LUTHOR.

it's completely uncouth to have sex dreams about your bestie and even more worse (yikes, kara) to toe damn close to the line of flirting openly, knowing damn well lena doesn't really know who she's flirting with. it's enough to make her back off, just slightly, letting go of the mug and settling back onto her instep, to put only a fraction more space between them.

(of course she pictures it: soft skin under silk sheets, the hint of the most expensive perfume on the planet, a breathy moan cut off by a loud shout -- what she wouldn't give to know how it feels. what she tastes like. soft in all the places kara is not, giving when kara takes, pressing on bruises and looking so, so pretty marked up in delicate, indecent places. kara doesn't think of herself as a possessive person, but with lena, she could make an exception.)

"we should work on that," she says quietly, unable to really look the other woman in the eye any longer, and clears her throat. "it's late -- early? you're tired, i'm sure."

"i'm trying. hard to do when your brother plots your demise from behind bars." it's also hard to do when you actively put yourself in harm's way because there's a shred of something inside you that says it's better off that way. (it's not a suicidal thread beginning to unravel — just one of... acceptance. understanding. knowing that if it happens, there's at least a reason. the not knowing is the worst bit — those few hours after the latest poisoning, gunshot, kidnapping, and not knowing why? that's what makes her mind churn.)

"it's been a long night." and just like that, the spark's gone. (it's not gone forever — it's a momentary thing. the second of thinking that supergirl is going to close the gap between them, leave a bruising kiss against her lip that splits it and leaves it throbbing before leaving in a zip of wind against her balcony doors. that's what leaves her when the space between their bodies grows.)

"i've got some appraisals to look over. there are a few projects that need a go-ahead from me." it couples the shrug of her good arm and she glances over to the home office perfectly cooked up in the corner room of the apartment. she won't sleep — she finds herself surprisingly sensitive to caffeine, and it's been her saving grace through her phds, but if supergirl's intent on leaving, she'll find herself busy nonetheless.

the mention of clark leaves something sour in the back of her throat; she visits to see lois, to see the kids, and yes to talk to clark but he's always, always busy (shocker) and it always ends in some delusional shouting match about standards and her friends and what she's doing with her life. it's infuriating, being lectured by someone she was supposed to raise and take care of and teach. she tries not to let the bitterness wash up on her surface, squashing it with the quick thought of the boys and how they always light up when kara touches down on the ranch.

"it's complicated. i flew to berlin last week to stop a freighter crash - does that count?" they both know damn well it does not. but anyway, it's not the part of the conversation kara is focused on; her attention is grabbed, snagged at the last moment, by the offhand implication of you're on a lot of minds. it's playing with fire, it's so risky to ask, but there's a daring recklessness tipping her scales with every second longer she stands in the dawning sunlight.

(alex says it's a side effect of time spent awake; the longer she pushes herself sensory wise, powers and energy stretching thinner with every passing hour before submitting to the more natural instincts, makes her less and less passive. it's like a wind up toy.)

kara steps closer to set the half-empty mug on the counter barely a handful of centimetres from lena's hip. "am i ever on your mind?"

oh, this — is not going the way she planned. she didn't plan anything, per se, but a coffee shared over her kitchen island is one thing and playing into the hand of a superhero whose repertoire is goodness and kindness, while she often stares down the measure of rough sex and slipping out in the middle of the night, is an entirely different one. does she think about her? categorically, yes. the power is a good look. and does she wonder how it might be? also yes. a strange sensation of being cared for whilst thumbing bruises against her hips for the better part of a week — she pictures it hard yet careful, because there's no telling what that strength can do, but in the same breath, she doesn't see supergirl as the type. perhaps she's a victim of leslie willis's hate chain in more ways than one too.

"i'm in trouble a lot." an equally impassive response, and those cards remain tucked to her chest as she takes another sip of lukewarm coffee. supergirl is a space heater — she can feel the warmth radiating and they're not even touching, and when lena casts a glance up at the five-eleven (or is that six foot?) beefcake in her kitchen, it feels prickly under her throat.

she says nothing more. it's a steely answer that even lillian would be proud of in that moment. (that's a lie she keeps telling herself — lillian would sooner call her a whore than ever crack a smile at how she wraps the national city influentials around a finger).

now look what you've done - she feels guilty all because you had to go and get all morose and bummed out. kara winces internally and almost goes to crack a joke, to alleviate the tension of sadness that seems to ghost over and between them. there's hints of daylight starting to break through the darkness outside and it's creeping slowly up and over the balcony, in through the floor to ceiling glass, reaching it's wonderful, energising arms out towards her. she can feel her body tip in the direction of warmth but remains solidly bolted to the floor. (it does make her feel a touch stronger, an ounce less tired. she doesn't need sleep like normal humans - it's nice, sure, but she could go a few days, even a week or so, without.)

