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Jess— Please make a reservation for me tonight. Anything will do.
Lena shoots off the text message as she walks up the tarmac, not sparing a second glance to the number. She has enough to do, enough to think about, that even the thought of eating later is a lucky break.
(On any normal night, she would have already kicked off her heels, curled her feet under her, and let the slump of her spine belie the tenseness of her shoulders.)
(On any normal night, she would have six meetings to prepare for and three hundred emails to read, but this is no normal night, and there is no apartment to think about returning to anymore. Metropolis has never been her home, but it has held her house, and it no longer does. Every skirt, every shoe is boxed and bagged, and leaving felt final—felt right—in exactly the way she had hoped it would.)
A moment later, her phone vibrates. She does not look, figuring it is simply the details of her reservation; those can be checked later, but now—
Now she is boarding the jet, shaking the hand of the pilot.
“Ms. Luthor,” he says, and she shakes her head.
“No. Lena.”
The flight is a frantic blur of emails, confirmations, and requests. She has a place to live, at the very least, and the rebranding effort appears to be going well, but several investors are not pleased by the changing direction of the company, and half of her belongings have been delayed, and Lena cannot help but feel as though running a company is a exercise in hydra containment: quell one disaster, create another three.
She snacks on peanuts and crackers and writes, sends off plea after plea, and does not even notice the gradual lull of her head until she is awakened by her pilot announcing their impending landing.
It is only once she is off the plane, once she has sent off her belongings and checked her email two more times, that Lena thinks to check her dinner reservation.
Hi! I think you've got a wrong number! This isn't Jess, but you sound like you could use some food, so I’ve got to recommend the Chinese place on the corner of 5th and Washington. They’ve got the best potstickers in the entire city, I promise!
Lena checks the number, feels her stomach sink as she notes the error. Of all the days, she thinks. Of all the times, of all the mistakes to make.
It’s typical, in that way that makes her want to laugh at fate, that ugly thing. It's so damn typical that the one thing she has done for herself all day is the one thing to blow up in her face.
Lena is hungry enough and lost enough in this strange, new city, though, that she is willing to go for it. She shoots back a reply to this “not Jess”—So sorry, meant to text my assistant. But if you say it’s that good, then I guess I’ll have to try it—and climbs in the back of her car.
And that is how she finds herself—blazer, heels, and pride-raised gaze—sitting on a lopsided bar stool at the smallest restaurant she has ever seen, eating the best potstickers she has ever had.
It’s something she would never think of again, usually. It’s a drop on a life that has endured a hurricane, something to laugh with Jess about one day, someday.
(Jess, Lena knows, is the single person keeping her sane. Jess is the only person who calls her Miss Luthor without the bite, without the scorn. And maybe it says something, that her assistant has so quickly become her rock, but Lena’s to-do list—filled with don't get murdered by your brother and figure out a way to make the entire world forget your name—has no room for self-pity.)
It is, as Lex would have said, back then, back before, no biggie, sis. That is, until the stranger texts her again.
Hello! Sorry to bother you! I hope you enjoyed your dinner last night! Did you have the potstickers? Aren’t they amazing?
Lena cannot recall a time when she has ever texted a single exclamation point, and this text contains three. As she stares, another text bubbles up, this time a series of emojis: four different smiley faces, two hearts, and some kind of shooting star.
It is a lot to take in, and Lena has a sneaking suspicion that years of world-class education have done nothing to prepare her for whatever force of nature has just entered into her life.
After three meetings—one successful, one mildly disappointing, one she knows she will have to drink to forget—she finally texts back: It's no bother at all. Yes, I enjoyed them very much.
Her thumb stalls over the send button, and, before she can question her decision, she adds a smiley face and immediately clicks send.
It is less than thirty seconds later that she receives an enthusiastic YAY! in reply.
“Go home, Jess. I’ve got one more meeting today, and I can survive a few more old men on my own. You need to get some rest.”
