♪ She put the lime in the coconut, she drank them both up
She put the lime in the coconut, she called the doctor, woke him up,
And said, "Doctor, ain't there nothin' I can take,
I say, Doctor, to relieve this belly ache? ♪
There was something inherently unnerving in Superman staring at her, Lena decided. She could *feel* the weight of his gaze on her. If she hadn’t know better, she would have thought that he was trying to steal glances at her. Of course, there was the matter of Lois Lane and all that, and Lena was assuredly not his type. She was, after all, a Luthor.
But he kept staring.
Lena listened to the mission briefing, feeling a bit detached. Her work here was done; she’d worked out the math and it was up to Kara and her cousin to push the asteroid just so, to return it to its proper orbit and send it on its merry way.
It was routine, if two people with godlike powers pushing millions of tons of rock through space could be said to be normal.
There was only one problem.
Clark.
Kept.
Staring.
Lena looked away from him, then slipped out of the room, looking up at the sky. She could see the offending space rock just barely, and extended her arm, covering it with her thumb, one eye pinched shut.
“Hey.”
Kara was in the doorway, not quite emerging onto the balcony. She’d suited up in her space suit, a new design of Lena’s that outfitted her in a stark white with a glowing amber light behind the red-gold frame of her family crest. Lena was proud of her work. It carried a sufficient air supply and was shielded against radiation, just on the off chance they Kara met something up there that bypassed her immunities.
Kara had her helmet tucked under one arm and her hair up on a tight bun, and she looked absolutely dashing. Lena couldn’t help but grin like a big kid, as worried as she was.
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” said Lena. “You look good in that.”
“Of course I do, you made it,” said Kara.
She broke across the balcony in three quick strides, and from the way she canted her head, Lena thought it might finally happen. She might crack that last barrier and press her soft lips to Lena’s, stealing some luck to take with her, and stealing Lena’s breath away.
Kara had stolen her heart years ago.
She didn’t, though. Rather than a hug, she ducked down and brushed her forehead lightly against Lena’s, before quickly pulling back.
“Come right back,” said Lena.
“You know it,” said Kara. “Want me to bring you something from my trip?”
“Just come back safe.”
Kara grinned her cocky grin and offered Lena a little salute.
“It’s time,” Clark said, from the doorway. Lena hadn’t even noticed his presence.
He was staring at both of them, now. Lena turned away. The pair stepped back inside, Clark speaking to Kara in clipped, rapid Kryptonese. Lena couldn’t parse it quickly enough, but she made out something about scents.
The mission was not routine.
Lena’s work was perfect. The data was not. Lena white knuckled the railing in her hands as the asteroid drifted down, skimming the Earth’s atmosphere and carving out a channel of unbound flame.
Alex was frantically demanding a status update, but neither Kryptonian answered her. There was only static. Lena watched the control room monitors, and her hands felt as cold as the steel they grasped. She felt utterly numb, on the verge of screaming.
Then the speakers crackled. It was Kara.
“I’m sorry, Lena,” Kara rasped out. “I made a mess of your suit.”
They landed a few minutes later. Kara was the worse for wear, with some of the reinforced plating melted off on her left side. She spun a harrowing tale of struggling to correct the rock’s course, Clark nodding along silently beside her. Lena locked eyes with Kara and let out a slow, agonized breath. She was okay. She was okay this time.
She’d always be okay. Right up until she wasn’t.
After, when Kara had been pried out of her suit, with her cousin’s help, and changed into a hoodie and leggings, she attacked the buffet that was laid out for the two of them in the cafeteria. Shoving around celestial bodies in as hungry work.
When Lena turned and saw Superman staring at her again, she decided she’d had enough and squared up to him.
“Okay, farmboy. Out with it. Why do you keep staring at me?”
“I was waiting for Kara to say something,” he said, “but I guess she’s too shy or she’s worried about what I’ll think. It’s okay with me if you two are together. I don’t hold your name against you.”
Lena’s brain about leaked out of her ears.