"good. i don't want them to think about me at all - anybody with me on the brain usually means they're in some kind of trouble." she offers a smile that feels a little more genuine than it might have been half an hour ago and shrugs. "only all the time. but usually it's when i'm doing my normal, actual, real-world job. when you can lift buildings, nobody really bats an eye at how often you do it."

"i think you'll find you're on a lot of people's minds. all the time." she's a big hit with the public — lena's seen that much on social media. there's at least a rogue subsection of some internet cult under each of any one of l-corp's tweets about her, and a little deep dive into the #supergirl hashtag brings nothing but close-up candid shots of the suit, the arms, the stomach, the thighs — there are videos, gifs, stills and shots of every part of supergirl out on display. drawings, stories — each and every part of her life splayed out for the world to see, no matter how much she talks about good and right and true, it'll still be there. it reminds her of her youth. it's not a pleasant memory, but one she bears to this day.

"does supergirl ever take a vacation?" it's not a ploy to whisk her away to the hamptons for a long weekend, or a quick trip to puglia. just a genuine, concerned question about a superhero's work-life balance. (it feels stupid, even thinking.)

"you should. the world is bigger than national city. and metropolis — i hear you visit your cousin often enough."

#like sorry she was practicing board games? don't make me cringe #she's a goddamn chess grandmaster she can figure out monopoly

femaleheroes

#LENA.

one of my peeves about cws.g is that they turned Iena from a ruthless ceo into a pathetic dweeb

kara watches lena move through the kitchen, takes in and memorises the way she looks down at her mug and the subtle frown lines creasing at the corners of her eyes, at the soft upturn of her mouth when she's about to say something she thinks she shouldn't. kara watches the dip of her throat and the hollow it meets, the tap-tap-tap of nervous fingertips. i want to know everything about you nearly comes barrelling out of her big dumb mouth but she reels it in at the last second, content to listen.

she takes the mug - it's one she bought lena months ago, with a picture of an overloaded angry test tube with i think you're over-reacting! written under it.

"i think i can understand that - when your life is removed enough from everyone else, you stop feeling like a puzzle piece and start feeling more like you're not even in the picture to begin with." kara thinks about it for a moment, about the chasm between supergirl and kara danvers and kara zor el.

"for me, it's less about feeling like an outsider and more as if... i'm living on borrowed time. that all i can experience here, all the people i know and love and the things i can do -- it's all temporary. and any minute now, it's all going to get ripped out from under me. most of the time it's easy to ignore it, but i -- i watched my planet burn. i watched my entire civilisation, my family and friends, my world just disappear without warning and a part of me wonders if lightning strikes twice." there's a heavy pause, a horrid moment of recall as a gunshot goes off and she's reliving being pinned to the ground by weak, ineffective hands, and kara takes a gulp of her coffee. "geez louise, i didn't mean for that to get so depressing."

"that's how i felt yesterday. outside. and to see all those people looking at me like i somehow caused every measure of pain they're currently feeling? do you know how long i've spent trying to steer l-corp onto a better path? green energy, scholarship funds, children's hospitals —" it feels like a cry in the wind. it feels like a sorry tale of otherness that doesn't even come into the equation when comparing it to losing a home, a planet, a life. it feels petty to even think about now, and that flashes across her face in a stark frown. she complains that she has too much money, too much responsibility, too much weight in a world where people can't even look up. there's a humbling in process, and she's bearing it full force.

"i'm sorry. i don't think many people think about what it must be like for you." but the world isn't going to implode so quickly — that's what they all have to work on mastering. without supergirl, the city would be a worse place. the same for metropolis, gotham — as much as she hates the thought of the bat, it exists for a reason. but the world won't cease to exist, while there are people fighting to keep it alive. she picks a spot on the upturned hem of supergirl's boot and stares at it for a moment, before crawling up the mesh of her suit and settling neatly at the crest.

