#lbitr

Previously, on LBitR...

She missed.

She missed?!

Lena can’t quite believe her eyes—she’s stunned stupid when the suit’s target tracking system beeps and chimes as it tries to locate and lock onto the little blue dot that is now flying somewhere a few hundred feet below her.

Her arms—and, more importantly, the Kryptonite blasters—are pointed slightly upward at an angle slanted just high enough to have missed Kara, had she stayed put.

Which she hadn’t, thankfully.

Lena hears the crackle of static inside her helmet, followed by a low groan of frustration Lex was too slow to mask.

She has very little time to bask in that small victory. Lena’s first instinct it to fly away, as far from Kara as she can possibly manage; however, as if it picks up on Lex’s anger, the implant at her temple sends what feels like an electric shock sparking right into her skull.

It catches Lena off-guard, so much so that she releases a yelp of pain as she tries to reach blindly for her temple in a reflexive action.

The loud thunk of metal on metal—more especially, her gauntlet making unimpeded contact to the suit helmet—stops her short, and with a start, Lena realizes that despite the connection Lex has established with the implant, she was able to complete the movement.

Wherever he’s holed up, Lex seems to have arrived at the same conclusion; Lena hears an angry yelp resonate within her helmet, and then the pain at the side of her head flares white hot, hotter and brighter than ever.

It disorients her for a moment, but more than that; it makes Lena clench her teeth because, for once, it’s not all she’s feeling.

She hears the thrusters of the Lexosuit. She hears the whirr and hum of the blasters as they recharge. She feels her broken hand, encased and stifled by a cast and the Lexosuit gauntlet, throbbing in pain with all the action. She feels the tender, bitten spot of her tongue and tastes the coppery tang of blood in her mouth.

It’s like the connection grows more tenuous by the second.

Unthinkably, as she hovers in the air cataloguing everything she feels and hears besides the implant in her temple, Lena releases a bark of laughter. She can’t remember the last time she had so many boxes to work with, so to speak.

Maybe the laughter came a bit too early, because Lex seems to realize his grasp on her mind is growing weaker and weaker.

“Trust me, Lena, this is far from over.”

The trigger words do what Lex designed them to do, of course. Lena feels the pulse, but this time, she is expecting it—she boxes the flash of pain before it can swell into something unbearable and is almost proud of her momentary triumph.

What she doesn’t expect, however, is for the Lexosuit to suddenly shut down entirely.

She’s falling, then, plummeting toward the pavement at a sickening speed, and her limbs are flailing as she tries to repower her suit, but there’s just so much happening in her head at once and oh god, Lena is going to puke in this goddamned suit…

“Lena!”

Lena doesn’t even need to look—she knows it’s Kara, knows she’s zipping through the air to come and break her fall before it’s too late.

Kara’s almost there, too, when the suit comes to life again at the very last second and Lena realizes, belatedly, what Lex is trying to do.

“Kara, get away!”

The blasters shoot just as the thrusters re-engage abruptly, shooting Lena upwards in a burst of green light, and Kara—

Kara’s sent careening through the air, crashing through the walls of the main branch of National City Bank.

“No!” Lena shouts, drowning out the sound of Lex’s laughter in her ears.

“Come on, Lena,” he prods gleefully. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

She feels his control returning, and it’s so much, so many things at once for her brain to fight, she finds herself slipping.

The target-tracking systems of the suit beep again; Kara’s little blue dot is moving—slower, but moving nonetheless.

Lena doesn’t have the time to be relieved, because the Lexosuit’s already taking off after Supergirl, and Lena feels her brother’s control returning, and it’s so much, so many things at once for her brain to fight, she finds herself slipping, unable to redirect it.

She bursts through the wall, and Kara scrambles away, looking slightly worse for the wear.

“Lena!” she shouts, and damn her, she still looks relieved, despite the faint, glowing green veins beginning to crawl over her skin.

Lena manages to move her arm away again at the last second, through monumental effort, just as Kara ducks away from another Kryptonite blast that blows a hole with scorching green edges on the wall behind her.

“Kara, get away!” Lena cries. She can feel Lex doing something to regain full control, like he is stitching together threads to tether her to his whims again. Her mind’s beginning to go foggy, and Lena’s tired, and she doesn’t know how much longer she can hold her own against him through willpower alone.

“Kara, go!”

“No!” Kara shouts back—she’s smiling, why the fuck is she smiling? “Lena, it’s OK! I trust you!”

Lena wants to scream at the Kryptonian that it’s not a matter of trust, it’s a matter of keeping away from a Kryptonite-powered war suit Lena has no control over.

Lena can’t even hear how giddy Lex sounds anymore. All she hears is the sound of the blasters at her arms charging to fire again, the sirens at the city below, the crackle of energy that seems to surround them entirely, and Kara…

Kara’s voice.

“Lena,” she’s speaking calmly, arms in Lena’s direction as if Lena is not the most dangerous thing to a Kryptonian in this planet at the minute.

“Lena,” Kara continues, stepping closer, so close the suit’s targeting system locks right onto her face, and Lena can see the green of Kryptonite getting stronger on her features with every step that she takes.

“No—”.

“Lena,” Kara cuts her off, still smiling like an idiot like everything’s going to be alright. “It’s OK. You can do it, Lena. You’re already doing it.”

