Chapter Text
Things are finally going Kara’s way. She defeated Lex Luthor and all his little minions, she cleaned up the messes the Children of Liberty left behind. Everything is in perfect order except the biggest, most terrifying thing: Lena still doesn’t know.
It’s not that Kara hasn’t wanted to tell her, she’s just been so busy! She had to take the dog to the vet, she had to help the elderly man across the street sort his recycling, she had to organize her spice cabinet. She’s been busy! But it’s time now, she knows, and with a heart full of terror and hope, she goes to Lena’s penthouse and knocks on the door.
A stranger answers.
“Hi there,” they say, smiling like they’re the one who is supposed to be there. “The showing isn’t until tomorrow. We’re still cleaning everything out.”
It doesn’t make sense, what they say, because this is Lena’s house. Lena’s impeccable; there shouldn’t be anything to clean. They shouldn’t be showing anything.
“Can I speak to Lena?” she asks. The person smiles apologetically.
“I’m sorry, the seller has asked to be left out of the dealings. I’m her point of contact for the condo selling.”
Every answer creates more questions, it seems.
“She’s selling? Where is she living now?” Kara asks, and they just shrug. There’s no answer for her, no information at all. Kara tries to call her then, but all the numbers she has for her just ring endlessly with no voice mail attached.
Lena is gone.
It gets worse: she learns so enough that Lena sold CatCo at a huge loss, that she just threw it into the hands of the first offer she seemed to get. She put L-Corp under a trust and sold nearly all her National City properties. Her forwarding address is a PO Box in Metropolis that no one seems to check.
Lena is gone.
It takes her months to find her, nearly a year. She kept searching long after the rest of the world gave up on finding the final lost Luthor. (Kara never gave up, Kara barely slept, all she could do or think or feel was ‘where is Lena?’)
Everyone told her to move on - it was very clear Lena never wanted to be found, that she went to great lengths to erase every trail that might lead someone to wherever it is she’s hiding. After Lex’s return, it makes sense she would want to start over. She wanted a clean slate, that much was obvious, but something inside of Kara couldn’t accept it. Lena wouldn’t just vanish like that, never like that. She would have said something. She would have let Kara help her.
So instead Kara searched and searched and searched and, after far too many months, she found her.
She found her in a fortified cabin deep in a mountainous region in Europe, packed in tight behind dense trees and electric fences set to kill. She found her heartbeat, found the soft tune she’s humming under her breath while she cooks a vegetable stir fry in a well-seasoned cast iron.
She found her, she found her, she found her.
In retrospect, she could have approached the situation in a more thoughtful, cautious way. Perhaps announced her presence with a knock or a call from outside. Something to let Lena know she was a friend, knocking on the door of her heavily guarded home. Instead she barreled in through her door like a tornado, so overwhelmed at the sight of her long-lost friend that she didn’t think to consider how that might play out.
The second she made it through the door a number of things occurred at once: an alarm sounded loud, bright red lights flashed, and she got a face full of sizzling hot vegetables and a frying pan. It dents around her face and she stands there, hair soaked in still sizzling oil, grinning dopily at her terrified friend because Lena is alive and nothing else matters.
Lena does not seem to share that sentiment, of course - she stares at Kara like she’s the last thing she ever wanted to see.
“Supergirl,” she says, voice tight, “how are you here? You shouldn’t be here, you have to leave.” Lena moves to a screen on the wall and with a few presses deactivates the flashing lights and alarm. She shoves at Kara, tries to walk her back out the door, but Kara’s still so shocked at the sight of her she forgets to even nudge back.
“Lena,” she says, voice dripping in desperate joy, “I’ve been looking for you for so long. I’m so-”
She’s cut off by a sudden shrill screech, though rather than another alarm it seems more human. She glances towards the wall blocking her from the rest of the house, but she can’t see anything. The walls are lead-lined.
Lena stares at her with terrified eyes, moves to grab at her again like she can stop her, but Kara is too captivated by the sound. She moves past her, back into the cabin until she finds a -
A child’s room.
It’s softly lit and sparsely decorated, just a light and a crib, inside of which sits a small black-haired toddler screaming his head off.
Lena rushes past Kara to scoop the child up, to hold him close and hum uncomfortably until his screams fade into silence. He presses his face against her neck and sighs.
“The alarm must have woken him,” she says, like that’s all she could think to say. Kara is just dumbfounded. Her voice shakes when she speaks.
“Lena- you, you have a -”
Lena shakes her head, sharp, and looks at her like she’s deciding something. Whatever she sees in Kara’s face must convince her to speak.
“He’s… he’s Lex’s.” She says it like it’s a half truth, like she’s holding back. All Kara can think about is how blue his eyes are. How much he looks like Kal-El did when he was small.
“His name,” she’s so careful with her words, like every one shared is a terror, “is Conner.”