"you work too hard — anyone ever tell you that?"

geniuscorp

@lgbtcorp

if nothing else, lex prides himself on being an exemplary inmate: he's considerate and timely and he doesn't cause trouble. the guards allow him to exercise, to read in peace (though it's one book a week and the quality varies; the hunger games was his latest fair and honestly couldn't tell you what the fuss was about). they even engage in conversation when the mood strikes.

but one thing is new and can cause a bit of whispering -- his recent visitor. she's been consistent and the chessboard is always set before he arrives. they've established some sort of detente. they don't touch too sensitive topics, leaving a still sort of peace between them for the time being.

"you're a little earlier than i was expecting."

when lex was young, he'd spent a season at the manor referring to himself as only sebastian. it was tiresome, and a needy grasp for attention, and lionel screamed himself blue in the face whenever lex refused to answer to his real name. sebastian, itself, is innocuous. a nom de plume, another face for a moment. it was peeled, gently, purposefully, from the second lex'd tore through the picture of dorian gray. victoria lucas was spat from the etchings in the back of the bell jar, and scrawled across lex luthor's visitor's log over the past few weeks.

"my meetings finished early." she owes him no explanation, but it comes willingly. one leg is folded neatly over the other, and they're set for today's game. he plays white — always, and she doesn't care for the advantage it gives him.

"white to play first."

#geniuscorp

the guilt hits faster than kara can catch it. you already do know me! you know me better than almost anybody on the planet! you know kara danvers and to you, she's just your dorky best buddy. there is a deep pit of shame getting wider and wider and kara forever teeters on the precipice of falling in, trying her best not to look too sick with the secrets of it all.

(here's the saddest thing about it all: lena sees kara. expects nothing from kara except companionship and a lunch date. lena confides in kara and trusts her and treats her like she's just as easily taken over by the will of the world as anybody else. and everyone who knows the truth forgets the humanity of it all. they forget supergirl can be just as vulnerable without the cape as she can with kryptonite coursing through her veins. even alex wants her to be bigger and stronger and better.

it's selfish to hold onto it, selfish to deny lena the chance at knowing both sides now, but... kara isn't ready. and isn't sure she'll ever be ready.)

"someday." she offers a smile but it's weak and small but by god does kara mean it. someday, lena, i'll tell you everything. someday when it won't destroy us. and maybe it's the midst of the panic of the day or the slight wince in lena's face or the way she turns away towards the kitchen but kara can't help what blurts out of her mouth.

"i really like gilmore girls. and, uh, pizza. obviously - who doesn't like pizza? - and i think the beatles are overrated."

"the beatles are overrated." like it's the most obvious thing in the world. she appreciates the gesture — the immediate let me show you who i am, but it isn't what she was angling for at that moment. what they have is different — not a codependency, but an acknowledgement that they could work together, if they needed to. in a world where a luthor is friends with a super, it's almost as though she can undo everything that lex stitched into the pattern of the universe without needing to change who she is.

"i've never seen gilmore girls." she offers out the coffee with her good hand, and leans back against the counter as she thinks it through. (she's never had time, more than anything — lillian would blow a fuse if she knew she'd been watching tv instead of anything else even remotely stimulating. and besides, two phds and a litany of masters leaves her with less free time than she would've liked. it also seems to be that when your life is unceremoniously turned upside down and your brother turns the sun red — you tend to have even less free time.)

"do you feel like an outsider here?" again, she speaks before she even gives herself a moment to think. perhaps the alienation of the city's most treasured crime-fighter is a little deep for the sunrise, but she takes her own mug and swills the dregs of her coffee for a moment longer. "that's how i feel. most days. and i know we're talking about — fast food and tv, but — a lot of the time, i feel like i'm looking in."

kara - supergirl - nods and runs a hand through her hair. rubs at her eyes and the back of her neck and tries to let some of the tension she's been carrying since the arrest go; while it is certainly impossible, somehow it feels as though there is a welt on the back of her head, like she can still feel the truncheon.

"yeah," she says absentmindedly and then follows up quickly, "no -- i just. wanted to make sure you were alright." as if kara could rest or settle or continue on with her damn day without seeing her; all she's thought about for the last twelve hours is lena, the gunshot, the tickers on the tv. she looks at lena now -- really takes her in, memorizing the details in her face, the crease at the corners of her eyes, the way she holds herself and how the injury affects the lean in her shoulders. she's tired and kara should go and yet. and yet and yet and yet.