“Kara, get away—”

Strong hands grab at the arms of the Lexosuit and Lena finds herself trembling. Lex will fire at any second now; Kara’s already close, too close, and all it takes is the push of a button and then she’ll be gone.

“It’s OK,” Kara says softly, so close now that she might as well be whispering in her ear. The ominous hum of the fully charged blasters almost drowns her out. “You’re doing so well, Lena. Trust me, it’s OK.”

Several things happen at once. One, Lex releases a howl of pure, unadulterated fury that reverberates inside the helmet like the angry clash of a gong. Two, Lena thinks her brain has actually begun to melt with the sudden intensity of the pain emanating from her temple. But then…

It vanishes within a split second. Lex regains control and fires; however, he’s already too late—Lena’s already shooting up through the ceiling and into the sky out of her own volition, sending the jets of green far into the horizon, away from Kara.

Lex is fuming.

“It seems I underestimated both of you, especially our little Kryptonian friend,” his voice comes through once more, and holy shit he sounds absolutely livid. “But trust me, Lena—”

Lena laughs again. Lex’s trigger words still ache and resonate in her brain; but they are no longer the debilitating blinding flashes he meant them to be. They’re twinges; pinpricks, really, and much more easily dealt with.

Easily boxed up.

“You tried, Lex,” Lena hisses, feeling a little high, a little light-headed at this sudden, inexplicable turn of the tables. “And you failed.”

“I haven’t failed yet, Lena,” he retorts, clearly angry beyond belief, but with a sudden calmness that sends a chill down Lena’s spine.

“I wanted you alive to witness the grand-finale, Lena, but make no mistake,” he continues, voice cold and vengeful in a way Lena hasn’t heard since he turned the sun red, a lifetime ago. “I have no qualms over collateral damage. We all must make sacrifices, after all.”

Lena realizes too late. She’s high above the clouds when her suit visor goes dark—the words OVERRIDE flash before her eyes, and a ten-second counter begins, flashing in ominous green right below. The blasters retract, but the hum of the Kryptonite charge doesn’t go away; if anything it intensifies, becomes so deafening Lena is scarcely even aware she’s falling again.

She doesn’t need to see Kara speeding after her. She can only take the few seconds she has left to scream for her to get away, far, far away, or she’ll die with Lena. She’ll die, because Lex’s last move was to make his own sister into a Kryptonite bomb. 

Previously, on LBitR...

Like her cell before this, the room Lena now occupied has no windows, only the bright fluorescent lights that emit a soft hum just loud enough for Lena to hear—something that would ordinarily drive her crazy with annoyance, but now just gives her something else to focus on.

There are no clocks, either, at least not that she could see, not even on the many monitors attached to her via an array of wires. Though, to be fair, her visibility is somewhat compromised by the limited range of movement the handcuffs afford her.

No one has come in to check in on her so far, not even a nurse doing their rounds or some hapless DEO agent—because she is very much not in a hospital, as much as it looks like she might be. Lena would guess she’s being held at the DEO, but she doesn’t particularly like guessing. She likes knowing. And what she knows is that she’s been here for what feels like forever and she’s starting to get antsy.

Not that Lena has much idea of how much time has passed; she tried counting the minutes in her head, but couldn’t concentrate long enough on the task to keep it up for more than twenty counts to sixty, which in her book, is long enough.

She half-expected Lex to come in at some point, even if just to gloat, but he hasn’t shown so far, and Lena figures he doesn’t need to. He’s already got his pieces in place—he controls both Lena and the Director of the DEO; he can just sit back, kick up his feet, and relax while he waits for the game to start up again.

For Kara to come flying into his trap.

Fucker, Lena thinks bitterly. She feels a little high—probably whatever pain medication she was given.

Her stomach growls, sudden and loud, and Lena realizes she has no idea when she had eaten last. But more than telling she’s hungry, the unpleasant sound tells her she’s been sitting here twiddling her thumbs (figuratively speaking, of course) for a few hours at least.

Tired of being laid up and useless, and entirely not in the mood to wait for Alex or whoever else to come in, Lena tries to shuffle down the bed, as much as the handcuffs will allow, to try to get to the bandages stuck to the side of her head.

There’s some incredibly awkward shuffling down the thin mattress and further into the cheap, staticky sheets, and the angle is far from comfortable, but eventually Lena manages to lean down just enough so her fingertips graze the edge of some gauze, right at her temple. She pinches it between her index and middle fingers—the only ones that actually reach—and slowly begins to tear it away from her skin.

It’s at this moment that Lena becomes exceedingly thankful for the invention of morphine—or whatever else it is they have her on, here—because after some poking around, she’s definitely reopened her wound. Her fingers come away bloody, and the whole spot feels raw and hot to the touch, but fortunately, she feels little more than pressure.

She’s very well aware that, as far as good ideas go, this one probably nears the bottom of the list (or perhaps isn’t in it at all), but her options are limited, after all. And to be quite fair, even if she doesn’t succeed, she’s already in this pseudo-hospital room—it’s quite unlikely her captor will let her just. Die.

The angle is mightily uncomfortable, which makes it less than ideal when it comes to actually digging into a head wound, and so far she’s felt nothing that resembles the minuscule implant in her skin, but Lena is nothing if not tenacious, not to mention stubborn as hell. Kind of like Kara.

