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It’s been a month since she killed her brother.
It’s been exactly 31 days since her entire life fell apart.
Two events that, upon closer inspection, turn out to be only half related. Lex may have lit the fuse, but he didn’t cause the explosion.
“It comes down to this sis,” Lex had said, smugly, even as his powers were stripped away from him. “You can only count on blood. We both know, no matter how much you despise me, you’re not ruthless enough to pull that trigger.”
He was right, until he wasn’t.
Until the moment he was on the ground, bleeding, staring up at the barrel of a gun, his little sister pointing at him from the other side in the aftermath. She wonders if he knew she would do it, or if he was caught off guard… or if this, like everything else, was all part of some grand plan.
It doesn’t matter, anyway. What’s done is done. There is no coming back from this.
---
“But when I’m gone, who will be left to be proud of you?”
Lena sits on the couch in her office, nursing a glass of scotch, which is where she can be found more often than not these days. Her head has that dull pre-drunk thump pulsing behind her eyes, but she ignores it. She glances off to the side of the room. A plain white banker’s box sits forlornly in the far corner of her office, packed neatly in a place where it can’t draw attention. To an outsider, it might look like another Luthor project, the contents meticulously filed away for the archives. To Lena, the box contains everything she wishes she could forget. All the demons of her past, conspiring together in one convenient place without a lock and key.
Lex’s journals sit tucked under the lid, unremarkable with their nondescript leather-bound covers, pulsing with hatred and venom toward the unfortunate heir. Lena doesn’t even remember how they got here, but she supposes it’s not that important. It seems inevitable that she should be saddled with more family baggage. She can’t bring herself to destroy them either, which is comical, considering she’s the one that pulled the trigger in the first place. She had strength enough for that. But erasing this part of Lex - the reminder of his genius, and also his madness - is a little too much right now. She feels like she needs it to fill a void, but not to make her whole again. This is to satisfy the grating voice in her head that tells her she isn’t good enough, that she will never live up to her potential. It feeds the greedy seed of doubt planted in her soul, allowing it to flourish in the light of recent events.
It’s part of the grieving process, she reasons. A necessary evil, as so many of her decisions boil down to. Though what, exactly, she’s grieving -- that’s a chapter she isn’t ready to read quite yet.
She walks over to the box and flips open the lid, grabbing the latest installment in Lex Luthor’s memoirs. Reading passages in the diary has become her guilty ‘pleasure’ - or rather, another way to feel the fresh cut of failure - all cleverly outlined in Lex’s elegant handwriting. He portrays everything in excruciating detail, but none more than Lena’s shortcomings throughout her life.
She flips to a random page, but it starts out like all the rest. Bullet points dissecting every part of her, with sharp words playing the part of a scalpel.
“Her attention to detail would be impeccable if she didn’t let her emotions get in the way.”
It goes on like this for pages. There’s an entire notebook filled with put-downs, volumes I - IV all chronicled like a “best-of” blooper reel highlighting Lena’s formative years. If only she could find it in herself to laugh. But she doesn’t. She just aches.
“Lena craves my attention,” the passage reads. “Pathetic. If she knew how brilliant she was, she’d realize she doesn’t need it.”
This isn’t even about hating Lex, but it’s all she has.
“Lena fails to see what is right in front of her. It will always be her biggest weakness.”
She slams the book shut and throws it down on the table where it lands with a dull thud. It’s maddening that he’s right.
She reaches for her near-empty glass. She throws back her head, gulping the rest of it down for the 4th -- or is it 5th? -- time tonight before turning on wobbly legs for a refill. The clock reads 2AM, but sleep has never been part of her normal routine. She sits back on her couch, hate-reading more pages, losing herself in the vortex.
And so it goes. In the wake of all the destruction, Lena holes herself up in her office. She closes herself off from the world, ignoring well-intentioned phone calls and personal e-mails. She locks the door to a self-created ivory tower, with nothing but vitriol and scotch for company.
---
In an ironic twist of fate, her tailspin into lonely oblivion is how she comes up with the idea for her newest technological innovation. L-Corp embarks on the creation of a virtual reality platform -- their CEO proclaiming it as a way to detach from this wretched world for good.