“Together?”
“Of course. I noticed earlier that her heartbeat synchronizes to yours whenever you’re in the room, and of course she’s been scent marking you.”
“She’s been what?”
Clark shifted on his feet, either from her tone or her expression or both. He looked strangely young.
“Oh, uh, I see. Anyway I need to get going, long flight back to Metropolis.”
Lena barely noticed him leaving. She stood in the same spot far too long, staring at the refrigerator. She was still standing there when Kara came up alongside her.
“Hey.”
Of course, she was devastating. Kara was in black leggings and a threadbare hoodie that was actually Lena’s, and padding around the place barefoot. Her golden tresses spilled around her shoulders in loose waves, held back by her glasses. The dashing bravado was gone and she was soft, warm, equally lovely Kara again.
“You scared me up there,” said Lena.
“You kept me safe with your suit. You always do.”
Lena looked Kara in the eye. Kara had the most lovely eyes, a gorgeous deep blue that could be as heavy as winter storm or as light as a summer breeze
“I heard what Clark said.”
Lena swallowed, her throat suddenly dry.
“He caught me red handed,” Kara added.
Lena wondered if she should laugh it off, or make a joke. Kara smiled, pulling her gaze away in a slightly embarrassed way, her cheeks turning a rosy pink.
“Does Kryptonian scent marking mean what I’m guessing it means?”
“It, um, it does.”
“This is how humans do it,” Lena whispered, diving headlong into Kara’s space.
She ducked just a little, tilting her head back, and Kara read her intentions perfectly. Their lips came together, and their first kiss was quick and soft, a promise for later, when there would be only fairy lights and Kara’s couch and soft, eager explorations full of slow, desperate intensity.
For now, Kara simply took Lena’s hands in her own, and very gently nuzzled her nose against Lena’s, breath ticking her lips.
I’m currently rereading These Strange Steps by thememoriesfire (probably because I’m an emotional mess atm) and like, it’s so good. The explanation of these two broken people and them trying to heal themselves individually but also together is just so what I need right now and it just lives free on the internet.
Oooooh, that paladin/new god post... for a SuperCorp AU, which would be which? My first inclination is divine Lena and paladin Kara, but I think an argument can be made for the other way around.
I think either could totally argued, but Paladin Kara is too good for me not to kind of spiral and write Lena as the goddess of Death so!!!! This isn’t much like the original post prompt but it’s where my brain went 🤷♀️
-
As one cursed with eternal life, it was only a matter of time before Death tried to come for Kara.
She sees the goddess for the first time as she’s sitting on a fallen tree, trying to dig a knife out of her back. She’d intervened in a roadside robbery out of pure instinct more than anything else – she prefers to keep to herself, for the most part, and has done so for years beyond counting – and she hadn’t been expecting this band of brigands to have a fourth member hidden in the woods. He’d caught her by surprise. Leading to her current predicament. She hadn’t even noticed the blade sticking out from between her shoulders until after she’d sent the thieves running and the victims on their merry way, and now it’s stubbornly lodged in a place she can’t reach.
Death stands in the shadows. Her dress is (unsurprisingly) black, her long dark hair framing a face Kara can’t quite see. She reminds Kara of the night. A foreign concept, here - the sun of this world never moves from the centre of the sky. Always beaming straight down. It focuses on this half of the planet, leaving the other half dark and dead rather than simply deigning to set for half the day to share its light. It leaves the world’s denizens thinking the globe is flat. A ridiculous notion.
The god of the sun had been benevolent on Kara’s world. Not here.
“I’ve been watching you,” the goddess says. Her voice echoes, clouds around Kara’s senses like a flock of ravens. “You’ve walked this earth for 120 years and haven’t aged a day. You should be dead. Why is your name not on my list?”
“I’m not of this earth,” Kara says distractedly. The voice should send shivers down her spine, but as her spine is currently being scraped by sharp iron she has bigger fish to fry at the moment.
