Work Text:
"She hovered high above the building, listening to Lena’s distressed heartbeat and not returning home until it finally calmed to a slower, lazy beat that spoke of alcohol and exhaustion." (From annacec's Late Bloomer, Chapter 8, line 93.)
Kara flew home as silent tears crystallized to ice upon her cheeks at the high altitude. She screamed but it did not help. With a quick call to Alex ducking out of their plans she crawls listlessly into bed and allows her misery to take her.
Kara wakes slowly. Her mind drifts in that semi-conscious state between dreams and wakefulness. Groggily, she rolls over away from the bright sun that shines through her bedroom window. Kara groans miserably. Usually she awakens and basks in the morning sun. Feeling the sun’s warmth and enjoying how it energises her for the day both literally and figuratively.
Not today.
Today is the first morning after “The Conversation” as Kara has come to think of it. The conversation which finally, and irrevocably, ended any hope that she could ever have Lena. Ended the hope that she could ever build a life with her and allow herself to tip over the knife’s edge she has walked for months, right into unapologetically loving Lena Luthor.
That can never be now.
Because of istrun.
Because she is an alien.
Because, yet again, she is different.
Because, yet again, the universe perniciously steals away what she loves.
Kara’s heart aches and the hollow feeling in her chest radiates. The primal part of her mind that has awakened with istrun rebels at the realisation that she can never have Lena. It growls and spits. Rage bubbles like a mad dog kept from its favourite bone.
While Kara recognizes those drives, those new desires and instincts, she also hates them. Hates this new part of herself that istrun has awakened. Her new Alpha instincts see Lena as a potential mate. Someone to want, to fuck, to breed. Mine.
Kara would be lying if she said that she didn’t want that too, but her feelings for Lena are older than istrun and far deeper than mere primitive need. Istrun makes her body and mind focus on the physical and Kara hates that. Hates the idea of reducing Lena to just a warm body, an omega to take. Lena means so much more to Kara than that.
Lena is her best friend. She is beautiful inside and out. Lena is selfless and kind, humble and, fragile in a way that the world who often hates her will never know. Lena is a secret nerd. People often see the powerful CEO and genius scientist, but Kara is privileged to know the Lena who wears glasses in private, who can babble about Star Wars and finds beauty in numbers where others only see utility.
Lena cares about the world and about people in ways that make her Kara’s hero. As the CEO of LCORP she has made countless decisions that retained jobs at the cost of enhanced profit and she has fought her board to prevent technologies being released that would endanger people. She donates to charities and secretly helps run numerous projects throughout the city. Kara sees all the good Lena does and that she refuses to take credit for. Kara sees the little girl who is trying to make up for the failings of her family which she has selflessly taken on as her own burden.
Kara sees it all and loves her for it. Loves her for her determination, the way the right corner of her smile is slightly higher than the left, how she gesticulates wildly with her hands when excited and even her hardened business exterior that makes the corporate world tremble before her, Kara loves (Okay and is maybe a little turned on by it).
With the hormonal rush of istrun, those feelings often get lost in Kara’s head. Certainly, Lena’s rather aggressive propositioning of Kara to fuck her on the counter a few days ago implies that even Lena may not see how much Kara really feels for her. The fact that Kara wants her for more than the physical.
Lena had swung from propositioning her with rash sex which with hindsight could have severely damaged Lena’s health, or even risked her life, to offering Kara what equated to a sexless marriage.
If Lena had made yesterday’s proposition of an intimate but sexless romantic relationship to Kara before istrun then Kara knows she would have jumped at the chance. It would have been everything Kara had wanted at the time in a relationship without the messy sexual component that she seemed to lack a desire for. All of the love, the companionship, the trust, the terms of endearment, the hugs, the kisses and the snuggling on the couch while they shared their hopes and fears for a future together.
Kara burrows her head further into the soft material beneath her face as she tries to escape the mental gymnastics of the situation, and the mourning for a life lost which she has never had.
The earthy, ripe smell of Lena invades Kara’s nostrils and immediately makes her head lighter before the scent seemingly rushes to between her legs causing an uncomfortable burning sensation and setting off a storm of tingles down her spine.