“If you would like, I could provide you with the schematics to Lex Luthor’s mind-control implant without the need of aggravating your wounds.”

Lena jumps—as much as one can jump when they’re handcuffed to a bed—at the voice; she’d been so concentrated on her slightly insane task she didn’t hear anyone come in. Her bloodied hand snaps away from the wound on her temple in shock and hits the rail with force, enough to send her now-empty ice-chip cup flying to the other side of the room.

“Brainy!”

Lena cannot quantify the sheer relief she feels when she sees the stoic figure at her door, ramrod straight with his arms crossed at his back. His lips are tugging into a little smile, like he’s so clearly happy to see her, and for some reason that makes her want to cry.

She does cry a little, and it’s so pathetic, because her hands are still handcuffed so she can’t even reach out to wipe at them. But it’s the first time in weeks, maybe months, that someone other than Kara actually looks happy to see Lena, and she finds she’s wholly unprepared to deal with it.

“What are you doing here?”

He steps in, squinting at her and tutting under his breath as he sees her bloodied hand, head, and bandages. “Do you need me to tell you how exactly much you’re increasing your risk of infection by interfering with your bandages?”

Lena lets out a wet, choky laugh. “No, thank you. I’ll be good.”

He nods, lips tugging ever-so-slightly wider. It’s the closest to a beaming grin as Brainy can get, and Lena can’t help but laugh. Maybe she’s hallucinating. But she’s so, so very happy to see me.

“Good,” he says, looking a bit awkward just standing by her bed with perfect posture. Lena wouldn’t have it any other way. “I will call someone shortly to redress your wounds. Trying to remove this type of subdermal implant with a piece of glass only had a 9.7% chance of success, in case you were not aware.”

Lena lets out a little snort. “I figured the odds weren’t great,” she quips. Brainy’s now just close enough she can touch his elbow with her casted hand—the other one is erm, bloody. It’s a little awkward—Brainy, like Lena, was never the extremely touchy type—but he accepts it with a little laugh. “Brainy, Alex—she also has an implant; she doesn’t remember—”

“I am aware of the Director’s implant. I was working to disable it, but it seems you managed to trigger the return of some of her memories.” He raises his brow, and Lena can tell he is mightily impressed. “Well done.”

“Who else has them? Who else has Lex gotten to?”

“Only the Director, as far as we know. Lex hasn’t made many of them, but we are working on disabling the entire system.” He frowns. “I need your help,” he admits as if it both pains and delights him to need Lena’s assistance. “I found the schematics of the implant itself, but the system…”

“Works on the basis of a program I designed,” Lena groans.

Brainy nods solemnly, thankfully not saying anything further on the subject. Instead, he pulls a small tablet from his pocket, and taps at it until it flashes blue. He turns the screen for Lena to see, and her eyes have a bit of a hard time focusing on the diagrams slowly spinning in place.

“The implant cannot be removed without triggering an alarm,” Brainy begins, and Lena is glad to finally have someone who can get straight down to business. “As well as several countermeasures Lex put in place. Had you successfully removed it, it would have. Erm. Liquefied your brain. In essence.”

Lena lets out a low whistle through her teeth. “Talk about overkill. So I guess we can’t remove Alex’s either.”

Brainy shakes his head. “No. The only hope is by disabling the entire system, which unfortunately cannot be accessed remotely,” he sighs. “I’ve tried 346 times and haven’t gotten close.”

“Well, if we can’t access remotely, then the only other option would be to—”

“LENA! ARE YOU BLEEDING??!”

Brainy jumps back a full three feet, bumping into the monitors with a loud clatter, hugging the tablet to his chest like a kid caught stealing from the cookie jar. Lena yelps, startled by a blue-clad figure at the door to her room, mask off but scowl very, very much in place.

“Nia,” Lena breathes, but she doesn’t have the chance to say anything else before the young woman marches to her bed, looking exasperated.

“What the hell were you thinking—girl you made a whole-ass hole in your head, this is not the time to start poking around in there, if this scars I swear to god I am going to kill you before Kara kills me before Lex kills us all are you kidding me right now—”

“Nia,” Lena tries again, and she can’t even be bothered with the way Nia’s fussing over her torn bandages and slowly clotting wound, because she just wants to thank her, she wants to hug her, but most of all, Lena just wants to cry. “Nia—”

“Oh my god, are you crying!?” Nia yelps, her previous fury vanishing within a second as it turns to worry as she eyes Brainy, who looks completely out of his depth at Lena’s sudden sobbing. “Why are you crying??”

Lena wants to raise her arms to hug the young woman, but the stupid handcuffs won’t let her, so she just. Sobs. Like a little baby—it’s a little pathetic, but she can’t help it, because Nia’s here, Nia’s the one who took her to Kara. Their mad run across the country, the resentment that melted into companionship again, the laughs they shared along the way—it was all because of Nia.

Nia seems to understand, on a surface level, because she lets out a sigh, dropping the gauze she’d been unsuccessfully trying to stick back on Lena’s head, and just wraps her arms around her, tight and present.

“Thank you,” Lena sobs wetly against the crook of her neck. “Thank you.”

