[ incoming text ] Lena Luthor: are you okay?
She’s still at the DEO. Still grinding a cement block into a cement milkshake with her fists, one swing at a time. There’s no actual heat vision burning from her eyes but with the way their stare burns through the block in front of her, there might as well be. Kara hears the vibrate but ignores it. One swing, another, another. She rocks back on the balls of her feet, breathes only twice and swings again. When she pulls back again she looks down at her hands, as if she’s checking for split skin or blood. It’s dark, for a second and she wishes they’d bleed. When she looks down, Kara wants to see blood because then maybe – maybe she can run back up the stairs, through the streets of the city, on foot, and thrust her bloody hands into Lena’s and take it all back. Look. They’re human. They bleed. I’m human. I’m bleeding. Not Supergirl. Not a liar.
As she thinks it, she finally breaks. The cracks Kara wanted to find in her knuckles reconfigure themselves in her chest instead and she feels her heart crack in two – or three. The tears finally follow, the loss of breath, the unravelling at the end of the anger. A thing so stuck inside of her that she doesn’t know if it’s human or alien. That’s the problem. There’s no separating it. No separating any of it and maybe she isn’t bleeding but she’s all of it. Supergirl, Kara Danvers, a girl who had nearly – almost asked Lena Luthor on a date. The same girl who couldn’t make her own knuckles bleed, who couldn’t stop her knees from trying to draw her closer to the floor as her chest shook. This girl feels foreign and familiar all at once. And Kara can’t determine if it’s Kara Danvers who is broken or Supergirl.
It’s all broken. She pounds her knuckles against the floor this time. Her phone vibrates again and somehow that stands out above the disconnected sound of her own lungs trying to slow her breathing. Whiping the sleeve of her button up over her face, Kara pulls her phone out.
It’s bolder than usual, brighter than usual. Kara’s certain. Are you okay? For a second, Kara wonders if Lena heard it, if somehow her fury shook the city and her rage broke through the walls of the DEO the way it had broken through her own chest. She wonders if Lena heard it that far away. Are you okay? Are you okay? Kara reads the words again and then again and then again. One swing, another, another. She types “yes” on instinct but can’t bring herself to lie again. “No,” on purpose but this was a path she had asked for. Kara finally gets a grip on her breathing, finally pulls herself to her feet again. She stares at the phone. Are you okay?
The room seems to echo around her. The untouched cement block, not at all turned to dust. Her untouched knuckles, clean of any evidence, her face with the tear tracks wiped away, the silence that falls around the DEO as her breath settles. The world sets right again, the cracks in her chest glue shut again, as they always do. She wipes her palms over her thighs as she walks away, like somehow that might wash her hands of whatever girl she’d left in that room after she’d buttoned her back into her chest. One more deep breath and Kara finally answers Lena’s text before walking out.
[ outgoing text ] Lena Luthor: are you?
Send me “Are you okay?” and i’ll generate a number!
