i'm really bad at taking a break from writing apparently. wow. but this is the one (1) fic of mine that i was actually inspired to continue, so i figured i'd post the written chapter anyway! i'm still not going to write for my other fics, but i'm trying my best, promise ❤️

celeste (florairmatylee on tumblr) read through this for me again! if there are any mistakes blame her lmao. thanks for reading, and for all the super nice reviews last chapter! i think i replied to them all, but if i didn't let me know - it's so hard to keep track on this website :(

Lena doesn't know where she is.

There are spots of light, yellow and orange and red hues, all swimming before her eyes—and they're hazy, blurry really, so much so that they cause a dull ache between her temples. It takes her a minute to realize she's asleep, and when she blearily risks opening her eyes she feels faint.

It takes her another few minutes to work up the strength to sit up. She's on an unfamiliar bed, with cheap cotton sheets rumpled around her waist, and in a room so bare that she can see every crack of the wall, every chip of the tile on the floor.

The bed is the only piece of furniture in the entire room. Lena gingerly slides off it, and finds her shoes waiting for her by the door. Her hair is loose, frizzy and damp at her nape from her sweat, and she snags a hair tie off her wrist to grab it up as best as she can. Her clothes are wrinkled and she's slept in her jeans, somehow, but reality doesn't really come crashing back to her until she's opened the door and wandered outside.

She's in Kara's house, and Clark is nowhere to be found.

Kara is asleep on the couch, still dressed in yesterday's clothes. Lena remembers; that shirt, ridden with bullet holes, has been burned into her memory. It hangs loosely on Kara now, untucked and unrefined, and Lena stares at it for too long that when Kara snaps to attention she startles.

"Lena?" Kara blinks at her blearily, and rubs at her eyes like she's afraid she's imagining this. "You're awake."

"I think so." Lena doesn't know what the proper reaction to what happened last night should be. So she does what she does best, and keeps it simple: "Do you have a spare toothbrush I can use?"

Kara's mouth opens wordlessly, and then she shuts it, dejectedly opting for a polite nod. "Top shelf," she says finally. "In the bathroom."

"Thanks."

Lena's mouth tastes like bile, and she has to brush her teeth twice before she's satisfied. She sees herself in the mirror, disheveled, eyeliner so smudged it looks like she has dark bags under her eyes. She forces herself to leave before she thinks too much about it; after all, Kara won't care what she looks like.

(Kara probably has never cared, come to think of it.)

When she emerges, she finds Kara in the kitchen. "Do you want some water?" Kara asks, already reaching for a glass before Lena can answer.

Lena watches her move and decides not to say that she really doesn't. She hovers by the center island and just observes, trying to figure out where her Kara ends and Agent Zor-EL begins.

Kara sets the glass on the counter and tries to smile. "I ordered breakfast," she starts, but Lena can't hear any more.

She tugs Kara's sleeve until she moves, until she's right in front of Lena, and her eyes are so heavy with guilt—so anguished—that Lena has to look away. She focuses on Kara's shirt, curling her fingertip in a bullet hole and meeting nothing but warm skin.

Kara shivers. "Lena," she says.

Lena lets go, and just then realizes that Kara isn't wearing her glasses. She spots the frames on the counter, and she examines them briefly; the frames are metal, sturdy, but the lenses are as insignificant as the glass of a window. "Tell me who you are," she says quietly, willing her voice not to break. "Please."

"I'm...me," Kara says. She gently takes her glasses back, hands lingering over Lena's for a beat too long. "I've always been me." But she seems to understand that's not the answer Lena is looking for. "My full name is Kara Zor-El. It's...well, it's not really nice to formally meet you, but…"

"I see." Lena's hands fall back to the shirt. She twists the fabric between her fingers disbelievingly, over and over again, until her eyes are swimming. "You were shot. Three times."

"Yeah." There's something sheepish in the way that Kara drops her gaze, now. "Sorry about your window."

To hell with the window, Lena wants to say. She wants to yell it, actually, loud enough that she might feel something other than muddled confusion.

"You're an alien," Lena says, finally, the urge disappearing as quickly as it had come. "Just like Clark."

"I am," Kara says. She tugs at her own shirt now, but more pointedly. "I'm bulletproof. I was never in any danger. I'm sorry if I made you think I might have been."

"Is Clark," and Lena doesn't know where she's taking this, not really, and it comes out as, "is Clark bulletproof?"

Kara's expression becomes instantly pained. "I don't...I don't know," she stammers, and Lena doesn't know if it's true or not. The way Kara can't meet her eye seems like answer enough, but part of her is holding on to a sliver of hope.

"Where is he?" Lena asks. This time, her voice does break. "Where's Clark?"

"We took him in," Kara says.

Lena swallows so hard that it hurts; nausea makes her head spin, and all she can manage is, "Who's 'we'?"

