#myhbb 1

Lena woke up feeling as if that last image of Kara’s smile had been burned into her retinas. The dream, memory, ends in the same place it always does, the moment before the realization of what she had just witnessed sinks in. Lena wakes with soul crushing despair settling deep in her chest so that her breath in a new day is little more than a broken sob. It takes a few minutes for Lena to gather herself enough to climb out of bed and reach for her phone. The move is calculated. Lena knows that if she had reached for her phone first, she wouldn’t have gotten out of bed. 

Every other day, Lena had been able to push herself through it. She could almost pretend that everything was normal, until she caught herself trying to call Kara and invite her to lunch. Even after two weeks, Lena’s first instinct was still to call Kara. The hope that maybe the dream had been a nightmare rather than a memory and Kara would answer when she called had been all that kept Lena going for the past 14 days. 

The day of Kara’s funeral had pulled that hope to a crashing halt. 

There had been a service for Supergirl the day before. It felt like all of National City had been there, human and alien alike. All the heroes that Kara had worked with over the years were there, a few of them people that Lena had only met briefly before the wave of dark matter destroyed all of their worlds. The Flash had a few words to say. Cat Grant had barely held her tears in. Superman openly cried as he said goodbye to his last blood relative. Lena had watched it all with a blank expression, Alex’s hand in hers. 

Lena had made her way to Midvale on her own and was one of the last to arrive at Kara’s childhood home. Eliza had greeted her with a hug and a far too knowing look. Lena had slept in Kara’s bed and refused to cry until she was sure that no one would hear her. 

Now, Lena pulled on the dark outfit she had selected the night before and made her way downstairs. Alex and Eliza met her at the bottom of the stairs and led her to where Clark and Lois were standing with J’onn. Eliza pulled Lena into another hug while Lois looked as if she was the only one in the room who could understand Lena’s pain. Everyone was treating Lena like she was Kara’s widow and Lena wasn’t sure she would ever recover from that. 

She had Kara had never been together. They hadn’t gone on dates or celebrated anniversaries. They’d never even kissed and yet Lena still felt like a piece of her heart had been broken beyond repair. She wasn’t Kara’s widow but she was Kara’s someday and that was somehow worse. 

How could Lena mourn what she’d never had in the first place? 

Kara’s funeral had been short. She wouldn’t have wanted all of her friends and family to spend hours crying over her. Kara had been a ray of sunshine, a becon of joy. Although tears were shed, everyone wanted to follow Kara’s wishes so it soon turned to a memorial rather than a funeral. As everyone had been distracted by Alex’s story of the first time Kara saved her, Lena didn’t think anyone would notice when she stepped onto the back patio. She nearly jumped in surprise when a masculine voice called her name. 

“Sorry,” Clark said as he stepped up beside her. Lena hummed her acceptance of the apology but didn’t say a word. 

They stood together in silence for a few minutes. If it had been any other time, Lena might have made a joke about a Super and a Luthor but it didn’t feel right with her Super missing. Eventually, Lena can see Clark’s shoulders sag and knows that the silence is about to be broken. 

“She was always so much stronger than me.” Clark speaks in a low, haunted voice. “I’ll never be able to thank her for righting my worst wrong.” 

There’s a heavy set to his shoulders and a distant glint in his eyes that makes Lena feel foolish for forgetting where all this conflict had started. Lex had killed Kara, but it was Clark that turned Lex into a staunch believer in the superiority of man. It was Clark who faced Lex time and time again. CLark who wasn’t strong enough to deal the blow that would have ended all of this conflict. It was Clark’s weakness that had pushed Kara into that position, and Clark’s cowardice that cost Kara her life. 

The urge to hate Clark for his inaction is strong, so strong it makes Lena’s stomach clench and her hands tremble. It would be all too easy to blame Clark for losing Kara, but Lena knows that it wouldn’t be fair to him. There’s plenty of blame to go around but Clark doesn’t truthfully deserve any of it. Lex does. For targeting Kara and dealing the fatal blow, but most of them blame falls on Lena herself. For her own war against Supergirl, for the experiments that gave Lex his powers, for not being strong enough to defeat him on her own. 

Kara would still be with them if not for Lena’s failures. 

“But there is something I can do for her, if you’re willing to help me.” 

It takes a moment for Lena to realize that Clark’s statement had been a request. She looks at him, blinking in askance. 

“Follow me,” Clark, in a move that Lena would never have expected to come from him, gently took Lena’s hand into his own and guided her down the porch steps towards the beach. Agreeing to Clark’s request that she wait there for a moment, Lena tries to settle her nerves. When Clark returns, Lena knows that there is nothing she could have done to prepare herself. 

Clark touches down gently a few feet away from Lena and in the space between them hovers a sleek, grey pod. The black surface on the outside fades to clear and suddenly Lena can see Kara. 

She looks peaceful in death, Lena thinks, like she finally dropped all the weight she had been carrying for so long. 

“On Krypton, when a woman died,” Clark swallows roughly. “It was tradition for the oldest female member of the House to speak Rao’s blessing over them.” 

