit ahead with the flashlight, casting long shadows that stretch like fingers down the corridor.

“Okay,” Alex says, voice echoing. “This one’s got some alien script—Kryptonian, I think? What does this mean?”

Lena doesn’t look at Kara. She doesn’t need to. The words are already burned into her mind. She’s read them before—on dusty pages in old Luthor archives, her fingers trembling, heart young and foolish and already looking for something that might belong to her.

But Kara steps closer to the inscription anyway, her voice low. “Lao zrhureiao divi khuhp skulir kuhs.’”

Lena doesn’t mean to say it. Doesn't mean to make choir to Kara's voice already translating out loud. But it falls out of her like a breath: “The beloved one is a light I can’t look away from.”

Silence.

So sharp, it feels like the air has been sucked out of the entire Earth.

Even Alex just blinks, stunned, slowly turning toward them. “Wait. What the hell did you say?”

But Kara’s already turned. She’s looking at Lena like the words were a key. And now the door’s opened and she’s seeing the whole of her.

“You speak Kryptonese?” Kara asks.

It should sound accusatory. It doesn’t. It sounds... hurt.

Lena swallows. Her mouth feels full of sand. “Um, yeah, sorta.”

Kara doesn’t look away. Her voice goes softer, more dangerous, “Since when?”

Lena exhales. “Since I was sixteen. Lex was obsessed with Superman. And I—” She tries to smile, but it feels brittle. “I wanted something to connect… Wanted him to need me.”

Kara’s eyes narrow, but not in anger. She’s thinking. Tracing things back. Adding it all up.

“How many times?” Kara asks. Her voice is too soft to be angry, too confused not to tremble. “How many times have you understood me when I thought you couldn’t?”

Lena wants to lie. God, she wants to. But she’s tired. Tired of silence. Tired of gathering Kara’s love like contraband—like something precious and forbidden.

“All of them.” she says. “All of, um, your secret confessions.”

Kara flinches. “Like what?”

Lena takes a step back. Her eyes flick toward Alex, searching for escape, for delay—but Alex is already moving. She’s seen enough. Felt the shape of what’s coming. And like someone sensing a storm, she quietly slips out of the room.

No more excuses. No more time.

Lena breathes. And then she answers, her voice barely there—small and yet impossibly brave in the quiet Kara leaves for her.

“Like… things I couldn’t bear to lose.”

Kara doesn’t press. She just watches her, listens like every part of her is tuned to Lena’s frequency. Like the silence is sacred now.

And Lena, against all her instincts, lets herself stay in it.

“Like the first time you called me beautiful,” she says. “You looked right at me when you said it. But you chose another language so I wouldn’t know…”

Her voice falters, like the memory still stings—soft and glowing, but edged with old hurt.

“You said it like it slipped out. Like you couldn't stop it even if you wanted. And I understood every word.”

Kara’s lips part, like she’s about to speak—but Lena keeps going.

“Or the night you said, ‘I wish you’d never leave,’ when I said I was going home.”

Kara’s shoulders tense. Her expression cracks.

“I stayed awake all night just to keep it, as if it would disappear if I slept.”

The words hang in the air between them. Fragile. Shining. Too much.

Kara steps forward. Slowly. Like Lena might vanish into the walls if she moves too fast.

“You knew,” Kara says, her voice frayed at the edges. “All this time. And you never said anything.”

Lena’s reply is barely more than a breath, still sounds too loud in this barren room. “If I told you… you would’ve stopped.”

Kara is close now. Close enough that Lena can feel the heat of her. Close enough to shatter her completely.

Lena’s eyes fall shut. She’s not ready for this—for the shape of truth spoken out loud. She’s spent too long hiding in the margins, surviving on shadows and half-lit moments, on words never meant to survive the air between them.

“I wouldn’t…” Kara’s voice falters, unsteady as a heartbeat in freefall. She inhales. Holds it. Tries again. “I won’t.”

Lena opens her eyes like the act itself might crack the world open. And Kara is looking at her the way sunlight looks at stained glass—desperate to get through, to touch something it was never meant to hold.

“I will never stop saying it,” Kara whispers.

Her hand rises slowly, reverently. And when she cups Lena’s face, it’s not a touch. It’s a vow.

Lena leans in just enough to say yes. Just enough to answer without words. Because Kara’s hand is trembling—not from fear, but from the weight of what comes next. From the sheer meaning of it.

And somehow, the stillness between them feels deafening. Like something holy. Like souls bleeding together. Like love.

Kara steps closer, and their foreheads meet—soft and sure. A contact so gentle it feels like a prayer.

“I meant every word,” Kara says, voice low and certain. “Even when I thought you couldn’t understand me.”

“I know,” Lena breathes. “I know.”

There’s nothing else left to translate.

Kara tilts her head and kisses her like a question.

There’s nothing rushed about it—no fevered urgency, no desperate pull. Just warmth. Just truth. Just the gravity between them finally given permission to exist.

Lena exhales into it, and it sounds like release. Like surrendering to something that had always been inevitable. Kara's hand drifts to the nape of Lena’s neck, fingers curling softly on her hair. The other rests against her waist, grounding her, because she can’t quite believe this is real and won't let the universe take it back.

The kiss deepens and it feels as if they're learning a secret language neither of them had dared to speak before. It’s soft, but it burns. And Lena can feel every unspoken word between them written into it: I want you. I see you. I love you.

When they finally break apart, it’s only just. Kara stays close, breath brushing over Lena’s cheek like a touch.

Then, in a whisper spun of stars and honesty, “Khap zhao rrip.”

Lena stills. Her eyes flutter open.

I love you.

There’s no mistaking it. No soft translation. No ambiguity.

And this time Lena doesn’t stay silent.

Her voice is hoarse with something holy when she answers.

The words don’t stumble—they rise. From the part of her that has always known how to speak these languages: Kryptonese and love. The part of her that has been waiting.

“Khap zhao rrip, zrhueiao.”

Her mother tongue coming out of Lena's tongue feels like a key turning in the lock of the universe. Kara’s breath catches. Her eyes shimmer like something celestial.