Oh, how Lex would love to take credit for this one, she thinks, bitterly. A way to control your own destiny, on repeat, without relying on people for the outcome.
“Hope you enjoy this from the grave, Lex,” she snarls, pushing harshly on her iPad. A pleasant chime sounds, her input accepted. Lena almost smiles.
At the end of the day, this has nothing to do with her brother. It never did, really. Not even her anger is truly directed at him. She got over that years ago. Now, like most things in Lena’s life, it has everything to do with Kara Danvers.
It always comes back to her.
Lena sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of her nose in exasperation. She can feel the sting of fiery tears building behind her eyes at just the thought of Kara. But she can’t give in to that, not right now. Not when she is this close to a breakthrough with the conceptual design of her first prototype.
There will be plenty of time for wallowing. It’s something Lena knows too well.
---
People grieve in different ways. Some fall into holes of despair, and some throw themselves into their work. Lena, as it happens, does a dangerous combination of both. Instead of focusing on truly healing herself, and acknowledging her pain -- essentially, taking what would probably be the healthier approach -- she decides to take on the problems of the world.
Grandiose and dramatic? Perhaps.
Necessary? Absolutely. Turns out she really is a Luthor, through and through. This thought in particular shouldn’t bring her comfort, but somehow, she finds herself holding on to her name a little tighter than she used to.
In her experience, technology has never failed her the way people have. Aliens or humans, it doesn’t seem to matter. Individuals who are capable of rational thought will always succumb to emotions. They lie. They cheat, and steal, and leave. They are weak, and easily manipulated, herself included. They cannot be programmed; there is no code to make them loyal, no validation rule to make them stay. The world is a cold, cruel place, and people make it that much harsher.
It turns out you can’t trust anyone, even those with the best intentions. Bright blue eyes hiding behind lead-rimmed glasses immediately come to mind. Lena grits her teeth and forces herself to ignore it, allowing the image to dissolve away into nothing, lingering in the air like smoke.
A virtual reality simulation can change all that. A world that can be programmed and hard-coded to satisfy any desire, simply cannot fail. Ideal scenarios exist, and they are made for people that have been wronged.
People like Lena.
Alone in the early hours of the morning, teetering the line of buzzed and just a little too drunk, with Lex’s voice in her head scorning her every move, Lena makes a quiet promise to single handedly make the world hurt a little less.
Her phone buzzes repeatedly. The familiar name flashes across the screen, and she allows the pain to stab.
She sends it directly to voicemail.
---
“The joke’s on you. It’s ALWAYS been on you. Your friends have been lying to you from the start,” Lex’s voice echoes in her mind as he gasps his final breaths. “Denial is a very powerful thing, isn’t it? It’s been standing right in front of you all this time and you chose not to see it.”
The montage of evidence playing behind Lex’s head as he spilled Kara’s secret is what flashes before Lena’s eyes, even now. Images of Kara, her Kara, shooting lasers from her eyes and deflecting bullets with her bare hands while Lena has her back turned. There are so many moments that she’s had to go back and re-evaluate, so many times Kara’s little idiosyncrasies were chalked up to charming, that now seem more sinister.
Kara Danvers is Supergirl.
Lena hasn’t had the courage to actually confront Kara about what went down in Lex’s final moments. She doesn’t know what that conversation will feel like, if it ever really happens. She’s thought about it, of course. She’s pictured it forward and backwards, upside down and sideways. But nothing fits. Nothing captures the overwhelming hurt of it all.
Not shouting, not crying, not yelling. Not even punching Kara in the face is satisfying enough to make Lena feel better. And she knows, because she’s tried. She’s created the scenarios, she’s seen the outcomes, she’s run the numbers. The fuel that has powered her last several months of research is strictly Kara motivated: she’s needed as many practice sessions as possible to cope with the fact that their relationship is destroyed.
Eve’s betrayal was surprising, and disappointing, but it was classic. Something Lena should have seen coming. Sure, she’s upset about it, but Eve is not Kara. Their relationship was always professional, even when it was late nights and side projects, counting down the clock and trying to cure cancer. She never needed Eve. Apparently, though, she needed Kara, and that’s the biggest tragedy to come from this mess.
Lena grimaces. It’s still too raw to admit that Kara turned out to be the worst of them all: a lying manipulator who used their friendship in unspeakable ways, going behind her back and smiling at her face, a personification of sunshine and warmth, all while a red cape billowed behind her in the night.
