The yawn stretched Lena’s jaw to the point that she felt like a cat, baring her fangs. Naturally, it prompted a Kara Danvers Pout, which was utterly devastating. Kara looked at her over the top of her drink cup, straw still pursed in her delicate pink lips as she frowned slightly.
“How long have you been awake?”
“I had a half hour nap this morning,” Lena sighed.
She’d been in the office for three days, but she didn’t admit that.
“Leeeenaaaaaaa,” Kara said, drawing her name out into a gentle rebuke. “You promised me you’d stop doing that to yourself. I’m taking you home.”
Lena’s heart skipped and Kara abruptly jerked upright, briefly glancing at her. Lena hated when that happened, when her body betrayed her. Kara meant escort her home; Lena’s thoroughly tired mind had supplied another scenario, one where Kara carried her onto the bed, relieved her of her clothes and dove between her legs, but that was never going to happen. Lena let out a long sigh of resignation, trying to be satisfied with best-friendship.
She hoped Kara hadn’t suddenly developed telepathy.
If you took me home I’d never leave. I could make love to you for a hundred years.
Kara smiled back at Lena’s wistful look. “I mean it.”
“Okay. I can come back to it tomorrow. Besides, I’m too full of grease and cheese to stay awake. Should we…”
Lena never finished her sentence. There was a crackle in the air, a sudden wet smell of ozone, and the thunderous boom that made her ears ring.
Kara flashed in front of her at super-speed, yanking off her glasses and tossing them on the couch in a smooth motion.
Hovering in the middle of her office was some ramshackle contraption resembling a mechanical eye about the size of a basketball that scanned Kara with a faint purple energy ray.
“Kara Danvers. Supergirl. I am Zeglos, Regent of the Alotian Republic. I am calling to you from the home of my people, located in what is to you a subatomic realm we call Universe Q. We need your help, you are our only hope. The invaders are slaughtering us and razing our home. There is no time.”
Kara glanced back at Lena. “I’ll help if I can. Let me-“
“There is no time. You must come with me now.”
“Wait, hold on a second-“
The machine flashed, thrumming as it powered up, and blasted here with a wave of light that surrounded them both, and then in a crackling boom they both vanished, leaving behind the ozone smell and a faint impression of Kara’s boot heels in the carpet.
Lena stared into the empty space for a moment, then shot to her feet, snatching the phone off her desk, where it had lain ignored since Kara walked into the room.
She called Alex, shocked at the blubbering panic in her own voice. Within a few minutes, everyone was there, piling into the room. Lena warded them off from the spot where Kara had stood. Alex was cold and calm, her voice clinical, and she immediately began issuing orders. J’onn took Lena aside and gently asked her probing questions in the manner of an old detective, coaxing every meager detail of the event out of her.
Within half an hour, Brainy and Lena had set up all sorts of equipment around the room, scanning, hoping to find some energy signature or other clue that could enable them to bring Kara back from wherever she’d been taken.
It proved fruitless. They tried everything.
Minutes stretched into hours. Lena was exhausted, heavy with fatigue.
“Go home, get some sleep,” said Alex. “We can’t help her if we pass out on the floor.”
She did, throwing a thin blanket over herself on the couch. It was Alex, not Lena, who cleaned up the Big Belly Burger mess. Lena slept fitfully, showered in the en-suite attached to her office, and changed into an old hoodie that she kept there and wore when no one was looking.
It wasn’t hers. Threadbare, a maroon color faded to a soft red, the back still emblazoned with a cracked and fading Midvale Mathletes Club logo, it was Kara’s. Lena had snatched it from Kara’s sofa and put it on one night when she was feeling bold and then, as now, felt surrounded by it, the oversized garment swaddling her.
And it smelled like Kara, just enough. Kara had stared at her intently for a moment when she took it that night but said nothing, a wistful sad look on her face before the moment was broken by Wynn’s bad joke at the table. Wynn was gone now, but the hoodie remained, just as it had remained when they were fighting, when she thought she’d never see Kara again. She’d worn it then and cried herself to sleep in it.