Parts 1 , 2

“are you taking it or not?”

the question isn’t even loud--it’s a murmur nearly lost to the noise of the ancient metal fan running full power in the small store, blowing the garments on the racks with a pitiful little breeze, but it’s enough to kick the gears into lena’s brain into grinding again.

she stares at the flannel shirt she’s been holding for too long--it’s a faded plaid of green-and-black, a men’s size that has probably shrunk in an unfortunate tumble in someone else’s dryer before ending up at this thrift store in the four-lane town they’ve stopped at.

lena blinks, feeling the fabric under her fingertips. it’s much softer than it looks, feels almost familiar in a strange way she doesn’t care to analyze. “what sort of weather am I even supposed to be packing for, anyway?”

kara gives her a look, but doesn’t answer her question. her eyes waver from lena to the shirt and back again a few times before she finally sighs. “take it. it goes with your eyes.”

lena assumes they’re not going anywhere too cold, since kara doesn’t buy them anything warmer than light jackets with the money she dug out from the road a few hours back. she hasn’t told lena where it came from or how she knew it was there, and lena hasn’t asked. talking, if there ever is any, has been done in short bursts and mostly out of necessity-- a ‘we’re stopping here’ or an ‘I need to pee.’ they certainly don’t discuss anything important, and given their situation, a mysterious briefcase full of money seems somewhat important.

they leave the store laden with paper bags full of clothing lena would probably never wear under normal circumstances, but that’s kind of the point, so she’s not about to complain. she knows better by now.

instead of going directly back to the car, kara leads them to a pay-phone down the street, and lena follows silently, waiting with the bags outside as kara produces a roll of quarters from her pocket and gets to work.

lena tries not to zone out as she hears the clicking of the phone, the mashing of buttons, and the clinking of coins. inside the booth, kara seems frustrated--she huffs in what lena knows is exasperation, but continues with whatever it is she’s trying to do without a word.

she doesn’t know how exactly, but she feels it, can’t really explain how she just knows, but it’s like someone dumped a bucketful of ice over her head; just like that, lena’s eyes snap open and she feels the hairs at the back of her neck standing at attention and she knows they’re being watched.

her heart is hammering in her chest in dull, rapid thumps that would definitely alert kara something is off if she still has her super-hearing (lena isn’t sure yet what the verdict is on that). lena tries, as discreetly as she can in her state of sheer panic, to look around, faking a stretch to crane her neck until she sees it.

there;s a man standing at the corner on the other side of their street. he’s leaning against a boarded storefront and trying to light a cigarette. it’s all completely innocuous, dare she say it, but their eyes meet across the street for a fleeting second and that sends a chill down lena’s spine.

an old, rumbling bus hisses and creaks down the street between them, and once it’s gone, so is the man.

it’s probably nothing. but a wanted criminal and the person she supposedly killed can’t exactly take any chances.

“kara,” lena calls out softly as she taps on the booth’s dirtied glass, trying to sound natural and failing horrible if the way her own voice squeaks out of her is any indication. she also realizes with a start this is the first time she’s spoken kara’s name since.. well. it hits her like a truck and this probably isn’t the time to dwell on it.

“kara,” she hisses again, opening the cabin. the blonde shoots her an incredulous glare that wilts into worry as soon as she registers lena’s panic. “kara, someone’s watching us.”

the phone clangs back into its hook loudly, and kara curses under her breath--lena has never heard kara curse before. she grabs her bags on one hand and takes lena by the wrist with the other, leading her back to the car at a near sprint.

“who? where?” she asks as they walk, her grip so tight around lena’s grip she would have broken the bone into dust were she at her full power.

“a man, at the street corner just now,” lena gasps, struggling to keep up.

“where did he go?”

“i don’t--I don’t know--kara, you’re hurting me!”

kara stops so quickly lena almost slams straight into her back, but the blonde’s grip relaxes immediately and she moves to entwine their fingers together instead, resuming her walk at a more sedated pace.

“sorry,” she whispers, so low lena strains to hear. “did you happen to see where he went?”

lena can only shake her head, afraid a moment of uncertainty may have unnecessarily led to more stress and fear. “no,” she finally says, trailing off with shame. “i’m not even sure if he was actually watching us. i just... i just had a feeling.”

to her surprise, kara nods and squeezes her hand in reassurance as they reach the jeep. “always trust your gut.”

their newest purchases are tossed in the back without ceremony, and in a matter of seconds kara’s peeling away from the empty car park, tires screeching as she speeds onto the road.

the silence is tense, this time. not that it hasn’t been tense in the last few days, but the sheer adrenaline running through lena’s veins and the worry kara fails to conceal work together to add another heavy layer of tension like the icing on top of a particularly disgusting cake. lena can’t take it anymore.

“where are we going, kara?” 

it feels weird to use her name now--like lena is undeserving. kara’s only answer is a grimace she fails to hide in time.

“where did that money come from, and how did you know it was there?” lena pushes, watching the needle of the speedometer climb up from the corner of her eye. “who were you trying to call? why are you even running with me?”

“stop,” kara grits out, muscles straining at her neck and jaw. her grip on the steering wheel tightens as the speedometer climbs, and lena knows, she knows she should stop, but it’s been days and days and days with no answers and she’s had enough.

“no!” she practically shouts. “you’ve been dragging me up and down the country--is there a plan here? if so, what is it? why are we running together?? how can you even stand being near me? how come,” and then she chokes, realizing she’s crying far too late to do anything about it. “how come you didn’t actually die?”

