An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Brock Rumlow
Characters: Darcy Lewis, Natasha Romanov (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter
Series: Part 6 of Marvellania
Summary:
The Mad Titan has been toppled and the countries of Marvellania are free to rule themselves again. As part of the new order, a Grand Treaty is written, sealed in the traditional way--with weddings!
Bingo info under the cut @darcylewisbingohq @warmandfluffybingocards @mfbingo @blackwidowbingo
Title: Sealing a Treaty The Traditional Way
Squares Filled:
DLBHQ Weekly Challenge: Kings, Queens, and Castles Week (100)
DLBHQ 2023: R5, Royal (100)
Warm and Fluffy Bingo: B2, Arranged Marriage (no min)
Multi Fandom Bingo: B4, Dancing (250)
Black Widow Bingo: G4, Wedding (no min)
Author: ibelieveinturtles
Fandom: MCU
Pairing: Darcy Lewis/Brock Rumlow, Darcy Lewis & Natasha Romanoff
Rating: G
Tags/Warnings: Fantasy AU, Royalty AU, Arranged Marriage
Summary: The Mad Titan has been toppled and the countries of Marvellania are free to rule themselves again. As part of the new order, a Grand Treaty is written, sealed in the traditional way--with weddings!
Word Count: 600
Hello everyone! I'm hosting a flash bingo for Christmas! This bingo card will only have 5 prompts and I will be choosing your prompts. Same rules apply as a normal MF Bingo except this time there is a deadline. You can sign up now and start creating as soon as you retrieve your card but you cannot start posting until December comes around and you have until the 7th of January before you miss out on the chance of a badge. You can still post for the bingo and I will still reblog it but you will not receive the badge. A few days after the event is finished I will send out a form to those who participated or completed the bingo.
When you do @ me, make sure to clarify what bingo you are submitting for or I won't count it for the right one. You can combine one square of your original card and one of your Christmas card and count for both bingos. You do not have to have a MF Bingo card to join but here is the form if you want to participate. Come join the MF Discord Server to hang out with other people participating. Don't forget to add your work to the MF Bingo AO3 collection no matter for what MF Bingo you are completing. Help grow the prompts list and submit a Christmas prompt or a regular one.
If you have any questions/concerns then please message me, drop your ask in my box or DM me on Discord. Good luck!
MF Bingo is hosting a Christmas flash bingo with only 5 spaces that you try to complete by the end of December. You don't get to choose prom
DISCLAIMER: MY BLOG IS 18+ ONLY! NO MINORS! Please do not copy, repost, plagiarize, translate, adapt, or republish ANY of my work to other websites or platforms. I take great pride in my work, and I spend a lot of time creating them. The only websites I will be posting works on are Tumblr under the username jessybarnes and AO3 under the username j_snow_writes. I don't own any of the celebrities or characters that I write for. Please read all of the warnings on my works before proceeding.
Below are the prompts listed as well as the character I will be writing for it. They will become links once written. :)
Summary - A scene from She-Hulk inspired me to create this video.
Warnings - Mentions of Suicide Attempt (From Movie)
Fandom - The Incredible Hulk, Avengers, Avengers Age of Ultron, Thor: Ragnarök, Infinity War
Relationships - Bruce Banner/Betty Ross; Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanov
Prompts - @mfbingo (Telepathy) / @herohardshipsbingo (Building/Maintaining a Good Public Image) / @julybreakbingo (Grieving or Moving On) / @taylorswiftbingo (You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath) / @badthingshappenbingo (Superpowered Overload) / @tropetember (Day 1: Enemies/Friends; Day 2: (Super)Hero; Day 3: Whump) / @whumptember (Day 1: Taken Hostage; Day 2: Hatred)
Below the cut are the bingo cards themselves and the full reasoning of why I made this video.
I saw a scene from She-Hulk and I had to make a video surrounding it. Half of the video was made out of anger and the other half made out of desperation to find scenes.
I personally don't like how Phrase 4 is going and I'm not excited for Phrase 5. I think they're trying too hard to get out their agenda and their stories seem like the writers are not trying. The movies don't seem to have enough actual story and more like action or lectures and it's ruining the vibe of the movies that have such great potential.
Any who, that's my opinion. I would like to hear about your opinion on the video and please don't forget to leave a thumbs up and make sure to subscribe to catch all my new videos. Thank you and have a great rest of your day :)
fic: i'm still here [supergirl - kara danvers/lena luthor]
Title: I'm Still Here
Fandom: Supergirl
Characters/Pairing: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Rating: T
Word Count: 12970
Content warnings: Ghost AU
Summary:
Are you depressed, anxious?
Are you lonely?
Do you need someone to talk to?
The living impaired are known for haunting us. My question is, what's haunting them? It's a lack of resolution.
Ghosts are simply spirits without resolution, with unfinished business. It's our job to find out what that is.
Luthor and Son. This week we’re in National City. But next week, boo knows?
Lena Luthor may not believe in the family business, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have to work. The last thing she expected when she arrived at the El Manor for a job was to find an actual ghost, a new best friend, and the love of her life, but strange things tend to happen around Halloween.
Notes: Written for the prompt "Ghost AU" for the Halloween event at @mfbingo
Read it on AO3 HERE or under the cut.
Are you depressed, anxious?
Are you lonely?
Do you need someone to talk to?
No problem, if you're a ghost.
You can call them ghosts, if you like, or as I prefer, the living impaired. But the bottom line is, they need help sometimes. Just like the rest of us.
Lena Luthor rolled her eyes as she listened to Lex’s voice coming from the radio in her car. Living impaired.
“Living impaired,” she scoffed as she obediently took a left turn when her phone suggested it.
The living impaired are known for haunting us. My question is, what's haunting them? It's a lack of resolution.
Ghosts are simply spirits without resolution, with unfinished business. It's our job to find out what that is.
Lillian’s voice filled Lena’s car. She’d tried to talk her mother and brother out of this ad but, as per usual, they hadn’t listened.
Luthor and Son. This week we’re in National City. But next week, boo knows?
“Oh for crying out loud. Boo knows!?”
The cheesy, terrible pun was honestly the least of her issues with this whole thing, but it still made her shudder with second hand embarrassment. Maybe first hand embarrassment. After all, she was the one driving a car with a “Luthor and Son” decal all over its side.
At twenty years old, Lena still wasn’t sure whether the family business was a scam or her mother and brother honestly believed there was such a thing as ghosts. What was worse, being raised by scammers, or by absolute nutcases?
She honestly couldn’t decide.
Either way, as usual, she was the one who had to go do what they liked to call “field work”. Luthor and Son were in National City giving their usual talks and conferences, but Lena Luthor (there was no Luthor and Daughter, coincidentally) was driving to an abandoned house several miles out of the city.
Her car announced an incoming call from Lex, and Lena accepted it with a sigh. She’d learned to take the path of least resistance when it came to Luthor and Son, for her own peace of mind.
“Are you in the house?”
“Not yet. Nearly there.”
“All right. Good.” A short, tight pause, and then, “Lena, you know this is our most important job. This is it. You can’t—“
“Mess it up. Yes, I understood the first seventy times, Lex.”
“You’re not taking it seriously.”
Lena sighed as quietly as she could manage. “I’m taking it very seriously.”
“Not seriously enough.”
“Maybe Luthor and Son themselves should’ve been the ones doing this job, then.”
The silence felt like it stretched for minutes until Lex finally spoke, voice dripping with badly hidden anger.
“Call me when you’re set up.”
The call ended just as Lena pulled into the driveway of the old El Manor.
As far as allegedly haunted houses went, Lena was pleased to see it looked at least structurally sound. It was an old victorian house, but it had only been abandoned for about a decade, which already made it one of the least decrepit places Lena would have stayed in because of her job.
And, believe her, she used the term “job” very loosely.
Well, it wasn’t as if she was part of the scam, she told herself as she started unloading all her equipment from her car. She never lied. Not once. She liked to think she even helped in her own way.
After all, people called them when they were terrified they were being attacked by ghosts. Lena got there, set up her equipment just like Lex had showed her, and waited for it to do absolutely nothing. She didn’t even pretend to be surprised when Lex’s patented ectoplasm detector remained silent. She just looked for the true source of whatever noises and paranormal events people were experiencing, and fixed it for them.
That’s not an old victorian child who died of the consumption, sir. Just a raccoon in your wall.
I’m afraid the whistle wasn’t your Great Aunt Myrtle’s beloved kettle, ma’am. You have tinnitus.
They all seemed relieved. Most of the time. Some people were oddly attached to the idea of having the tortured soul of a long-gone person haunting their plumbing. But, most people were relieved. They thanked her profusely and were happy to be rid of their irrational fears.
Luthor and Son were scammers, but Lena was not.
“Luthor, I presume.”
Lena gasped, startled by the unexpected presence of a woman in the living room she’d decided to use as her base of operations. She was a little bit older than Lena and looked at her in a way that made her feel like she was supposed to apologize for her very existence.