“That much I do know,” Death says coldly. “Your gods are dead.”
The reminder makes Kara’s chest ache. An echo of her dead planet, more dead even than the darkened half of this one. Reduced to rubble. But she smiles through it.
“They are.”
“That shouldn’t mean you can evade death. In any realm.”
“Evade is a funny word for being kept from something,” Kara says, gritting her teeth as her fingers brush the knife’s handle without grasping it. Every time she twists her arm to do it, it sends a shot of pure pain through her. “Could you maybe help me with this?”
“You want to die?” Death asks. Her voice is changed, now – the smoky effect drops, as if it was an affectation interrupted by her shock.
“Would love to, actually.”
“So, how -”
“Ask your brother,” Kara says cheerfully. She knows the pantheon of this world almost as well as her own, now. Learned that hard lesson when she arrived here alone, on this world where the sun never sets. She knows the familial ties that bind the gods. There were many once, one for every little thing one might need to pray for, but now there are but two. Lex, the sun god who provides life, and his unnamed sister the goddess of Death.
Death scoffs. “What does my brother have to do with this?”
“He cursed me,” Kara says, finally turning in her frustration to a nearby tree. Bracing for pain she rubs her back against it, strafing until bark hits blade and the pressure slides the knife free. The wave of pain eases into relief as soon as it’s gone, and in moments the wound has stitched itself up. “With eternal life. Cursed never to see my dead family in the afterlife. Clever, right?”
“That’s not possible,” Death says slowly. “He can’t supersede my domain.”
“Well, he has,” Kara says, nodding her head half-respectfully in Death’s direction before gathering up her things and heading back to the road. She has nowhere in particular to be, but walking gives her a sense of purpose even so. “So take it up with him.”
The goddess disappears in a dramatic wave of black smoke. And that, Kara thinks, is the end of that.
-
Kara meets the goddess of death again 3 years later. She’s busy putting out a house fire, one that might have overtaken the entire village if left to grow – she’s the only one braving the flames when everyone else has run to safety. The fire sears her palms, leaves shiny red welts that disappear the moment they see the rays of the sun, but it hardly registers as pain anymore. She’s grown used to it in the last few years.
Saving people in need means a lot of injury.
When the flames are dampened and she’s left pouring water on the cinders, she moves a crooked pile of rubble to find the dark goddess sitting with graceful poise on the charred remains of a wooden table. Even in the eternal sunshine, darkness sits around her like a heavy cloak.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Kara says. She brushes the ash from her hands, gesturing at her soot-stained face. “Sorry about the mess.”
“He shouldn’t be able to do this,” Death says. Kara can detect none of the echoing dramatics her voice held during their last meeting – now her tone is clear and sharp. Low and a little raspy, maybe, but not in an unpleasant way. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“Shouldn’t, but did,” Kara says, shrugging and moving to pass around the table. “If you’ll excuse me?”
The goddess holds out a hand, and Kara’s way is blocked by a dark cloud of energy. Kara sighs.
“I don’t know what you’re expecting me to do,” Kara says, with a little more steel to her voice. “I’d love to help you out and go into the great unknown or whatever it is that you do, but I can’t die. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“Why did he curse you?” Death asks.
“Because he is the great Lord of the sun on this world, and honouring Rao dishonours him,” Kara replies heavily, leaning against a very unsteady beam. It’s hot against the skin of her arm. “He took offence to worship being given to another when I first arrived here. Even a dead god.”
The goddess is quiet. Embers crackle and settle around them - the orange glow lights the angles in her face through her cloak of shadow, though the details are still obscured.
“Did you know that the sun moves on most worlds?” Kara says. The goddess doesn’t move. “Rao didn’t control the sun. He was the sun. He moved through the day to cover the whole planet. There’s no night-time, here.”
“Yes,” Death says softly. “My brother likes to be the centre of everyone’s sky.”
“Except the dark side of the planet.”
Death doesn’t answer for a time. Shadows curl around her, licking at the surface of the table like dark flames.