“i did!” kara shouts, hitting the breaks and swerving into the shoulder so suddenly it gives lena whiplash. they come to an abrupt stop in the thankfully deserted road, and kara is panting, shaking so hard the entire car trembles with her.

“what?”

“i did die,”she says, softer this time, voice trembling almost as much as her shoulders. “i was unresponsive for five whole minutes. alex brought me back.”

lena wants to say something, anything, but her brain is completely stuck on the fact that supergirl did die. words don’t make it past her throat; all that rises is bile, and she narrowly makes it out of the door and onto her knees on the pavement as she vomits.

It plays in her head on a loop, supergirl falling out of the sky, riddled with green, kara--kara, her kara, lying dead for however long in a crater on the pavement.

and it was all lena’s fault.

Previously on LBitR...

“Calm down,” Lena whispers, even though she’s having trouble doing exactly that at the sight of the empty bench where she had left Kara waiting not even an hour ago.

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Alex hisses; the muzzle of her gun dis rather painfully on her back, and Lena would really like to step away from it, but the agent has her arm locked in a vice grip. “Where the hell is she, Lena? She was here when I followed you in!”

“Walk with me,” Lena says, quickly scanning the area--they’re standing in a stiff, unnatural way, and the last thing she wants is to draw any attention, especially when they’re both wearing stolen LuthorCorp lab coats right outside the building. She takes one tentative step away, hooking her arm around Alex’s as if they were just friends walking down the street arm-in-arm.

Thankfully, Alex understands Lena’s not-so-subtle hint faster than Kara ever could; her image-induced expression relaxes into a smile that barely looks forced, and her grip of Lena’s arm, though still tight and borderline painful, shifts so that it appears more casual.

“Is there any way you could have been followed?” Lena asks, subtly looking around them, noting that Alex is doing the same.

“That’s always a possibility,” Alex admits, sounding both panicked and defeated at once. “But I was very careful.”

“OK, let’s not panic yet,” Lena tells both Alex and herself. “Kara and I made plans to rendezvous back at the motel if I was gone too long or if anything happened.”

Alex gives her a look--it’s weird to have a patented Alex-Danvers-look-of-disapproval coming from a stranger’s face. “You weren’t gone for long, though.” She doesn’t voice the alternative.

Unthinkably, Lena reaches out and gently pats the hand on her arm. She means for it to be reassuring--it’s the kind of thing she would do for Kara--the kind of thing she has been doing for Kara over the last couple of weeks, but Alex looks just as puzzled by the action as Lena is.

She removes her hand and clears her throat. “Still, our best bet is the motel. Did you drive here?”

Alex nods. “Great,” Lena continues, mind already working a mile a minute. “Kara probably took the bus back--we didn’t want the car to be seen downtown,” she explains, and Alex lets out an undignified snort.

“That’s remarkably sensible of you,” she quips sarcastically. Lena ignores her.

“What I’m saying is, if you drove here and we take your vehicle, we may beat Kara to the motel, or get there shortly after her. It’s one hour from LuthorCorp to the motel by bus--she’ll switch routes at least twice on the way.”

Alex looks impressed despite herself. “And if she doesn’t show, what then, genius?” she challenges, lips pursed.

Lena breathes out steadily, calmly. “She will,” she says with as much conviction as she can possibly muster in her tone, because the alternative is simply unthinkable.

Alex smacks her lips, slowing her walk as she considers their limited options. “Fine,” she finally concedes, dragging Lena down an alleyway.

They dispose of their lab coats in a trashcan in that same alley, and Alex practically hauls Lena towards a secluded spot behind down another alley a few blocks away.

“You better hold on,” she says, removing a few strategically placed cardboard boxes to reveal a sleek black motorcycle, discreetly parked behind a dumpster. “I did not bring an extra helmet.”

Lena does hold on, mainly because Alex weaves and cuts through traffic like an absolute manic as she follows the directions Lena has to practically shout in her ear as they go. She knows Alex is desperate to find Kara and make sure she’s OK, but Lena also wishes she would ease off the gas a little; she’s got enough to be afraid of at the moment.

She feels like her heart is about to burst out of her chest when they finally reach the hotel; they’re nowhere close to the room she and Kara had checked into, but she’s already fumbling in her purse for her key card. with Alex hot on her heels.

They stumble into the room together, and Lena has to stop, has to take a second to try to stop the cold dread she immediately feels at finding it empty, exactly as they had left it this morning.

Alex begins pacing like a caged tiger immediately. “She’s not here,” she gasps, tapping at the image inducer at her temple, and then it’s Alex, really Alex, looking worried and panicked and slightly disheveled in this empty room, and now Lena is belatedly realizing it’s up to her, Supergirl’s would-be killer, to try and comfort the hero’s sister while they wait.

As if she is not on the verge of a panic attack herself.

“We knew she wouldn’t be,” she tries to reason, keeping her voice as even as she can, though she can’t stop tugging at her fingers out of sheer nervousness.

She’s doing the math in her head, thinking of the bus schedules, of which one Kara probably had gotten on and when; she’s mapping out the routes in her mind, considering the usual trip times, factoring in the average Metropolis traffic at two in the afternoon on a Thursday.