Kara hesitates, jaw clenching so tightly that Lena sees the ripple of the muscle. But in an instant she's apologetic, every inch of her, eyes soft and shoulders slumped. "I'm not sure how much I'm legally allowed to tell you," she admits. "Alex and I, we...we work for the D.E.O. It's more commonly known as The Department of Extra-Normal Operations. Or, er, not so commonly, because it's a hidden branch of the government, so…" She fiddles with her shirt again, this time almost regretfully. "I know I haven't been very honest with you."

That's the understatement of the year, and Lena almost says so. She refrains when Kara lifts her head again, eyes glassy and wet like she's a second away from bursting into tears.

"Can you tell me what you can?" Lena asks. She means so much more with the question, like can you tell me what was real, first, but it's a foolish thought.

"I'll try my best," Kara says, so reverently it's like it's a promise, and maybe that's the best that she can offer.

So Lena drinks some water, and chokes down powdered eggs from some fast food chain she doesn't ever visit, and then she and Kara sit down on her couch. Lena looks anywhere but Kara, and Kara doesn't push for anything else, as if she too needs to work up the nerve to actually speak.

Lena notices that the boxes that once lined the walls are gone. This couch is probably the second piece of furniture in the entire house, and soon it'll likely be gone too.

"Lena, I...I didn't want to lie to you."

The unexpected confession piques Lena's sense of morbid curiosity, but she stays unmoving, just listening, lest she betray her hurt.

"But it was necessary," Kara says. "My mission was very simple: I was supposed to arrest you quietly, and take Clark into our custody, because we had no idea what your motives were with him."

"And yet," says Lena tentatively, "here I am. Not arrested."

"We were uninformed," Kara says. "When we found out who you were, some of our agents were...skeptical about your intentions. We've been following Lex Luthor since his anti-alien stunt a few years ago, and—"

"So it's because I'm a Luthor," Lena says. It comes out more bitterly than intended, and when Kara tries to rest a hand on her leg, she flinches away. "Don't. I get it."

Kara's hand remains suspended in mid-air, and slowly, she brings it back to her lap. "I convinced the director to let me run surveillance," she says. "Just to figure out what you were doing with Clark. I knew you were innocent from the beginning, and I couldn't—it wouldn't be fair to treat you as guilty until proven innocent."

Lena drums her fingertips against the arm of the couch, just to give her hand something to do. "Well," she says hoarsely. "You've been watching me, trying to figure out my nefarious plans. I guess that explains a lot."

"I'm sorry," Kara breathes. Her voice is as pained as her expression is, torn between devastation and grief. "I know that makes up for nothing. But I'm so sorry. If I could change the past, I would. I would have never let this mission go on as long as it did."

"How much of it was real?" Lena asks before she can stop herself. "Did you even like me? Did you even want to get to know me? No. I'm sorry, that's a stupid question. Of course you didn't. You were just indulging my hopeless crush on you because you had to."

The wetness of Kara's eyes comes back. "It wasn't like that."

"But it was, wasn't it? I kissed you and you kissed me back because you had to keep me close. Fuck, I'm an idiot." Lena inhales deeply, and she wills herself to turn away before Kara can see the frustrated bubble of tears in her own eyes.

"I kissed you back because I wanted to," Kara says, so quiet Lena almost doesn't hear her speak. "My whole life, I've been training to use my power for good, proving myself to everyone who knew my secret. I'm terrible at being human, but you...you still saw me, and you didn't see me as someone who had anything to prove. It was inappropriate and a break in protocol and—it was selfish. It was so selfish."

She reaches over to take Lena's hand, and it's like Lena's heart shoots up, getting lodged in her throat so tightly she can't breathe. Kara is looking at her so plainly, so openly, as if to say I'm here now, you can have me now, for real, and the first of Lena's tears fall.

"How could you do it?" Lena says, wrenching her hand away. She's shaking, now, and Kara's face falls. "How could you pretend like that? How—how could you let me fall half in love with you knowing you could never want me the same way?"

"I did want you," Kara whispers. "I wanted you so much it scared me. We were...I don't know what we were, but I liked it. I liked you. You made me feel more human than I have in years."

"Don't say that." Of all the betrayals she's been subjected to lately, this one hurts the most. "You don't...you don't have to keep pretending." Lena gets up on quivering legs, even as the tears burn her eyes so fiercely her vision blurs. "I have to go."

"Lena—"

But Lena doesn't give her a chance to explain. And Kara doesn't follow her out.

.

.

.

The world continues, even if Lena can't.

She tells Jess everything by accident. She doesn't know if she's allowed to say anything at all, but it doesn't matter; Clark's gone, and Jess asks why, and somehow what should be a two-word answer about his whereabouts becomes a full hour or so of truly pitiful sobs.

Jess rests her cheek against the top of Lena's head and asks, "Do you want me to egg Kara's house? I'll egg her house."

And Lena would smile at that, if she weren't so depressed. "You can't," she says. "She's gone, too."

Jess goes quiet at that. Surely she's seen the empty driveway next door; surely she's noticed that the house is empty again, and that Kara has left. "I'm sorry, Lena," she says, smoothing her hands over Lena's shoulders. "I thought she was different."

