#lenadanversandkaraluthor

It wasn’t until later, when almost everyone in the building but her had already gone home, that she reached for her tablet and found the last of those pictures of Kara waiting for her. She deleted it after looking for perhaps a moment longer than she should have, and then she scrolled through her texts again. What did Cat want. Who did Cat want? She’d been touching Kara while she said that she and Lena should catch up and it was baffling.

But Cat Grant never did something without a good reason. There had to be some explanation for her humiliating Kara and inviting Lena to participate. If she just wanted to amuse herself, she would have done it in a way that didn’t risk her professional reputation.

She knew it was a terrible idea, but she reached for her phone. She waited for Cat to get a few words out, just to make sure it was her and not some assistant, and then she spoke. “You’d better have a good reason why you felt it necessary to humiliate Kara Danvers this morning.”

It really hadn’t been her intention. She just--she just had to get Supergirl--Kara--out of the way. Didn’t she understand what she was doing? Lena was trying to save people and if that meant there had to be a few willing sacrifices along the way, then so be it. Every risk was accounted for, every chance weighed, and the greater good. 

The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few. Maybe Lena should’ve gotten the Vulcan IDIC tattooed on her ankle because, quite honestly, she believed wholeheartedly in their belief systems. 

Sacrifices had to be made. Lena had conducted hundreds of trials, ran over a thousand potential scenarios in three different computers and all it did was make it clear that the risk was infinitesimal compared to the benefits. 

No more cancer. No more children in hospitals hooked up to oxygen tanks and hoping that Supergirl could save them while their parents went into debt just trying to spend time with their child who would probably die no matter how many experimental procedures or aggressive rounds of chemo that they endured. If Lena could fix that--if Lena could make sure that not a single person had to go through that--she had to. 

But Kara and her aggressive, positive, relentless morals, she would never get it. She would never let it happen. Kara believed in helping save each and every life. If Kara walked into a building with five sick kids who needed organ transplants or they would die that same day and there was a healthy person who had the right organs that those kids would need, Kara would let the kids die because she would find it easier than killing someone. 

Lena would kill the donor. 

It had been a hard conclusion to come to but--inaction was just as bad as bad actions. Besides, in Lena’s version of the story, the donor was willing. She wasn’t Lex--she wasn’t going to conduct experiments on people who didn’t know the risks and weren’t informed of each and every possibility. 

But Kara was going to stop her. She knew that and so she had planned ahead. First, the brief but intense flash of Kryptonite to disable Supergirl and red lamps to keep her at minimal strength. Lena had no doubt that Kara would still be strong but that was why this room--which was nearly the size of Kara’s own apartment--was reinforced with nth metal. Was it overkill? Probably. But Lena wasn’t going to take any chances. 

The only chance she did take was standing in the room with Kara, unarmed and quiet. She had dosed Kara with Kryptonite while she was still dressed in her reporter attire and she was waiting for the inevitable wake up where Kara would freak out and try to get out of here. 

But she liked Lena. She liked bringing her coffee on her lunch breaks, liked chatting with Jess while Lena was in meetings, liked the way that Lena looked so--ferocious and confident. And maybe it was kind of inappropriate because Lena was a CEO and Kara was Cat’s assistant and they had only met because Cat had her run all kinds of errands including and not limited to hand delivering things to various people around the city. 

Being with Lena was so easy and fun. Unlike most of the people that Kara ran into as Cat’s assistant, Lena treated her like a person, not just some sort of vague extension of Cat. Lena always made Kara smile and then there was the time that Kara had managed to help Lena out of a really tough situation and she had sent Kara so many flowers that they had overflowed onto Winn’s desk, too. That had made Kara absolutely giddy with delight and the way Lena had smiled at her when Kara told her about the flowers--God, it made her feel all kinds of warm, fuzzy things. 

Kara wanted to spend every day with Lena. She loved being able to join her on her couch, chatting about everything until Kara had to rush to return to Cat’s office, barely making it in time more than once. She probably shouldn’t be spending this much time with Lena but they were friends. And it wasn’t interfering with Kara’s work so it was fine. 