Kara groans anew as she remembers she had fallen asleep with Lena’s shirt as a comforter the previous night.
Lena’s shirt, and more importantly her scent upon it, had seemed to bridge the distance which their conversation earlier yesterday had wrought between them.
Kara had cried bitterly in her bed last night. Alex was supposed to come over for a sister’s night but had understood Kara’s need to be alone after the news she had been given earlier. Alex had awkwardly tried to console Kara, to insist on coming over to be there for her sister, but all Kara really wanted was to be alone. To mope in peace, to mourn her loss and drown herself in the small comfort of Lena’s scent as she cried herself to sleep.
Kara breathes deeply of that delicious earthy scent. The vaguest notes of Lena’s expensive perfume tickle the back of Kara’s nostrils and she is unusually annoyed at the distraction from Lena’s pure scent. Lena should never wear perfume; she smells delicious and decadent without it. Her natural scent, uncorrupted by manufactured scents and dead flowers reminds Kara of a particularly sweet fruit called Deshen which was traditionally roasted and eaten at the Fire Falls Festivals on Krypton.
Lena smells like home and of possibilities. Kara shifts her thighs restlessly as she tries to temper the heat building there and the stirrings of her sern.
Begrudgingly, she opens her eyes and twists to starfish back on her bed. Her left arm drags Lena’s shirt up to her nose.
Kara can feel the tears watering at the backs of her eyes as she is again reminded that she will never be able to be with Lena as she desires. It’s not safe.
Alex and Lena’s tests indicate she is only biologically compatible with human males or perhaps other aliens. Kara can’t help the grimace that comes to her face at the thought. Even before Istrun men were not particularly appealing to her and now, while she admits to herself that she does feel some more primal attraction to some males, it is nothing compared to how she feels for Lena.
Is that Kara’s destiny? To be alone or to make do with a male companion who fulfils her heats and her physical needs, but whom she doesn’t feel the same driving need and desire for that Lena inspires?
The idea feels hollow, like Kara is once again damned to walk alone on an alien world. When she came to earth she was the last true Kryptonian and she was so isolated. With Alex and her friends she learned to feel part of humanity, to feel included. Yet istrun has thrown that feeling of belonging on its head once again. Kara feels alien in a whole new, and far more profound way.
Even if she were to consider a male human to mate with, who could she possibly choose? Who would be willing? Human males who would be attracted to her superficial appearance may be turned right off when they discovered her sern and alien nature. How would she even go about explaining such realities to a prospective partner? The thought of the conversations makes Kara blush hot in embarrassment.
Aliens then. Fellow aliens at least would understand and be open to the idea of being with another alien. A conversation about sexual and biological compatibility may be slightly less awkward, but that also raises a whole slew of new questions. Which species would she be compatible with? Would Alex know? She can’t ask Lena. That would just be too awkward. Would each new prospective alien need to be tested for their species compatibility? That would be awkward and painful. Constantly making connections and building a relationship enough to discuss sexual compatibility only to once again, potentially, find we were incompatible perhaps. The thought makes Kara’s heart ache and nausea race up her throat.
She can barely even comprehend the thought of hypothetically having a relationship at some distant point in the future…but for it to end as her and Lena has? No, that would be too painful. Kara can’t do it again, she isn’t even sure that she can survive Lena’s loss as a romantic possibility.
What is left then, celibacy? A life of unfulfilled desires? Suffering through her heats alone again and again for years, maybe even centuries with her life expectancy.
Kara’s entire body shudders at the thought. Even with suppressants and Krestrogen binding replacements that Alex and Lena are developing, she knows her heats will be uncomfortable at best and agony at worst. Her mother’s hologram had pulled no punches in that area. Alex had tried to downplay it as a few days locked up in the DEO. Kara though has been feeling the push and burn or istrun and even this far from her heat the primal instincts, the driving need and burning desire has been a terrible mixture of hard to control and uncomfortable. The Heat itself is likely to be a hundred times worse.