"I thought so too." Lena feels frustrated tears spring to her eyes, and she angrily wipes them away. "I don't know what to do now."

"Isn't it obvious?" Jess says. "We drink."

Lena can't argue with that logic. Jess pours them mediocre wine, and the last of Lena's Highland Park, and bumps her first glass soundly against Lena's in some sort of joke of a toast.

"It doesn't feel the same without him," Lena says quietly, and Jess doesn't have to ask who she's talking about.

"Yeah," agrees Jess glumly. "That little guy was the best. He was this close to being able to say my name, I just know it." Lena nods mutely, but Jess goes on: "My sister isn't going to have kids, so how else would I have been the cool aunt?"

"Are you kidding? You were basically his mom," Lena teases, and Jess wrinkles her nose.

"No way," she argues, "that was you. That little boy loved you a lot, you know."

A stab of discomfort in her chest makes Lena shift, uneasy enough to accidentally spill some wine on her bed sheets. "I would have been a poor substitute for a mother," she says faintly. "Maybe it's better that he's gone."

"Shut up," Jess exclaims, voice already slurring around the edges. "This can't be it. We tried so hard to make sure he wouldn't be taken away by the wrong people, and guess what—he was! The government stole him and now they're going to dissect his brain."

"I don't think Kara would let that happen." Lena thinks of Kara's number, still stored in her phone even though she's debated deleting it time and time again. "I wish I could talk to her again."

"Me too," Jess mutters venomously. "I'll fight her."

"You can't do that, she's bulletproof."

"No kidding? Shit." Jess takes a swig straight from the whiskey bottle and says, a beat later, "So you said she was shot?"

Lena traces the rim of her glass pitifully. "Yeah," she says. "Three times."

Jess wordlessly passes her the whiskey. "Look at it this way," she says. "She saved your life. That's something, right? That has to mean something."

"Mean what?" Lena scoffs. "I doubt she wanted my blood on her hands. That's it." The next swig of whiskey burns less than the rest, and she takes a second just for good measure. "I'll be fine. Just...just give me a few days."

"To what, drink yourself to death?" Jess's sour expression softens. "Tell me what I can do to help you, Lena. If that means fighting someone who's bulletproof I'll do it."

"Don't be so dramatic," Lena laughs bitterly. "I appreciate it, but—you know there's nothing we can do to get Clark back, and Kara and I aren't even...we were nothing. I don't care about her anymore. I want to forget."

Jess seems to know that's not true, but she says, "Okay," because that's just the kind of person Jess is; she's faithfully held her tongue about everything else, so why stop now? "Drink up, then. You've got a lot of forgetting to catch up on."

"That, I can do." Lena rests her head against her arms and sighs, half-emptied bottle of whiskey hanging from her fingertips as she watches the liquid slosh against the sides. "Jess?"

"Yeah?"

"My brother's trying to kill me," Lena says. "And I don't know what to do. About anything, about everything...maybe Veronica's right. I should just leave town."

"The day you take advice from Veronica Sinclair is the day I die," Jess says. "Listen. We can't do anything about Clark, or your brother, but you know what we can do?"

"Um," Lena tries to think, "cry?"

"We're going to give Kara a piece of your mind." Jess spills almost half a glass of wine on Lena's bed in her excitement, and the empty glass gets chucked onto the carpet hard enough to snap the stem. "Give me your phone."

"She's probably blocked my number," Lena mumbles, but she doesn't put up too much of a fight as Jess steals her cell phone from her back pocket. She doesn't put up a fight at all, really, and focuses instead on the whiskey bottle swinging. Left, right, left, right…

Jess puts the phone on speaker and dials. It's background noise at first, inconsequential and never-ending, but then there's a click and a cautious voice says,

"Hello?"

The whiskey bottle falls. Kara's voice sounds so familiar, if slightly more hoarse, and it's enough to make Lena panic. "Jess," she hisses. "Jess, hang up."

For the first time in forever—mostly because of the alcohol—Jess doesn't listen. "Hey, jackass!" she all but yells into the receiver. "You suck and 'm gonna…'m gonna fight you."

"Wait, Jess? Where's Lena? Is she there with you?"

Lena snatches the phone out of Jess's hands. "Jess, shut up!" she whisper-shouts.

Unfortunately, Jess does not, going on a rambling rant about how she doesn't care how bulletproof Kara is, she's still going to kick her ass. It gets too incoherent that Lena has to lock herself in the bathroom, Jess still going on faintly in the background; she rests against her door and exhales, allowing herself a moment to gather her thoughts and figure out what she's going to do.

Her phone is still on. Quietly, Kara's voice breaks through the silence: "Lena?"

It feels like her heart breaks all over again. "Hi," Lena manages.

"Hey." A beat of silence. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have answered."

"You're right, you shouldn't have." But Lena makes no move to hang up, and neither does Kara.

"Is there...any chance that you'd meet me for coffee? Just to talk," Kara is sure to tack on. "There's so much we didn't get to talk about."