Not a new feeling, to be perfectly honest, but definitely unusual outside her family home.
“I’m Lena.” She bit back her last name like not speaking it out loud would make it disappear.
“Alex. Danvers.”
Oh. Well, that explained the barely concealed hostility. Alex Danvers — Jeremiah Danvers’s daughter — had been the one fighting Luthor and Son for the last ten years to keep them away from El Manor.
Now she really felt like she was supposed to apologize.
“I’m sorry. About your father.”
Jeremiah Danvers had disappeared in this very house ten years earlier along with his friends and colleagues, the Zor-Els. Lena had heard the story a million times before. Their work in the field of converting ectoplasm into sustainable energy. Their groundbreaking discoveries which were the basis for the equipment Lex had engineered. The tragic disappearance of the three scientists and the Zor-Els' young daughter.
If only Lena believed in ectoplasm, she would’ve been in awe of standing in the very same house where it all had happened. As it was, she was just sorry their delusions had left Alex fatherless.
“Right.” Alex’s eyes narrowed just enough to make Lena feel like the slightly older woman was not above physical violence, given even the slightest provocation. “Well. I’m the grounds keeper, as you know.”
Lena nodded. She honestly hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to the legal saga that was Luthor and Son vs. Alexandra Danvers, but she knew El Manor had been transferred to the City when the rightful owners had been presumed dead seven years after their disappearance. She knew for the next three years Alex had tried to keep the house in the City’s possession to protect it. And she knew the Luthor money had won in the end, so El Manor was now, as Lex had repeatedly pointed out, L Manor.
Hilarious, Lena was sure. You just had to be there.
The one part of the house they hadn’t been able to buy was a small house at the far end of the back garden where the Danvers family used to live. That had been inherited by Jeremiah’s daughter, who had been working as the grounds keeper for the last ten years.
“I live in the house out back. The one you don’t own?”
Lena wanted to clarify she technically owned nothing since she was neither the Luthor or the Son, but Alex didn’t seem like she was in the mood for a discussion on technicalities.
“Anyway. If you need anything…”
Lena had a feeling the sentence ended with ‘go fuck yourself’ in Alex’s mind.
“Right. Thank you.” Path of least resistance. Sometimes it was just easier to pretend you were a little bit dim.
Ask her how she knew.
***
Ten hours later, the living room had been completely taken over by Lena’s equipment. She could’ve called Lex right away and started letting the machines do nothing at all as usual, but she decided she deserved a break. Her favorite part of her job had always been getting to explore all the different houses she investigated.
And the gardens. Mostly the gardens.
Old houses always had the best gardens to get lost in, and Lena never missed a chance to do just that. El Manor would not be an exception.
It was a balmy summer evening, and the moon was already out when Lena walked out of the house and started walking along a winding gravel path. For a house with a working grounds keeper, the garden looked distinctly unkempt. But Lena liked it that way. A little bit wild. With personality. Nothing depressed her more than a manicured lawn.
“Hi.”
Lena gasped, bringing one hand to her chest as if that would stop her heart from beating right out of it.
“Jesus. What is wrong with you!?” Who snuck up on someone in a gloomy garden at night? Come on!
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Well thank God for that.” Lena couldn’t fully keep the sarcasm out of her voice. In her defense, she was still fighting an impending heart attack.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Lena looked at the young woman in front of her with a mixture of confusion and annoyance in her eyes. She was a bit taller than Lena, with long blond hair up in a ponytail and sensible glasses not much different from Lena’s. She looked around Lena’s age, and Lena would’ve told her to get out of her property if it hadn’t been for the disarmingly clear look in the girl’s blue eyes.
The pretty smile did not help.
“I’m Lena Luthor.” Recognition flashed in the girl’s eyes like someone had poured a drop of ink into a glass of crystal clear water. Lena straightened her back and pushed her own glasses up her nose. She had nothing to be ashamed of (technically). “And who are you, exactly?”
“Kara. Kara Danvers, I uh— Alex’s sister?”
Great. There were two of them. Lena was suddenly outnumbered by Danverses. Kara didn’t look quite as likely to resort to violence as her sister, but Lena was sure she’d at least cheer Alex on while she beat Lena up.
“Right. I guess you’re just as thrilled as she is that I’m here.”
Kara shrugged slightly. “Well I mean… you guys don’t have the best record? Scamming the living impaired and all.”
It was boarding school all over again. The Luthor freak whose family believed in ghosts.
“You may have noticed that’s Luthor and Son. And I’m neither.” She shook her head, disappointed to find out the beautiful girl with transparent blue eyes was just like everyone else. A shame. “I’m just a girl trying to do her best. That’s all.”
Kara looked like she was going to say something, but Lena walked away before she could get a single word out.
***
Lena was still glaring at her phone after talking to Lex the next morning when she heard a knock on the back door. She figured it had to be one of the Danvers sisters, and sighed as she braced herself for another round of mostly undeserved judgment.
Being a Luthor hadn’t been her choice, after all.
“Morning.”
Alex Danvers stood on the back porch as she delivered the driest greeting Lena could ever remember receiving. Fantastic start to her day. Lex, and now this.
“Hi. How can I help you.”
Lena’s tone wasn’t much friendlier than Alex’s. She figured she was entitled to a bit of broodiness of her own if she had to put up with this… bullshit, from both her family and theirs.
Alex Danvers looked down at her well-worn leather boots. And then up at the sky like she was asking God to grant her the strength to do… whatever she was there to do. And then, finally, she looked at Lena.
“You’ve met my sister. Kara.”
Cryptic. Very thematically appropriate, given the allegedly paranormal circumstances.
“I have. Briefly.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
Lena heard the tap-tap-tapping of her own left Converse shoe against the aged floorboards under her feet as her patience grew thin.
“Right,” Alex said again, and then made a sound that was halfway between a sigh and a grunt as she tackled the nearly insurmountable (apparently) effort of holding a mug out for Lena to take.
Lena had binged enough true crime podcasts to know not to take drinks from people who very likely had her name written down on a hit list somewhere.
“I don’t want that,” Lena said, perhaps a little too defensively.
“Oh for fucks sake,” Alex rolled her eyes, took one step forward, made Lena take one back, “don’t be a baby.”
“I’m not a baby. I’m also not a moron. I don’t take beverages from people who hate me.”
“It’s not from me. Why would I bring you coffee?” Lena chose to ignore the fact that Alex hadn’t denied she hated her.
“To poison me, obviously. Laxatives, at the very least.”
Alex let out a quiet ‘huh’ and looked at the mug like she was slightly disappointed she hadn’t thought of that herself. “No, but it’s not from me. It’s from Kara.”
“And that’s… somehow supposed to make me trust it?”
Alex looked genuinely confused. Like she couldn’t believe someone would even think Kara would be anything but completely trustworthy.
“Obviously.” Alex held the mug closer to Lena. “She’s Kara. She’d never make you crap your pants, that’s preposterous, if hilarious.”
Lena did not laugh.
“Listen. She said she felt bad for whatever happened last night between you two. I told her whatever she did you definitely deserved it, but she wouldn’t listen.” Alex shoved the mug towards Lena once again, and Lena finally took it. Path of least resistance. “Said she’s sorry. And please accept a coffee as a token of friendship.”
Lena looked into the mug of delightfully hot coffee and then up at Alex once again.
“Why did she send you?”
Alex shrugged. “She’s busy.”
“Oh.” Weird. “Okay.”
“Right. We’re done here.” Alex had already climbed down from the porch when she turned around to shoot Lena a warning look. “You better drink that, Luthor. Don’t disrespect Kara’s token of friendship.”
Lena took a sip, just to shut her up. And she made sure she was within running distance of a restroom at all times for the rest of the day.
***
“Zero,” Lena muttered, reading the little dial on the side of one of Lex’s beloved machines, “and zero again,” she went to another one, “and oh, won’t you look at that? Zero.”
No ectoplasm in the El Manor. Which would only be surprising if Lena believed in the stuff. But because she lived in the real world where things like ectoplasm and ghosts did not actually exis—
“Hi, Lena.”
“Jesus Christ, Kara!”
Lena turned around, heart once again galloping against her rib cage like it was trying to escape.
“Would it kill you to be a bit noisier? It’s like you just—“ Lena gestured in the general direction of the empty space between them, “appear, out of thin air.”
Kara laughed a little too hard, considering Lena wasn’t aware she was even making a joke.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Lena. Appear out of thin air. As if.”
“What are you doing inside?” Lena was aware the Danvers sisters lived in the property, but the house wasn’t theirs. Lena was entitled to some sort of privacy, right? Personal space, and all that?
Kara shrugged, ignoring the question completely. “I hope you liked your coffee.”
Lena considered insisting for just a moment, and then decided she didn’t actually mind Kara being there. She seemed kind, for a Danvers. Certainly kind in comparison with the other Danvers in the vicinity of this house.
