Waves
“Why is your hair wavy?” young Lena asked.
It was one of Lena’s earliest memories - one of the few she had of her mother. The realization was sudden and profound for the 4-year-old, that sometimes her mother’s hair was straight, while other times it seemed to cascade down her shoulders in loose spirals.
Her mother had looked surprised, before breaking out into a smile. “You know how mommy puts her hair in braids some nights?” she said, getting a nod from her daughter, “That makes it wavy the next morning.”
“Can I try?” Lena asked back, and her mother nodded.
The next morning, Lena’s hair had waves too.
---
There weren’t waves in the Luthor household. “It looks messy,” Lillian said disdainfully one morning. Lena wondered if she wasn’t braiding her hair right - her clumsy little hands just couldn’t seem to get the tightness and symmetry that her mother had been able to. “I can try again,” Lena replied.
“It looks better straight,” Lillian said. And that was that.
---
It was Andrea that taught her to braid her hair for real.
Lena was 16 years old when she joined Mount Helena Boarding School, and she felt lucky to meet Andrea off the bat. Andrea taught her a lot- she learned how to sneak off for drinks, how to feign cockiness against other snobs, how to roll her r’s properly.
One late night - after doing things parents didn’t want to hear about their teens doing - Lena mulled that she wanted to braid her hair, but didn’t know how. Andrea murmured “easy”, finding a hand mirror and guiding Lena through the motions until she had a tight braid.
The next morning, Lena had waves in her hair, and breathed a little easier.
---
She was drunk. Jack was drunk. Drunk nerds at MIT were a different breed. “You can factor a Yang-Baxter equation in that state,” Jack slurred slightly, “But a quantum state is-”
“Unfactorable,” Lena completed, “Yes, I know how entanglement works. Jack, what are you really trying to say?”
Jack sat down, glancing up at Lena. “I like your braids.”
“You… wanted to talk about topological braid groups to compliment my hair?”
“Yes,” Jack said.
She asked him out on the spot.
---
She was a Luthor again.
After years together, she left Jack - crossing the country to take over LuthorCorp. She rapidly needed to slough off her MIT years, knowing that nerdery would not help her in a boardroom meeting. She needed to pull from her lessons from Andrea, how to put on a facade in the face of nerves, how to command a room full of misogynistic men to get her way. Poise and class would need to define her if she didn’t want to drown.
She kept her hair straight.
---
Years went on, and she found herself occasionally falling back into the habit - nights here and there where she would braid her hair, letting the waves fall the next day until they straightened out in the shower again. Never too often, never too many days in a row. Just in those moments when she felt a little closer to being herself.
Or was trying to be.
Kara came back from the phantom zone, and somehow their friendship seemed to survive the layers of mutual betrayal. Though it would take time to repair what was broken, their conversations were soft words sitting across from the couch from another - a far cry from the tense moments and harsh words on balconies. For the first time in years, Lena felt she could breathe again.
Other things changed. She never expected to end up in Kara’s bed, or wake up to her sunny smile. Somehow, that made it easier to drift away from the Luthor facade - to trade her stilettos for comfortable tennis shoes, her fresh-pressed suits for soft cottons, for a lighter touch on makeup that didn’t hide the crow’s feet developing from her more frequent laughter. She’d note the private smile from Kara when she’d show up at her loft for the evening, happy to see Lena more comfortable.
And before bed, Kara started taking to braiding Lena’s hair. “I had wondered why it was wavy sometimes,” Kara said, “It was like that a lot, in your college photos.”
Lena caught Kara’s eyes in the mirror. “Just didn’t seem fitting for a Luthor,” Lena said, “But it feels more right now.”
Kara smiled back, reaching for a small hair tie, finishing the braid. “Ready for bed?” Kara said.
“Ready.”