Alex takes one look at Lena’s fidgeting hands and immediately sighs, sinking into one of the beds. “Take that stupid wig off,” she barks. “Blonde you is freaking me out.”

That lets out a little chuckle, but it feels like some kind of hysteria. She takes a seat on the opposite bed, and Alex regards her quizzically.

“Kara said something similar yesterday,” she explains, carefully removing the wig and setting it on the nightstand. “That’s too bad; I really thought I was pulling it off.”

The attempt at humour falls completely flat--Lena can see it plainly in Alex’s wooden expression. “You definitely weren’t,” she deadpans. Her knee is bouncing up and down, up and down, up and down, boot tapping dully on the carpet.

It’s driving Lena insane.

“Kara will be here soon,” Lena says, still tugging at her fingers. Alex doesn’t look convinced. 

“And if she doesn’t?”

Lena has no answers to that, refuses to consider the possibility.

“She will,” she says again, in an almost silent whisper, for her own comfort. “She will, she will, she will.”

Alex says nothing, only continues with her bouncing knee, keeps her gaze locked onto Lena. And Lena, Lena tries not to squirm under the agent’s scrutiny; she fidgets, she stares at the blinking red numbers of the alarm clock, steals glances at the door--she looks at anything and anywhere to avoid Alex’s gaze.

When Alex does speak again, her voice is low, but it still startles Lena enough for her to jump a little in surprise.

“What do you remember about that day, Lena?”

When Lena turns to face her, Alex’s eyes are as hard as stone. Her scowl has returned, and the way her brows are furrowed is far more telling than the cold tone of her voice. It says, plain and simple, I don’t trust you.

It takes Lena a long time to come up with an answer Alex may find even remotely satisfactory--she knows that ‘I don’t know’ that is on the tip of her tongue simply won’t cut it, even if it is the honest answer. Her memories, the few that she does have from that day, are murky and sparse, and don’t feel altogether hers.

She struggles to recall any details, searches the blurred images interred somewhere in her subconscious and tries to make sense of the tangled mess she has been left with. “Flashes,” she tries, settling for as much truth as she can muster at the moment. She swallows. “I remember... I remember Kara falling--I remember seeing her from the top floor at LuthorCorp.”

Alex raises a brow like she doesn’t fully believe her. “The top floor?” she asks, voice oddly neutral. “Not from the basement labs? You didn’t watch it from the screens?”

Lena furrows her brows, tries to poke at whatever remnants of memory she has latched on to. “No, I don’t...” she closes her eyes, sees Kara falling, riddled with green, her body limp falling past her windows as fast as a bullet. “I-I don’t think so, I was... I think I was at the top floor.”

“You were apprehended in the basement, Lena,” Alex says brusquely.

“N-no, that can’t be right,” Lena chokes out, but all she sees behind her lids is Kara’s body falling, and her mind provides the most horrifying sound effect as it hits the pavement. “That can’t be, I watched her fall, I w-watched from my window.”

Alex shakes her head. “What do you remember before the rockets?”

Lena rattles her brain with difficulty; her lungs can’t quite return to their normal rhythm with the images her mind is supplying. “Before?” she gasps, keeping her eyes shut so she doesn’t have to see, doesn’t have to wither under Alex’s unyielding disappointment and doubt.

“M-myriad, the, um, the Fortress, ah... I was there with K-kara, and--”

She’s close to hyperventilating; she can’t get the image of Kara’s body--her bloody, broken body falling, falling--out of her mind.

“The Fortress? Lena that was two weeks befo--Lena? Lena, are you OK?”

Lena can’t respond--she can’t speak, she can’t even breathe. her brain is giving her the most terrifying flashes of memories, memories that don’t feel like her own, and she’s scrambling to fill that gaps at the same time as the images come, unbidden, to her mind. Her mental boxes are teetering, swaying in their little organized, compartmentalized stacks, unbalanced, and she can’t, she can’t breathe.

“Shit,” she vaguely hears Alex say, marginally registers the agent rushing to her side, but then someone is touching her and there is another flash--it is white hot and painful in her brain, like an electric shock, and she feels someone grabbing at her shoulders, pushing her down hard, pulling, and dragging, and, and--

Lena yelps and recoils, bats away at the hands reaching for her shoulders in uncontrollable, all-consuming panic.

“HEY!”

It’s another voice, worried, coming from someone bursting through the door with force, nearly slamming it off its hinges. Lena’s only somewhat aware of Alex yelling--she sounds happy, surprised, worried, and a whole gamut of other things Lena cannot focus on, because suddenly, there’s just warmth all around her.

She’s being held, tight, tight, tight, but it isn’t restrictive--it’s the opposite, warm and comforting and it envelops her almost entirely, like a heavy blanket, muting the sounds of her own frantic heartbeat.

“Sh, Lena, it’s just me. You’re OK. I’m here, I’m here.”

It’s Kara’s voice--low in a soothing murmur, rumbling in her chest as she whispers right at Lena’s ear, and the vibrations are soft, reassuring, and tranquil, almost enough to ease Lena’s trembling.

She’s wrapped tight in Kara’s arms as her awareness returns, slowly and fuzzy. Kara’s hand rubs circles on her back, and Lena instinctively tucks her head under Kara’s chin, seeking more of her warmth. Kara is taking deep, deliberate breaths, and Lena finds herself subconsciously trying to match them at every inhale and exhale, using the pressure of the rise and fall of Kara’s chest against hers as guidance.

