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sssammich · 6 months

Text

fic: let there be another day

inspired by this fantastically angsty gifset of a supercorp AU. happy supercorp sunday yall

thanks x

---

The days transform steadily, selfishly, into weeks. Until the weeks have amounted to six months of nothing. Nothing between them but a phantom line of what they’d been to each other, once upon a time.

There is a crater in Lena’s heart, a botched excavation of the way she’d willed herself to forget Kara, to protect the two of them from the ruthlessness of her family. So she’d cored herself first, hoping to beat her brother and mother to the punch. Yet Kara had dug herself further into her heart, straight into her marrow.

So she failed, in the end, to rid herself of the woman she’d loved with her whole being.

But it’s gotten easier, in a way, existing in this reality where she had to deny herself the chance for happiness if it meant her happiness could live.

Her family has continued to terrorize her, but she’s acclimated. Expected it, really. Their efforts of trying to eliminate the few people who have been able to reach the fortress of her heart have now since changed to recruiting her into the fold of the family business.

She now only functions to keep L-Corp as an entity of good despite her family’s best attempts at compromising her work. It’s fine, because she has accepted that her work will be her life. Her love—her grief—has become the shape of late nights in front of her computer, of half-filled decanters as she oversees expense reports, of dry-cleaned power suits and a lethal red lipstick as armor worn in superfluous business meetings.

It’s worth it, she reasons, when she catches sight of Supergirl zooming past her window to save the day once more.

—

Lena should have known that Lex and Lillian are simply biding their time until they strike. The last couple of months of relative quiet was not a sign of reprieve. So when the glass of her office doors break and splinter into tiny crystalline pieces, her heart aches not in fear, but in disappointment.

She’s never had a death wish and would never wish this hurt upon herself, but the amount of threats to her life has surpassed her age. She thinks that maybe if both Lex and Lillian simply just got it over with, that she can get some goddamn rest. But she knows why she fights and why she keeps going. If only to spite her family, if only so that her sacrifice isn’t in vain.

Another explosion erupts and throws Lena partway across her office, her head hitting the corner of her desk with a thud. She opens her eyes and her vision blurs, her head throbbing with pain, her body tense and sore all at once. Distantly, she can hear the fire alarm go off just as the sprinklers start shooting off water and flooding her office.

She attempts to stand and find an exit, but her body betrays her intentions, buckling under her weight as she’s sprayed with water all around her. She falls onto her knees and subjects herself to crawling towards the exit with only but reckless determination and an almost-extinguished hope that she will make it out of this alive.

Before she can take another step forward, there’s a whooshing sound that fills her already ringing ears and suddenly, warmth envelopes her.

She sighs in resignation and gratitude when she feels the familiar weight around her. Lena knows before she opens her eyes what has engulfed her so safely, so securely. It cuts her heart just as it heals it, and she is in a loop of pain and joy.

She wants to open her eyes, truly, to look into ocean eyes and a field of golden grass. But she is in pain and she is hurting. Her only course of action is to keep her eyes closed as strong arms grab hold of her—gently, always so gently—and whisks her out of her now compromised and ruined office.

—

When she comes to, she finds herself in a secluded and private examination room of the National City Hospital, discretion of the highest priority as a prominent public figure. It’s one she’s been in before, from a past attempt at her life. It’s almost something like a comfort, this familiar space that has seen her bruises, cuts, and scrapes.

The door swings open and she hears Kara behind her begin to make her exit. She doesn’t look up but when she catches sight of the red cape just by the bed, she holds up a hand and stops the movement altogether.

She only lets go when the doctor looks down from her clipboard and settles on the rolling stool, the creak of the leather as she rolls closer to Lena.

She allows the doctor to do what she does best, intently listening to the sound of the squeaking stool and the crinkling of the paper of the examination bed as doctor works.

A mild concussion, some cuts and bruises. It could have been worse, she’s told. It always could have been worse and she wants to yell at Dr. Shapiro that this feels pretty close to the worst. Still, she listens carefully as her doctor explains how fortunate she is for surviving after the second and third explosions completely decimating her office.