It takes more convincing than Lena expects to get Jess to admit to illness, though the empty tissue boxes adorning her desk are evidence enough, and even more convincing to get her to go home.
The floor feels empty without her, all white and clean and blank.
(They had been going for purity, but it feels like surrender.)
And without Jess to forward calls, sift through emails, Lena soon finds herself without anything to do. The feeling sits uncomfortably against her hands, which twitch to type or build or work, somehow; she has never been good with stillness.
(Sit still, Lena. Stop fidgeting. You are a Luthor.)
She aches to get out of her office and explore, but she does not know the city at all.
But— she knows someone who does.
Since you were right about the Chinese restaurant, do you happen to have any other restaurant recommendations?
“Kara, you’re the one who wanted to watch this movie!”
“Sorry, sorry. One second.” She looks up to grin, all sheepish grimace and faux-guilt, before ducking her gaze immediately back down to her phone.
Alex wants to pick up the pillow next to her and throw it, but she settles for grabbing Kara’s phone out of her hands instead. It’s easy, this laughter, this moment. It’s easy to ignore the red cape stretched along the back of the couch for a second and focus on them, on family.
“Wh— Alex!”
Alex scrolls through the text conversation gleefully with one hand, holds Kara back with the other.
(Logically, it’s futile. Kara is quite literally superhuman, and soon enough she will clue into the fact that Alex’s hold on her is no barrier at all. But here, now, her human instincts win out, and she resorts to batting the air aimlessly.)
“Give it back, Alex,” she whines. “Let me just finish my text and I’ll put it away, I swear.”
Alex tuts in reply. “You know, most people name their contacts something other than ‘Friend’ with six exclamation points and two hearts.”
There’s a beat, and Kara sits back down, crossing her arms sullenly. “I don’t know her name.”
“What?”
“I don’t know her name,” Kara repeats, pausing after each word. She stares down at the carpet, wills away the pink streak that colors her cheeks.
“I— Wait, okay. So you’ve been texting this person…” Alex scrolls, looking more perplexed by the second. “—Like a hundred times a day. And you don’t know their name.” It’s not even a question: she knows Kara, and this is so very Kara.
Kara nods. “It never came up.”
“You could ask, you know."
And though it seems ridiculously obvious now, the thought had never occurred to Kara. They were simply friends, existing in some strange haze of comfortable distance. Asking might disrupt that, might unbalance their odd equilibrium, and she cannot have that.
“It’s whatever, Alex. Why don’t you go back to staring at all those pictures of Maggie you have on your phone, huh?”
Alex tosses the phone back at her, says something about I don’t stare, and I only have four pictures, okay?
Kara thinks about the woman a lot.
She thinks about whether she has ever rescued her, if she has pulled her from some raging fire or stopped a stray bullet at just the right time. If she has ever thanked Kara without knowing that she had done so before, many times, without knowing this was simply the first time it was said aloud.
She thinks about whether she has seen her as Kara, if they have crossed paths carrying cups of coffee.
She thinks about them meeting, thinks about looking into her eyes and knowing, and if superpowers exist on this planet, then maybe fate does too, and she thinks about just how much this woman knows about her, and just how little, too.
Kara wonders what she looks like, what her name is, whether she would smile or roll her eyes when Kara stumbled over her words, mind whirling too quickly for her lips to ever catch up.
And sometimes when the world pushes down on her, she likes to think that the woman would respect all of her—not just Kara Danvers, not just Supergirl, but all of her. She likes to think the woman would get her, even though she hardly knows her.
She tells Alex about her promotion, her choice, as soon as she gets home.
“Well, that’s great, isn’t it? You can do whatever you want,” Alex says.
Kara does not know how to explain that that is the problem, that she has never known how to choose what she wants instead of what she has to do. That it’s never been about her desire and now it is, and how wrong it all feels.
She texts the woman instead and receives a reply back in minutes.
I never had much of a choice either, so I understand that much. What do you enjoy doing? What makes you happy?