"maybe one coffee? i've got a patrol and then -- i have to be a real person for a while," she says, and they both know fine well it does nothing for her.

lena thinks that in these past ten minutes, supergirl has shown more care for her than lillian has her entire life. perhaps it's different — one's a stone cold bitch and the other flirts on the edge of, well, flirting. but had lex detonated anything whilst she'd still been in college, she'd be hard pressed to find andrea at her side so dutifully, and she doesn't need to mention the veronica sinclair of it all. supergirl is different — and it might be an act, it might be a ruse so perfected that she seems like nothing more than a kind person in a cape, but it resonates nonetheless.

"i'm okay. i promise. you can... relax a little." because supergirl's heart is thrumming a hard tune from across the room, and lena slips back toward the kitchen with a mission at hand. (it's a little more cumbersome than she'll admit to — the sling will be off soon, and as long as she doesn't bleed through her blouse, she'll be back in the office in a day or two. no one takes time off for being shot at.)

"— i'd like to know you as a real person someday." she doesn't know why she comes out with it, and she doesn't know what line she's crossing over, but it's out before she can rein it in. there's a frozen moment where she pauses, before making a hasty retreat into the kitchen. (a super doesn't want a luthor knowing too much about them — rule 101 of having an arch nemesis family.)

"or just. have a coffee with you."

a terrible one night stand. yeah. that's about right, in the grand scheme of things -- kara almost laughs and then doesn't, waiting until lena sets her mug down before blowing out the breath she hadn't realised she was holding. it's a wheeze more than anything and she hunches over with the weight of it leaving her, bent at the waist, hands on her knees for only a few seconds before straightening up. it's been a long fucking day and it's only been made worse by the rumours circulating about kara and the so called 'evidence' of supergirl being supposedly m.i.a. there's a lazy swipe of her hands over her face, dragging down, exhausted and worn down and just done with the pulled taught wire inside her spine.

"it's okay to put yourself first, you know." kara says but it falls a little flat, rings a little false given the cape snapping around her shoulders. she knows what she must look like: ragged, run through, exhausted in a way she can actually feel not just feign. "you have to put yourself first, lena. i can't be everywhere at once, i can't -- always be everywhere and it's too hard not to make you my priority."

(can't you see what she's trying to say? i care about much more than i am supposed to. put yourself first so that i can concentrate on literally anything else because by god would the world look pretty burning so long as you're safe.)

"i'm -- sorry i wasn't there today."

she thinks for a moment that supergirl must be speaking to the mirror — that the cape is heavier than its fabric reality. she wonders about her life sometimes — when it's late at night and the city lights are a blur across the horizon, and when she's waist-deep in memorandums and project revisions. she wonders whether she has a partner, or where she sleeps, or how often she waits in the queue to a coffee shop, grocery store, where she buys her clothes from. there doesn't seem enough left of a life to live two so differently. so for once, and for all of her virtuous little speeches, she thinks that supergirl hasn't got a damn clue what she's talking about. it almost softens her. almost.

"i'm fine, honestly." even if she was gutshot, seeing that look on her face and the way the bags curl under her eyes, she would still be fine. just fine. because there are bigger problems at play than a rogue bullet through a crowd.

"you don't have to apologise. you weren't there, that's okay. i have a very good doctor on retainer and i pay more than enough for george to get me out of these situations when necessary. it's a big perverse, really, that this isn't my first rodeo." for all his failings, and for all the trauma he drags her through, lex has made it so she can muscle her way through just about any situation.

"i didn't expect it, but it's nothing more than a graze. in a week, i'll be back to normal." make it a couple, but it's barely going to slow her down. sometimes you have to pacify the crestfallen superhero on your balcony and wonder what your life has become. "do you need some coffee? orange juice? it's freshly-pressed."

"yes, you could!" kara bursts, furious and frustrated and very much wanting to shake the daylights out of this perfect, beautiful, horrifyingly fragile human, who seems to have a constant and endless death wish. it's barely seconds in before she's pacing, arms flailing as she gestures, every footstep getting heavier and crunching through just that fraction more of the balcony. "you could have been killed. everybody was saying you had been shot and nobody had updates and nobody knew anything, and -- y'know cnn were just showing this ticker reel of all these threats you've had in the past year, and i had to what, sit there like a freaking chump and you -- you should have called. or texted. or --"

but lena doesn't have supergirl's number. lena can't call supergirl and update her on whether she's been drive-by'd or not. lena and supergirl aren't close like that.

kara stops mid stride and scrunches her eyes closed tightly, a sigh huffing out of her chest with only the hint of a chill in it, fists clenched, shoulders rounded. a second ticks by and she pinches the bridge of her nose to fade off a headache and when she looks up at lena, feeling guilty and annoyed, it's with a frown. concerned. "-- are you okay?" a soft glance at the clearly injured arm and the concern tips into a little bit more affection than really it should; kara's got a shitty poker face no matter what costume she's wearing. she takes a calmer, gentler step towards lena, hands on hips. "you're hurt?"