Kara squeezes her eyes shut tighter to escape her reality. She is safe here in bed beneath the covers. That’s what she tells herself, but the reality is that some of these new feelings and drives feel a lot like red kryptonite and that terrifies Kara. She knows she will have to blow her powers out and stay under green kryptonite during her heat. It is the only way to be safe, yet she is already dreading it because the agony of sitting out her heat alone will only be made worse by the lack of her powers and the burn of kryptonite. One agony on top of another. Just the thought is almost too much. Kara can feel the instinctual fear of the future pain making her want to run and rage against the world. The primal istrun born Alpha part of her mind bares its teeth and thrashes at the thought of being denied.
The primordial Kryptonian equivalent of lizard brain inside Kara’s mind which was awakened by Istrun rebels at the notion of being alone, of never taking a mate. Celibacy is wrong, it cries. Celibacy doesn’t get us an omega. Celibacy doesn’t get us what is ours. Celibacy doesn’t make children. Kara’s heart aches at the prospect of being alone for the rest of her long life. What is the point in istrun if she is destined to be alone, to be unfulfilled?
Tears slowly leak from Kara’s eyes now and she grips Lena’s shirt closer to her nose in an attempt to find comfort in her scent.
Perhaps she was too quick to turn Lena down?
Lena will continue work on her suppressants, on the Krestrogen compliment that could artificially ease her heat and would likely be helping Alex in continuing to test for potential mates Kara could biologically compatible with. The thought makes Kara squirm. Lena will essentially be making her masturbatory aids, and essentially helping to pimp Kara out. Helping her to find a new lover. The thought leaves a sour taste in Kara’s mouth. Lena was meant to be Kara’s an as much as they both say they can be friends again, it feels wrong for Lena to be trying to alleviate Kara’s problems, to find her someone else, while Lena gets nothing but a broken heart in return.
There has to be another way. Kara must have been too quick to reject Lena’s compromise of a semi intimate romantic relationship.
Kara gives into weakness and allows her mind to wander, to explore once more the possibility of having Lena, even in a limited capacity.
They can’t do anything that would risk their bodily fluids mixing, that would risk Kara’s Krestrogen entering Lena’s body and wiping out her estrogens. Kissing on the mouth would be too risky, even closed mouthed.
Yet, there is so much more to kiss. Kara can see it behind her closed lids. Lena’s perfect face, trusting and filled with passion. Kara could plant butterfly kisses right at the corner of her mouth, tantalisingly close to Len’s luscious red lips. She could trace a path across her high cheek bone and taste every inch of her alabaster skin. Would it all taste the same? Would her skin taste different as Lena blushes with growing arousal?
Kara would kiss her closed eyelids, would whisper words of love and trust as she peppered Lena’s face with kisses. Then, when Lena would be distracted, when she would think it all so innocent, Kara could dive for her neck. Open mouthed kisses which are wet and hot across Lena’s suddenly racing pulse. The fresh pheromones and scent from Lena’s swan like neck would drown Kara’s tongue and she would lap at Lena like the finest of wines. She would kiss her softly and then with the barest hints of teeth, before swirling her tongue across her pulse point and sucking her sweet flesh into her mouth to mark her as Kara’s with a love bite that would stand red and raw against her pale skin.
Kara flushes, possession roars through her body and she delights at the mental image. Her sern throbs but Kara ignores it, she can control herself. She could have this damn it!
Kara would trail kisses across Lena’s fine collarbones which peak out from the scooping neckline of her business dress. Lena would gasp and beg, her breathing becoming short and her heart racing in Kara’s ears.
Then she would press herself against Lena. Their entire bodies pressed together as they shared breath and heat. Their foreheads, noses, their breasts, hips and legs all pressed and tangled together. The lines of their bodies only held apart by the thin shield of their clothes.
Kara would draw back and she would command Lena to undress, and she would(like a good, obedient omega a dark voice whispers in Kara’s mind). That sultry look in her emerald eyes. Kara bets Lena would make a game of it. She would go tantalisingly slowly just to tease Kara, to drag it out.
Kara can feel the growl build at the back of her throat at the mere thought of it. She would give in of course. She would dive forward to help Lena, to help her omega divest herself of her clothes more quickly. Lena would laugh at her small victory. A sound filled with light and joy. Kara would be all fingers and thumbs at first, but superspeed and strength would let her get Lena undressed in record time.
