Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kara wakes to the harsh buzzing of her work phone, and the worst headache she’s ever had.

Groaning against the early morning light streaming through the cheap hotel curtains, Kara flings an arm out from under the covers to grab it. Her blind grasping only succeeds in knocking it off the bedside table, though, and it hits the floor with a clatter that makes her ears ring.

After a few more vibrations it goes silent, and Kara raises her head from the pillow.

She knows that Alex is the only person who would call her this early, and – the phone starts to vibrate again, and Kara flops back with a sigh – this incessantly. She’d promised her sister an update last night and then got so caught up with Lena that she’d forgotten, and it’s a miracle Alex waited until daylight to check on her.

As the second call rings through to silence Kara glances at Lena’s bed, where she can just barely see a mess of dark hair poking out from under the duvet. Lena has burrowed herself under the covers and seems to still be fast asleep despite Kara’s ruckus, snoring gently as the blankets rise and fall, and despite the nausea and the splitting migraine it makes Kara smile.

And then the buzzing starts for a third time, and Kara has to push down the urge to throw the stupid phone out the window.

Lena doesn’t stir when Kara finally picks it up, squinting at the caller ID, and when she taps the screen and holds it up to her ear her voice is low and hoarse.

“Why?” groans pitifully, pressing her other hand over her sore eyes.

“Come outside,” Alex says in a hushed tone, and hangs up the phone.

It takes Kara a few minutes to gather herself enough to even roll out of bed. According to her phone she only went to sleep 3 hours ago; she’s hungover and exhausted and still reeling from last night’s conversation, and by the time she’s thrown on the closest clothes and dragged herself out to the courtyard where Alex is waiting, her sister is impatiently pacing the concrete walkway.

Before Alex can even open her mouth, Kara holds up a hand.

“I know I should have checked in. A lot happened last night.”

Alex looks a little deflated that her comment was so easily predicted, but she nods. “I know. You look like death.” Alex’s eyes flick down to Kara’s torso, and then back up with a frown. “Is that an MIT sweater?”

Blanching, Kara looks down to find that the shirt she blindly grabbed from the floor is in fact a soft grey sweater with Lena’s school logo on it. It’s tight across her shoulders, but somehow, she hadn’t noticed at all; she hadn’t even looked before she pulled it over her head, apparently not registering the smell of Lena’s perfume. No wonder she’s been feeling so calm.

“You didn’t exactly give me much time to get dressed,” Kara grumbles, pushing up her sunglasses and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “I’ve slept a cumulative 6 hours this whole damn weekend.”

Alex, blessedly, seems to accept it and hands her a large paper cup of still-hot coffee, and together they head towards the next wing where the rest of the team has been working.

“What did you find out?” Alex asks as they walk, and Kara tries to chug coffee without scalding her mouth. “Broad strokes, before we debrief.”

“I think it’s Lillian,” Kara says, wiping her mouth. She ended up with a burnt tongue anyways, but the caffeine is worth it, no matter how terrible the coffee is. Her sluggish brain is still trying to find a way to tell Alex what she found out last night without revealing that Lena knows everything, and Alex seems to be even more stressed out than usual this morning. “Alexander is her son, and apparently he used to have some ties to Cadmus.”

“Alexander? The creepy assistant?” Alex says, swiping her access card and opening the door for Kara. Inside the others are still in a state of disarray, unlike Alex – James is still in pyjama pants, and a ruffled-looking Vasquez is cradling a cup of coffee between her hands like it’s the elixir of life – and the audio and camera feeds are still dark, yet to be turned on again by Kara. “How did we not know that?”

“They went to a lot of effort to hide it, I guess,” Kara says vaguely. “He used to go by Lex.”

“Run a background check on anyone associated with Cadmus named Lex Luthor,” Alex barks at Brainy, who jolts upright in his chair and starts feverishly typing before he’s even opened his eyes fully. “He’s a high priority suspect.”

“Him and Lillian,” Kara reiterates firmly. “I think they’re working together.”

“If both of Lillian’s kids are here, why would she do this?” Vasquez asks, peeking over Brainy’s shoulder at the computer screen. He swats her away, and she snatches his coffee and pours it into her own cup in retaliation. “Why would she put them in danger?”

“I think they’re doing it to throw off suspicion,” Kara says, finally voicing the theory she’s had ever since Lena mentioned that her mother pressured her into competing. “As an alibi. Nobody would suspect someone of putting her own daughter in danger – but I don’t think Lillian cares about Lena at all. You should see the way she treats her.”