#teehee #swallowpit #swallowpit / kara.

here it comes. for all her pros, for all of the times she's saved people from burning buildings, from traffic accidents, from full-on terrorist attacks on the city, supergirl postulates. she reads through the script of some b-rated movie like a bad protagonist of a christian parody, and talks about good and evil and overcoming with love and trust and faith — there's that bitterness in her again. it really has a bite this morning. the virtuous, righteous, do-gooding speech of a preacher is just about her limit for the morning —

but she reminds herself that it's not just that. there's something else in her voice. concern, maybe? exasperation? lena luthor is an exasperating woman, if you believe the times.

"you never leave your number. you're like a terrible one night stand." that comes out wrong. and perhaps it starts to uncover the unspoken between them. for all she'd give for a night between the cape and the sheets, she's not so sure it's like that anymore. (oh, don't get me wrong — being thrown around by supergirl...? shit, i'm turning into my brother.)

"bad joke. but i'm fine. it's just a graze." there's the hint of a shoulder shrug that she manages with her good arm, and she soothes it with a wince into her mug and the slow strain of warm coffee down her throat.

"if i didn't leave my apartment every time someone wanted to kill me, i'd never leave it. and if i didn't leave my office yesterday, silence is complicity. i don't — hate aliens. i don't advocate for anyone's mistreatment, especially not anyone because of where they come from. and i refuse to be lumped in with them simply because i didn't address it."

a sigh casts away with the steam from the mug, and she settles it down on the windowsill.

"it's just a graze. i'm fine. the doctor said i'll be fine."

kara cracks the cement and doesn't notice it. this high up in october and her cape snaps in the wind as she flies as fast as she's ever flown before -- and gosh, gee golly whizz, county jail can, as nia would say, suck a fucking fat one. (sorry for the language eliza, but some situations just warrant a little stronger sentiments.) kara gets dragged to a police station half the city away and gets shoved through security and shoved from lockup to lockup and eventually gets booked for inciting violence and resisting arrest. they can't prove she broke that guys arm and she looks like she weighs a buck twenty so the neanderthal who glared at her from the back of the ambulance as she got arrested can't really do anything at all. she tries to explain that she's press and she was there to cover the story but her phone is smashed to pieces on a sidewalk somewhere outside l-corp and kara doesn't care enough about anything else to push it.

alex bails her out around 4am and by the time the paperwork is done, it's closer to dawn than not. the disappointed frown gets very old. and it's a lecture the entire drive back to kara's apartment about what the hell were you thinking and no i haven't heard from lena yet.

there's been no news.

nothing except the ticker tape fox news flash of 'lena luthor shot during protestor' and kara hasn't heard anything else -- but the look on alex's face tells her there's something she's not divulging.

(she'll find it out later: buzzfeed, of course, dropped a rumour that kara was the shooter. crazy stalker reporter snaps and shoots ceo. it'll play out in the blogosphere and on tiktok and it'll die when they catch the real shooter but kara's like is going to be turned upside down for the next two weeks. it doesn't matter right now.)

so the second alex lets her up to her apartment and says see you later, kara speeds into the suit and launches herself at top speed through the window. cracks the concrete. pulse beating in time to lenalenalenalenalena.

"what the hell were you thinking?!"

it's certainly not the greeting she's expecting. the smile falters, buckles like her nerves, and she stares hard. she's not expecting a lesson in morality from the caped sigil of virtue herself, and doesn't particularly want to spend her morning battling wits with a kryptonian — her brother spent more than enough time doing that himself and it got him no further than the other side of prison bars. and just as it turns out, being shot at is as exhausting as going three rounds with lex.

"don't come to my apartment to berate me." she's taken a moment to calm herself, because, if it isn't the elephant in the room yet, it'll become one later — where the hell was she? if she wants to start a fight, lena's the one sharpening her claws no matter how grazed, battered, or bruised her left side might be. (she's thankful, though — back to the arm, before the novelty is swept up by the media — that it's her left. she can still write, still type, still live a near-normal life if not for button-up shirts and dress zips while maintaining a shred of dignity.)