Her mind fills in the answer immediately: you make me happy.
But texting a nameless, faceless stranger is not much of a career choice, and Kara only has one more day to decide, and the questions do not give her any more answers.
Clark comes into town, and her fears seem to flicker back into nothingness, if only for awhile. He has that effect, always has, though she is tempted to believe it is just the memory of home. Whatever the cause, he understands the weight of the cape like no one else.
She follows two steps behind him from Catco all the way to Lena Luthor’s office, watches his shoulders curl up in tense worry. Her phone buzzes as they exit the elevator, and Clark jumps. She rolls her eyes.
“She’s Lex’s sister,” he mutters, like Kara is not already aware. And when Kara shrugs as if to say so what?, he sighs. “Chances are she—“
Lena’s assistant walks up then, gestures toward a large set of doors. “Lena is waiting.”
He cannot finish his sentence, though she is staring at him pointedly, only distracted when her phone buzzes again. Kara itches to look, but Clark is already walking ahead.
Kara grumbles as she jogs to catch up, slides into Lena’s office to see her putting down her phone, and the entire meeting is a frantic rush of back and forth. She cannot explain why, or how, but she knows Lena had nothing to do with the Venture explosion. Clark clearly does not feel the same.
It is only when she hands over the flash drive with a carefully manicured hand that his muscles relax into something more innocent, less accusatory, and it startles her, how drastic a change it is. She almost misses how Lena turns to look at her.
“O—Oh, well, I’m not a reporter,” Kara stutters.
“You could’ve had me fooled,” Lena says, and she feels her face flush as the idea worms its way down to her heart and sticks.
She tells Cat as soon as the gets back to Catco. Alex calls her with news of a rogue alien attack before she can tell the woman.
Lena is surprised to see Superman in National City.
(Superman, Clark Kent—of course she knows. And while she would like to pin it on intellect alone, the memories of Lex’s ranting smart too keenly.)
(Alien, Lex had said. He’s dangerous. And all Lena could think was no, no, you are.)
But she is more surprised by the woman that follows. Kara Danvers, she says, and Lena has to hide a chuckle. It appears that Kara takes after her friend where disguises are concerned: the glasses are good, as is the air of slight discomfort, but neither can hide the way her gaze flickers about, too aware, too searching.
She gives them the flash drive, for she is innocent, after all. Innocent of all of her family’s crimes, though the name she carried always seemed to suggest otherwise.
Superman she can understand. Superman had fought Lex, had seen what he could do. But Supergirl wore none of the clear distaste that was radiating off of Clark in spades.
She seems trusting, but Lena knows that was never the case, not really. And yet, when the pair leaves, Lena finds herself wondering why she wants Kara Danvers to return.
Lena gets more worried with every day that passes. She has never worn hope well, and it seems that that truth has not changed with her surroundings.
She is waiting for the mysterious texter to ask for her name. She is waiting for the inevitable scorn, the shame that will come with the slower and slower replies, before they stop entirely. The shame that it’s her, it’s her, it’s Luthor, that has destroyed yet another relationship.
Another day passes without the question, and another, and her lungs start to ache.
This woman knows everything about her, even the parts she spent so long learning to hide, and the realization that she cares fills her with uneasiness. She is not supposed to care, not about some stranger, not about anyone. She has built this persona so carefully, and it has been torn down so easily, and no matter how hard she tries to fight it, she finds she does not mind at all.
Kara stops by, carrying two cups of coffee that she calls “an apology for, you know, showing up here all the time.”
Lena assures her there is no need for an apology, but she takes a coffee anyway. It is her favorite: a latte with the lightest dusting of cinnamon on top.
She stops short and looks up. “Not many people like cinnamon on their coffee.”
Kara offers a shrug and smiles, and Lena feels her heart thump uncomfortably in her chest. “A friend of mine said it’s her favorite, so I decided to try it. It’s good right?”