“I did. Thank you.” Some kind of ancestral sense of manners kicked in then, and Lena reached for the first edible thing she could find. “Kale chips?”
Kara looked downright offended.
“No. No, thank you.” She shook her head. “Not hungry.”
“More for me,” Lena said, popping one into her mouth. If Kara couldn’t appreciate the finer things in life, that was certainly not Lena’s problem. And with that established, she went back to making sure all machines — as expected — marked big fat zeros on their dials.
“I’m sorry about last night,” Kara said eventually, “I shouldn’t have assumed you were…”
Like them. A Luthor. At home she’d always been treated differently — reminded that her failure to perform what was expected of her as a Luthor made her unworthy of the name. But out in the real world, where that would have been an asset, she was very rarely given the chance to prove that she really wasn’t one of them.
She’d always been stuck. In-between. Not a Luthor, but not not a Luthor, either. Stuck.
“It was a fair assumption. Can’t exactly blame you.”
“Still,” Kara said, and her voice was so soft it made Lena want to cry, “I should’ve given you a chance.”
Lena nodded, but she made sure her eyes didn’t meet Kara’s, just in case the blonde could read anything in them.
“Lena? Wanna start over?”
Lena checked off the last zero of the night and looked at Kara. At the bright, clear eyes and the pretty smile. And she sighed.
“I’m Lena Luthor,” she said with something close to a smile on her lips, “and who exactly are you?”
***
A week into her stay at El Manor, Lena had stopped complaining every time she talked to Lex.
The equipment remained, unsurprisingly, completely silent. No ectoplasm to be found. No readings to report. But Lex wanted her to stay there. This was it, after all. The job. She had to stay until he was absolutely certain every single cubic millimeter of the space within the walls of the old Victorian house had been analyzed.
Why he expected to find a microscopic ghost, Lena didn’t know. And, frankly, she didn’t care.
Her cold (for now, she feared) war with Alex Danvers had reached a sort of equilibrium where Alex brought her breakfast every morning at Kara’s request, and in exchange Lena smirked when one of Alex’s verbal attacks managed to hit her funny bone.
Alex was, as it turned out, a funny — yet grumpy — lady.
And every night, Kara showed up. Lena knew to expect her right around sunset, so she very rarely got startled by her these days.
And three weeks after her arrival at the manor, Lena surprised herself by feeling at home within its walls.
And even outside its walls. Which is why Lena was currently out on the terrace on top of the roof, feeling the chilly late summer night air on her cheeks while she kept warm with a blanket wrapped tightly around herself.
“What are you doing up here?”
Kara’s appearances no longer put Lena on the edge of a heart attack, but she’d be lying if she said being around Kara had no effect on her heart.
It beat just a little bit faster. A little bit louder. A little off-rhythm.
“No clouds at all. You can see every single star.” Lena figured that was enough of an explanation, and she patted the spot next to her as she unwrapped the blanket to offer Kara half of it.
“I’m okay. I run hot,” Kara said, accepting the seat but not the blanket.
“It’s your turn,” Lena said as soon as Kara had taken her seat, “you start tonight.”
Kara hummed as she thought of a question to ask. They’d started an ongoing game of 20 questions that had turned into close to 200 by now, but neither of them seemed too willing to stop.
“What’s your favorite food?”
Lena chuckled, something lazy and a little distracted as she tried to focus on looking at the stars instead of the girl next to her. “You’ve asked me that at least ten times already.”
“I’m hoping you’ll develop good taste at some point.”
Lena rolled her eyes with a smile. “Creamy kale pesto pasta is amazing, I don’t care what you say.”
“Hopeless. You’re hopeless.”
“Okay, Madam Potsticker. Do you really think you’re in a position to be snobby about food tastes?”
“Do not disrespect potstickers.”
Lena chuckled and looked up at the stars once again. “My turn,” she said, “What’s the thing you hate the most in the world?”
Kara thought for a long time, which was unusual. Normally she answered quickly with whatever popped into her mind.
“The fact that it’s been so long since I’ve had potstickers I can hardly remember how they taste?”
There was something in her tone. Lena didn’t think she knew Kara well enough to read it, but she could feel it simmering right below the surface.
“What about you? The thing you hate the most?”
Lena could have answered that question in many different ways, but she chose to follow Kara’s lead and go for the safest option.
“When I’m in a rush and can’t find my keys.”
Kara giggled quietly, and when Lena stole a glance she saw she was looking up at the stars. She looked particularly beautiful like this, relaxed and happy in the moonlight, and Lena settled into the comfortable silence between them without any trouble.
“I love the stars,” Kara finally said, voice soft and a little airy, almost like she wasn’t really there. “When I was younger I wanted to be an astronaut.”
There was that feeling again — the feeling of something Lena couldn’t see or name right under the surface of Kara’s words — but this time Lena felt it like a small wave of sadness crashing at her feet.
“I’m glad you stayed on Earth.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Lena saw Kara’s hand move just an inch towards Lena’s. If she simply stretched her pinky finger, she could touch Kara’s skin for the very first time.
She was about to do it when Kara moved her hand away, and Lena swore she saw a hint of pink on the bridge of Kara’s nose.
***
“Fuck.”
Lena walked out of the office she’d been using as a makeshift bedroom, pulling her hair up into a messy bun as she scanned the living room for the twentieth time. Sticking to the bottom floor of the manor had been an excellent call, because if she’d had to run up and down the stairs instead of simply rushing in and out of the office she probably would’ve lost her mind by now.
“So goddamn late.” Her morning coffee sat untouched by the back door where she’d abandoned as soon as Alex had left, and Lena hopped on one foot and then the other as she tried to put on her shoes while still looking over every surface in the room.
Stupid keys. Stupid fucking keys. Where the hell were th—
Her frantic movements stilled immediately as she heard a sound she couldn’t immediately recognize. When Lena looked in the direction of it, she saw a pen rolling across a coffee table and then falling on the floor.
Since when did pens roll off flat, level surfaces on their own?
“Maybe there are ghosts after all.” Lena’s voice dripped with sarcasm as she crouched down next to the coffee table to get the pen and saw… her keys. Right there on the floor, almost completely hidden by the couch.
“Huh.” Lena placed the pen back on the table, flung her messenger bag over her shoulder and made a beeline for the front door. “Thank you, Casper. I owe you one.”
***
The first night Kara didn’t show up, Lena was on the roof. It was a moonless night, dark and quiet, easily the coldest since she’d arrived at the manor.
There was a sort of excitement crackling under Lena’s skin like a live wire. She was going to take a step. Cross a line. She was going to let Kara know she thought about her when they were apart. And if something else happened as a result? If they crossed another line or two or more?
Well — Lena smiled at the take-away containers neatly set up next to her blanket on the floor — she wasn’t going to complain about that.
Lena waited until just after midnight before giving up and walking downstairs. She sat in front of the television and ate reheated potstickers for two, and by the time she went to bed she’d changed her mind on the appropriateness of crossing lines.
***
Two weeks later, for the sixty-second time in a row, Lena wrote down a neat, round little zero next to each of the parameters Lex’s machines were supposed to measure.
Zero ectoplasm. Shocking, she was sure.
But she wasn’t complaining. She liked El Manor, even if she only really used the ground floor and the roof. She loved the garden in all its wild, defiant glory.
She loved seeing Kara nearly every single night.
Which is why, when the sun went down and the first stars started being visible in the night sky, Lena cut her garden walk short to head back home. Kara would be there any second, and the last thing Lena wanted was for her to think she’d gone out without her.
She didn’t usually go anywhere near the little house at the end of the garden. She and Alex were mostly civil these days, all thanks to Kara, but she still wouldn’t put it past her to do bodily damage if she felt like Lena was in her turf.
But that night Lena had gotten a bit disoriented among the tall grass and overgrown bushes, and she’d found herself walking right along the side of the little cottage on her way back home. And that’s when she heard it.
Kara’s voice, coming from the open window.
“I can’t. I can’t— I can’t tell her, Alex.” There was an anguish in Kara’s voice that made Lena feel like someone was squeezing her heart in their fist. “I just can’t.”
“Then you have to stop. No— Kara, look at me. You have to stop seeing her. Stop letting her see you. Because she’s going to figure it out.”
“She won’t—“
“She will, Kara. She will figure it out, and it’s gonna be even worse.”
There was a long silence, heavy with things Lena couldn’t even name, and when Kara spoke again there were tears in her voice.
“I can’t stop seeing her. I can’t. Don’t ask me to do that.”
Lena heard an exasperated sigh. She hoped Alex was holding Kara. Drying her tears. Making her stop hurting for whoever they were talking about.
“She’s a Luthor, Kara. Have you forgotten?”
Oh.
“She’s different.”
“Kara—“
“No. No! You don’t understand, Alex. You don’t know her like I do. You don’t see her like I do.”
Lena heard Kara stop talking to sniffle, and she covered her own mouth so no sound would come out as she felt the first tears start to fall.
“She’s— I trust her, Alex. She’s not like them. She’s not like anyone else.”