"Are you in the area?" Lena asks dubiously.

"I can be," Kara responds, underlying hope as easy to read as a book.

Lena goes quiet. The logical side of her is begging her to hang up now, to decline, to leave. But her heart's tugging her in a completely other direction, and it's much harder to think when there's a tight ache in her chest.

"How's Clark?" she says, in lieu of an answer.

Now it's Kara's turn to go silent. "He's okay," she settles on, like she knows that's not what Lena is asking.

"Will I ever get to see him again?" Now the tightness is choking her, balling up at the base of her throat, sharp enough that it causes physical pain.

"I want to talk to you about Clark," is all Kara offers, hesitant in her delivery. "Will you consider it?"

Lena swallows. "Okay," she says. "I'll think about it."

.

.

.

"I'm surprised you agreed to meet me like this."

"I'm curious," Lena says. "It's not every day your ex-girlfriend tries to get you to leave the city."

At that, Veronica smiles—slightly, never enough to show any teeth. "I didn't know you thought we were girlfriends," she says. "Thank God you never told me that. I would've started running."

"You always were flighty," Lena says. "But you were young, I'll give you that much."

Veronica hands her a mug of tea. "Sugar?"

"No, thanks." Lena watches Veronica move; she does everything gracefully, smoothly, but there's an obvious waver to her actions.

Eventually Veronica takes a seat, crossing her legs as she takes a sip out of her own cup. "So," she says. "I would like to say, for the record, that this isn't a date."

Lena almost laughs. "I know," she says, amused. "I am the one who suggested we meet. I think I'd know if it were a date."

"You can never be too sure." Some of the nervousness in Veronica's demeanor has faded, and she's back to her smug, self-satisfied self. "What can I do for you, then?"

"Lex tried to kill me again," Lena says, just to get straight to the point. She ignores the way Veronica's eyes widen, and continues, "I suppose you suspected he'd try to do that. That's why you wanted me to leave."

"What do you mean again?" Veronica asks tightly. "I knew he was coming unhinged, but I never thought he would do anything so…" She trails off, jaw visibly tense. "You're his sister. How could he do such a thing?"

"I don't think he cares, really," Lena says. "Not anymore." She forces herself to take a sip of jasmine tea to calm herself down. "But I'm not here to talk about my brother with you."

"Finally, what every girl wants to hear." Veronica looks at her carefully, like she isn't sure if she's supposed to be seeing her like this. "What are you here for?"

"I want to know more about what's going on," Lena says. "I know you've been trying to shield me from something, in your own...weird way, but I want you to tell me what it is. If you know anything about what my brother's up to—it could really help me out here."

Veronica sighs. "Do we really need to do this? Do I need to give you some long-winded speech about how you're too good for this, and the best thing you can do is leave before you get caught up in the crossfire?"

"You're welcome to, but we both know I won't listen."

"So you've grown a backbone since boarding school," Veronica says, and she laughs like she can't quite believe it. "I almost wish this was a date now." Before Lena can even respond, she's pushing her cup of tea aside and leaning forward, elbows on her knees as she becomes deadly serious. "I know you think I'm a monster. Maybe what I'm doing isn't the best way to go about things, I'll admit it. Have you heard about Gotham? It's corrupt. Terribly so. And they don't even have a large alien population like our city does."

"Next we're going to get some kind of superhero vigilante. Is that what you're hinting at, here?" Lena asks, but she's already putting two and two together in her mind; it's running through her head, making the very ins and outs of her consciousness wild.

Veronica doesn't reply. She drops her gaze, and straightens back up. "It's sort of like an unsaid agreement," she says. "Congratulations. You're up to speed."

"Scapegoat the aliens," Lena says hollowly. "Mass hysteria. It explains the alien tech, the documentation, the need to…" She stops, and Veronica has the decency to look ashamed. "Why?"

"Apparently there's been a spike in alien crime. It's been kept pretty tightly under wraps," Veronica says. "I've only heard of a few cases myself."

"Alien crime," Lena repeats. "Do you know about the D.E.O?"

"The what?"

That brings her the smallest sense of relief. "Sorry," Lena says. "Just thinking out loud."

Veronica gets to her feet, busying herself with the task of pouring out her unfinished tea as she reaches for a tumbler of something stronger. "I feel like I'm over my head," she admits. "It's all supposed to be business, you know. But sometimes I wish I hadn't come here."

"You can still leave," Lena suggests. She fiddles with the edge of her teacup, some sort of expensive china she knows Veronica hasn't used in ages. "Move somewhere else. Start a new life."

"If this is your attempt to get me to run away with you, it's not going to work. I'm a very big fan of your face, but truthfully, I feel like we'd kill each other. Or at the very least drive each other mad." Veronica's brief lapse of emotion is masked by a teasing wink, and Lena feels a pang of sympathy for her.

Maybe she's still a tad nostalgic, but she says, "You're terrible at being evil."

