More Continuity Puzzlings (aka the Supercorp patch)
I just tried to do maths for this post, and while splicing in the "let's share appetizers" scene almost immediately after Kara returns the emails does make sense in terms of math and the dialogue of "you're my only friend in National City" in Crossfire, it DOES NOT make sense for the "do tell wiggle" in Welcome to Earth.
That scene happens before Survivors and the alien fight ring, and therefore before Kara returns the leaked emails, and if you watch the scene on the couch, where Lena opens up about Lex, and Kara re-examines her kneejerk reaction about the alien detection device, that is not purely professional. There is absolutely no way anyone can try to convince me it is.
HOWEVER
I found a work around that helps make it make sense.
Imagine for a moment that Lena has just said good bye to Kara after their heart-to-heart in Welcome to Earth, and she's still smiling when she returns to her desk to pack up for the night. She finds herself thinking of Kara, enjoying the warmth in her chest that had bloomed at the sight of Kara's smile, and lingers still.
Then she freezes, her happiness chilling with realization. No. Not again. She will not allow this rookie reporter to slip in under her guard and convince her they're friends.
They're not.
That much was proven when Kara first stopped by for an interview. Lena’s newsworthy name gets Kara her word count, and Lena gets her new device on the public’s radar. Quid pro quo. Clean. Efficient. Reward without risk.
But smiling over flowers? Confessing her heartbreak over Lex? Listening to Kara’s own change of heart?
Hasn't she learned her lesson???
Don't get attached.
Don't get close.
Guard your goddamn heart before one more person puts a knife in it.
So when Kara Danvers next comes barrelling through her door, Lena rises to her feet with a stiff spine and stiffer jaw, ready to re-establish the boundaries of professional courtesy.
But Kara leaves with the information she needs and priority access she didn't ask for. Lena watches her go with self-reprehension roiling in her belly, kicking herself for immediately capitulating.
It hurt nothing to rat out Veronica Sinclair-- Lena maybe even enjoyed it, just a little. But she should have guarded it, asked for a promise in return.
Instead she presumes it, and takes absolutely zero measures to hold Kara to it.
Weak, her mother's voice echoes in her ears, even as Lex's taunting smirk flashes behind her eyes, with Andrea's conniving sneer chasing close on its heels.
She is weak, but Lena vows to be stronger.
And she is, the next time Kara Danvers arrives unannounced. She is strong when she makes it clear, in no uncertain terms, that she has no intention of being friends, and stronger still when she returns the USB rather than accept it as a favor.
Kara is gracious enough not to push, and Lena is grateful for it-- she doesn't trust herself to rebuff the offer a second time.
That doubt comes true to life when Kara greets her brightly in a downtown cafe barely a day later.
Lena doesn't know if it's the genuine smile that softens into something intimate, despite their professional arrangement, or the vulnerability that Kara trusts her with when she confides how close she'd been to losing herself, but a crack forms in her resolve, and only widens when Kara's smile hollows in disappointment at her sister's rain check.
Lena knows that danger... the risk of losing herself. It's the one thing she has left to lose, and already she feels herself starting to slip beyond her own recognition.
The slope of the challenge Lex has left her with is smooth as glass, offering no handholds to cling to, and when she leaves the office each night she swirls around the empty hotel suite she's leased, spiraling around a dark and yawning drain as she paddles mindlessly towards some invisible shore.
But here Kara is, stroking out to her with a life raft in tow.
