#kar danvers

Kar’s gaze was gentle, patient, but there were twitches of confusion in their brow. Their teeth played with the inner edge of their lower lip, toyed with the idea of giving voice to their curiosity, but as that crinkle she found so adorable began to show between eyebrows, she knew what was coming. 

Kar’s shirt dropped to their feet, in favor of hands settling on Lena’s waist, a simple tug enough to encourage her final stride into their space. “What’s happening?”

Lena’s hands flattened against their chest, maintaining that last inch between them—the boundary that kept Kar from the spiral of thoughts that dragged at her. Time would leave its mark on her and life would take its toll, her body taxed more each year, while Kar would not see such struggles in her lifetime. 

“Nothing.” Lena recognized the bitterness that coated her tongue, the venom that she did not want to direct at Kar, so rather than open the floodgates, she denied the need. 

“Are you sure?” When Lena’s gaze lifted, she caught the way their eyes flitted between hers, searching for the truth she hid away. She returned to the sprinkle of hair along their collar bones. “Your heart is— well, it’s doing that thing,” they tapped the erratic beat with a finger, “and I don’t think it’s cause of the knee lift thingies.”

Lena was no longer panting, but her breath was still heavy. “How am I supposed to compete?” A sardonic chuckle hollowed out the rest of her chest. 

Her question was met with a deep inhale, her hands rising with the fill of Kar’s chest, where they held still for a stretched beat. Whatever lightness she’d hoped to return to was forfeit then. 

“You’re not.” 

Lena recoiled from the sting of judgment she’d never escaped, echoed back through her past to rebound with a multitude of voices singing the same cruel chorus. 

“You don’t have to measure yourself against me.” 

There was a sincerity she wasn’t expecting, driving through the shell of humor she used to guard those little seeds she harbored—the doubts about what her future held, what more it would strip from her, and whether what was left would be desirable. 

“You’re allowed to love yourself…”

It wasn’t permission, not in a way that could be given with any true authority, but more the shared fruit of a lesson clawed from blood-thick soil, found in the raw tracks left by tears, and beyond silent screams that haunted nights. And just as it was etched into flesh, it also cropped up in tufts of hair allowed to grow freely. 

It was joy, when all that was taught was loathing and guilt and a sickening sense that escape from all of that wasn’t deserved, wasn’t earned—because somehow it had to be. But there it was, a happiness nurtured in the cracks, sprouting along those ridges, fed by a tender radiance. 

That smile. Crooked, with the barest show of teeth. It’s warmth was offered without demand for compensation.

“You’re enough,” they said, their words driving directly into the tenderness of her heart, “always.” 

Lena heard it, then. Her hands slipped around Kar, held tight in the hope that if she squeezed, it would sink in easier.