Except--

Except today there had been construction work and an entire sidewalk had been blocked off and Kara had completely forgotten about it because her mind was still on Lena in that blouse. Lena in those heels. Those clingy dress pants that left so very little to the imagination. But, most of all, she was focused on the way that Lena’s lips had brushed against hers before settling on her cheek, kissing her goodbye. 

Kara had been so caught off guard by it that she was utterly speechless but Lena was smiling at her like she knew exactly what Kara couldn’t quite say and then they were interrupted because Lena had a meeting and Kara had to go back to CatCo and she had run up the stairs in her sensible shoes and she was in great shape but even she couldn’t really manage to run up all those stairs without being winded and she managed to just make it into the office while it was still the last minute of her break. She leaned against her desk and tried not to look like she had just sprinted up a dozen flights of stairs and she saw Winn staring at her. 

“What?” she hissed. He tapped his cheek and Kara felt herself flush from head to toe. Lena had been wearing a deep red lipstick. Lena had kissed her cheek. 

Oh no. 

Kara turned immediately and fumbled for her phone, opening up the selfie cam to see the damage. It wasn’t a perfect imprint but it was absolutely, unmistakably a kiss. Which was fine. Would be fine had the person who had kissed her been anyone but Lena Luthor, a woman she sort of technically shouldn’t be spending time with anyways. And Cat was going to be here any second. 

Kara desperately grabbed a tissue and tried to dab at the print, worried too much that it would smear if she tried to rub it too hard. She needed to wash this off, to get rid of the evidence before--

“Ms. Grant!” Kara cried as she spotted her boss. “I, uh, have those papers you needed.” She grabbed the stack off her desk as if that could distract from her breathless, slightly disheveled, kiss-marked appearance. 

She had been on a path moments before, one run by deer and other wildlife but, looking back, there was no trace of it. Not even a twig snapped by her boots. She didn’t dare turn around, too worried that, with the clouds obscuring the sun, she would get so turned around that she would never find her way out. So she went straight, hoping that she would stumble across the path again and be able to follow it home. 

The trees grew closer together and Kara did her best not to be afraid. The last time she had been in woods like these... she had watched her whole village burn. 

She had been thirteen at the time, old enough to see herself as truly independent but young enough to be utterly innocent of the true nature of things. She had read a note that her aunt had left for Kara’s mother that asked for a meeting. Alura had tossed the note into the fire and Kara had dug it out later, pleased that the delicate paper had not managed to be consumed by the flames. There was a location written on the scrap and Kara had snuck out of bed to see her aunt since she missed her terribly. 

She had waited and waited and, eventually, she had fallen asleep among the trees, woken only by the smell of smoke and the sudden bright light of fire as it consumed everything in its path. She watched it for far too long, terror making it impossible to move, until a building caved in and startled her into motion. 

The trees had been thick then, too. Thick and dark with only the distant smell of smoke to keep her company. She had run and run until she could run no more and it had been then that Jeremiah and Eliza had found her, unconscious and alone. They had taken her in readily and, ever since, she had been with them. 

Though, perhaps that was about to change now. Perhaps this was the way that Kara had been destined to die--alone in the woods. Perhaps Jeremiah and Eliza had only delayed the inevitable. She shivered as she pressed onwards, making as little noise as possible and wishing that she hadn’t run off dressed like this. What would someone think if they found her? She might be able to pass as a young boy with her baggy shirt but what then? She had no coin on her, no way of compensating a helpful stranger, not even a snack. 

Wait--that was a trail. A faint one but a trail nonetheless. She eagerly followed it, relief making her giddy, and headed deeper into the forest, hoping to find her way home one way or another. 

Which meant that Kara had been extremely picky and working as a sub at a Renaissance Fair was perfect. She didn’t have to work every weekend and her hours, though long, provided plenty of money so that she could spend the rest of the week working on school stuff. But it also meant that she had no idea what she would be doing every day and she was kind of terrified of having to learn all the roles that she was supposed to play. 