Kara wouldn’t let Lena bask in her victory too long, she would dive forward and taste her breasts. Her glorious, ripe, firm breasts that have teased Kara in low cut tops and gala gowns for years. Kara would finally get to see her nipples. To see if they are large or small. Dark red or dusty pink? Either way Kara would kiss them, taste them, pinch them until they were hard and red from her attention. Stiff and oversensitive. Lena would moan, she would beg, her hands would claw at Kara’s invulnerable back but she would not be sped on from giving that wonderous chest all the attention it deserves.
Kara would pull back again and she would remove her clothes with superspeed before Lena realises she has moved. Lena and Kara would gasp together as their naked bodies fell together for the first time, fire erupting where their skin touches. The slight dampness of Lena’s sweat making them slide together with the barest hint of pleasant friction. Kara would press them together and Lena would wrap herself around Kara like the cuddly Koala bear she refuses to admit she is. In this private moment Lena would indulge her touch starved need and Kara would quench her thirst.
Kara can almost feel it as she lies on her bed, imagining Lena in her arms, their bodies melding together so thoroughly they lose track of where one begins and the other ends. Kara would insinuate her thigh between Lena’s legs, she would push slowly against her throbbing hot centre. Would it be smooth and wet against Kara’s thigh? Or would Lena have a neat patch of coarse dark hair hiding her most private place from Kara’s view?
Even lying here in bed Kara imagines she can feel the ghostly caress of Lena’s body and the echo of the electricity that would surely surge between them. Her nerves feel hypersensitive, her breathing is laboured, and she can feel her flush spreading down her chest.
Kara’s sern is fully erect now and throbs painfully but Kara is determined that she control herself. If she were with Lena she couldn’t risk it touching her anywhere near her openings. Kara’s sern is coated in too many hormones and fluids for it to be safe, never mind the risk of her ejaculate.
Kara is lost in her early morning imagining, her mind drowning in the image of Lena grinding upon her thigh, of kissing every inch of Lena’s flesh.
Lena’s beautiful green irises would have disappeared, her pupils would have blown black with desire and she would call to her god, she would call Kara’s name for release.
Kara would oblige of course like the good Alpha she is. She would make Lena hers. She would reach between them and part Lena’s lower lips with deft fingers. She would play with her, tantalise her, push and massage but hold back from entering. Kara would weave patterns on her throbbing nub, all the shapes of the Kryptonian ideograms that represent the eleven virtues, the Girod. She would swirl her fingers in the symbols of her name, she would mark her as Kara’s with burning touches and then at her peak she would push forward with two fingers.
White spots dance behind Kara’s eyelids and she feels her chest vibrating in a subsonic growl. She clenches her teeth viciously at the building pleasure at just the thought of being able to feel Lena like that, to be inside her with her fingers.
Kara grinds her ass back into her bed to prevent her hips bucking forward at the thought of her fingers where her sern so desperately wants to be.
What would Lena feel like? Would she be tight and smooth? Would she come as Kara touches her? Would Kara's sern bottom out inside her? What would she look like as she falls apart? What would she smell like? Lena smells delicious all the time but in the throws of pleasure? Kara can’t even begin to imagine it. Saliva floods Kara’s mouth and her mind feels cloudy as the instinct to bite and claim rises. That desire to taste, to bite rears up stronger and stronger and for a split second the image of Kara biting Lena’s neck, of tasting Lena between her legs fills Kara’s mind. With a whimper and thrashing to the side Kara dislodges the image.
No!
Kara can’t do that. It would be too dangerous for Lena.
But Kara could touch herself right? As she pleasured Lena she could touch herself and Lena would like that right?
Her Omega would want to see how big her Alpha is, how much she wants her.
Before Kara can stop herself her hand has dove beneath the sheets. Her fingers dance across her labia and where her entrance used to be until they come in contact with her new appendage. Her sern jerks at the slightest touch. The mucous membranes feel scaldingly hot and slick. Kara can feel her heartbeat through the textured pinkish-red membrane. She grips her sern and her sudden awareness of it is like lightning. It wants, it needs to fulfil its purpose, like muscle memory encoded long ago in its cells before her species even stood upright. Kara almost comes at the feeling of pressure from her hand as she holds the image of Lena beneath her, riding her thigh in her mind.