How could her mother, and her brother, have been so right ?
She pushes that thought away quickly, because that’s dangerous territory. Instead, what she settles on, ultimately, is avoidance. Creating worlds where Kara simply doesn’t exist is the only way she gets any sense of relief. Even if it’s temporary, it’s better than the alternative. So she returns to her central hypothesis.
Why attach yourself to people when you can simply escape?
Lena places the small VR devices in her eyes; they’re miniscule, like contact lenses -- a concept she worked hard to master. There’s no reason to walk around with those absurd goggles when something conveniently packaged will do just as well.
In an instant, she is transported to another realm, another plane, another world where she controls the game. She takes a deep breath, and allows herself to forget.
Suddenly she finds herself in a world where Kara Danvers means exactly nothing.
---
“Ms. Luthor, you have a visitor,” the intercom rattles her out of another late night trial. Lena jolts forward and shakes herself out of it, quickly turning the device off and returning her focus to normal. It’s past 10pm on a Friday, which means this is more likely a personal call. One she absolutely does not want to take.
“I was not expecting…” she starts to say, but the door to her office is already slowly opening. In all her distraction, it seems she forgot to inform her assistants about the CatCo reporter who should have her all-access pass revoked.
A regrettable oversight.
“Hey,” a small voice says, quiet and meek, pausing at the threshold. A flash of blonde hair catches Lena’s eye, and her stomach drops.
“Kara,” Lena says, her voice wavering. The vowels seems foreign in her mouth, like they no longer fit the way they used to. She shoves one of Lex’s open journals discreetly into a top drawer before clasping her hands in front of her. She feels like she might just fall through the floor, so she focuses on remaining tethered. She doesn’t want to do this now. She isn’t ready .
They haven’t spoken in weeks, or maybe now it’s been months. Lena tries not to keep count. Kara has reached out, of course. Concerned, worried, genuine, Kara. Lena shakes her head, scoffing miserably at herself. Genuine . That was the one word she used to associate with Kara above all else. How perfectly fitting.
Now when she thinks of her, all she sees is red.
Kara doesn’t know that Lex got the last laugh. She doesn’t know that her secret is shattered. She just thinks Lena is mourning the loss of her brother, and that’s partially right. Death has a nasty habit of following her no matter what she does, and of course it hurts. But while the physical loss of her brother isn’t easy, she’d be a fool to think that Lex wasn’t gone a lifetime ago. In some ways, this is a relief. His death is nothing but a final sentence in a chapter Lena has no interest in reading ever again.
No, that’s not what has her drinking herself into a stupor and crying out in her sleep (when she actually allows herself to close her eyes). The death she’s grappling with is the kind that doesn’t occur in a physical sense. She’s grieving, sure, but it’s Kara she can’t get over losing. Kara Danvers, her best friend, the one she thought she knew, completely destroyed with a single sentence:
Kara Danvers is Supergirl.
How does she explain that she isn’t suffering over the guilt she should feel from shooting her brother, but rather that she’s reeling from the information that her best friend, and the only person in the world she truly thought she could count on -- was just like everyone else?
It’s the lies she’s been told, but above all that, it’s the lies she told herself along the way that are the root cause of her anger. It was one thing when her ‘more than best friend’ feelings were just an inconvenient nuisance, but now that she knows the truth about Kara and Supergirl, it feels more detrimental. Her denial was shaped by her feelings, and once again her out of control emotions have trumped solid facts. It’s how Lex always got the best of her; It’s how her mother always knew how to outsmart her. And Kara, the one to witness it time and time again, was able to hide herself in the exact same way.
It’s pathetic, but she shouldn’t be surprised.
Lena watches Kara with new, calculated interest as she pauses by the threshold. She’s windblown, her cheeks flushed, and on an ordinary day with Lena’s head still in the sand, she’d think her best friend looked radiant and beautiful. Now, she can only see the tattered string of their relationship, the one that kept them in a precarious arrangement: but unlike Clark and Lex, they were always leaning on the side of something impossibly more . The idea of ‘what if’ with Kara Danvers had been keeping hope alive in Lena’s heart, something she didn’t realize was there until it was unceremoniously ripped away.