“So what do we do about it?” James says, looking around the room for an answer that nobody can give. “We don’t have any real evidence.”

“She hid Lex’s identity from us, and she’s been roadblocking us since the beginning,” Kara points out, but nobody seems convinced. “Always being unhelpful. Plus the envelope was licked by a woman, remember?”

Alex sighs. “None of that would hold up in court. Maybe she’s communicated about it with someone? Something in writing?”

“I don’t have a warrant to search her office,” Kara says, flopping back on the bed with the coffee cup upright on her chest. “And I think she keeps it locked. We need more. We need to catch her in the act.”

“In the act of what?” Vasquez says, throwing her hands up. “The worst thing I’ve seen her do is be a bit of a bitch.”

“I need to talk to Lena,” Kara mutters, sitting up again and taking another big swig of now room-temperature coffee. “I should get back while she’s still asleep anyways.”

“Nothing specific, though?” Alex says sharply, making Kara’s insides squirm with guilt. “If you ask her about her mother too much, she might get suspicious.”

Kara answers with a silent wave, grabbing a second coffee as she bustles out the door and back to the room. She was telling the truth about one thing, at least – she wants to be there when Lena wakes up.

She tries to open the door as quietly as she can, wincing at the loud beep of the key card, but when she slips inside she finds that her effort was wasted - Lena is sitting up in bed, her oversized t-shirt hanging slightly off one shoulder and the duvet bunched around her hips. They both jump a little, Kara fumbling with her coffee cups and Lena running a quick hand through her messy hair, and a sort of quiet settles between them that should be tense but somehow isn’t. Lena’s eyes flicker down to Kara’s stolen sweater, and her face softens.

“Good morning,” Kara says nervously, holding out the newer cup as an offering. “Coffee?”

Lena smiles, quietly accepting the drink and taking a careful sip. She winces a little at the first taste, lowering it into her lap as she raises a brow at Kara.

“I’ll be honest – I appreciate the gesture, but this is pretty terrible coffee.”

Kara laughs, sinking down onto the end of Lena’s bed and taking a swig of her own almost-empty cup. It’s even more bitter when it’s lukewarm instead of hot, and Kara sets it on the bedside table. “Yeah, I think James made it. Even at the Bureau his coffee always tastes burnt.”

“So you were at…a meeting, of some kind?” Lena asks cautiously. Like she isn’t sure she’s allowed to be asking. “Is that where you’re always disappearing to during the night with your sister?”

Kara nods. “That, or I’m in boot-camp sessions with Cat. Trying to make me into a believable pageant queen. Alex wanted an update on what happened last night.”

Lena’s hand tightens on the coffee cup. Kara can see that she’s almost crushing it, little fissure lines forming on the paper, and gently she reaches out and takes it from Lena, setting it next to her own cup before it ends up all over the sheets.

“And?” Lena says, her voice calm despite her tight body language. “What did you tell her?”

“About your brother,” Kara says, leaning back and bracing herself against the mattress. Lena’s eyes follow the movement, dragging down to where the sweater stretches over her arms and back up again just slowly enough for Kara to catch it. It makes her feel a little warm. “And his connection to Cadmus. And that I suspect Lillian is involved, but I don’t know how to prove it. Nothing else.”

“You didn’t tell her about…” Lena trails off, gesturing vaguely between them. Kara shakes her head.

“No. I can’t keep it from her forever, but I don’t think it would do any good for her to have yet another thing to stress about right now. She’s pretty close to blowing a gasket as it is.”

“You think she’d be upset?” Lena says, picking at one of her cuticles. It’s clear that she’s trying not to be too vulnerable, but Kara can still see the worry that propels the question.

“It’s complicated,” Kara says, shifting closer until she can feel their knees touching through the barrier of the duvet. “She’s a protective person, especially with me. We’re in the middle of an investigation against your family, and keeping this whole thing under wraps is part of her job. Knowing that you know everything and that I’m – that we’re – you know,” Kara fumbles, copying Lena’s gesture before she makes an idiot of herself trying to put a label on something they’ve barely even talked about yet, “she’d probably freak out a little bit.”

“Right,” Lena nods, her hands twisting in her lap. Her brow is furrowed, and Kara wants desperately to smooth the worry from her face. “Of course. She has no reason to trust me.”

