Okay though please consider: Imra and Mon-El get a Future Past Space Divorce or whatever, after they save Sam and EVERYONE IS FINE, SOMEHOW.
Imra sticking around the DEO and Kara sort of - adopting is the wrong word, but it’s not quite a mentorship, either. But it’s Kara gravitating toward her, two stars in orbit in a way that neither of them can quite explain.
Imra who’s just so full of emotions, her marriage is just gone after all those years and now here’s Kara Zor-El, the woman she idolized from the past, looking at her with big, curious eyes and asking if she wants to go for pizza.
(The woman that, if Imra were a lesser person, she might be cross with. But they both know this was never really about Kara, never really her fault, as much as Mon-El insisted it was.)
(Kara asks Imra if she likes pizza and Imra agrees to go out with her. Even if she’s vibrating from the intensity of it all, from grief and anger and the fluttery, starstruck feeling she always gets when Kara’s around. Even if this isn’t supposed to be a date, somehow it feels like one in the back of Imra’s mind, in the way they’re both a little too nervous and a little too awkward with each other.)
Imra goes for pizza and gets sauce on her chin and somehow, when Kara giggles at her and swipes her thumb across it, Imra doesn’t feel embarrassed. She feels electric, Kara’s touch innocent but setting something ablaze inside of her that Imra doesn’t want to consider.
Kara taking her for ice cream the next week, fancy doughnuts the week after that, cookie dough next and cotton candy the following week and it’s that last one that makes Imra kiss her for the first time.
Kara who’s giggling at her and explaining, once again, how blue is a flavour here on earth and how much she loves it, how tickled she is by the mythical blue raspberry that has never existed, and Imra’s laughing at her and there’s blue food dye and sugar on the corner of Kara’s mouth and something inside Imra’s chest bubbles up bright and brave and oh. There it is.
Kara who freezes, whispers oh and goes soft underneath Imra’s mouth, and for one stomach-churning second Imra worries that she’s gotten it wrong - that she’s just been starstruck all along, that this doesn’t mean what she thinks it does.
Sorry, Imra whispers. You had blue on you.
Kara kisses Imra back this time, giggles against her mouth in a way that makes Imra feel like she could float right back into space.
Anyway. That’s how it starts.