She’s only ever had faith in Lena. It’s been a constant. The bedrock of their relationship. Even when everyone else had doubted her, Kara had known it like something inherent, that Lena was good. It’s Kryptonite that chips their foundations. Kara doesn’t realize it until the heat is on at the DEO, the seven of them sitting around the table volleying between an interview that borders on a trial and a briefing. It dawns on her gradually as Lena outlines her three weeks with Reign. Reign, seemingly unstoppable. A thus far insurmountable obstacle, even for Supergirl. But Lena had her locked in a box.
Kara knows the answer to the question before she asks it. “How-- how did you keep her contained?” Kryptonite. Kara feels the word like a slice from the radioactive rock itself. Damage is dealt. Enough that she can’t see that Lena knows it’s going to hurt her, but she tells her the truth anyway. Enough that it plants the seed of doubt.
If the initial realization is slow, the acceptance that Lena had a good reason is like a faucet just beginning to leak. Agonizing plunk after plunk until Lena’s sharp tongue calls her out on the hypocrisy she’d been blind to. Maybe willfully so. Kara knows the cost of secrets. But she can only see the harm in others keeping them from her. It’s a flaw. Secrets are where so much of her trauma comes from. If it hadn’t been a secret, would more of her race have escaped Krypton? Embarrassment burns through her regardless. But in a parallel dimension where their time is limited, she doesn’t have a chance to dwell.
The dwelling comes when it’s over. Pestilence and Purity are dead, and Supergirl makes it to the very mouth of Lena’s vault. She has to know. The seed of doubt wills it to be so. It eats at her until she’s standing in front of the answer and finds she doesn’t need to know. She wants to trust Lena instead. For a fraction of a second she wonders if this is what it was like for Kal-El. He’d been friends with a Luthor too. But Kara can hear her own voice in her head. Lena isn’t Lex.
It feels like weeks since she last took off the suit. Kara Danvers and her real world obligations hardly matter in the face of Worldkillers. It’s a relief to put on a sweater. But the suit’s still there, hiding underneath. She can’t shed the burdens so easily. She’s not Guardian-- he can stop being a vigilante any time. Kara can’t escape her heritage. It’s about time she stops trying to with Lena.
For a moment, Kara isn’t sure which of the entrances to Lena’s office she’s used more: the front door or the balcony? She ends up overlooking the city anyway, the lights just beginning to turn on in the windows below. Do they know how close they came this time?
She’d know the sound of Lena’s heart at the end of the world. Maybe it was because they’d come so close.
@gadots