“Most would covet eternal life, you know,” Death finally says. Her voice is curious. “Most hate death as a very concept. Hate me.”
Kara folds her arms. She looks directly at Death, focused on where her eyes should be.
“I’m not most.”
After a beat the goddess disappears, leaving Kara alone in the ashes.
After that day, Kara can almost feel the goddess watching her every time she survives something that should kill a mortal. Every time she heals a fatal wound, or lets another birthday pass her by without a sign of age. But for years the goddess leaves her alone. It’s another 21 before Kara sees the goddess of death again.
This time, Kara is almost sure she’s finally managed it. She dove deep to pull someone from the remains of a shipwreck, and after sending them to the surface for rescue she stayed underwater. Letting her air run out slowly, feeling her lungs fill with seawater. Choking in the dark. Blackness creeping in, the world getting fuzzy, her family’s faces swimming before her eyes as she feels the first spark of hope she’s felt in over a century -
She wakes to hot sunlight, sand under her back, and the goddess of death looking down at her from a regal seat on a beached crate of supplies. Her dark hair is framed by midday sun, her pale skin luminescent and stubbornly resisting its rays. For the first time, Kara can see the details of her face. She’s as flawless as a goddess might be expected to be, each feature carved and tying together a picture worthy of worship. And her eyes. They waver back and forth in colour, once blue and now green, like shades of the ocean reflected by different skies.
She’s beautiful. And she’s looking at Kara like she’s a stubborn puzzle-box, refusing to give up its secrets.
“Damn,” Kara says, coughing up several mouthfuls of salty water and turning over to spit them into the sand. “I came close that time, didn’t I?”
“I don’t understand you.”
Kara flops back. Her lungs are burning, and she can already tell it’s going to be hell to get all this sand out of her clothes. “Yeah, I don’t understand me either.”
“You could be living a life of selfish pleasure. Endless pleasure,” Death says. There’s a crease between her brows that, in her drowning-induced delirium, Kara wants to smooth with a finger. The first hint of imperfection in her limestone face. “You could accrue wealth and fame and followers. You could live the life of a god on earth if you wanted, and yet you spend your time throwing yourself into danger for others.”
“Why not?” Kara says, sitting up and feeling each vertebrae pop back into place. “I can’t die. I can do things others can’t.”
“So instead you aim to eliminate names from my list.” The goddess doesn’t look angry. Just confused. “Today three names disappeared before I could get here.”
“I would say sorry, but I don’t like to lie,” Kara says. She brushes sand from her arms, grimacing at the knots the seawater has made in her hair.
The goddess’ lips twitch. Almost a smile. Her mouth downturns naturally - fitting, for a goddess of the saddest domain - but Kara thinks suddenly that her smile might just be life-giving. She wants to see it. It lights a fire in her she didn’t expect.
“No need to apologize,” Death says quietly. “I take no pleasure in the reaping of souls.”
Kara pauses partway through untangling her hair.
“Huh.”
“Is that surprising?” Death says. One perfect brow arches, and Kara traces its curve with her eyes.
“Well, that’s not how people speak of you.”
“Ah, yes. Death, the cruel thief of joy,” the goddess says, a thread of bitterness weaving into her words. “Waiting in the dark to snatch mortals away at the slightest provocation. Bringing woe and grief wherever she goes.”
The dark smoke that’s been mostly absent from their conversation appears again. It sweeps around Death, blurring her features like a stormcloud, and Kara leans back on her hands.
“I mean. The aesthetic isn’t exactly doing you any favours,” Kara notes.
The smoke parts. And this time, the goddess does smile. It’s almost incredulous, like she’s shocked at Kara’s gall, but Kara finds she was correct - that smile is like the first beam of moonlight after an eclipse. Something not of this world.
“No,” the goddess says, rising to her feet. The sand doesn’t touch her dress. “I suppose it isn’t.”