Clark meets Lena’s gaze evenly. 

“I know that would be Eliza here, or Alura if she had come, but I also know that Kara would have wanted it to be you.” 

“Clark,” Lena hesitated, “Kal, I don’t know.” 

“I know what you mean to her. Meant.” Even though they had been doing so all day, hearing Kara referred to in the past tense hurt deeply and Lena felt the tears welling for what must have been the thousandth time. 

“Okay,” Lena agreed with a shaky nod. Clark handed her a small piece of paper from his pocket and then turned his gaze to the pod containing Kara’s still form.” 

“Whenever you’re ready.” 

Lena was sure that she would never be ready to say goodbye to Kara but there was no sense in waiting. Voice thick with tears and barely above a whisper, Lena began to read. 

“You have been the sun of our lives. Our prayers will be the sun that lights your way on the journey home. We will remember you in every dawn and await the night we join you in the sky. Rao’s will be done.” 

They stood there for a moment with only the sound of the waves crashing against the beach breaking the still air. Then, with a heavy breath like he was steeling himself for the hardest moment of his life, Clark lifted the casket into the air with him. A moment later, Kara returned to the stars that had brought her home. 

Clark returned to the Danver’s household while Lena remained on the beach by herself. There was a fleeting feeling of Lena wishing she had something to hold on to, a memento of Kara’s. The feeling faded only to be replaced with a much stronger wish to simply have Kara there with her. The feeling was strong that for a moment, Lena felt the soft, familiar warmth of Kara’s hand in her own, their fingers resting together easily. As time stretched on, Lena let herself be lost in the phantom feeling of what could have been, until the sound of a car door closing shattered the dream and brought Lena crashing back to reality. 

A reality where Kara was gone. 

Suddenly, the beach felt just as stifling as the house had been. 

Realizing that her moment with the ghost of Kara’s memory was over, Lena turned to make her way back to the house. 

Only Kara’s closest friends remained at the house. Clark, Lois, and Lucy were sitting together on the couch, the two normally argumentative sisters silent in their grief. Barry and Iris were curled together in a chair, Barry staring blankly ahead as Iris watched him in concern. Caitlin and Cisco sat together on the floor in front of Barry and Iris, their shoulders pressed together. Ava sat in the other chair with Sara leaning against her legs, her fingers idly wrapping a strand of Sara’s hair around and around. The other Legends must have gone back to the Waverider. Alex and Eliza sat together on the loveseat and made room between them for Lena. 

It was odd, Lena decided as she took the seat provided for her, to be surrounded by so many heroic figures and not feel even the smallest amount of hope. The Kara shaped whole in the arrangement could not be ignored. No one said a word as Lena sat down and the silence was no less disturbing the longer it went on. 

“It doesn’t seem right,” Cisco broke the silence with a sad voice. “The most powerful person we know.” 

“The bravest and most caring, too,” Barry added just as softly. “She didn’t even ask for help.” 

“You were all busy,” Alex shrugged slightly but Lena could see the tension in her jaw. “You all had your own villains to face and lives to live. She wouldn’t have disrupted that.” 

“She wouldn’t put all of you in danger like that.” Lena’s voice was hoarse from disuse. Not counting her blessing of Kara at the beach, that was the longest sentence Lena had said in two weeks. 

“I did, with the Dominators and Crisis,” Barry’s expression shone with guilt. “She answered every time.” 

“She was like Oliver,” Sara said, leaning further into Ava as she spoke. “More of a hero than any of us will ever be.” 

“All these powers, even time travel, and we still can’t save everyone.” Iris sighed and dropped her head onto Barry’s shoulder. Barry pressed a kiss against his wife’s forehead. 

“We would if we could.” Barry said. “I’d go back in a second if we didn’t have to worry about another Flashpoint. An event like this is too big to go back and change.” 

“Flashpoint?” Lena asked curiously. Alex looked at her with the smallest bit of surprise and a hint of question in her eyes. 

“One of the first times I travelled back in time on purpose, to save my mom. I ended up changing everything,” Barry explained. 

With everyone reluctant to leave, it took little prodding to get Barry to continue elaborating. A conversation about the difficulty of preserving the timeline arose between the members of team Flash and the two remaining Legends in the room. Lena listened with half an ear but her mind was stuck on the comment that had started this conversation. 

It didn’t feel right without Kara in the room, not only in the sense that Lena personally felt as though she was missing an essential part of her being, but in the sense that something about all of this was fundamentally wrong. The only thing about Kara’s conflict with Lex was that Lex was gone. It doesn’t make sense for him to have taken Kara out with him, especially not without Kryptonite. Lena remembered the final blow in sharp detail. The beam that had exhausted Kara was golden, not green. 

A comment about the natural order of time caught Lena’s attention and she pondered the implications of it. The natural order of time ensured that everyone was at the correct time and place, whenever that happened to be in the linear timeline of their own lives. Barry and the Legends are able to move through time as long as they don’t disrupt the natural time. There were few rules for time travel, but the most important was that one could not be in the exact same place and time as they had been before. A person cannot physically be in one specific time and place more than once.