Lena cannot shake the feeling that she has been here before, done this before. After a moment, she nods. “Very.”
It is easy to find Kara’s address, and it is even easier to convince herself that this makes sense.
(This: all of it. From the way she walks into Catco like it is the most obvious thing in the world to the way she will smile, laugh, just to see if Kara will do the same.)
(What does not make sense: the way her neck flushes red every time she sends the strange woman a text, still, after all this time. The way Lena wonders what her smile looks like, if it too would make her stomach flutter.)
She knocks on Kara’s door and grins easily when it is answered. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but—“
There’s another woman, one she recognizes. It is unexpected, the sudden pain.
(What if the stranger had someone? Possible, even probable. And why does her mind go there, when Alex is speaking and assuaging her fears, and Kara is grinning back, and she is here? Why is her mind there, so far, far away?)
She invites Kara to the gala because she wants to, wants to see Kara adorned in a beautiful gown. But later, two glasses of wine into the night, she shoots of a text—I’ll be going to a gala this weekend. Would you like to come?
And she does it, she knows, because she needs to.
She needs to know. She needs to see her, make up her mind, for this limbo is all too dangerous a line to tread.
Kara has stared down aliens, certain death, and the glare of her sister, but the text strikes a deep note of fear she is sure she has never felt before.
It is terrifying, the sudden reality of it all: she will have a name, a face.
(What if the woman hates Supergirl? What if the woman hates her?)
She had been surprised to see Lena at Catco, even more surprised to see her at her door, but it had not been unwelcome. If anything, Lena never failed to shock Kara’s throat into disobedience, into an incurable stumble of thoughts she struggles to voice. Lena is gorgeous, no doubt about it, a tornado, and Kara is caught in the eye of the storm.
But the invitation from the woman is the chance she has been waiting for, and she accepts without a moment of hesitation.
It is easy to find Lena at the gala: she is glowing, even in the deep red of her dress. But there is no sign of the woman.
(No sign, as if she knows what to look for. It is hopeless, Kara thinks. She is hopeless.)
She makes her way over to Lena with a wave, and Lena responds in kind. It would be easy, it would be good, this moment. The way Lena rests her hand on Kara’s bicep, tells her how wonderful she looks, how grateful she is that Kara came.
It would be perfect, it could be perfect, but it isn’t.
Kara excuses herself to take out her phone, but her fingers freeze. There is no way to write this, no way to say hey, where are you, so I can ditch the person hosting this fundraiser to finally meet you? or hey, I can’t stop thinking about you even though we’ve never met, so can we please just meet and get it over with?
She swallows hard, writes a simple I’m here!, and clicks send.
Lena looks at her phone, and she is glad she has refused everything harder than a glass of champagne, for a wave of nausea curls over her.
It is rude to be staring down at her phone, and she can all but hear the lecture her mother would give her.
(She hears them a lot, the lectures. She rarely talks to her mother anymore, but her voice still haunts her, will forever, probably. And every time she hears her mother’s voice, Lena takes it as a compliment, a sign she is doing something right, actually, finally.)
Lena glances up at Kara to make sure she is not ignoring her entirely, but Kara is staring down at her phone as well. It should feel wrong, this wanting. It should, but it does not.
She writes back a quick “Me too. Where are you?” and urgently flags down a waiter carrying drinks.
Kara coughs out a choked gasp, and Lena looks up sharply.
“So—Sorry. I’m looking for someone.”
Lena stares at her, and Kara wonders if she said something wrong, if that was some social faux-pas she had yet to learn of. Eventually, Lena waves her free hand. “No worries. Tell them we’re by the appetizers.”
Kara does, and Lena’s phone vibrates.
It is Kara’s turn to stare like she is encased in kryptonite, rooted to the ground.
If Lena had a choice, she would down her entire glass of champagne, and maybe four more after that.
