little bumps in the road (pt. 10)
“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.
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.
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