It’s near impossible for Lena to get rid of her after that.
Kara spends as long as she can with her, trying to get any information out of her that she can, but all Lena will do is rock the baby and stare out the window. She has so many questions that have built up over the months and still Lena has nothing to say to her.
Eventually, terribly, Kara’s earpiece alerts her to an incident she needs to attend to and with great reluctance she has to leave.
“Don’t tell anyone,” Lena begs, finally speaking. Kara just nods.
She comes back five hours later to find the safe house ransacked, like they were in a hurry to pack and escape.
It takes her another two months to find them again, this time in the Caribbean hiding away on an island that technically does not exist. Kara has the self-awareness to knock instead of barreling into the home this time.
“Why are you running?” Kara says into the barrel of the gun aimed her way the second the door opens. Lena just looks annoyed to see her again and lowers her weapon with an agitated sigh.
“Why won’t you leave me alone?” She asks in return before turning to go inside. She leaves the door open, though, so Kara takes it as permission to follow inside.
This one is not as neat as her first safehouse. It’s strewn with toys and clothes and newspaper clippings, and what seems to be mashed bananas are spewed across the floor. Lena collapses on the couch with a groan, placing her gun aside so that she can rest her face in her hands, and Kara takes a tentative seat beside her.
“Well, when someone important to you vanishes in thin air with a baby they suddenly inherited, it makes sense to be concerned.” Lena looks up at her with a sharp glare.
“And why would you care about me, Supergirl? We weren’t exactly friends now, were we?”
Kara can feel the fish floundering face she’s undoubtedly making, can see how Lena scoffs at her stutters. Lena continues,
“I’m not in National City anymore. I’m not even doing anything bad, I’m just trying to stay off the radar. You don’t need to worry about me. I’m not your responsibility anymore.”
Kara plays with her hands nervously, her stomach roiling with concern.
“You’re not a responsibility, Miss Luthor. I’m just worried about you, and- and Conner.”
And at that she reaches into a hidden pocket in her suit and pulls out a plush toy, small and fuzzy, shaped like the family sigil of the House of El. She holds it out to Lena who makes no move to grab it, instead just eyeing it wearily. After a moment, Kara places it on the table.
They sit together for a while, not talking, until again Kara is called away.
“Will you be here when I come back? Or will you run again?”
Lena looks so worn out, so drained beyond her abilities, and she shakes her head.
When Kara comes back the next day, she finds Conner in Lena’s lap chewing on the super sigil, gurgling happily.
Kara keeps coming back.
Lena doesn’t explicitly give her permission, but she also doesn’t turn her away, so Kara feels like she’s okay so long as she treads lightly. It’s painfully obvious how out of her depth Lena is in this.
Every other day like clockwork she appears, sometimes for a few minutes during her lunch break and sometimes for hours after work. She brings baby clothes, small toys, big books with colorful pictures and beautiful adventures. She brings Lena stories, mostly, about what’s happening in the world she’s left behind. Childcare in exile is an isolating experience, apparently.
She mostly helps around the house, cleaning up baby messes or cooking meals. So familiar with the pristine CEO Lena Luthor, Kara finds herself shocked and endeared to meet this new version of her old friend. They exist in their own world somehow, just her, Lena, and a baby. It stops feeling weird and starts feeling precious, like a secret she must keep.
It’s two months in when Lena trusts her enough to be alone with him while she does laundry, though she calls to them constantly from the other room. It feels like she’s scared Kara may scoop him up and jet away at any moment. She’s so, so afraid. That fear fades with more frequent visits, fades until Lena willingly goes to nap while Kara and Conner play. It’s progress, which is so funny to consider when they still barely talk to each other beyond pleasantries and news updates. Things are some kind of normal, as tenuous as it is stable.
Then Conner punches a hole through a stone table and giggles with the shards in his hand.
She doesn’t mean to wake Lena with a scream but, in her defense, she didn’t expect a toddler to punch through stone.
Lena comes flying out of the bedroom wielding a massive knife (did she sleep with it under her pillow?), eyes confused face covered in sleep marks, and Kara holds the still laughing child up to her and shouts,
“He’s Kryptonian, isn’t he? He’s my cousin’s.” Because she suspected for so long, but she had convinced herself it was her mind playing tricks, making her see the baby she didn’t raise in the face of this one. But human babies just don’t punch holes into things. Lena moves to pull him from her hands and pulls him tight to her. Says nothing, just looks afraid. Kara has tears in her eyes.
“How could you not tell me?” She asks, and Lena laughs in a shaky burst.
“Let’s not play the secrets game here,” she says, voice shaking eyes wet, “you haven’t exactly been honest with me… Kara.”
Kara has to sit down hard at that, overwhelmed by the force of it all.
Just like that, their situation became a hell of a lot more complicated.