Her form starts to waver again. Black smoke takes over her features, sweeping across the beach. Kara scrambles to her feet. Sand sticks wetly to her back, making her hyper-aware of just how bedraggled she must look in comparison to the literal goddess she’s speaking to, but she calls out anyways.
“Wait!”
The smoke stops.
“Do you have a name?” Kara asks, hardly daring to hope for an answer. She can feel Death looking at her even with her features obscured.
“I haven’t used it in a long time.”
“No time like the present,” Kara says. The smoke billows out, sweeping across Kara’s soggy boots. Almost like a laugh. After a long pause, she answers.
“It’s…it’s Lena.”
Kara smiles.
“I’m Kara. Since my name isn’t on your list.”
Lena disappears without an acknowledgement. But Kara clings to her name. She holds it in her mouth like a sweet, lets it melt over her tongue as the last hint of the goddess’ presence disappears in the bright sunshine.
“Until next time. Lena.”
-
Saving people in need becomes something of a pastime. With nothing much else to do with her endless days Kara keeps travelling, helping out where she can and learning how to fight to do so more effectively. And, she finds, she’s good at it. It comes as easily to her as anything.
But sometimes, even easy things go wrong.
It isn’t often that Kara fails. But her strength has limits, even with eternal life – when the man she’s caught mid-fall on a rocky cliff slips from her grasp, there’s little she can do but watch as he hits the ground. She even falls after him, pulling herself towards him on broken legs that snap themselves back into place within moments, but there’s nothing she can do to heal his broken body.
Lena appears in her periphery as she’s holding him. His wheezing breath is starting to leave him - he’s terrified, seizing at her clothes.
“Help,” he chokes. Lena moves just into Kara’s field of vision. Not circling, but making her presence known.
“I can’t,” Kara whispers. She lays him gently on the ground, prising his hands from her tunic and stepping away, and when she finally looks at Lena she sees not satisfaction but deep, unimaginable sadness.
The moment Lena takes Kara’s place, he knows.
“No,” he moans, trying to scramble away but failing as the strength leaves his body. “No, no, please, I – I have a family, you can’t – please don’t -”
“Be at peace,” Lena says softly. A pale hand comes to rest on his wound, a soft glow emanating from her palm. Her face is set in aching empathy. “Your suffering is over. No pain will follow you here.”
The man is not at peace. He’s still terrified, hardly hearing her comforting words, but Lena says them anyways; when his spirit fades and his body goes limp, Lena stands. She doesn’t look at Kara, not directly, but nor does she disappear as Kara takes a heavy seat on a flat rock.
After a moment, Kara calls out.
“Lena?”
Lena twitches. Her hand flexes, making a fist and then relaxing again. Kara wonders if she’s heard her name called a single time since their last meeting.
“Come talk to me,” Kara says softly. She pats the spot beside her, and Lena’s eyes flicker to the movement. “Please?”
Lena comes closer, but she doesn’t sit. Her eyes are downcast. Kara wishes she would look up, so that she could see the ever-changing colour of them. She’s been thinking about it for years, now. She’s just as starkly beautiful as she was the last time they saw each other.
“I’m sorry,” Lena says quietly. Kara shrugs, trying to put aside the guilt eating away at her insides.
“Can’t save everyone.”
“And yet you still try. Doesn’t it get tiresome?”
“I should ask you the same thing,” Kara says. Lena finally looks up.
“My task is enforced on me,” Lena says, her hands coming together in something close to a fidget before she seems to remember herself and stop. Her eyes are grey, today. Like the choppy steel of a stormy sea. “You do this by choice. Have you made some kind of game out of erasing names from my list?”
“I guess you could say that,” Kara shrugs. She moves over, patting the open spot beside her again. “Or maybe I just enjoy your company.”
Lena scoffs. “That’s even more absurd than defying Death.”
“And yet, here I am. Doing both.”
Lena’s face is like stone as she assesses Kara’s words. But she sits.
“You don’t get to talk to people often, do you?” Kara says. Lena has left a great deal of space between them, perching on the very edge of the rock, and Kara takes in what she can of her side profile.