Her sern grows under her attention and molten hot pins and needles dance down her spine as fire builds in her groin.
Her hips begin to piston as she instinctively sets a punishing pace with her hand and she imagines Lena’s enraptured face as Kara begins to come undone.
Want, take, fuck, breed. The mantra seems to race in Kara’s mind. Kara inhales deeply from Lena’s shirt, the renewed scent combined with her mental imaginings driving her over the edge. Her Omega, her Lena. Take!
As Kara comes with an aborted cry the image in her mind shifts and Kara sees herself plunging into Lena, driving into her over and over again as she comes. It’s not her own hand she is fucking but Lena.
It is euphoric, it is heavenly…and then it is a nightmare.
The Lena in her mind’s eye doesn’t look aroused and sated anymore, she looks scared. Lena shrinks back from Kara, she whimpers and her whole body shudders not in pleasure but in pain. Deep bruises mottle Lena’s thighs where Kara held too tight and drove forward too hard in pursuit of her pleasure.
Lena’s face becomes sallow and her pale skin becomes waxy.
“Kara…” she whispers brokenly.
It is then that Kara’s eyes fly open in horror and realisation. In her pursuit of pleasure, even only in a dream, an imagining, she has hurt Lena.
She couldn’t control herself.
She bruised her, she made her afraid.
Worst of all she couldn’t control herself and she fucked Lena.
Rao, if she did that in real life, she could kill Lena!
Her Krestrogen would eradicate Lena’s estrogens as it invades her body just because Kara couldn’t control herself.
The ecstatic pleasure of a moment ago is gone with the gruesome realisation and nightmarish image that burns Kara’s awareness. Her sleepy mind is awake, and she thinks she may never sleep again.
Kara flinches and flings Lena’s shirt and scent away from herself as though burned.
The image of Lena: bruised, afraid and wasting away as Kara’s krestrogen races through her body like a poison causes her Alpha instincts to rear up in disgust at herself. She is meant to protect, she is meant to defend Lena. Her Istrun awakened desires die on the vine, she feels nausea race up her throat and sickness tumble through her gut where moments before there was arousal.
With superspeed Kara jumps up from her bed. The cooling sticky mess at her thighs and on her sheets stings in the cold air as she flies to her bathroom.
Her body is wracked with sobs as she vomits uncontrollably into the toilet. The tears come unrestrained and fast. Kara feels like she is dying, like she has just watched Krypton die anew.
Slowly, so slowly her body calms. Her stomach is empty and the dry heaving that has left her sides aching begins to peter out.
Kara collapses bonelessly beside the toilet. She feels sweaty and hollowed out. Salty tear tracks stain her face. She drags a hand through her sticky hair and tries desperately to calm her shuddering body, to force out the image of the broken, dying Lena in her mind.
Fuck! Kara had been thinking about Lena as hers. As her Omega. She had no right to that. She had no right to imagine herself and Lena like that. To use her friend like that. The guilt mixes with her sorrow and her horror grows again.
Kara whispers to herself, “No, I’ll never be safe for her.”
Any hope, any chance of going back to Lena and accepting her offer of an intimate but restrained relationship is blown out of the water. Kara was right yesterday. She had made the right choice. She was too dangerous. She can’t control herself enough to have that sort of relationship with Lena. Her instincts, her desires, her Istrun would drive her to want more and to eventually hurt her beloved.
Kara’s heart aches. Lena isn’t hers. The primal instincts of the Alpha want to rage at that realisation, but they feel muted and horrified as her protective instincts override the sexual want.
Kara can’t have Lena, but she can keep her safe. She must accept this, accept that she can never have Lena. Accept that they are just friends.
Kara sends a small prayer to Rao, thanking him that Lena had asked for some time apart to recalibrate to this new normal. Kara needs that time too. Needs to force herself to accept this new normal.
With tired movements and staggering feet as though drunk, Kara drags herself to the shower…a cold shower.
To love Lena, to truly love her means keeping her safe…it means letting her go.
It seems humanity is wrong: sometimes love isn’t enough.