freefall
Tagging: @luthorforgood & Supergirl When: August 1st, 4:30 am Where: L-Corp What: Kara pays Lena a visit in the aftermath of Magneto’s attack. Lena can’t stop thinking about seventy stories, and that one second. Warnings: Injury Word Count: Not atrocious, 2,481
LENA: The clock on her tablet read 4:43am. Lena stood alone at the top of the staircase, observing the silent wasteland of the upper floors of L-Corp. Her tablet chirped. Digital scan complete, an automated voice spoke and then the floor plunged back into silence.
Her mind screamed. The gravitational constant: 9.81 meters per second squared. Free fall time: 7 seconds. In free fall without air resistance, h = .05(g)(t)^2. Calculated, h = 240.263 meters. 1 meter = 3.281 feet. 240.263 meters = 788.264 feet. L-Corp stood at 848 feet. The 29th tallest building in New York City. Two feet shy of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. 70 stories tall.
Supergirl reached Lena on the 38th floor at the 5th second.
402 feet of freefall in 5 seconds. 2 seconds to go from 109 miles per hour to zero with 446 feet of space and 500 feet required... her foundation had hairline fractures and her body ached from the pressure. After 6 seconds of freefall... 1000 feet required to stop from a speed of 150 miles per hour that her body would have then reached. The difference of a second.
There’s this world on my shoulders, and if anything happens, if that’s ever too much, if I’m ever too weak to hold it…I can’t bear to think about what might happen. One second later. Lena could only think of what might have happened.
A breeze brushed against shattered glass and a siren wailed in the distance. Ribs ached and joints protested the slightest movement. A flash of red. Lena's jaw clenched impossibly tighter, eyes shifting. "Supergirl?" A rasp in the air, hating herself for the grating sound of its uncertainty. Lena straightened her back and cleared her throat, but she couldn't hide the red haunting the corners of her eyes. "What can I do for you?"
KARA: Her apartment felt tight. It had been a while since she'd felt so restless in the space of her bedroom. Soft moonlight played across her comforter, outlining Lar's profile on the pale blue pillows. The steady in and out of Donna's breathing could be heard across the apartment, and it was supposed to be comfortable.
But something itched just beneath her skin. Her thoughts bounced from one to the next wildly and she couldn't bring herself to lie still. It's not like she actually needed sleep. Not since landing on Earth. No, that was another thing she'd lost with her home–
Rao, what was wrong with her? Her hands curled into fists and she suppressed a frustrated groan. The last thing she needed was to wake up her roommates and endure the third degree. Quietly, she lifted her window and floated out into the night sky. She hadn't felt quite right since the attack at L-Corp. Since she'd landed with a thud with Lena Luthor at the bottom of her elevator shaft, and the twist of metal around her had burned her palms.
Her gaze turned to L-Corp tower, where she could make out the skeletal outline of Lena moving shakily around her office. 4:43 am and of course she was awake. Doing what? Playing with more kryptonite? Kara thought of what could have happened.
It wasn't hard to imagine. She could imagine the dry scratch at the back of her throat, the way her own blood seemed to scrape through her veins, how her skin burned. She could imagine hovering over the elevator shaft and Erik finally revealing his cards, green and glowing as they both plummeted eight-hundred-forty-eight feet.
She could feel Lena's fingertips slipping through her own. All those worlds on her shoulders and Lena consistently decided to gamble with them.
She found herself drifting through Lena's office window, feet skating across the remnants of broken glass. It was still a battleground. She twitched, fingers flexing, breath catching. Something burned but she brushed it off. Lena moved tenderly, her voice not much more than a scratch.
Just seconds. Just one.
She thought are you okay, but found herself asking "Do you get it, yet?"
LENA: Two steps forward and one step back. The difference between five seconds and six. She should have expected Supergirl's words, the clip of something just beyond frustration in her voice. How many times had they been here before? How many times would Supergirl have to swoop in and save her life before Supergirl finally decided that a Luthor's life was no longer worth saving? Lena shouldn't have hoped for understanding.