And now Kara’s here, standing in front of her, alive as ever and not part of a simulation; just a perfect stranger with a 100-watt smile, and Lena is convinced there is nothing worse than this.
“I don’t mean to bother you,” Kara begins, walking further into Lena’s office. She wrings her hands nervously, trying hard not to make eye contact. Lena studies the way her lips pout, and her shoulders slump. She moves slowly, delicately, forcing herself to look small underneath her coat. She’s doing it, even now. She’s putting on an act, so completely the opposite of the broad shoulders and proud chest that carries the emblem of the house of El. The deception almost makes Lena laugh out loud. It’s so obvious .
Lex was right. How could Lena be so blind ?
“I just haven’t heard from you in awhile, and I’m worried about you. With everything that’s gone on --”
“I’m perfectly fine, just busy, as usual,” Lena dismisses her, waving a hand in front of her face. It comes easier than she expects it to, and for once, she’s grateful for her ability to shut down. “My company doesn’t stop functioning just because of some family drama. You, of all people, understand that.”
Kara nods, frowning. Lena knows she’s said more than enough with just her tone of voice. She turns back to her iPad, pretending to scrutinize some numbers, but the deep furrowed lines on her forehead come from staring at an old picture that she wishes she had the strength to delete.
“I hear that L-Corp is unveiling something major in the next few weeks,” Kara offers, angling closer to Lena’s desk. “Must be big time.”
“We’re almost ready,” Lena concedes. She clenches her jaw, refusing to look up. She knows to do so would risk giving it all away.
“I’ll be ready for the exclusive,” Kara chirps, and Lena doesn’t even have to look anymore, because she’s seen the crinkled smile that lights up Kara’s eyes hundreds of times by now. She wonders how much of that is an act, too.
The silence hangs in the air. Lena clears her throat.
“Okay, well I won’t keep you,” Kara shrugs, chancing a quick look up from the ground. They make accidental eye contact, and Lena hates the way it almost burns. “Brunch soon, though? I know how you get when you’re focused on a project. Don’t want to forget to eat.”
“Yeah,” Lena says, plastering some semblance of a smile across her face. “Sure.”
Kara nods then, beaming like she considers it a victory, before heading for the door. She pauses before leaving and turns back to Lena.
“Last year, when I was going through a really hard time, it was you that pulled me back,” Kara says, her voice stronger and more determined. Lena isn’t sure if it’s Supergirl or Kara Danvers speaking, and she hates that she has this dilemma to consider. “You might not be ready to talk about it, and that’s fine. But I won’t let you go through this alone.”
She doesn’t wait for a response before closing the door firmly behind her. Lena gets up, with half a mind to follow her, but thinks better of it. Instead, she stalks around her desk, heading for her liquor cabinet. The only comfort she wants tonight is the familiar burn down her throat, and the relentless ache in her heart.
She doesn’t need sympathy -- or anything, really -- from Kara Danvers.
As far as Lena Luthor is concerned, Kara Danvers is dead.
---
It’s several days later when she finds it. A journal that looks different from the others, well-worn and tattered, completely filled with notes from cover to cover. It must have fallen to the bottom of the pile, but once Lena discovers the contents, there’s no coming back.
“You nostalgic bastard,” Lena mumbles under her breath, frowning. She leans forward, squinting at the writing. “Of course you have notes on this.”
The details practically jump off the page. Descriptions of Krypton from every perspective: first, scientific, with figures outlining the atmospheric pressure, positioning of the axis, and estimates of the higher gravitational pull. There’s information on history, and how the planet came to be, how long it managed to exist compared to Earth.
But it’s the anecdotal pieces that Lena finds herself obsessing over. Page after page filled with comments from Superman about culture and customs, about technological advancements and beliefs. There are descriptions of colors Lena has never heard of on Earth, with Lex’s handwritten notes about how to possibly recreate them.
There are skyscrapers, more grand than anything Lena could picture, all under the auburn glow of a sun that burns differently than Earth’s.
There are stories -- tainted of course by Lex’s commentary -- but still beautiful; vivid tales about the house of El. The place and family where Clark -- now Kara, she remembers, and the thought still rattles her -- came from.