Another silence. Even more tense than the last one.
“If you trust her, why can’t you tell her?”
Lena held her breath. If Kara trusted her, why couldn’t she tell her… whatever they were talking about?
“I just—“ Kara let out a quiet sob, “I don’t know what I’d do if she hated me.”
Lena heard another sigh. Softer this time. And when Alex spoke again, her voice sounded gentler than Lena thought possible from the older Danvers sister.
“Oh, Kara.”
Kara was still crying when Lena ran back home.
***
Kara didn’t show up that night, but the routine was re-established the night after that.
There was nothing different about Kara, at least on the surface. But Lena kept thinking of a secret she was supposed to know, but didn’t. A secret Kara couldn’t — wouldn’t — share. A secret that could potentially make her hate Kara.
But over the last few days since she’d heard the conversation between Kara and Alex, Lena had thought about it almost constantly, and she’d come to a conclusion: there was nothing — absolutely nothing — Kara could tell her that would make Lena hate her.
“Remind me the name of that one?” Kara pointed up at the stars from her spot next to Lena on the roof.
Lena followed Kara’s gaze towards the starry sky. “That’s Lacerta. The—“
“Lizard,” Kara finished for her, “I remember.”
Kara loved the stars, and she loved listening to Lena share trivia and little facts about them. Lena had started reading up on astronomy during the day just so she’d have things to share with Kara at night.
And once again, she realized there was nothing Kara could say to make Lena hate her. Because Lena— well. Lena felt things. For Kara. The kind of things you don’t forget because of someone’s deep, dark secrets.
And because Kara couldn’t exactly bring up the subject without admitting she’d been eavesdropping, she decided to do the next best thing. She’d let Kara see a little bit of how she felt. Give her a hint.
Even if it had to be a tiny one.
Taking in a trembling breath, Lena moved her hand along the floor until it was right next to Kara’s, and then gently, slowly, stretched her pinky finger to touch… Nothing.
Lena frowned slightly. Had she miscalculated her move? She was so glad Kara hadn’t noticed, because this was on the same level of embarrassing as those scenes in movies where the boy yawns to put his arm around the girl at the cinema and whacks her in the face instead.
So she decided to try again, but this time she wasn’t going to go in blind. She looked down at their hands just to see how much she’d have to move to reach Kara’s, and—
Lena couldn’t say anything. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t think, she couldn’t do anything, because what she was seeing with her own two eyes was her pinky finger in Kara’s hand.
As in, her pinky had gone through Kara’s hand. Kara’s hand that looked distinctly translucent now that Lena’s finger was in it.
It took her a few seconds to react, and when she did it was by scrambling to her feet and taking two steps backwards.
“What— what the fuck, Kara?”
“What?” Kara seemed confused at first, following Lena’s gaze to her hand (which looked normal again) and clearly not seeing what was happening. And then. Then, Kara looked at Lena’s face, into Lena’s eyes, and Lena could tell the exact moment Kara realized what she was seeing in them wasn’t hatred. It was fear.
“Lena. Lena, please, I can— I can explain.” Kara was on her feet now, pleading, taking one step forward for each one Lena took back. “Please don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what, Kara? Like you’re—“ The word tasted bitter at the back of Lena’s mouth. Bitter and impossible but real and like it would infect everything else in Lena’s world. “A ghost!?”
“Lena…”
“I’ve been— God, I’ve been here all this time, feeling so guilty about my family bothering you and Alex. So… unworthy of you.” Lena felt her eyes burn with tears, but she refused to let them fall. “And you knew. You knew they were right and you didn’t— you let me keep feeling that way!?”
“Lena, please. Please just listen—“
“No!”
Kara flinched like Lena’s voice had physically hit her.
“No. You’ve had— you had plenty of chances to tell me. I would’ve listened any other time.” Lena shook her head. “I can’t even look at you right now.”
The last thing Lena heard before slamming the office door shut was a quiet ‘Lena, please’.
***
Twelve hours had not been enough to process her feelings about what had happened on the roof.
Lena stood in the shower, letting the warm water fall over her like rain, picturing the darkness in her head washing off her and running down the drain.
Sadly, she was well aware it didn’t work that way.
She felt… betrayed. All her life she’d been an outsider in her own home, always set aside. She was the other child. Not Lex. The other one. Her age hadn’t hit double digits yet the first time she noticed a conversation between Lillian and Lex abruptly ending when Lena walked into the room.
She’d thought Kara was different. She thought Kara saw her differently — trusted her enough to let her in. But she’d been wrong. Just like Alex, Kara saw her as an outsider. A Luthor, even if the Luthors didn’t see her as one. Someone who couldn’t be trusted — not fully, anyway.
Lena stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around herself. When she walked past the mirror, she saw a message on the fogged-up glass.
Roof tonight?
Lena pressed her palm on the mirror and wiped the message away.
***
Lena went up to the roof anyway.
Two hours after sunset, just to make it clear was still angry. Still hurt. Still not okay.
Kara wasn’t there when Lena walked out on the terrace. At least not visibly. When she saw her appear out of thin air for the first time, Lena couldn’t help the way she gasped and took a step back.
The look in Kara’s eyes when she saw she’d scared her made her want to cry.
“My name is Kara Zor-El.”
“Zor-El. As in—“
“Yes.” Kara nodded. “My parents— Jeremiah and my parents discovered a way to turn ectoplasm into a clean, renewable energy source. They thought—“
“I know. I know the science.” Lena shook her head. She’d been hearing about the goddamn Danvers-Zor-El experiments for years. “And I’m using that word very loosely.”
It suddenly dawned on her that the fact that Kara existed — that Kara was a ghost -- meant everything else she’d always thought was nonsense may very well be true.
“My family has been trying to pick up where yours left off,” Lena said, “I always thought it was ridiculous. Pseudo-science at best. But if it isn’t…”
God. What if it wasn’t? “It could make the world a better place.” When Kara was a little girl, she wanted to be an astronaut. Lena had always wanted to make the world a little bit better.
Kara nodded. “I was thirteen when the accident happened. They thought they’d found a way to gather ectoplasm, but they accidentally— they crossed us over. They only had enough power to send one of us back so they sent me, but I— well. I got stuck.”
“Stuck?”
Kara reached for a leaf on the ivy climbing up the wall, and Lena watched Kara’s hand go through it without disturbing it at all. “Stuck. In between.”
“So you’re not…” Lena couldn’t bring herself to say the word out loud.
“Dead?” Kara said bluntly, like she’d been practicing. “No. No, I’m not dead.”
“Just in between,” Lena said, a little thoughtfully, like she fully understood what it all meant.
“Just in between.”
Lena closed her eyes just to be able to focus on her thoughts. The experiments, the notes her mother and brother had made her read over and over again. It was all real. All true. Ectoplasm existed, even if, for whatever reason, Lex’s machines couldn’t detect it. Maybe Kara was different. Maybe they were all just slightly off on their calculations.
“Lena?”
Kara’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts. “You’re the Zor-El girl,” she finally said, like that was the most important detail in this whole mess, “so you’ve been… like this for—“
“Ten years.”
Ten years. Ten years in between, whatever that meant. Ten years in which Kara had aged, evidently, because she looked twenty-three and not thirteen. And out of all the questions she could ask — all the questions her scientific mind could come up with — Lena could only come up with one.
“Why. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Kara looked down like she was gathering her thoughts. Like she couldn’t quite meet Lena’s eyes. If you asked Lena, she deserved to feel at least a little bit ashamed.
“All that equipment. The commercials about the living impaired. Your family fighting Alex in court all this time to get access to the house…” Kara shook her head and finally looked up, “I thought I’d lose you, Lena. If you knew who I really am. What I really am.”
Lena let out a quiet, bitter little scoff. “So after all this time, you really think that’s all I am. Just another Luthor. Someone to keep at an arm’s length.”
“No!” Kara took a step towards Lena, and Lena surprised herself by not stepping back. “No. Lena. You’re so much more than that. You mean so much more than that. What I feel for you—“ she shook her head, “I would never push you away. I could never give up on this. Never.”
Lena set her jaw. “Then why,” her voice came out strained from the sheer effort of holding back her tears, “did you think I would?”
Lena watched Kara struggle to find something to say for six heartbeats before she turned around and went down to her room.
***
Kara appeared in Lena’s kitchen two nights later, while Lena was in the middle of doing the dishes.
“You didn’t show up last night,” Lena said as a greeting, her back still to Kara.
“There was no moon.”
Lena finished washing up and used the time to think about what Kara had just said. What it meant. What it implied. It wasn’t necessarily easy to wrap her head around a reality where ghosts existed, let alone trying to understand all their rules and idiosyncrasies.
“Is that why you only come at night?” Lena turned around and leaned her back against the counter, wiping her hands dry on a small tea towel. “You need the moon?”
Kara nodded. “I’m here during the day, too. I’m always here. You just can’t see me. Or hear me.”
“So the moon— the moon makes you… visible?”