"Am I evil? I didn't know that." But while her voice is dry, there's a soft thanks in Veronica's eyes. "Listen, I hate to be that girl, but I'm going to have to kick you out of my apartment pretty soon."

"Nothing new there," Lena jokes, feeble as it comes out, and she hates that she's suddenly very worried. "You probably have a hot date waiting for you."

"None that would compare to you, sweetheart," Veronica replies, but the cockiness of her smile is watered down. It doesn't have that typical flirty Veronica Sinclair magic, but it's still charming enough that it makes Lena smile back.

"Take care of yourself," Lena says suddenly. "And if you ever need anything, you know. Call me."

"That better not be a line." Veronica surprises her by resting a hand on her shoulder, like she'd been psyching herself to lean forward for a hug but couldn't go through with it. "Okay. Well. You be careful."

"You too." Lena leaves before she'll do something she'll regret—like spill about everything to her, too—because she knows what she has to do.

.

.

.

Kara still looks the same. Figures.

Lena takes her time to place her coffee order. Kara's picked a cafe she's never been to before, one that's quite a ways from Lena's house. It looks like Kara has already had a cup or three, because when Lena finally makes it back to the table she sees Kara bouncing her leg, fingertips dancing across the table.

"Hey. Hi," Kara blurts out. "Thanks for coming."

"Sure." Lena aims for an obligatory polite smile, but suspects it's nowhere near one. "You look nice."

Kara runs her hands through her hair and laughs. "Uh," she says. "Thanks? You look nice too. Great, actually. You look great."

Lena doesn't even know how long it's been since they last saw each other. A month? A month and a half? Certainly not long enough to act like it's been a while.

Kara clears her throat. "How's your book?"

"Let's not do the whole...how are yous," Lena says. "I'm fine. You're fine. Let's leave it at that."

"Oh. Okay." Kara blinks like she hadn't been expecting that. Maybe she hadn't. "It's good to know you're...fine."

Lena licks her suddenly dry lips and nods along. "Good," she says.

There's a second of hesitance on Kara's part, and then she ventures to say, "I know it's not my place to say, but I really care how you're doing. Because I care about you."

"Noted," says Lena stiffly.

Kara's face falls, and Lena regrets her reply instantly. "Well," she says, "I know you probably still have a lot of questions. I'm technically supposed to, er, get you to sign a few forms. Non disclosure agreements and all that."

"Right. I figured." Lena fiddles with her hands, not sure where to direct her attention. "Technically, do you exist?"

"Kara Danvers exists," Kara says. "In a limited sense. Alex's family, they sort of adopted me. But not really. I've been...I've kind of been the government's pet since I landed on Earth. Jeremiah Danvers was the first friendly face I met. He and Eliza...and Alex...they helped me feel human."

Lena feels herself frown. "You mean you were like a lab rat of sorts?"

"I mean, I guess you could say that." Kara tugs at her collar sheepishly. "I was thirteen, I was scared, and I'd landed in the backyard of some powerful government official who wanted to lock me up in a maximum security prison. The D.E.O was created to...sort of study me. Non-invasively! But also sort of invasively. In a mental sense. Not physical. And...I'm kind of over-explaining, aren't I?"

"Kara, I...I didn't know," Lena says. She's genuinely stunned, and doesn't know what to say. "Are they going to do that to Clark? We can't let them do that to him. We have to—"

"Oh, no! No, no, no, the D.E.O's changed since then," Kara is quick to assure her. "We've come a long way since its conception. I have to be honest, though. Our priority is taking care of alien threats."

"And Clark was a threat," Lena says skeptically.

"No." Kara looks guilty now, and it's not hard to figure out why once Lena hears the rest of her explanation: "The mission to get Clark was a favor to me. The director would've never let something like that happen otherwise. The truth is that Clark's my cousin."

The information steals Lena's breath away, makes her go instantly dizzy in the head. Just when she thought she'd finally had Kara Danvers—or Zor-El—figured out, she had to go ahead and throw a screw into the mix. "What?"

"I tried to persuade the director to let me tell you that, but he said it would be too much of a risk—in a second you'd guess my secret, and he was worried what you would do with that information." Kara sighs. "I'm really sorry about all of the lies. It was just my job to figure out your intentions, and debrief you on the details once I'd gained your trust. And I was going to do it soon, I swear—"

"But then my brother tried to kill me," Lena finishes, filling in the last of the blanks.

"That was the one rule," Kara says. "No harm could come to Clark. I was always supposed to intervene if a formal move was made on him."

"Of course." Lena doesn't know what to do, now. Laugh? Cry? Both? "You saved my life for him."

"I would've saved your life no matter what. You have to know that by now."

Lena meets Kara's eyes, a million questions running through her head, a million different things she wants to say. "What's his real name?" she asks softly.

Kara smiles, sadly. "Kal-El," she says.

"Is he happy?" Lena can't bring herself to care about the technicality of the mission anymore. Or even about her relationship with Kara. All she can think about is the baby she'd been trying to save—the baby who deserved a family. And now he'd found his.