For her first weekend, she had it easy; the girl who usually played the queen’s lady in waiting was out of town that weekend and Kara was there to take her place. All she had to do all weekend was sit around in the “castle” and watch the knights joust. And, at the end, the winner would take her queen to the feast and Kara would trail along behind them, doting on the queen and serving her at the feast. Easy. Kara wasn’t really looking forward to wearing the dress (she had met the other girl during her interview and Kara wasn’t even half as busty as her and she didn’t really know how they were going to fix that because Kara would never fill out that corset) but it would be easy work. And the pay was pretty good, if she was honest with herself. Certainly more than she’d make bagging groceries or anything else that she could work weekends only. 

Kara fussed with the dress as she stood in front of the mirror, feeling dumb for this. One of the other women had seen her earlier and tsked, finding her a smaller corset in the wardrobe and telling her to put that one on instead. It helped once she had put it on but it was still too big at the top. She tried to fix it but it looked obvious that it belonged to someone else. She tried to lace the corset tighter but, without being able to see, she was just tugging uselessly on the laces. Maybe, if she was cinched tighter, she would be able to push her small breasts up and make them look at least a little more impressive. 

Surrendering to the corset, Kara poked her head out of the dressing room, glancing down the hallway to look for some help, well aware that this was going to be impossible to do on her own. 

It wasn’t until Sunday morning that they saw the front page of the celebrity gossip magazine. On it, there was a large picture of Kara trying Clark’s ice cream as they sat in front of a fountain lit by streetlamps. They were both smiling and Clark was obviously laughing. There were several other pictures on the side, one of which was Kara on Clark’s balcony in a tank top and a pair of tiny pink sleep shorts while Clark offered her a bagel from the doorway. And then there was their dinner last night, the two of them smiling in the romantic light. And then there was a picture of Lois looking upset beneath it. 

The headline was the worst--Is Clark Kent Getting Back at Lois Lane for Her Affair with Superman?

Kara had snatched the magazine from the pile and hastily paid the vendor before racing back to Clark’s, magazine in hand. She read the entire article about Clark and his “new, young mystery blonde who made Lois look like an old maid”, kicking herself for being this dumb. She had forgotten that Lois was famous and, by proxy, so was Clark. The fact that no one knew they were related meant that everything was misconstrued and there was no way to undo the damage without drastic measures. 

Kara and Lois and Clark all had a very serious conversation about damage control, trying to find the best way to fix this before it got out of hand and was impossible to fix. It was bad enough that Lois had to deal with the whole Clark vs Superman thing--adding Kara in was just making it all even messier. 

Which was exactly why Kara was waiting nervously for Lucy at Lois’s apartment, trying not to pace too much. She had to make this convincing. And she had to convince Lucy to go along with her idea. If people realized that Kara was clearly dating Lois’s sister, all of this could (hopefully) be resolved. If not... they would have to figure out how to make Kara somehow related to Clark. Maybe that the Kents had taken Kara in for a few years before the Danvers got her. 

Kara adjusted her glasses nervously and really hoped that Lois had been able to get Lucy to agree to this on the car ride over. And maybe the brown dress pants and the crisp, white shirt and tweed blazer was a bit too on the nose but she was hoping that leaving her hair in curls would soften the look a bit. And at least there were no suspenders involved. That was too much, right? She had asked Maggie how to dress and Maggie had laughed at her so Kara was kind of flying blind here. 

And maybe a lot of her nervousness was because it was Lucy. Lucy was gorgeous and she smelled so good all the time--like all the time. Constantly. And she left her scent lingering in rooms and Kara had no idea how she did it but she absolutely understood why James would be interested in her because those eyes and her hair and she was just so--so impressive and smart--and Kara was just this. Just some nerdy reporter who would never ever be in the same league as someone like Lucy because Lucy was definitely off-the-charts gorgeous. And she was smart and kind and fair. She was basically a quadruple threat and Kara was lucky if her socks matched on a good day. 

Maybe they should have picked someone else. But the point was to make Kara really gay so she was definitely not interested in Clark and also to make her supposed girlfriend into someone who was close enough to Lois to explain her relationship with Clark. That was, of course, if Lucy said yes. 

Kara heard steps outside the door and she tried to act casual but there was nothing at all casual about the way she was leaning on Lois’s counter and--nope, sitting on the couch was worse. She settled on seating herself on one of Lois’s bar stools just before the door opened, trying to look as non-threatening as possible in the hopes that it might help this go smoothly.