A/N- The third break has mentions of suicide/ self harm so skip over that one if it triggers you (self care y'all). I'm not sure where I was going with this, but here it is.

...

They don't find each other in every universe. In some universes, Krypton doesn't explode, in others, tragedy strikes before they even meet, but in every universe where they're given a fighting chance, Kara Zor-El and Lena Luthor find each other.

…

In another universe, they met in high school. Kara fell from the sky and grew up with the Danvers and Lena didn't go to private school because her mother didn't die. In this universe Lena skips grades, she's two years younger but still in Kara's class when they run into each other at a house party hosted by a boy on the football team. Lena was a little tipsy from cheap beer bought with someone's fake ID, and Kara was trying not to embarrass her older sister.

In this other universe, they are high school sweethearts. They're relationship is soft and gentle and uncomplicated by the lines of Luthor and Super because in this universe Lena never learns who her father is. In this universe Kara plays varsity soccer, holding back just enough of her strength to fit in, and she gives Lena her letterman's jacket.

They go to National City University together and marry two years after graduation.

…

In another universe, Lena doesn't handle the pressure of being Lionel's bastard daughter nearly as well as in all the others and she dies young. She dies with scars on her arms and stolen pills in her stomach. She dies at age nineteen and somewhere across the country, a college aged Kara watches the sky, wishing she could see anything other than her planet exploding when she closes her eyes. She can't explain why it feels like she's lost something again.

In this other universe, Lena and Kara never meet. Kara finds home with her adopted sister, but never really feels whole.

…

In another universe, Kara doesn't get stuck in the phantom zone. She arrives on earth in time to pull an infant Kal from his pod. They are both adopted by the Kents. Kara raises Kal to remember their ancestors and speak their language without an accent. In this universe she becomes a professor, working to bring the scientific revolutions that so helped medical advances on Krypton here to earth.

In this universe, Lex doesn't go mad. He grows up in a world where Superman is already a hero, and aliens are accepted in society. In this universe, Lex shelters Lena and shields her from Lillian's scorn. He encourages her when she goes to university early and he's the first person she tells of her embarrassingly big crush on her bioengineering professor.

Kara in this universe has serious moral qualms about getting involved with a student- much less one who skipped three grades and will graduate at the age of nineteen. But in this universe (as in all others) Lena is persistent and she stays on at the university to get her doctorate, and then a second. By the time she's twenty three she has an impressive collection of degrees, a mountain of publishing credits, trademarks on dozens of tech gadets, and her most impressive accomplishment is finally getting the renowned Professor Kara Kent to agree to a date.

In this universe, Kara never really gets over marrying someone twenty-six years her junior, but Lena makes her feel young. She makes the weight of a dead civilization feel a little less overwhelming.

…

In another universe, Kara's pod is stuck in the phantom zone for fifty years, not twenty-four. She is stuck, alone in the dark, for a small eternity. Lena is also alone. Lex goes mad, and Lena never really gets over it. In this universe, when Lillian comes for Lena, she has no mercy.

In this universe, Lena kills Lillian.

Lawyers call it self-defense and she never serves time. Lena doesn't go mad, she's always been more stable than Lex, and she doesn't get bitter, that was always Lillian's style. But she does withdraw.

She is the much talked of, rarely seen, tragic Luthor heiress. She throws her life into her work and she gives constantly to charities. In this universe Lena doesn't find the unconditional love and acceptance that her family was supposed to give her.

In this universe, the bubbly blonde college student she hires to walk her dog becomes the high light of her days.

…

In another universe, Kara marries Mon-El. The weight of being the last daughter of Krypton is too heavy for her to bear, it presses on her making her breaths hard and her chest ache in a way that shouldn't be possible given the strength this sun gives her. Mon-El somehow makes that better, because yes, he isn't from Krypton, and yes his people and hers waged wars, and yes he doesn't make her happy but she somehow feels less guilty being with someone who knew what her home was like.

And yet when she's with him she can't take away the crushing guilt. Because in this universe she still meets Lena.

Lena who is incredibly smart and brave and beautiful. Lena who is patient and doesn't say anything when she stands beside Kara as one of her bridesmaids when the blonde marries Mon-El. Who smiles encouragingly and does her best to pretend like the ceremony isn't absolutely killing her.

Lena who waits until after a particularly bad fight when Kara comes over to her apartment and they drink a little too much and neither of them say the things that they both know are true (because that would make it too real). But they let their actions speak for themselves. They speak all night and Kara has the most peaceful sleep she has had on this planet. When she wakes up, she feels like home.

Their affair lasts for nearly three years. In that time, Lena never pushes. In this universe (as in all the others) she loves Kara with all her heart and she waited years for this to happen, she can wait a little longer.

Eventually, Mon-El goes too far. He says the wrong thing, makes the wrong move and Kara leaves him. Lena is waiting.

…

In this universe, it takes them a few tries to get it right. First, they're both with other people, the wrong people. They're friends and both of them yearn for something more. Lena's the one who makes the first move- of course she is. They're together and for a while it's the easiest thing. Easy like breathing, like drinking water. Until it isn't.

Until they both say things that hurt. Things that cut deep and hit a little too close to home. And Lena's always been stubborn and Kara is afraid to push and eventually it's an emergency that gets through to them both.

It's Lena's building getting attacked and Kara falling from the sky. It's Lena forcing her way into the DEO and Alex letting her sit vigil at Kara's bedside until the hero wakes up, groggy and bruised but smiling when her eyes land on the CEO.

In this universe it's never simple, but it does get easier.

It gets easier with movie nights and take out dates and soft reassurances. It gets easier every time Lena stays too late at the office and Kara shows up to drag her home, and every time Kara floats in the bedroom window in the early hours of the morning smelling like smoke with rubble in her hair and Lena curls up in her arms with a relieved sigh of 'you're home.'

In this universe they are home.