“If I want to be. I can stay hidden away.”
Lena savored the implication in Kara’s words. The acknowledgment that Kara had had a choice in all this. She let Lena see her because she wanted to. She could’ve simply stayed away, but she didn’t.
“Was it you? Did you help me find my keys the other day?”
Kara smiled, something small and almost hesitant, like she was scared if she showed any emotion other than remorse Lena may shut her off again. Lena felt like someone had turned on the light in her heart.
“You said you hated losing them.”
Lena nodded and let out a sigh. “I do. I really do.”
For the first time, the silence between them felt uncomfortably thick.
“I’m so sorry, Lena.” Kara took a step forward. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. I wasn’t brave enough and I’m so sorry.”
Lena looked at the damp tea towel in her hands for a moment. She was at a crossroads, she figured. She could wallow in self-pity. In the very real feelings of betrayal and rejection and anger swirling around in her stomach. She could let them fester there for weeks and months and years until she either got over them or Kara stopped caring enough to keep apologizing.
Or. She could acknowledge the feelings and rise above. Prove Kara wrong and herself right. Accept that there really was nothing Kara could do to make Lena hate her.
“You hurt me.”
“I know,” Kara whispered, voice just a little watery. “I know I did.”
Lena took in a deep breath and let it out in a slow, steady stream. She could never hate Kara Danvers. Or Kara Zor-El. Not in this reality, and not in whatever in-between parallel dimension she inhabited.
“So. Can you leave?” Lena asked, “Can you go away?”
Kara wiped a couple of stray tears rolling down her cheeks and smiled even though Lena could tell she was trying not to. She understood, didn’t she? She understood Lena could never give up on this.
“Not too far. I can go to Alex’s. Maybe a couple steps down the street.”
“No, I mean— can you go fully… well, away. Into… the beyond?” Lena didn’t even have the vocabulary to talk about this whole new reality Kara had opened her eyes to.
Kara was kind enough not to laugh at her as she shook her head. “I’m stuck.”
“Forever?” Thinking about forever without ever holding Kara’s hand made something ache deep inside Lena’s chest.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Kara shrugged slightly, and it became clear to Lena, in that moment, just how far ahead Kara was in her understanding of all this just by virtue of having had ten years to wrap her mind around it. She talked about it like it was nothing — like it was no more extraordinary than the weather or the phases of the moon.
“I do age. So I kind of— I assume I’ll die, eventually. And just cross over like everyone else.”
Lena mulled over the words and their meaning in silence for a moment. “That’s a bit morbid.”
“Well. I am a ghost. Morbid comes with the territory.”
“Right.” Lena wrapped her fingers tighter around the tea towel just to keep herself from doing something as unspeakably stupid as trying to touch Kara. “Can you feel? Physically, I mean.”
“Not in the strictest sense of the word.”
Lena hesitated for a moment. Tightened her grip on the towel until her knuckles went white. And then took two steps forward and traced a line down the back of Kara’s hand, from her wrist to the tip of her middle finger.
It felt like nothing, and it felt like everything.
“Did you feel it?”
Kara’s eyes had fluttered closed, and she swallowed before she looked at Lena. “Not— I mean yes. Just not in the same way I would out there. It’s— different.”
“Can I feel you? Can you let me feel you?” Maybe it worked like being seen. Maybe Kara could control it.
But Kara shook her head. “During the day, maybe. Kinda. I can touch things.”
“Like the mirror?”
“Yeah. So maybe.”
Lena nodded. Maybe was better than no. Maybe was much better than never.
“Well, and then there’s Halloween.”
Lena stopped looking at her hand to meet Kara’s gaze. “I’m sorry. Halloween?” Now that crossed the line. Up until now Lena had kept an open mind, but that was a bit much for her suspension of disbelief.
“Don’t you know the story? All Hallow’s Eve? Samhain? When the portal between both worlds opens and—
“You’re kidding, right? You’re not actually expecting me to believe it’s all true.”
Kara shrugged. “Maybe not all of it. But I can cross over on Halloween. Just for the night.” Kara smiled, and Lena shook her head in disbelief. “I eat potstickers and get hugs.”
Kara was looking at her with those eyes of hers, and Lena couldn’t see a single hint of mockery in them. Kara was telling the truth. Somehow, this was reality. And Kara would be able to cross over on Halloween.
“And you’ll feel it if I touch you?”
Kara nodded. “Just for the night.”
Lena did her very best to maintain her poker face, but something told her she wasn’t being completely successful. “And if someone kissed you. Would you feel that?”
A dusting of pink appeared across Kara’s cheeks.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’d feel that, too.”
***
Ever since she’d found out about Kara, Lena spent most of her time in the library. A month ago she’d have said most of the antique books in there were nothing more than old wives’ tales, but now…
Well. Now she was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
As usual, Lena walked towards one of the floor to ceiling bookcases and picked a book at random. She hadn’t read enough about this whole new side of reality to get a feeling for which things related to which, so she was taking a more… eclectic approach to her research.
As soon as Lena opened the book, the pages flipped on their own.
“Oh, you’re here. Good morning to you, too.”
Lena looked up from the book when she heard a distinct, rhythmic tap-tap-tapping on a nearby shelf. When she looked at it, she saw one of the books slide ever so slightly backwards until it was visibly misaligned with the rest.
“What is this, literature recs from the beyond?” Lena smirked and grabbed the offered book. “Very seasonally appropriate for October, I must say.”
Pages flipped on their own once again, but this time it felt like there was a purpose behind it. On a particular page, the pages stopped turning and Lena heard that tap-tap-tap once again.
“Every nineteenth year,” she read out loud, “a full moon shines on Samhain, and the portal fully opens. Oh, and it comes with a chart, too. Handy.” Lena followed the lines on the chart until she reached the number she’d been looking for. “This year. There’ll be a full moon on Halloween this year.”
Lena looked at the empty space in front of her. Having a conversation was so much easier when she could at least see the expression on Kara’s face.
“Okay. I have no idea what this all means. The portal fully opens? I thought that happened every year.” She shook her head. “What does it mean, Kara?”
Tap-tap-tap.
Lena turned around. The sound hadn’t come from the book or the bookcases. “Kara?”
Tap-tap-tap
The window.
Lena walked over just in time to see the first letter appear on the condensation on the glass.
I
“You what?”
I’ll stay.
***
“Haven’t you eaten anything all day?”
Lena figured the sun had set, but only because she could hear Kara’s voice. She’d been reading up on the Halloween full moon situation since morning.
“Not hungry.”
“That’s because you eat goat food. I wouldn’t be hungry either if leaves were on the menu.”
Lena rolled her eyes, but there was no keeping the smile off her face once she actually looked at Kara.
“What does it mean?” Lena figured she didn’t need to provide context. “You’ll stay where?”
“Here. There. With you.” Kara’s cheeks immediately turned a beautiful shade of pink. “I mean— you know. On that side. Which you are in.”
Here. With her.
“Not just for the night?”
Kara shook her head. Lena felt her own cheeks warm up.
“Okay. That’s— that’s good. That’s good news.”
“So will you help?”
“Me?” Lena could barely comprehend the situation, how on earth was she supposed to help? “How?”
“Alex and I— we have some of my parents’ and Jeremiah’s old notes. But they’re incomplete, and—“
“I have them. I have the rest. In the lab.”
Maybe that would be how Lena Luthor could make the world a little bit better. Helping put Kara Zor-El back in it.
***
The visit to the Luthor lab had been quick and uneventful. Luthor and Son were touring nearby college campuses giving talks about the living impaired and how to help them, and they were more than happy to leave Lena to watch the equipment and keep registering zeros every day.
Whatever Lex thought he’d built, it was clearly not working if it couldn’t detect Kara at all.
For the next two weeks, all Lena did was study. She went over Jeremiah and the Zor-El’s notes, modified some of Lex’s equipment, tried to make sense of physics that didn’t follow the rules Lena knew like the back of her hand.
Tap-tap-tap.
“Morning, Kara.”
A strand of hair had gotten loose from the bun on top of her head, and Lena felt it swish against her neck as if someone had blown on it.
“You do know I’m working on helping you cross over, yes?” Lena tried to sound stern, but the smile on her face betrayed her.
A round metallic piece fell off her desk and hit the floor with a sound that was far too rhythmic for it to have been a coincidence. And then it started rolling across the floor.
“Are you serious?” Lena chuckled and stood up, following Kara (it felt a bit less ridiculous to think she was following Kara than to think she was being led by a piece of metal) towards the stairs.
Tap-tap-tap.
“Up? All right. This better be quick, though. I was about to make a breakthrough.”
Lena hadn’t really explored the top floors of the manor yet. She’d stuck to the ground floor for living and the garden and roof for exploration and stargazing, respectively. The two floors in between were a mystery to her.
But not to Kara.
Lena followed the taps on the wall along a hallway until she was standing in front of a door with a red and blue “K” painted on it.
“Was this your room?”
She took the knock on the door as a yes and walked inside.
