There was someone in her penthouse.
Lena paused at the door, listening. The short hairs on the back of her neck stood up, a tingling sensation running down her spine. She wasn’t sure what tipped her off, but after the fifth kidnapping and three or four attempted murders in her own spaces -office, lab, here- she always listened to those instincts. Kara never complained if it was a false alarm when Lena activated her signal watch.
Her thumb hovered over the button. She took another step inside and the door latched behind her. She was about to press when Kara said,
“Please don’t press that.”
Something was off. Her voice was raspy, as though she had a sore throat, and oddly distorted. It was as if she spoke through a damaged speaker. Lena edged from the foyer into the kitchen, her heart still pounding.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Kara was standing in the living room in her super suit, or so Lena thought. Her cape was there, but the silhouette was different. Lena reached for the light switch and again Kara spoke.
“Don’t. Please.”
“Kara?”
“I’m not your Kara. I’m just… passing through.”
“Passing through my penthouse?”
Lena ran her thumb around the button, ready to press.
“Are you together in this world?”
Lena froze. The figure in her living room, Kara-but-not, was holding the framed photo of Lena with Kara smiling together, the one she’d once shattered. Kara had bought her a new frame for it when they were healing, still working out who they were going to be together, if their friendship could survive with a foundation that had so profoundly crumbled.
The glint caught Lena’s eye. One of Kara’s hands. At first she thought it was a medal glove but that wasn’t right. The shape was wrong, the fingers too thin, skeletal and claw-like. As her eyes adjusted, Lena could pick out more details.
Good God. The whole side of her face was missing, rebuilt into something inhuman and skeletal. A faint emerald glow from her chest and eye cast a pallid light across the living room.
“She’s my best friend,” said Lena.
“Best friend,” the creature whispered, her voice even harsher and more distorted.
“What do you want?”
“I told you, I’m passing through. I won’t be here long. But… can I look at you?”
“Look at me? I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Just let me look at you and I’ll go. Promise me you won’t scream or call me a monster.”
Lena swallowed hard.
“Should I turn on the light?”
“I would rather you didn’t.”
“Alright, then.”
The figure slowly replaced the photograph and turned, moving towards Lena. She limped, just a little, left foot dragging. Lena gasped.
It was Kara, but not. She had been… mutilated was the only word Lena could find for it. Half her face, her right arm, her leg, and worst of all, a gaping hole in her chest that contained a chunk of vile green Kryptonite burning inside. Her skin was deathly pallid, almost blue, raked through with sickly green streaks surrounded by faint bruises, as if her blood itself was poisoning her.
“My God,” Lena breathed.
“You’re so beautiful,” Kara said, her remaining eye so full of sadness and regret that Lena felt tears welling in her own.
When Kara wept in return, she wept verdant blood. She drew closer, and Lena stood stock still as Kara pressed a corpse-cold palm to her cheek.
“It’s been so long since I heard your heartbeat,” she said. “Thank you.”
“W-what happened to you?”
“Your brother, what else? He impaled me with a Kryptonite harpoon. You saved me. It’s almost funny. The Metallo Protocol kept me alive. If you can call this living.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lena whispered. “Can I help you? Is there something I could do?”
Kara shook her head, mechanical joints in her neck grinding. “There’s no cure for death, zhao.”
Lena blinked. Zhao? Was that Kryptonian? She wasn’t sure what it meant.
The cold palm fell away from her cheek.
“There must be some way I can help,” said Lena.
“In my world I killed your brother,” said Kara.
“In this world, I did. For her.”
“She loves you.”
Lena flinched. It felt like a bucket of cold water had been dumped over her and her legs went weak. She had to steady herself on the kitchen island.
“What?”
“Kara. She loves you.”
“How… why do you say that?”
“I have visited thousands of worlds. Thousands of timelines. There are many where you don’t even exist, where I don’t. But in all the ones I’ve found with the both of us, there is one constant: Kara Zor-El loves Lena Luthor. It’s inevitable, it’s like gravity. There is something in all of me that must love you.”
“You’re traveling across dimensions?”
She nodded, closing her one eye. “I’m searching. Before I killed Lex, he used his masterstroke against me. He couldn’t kill me, so he hit me where he could do the most damage. He sent Lena to the Phantom Zone before I ripped his heart out of his chest. Then something happened… the yellow aliens told me there was a crisis, a multiversal collapse that split the phantom zone into infinite shards.”
“Yes, the Crisis, but there should be only one Earth now. Your world should have been merged with ours.”
Kara sighed, a broken, pained rasp. “What happens when you subtract infinity from infinity?”
Lena frowned. “I see.”
“I know she’s out there. I can feel her. I thought your world might be the one, but there’s another me here, and the wrong you.”
“I hope you find her.”
“Thank you. May I ask you something?”
“Go ahead” said Lena.
“Do you love her?”
Lena didn’t need to ask who she meant. She felt a lump form in her throat even as her chest fluttered. This cold broken wreckage of another Kara stared into her as if to parse the strands of her soul.
“Yes,” said Lena.
Kara edged closer. “Then tell her. Please. Don’t make her wait. She’s too scared to tell you. She’s like all of us- she’s so afraid of her own strength that she won’t hold anyone truly close for fear she’ll crush them. She’s afraid of losing you, or losing you again. She’s lost everything. Her world, her people, her culture, two mothers and two fathers- there is so much grief in her that it could freeze a newborn star but you, you are the light that shines in the darkness. You are her red sunrise.”
Lena said nothing, fighting the tremble in her lip.
“I must go. She’s out there and I have to keep trying to find her.”
She turned away and Lena caught her arm, gently tugging. She stopped.
“Wait?”
Kara turned back to her, and Lena darted in close and pressed a soft kiss to her cold lips.
“What?” Kara blurted.
“For luck. You’re going to find her.”
“I wish I had your faith.”
Lena now pressed a palm to Kara’s cheek.
“You will. You’re Supergirl. You can do anything.”
Kara smiled with half a face and pulled free, activating a device on her belt. A portal opened before her, filling the penthouse with blazing light. She stepped through and was gone.
Lena stumbled to the sofa and collapsed onto it, hugging herself as the tears flowed.
A few moments later, the familiar sound of stacked heels thudded on her balcony and the door slid open.
Kara, her Kara, swept into the penthouse, frantic.
“Lena, what happened? I saw that flash. I was out on patrol and… are you crying?”
Kara knelt beside her and brushed her hair back from her eyes with her soft warm hand and said, “Baby, are you okay?”
Lena looked at her, really looked at her, and was simply overwhelmed. There was so much depth in her blue eyes, so much kindness and compassion and love.
“I am now,” said Lena.
Kara blinked a few times. “I don’t understand. What happened?”
“I promise I’m tell you someday, but first I have to ask you something.”
“Ask,” said Kara. “Anything you want, you know that.”
Lena curled a finger around Kara’s chin and watched her eyes widen, first in confusion and then in nervous anticipation as Lena bent towards her and tilted her head just slightly to press their lips together.
At first Kara didn’t react and Lena thought she’d made a terrible mistake, but then something in Kara came around and she lunged onto the couch, pressing Lena down to the cushions.
“Lena,” Kara breathed. “What… how… do you… with me?”
Lena hugged her fiercely.
“Stay with me, Kara. That’s what I want. Stay with me.”
“Always.”