“I trust you,” Kara says, without hesitation. She puts a hand over Lena’s, pausing her fidgeting. “Alex will come around. We just need to get through this weekend first.”

“And what happens after that?” Lena says softly. Kara swallows, rubbing the back of Lena’s hand with her thumb. That question is one Kara has been asking herself since last night, and she still hasn’t come up with a satisfactory answer. What she’s feeling for Lena, what she’s been feeling since they met, is real – but it’s also new, and completely untested. They live in different states, live totally different lives outside this bubble, and there’s no way of knowing if whatever connection they’ve made is worth pursuing past this weekend.

And yet, the idea of never seeing Lena again after tomorrow is one Kara doesn’t want to entertain.

“I don’t know,” Kara says carefully, her thumb keeping its even rhythm. “What do you want to happen?”

The rising tension in the room is unceremoniously broken by several loud, insistent knocks on the door.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kara mutters, deflating slightly while Lena slips out of bed just a little too quickly to answer it. Lena practically runs to the door, opening it only to be almost barreled over by a frantic Nia with a hand over her mouth.

Before Kara can even ask, Nia sprints past both of them to their bathroom, slamming the door behind her and immediately vomiting. 

“I guess it’s good to know she survived,” Kara quips, talking over the partially-muffled retching. Lena presses a hand to her lips to cover her smile, instead shushing Kara and knocking gently on the bathroom door when the noises start to quiet.

“Nia, honey? Are you okay?”

The toilet flushes, and Kara can hear the sink running as Nia assumedly washes her mouth out before finally opening the door to face them. Her face is deadly pale, and she lets both of them help her to the bed to sit down.

“Sam was hogging the bathroom,” Nia grumbles, flopping back onto Lena’s bed in Kara’s abandoned spot. “I didn’t make a mess, I promise. Would one of you just mercy kill me? I promise my family won’t press charges.”

“It’s your own fault you drank so much,” Lena says affectionately, swiping the sweaty hair from Nia’s forehead. “We tried to stop you.”

“Yes, I know, I make bad decisions,” Nia groans, rolling over and burying her face in the covers to muffle her next statement. “At least I didn’t hook up with my roommate.”

Kara’s stomach lurches.

“What? I didn’t –” Lena starts, looking desperately at Kara.

“We didn’t –” Kara adds in, waving her arms in what she realizes is a slightly too enthusiastic way. “Why - why would you think…?”

“There was no hooking up!” Lena finishes more firmly. Nia only smirks, her face still pale as she carefully drags herself up to head back to her own room.

“You’re wearing Lena’s sweater.”

Shoot.

“It was dark when I got dressed!” Kara calls after her, to no avail. “That’s all! Nia!”

Much to Kara’s chagrin, there’s no more time to talk after Nia leaves. They’re both already running a little late, half the other girls already dressed and heading down to breakfast by the time Kara makes herself presentable enough to leave the room, and after forcing herself to eat some plain toast it’s straight to rehearsal.

Something Kara hadn’t realized about the televised finale tomorrow is that while the show itself is only a few hours long, they’re hours that need to be choreographed down to the millisecond, and Lillian is intense to the point of mania about it going smoothly. She watches them all like a hawk as they practice gliding across the stage in sync, exiting and entering unobtrusively and allowing each contestant their moment in the spotlight, and she barks out orders when someone so much as misses an arm movement.

The rehearsal schedule is so packed that Kara hardly sees Alex or even Cat until late afternoon. They’re shuffled from practicing stage directions to dress rehearsal for the talent show to rehearsal for the group dance number with barely any pauses - but nothing, not even Lillian picking on her ceaselessly for her lack of grace or Lex appearing in the wings of the stage to stare at them all in random intervals, can keep Kara from sticking close to Lena all day. She focuses on almost nothing but the three Luthors, specifically how close Lillian and Lex are to Lena at any given time, not even paying attention to the movements she’s supposed to be following, until Nia points out that for the last 20 minutes Kara has been doing the choreography perfectly without realizing.

“Oh,” Kara says doubtfully, as the notes of the song fade out and Lillian announces (through a megaphone, of course) that they can have a 5-minute break before they need to be back in their starting positions. “Wait. The dance choreography? I didn’t mess it up?”

“It was pretty much perfect,” Sam confirms, handing out dixie cups of water to each of the girls in the vicinity. Kara gulps hers down, crushing the cup in her hand.