"I warned you," Lena said, hand itching to run through her hair and tuck it behind her ears but body too stiff to think about uncrossing her arms and indulging in the anxious habit. She closed her eyes and a grimace turned into a frown as she turned to face the Super, eyes and jaw clenched shut for a second before both opened again. "You still came anyways." And maybe that hurt substantially more than if the Kryptonian had stayed away in some inexplicable way, because Supergirl hurtled through an elevator shaft without knowing if she would still be invincible when she hit the bottom. "You shouldn't have come." Come now? Come then? Ever?
KARA: Something was slipping, but Kara only just managed to catch herself.
I promised you always.
And she kept her promises. It hadn't mattered what would happen to her, if Erik had used the kryptonite. It hadn't mattered what Lena had said or done, how many times she could shove the device into her articles. It hadn't mattered, because Kara loved Lena, and she had promised her always.
But telling her as much would show her hand, and even feeling as though she was standing on a precipice in Lena's doorway, Kara couldn't quite bring herself to tell her the truth.
Maybe, maybe she doesn't deserve it.
Kara's mouth opened and closed again, her hands twitching at her side. Her toes were hanging off the edge, ready to plunge her into something, but she couldn't quite tell what. "Of course I came. I'm always going to–" She paused on a breath, raking a hand through her hair. "Don't, don't do that self-sacrificing song and dance. A lot of people worked really hard to keep you alive today, don't pretend like that means nothing."
LENA: Something in Supergirl's demeanor made Lena take a second look at the Kryptonian, really trying to look past the steely gaze and strong exterior.
Supergirl was tired.
"I didn't ask them to," Lena answered, her tone just a bit too sharp. 'I didn't ask you to' was implied, but Supergirl kept showing up time and time again. Lena had done nothing to earn that kind of loyalty, especially not with the past the two shared, but it was still freely given. "I dug this grave for myself. No one else should have to lie in it." The words were softer now, approaching vulnerable, and she had to look away. Glass littered the floor and severed cables still sparked at random in the gaping shaft of the elevator, wind twisting through the gaps and whistling as it passed through. Lena should have died, but she hadn't.
She turned back to Supergirl. I do care. "It means something."
KARA: She had, she had dug her own grave.
The thought burst its way forward before Kara could temper it, before she could remember Lena had started at the bottom of a grave. Her family had been digging it well before she'd been given a shovel. That maybe she'd be throwing up pebbles of her own in bits and pieces hardly meant she was entirely responsible.
But then there was kryptonite, and alien detection devices, and how sometimes Lena stepped right into her family's footsteps, even if she didn't seem to fully realize it.
Or maybe she did. The tired, small tug to her voice was telling. Kara took a moment to fully take Lena in, the way she guarded against too many injuries, the way the breeze from the ravaged elevator shaft played at the ends of her hair. How she seemed to war between resignation at the bottom of her grave and embracing the strength to crawl her way back out of it.
"Okay." Kara's voice was soft in turn, giving a small nod before she looked away. Too many words danced on the end of her tongue. Confessions, anger, concern, love. She had to clench her fists against the onslaught. "Good, okay."
She looked up, taking great effort to force herself to relax. Something wasn't right. "You have to believe you're good, Ms. Luthor. The rest of the world, they won't believe anything until you start believing it, too."
LENA: Kara Danvers believes in you. Lena remembered hearing those words when the rest of the world was shouting the fall of the last Luthor. She'd been so tired then, and the fight had just begun for clearing the Luthor name. Then, she hadn't known how many times one person should have to fall from grace and redeem a name over and over again. Metallo. Cadmus. It had only been the beginning, but it could have been the end. She'd been set to die in her brother's vault then, but Supergirl had saved her then too. But that's when Kara Danvers had become her hero, inspiring her to keep fighting for what was good.
She'd never considered that she had to believe first.