But she doesn't feel fulfilled knowing that. Instead, she feels empty.

"He's safe," Kara says, which isn't an answer. "He's staying with me. And Alex."

"That's good." Lena doesn't know how it's come to this point, but she feels like crying. "It's great that he found his family."

Kara almost reaches out to touch her. Lena feels it; her hand hovers, the warmth of her skin so close that it feels like a jolt of electricity, and then she refrains. She pulls her hand back into her lap, and stares down at the table, and doesn't move.

"You don't owe him anything," Kara says finally. "You definitely don't owe me anything. But if you ever wanted to visit or something, I know—I know he'd love it. He likes the name Clark, did you know?"

"You would let me do that?" Lena's heart aches again, but this time for a different reason. "Really?"

"He loves you," Kara says, and there's some self-loathing in the way she says it, some tinge of pained jealousy. "I've ripped him from you, from the life he's known, and—I'm not ready to take care of him. I'm not ready. I've been waiting for him my whole life and I'm just...I'm not ready."

There seems like there's more that she's left out, like there's more to the story, because suddenly Kara looks close to tears and Lena's heart hurts—but for her. Her heart hurts for this woman she can't get over and she hates that it does.

"I wasn't ready for him either," Lena confesses. "He complicated my life so much. Just...threw my plans out the window, that kid." She's just bold enough to reach forward, to touch Kara's hand. "I think you and I have too much in common."

"In a bad way?" Kara tries.

"Maybe." Lena feels Kara slowly turn her hand around so they're palm-to-palm, and then she intertwines their fingers. "Or maybe not."

"I don't want you to hate me," Kara says. "I know I messed up, I know I let things go too far—"

"Let's not think about that right now." Lena forces herself to remember why she's here. "I'm...actually here for a more pressing reason than answers from you."

"Okay." Kara furrows her brow. "Like what?"

"Like...I need a favor."

.

.

.

Alex won't stop watching her.

It's kind of making Lena jumpy. Alex stares like she glares, and even when Lena catches her eye she doesn't stop. It's like she's trying to win the world's most twisted staring contest, and Lena's losing so badly she'll never catch up.

Lena tries to break the tension in the room. "So," she says. "You've known Kara for a while."

"I'm her sister." For all of Alex's intense staring, her voice is light. "I guess you can say I know her a little, yeah."

"Sorry. It's just a lot to wrap my head around, you know," Lena says, gesturing vaguely around the small living room. "This might sound invasive, but—weren't you two fighting?"

"We were." Alex shrugs, and picks at the strings on her sweater almost like she needs a distraction from the topic at hand. "I didn't want her to take that stupid mission for her cousin. It was too close to home, and I knew she'd get her emotions all twisted, so...I tried to take the job. She wouldn't let me."

"Oh." Lena can't imagine a world where Alex had been the one to move in next door. It would certainly have been different. "That's, um, unfortunate."

Alex gives her a funny look. "Sure," she says. "Unfortunate."

That's the extent of their conversation. Kara thankfully comes out of her room, a barely-awake Clark in her arms. He sleepily gives their company a once-over, and then he seemingly snaps awake, nearly lunging out of Kara's grip as he flings his arms open towards Lena.

"Ma!" he screams, joyful and then frustrated when Kara worriedly pulls him back.

Lena feels like she's been struck by lightning. "I'm not…" she casts a horrified glance at Kara, who just gives her a wavering half-smile. "I never taught him that."

Kara slowly gets down to her knees, and then sets Clark down. He's a bit firmer with the way he stands, though he keeps a tight grasp on Kara's hands. He keeps his bright blue eyes trained on Lena, whining for her to move closer. When Lena hesitantly drops to her own knees, holding out her hand for him to take, he lets go of one of Kara's hands.

Lena holds her breath, not moving closer, and Clark moves his little legs a little. He's shaky in his movements, but his face scrunches in fierce determination and then he's moving for real. He drags Kara's hand as far as he can, and then he lets go of that one too, left with nothing but air around him as he toddles forward.

He's not seasoned enough to make it safely forward, but it doesn't matter. As soon as he tumbles forward Lena is there to catch him, crying against his hair as he buries his face into her neck.

"Ma, ma, ma," he babbles over and over again, chubby fingers digging into Lena's arms as he waits to be carried.

"Hi, baby," Lena breathes against his head. "I missed you."

Clark refuses to leave her side after that. He toddles around the low coffee table in the living room if he gets too tired of staying still, but mostly he's content hanging onto Lena's legs, happily smacking her jeans as he plays with the stuffed bear that Lena had brought over. It had been a gift from Jess, and one of his favorite toys, and he can't let go of that either.

Alex and Kara engage in casual conversation with Lena, stuff that's meaningless—weather, TV, even a few sentences about Lena's book. Lena lets them lead most of the talking; it still feels awkward, and there's nothing they can really do to fix that.

It's not until Clark finally falls asleep again that Alex breaks. "This is ridiculous, you know," she says. "With no evidence, Director Henshaw's going to laugh us out of the building."