She reads the journal front to back, over and over again until she can’t remember where Krypton ends and Earth begins. When she finally comes back to herself -- hours, or days later, she can’t be sure -- she pushes the notebook aside and pulls out her laptop to begin to work.
---
It makes sense, when she stops obsessing over schematics and accidentally starts to feel something. Krypton is so much more than just a lost planet, home to an extinguished race. Now it takes on a whole new meaning. This was Kara’s : a place that provided safety and comfort when she was a child. The same Kara who came to Earth, unbeknownst to Lena, and somehow, embodied all the same things for her. Lena feels the lump form in her throat, but she pushes it down and continues to stare at her laptop.
The plan is pain. There is nothing poetic or romantic about it. It isn’t even that she wants revenge. She doesn’t want to “one up” Kara. There is no winning this game, after all. She just wants pain: jagged and deep, the kind of wound that isn’t soon to be forgotten. She wants Kara to hurt . She wants her to suffer, the way Lena has had to suffer. She wants Kara to know what it feels like to lose everything .
(And, if she really admits it to herself, she wants to be there when it happens.)
She studies the code again, triple checking her work to be safe. She’s so close she can taste it. It’s different from her other VR simulations, that much is sure. None of the other programs have taken place off-world, and certainly not to a planet that no longer exists. She’s going off of memories and an unreliable narrator, but she’s confident in her design. More than that, it’s about what it represents. VR Krypton needs to be accurate, of course. But it stands for more than reality. It stands for their entire relationship: a world that represents comfort, peace and joy, sitting atop a false foundation.
And at the end of the day, Lena plans to watch it burn.
---
Trial 1
It’s a technological marvel, but Lena doesn’t waste time giving herself credit. All she did was plug in the right formula to make it appear, but Krypton was always divine. Even from Lex’s sketches, she knew this to be true. It’s one thing to think about it, to imagine it at night while staring out over the skyline of National City. It’s another thing entirely to be standing there, surrounded by the lost cities, fully immersed in a world as majestic as her wildest dreams.
It makes sense that someone as otherworldly as Kara would come from a land of magic.
First and foremost, she’s blown away by the colors; the way the auburn sky seems to cast an ancient glow as far as the eye can see. The way the buildings extend to the sky, gleaming strong and mighty along the horizon. Lena can’t believe something that seems so stable, so permanent - could be wiped from existence. But that’s why she’s here. That’s exactly what happened.
The thought churns violently in her gut. Lena clenches her jaw, and conjures the image, waiting. The rumble starts in the distance, picking up strength as the surrounding buildings begin to quake. Glass shatters all around her, the shards exploding from window panes, flooding the streets below. There’s an explosion in the distance: impossibly loud, which causes a cascade of heat to wash over Lena’s face. The flames engulf everything in their path, crackling and hissing as they wreak havoc.
Lena stands there, alone, in the middle of the chaos. She watches the world come crashing down around her.
There’s yelling in the distance, and sirens blare with no one to heed the call.
The sky turns a smoky black, choking the air from her lungs. The flames roar intensely around her, and Lena swears they seem to call out for Kara.
It isn’t until she pulls herself out of the simulation, and feels the scratch in the back of her throat, that she realizes it was her own voice screaming Kara’s name.
---
Trial 5
The first handful of trials are all the same. Lena stands idly by as she watches a planet crumble beneath her feet. It’s satisfying, in some way, but Lena craves more.
This time, it’s different. This time, Kara is with her.
“Follow me,” VR Kara says, holding out her hand, a steel beam crashing a few feet behind her. “You have to get out of here!”
Lena follows her for a bit, calmly allowing herself to be led. VR Kara is on the verge of a panic, putting on a brave face whenever their eyes connect.
“Why are you doing this?” Lena hears herself ask, not that she wants the answer.
“I told you I’d always protect you,” VR Kara replies, looking at her with sad, pleading eyes.
“You’re a liar!”
She takes pleasure in the way Kara seems to struggle to respond, eyeing the little bob in her throat before she gulps it down.
“We’re on the same side, Lena,” VR Kara pleads. “Aren’t we?”
Lena doesn’t answer. She thought they were, once. But how can that still be true? A loud crash echoes around them, as a building collapses in the distance.