Lena offered a stilted smile in return, brow still furrowed and a hand rubbing the back of her neck. "The last time Magneto paid L-Corp a visit, I had to make a phone call to tell a woman that her husband wouldn't be coming home again... that Anthony's baby girls were fatherless." She stared hard into Supergirl's eyes -- green meeting blue. "I don't want to make a similar call for you." Lena didn't think she could look Kon-el in the eyes again if it came to that.
KARA: "Haven't you heard? I'm the Girl of Steel. I don't bend, I don't break." The words fell out before she could stop them, an echo from a simpler time. She could bend. She could break. It wasn't invulnerability that kept Kara alive. It was a mixture of luck and determination.
And they weren't the right words, not in that moment. When Lena was meeting her eyes with a resigned determination, on the tail of a confession that hurt. She knew what it felt like, to make that call. To know that, despite all best efforts, not everyone could be saved. It wasn't even Lena's fault.
The thought caught, whispers of kryptonite and detection devices and 'he's coming after you over your inventions, Lena' bubbling in the back of her mind. Her fingers curled and for a moment she was shocked they were loud enough for her to even consider. She shoved them down, shifting on her feet. Stop, breathe, restart.
"What I mean is I understand the risks I take." I wasn't sent here to fall in love with a human... "So do the people who love me." There was Fort Rozz, Reign... "I do what I do because I love this planet, the– the people. It gives me a purpose here, after– after Krypton. If you ever have to make that call, Lena, know that it's because I was doing something I truly believed in, and I'm at peace."
She paused, more than she meant to say having already spilled out into the air between them. "That woman, she probably believed in you."
LENA: Her lips pursed for a moment, ready to argue with Supergirl. Lena knew that there was one thing that could make the Kryptonian break, and it was the very thing Magneto had stolen from Lena. The very thing Lena has created — against Supergirl’s warnings. But Lena was so tired, joints aching and a migraine threatening to form and arguments dying on her lips just as they were thought. Words would get them nowhere tonight. “You might be at peace, but the rest of the world would not,” she admitted in no more than a whisper. “Maybe it’s selfish, but I care Supergirl.” I do care. The same words spoken weeks ago when she’d tried to warn the woman about Magneto’s potential threat. So much had changed, but that fact had not. It would be easier if she didn’t care, but she did and it seemed after all their differences, the same was true in reverse.
“You have a family here Supergirl. A good one that still sits around a table and eats pasta together.” She paused, unable to remember a single Luthor dinner that resembled the one Kon-El had invited her too. “I would like you to continue to go home to that.”
KARA: Someone had once told her she looked beautiful, with the weight of so many worlds on her shoulders. Kara didn't need any more weight, but in that moment, she felt it settle heavy against her back.
'The rest of the world would not' fell into the air between them and she caught on it, let it tumble around in her mind for a moment while Lena continued. Like there was no falling gently into Rao's light with the rest of her family, there was no peace, there was an Earth and a family who cared too much to let her go. There was a Luthor who thought about that, who pointed it out.
Kara wondered if it was just the guilt. She almost spoke it allowed, but she already knew the answer. It was written clearly across Lena's face, in the tired slump of her shoulders, in the stories she told. It was Lena's kryptonite. It was the mark on her back that got her security detail killed. It was–
Not Lena's fault. The actions of evil people were not Lena's fault. For some reason, Kara had to repeat it to herself once, twice, again for it to fully stick. It still felt slippery, unsure, and suddenly Kara felt markedly uncomfortable. There was an itch beneath her skin, something only a few rotations around the Earth might fix, and she needed out.
She didn't need Lena's concern, certainly not in regards to problems she'd created herself. She didn't need to be reminded of all the worlds on her shoulders. She was plenty aware of them without the help. Words like 'worry about yourself,' and 'you're playing with the same family now' danced on the tip of her tongue. But instead she said "I need to leave."
Her head tilted, like maybe she was listening to something, but all she heard was her own heart picking up pace and the way Lena's creaked against themselves when she breathed. Her feet lifted from the floor and she was half a moment away from blasting through Lena's windows when she paused. "They're your family dinners now, too, Lena. Best you come home to them."