The room looked dusty, but not like it’d been abandoned for ten years. She figured Alex had been keeping it somewhat presentable for the last decade. There were yellowing posters on the walls, all of them related to space. Planets and constellations and galaxies everywhere. There were discolored spots on the walls where Lena was sure glow-in-the-dark stars had been stuck for years.
“It feels yours,” Lena finally said, “It really does.”
The lamp on a vanity flickered on and off. Lena smiled at the sight of what was meant to be a spot for Kara to start experimenting with make-up and curling irons being covered in science fiction novels and comic books instead.
Kara tapped on the chair, and Lena obediently sat down.
There was a quiet sound. Like wind chimes, maybe, but softer. Lena couldn’t figure it out until she noticed a golden chain dangling from a hook on the side of the mirror. Kara made it swing and make the metallic little sound once again.
Lena took the chain in her hand and looked at the two pendants on it. A golden K, and the Big Dipper with a small blue crystal on the North Star. It reminded her of the color of Kara’s eyes.
“Ursa Major,” Lena said as she traced the lines connecting the golden stars, “they’re beautiful, Kara.”
And then.
Lena felt Kara. It was unlike anything else she’d felt before, but it was her. One fingertip. Two, maybe. Drawing a painfully slow line around Lena’s neck.
For a moment, Lena forgot how to breathe.
“Y— you want me to put it on?”
Lena placed the delicate chain around her neck and carefully fastened it in place.
She felt Kara’s finger tracing the chain, and the touch — for lack of a better word — echoed all over her body.
And then, just as she was still trying to make her pulse go back to normal, she saw the mirror on the vanity fog up like someone had breathed on it.
Happy 21.
“Is that today?” Lena looked at her watch. October 24th. She was twenty one years old. One year closer to being able to access her trust fund and say goodbye to Luthor and Son. But she had much better things to focus on today.
“One week,” she said, and she wished she could see Kara’s face, “and I’ll thank you in the flesh.”
***
The night before Halloween, Lena didn’t sleep.
She stayed up with Kara, huddled under a blanket under the stars and talking about them. About life after Halloween. About togetherness.
“Sun will be up soon,” Kara said in a whisper.
“I wish you didn’t have to go.”
“Last time.” Kara smiled, already starting to fade. “Tomorrow night I’ll stay forever.
“I like that word. Forever.”
“Most people find it daunting.”
“Most people don’t even know what it means.” Lena sighed, but knowing she was mere hours away from finally having Kara — really having her with her — made her heart feel light. “I’ll finish reading your parents’ notes today. We’ll be ready to go by sunset.”
Kara nodded. When she spoke, it sounded like her voice came from far away. “I know I’m in good hands.”
“What are you looking forward to the most for tonight?” Lena knew she was just trying to make these last moments together last a little bit longer. “Potstickers?”
Kara chuckled nearly silently and shook her head. Lena watched her fully fade as she leaned in, and felt Kara’s cool breath on her lips.
“I think—“ Lena sighed and hesitated for only a second. After tonight, she’d never be with Kara without seeing her again, and some things were simply easier to say when you couldn’t look into the other person’s eyes. “I think I’m in love with you.”
***
Lena spent the rest of the day hiding away in her favorite corner of the garden, going over the last of the Zor-Els’ notes.
It was a secluded little spot. She figured it wouldn’t have been this peaceful with a more traditional approach to gardening, but Alex’s chaotic neutral style meant the vegetation around it had turned into a natural hideyhole of sorts.
Lena’s mother — her mother, not Lillian — had always called her a library mouse. She had a certain affinity for burrows of all kinds, especially when she had to read.
She’d made Kara promise to stay away. Lena loved hearing the little tap-tap-tapping that told her Kara was around, but she couldn’t afford the luxury of getting distracted. She had to finish reading up on the process of getting her back before the sun set. She had to get it all exactly right, because nineteen years would be too long a wait. Nineteen years was an unthinkably long time to wait.
So Lena focused on her work. She triple checked her math in her head and on paper. She would run the same calculations through her laptop later, of course, but in her experience computers weren’t much more accurate than she was when it came to math. Still, it couldn’t hurt. She looked at the diagrams on the page, noted little adjustments Kara’s parents had made to the original design. Tried to figure out what, exactly, had made it all go wrong.
And then.
Then everything changed. In a split second. In the tiny fraction of a second it took for her to turn a page.
Suddenly the handwriting changed. It wasn’t Astra Zor-El’s neat, no-frills cursive or her husband’s more angular print. It was—
Lex. It was Lex’s tight, rushed, barely readable handwriting. She must’ve accidentally grabbed some of his papers when she took the Zor-Els’. And for a moment the feeling of something being terribly wrong overwhelmed Lena so much she couldn’t even read.
But she did, eventually. She read. She skimmed, if she was being perfectly honest, heart beating faster with each word as her reality shifted once again and she discovered yet another secret that had been built and maintained around her.
Lex knew. Lillian knew. They knew about Kara. The equipment — they had the real data streamed to their lab directly while they kept Lena busy recording zeros and keeping the machines in perfect working condition. Ectoplasm was real and its energetic potential nearly endless, and Lena felt a wave of nausea hit as she kept flipping pages and saw the rest Lex and Lillian’s plan: revolutionizing the arms industry.
An image of a bomb with her name stenciled on its side flashed through her mind, and the only reason Lena didn’t throw up right then and there was she’d been too busy reading to eat.
And then it hit her.
Kara.
Kara was the key. Kara who was in between and could open the portal that would allow them to harvest all the ectoplasm they could ever need. Kara who — according to Lex’s notes — could be a source of ectoplasm herself. Kara who could be harvested.
“KARA!”
Lena shoved the papers off her lap and started running back towards the house. It was still early afternoon and the moon wouldn’t be out for hours. God, she hoped Kara would hear.
“Kara! Don’t— don’t cross over! It’s a trap!” Lena reached the back porch panting, barely able to get her voice out and wishing she’d given sports more than a passing glance over the years. “Kara!”
Lena opened the back door and walked inside, looking around at every glass surface where Kara could conceivably leave any kind of sign that she was there. That she could hear her.
“Kara, please! Can you hear me? Don’t cross over tonight. Whatever you do— I’ll wait.” It took Lena a moment to register there were tears running down her cheeks. “I’ll wait, baby, please just— stay put and—“
Lena’s eyes rounded in surprise as she noticed a handbag that was very much not her own resting on the coffee table in the middle of the living room.
“No,” she whispered once she recognized it as Lillian’s and realized she may very well be too late, “Kara! Stay away, Kara, plea—“
She didn’t hear steps behind her. Maybe if she’d been less hyper focused on warning Kara, she would’ve noticed someone behind her and could have gotten away.
But the first thing Lena noticed was the damp cloth against her nose and mouth that smelled like the waiting room of a hospital, and then the sting of a needle in her arm.
And by then, it was too late.
***
Lena woke up with a pounding headache, a sore throat, and so thirsty she felt like she could resort to physical violence for a glass of water.
Her brain felt like a sponge.
Like a dry sponge.
As she slowly returned to consciousness, more and more of her muscles made themselves felt.
It took her a while to fully process her surroundings and realize she was on a cold tile floor.
On the cold tile floor of the bathroom.
In El Manor.
Kara.
“Kara,” Lena choked out, voice hoarse from all the yelling she’d done the day before. Had it been the day before? How long had she been out? Bits and pieces of the situation started filling up her brain as she struggled to get up.
Lillian. Lex. Kara.
“Kara?” Her voice quivered. Had she crossed over? Had they taken her? Was she gone?
Forever didn’t seem like such a good word right now.
“Kara, are you here?” It was light outside. Even if Kara was there, she wouldn’t be able to answer. “Kara, please. Just— just be okay.”
Tap.
Lena turned her head so fast towards the mirror that she felt a little dizzy.
“Kara?”
Tap-tap-tap.
And then a cloud of fog on the surface of the mirror, like a breath, and Lena watched through the tears in her eyes as a little heart-shaped doodle appeared on the glass.
“Kara,” Lena breathed out.
She decided nineteen years were nothing in the grand scheme of things.
***
Lena spent the next October 31st decorating the house. She spared a thought or two for Lex and Lillian — Luthor and Son — on the anniversary of their disappearance in the same tragic circumstances that had once taken Jeremiah Danvers and the Zor-Els, but she quickly decided her mental energy was better spent on something else.
She’d never been big on holidays, but she knew Kara liked a bit of festive flair, so the El Manor was a cornucopia of pumpkin-themed decorations.
Over the ornate arch that separated the living room — now free of machinery — from the kitchen, she carefully painted the numbers from one to nineteen.
Loud groups of trick-or-treaters ohhed and ahhed at the old El Manor as they walked up the path to the front door. Lena pretended she didn’t see when little hands double-dipped into the bowl full of candy while she complimented plastic Iron Men and lopsided witch hats.