“Not unless I’m bringing them to the afterlife,” Lena says. Her hands twist together again. “And in those cases, as you saw, they tend to be…”
“Afraid.”
“Or angry. Or pleading. But yes. Mostly frightened,” Lena sighs. “Everyone fears the unknown. It doesn’t really matter what I say.”
“But you still try,” Kara says. It’s something she never would have expected from Death, this well of genuine empathy for the humans she reaps, but it seems to be a fundamental part of Lena just as much as her stormy eyes or her sharp tongue.
Lena nods. “Everyone deserves comfort in their final moments. Especially if they’re gripped by fear.”
Kara’s next words come in a whisper.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
Lena looks at her sharply. Her brows are knitted with disbelief, and her hands stop their twisting and instead brace on the rock.
“My brother did this to you,” Lena says. Her voice is low, but urgent as she leans towards Kara as if to persuade her. “Keeps you from seeing your family. He is the source of your curse.”
“Unless I’m mistaken, you don’t seem to be your brother.”
Kara’s hand moves closer to where Lena’s rests. A few inches between them, perhaps, easily closed. Closer and closer Kara moves, towards Lena’s pale fingers, reaching –
The swirling black cloud has hidden Lena’s features before Kara can come close to touching Death’s hand.
“Lena, wait!” Kara shouts. But it’s to empty air. The goddess of death is gone.
-
After that day, Kara puts herself in danger perhaps a shade more than she did before in the hopes of drawing Lena out again. Sometimes Kara can feel her presence when she saves a life, a gentle smoky warmth just over her shoulder; sometimes she can almost see her as someone’s soul is leaving their body, if Kara has failed to change their fate. A faint outline. A sense of calm, even when the dying person is frightened. But no matter what Kara does Lena doesn’t materialize.
She even tries praying, which feels as silly as it must look. Lena doesn’t answer. Her absence only intensifies Kara’s fascination.
As she walks the world Kara looks for worshippers of her newly-favoured goddess, and finds few and far between. Besides the occasional murderous cult who worship a version of Death that doesn’t resemble Lena in the slightest and a single, run-down temple on a remote island hidden from human access, there’s no trace of the kind of worship given to Lena’s brother the sun-god. No festivals, no sacrifices, hardly even an acknowledgement. Only fear, and resistance against the inevitable. As if pretending death doesn’t exist will stave it off indefinitely.
Even with only three meetings, Kara feels somehow as if she knows Lena. And her erasure feels deeply unfair.
It takes 12 years for Kara to see her again. 12 years of looking for danger, saving people whose names she knows must have been on Lena’s list, stealing souls back from Death in an endless back-and-forth, until finally Kara does something drastic.
She takes her vows, and becomes Death’s only Paladin.
Hearing Lena’s voice again is like hearing the first drops of rain after a long drought.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?”
Kara opens her eyes. She’s only halfway through her 24 hours of silent prayer in this windowless room, the last step in this holy process, and now her patron goddess herself is perched on the altar surrounded by flickering candles. Her legs are folded one over the other in a graceful cross, and her face is set in incredulity.
“Lena!” Kara breathes, grinning wide and rising from her knees. “Long time no see!”
“Death doesn’t have Paladins, Kara,” Lena says fiercely, as if Kara hasn’t greeted her at all. “Nobody walks the earth saving people in Death’s name. My brother’s Paladins seek to defy me, they don’t…they don’t worship.”
“Why not?” Kara shrugs. Her armour, a dark leather set with Death’s symbol on the breast, squeaks with her movement in the way new leather always does. Lena’s nostrils flare.
“Because it doesn’t make sense!”
“It does, though. Think about it,” Kara says, as insistent in her decision as she’s been these last two years of training. She’s had to weather the disbelief of the other Paladins here too, all training to serve the sun-god. She’s gotten more than enough practice. “I can’t die. Ever. Who’s more fitting to carry out Death’s will?”