When the flashes cease, she dares open her eyes again. Over Kara’s shoulder, her gaze locks with Alex, who’s awkwardly standing to the side, watching them closely.

“OK,” the agent says, gaping a little. “What the fuck?”

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

lena becomes aware of her brain beginning to zone out almost immediately; she just doesn’t have the wherewithal at the minute to pull herself back to attention.

instead, her focus wanders towards the noise.

there’s the incessant sputtering and whirring of a coffeemaker that looks positively ancient--there’s also something clanking inside the machine, and she can hear it from where she’s sitting. the engineer in her knows it’s only a matter of time before the whole thing goes kaput just by listening.

there’s the occasional ding of a bell, the splattering of hot oil, bubbling in a pan somewhere in the kitchen, the squeak of a door swinging open and closed, open and closed, open and closed.

there’s the abominable sound of cutlery scraping against plates--it irks her to the point of silent fury, the way the metal scratches and clinks and screams against the cheap china. but then, to make everything worse, there’s the chewing.

loud, rapid, moist, and utterly revolting, not to mention obnoxious chewing. lena levels a withering glare from under her baseball cap -- lillian would be proud, of the glare, not the cap-- and sneers with all her might.

“could you not,” she hisses, fists clenching when the slurping of orange juice through a straw joins the maddening cacophony, “could you please not eat like a complete troglodyte?”

the slurping ceases, mercifully, but the chewing resumes, almost as a direct challenge, after an indifferent shrug of broad shoulders.

“i haven’t eaten in three days. i’m hungry.”

the voice sounds equally tired and annoyed, and lena has regretfully become very well acquainted with that particular tone over the last few days. she ignores the way blue eyes look solely at the humongous (truly, the massive, inhuman quantity) stack of pancakes that is currently being decimated.

“be that as it may,” lena continues, gritting her teeth at another scrape of the knife that seems to screech louder than before, “maybe you could eat a little more slowly? or at the very least,” she scowls, “with your mouth closed?”

there’s a deep exhale from across the table--an exasperated, getting-real-tired-of-your-shit kind of sigh, and it comes with an exhausted hand running through hair that has been cropped short, now only a few inches long and tucked into a baseball cap almost as ratty as lena’s. it’s a gesture that lena recognizes from a time when that hair fell in long, blonde curls, cascading freely over blue-draped shoulders and she hates the way the memory comes unbidden to her mind.

“do you have any idea of what my usual caloric intake has to be?”

lena blinks, because no, she doesn’t, and she’s automatically trying to do the math in her head before she stops herself and remembers to scowl again.

the cutlery resumes its scraping--a bit more forcefully, frustrated, even. “a whole damn lot,” comes a muttered addendum.

lena’s rolling her eyes before she can think better of it. “one would think you wouldn’t need to meet your usual caloric intake under these... circumstances,” she begins, but trails off into silence once she’s the one on the receiving end of an icy glare.

she doesn’t learn, though, does she, because lena continues against her better judgement, lowering her voice to a whisper and glancing around them, just in case. “it’s not like you have anything... super messing with your metabolism right now. it’s not like you need the extra energy.”

the slurp is obnoxious and furiously deliberate this time, drawn out long enough until there’s no orange juice left in the cup--just the endless sound of air bubbles and melted ice blubbering and sputtering as they’re sucked through the straw.

“that’s exactly why i need more energy. i’m still recovering, so i need all that i can get.”

“but what about the sun?” lena can’t help but ask, can’t help but push, shifting in her seat and leaning over their table, letting her curiosity get the better of her for a mere moment. “i mean, i always thought that supergirl...”

“nuh-uh,” comes the categorical denial and a fork, pointed accusingly at lena. ‘there is no supergirl,” the blonde says, and her fork moves to point at the TV above the bar of this middle-of-nowhere diner they stopped at after nearly three days of nonstop driving. it’s still reporting on the chaos of three days ago.

“supergirl is dead.” kara says through a scowl that rivals lena’s. “you killed her.”

Hey all! I said it would happen over the next few days, but I have so much to work on in April, I just decided to bang it out this weekend before I shift my focus to other projects.

Thank you so much for reading--the response has been incredible, and I have to admit, y’all have been absolutely killing me with your tags. Seriously, y’all have made my day several days in a row. Sorry not sorry for the cliffhangers along the way, but I hope they were worth it!

The full story is now up on AO3 (with a little epilogue! hooray!). Cheers!