A day became two. Then three. Five. Lena tried everything, pursued every theory. They called in every favor, human and alien. Brainy tried to send messages to the future. Nia dreamed fruitless dreams. Alex paced like a caged animal and Kelly kept the peace, keeping them all fed, making sure everyone slept, talking things out whenever tempers flared.
Lena even tried praying, something she hadn’t done since the last time she was in a small church in Ireland. It didn’t work this time, either.
Lena was seated next to Brainy on the couch, going over a design for a new device to try to follow what was by now a thoroughly cold trail. Alex stood at the balcony door, staring out into a slashing summer rain squall that buffeted the glass with distant thunder and gusts of wind.
The ozone smell tickled Lena’s nose and she looked up, just as Kara took a stumbling step out of nowhere, appearing in her office with an utterly bewildered look on her face.
Alex snapped round, adding her voice to the chorus. “Kara?”
Kara stared at her sister, open-mouthed, tears welling in her eyes.
“Alex?” she said. “Alex, you’re alive? How is that possible?”
“Alive? Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Kara!” Lena cried, her voice ragged in her throat.
At the sound of her voice, Kara snapped around, eyes wide. Her knees buckled and she sagged, almost falling. She stumbled forward as Lena stood and they fell into each other, Lena hurling herself, reckless, into an embrace that revealed too much. She almost climbed Kara, all but throwing her legs around her as well as her arms as she buried her face in the Kryptonian’s neck.
“Oh God. Oh Rao. I thought you would all be gone. I begged them to let me leave but they wouldn’t let me go, I had to…”
“Kara?” Alex asked, cautiously. “Why would we be gone?”
Kara barely seemed to hear her as she gently twined her fingers in Lena’s hair and wrapped her powerful arm around Lena’s waist, encircling and shielding her.
“About a week,” Lena choked out. “I was so scared.”
“A week?” Kara blurted. “It’s only been a week here?”
Alex put a reassuring hand on Kara’s back, standing next to them. “Yeah, you were taken on Tuesday, kiddo. It’s Wednesday, the 17th.”
Kara stared past Lena, resting her chin on the shorter woman’s head, and began to sob with relief.
“Time dilation,” said Brainy.
“They told me time would pass slower up here but I didn’t believe them. I’ve been gone for… for…”
“It’s okay, Kara,” Lena whispered. “You’re okay, you’re back.”
“Eighty seven years, four months, and eighteen days,” Kara sobbed. “It’s been so long, I thought you were all dead.”
Alex stiffened. “Kara. Oh my God.”
Kara buried her face in Lena’s hair and breathed her in, shuddering. “I’d given up. All that kept me going was hoping I could see you again. This is a gift. A gift. I love you all so much.”
Kara still held her, rocking slightly, her big shoulders shaking with powerful sobs.
“Kara,” Lena whispered. “Kara, it’s okay.”
“I love you,” Kara blurted. “I love you. It’s okay if you don’t love me back, I just need to tell you, I have to tell you. All I could think about down there is how stupid I was and how stupid I’ve been and how none of the reasons I never told you made any sense,” she sucked in a breath as if she’d briefly forgotten how, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
There could be no mistaking her intent. She seethed with it, it radiated from her very bones. Lena hugged her hard, crushing her with all her might as if to crawl inside her.
“God, Kara, I’ve dreamed of hearing you say that. I love you too. Let’s… mmmph!”
Kara was kissing her. Lena’s brain briefly froze, then she realized the full magnitude of what was happening. Kara was kissing her. Kara was kissing her. Then Lena was kissing her back. There was so much in it, need and lust and adoration and an unbelievable desperation, but above all love. Lena felt her heart open as if hadn’t in a long time, like a flower unfolding to receive the nurturing warmth of morning sun.
“I’ve been waiting for this for so long,” Kara whispered when they finally broke and Lena again could breathe.
“Let me take you home,” said Lena.