“What are you going to do, go out and kill people indiscriminately in my name?” Lena says, waving her hands wide. The strength of her reaction makes her somehow more real than she’s ever been, even when her draped sleeves pass over the candles without catching. “What could possibly be the function of a Paladin of Death?”
“You don’t take pleasure in the reaping of souls.”
Lena pauses. Her arms fall slowly back to her sides.
“You remembered that,” she whispers.
Kara knows then with a certainty she can’t describe that she’s done the right thing. She’s tried keeping Rao in her heart, she’s tried escaping from her past, she’s tried every method available on this earth of letting Death take her. But now that she knows Death, has seen her firsthand, she’ll kneel for Lena and nobody else.
“I can be your vassal,” Kara says, lowering her voice to match Lena’s. “I can sort those who can be spared from those whose time has come. Make your job easier. Save them, or ease their passage if I need to. Soothe some of that fear.”
Lena bites at her lower lip. Her teeth are brilliantly white, the edges sharp enough to leave a mark that fades slowly.
“It would defy my brother,” Lena admits. “He’s the one who gave me this task. I’m not meant to deviate.”
“Who better to do that, too?”
Lena is silent. Kara approaches her, trying to absorb her every perfect feature while she can – the curve of her brow, the shape of her sharp jaw framing her mouth. The slight underbite that shines through as she seems to chew on the inside of her cheek.
Kara reaches out a hand.
Lena slides off the altar, snatching her arm away before Kara can get close. “No - you can’t touch me.”
“Why not?”
Lena sidesteps, sliding past Kara and backing up until her back hits the wall. “Mortals can’t touch the gods. You’ll burn. It’ll -”
“Kill me?” Kara grins. She removes her gauntlet, dropping it to the flagstones. “I’d welcome it.”
Again, slowly, she reaches for Lena’s hand. And slowly Lena relaxes her arm until finally, Kara’s fingers wrap around her bare wrist.
Lena’s skin is like ice. It’s cold enough that it might burn, like Lena said, if Kara wasn’t cursed. But it doesn’t. Kara feels more alive than she’s felt in decades, just from a simple touch. Wonderfully alive. Joyously alive. Lena’s intake of breath is sharp enough to cut.
“See?” Kara says lowly. “My curse is good for something.”
“You’re…”
Kara’s free hand joins the first. She cups both of them around Lena’s, feeling their shape; Lena’s long, elegant fingers curl into themselves in the cradle of Kara’s palms, their cold receding. Kara keeps her voice low.
“What am I?”
Lena swallows. Kara watches her throat bob, her lips parting to show a flash of her pink tongue.
“Warm,” Lena murmurs. “Like the sun. I haven’t felt warmth in…a long time.”
Kara is close to her. So close that she can see the shifting sea colours in Lena’s eyes even in the dim candlelight. Carefully, Kara sinks to her knees with Lena’s hands still cradled in her own. She opens up her fingers so that she can press her forehead to Lena’s palms, and she finds that the coldness has left them. They’re almost hot, now.
“Let me serve you, Lena,” Kara whispers, like the endless prayers she’s been whispering since she was locked in this room. “Please.”
Lena’s fingers move. For a moment Kara thinks she might push her away. But instead they relax, and press against the top of Kara’s head.
“You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met,” Lena says. But there’s wonder in her voice. Happiness, even. And when she disappears in her usual cloud of smoke, the smoke drifts over Kara. She breathes it in, feeling it full her lungs, and on the first breath she feels it changing her.
Lena smells of fresh earth. Of fallen leaves, crisp and decomposing in a fragrant autumn. The tangy smoke of a doused fire.
She smells like the cool air of night.
When she smoke leaves her, Kara feels different. Unimaginably different. Envigorated. The pew she uses to pull herself to her feet cracks and splits under her hand with hardly any effort, and when she flexes her shoulders – feeling a new strength in them, one she can’t wait to explore – she feels something else there.
Two black, feathered wings unfurl from her back, filling the room with fragrant shadow.
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