“Third explosion?” she asks, this information brand new to her.

“Mm,” the doctor hums. “The second blast was the reason for your concussion, but according to reports, the third blast was close to you and would have knocked you prone and done serious damage had you not found cover.”

Lena tries very hard not to twist her aching body and look over her shoulder.

“Thank you, Doctor.”

The doctor looks at her meaningfully before glancing over Lena’s right shoulder and placing a hand on hers, squeezing, and then letting go.

The door closes with a quiet click, but instead of an exhaled deep breath, she holds herself tense. She shuts her eyes and listens to the way the superhero makes just enough noise so Lena knows where she is. First, from the chair she’d been occupying, then the sound of boots against the linoleum flooring, then the swish of the cape as it catches against the corner of the examination bed and back down again.

“Where can I take you?”

She opens her eyes to the setting sun, to saltwater ocean, to a small smile she hasn’t allowed herself to witness in six months.

She doesn’t know what’s safest, what her family is planning, what the total damage is. She needs her phone, she needs access to her company, she needs—

“Can I go with you?” is what she says.

Kara studies her, like the horizon staring back, and nods. She opens her hand, the thumb loop of her suit wrapping around her palm, and offers it to Lena.

She takes it, sliding her unsteady hand in place and breathes when Kara clasps their hands together.

—

Kara’s apartment smells the exact same.

She does not comment on this, though it’s the most prevalent thought in her mind. Kara lets her walk in first, speeding to the lamps and switching them on until the apartment is bathed in faint golden light. Fitting.

“Get cleaned up. I’ll have some spare clothes for you right outside the bathroom.” Kara passes her a towel, and she hugs it to her chest.

The water scalds her skin, stings the open scratches and cuts. And she revels in it, her alabaster skin reddening under the downpour of it. She savors it until the shower sputters a little and the hot water becomes tepid then becomes cold. She squeals and jumps away, hitting herself against the side of the shower stall and knocking half of the soaps and hair products off the shelf.

Kara is there in an instant, opening the door and getting soaked herself, trying to protect her.

Naked and broken, she looks up to the setting sun that is Kara’s concerned face, and then she starts laughing.

“I—the hot water ran out.”

Kara exhales, that cold water matting down her hair on her forehead as she protects Lena from the downpour. “Sorry, I never did call the landlord about it.”

She turns off the water behind her and steps out of the shower stall to pick up Lena’s towel for her. She opens the towel and turns away.

You’ve seen it all before, she wants to say, but doesn’t. Instead, she takes the towel and wraps it around herself, the cold beads of water from her hair clinging to her neck, her shoulder blades.

Kara steps aside, offers her a shy smile, and leaves wordlessly. Lena listens to the way she walks around the apartment, the clattering of the plates on the table.

She steps out and smiles when she finds spare clothes placed on a stool right outside the bathroom door.

When she next steps out of the bathroom, she is wearing Kara’s oversized shirt with a faded cartoon drawing of National City State Fair on it and a spare set of her pajama pants that she didn’t realize she’d forgotten, she'd thought Kara would have gotten rid of.

The spread of Chinese food on the coffee table is modest, but familiar.

She takes a seat in the spot she once proclaimed as hers, and accepts the plate from Kara’s grasp. They eat in silence with only the sound of the television playing on in the background.

Kara watches her—studying her, Lena’s sure—but doesn’t say anything. She talks about her week because Lena had asked, and so she gives it to Lena. They clear their plates, then she trails after Kara to the kitchen, parking herself on the kitchen island. Kara seems to anticipate her and passes a pint of Cherry Garcia towards her with a spoon on the lid.

“Good for concussions, I heard,” Kara offers, a twitch of a smile on her lips.

She laughs at that, surprised, but accepts the ice cream, opening the lid and taking a spoonful. “That’s tonsillitis.”

Kara shrugs but takes a spoonful of her own Rocky Road on the opposite side of the kitchen island. So much of right now exists superimposed to how things had been before, how their lives had been so entwined, so integrated. It is unnerving as it is comforting, and Lena accepts that for today, at least, she has to accept the disorientation.