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4

there’s a change after lena’s little breakdown back in kansas--a paradigm shift that upends their entire dynamic seemingly overnight in ways that lena cannot even begin to comprehend.

but she can categorize them.

at the beginning of this road trip of insanity, when someone had taken a bag off her head and shoved her in a jeep with kara--kara, alive, with cropped hair and new glasses and alive--they had merely existed in the same space, because... well, lena was furious, kara was furious, and so they sat together, stewing in their anger in a confined space for hundreds and hundreds of miles.

so it had been... silence, and a whole lot of ignoring one another, when they weren’t sniping, fighting, bickering. willful, stubborn, heavy and deliberate silence. but now? now that silence is often interrupted -- not always by words, but by looks.

there’s glances, all from kara, and they say things more clearly than words ever could, and they come when lena is least prepared. it’s a look that asks her whether she’s alright--the answer to that is almost always a categorical no-- while kara is driving, or through the glass of a phone booth while she attempts yet another of her mysterious calls as lena waits outside. it’s a poorly concealed glance at a rest stop that asks whether or not she’s hungry, a side-eyed gaze that asks the silent question of what’s on your mind?

lena doesn’t know how to deal with any of it, has simply no idea how. but glances are only part of this altered dynamic, of this unexpected shift, because now there is also talking.

they talk. or well, kara talks--to lena, for lena, sometimes for no reason at all. they’re not exactly having conversations--not yet, because that still requires more than what lena’s prepared to contribute--but at least they’re not arguing, either, and that feels like a considerable step forward.

kara will talk about everything and nothing; little comments on the weather, passing observations on the scenery, but that’s not all. she’ll tell lena things--not important things, because they’re not there yet, and sometimes lena wonders if they’ll ever be-- but things nonetheless, like where they’ll be stopping next, or an interest factoid about the state they’re in (like, the location of the nation’s largest inflatable donut or something equally ridiculous).

but the most worrying of all, the thing that really throws lena off her game, that unbalances completely, is the touching.

the first time lena registers kara’s casual touches, she feels like she almost has an honest-to-god aneurysm, because the last two times that kara’s touched her happened to be when lena was in the middle of a panic attack, and it’s like her body remembers those particular circumstances. she nearly jumps out of her skin the next time she feels kara’s hand on her shoulder.

it turns out to just be kara asking whether she’s done with the sink (at a motel in nebraska, this time), and lena’s heart is still hammering in her ribcage as kara gives her one of those are you ok? looks.

over the course of a few days, lena grows used to it all--kind of, but not really, but as much as she can under the circumstances, she accepts these new little facets of her current reality.

she’s lost track of time--maybe they’ve been on the run for weeks, maybe it’s been months, who’s to say? but at every rest-stop, at every shitty motel or random attraction, kara’s there, looking, talking, and touching, and lena doesn’t feel so horribly untethered any more. she’s still terrified, confused, and generally listless, but... it’s easier to breathe, somehow.

they’re approaching the state-line between missouri and tennessee when lena dares (she hasn’t tried since... texas, maybe) to ask a question.

she’s been dotting the places they’ve passed through on a roadmap she picked up a few towns ago--some are so small they’re not even on the map--trying to make sense of the route kara has been seemingly making up as they go.

she stabs through the paper with her pencil at caruthersville, missouri, knowing they’ll cross the mississippi sooner or later.

“are we going all the way to the east coast?” she asks, mostly just voicing her thoughts aloud, not really expecting kara to give her an answer. to her surprise, kara does, barking out a little laugh.

“i mean, if we have to, sure.”

lena almost drops the pencil and the map, she turns to kara so quickly.

“why would we have to?”

kara shoots her a look, but it’s got... mirth, something that has been missing from that blue gaze since... since they had decided to be enemies. give or take.

“we’re kind of on the run, lena. in these situations, it’s imperative that we keep on running.” she quips sarcastically.

lena blinks. are they talking-talking now?

“are we running anywhere in particular?”

kara’s lips press into a thin line, and she doesn’t answer for so long lena thinks that well has run dry. but, once again, kara surprises her.

“just... away.” her eyes are glued to the road ahead. “there’s no plan, if that’s what you’re asking. at least not yet.”

“not yet?”

kara shakes her head, sighs deeply. “not until i get in touch with some friends, at least.”

there are many follow-up questions to that, but lena settles on what is probably the worst possible choice imaginable.

“are we having a conversation right now?”

she can see kara tense a little, hears the sharper intake of her breath and regrets her words immediately; however, kara sighs once more, relaxing into her seat by degrees.

“sure. if you want to.”

lena swallows dryly, her throat tight all of a sudden. there are so many things she wants to say, so many questions, worries, so, so much to get off her chest.

“uuh,” she starts off, hoping to find the words along the way, and kara laughs a little. “what... what friends are you trying to get in touch with?”

“the usual,” kara says, looking a little wistful, and lena can tell she’s trying to keep her smile up for her sake. “mostly, i need to reach alex somehow.”

“is... is alex the one you’ve been trying to call? from the pay-phones?”

kara nods the affirmative. “we have a few codes; a system in place if we ever need to contact one another if we’re ever in trouble. she hasn’t been answering, which is a little worrying, but i’m sure she’s just waiting for the right moment.”

if we’re ever in trouble...

“did, uh... did the briefcase come from alex, too?”

“yeah. she made me memorize several coordinates across the country--said they would be useful if the fortress was ever compromised.”

which it was, lena thinks immediately. because of her.

“anyway,” kara continues, oblivious to lena’s thoughts, hands running over the steering wheel a little nervously. “i’m sure she’ll answer soon. she’s probably got too many eyes on her right now.”

lena perks up at that, brow quirked in question.

“too many eyes on her? why?”

kara seems to shrink in her seat.

“well...” she says, eyes darting like they’re looking for answers and finding none. “alex doesn’t... she doesn’t exactly know... that uh... she doesn’t know you’re with me.”

lena blinks, opens her mouth, closes it again. kara looks sheepish.

“she may be leading the manhunt for you.”

“she what?!”