The last pieces of candy were gone before the sun had fully set, and Lena busied herself with setting a table for two (no kale, just potstickers) until it got dark outside. And then she felt her.
She felt her.
“Happy Halloween.”
Kara’s voice sounded different. More real. Lena leaned backwards and felt the solid strength of Kara’s body against her back, and she had to take a moment to breathe through the sudden need to cry.
She turned around slowly, looked into Kara’s eyes, and was delighted to see they looked exactly the same on this side. Still bright blue and transparent and clear.
Lena pressed the palm of her hand to the left of Kara’s sternum and closed her eyes for a moment until she felt the thump-thump-thumping of Kara’s heart against her hand. If she had any musical talent, she would write at least a dozen songs to its beat.
“You’re tall,” Lena finally said, taking a step closer to press herself flush against Kara.
Kara pressed a lingering kiss to Lena’s forehead. To the bridge and then the tip of her nose. “I’ve always been tall.”
“You feel taller in the flesh.”
Kara smiled against the wet, salty skin of Lena’s cheek.
“I feel like I should apologize in advance. I hear first kisses can be a bit clumsy.”
It took a second for Lena to understand what Kara meant. Not just the first kiss between them. Her first kiss ever. Because she got stuck at thirteen and, Lena figured, there were no homecoming dances in the beyond.
“Well. Practice makes perfect,” Lena teased, feeling Kara’s heart beat faster as the taller woman leaned in, “no shame in learning a new skill.”
Their first kiss was a bit clumsy. A bit too hesitant, a bit too nervous, a bit too much teeth because of their smiles.
The second was slightly better.
The sixth was cut short when Kara saw the potstickers, and the seventh landed on Lena’s cheek because she turned her head with a shriek to dodge Kara’s potsticker-covered lips.
Lena had lost count when Kara pressed her up against the wall halfway up the stairs and kissed her until her knees were weak and her body humming with a year’s worth of waiting.
In the middle of the night, Lena wrapped a soft sheet around her naked body and sneaked out of bed to go downstairs. She stood on her tiptoes to reach the top of the arch between the living room and the kitchen and used the same paintbrush she’d used to paint the numbers to cross out the first one.
“Eighteen to go.”
***
The house smelled like burnt pumpkin bread (hey, at least they tried), the cinnamon candle Lena had lit to try and get rid of that first smell, and them.
Kara didn’t own any t-shirts, technically, but she’d mentioned seeing Lena wear one of them as one of those silly romantic fantasies from her teenage years. Lena had had to enlist Alex’s help to track down a large t-shirt from the high school Kara was set to attend after the summer when she got stuck in between two worlds, but it had been worth it.
Kara had blushed every single time she’d seen Lena in it, from her last birthday until Halloween.
Even now, in the middle of her 3AM potsticker break, Kara’s cheeks glowed pink when Lena walked into the kitchen. Best purchase ever.
“Wanna do the honors?” Lena asked, offering Kara a small jar of orange paint and a brush.
Kara popped the last potsticker into her mouth and hummed an affirmative reply as she walked out of the kitchen through the arch and looked at the numbers on top of it.
Carefully, almost reverently, Kara crossed out number five.
“Fourteen to go,” Lena said, arms winding around Kara’s waist to pull herself as close as she possibly could. She found her favorite spot against Kara’s side, nose resting against Kara’s neck so she could breathe her in, and committed this feeling to memory. Just a little while longer, and then another year without this.
Two hours later, as they laid in bed in silence, Kara stopped drawing idle patterns on Lena’s naked back to speak.
“Baby?”
“Mhmm?” There was absolutely no way Lena would fall asleep before the sun came up and Kara went away. But she was so relaxed her voice came out quiet and soft.
“I’m so sorry.”
Lena shook her head. She stretched out on the bed, making sure Kara saw just how much of an effort it was for Lena to even move after the night they’d spent together. Everyone liked an ego boost once in a while, right?
“What could you possibly,” Lena let out a content hum, “be sorry for?”
“I’m just—“ Kara let out a quiet sigh, “I’m sorry I can only give you one night a year.”
Lena rolled onto her back so she could look Kara in the eye. She was wholly unprepared for the sadness she saw shining through.
“Kara Zor-El,” Lena said, voice steady and firm, “you give me so much more than that. You give me everything.”
When Lena sat up and kissed her, she realized it was the very first time she’d felt Kara’s tears.
“I’m in love with you every single day. Listen to me, Kara,” Lena cupped Kara’s cheeks with her hands, “you make me happy every. Single. Day.” Lena wiped Kara’s tears away with the pads of her thumbs and waited until watery blue eyes looked up at her. “The one night a year is just…” Lena’s voice trailed off as she tried to find the right metaphor.
“Confetti?” Kara offered.
Lena let out a quiet chuckle. If Kara was going to quote the shows they binge-watched at her, there were worse ones to pick, she figured.
“Yeah.” Lena nodded and kissed Kara’s lips for good measure. “Just confetti.”
***
Lena looked up at the numbers above the arch, wet paint dripping slightly where she’d crossed out number ten. She took in a deep breath and allowed herself a moment to bask in the feeling of being more than halfway done.
Ten years gone, nine to go.
Walking up and down the stairs was more of a chore at thirty-one than it had been at twenty-one, but Alex had warned her things didn’t truly start going downhill until thirty-five. Lena chose to believe this was already rock bottom, just for her own peace of mind.
Quietly, Lena walked to the end of the hallway, to the room with the K on the door. She leaned against the door frame and simply looked at the scene in front of her for a little while. Kara, solid and here, messy hair up in a ponytail and blue eyes so full of love Lena needed to take a moment to breathe through the sudden rush of tears.
“Haven’t you picked her up yet?”
Kara didn’t look away from the baby in the crib. She just shook her head and kept watching her sleep. Lena couldn’t blame her, really. In her own scientific opinion, their daughter was awe-inspiring. A true work of art from her long dark eyelashes to her pouty pink lips.
“She won’t mind, you know. If you wake her up. It is a special occasion.”
It took Kara another minute or two to finally make up her mind. Slowly, carefully, oh-so-gently, Kara slid one hand under the baby’s fuzzy little head and another under her body and lifted her up and out of the crib.
“She’s so small. Lena.” Kara still couldn’t tear her eyes away from the baby, and Lena watched as she shifted her in her arms until she was comfortable once again. “She’s so small.”
Kara’s voice was full of awe and emotion, and Lena decided there was no need to comment on the fact that their daughter had more than doubled her birth weight in the three months she’d been in the world.
She could be proud of her daughter’s clearly above-average growing skills at some other time.
The little girl in Kara’s arms stirred awake, and Kara offered her pointer finger for a tiny fist to wrap around. Lena heard a quiet sniffle and wrapped her arms around Kara’s waist, pressing a kiss to her shoulder blade.
“Hi, Luna,” Kara cooed, voice watery with tears, when round, dark blue eyes looked up at her, “sorry it took me a while to pick you up.”
Lena kissed the top of their daughter’s head. This, she decided. Making Luna. Making this family. This was how she’d made the world a better place.
***
“You have got to be kidding me right now.”
Lena, arms akimbo, watched in abject horror as her wife (they’d decided several years earlier that they didn’t need anyone’s signature to get married) and daughter stuffed their faces with candy and potstickers in front of the TV.
“Popsticker?” Luna offered, holding a half-eaten dumpling in Lena’s direction as she rummaged through the candy pile.
“Who are you people?” Lena sat on Kara’s lap anyway, and accepted a candy corn flavored kiss.
“Your mommy eats leaves, Lulu,” Kara chuckled when Lena lightly smacked her arm, “can’t expect her to know culinary brilliance when she sees it.”
“Oh!” Luna’s blue eyes rounded along with her mouth as she clearly remembered something important. “We gotta bake the cookies for school!”
The bake sale was two days away, but it was so rare for a school thing to land on Halloween so Kara could participate that Lena didn’t even think about questioning it.
“Are you sure you want Mom to help us, Lu?” Lena smiled when her daughter practically leapt into Kara’s arms the second they got off the couch. “She may wanna put potstickers in the dough.”
“Please focus on saving the planet and leave the cuisine to the experts.” Kara winked at Lena before pressing a kiss to her lips. And then another one.
El Corp — stylized as L Corp, because Lena had a sense of humor — had revolutionized the world. Lena had found the mistake in Jeremiah and the Zor-Els’ experiments and managed to find a sustainable, renewable, completely clean source of energy. But she still thought her family was her contribution to making the world a better place.
On the fourth kiss, Luna stuck her little hand between her mothers’ faces.
“Cookies, please!”
Lena winked at Kara. There was officially no bedtime on Halloween, but she knew Luna well enough to know she’d be out like a light before midnight, and then she’d get Kara to herself.
Kara was about to cross the arch into the kitchen when she stopped and took a step back. “Wanna cross out a number, Lu?”
Lena handed her daughter one of the million pieces of crayon that seemed to appear out of thin air all over the house, and watched as she crossed out number fifteen while Kara held her up.