Eventually, “here. I charged your phone. I’d call Sam first, then Jess.”

There is distance between them, far greater than the kitchen island in front of her, and it shows itself for the first time now, here. After everything.

“Kara, I—”

“I need to fill Alex in on everything. Let her know you’re alright. I’ll be right outside.”

She nods, glances at her phone and the laptop that Kara slides across the kitchen island, and watches as Kara walks out the front door.

For a solid hour, she works through everything she can considering her mild concussion. She touches base with her assistant, with her team, and finds that they have taken care of everything for her. She sighs in relief, shuddering into her hands when Sam and Jess let her know that they have everything handled, that all they want for her is to rest, that the investigation into her family’s attempt at assassinating her might finally have some legs with some information they’d discovered during the cleanup.

She sighs, sniffling into the back of her hand and tells them goodnight before she closes her phone and sobs into her hands, the day finally wearing her down.

She doesn’t startle when arms wrap around her, the press of a strong body kneeling in front of her as she cries into the crook of Kara’s neck. She grabs fistfuls of Kara’s shirt as her tears soak through the cotton.

Kara only holds onto her, rubbing her back and gently cradling Lena in her arms. Soft shushing filters through Lena’s ears and she sobs further into Kara, hoping Kara can just absorb her entirely, as if that’s the only thing that can protect her—from her family, from the world, from herself.

Her sobs lasts and lasts, a never ending fountain of all the tears she’d shoved back in, a dam bursting now that she’s allowed herself.

—

Kara carries her to the bed, quietly ushering her under the covers just as she sits on the edge of it.

“You saved me,” she says, her voice coming out slightly congested.

Kara brushes her hair behind her ear. “That promise has never changed.”

“They’re never going to stop, are they?”

Kara shakes her head.

“I thought by letting you g—” she huffs, turns away. “I thought I was protecting you. I was trying to do the right thing.”

Kara grabs hold of her hand and places it on her lap, her fingers fiddling with Lena’s palm, but doesn’t quite look at her.

“I’m afraid that the only times I will see you, I’m trying to save your life. And I—it worsens when I think that I can’t make it.”

Lena watches Kara’s beautiful profile, the expanse of her forehead, the slope of her nose into the curves of her lips and down her jutting chin, trembling slightly in the faint light outside the bedroom curtain. Then she sees the bob of Kara’s throat, a single tear falling into the center of her palm.

Kara’s facing her now, and Lena brings up her other hand to wipe Kara’s cheek.

“I missed you, Lena. And I don’t know what I will do if I can’t make it to you in time, I—”

This time, it’s Lena who pulls her close, wrapping the arm that Kara’s been focusing on around her front as she cradles Kara in her arms. “I’m sorry, darling,” she says, voice hoarse. “I’m sorry.”

Kara then turns in her arms and they embrace one another, both hiding in each other.

The tears stain and soak her neck, but she lets it, welcoming Kara’s weight after months of being so untethered.

“Please, just come back to me,” Kara says into her skin, muffled words that hold so much promise. “Let me take care of you. Let me protect you,”

Lena pulls back slightly. “You’d still—you’d still want me?”

“Let me love you again, Lena.”

Unable to hold her own tears back, Lena pushes forward until their lips meet. She angles her head and Kara kisses her back, the pair of them holding each other.

There is an ache to their reunion, but there is healing, too. And Lena remembers, unbidden, Dr. Shapiro’s words. It could have been worse, she’d heard.

But Lena wants it to be better. She deserves at least that, for all of her troubles, and if her family will aim for her and all that she loves, then she can’t hide herself in the shadows.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love you.”

Tomorrow, she thinks, after the whispered declarations and the promises of more, of better, of a new day. Together.

“I’m here. I’m here. I love you, too. I’m here.”

#samfic #supercorp #inspired by a gifset #i'll post this on ao3 at some point i don't have time for now #anyway please enjoy #kara danvers #lena luthor #kara x lena #karlena #supercorp sunday #god this is riddled with mistakes #i fixed most of them now #god will i ever write the things im supposed to #listen listen i promise i'm working #ok love u bye

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