“There. We need to get up to the top of that hill!” VR Kara exclaims. She glances around and points skyward. “Take my hand.”
Kara reaches out, but Lena knows it won’t make a difference. She shakes her head, just as the ground begins to shake beneath them.
“Lena, please!”
The ground splits and cracks between them, pulling Kara down with it. Lena falls to the ground, covering her head with her hands. When the shaking subsides, she rolls onto her stomach and pushes herself to the edge. She chances a look down into the hole that’s been created.
Kara is dangling from the rock, holding on with everything she has, scrambling to get back up.
Lena pushes herself back and tries to stand, bracing herself for another aftershock.
“Lena!”
She doesn’t want to look again. She wants to turn away. This is everything she wanted, and everything she created.
She closes her eyes, but all she can see is Kara’s face, dirty and scratched, begging for her help.
At the last minute, with Kara gasping for air and reaching, clawing desperately for her -- only then does Lena turn around to pull her up out of the destruction
Seconds later, the entire cliff erodes into black nothing.
She flips the VR off and takes the lenses out with disgust. She reaches for her glass of scotch and takes a long swallow.
Weak.
She hears the voice in her head, a strange combination of her mother’s displeasure and her own deep loathing. It’s quickly followed by another voice, equally as unwelcome as the first.
“You are not weak! You are a brilliant, kind-hearted, beautiful soul--”
“Shut UP!” Lena roars, throwing down her drink, breaking the picture frame laying face up on her desk. Kara’s shattered face stares back at her, her smile cracked but somehow still impossible to miss.
Lena picks up the phone, mind reeling, intent on calling Kara to have her witness the destruction of Krypton that very night. She stares at the caller ID for what seems like hours, willing herself to push ‘Send’.
(In the end, she doesn’t.)
---
Trial 10
In another simulation, Lena throws them both off the cliff, where they clutch each other as they fall into the fire.
She returns to reality, her face drenched in sweat and tears.
---
Trial 25
In this simulation, Kara escapes destruction on a pod headed for Earth -- because Lena fights like hell to put her there.
Lena stays behind.
She returns to reality and drinks until she blacks out, content to forget.
---
Trial 50
In this simulation, Kara and Lena escape together, in a pod that somehow fits them both. They head for Earth as the planet explodes behind them.
Lena wakes up with a jolt, and realizes she’s alone.
---
Trial 75
In this simulation, the world is on fire around them when it starts to rain. Kara is stroking Lena’s face, her lip quivering as they stand on the balcony of a collapsing building.
“Don’t go,” Kara whispers, and Lena’s eyes flutter closed. She swears she can feel Kara’s touch, and she allows herself to lean into it…
She wakes up in the darkness, feeling empty.
She takes out her phone and scrolls to Kara’s name.
The ‘I miss you’ text is never sent.
---
It takes 101 trials, when all is said and done, for Lena to figure it out.
Even in a ‘perfect’ world, one of her own conjuring, meant for pain and anguish -- Lena discovers she is incapable of intentionally hurting Kara. Every scenario, every confrontation, somehow it always ends the same: Lena and Kara, side by side, in life and death. The endings aren’t always happy -- in quite a few of them, they end up apart, but the goodbye is never bitter. There is never malice.
There is only love.
That’s when it dawns on her.
Kara has done this before. She has already lost her entire world, and this has been the result. Krypton had to explode for Kara to be Kara -- the Kara that Lena met, and ultimately, fell in love with.
And maybe, just maybe, she had to lose Kara in all versions of reality for her to truly be Lena.
It’s trial 101, and Lena doesn’t trigger the destruction sequence. Instead, she spends a night sitting on a quiet rocky outcrop on Krypton, surrounded by the glow of the red sun Rao, admiring the long shadows cast by Argo’s tall buildings. She is reminded that not all loss is permanent.
There isn’t anymore pain, there is only peace.
When she leaves the simulator for good, she pours herself a glass of scotch and archives the Krypton server. She might show it to her, one day. Not the previous versions, of course. A better one, where Krypton can continue to exist, long after the memories fade. One where it can never be destroyed, a place Kara can go when the weight of the world is just a little too much for her to shoulder. A place to escape, even just for a little while.
Maybe she’ll even invite Lena to join her.
The next day, she picks up the phone.
She finally calls Kara.