“How many to go?” Kara asked.
Luna very seriously, very carefully, touched the numbers one by one. “Four!” She announced, clearly proud of herself, showing Kara four fingers in one of her hands before extending her thumb as well. “That’s one less than me, ‘cause I’m five.”
Kara nodded. “Four. That’s not a lot.”
Lena pressed a kiss to Kara’s cheek as she walked into the kitchen. “Four’s nothing at all.”
***
“Luna Zor-El!” Lena called out from outside the car. She hoped the neighbors wouldn't mind her raising her voice after sunset for once. The front door of the house was open, but her daughter was — of course — nowhere to be seen. “I’m gonna leave without you, and I’m not the one in the play!”
“Please don’t rush Dancing Pumpkin Number Five. She’s going to carry the weight of the show on her shoulders and needs to be prepared.” Kara appeared at the open door and gave Lena a mock disapproving look.
It took only three more minutes for Luna to finally emerge from the house, orange tutu bouncing with each step she took to climb down from the front porch.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she said with a tone that put the fear of teenage years to come in Lena’s heart. She couldn’t remember being sarcastic at nine years old. But she couldn’t focus on that for too long, because she suddenly noticed Luna was holding out a cupcake and a (poorly) wrapped box.
“From me and mom,” Luna explained, “cause we love you.”
“And…” Kara prodded.
“Oh! And cause it’s your birthday.”
“Well, thank you very much.” Lena took a bite of the (strawberry cheesecake) cupcake and then handed it back to Luna so she could use both hands to unwrap the little box.
“Aunt Alex took me to the store since Mom’s stuck till Halloween.”
“Very kind of your aunt,” Lena said, glancing at her daughter only to see her stuff the rest of the cupcake in her mouth. Kara’s influence clearly was not deterred by not living in the same dimension.
It didn’t take long to peel the too-small paper off the little box, and Lena blinked back tears as soon as she opened it. A little golden charm in the shape of the number nineteen.
“It’s for your necklace,” Luna reached up to tap the golden chain around her mother’s neck, “Aunt Alex said if we push you into the lake you’ll go fwoop—“ she made a dramatic downward motion with her hand, “— straight to the bottom at this point.”
“Again, Luna, your aunt is so very kind.” Lena shook her head, a smirk on her face. If she was being perfectly honest, her little golden chain had gotten a bit heavier over the years. There was the letter K, and the Big Dipper. A full moon Kara got her for her 25th birthday, and a crescent moon she got for their daughter. And now, number nineteen.
“I love it,” Lena sniffled and wiped away a stray tear, “thank you. Both of you. Best present ever.”
Lena leaned down to give her daughter a tight hug, and grinned when Luna pressed a loud kiss to her cheek.
“Another one for me, please, Lu,” Kara said, and the little girl rolled her eyes as she delivered a second kiss.
“Okay, come on!” Luna climbed into the car and onto her booster seat. “We’re gonna be late!”
Lena nodded, but she made no move to follow her daughter into the car. Not yet. The golden number nineteen shone in the moonlight as she held it on the palm of her hand.
“You gonna put that in with the rest?” Kara traced the chain with her fingertip, and Lena felt nothing and everything all at once.
She shook her head. “No. You can do it on Halloween.”
Kara nodded once. “Happy 40th, baby.”
It wasn’t always easy, this whole thing. Even nineteen years in, sometimes it was just… it was just hard. Painful. Sometimes not being able to touch Kara felt like not being able to breathe.
And Kara always, always knew when it was one of those times. Lena was convinced she saw it in her eyes.
“One week,” Kara whispered, “just one more week. And then—“
“Forever.”
Kara smiled at her, and the pain faded just enough to be able to keep going. “Yeah. Forever.”
Lena winked at her wife and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“I want everything on tape, okay?” Kara said from the driveway as Lena started the engine.
“Always.” Their daughter’s entire life outside the El Manor had been painstakingly documented by Lena over the years.
But only for one more week.
***
The sun was already up in the sky when Lena stirred awake.
She stretched her arms up above her head and wiggled her toes under the covers, feeling joints crack here and there as she forced them awake.
Forty. Lena missed being thirty-one and thinking getting a little winded after climbing up the stairs would be the height of her decrepitude.
Letting out a grunt at the effort of actually moving her body this early in the morning, Lena rolled onto her side and glanced at the alarm clock on her bedside table.
7:23 AM
And then, underneath,
Nov 1st
November first.
Lena didn’t roll over right away. She took a second to breathe in and out, look down at the red and purplish marks scattered on her body that proved Kara had been there — really been there — last night.
Her fingertips traced the charms on the golden chain around her neck. The K and the Big Dipper. The full moon. The crescent. She really had met Kara. She’d turned twenty five with her and they’d had Luna. And then, number nineteen.
Nineteen years, and it was November first.
And once she’d made herself believe it really had happened, she finally rolled onto her other side.
And Kara was still there.
She’d never seen her in the morning light, and Lena stared for a moment, at the soft blond hair shining in the cold November sunshine and the thin lines she’d seen appear on Kara’s face year by year.
She gently traced the long lines of Kara’s fingers and watched the way her skin seemed to glow in the morning sun.
And then she kissed her awake. She’d never done that before, and Lena could taste the salt of her own tears in each kiss.
Kara’s eyes were even more beautiful in the sun.
“Hey,” Kara said, and it took her a second to realize what was happening. The first thing she did was trace Lena’s bottom lip with her fingertips, like she wanted to make sure she really could touch her. She really could feel.
“I’m still here.” Kara looked at Lena with blue eyes full of wonder, like a part of her never fully believed this day would come. Lena knew that feeling very well.
“Say it,” Lena said eventually, after a long stretch of silence. They’d talked about this. About the things they’d never gotten to do or say. About the one thing Lena had never heard Kara say.
Kara let out a watery chuckle, kissed her, and whispered against Lena’s lips.
Hello everyone! I'm hosting a flash bingo for Halloween! This bingo card will only have 5 prompts and I will be choosing your prompts. Same rules apply as a normal MF Bingo except this time there is a deadline. You can sign up now and start creating as soon as you retrieve your card but you cannot start posting until October comes around and you have until the 7th of November before you miss out on the chance of a badge. You can still post for the bingo and I will still reblog it but you will not receive the badge. A few days after the event is finished I will make a master list of everyone who completed this round.
When you do @ me, make sure to clarify what bingo you are submitting for or I won't count it for the right one. You can combine one square of your original card and one of your Halloween card and count for both bingos. You do not have to have a MF Bingo card to join but here is the form if you want to participate. Come join the MF Discord Server to hang out with other people participating. Don't forget to add your work to the MF Bingo AO3 collection no matter for what MF Bingo you are completing. Help grow the prompts list and submit a Halloween prompt or a regular one.
If you have any questions/concerns then please message me, drop your ask in my box or DM me on Discord. Good luck!
MF Bingo is hosting a Halloween flash bingo with only 5 spaces that you try to complete by the end of Halloween. You don't get to choose pro
Hello everyone! I just wanted to let everyone know that MF Bingo is officially back online! I am very sorry for the long hiatus but the bingo is back. I just got finished with sending out hopefully the last bit of bingo cards I was behind on. If you requested a regular MF Bingo card and have yet to receive it then first check either your submission box from @godestof3worlds and/or check your messages. If there is nothing concerning the bingo then please private message me or leave it in my box. There were a few people who I couldn't get in contact with so most likely your card is waiting for you.
I am currently going through the tags to find any works you guys did that included the bingo but it would help if you would leave a link in my submission box so I could queue it up to reblog. Also, if there are any events you would like me to share then also leave the link in my box.
I am also creating a form where if you completed a bingo, or a blackout you could fill it out and I can send you your badge, so make sure to keep an eye out for it.
Have a great rest of your day and keep encouraging each other!
I have decided to add in a little prize to all participants of MF Bingo so when you earn a bingo or a black out on your MF Bingo Card, you can get something to show your accomplishment other than your glorious works. If you get a bingo, 5 prompts completed in a straight line, in the year 2022, this year, then you can get the MF Bingo 2022 badge on the left. If you get a blackout, all prompts accomplished on your card, in the year of 2022, this year, then you can get the MF Bingo 2022 badge on the right.
The badges will be updated every year so next year you can get the same badge but for the 2023 year. This is just a little something to congratulate all your works from me to you. I will keep track of your works that you add to the MF Bingo AO3 Collection and/or when you tag me (@mfbingo). If you don't post your works but complete the prompts then PM me or leave an ask so we can discuss how you can get a badge.
I will know if you say you have the badge but didn't earn it so please don't try to lie about it. I will personally hand them out so you don't have to worry about it but if you think you earn it and I didn't present it to you then PM me or drop an ask so we can work it out. I will be looking over everybody's progress today so in a few days everybody who has earned a bingo or blackout will get their badge.
(You don't have to do anything with the badges, it's just something to show that you accomplished something and a thank you for joining MF Bingo).