"It's the D.E.O's job to deal with alien issues, isn't it?" Kara presses. "This is right up their alley!"

"It's the D.E.O's job to deal with alien threats," Alex corrects. "If what Lena is saying is true, there's nothing we can do except wait. Maybe once something more hard-hitting happens we can scrape up a case, but right now it doesn't look like we have any other choice but to let it go."

"Let it go?" Lena says. "I'm sorry, but I don't feel like waiting for my brother to start targeting innocent people to prove some twisted point of his."

"I don't like it anymore than you do. But he's already tried to kill you twice! Normally that would be a sign to, you know, lay low for a while," Alex says. "Look. The best we can hope for is an opportunity to uncover some part of this plot of his—or anyone's, if we get a chance. Any idea when something big is going to happen?"

That, Lena has no idea about. "If I talk to Veronica again—"

"We've looked into Veronica Sinclair," Alex cuts her off flatly. "She's not to be trusted."

"You don't know her like I do," Lena argues. "I know she might not seem like it, but she has a good heart. Somewhere. I know it."

"Just because she's your ex—"

"She is not!" Lena's eyes snap to Kara without meaning to. "Where did you hear that?"

Alex rolls her eyes. "I got a very thorough background check," she says, but one look from Kara makes her sigh. "Fine. You try it your way. I'll get a team together and see what we can dig up on—what was his name. Maxwell Lord? Get your contact my information so I can debrief him personally."

"Thank you." Lena texts Winn a head-ups about it. And a warning, just to be safe. "So tell me one thing: what does the D.E.O have on my mother?"

Kara and Alex exchange glances.

"And that's my cue to go," Alex decides, brushing imaginary lint off of her pants as she gets up. "I need a run anyway. I'll pick up dinner on my way back?"

As soon as Alex is gone, Lena wishes she hadn't let her leave. It's substantially more awkward now, if that's even possible, because Kara can't look at her and Lena still has a sleeping Clark in her arms and it feels—not for the first time—like she's intruding.

Kara coughs. "We've sort of been...following your mother too," she admits, when the silence drags. "She'd taken an interest in Project Cadmus. We think she's taken over as the head, actually."

"Project Cadmus," Lena says, trying the odd name on her tongue. "What is that, exactly?"

"It used to be part of the D.E.O operations," Kara says. "It was a clinic, used to test the aliens we captured. But it went rogue early on—doctors were treating it like a laboratory, and doing experiments on the patients. The D.E.O formally removed it from the building, but it seems to have resurfaced as a separate terrorist organization."

"And you think my mother is somehow involved," Lena says. Her phone buzzes with a questioning text from Winn, but she sets aside for now. "That's insane."

Kara grimaces. "I'm sorry," she says.

"No. Come on, you're kidding, right? My mother's cold, she's callous, but she's—she's not the devil incarnate," Lena says. "Every kid thinks their stepmom is evil, but she's…she can't be."

"Your brother wasn't always like this, too," Kara reminds her gently, as if Lena hasn't agonized over that for ages.

Lena feels like every resolve of hers is collapsing; there are only so many surprises she can take. "Fantastic," she says. "I guess that's a sign to go back to the drawing board for now?"

"We'll figure it out," Kara promises, and her eyes fall on Clark; Lena gets the sense she's talking about more than the crisis on hand.

.

.

.

Lena doesn't try to think about her relationship with Kara often.

She still doesn't know where they stand. Is she upset that Kara lied to her so much? Absolutely. Does she understand Kara's motives? Yes, she's not a monster. Kara's confided in her about what happened to her planet—to her family—and Lena can't begin to imagine the toll that must have taken on such a young girl.

Bit by bit, the truth about Kara Zor-El is coming out. She tells Lena about the technology of her planet, about her mother's job, about the heavier implications of being sent out to space with her single solitary mission being protecting Kal-El.

("That seems like a lot of responsibility for a kid," Lena had said when she first heard about it.

Kara had looked pensive then, staring off into the distance with a crinkled brow. "Yeah," she'd said quietly. "It was.")

Lena isn't about to play with fire. She leaves things as is, and if that means she's weirdly heartbroken and also weirdly not, then she'll put her heart through that. Clark matters most, and he needs them both, selfish as that makes Lena sound.

Lena's been spending more and more time at Kara's cramped apartment. Sometimes she catches Kara looking out over the brick balcony, down at the bustle of the street below, and she knows that Kara is missing her garden.

"I feel like it used to be simpler," Lena tells Kara one day like that, when Kara is leaning over the balcony railing. "Back when I didn't know about you."

Kara eyes her skeptically, out of the corner of her eye. "It was," she says, after a moment.

"It was easier with Clark too." Lena comes to stand beside Kara, not close enough their arms brush, but if she were to inch slightly to the left their elbows might touch. "You know, I'm not Clark's mother. I'm not his...anything."

Kara doesn't flinch at the sudden closeness. "I wouldn't ask you to be anything," she says. Her expression is muted, much like the calm before a storm.