"if you're going to be like that, you can go out the way you came." again, long night, and the codeine is beginning to wear off and the throb in her arm is beginning to feel like more of a workout than she's used to these days. (she says it's because she hasn't got time, but she spends too much of her days poring over data and residuals without thinking about the fact that she hasn't eaten in eight hours, let alone when she last went to the gym. the arm aches, and that's the end of the story).

"i couldn't just stay in my office." it would play worse with the media — it's a mess that lex has gotten her into, as he always does, and seems to continue doing from behind prison bars, but it's still a luthor bloodshed nonetheless. an anti-alien rhetoric is instilled into every piece of new technology she spearheads, no matter how hard she tries to scrub it. face it, listen to the people who are hurt by it, and do better — that's her philosophy. hiding behind fifty stories of glass and concrete will do nothing for the image.

swallowedabug

#ye boi #LENA.

what are you doing, lena? what are you doing? kara winces at the chants starting and tries to ignore them, tries not to let the cacophony of sound seep in as fast as the panic is starting to rise in her chest. if lena steps out here, it'll set off the powder keg, kara can tell. (and it's so unjust, so wildly unfair for the blame to be placed at the feet of someone so wholly undeserving. she could shake the world in frustration at the sheer audacity of it all - to blame lena, kind and gentle and generous lena, for the great crime of simply be related to a whackjob.)

with a steadying hand to her cameraman, she makes the decision and hoists herself up and over the barricade. somebody yells to get back here but she ignores it, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose and squeezing in through the amassed crowd that's only getting tighter and tighter by the moment.

it's here she must make the conscious effort -- it's easy enough when things are one on one and unhurried, but without the cape, people don't bother to keep their distance. blissfully unaware of the immense danger a walking block of concrete can cause. people push and shove and kara must sway her body too and fro without too much resistance or too much force. it's difficult. it's sensory overload. time consuming. so time consuming in fact that she absolutely misses the hairpin trigger, the click shutter bang of the bullet, she's not able to speed in this thick of a crowd, not without going through somebody and all she can think is LENA LENA LENA LENA.

she is shoved and pressed and shoved and pressed and the chaos becomes anarchy as people scatter and the crush separates. the little gap she has still isn't enough to make it any faster than human pace and there's hands on her. she shrugs them off. somebody screams in agony and then --

a truncheon hits the back of her head and snaps in half and it's like a fly hitting a windshield -- except she has to react. it's a delayed response, of course, but to an untrained eye or phone camera lens, it's nearly instant. she takes it like a champ. let's the cops wrestle her to the ground. the entire time thinking lenalenalenalena, her neck craning to look around, to see if she can spot a flash of dark hair or a car or a burly bodyguard. there's nothing. not even the screech of wheels, not unless she missed it.

lenalenalena.

the only discernible thought she has is that the leather lining of a mercedes is not comfortable when the wind is taken out from between her ribs and squeezed into the footwell beneath her. there was a shot. there was a gun. someone had a gun there — someone shot at her — the next thought is that she should be more surprised. (it's never a shock anymore — lex has been gunning for her since she stepped foot in the courtroom, and it seems even getting brunch in national city faces his wrath.)

they leave the scene and it's like a circus — the loud, mobbish grunts and shrieks where placards are stamped into a blood-stained mosaic of broken glass, the heavy hubbub of bodies scrambling and police breaking up a peaceless rally. (that's what this has become — a riot. not a protest. when the sky smells like gunpowder and blood, the smack of body against concrete and the startling shouts of police officers become the only thing that happen next.)

it takes two minutes of silence and careful driving for her to register any pain, and another few seconds to figure out where it's coming from. (there's a graze along her arm — bicep, to be exact, and it's sticking to her shirt which is pinned against the leather. again, not the most comfortable.)

---

they recommend pressure and ice, and perhaps it's the adrenaline that's settled and left the telltale markings of a tension headache, or the nicked artery in her arm that bled a horrible tale on her own office doorstep, but she's had better sunrises. the wound is just that — dramatic, full of effect, but after being cleaned, bandaged, and trussed in a sling up against her chest, she was told that she'd got lucky, and with a little time, ice, pressure, and rest, she'll be back to tip top shape before she knows it.

the company is not expected. she's half way through a coffee when the boots leave a dramatic thud against the metal of her balcony. she doesn't rush, but calmly takes the coffee mug toward the terrace, and unlocks it with an almost-unfaltering smile.

"this is a surprise, supergirl."