If Lena had a choice, she would laugh and laugh and laugh. It had been funny—sad, maybe, but that was a thought for another day, another night—that her only friends in National City were Kara Danvers, her superhero alter-ego, and a woman she had never met. It was absolutely absurd that all three were the same person.
But she realizes Kara is staring at her like she has admitted to being from Mars—no, wait, she thinks, that’s normal for her—and Lena knows she has to say something.
Only, something is hard to say when she has said everything over the course of the past several months. Kara knows her, better than quite possibly anyone. Kara knows her as Lena Luthor and as no one at all, and Kara is puzzling the pieces together, and Lena is not certain she wants her to finish.
“You have good taste in Chinese food.” Lena cringes, wonders why that was what her mind came up with, but Kara bubbles into laughter.
“I told you they were the best potstickers in National City.”
And it is easy, thankfully, just as easy as it ever was, for Lena to agree. “I know. That’s why I had them cater tonight.”
The shreds of information fall into place, slowly.
First: Kara eats more than anyone else she knows. Lena gets why, gets the whole alien metabolism thing, but it startles her nevertheless. Her restaurant recommendations had always come with some justification, often a “lots of pasta!!” or a “free refills!” and Lena knows, now, why that would be such a boon.
Second: no wonder the mysterious woman used so many exclamation points and smiley faces. Kara Danvers, after all, is a walking heart emoji.
Third: Lena is happy that she does not have to choose. Happy that Kara is looking at her like she gets it, whatever the it is.
Lena takes Kara back up to her office under the pretense of finding some peace and quiet.
Suddenly Kara is all nerves again, all tapping toes and tripping tongue, and Lena stills her fidgeting hands with her own.
“I forgot to tell you I decided to become a reporter,” Kara blurts, and immediately shakes her head. “I mean, I know you know, because you’re you and I’ve interviewed you a bunch of times. But I became a reporter because you kind of suggested it that day with Clark, and I never told you—uh, phone you—even though I meant to.”
Kara is talking now, unstoppable, and Lena listens.
(Lena is happy to listen, always has been, even before it was Kara.)
“My sister—Alex, you know her—thought it was weird. That I was texting someone I had never met?” She says it like a question, but the determined quirk of her brow, the tinge of Supergirl she can never fully hide, says otherwise.
“Wasn’t it?” Lena asks, chuckling. “You didn’t even know my name.”
“That didn’t matter! I cared about you.” And, quiet all of a sudden: “I care about you.”
Lena is all too aware of the way her hands are still clutching Kara’s. She glances down. “Even though my last name is Luthor?”
“Especially because your last name is Luthor. You’re not like them. You’re you, Lena. You’re— Rao, do you really think all of National City hasn’t realized how incredible you are yet?”
And if there is something to be thankful for in this world that has done so much to spite her, to kick her down, Lena is thankful for a hectic day of packing, Jess’s phone number, and and the two-digit swap that had turned it into Kara’s.
She does not know what to say, but the hitch of her breath is answer enough.
Lena has thought about this a lot, thought about what the woman might be like. And in every possibility, every daydream, she is the one to make a move.
Of course she is: she is Lena Luthor. She is the CEO of L-Corp. She has to be brave.
But Kara is the one to reach up and curl a stray strand of hair around her fingers. Kara is the one to tilt her head, ask the question, give Lena time to lean away.
And when she doesn’t, Kara is the one to kiss her, and Kara is the one to rest her forehead against Lena’s and say, “I’m glad you invited me to the party.”
Lena does not know which invitation she means, does not truly care. “Me too.”
The sun finishes setting in a swirl of pink and orange, and Lena watches it from where her head rests on Kara’s shoulder. But then Kara pulls back abruptly, scattering away the silence with a sudden “wait!”
Before Lena can so much as blink, Kara pulls out her phone, types for a moment, and then flashes the screen toward Lena. And as she clicks, the name above the text message conversation changes.
Before, it reads Friend. After, it reads Lena.
(Kara keeps the exclamation points and, a moment later, adds another heart.)