"You don't get it, Kara. I'm literally no one to him. I took care of him for a little while, and he likes me enough, but I'm not his family. Not like you are." Lena feels flustered; this attempt at cheering Kara up is already off to a bad start. "If you'll let me, though...I'd like to be in his life. I know I'm not anyone important to you either—"

"You're my friend," Kara cuts her off. There's the barest hints of a blush creeping up her neck, and she rubs at shoulder clumsily as she laughs somewhat awkwardly. "I mean...I hope we're still friends."

It's no secret that they're terrible at being friends, and the way Kara looks at her tells Lena all she needs to know about that. But Lena humors her anyway.

"Friends," Lena says. "Alright. I can be your friend who casually hangs out with your cousin. Hopefully he'll get out of the habit of calling me 'ma,' though. Which for the record, Jess taught him—she spilled."

"Makes sense." Kara's smiling at her more genuinely than she has in weeks, and they might not be okay, but they're on the path to something like it.

Before Lena can think about it too much, she's leaning forward, and she kisses Kara right there—the cars hum beneath them, and the sun beats a bit too harshly, and Alex is inside playing rock music that Clark hates—but it feels right. When she pulls back Kara's lips are still a little puckered, but her eyes are open and she's blinking rapidly like she's trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

"I don't know if I forgive you," Lena says, because it needs to be said. Suddenly she's realizing that she has no justification for that kiss beyond that she'd wanted to do it, and it makes her swallow thickly.

"Oh." Kara's disappointment is palpable, but she makes an effort to hide it anyway. "I understand."

"No, it's—it's not fair to you. I'm sorry I did that."

"It's okay." Kara stares out at the skyline, and then says, "We've had no breakthroughs, and nothing but radio silence from our contacts. Things happen when you're bored."

If Lena were trying to be vengeful she'd agree. She'd call it a thing of boredom, she'd call their entire relationship meaningless, she'd put as little emotional value as possible into every interaction she has with Kara. But she can't be that mean. She's not capable of it. Hell, she's not strong enough to even act like it.

She watches Kara, and the tired lines of her face, and wishes she could say something else. Something that would make her smile—something that would make her turn to face Lena, something that would make her laugh, so that the sunlight could bounce off of her hair and illuminate the beautiful curves of her smile. Anything that would bring back clumsy, well-meaning, and (to be frank) terrible human Kara Danvers.

But Kara Zor-El is different than Kara Danvers, with so much weight on her shoulders that she's suffocating, and Lena finally understands what it means to want something you can't have.

"No amount of talking is going to fix this, is it?" Lena says. "Go on. Get mad at me. I'll get mad at you back. And we can finally put this behind us."

Kara only frowns, mouth twisted confusedly. "I'm not mad at you," she says.

"Then I'm mad at you," Lena says. The admission surprises her just as much as it does Kara; she'd thought she had her feelings under control, and here they are, causing her more problems. "I'm pissed, actually, because you lied to me. A lot. I was tearing myself apart with guilt from never finding Clark's family, and there you were this whole time. You could have saved me a hell of a lot of heartbreak if you'd just fucking arrested me."

"Lena," Kara says, and she sounds defeated as she says it. "I trusted you. And I was right about you. You're good, and you've always been good, and I'm sorry—but if I had to do it again, I'd pick this direction every time."

"Well that's a very fucked up way to think." It feels liberating to get it off her chest, like her anger's overflowing straight from the tightness in her chest. "I'm a person, not something that you had to maneuver around. You could've just told me! At any point in time, you could've just told me!"

"I know—"

"You know? Do you really?" A few hot tears slip down her cheeks now, and if Lena were thinking clearly she'd have the sense to feel embarrassed about them. "I want to hate you so much. I should hate you. But I've had enough of lies and I don't hate you."

Lena is breathing hard like she's been shouting even if she hasn't when she's done, chest heaving with each sharp intake of breath, but Kara keeps her eyes on Lena's like holding onto a lifeline. Her hands come to rest on Lena's arms, and Lena doesn't even push her away. There's hurt in every hint of Kara's expression, from the shininess of her eyes to the deep lines of her frown, and Lena takes it all in without a word.

Her thumb swipes over the apple of Lena's cheek lightly, her knuckles dragging just after it as she wipes some of the tears away. "I'm sorry," Kara says, so low that Lena has to strain to listen. "I wouldn't blame you if you hated me."

"Do you have to be so nice about everything?" Lena sniffles, the fight being drained out of her in one silent sob. "Just yell at me or something. Tell me I've ruined your life. Tell me you're mad that I can't figure out what I want. Tell me you want me to stay far away from you and your family."

Kara's hand unfolds, and comes to rest tenderly against Lena's face. "I can't do that," she says. "I can't lie to you again."

She catches Lena when she all but falls against her. Lena's hands are balled into fists that she presses against Kara's chest but she doesn't push her away; she rests her forehead against Kara's shoulder and cries, and cries, and Kara holds her tight without another word.