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Lena's Secret update
🕑 Added 2016-11-23 14:47:51 +0000 UTC Kara had developed a theory of childhood as being unchanging, placid, smoothly even in its ups and downs. The great highs of birthdays and holidays formed a perfect counter with the lows of lost pets, schoolyard bullying—minor problems that couldn’t truly harm the contentment of youth.She knew she was projecting her own development on Krypton there. Krypton, where nothing bad after happened, until it did, all at once. On Earth, worlds ended every day. Children lost parents, were injured, displaced. But for a great many of them, a lucky many whose ranks Kara hoped to increase, there was mostly comfort.
Adulthood brought trauma. Being hurt and depressed over things outside your neighborhood, outside your city, your country, things outside your control and beyond your parents.
Only as an adult—and Kara’s adulthood had begun with the death of Krypton—could the world go bad so fast and so harrowingly.
She flew to the L-Corp Tower, changed in an alleyway nearby, and proceeded at a fast walk through the lobby, up the elevator—she could go so much faster—and through the secretary to Lena’s office. The scene she approached had her wishing she had just flown up there, the direct approach.
“Get your hands off me—GET YOUR HANDS—“
“You think this is Metropolis? You think you’re Lex Luthor?”
“I’m not—“
“You can just come up with a million and one evil schemes and I’ll just let you, taking potshots at Supergirl…”
Kara burst in to find a scene like she’d fallen asleep and had a nightmare. Alex had Lena pinned to the wall and was roughly frisking her, handcuffs in one hand. “Get off me!” Lena screeched, jabbing an elbow back, and Alex caught it, shoving Lena back, unfurling the cuffs with a fiercely triumphant grin…
“Alex, stop it!” Kara said, voice firm, almost trembling to keep from shouting. Supergirl would shout and she wasn’t Supergirl right now.
Alex looked at her sidelong, showing teeth. “It was her, she put him in the hospital—“
In a crisis, Kara could calmly Supergirl out and look at things rationally. That was almost what she did here, but her emotions were all tangled up, loyalty split between two women who seemed about to come to blows. She thought, crazily, that Snapper would be proud of her. She could see the whole thing through a reporter’s eyes.
How L-Corp’s mad scientist, Jacob Kahn, had gone on another rampage after her night with Lena. J’onn had tried to stop him and been injured. For once, Kara was better prepared than Alex to process that. Her sister was all shaken up from her stalled relationship with Maggie, and had jumped on the idea that Lena had created the supervillain Kahn had become as some anti-Supergirl proxy.
But sifting through the evidence at superspeed and running it by Winn had proved that the lab accident that’d given him his powers was just an accident. There was no ulterior motive. He had been given power and used it to break into banks.
“Alex, I talked to Supergirl, she said it was nothing like that.”
Alex wouldn’t give an inch. “And I say we take Lena back to headquarters and take a run at her,” she hissed. “See what spills out once she cracks.”
Lena’s jaw jutted out for a moment, sidelong to her upper lip, as if she were chewing something hard. “And how about I make a call to my friend the police commissioner and see if he’d like Internal Affairs to look into Detective Maggie Sawyer?” With Alex blocking her to the wall, she could feel the other woman stiffen. “She’s your friend, isn’t she?”
Alex wrenched Lena’s arm down, the handcuff around her wrist, and seemed about to rip her other arm out of its socket when Kara raised her voice: “Alex, enough!”
Alex looked at her ferociously. “You heard her!”
“Go outside,” Kara said, struggling to keep cool when everyone else seemed determined to set things on fire. “Right now.”
Alex set her jaw, the muscles corded all down her throat, and stomped out of the office. She left the handcuffs halfway on Lena, who crooked a finger inside the empty cuff as she sat down on her desk. The sight of Lena, who could sprawl herself there as seductively as a lounge singer, now toying with what was practically a weapon she’d been assaulted with, gave Kara a moment of cognitive dissonance.
While she was stunned, Lena pressed her intercom button. “Ms. Kowalski, have security show Alex Danvers off the premises. Emphatically.”
Kara recovered her wits as the secretary sent her acknowledgment. “Lena, you cannot do that! She’s in love with Maggie, you cannot just threaten her!”
“Why not?” Lena asked bitterly. “You saw her. She was outright terrorizing me.” She pulled the chain of the cuffs taut. “Why shouldn’t I treat her like any other attacker?”
“She’s gay! We’re gay! Don’t you think that makes it a little awful to threaten her through her gay lover?”
“I wasn’t feeling much female solidarity when she was ramming my face into the wall.” Lena snapped her finger clear of the empty cuff, letting the links dangle from her caught wrist. “I know, I know, she’s your sister—“
“She’s a good person! A good, decent person!”
Lena held up her bound hand. “Not the impression I was getting!”
“I’ll get her to apologize—“
“I don’t want her to apologize.”
“Well, I will get her to anyway. And I want you to promise not to go after Maggie Sawyer. For anything.”
Lena hung her head. Like Cat, she hated admitting she was wrong. Unlike Cat, she was capable of doing so. After a fashion. “Come here, Kara,” she said, her voice much softer, much more lightly strung.
Kara took a few steps, but held back from going to her, as much as she wanted to. She thought she recognized a part of herself in Lena; that Lena could get a certain way and just be impossible to talk to, impossible to dissuade, because someone had threatened what was hers. They had that in common. My city, my company…
So she had to insist on getting through to Lena and count on being one of the few who could. Because she didn’t know if Lena could stop herself any more than she could.
“She’s not your enemy, Lena, she was upset.”
Lena eyed her. “Do you know what happens if one photograph is taken of Lex Luthor’s sister in cuffs? Stock prices plummet, careers end, my people—“
“She wasn’t thinking about that, she was thinking that you had hurt someone close to her. Put others at risk.”
Lena’s cheeks pulled in as she teethed them. Her eyes lowered slightly and she repeated herself, more plaintive: “Come here.”
Kara walked up to her, but held herself back from embracing Lena. She wanted to just shake her, to hug her and tell her this, this is how much I care about you, and I care about Alex that much too, and if I have to take sides it’ll rip me in half!
She felt like she was ripped in half already, seeing them at each other’s throats.
“I understand you have to protect yourself, and your company, and your reputation… I worked for Cat Grant, I know you have to go under the table to get things done. But leave Maggie alone. Leave Alex alone. They’re not your enemies.”
Lena exhaled frostily. Whatever else she was, she was a woman of her word. If she promised not to go after someone, that was it, forever, no matter how they vexed her. Alex could have a gun to her head and Lena wouldn’t lift a finger against her. It was a lot to ask of her. “Anyone else you want to spare from my wrath?” she asked evenly, trying to make a joke of it, even if her voice was too heavy for it to land.
“Winn Schott. Jimmy Olsen.” She thought of saying J’onn, but that would never make sense without her secret too. And besides, he could take care of himself.
“The Toyman’s son?” Lena’s brow furrowed. “You do keep interesting company.”
Kara relaxed a little, feeling Lena giving in. “It’s what makes me such a good conversationalist.” She leaned in, butting her hip against Lena’s knee. C’mon.
“Alright. I promise. No matter what the game is, I won’t make a move against any of them.”
Kara breathed a sigh of relief. For all that Lena had… ‘bottomed’ the other night, she could be stubborn as a mule when she wanted to be.
“Now then… since you’re here…” Lena reached to Kara’s throat, holding the handcuff chains in either hand, and looped the link around the back of Kara’s neck. “Are you as turned on right now as I am?”