“I guess all she needed was a night out to loosen up,” Andrea says, sipping much more daintily at her own water. Nia snorts into her cup.

“Or someone else loosened her up last night.”

Lena chokes, spraying water in a wide berth that mostly ends up hitting Siobhan. Sam rushes to pat her back before Kara can get there, and while Lena is still clearing her airway Kara changes the subject.

“The big interviews are this afternoon, right?” Kara says loudly, not quite covering Lena’s coughing. “How different are they from the short ones yesterday?”

“Completely,” Nia says drily, looking mostly entertained by Lena’s plight. “Yesterday was a few fast questions. Today is a full 3 minutes each, and the questions are more in-depth.”

“3 minutes each?” Kara says, frowning. “There’s so many of us. Won’t that take like, 3 hours?”

Andrea shrugs, tossing her cup in the trash and heading back to her spot with a swish of her long braid. “They do it in groups of 10. Do you have somewhere better to be?”

Kara’s earpiece crackles right as the music starts again, and Kara’s apparent new grasp of the choreography is tested as she tries to listen to both at the same time.

“Meeting in the team room at 1800,” Alex says in her ear, quiet but insistent.

“I might still be in interviews then,” Kara whispers back, twirling without stumbling for the first time in memory. “Or at dinner.”

“I asked Cat, the interviews will be over. And just skip dinner. Jonn is on his way.”

Kara stops dead. The girl behind her walks straight into her back, hissing what the hell? as Kara tries desperately to get back on track, but she can’t quite find the beat again with so much going on.

“Jonn?” Kara says under her breath, wincing when Lillian immediately senses her weakness and shouts an insult. “What’s he doing coming all the way to Texas?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say,” Alex says, her voice tense. “Just be here, okay?”

The line goes dead, and Kara spends so much time trying to guess at why her boss would feel the need to come down and interfere with the operation that she hardly notices the rehearsal ending - and after a quick shower and 45 minutes in the makeup chair with Cat fussing around her, the next stage of the circus begins. Cat, oddly, doesn’t seem terribly worried about this round of interviews. She just helps Kara into a cream-coloured satin evening gown, gives her shoulder a squeeze, and murmurs ‘go charm them’ before giving Kara a push towards the stage door.

Kara finds her spot in the line with barely a thought, thankful that Lena is in her group even though she’s already distracted by how gorgeous she looks; Lena’s dress is a dazzling forest green, hugging her curves beautifully and making her eyes look even more arresting than they already are, and Kara gets herself tangled in the hem of her own garment when Lena gives her one tiny smile as they step on stage.

Getting herself disentangled proves more difficult than the other way around. The second Kara steps in front of the cameras she faceplants on the hardwood.

“Shoot,” Kara grunts, grateful at least that she hasn’t been mic’d yet as she heaves herself back to her feet. She tries to wave off the three girls who rush to help her with a self-deprecating laugh, but it doesn’t stop Lena and Sam.

“Are you okay?” Lena asks, brushing the dust from Kara’s dress as Sam helps to fix her hair. Kara nods, glancing at the cameras. All of them are trained on her.

“I’m fine,” Kara says, plastering on a smile that doesn’t feel quite as unnatural as it did two days ago. “At least I didn’t dive off the stage this time, right?”

Lena seems to understand. She leaves Kara with a smile and a brief squeeze of the wrist, and once Kara’s outfit has been successfully fixed they all perch on wooden stools in a semicircle.

Lena’s interview is the first of the group, and to Kara’s relief she doesn’t get any surprise curveballs like yesterday. Lillian is still one of the interviewers, but there’s also a new male host keeping her in check – Kara thinks his name is William, but he’s been mostly absent the last few days and she’s never been formally introduced. Kara gets the feeling that the reason she hasn’t seen him much is that he’s queued up to be Lillian’s replacement, and that’s made quite clear when the interviews start and he takes the lead, leaving Lillian in the background.

Lena breezes through her slot with ease, her banter with William light and amiable, and Lillian’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes for a single moment of it.

Kara is last in the order. William is just as friendly to her as he is to everyone else, introducing her as “everyone’s favourite anti-smoking activist” in a kind attempt to play off her fall, and the audience is laughing warmly by the time she gets her first question.

“Now tell me, Kara,” William says conspiratorially in his likeable English accent, giving her a big stage-smile, “a large part of this pageant is the spirit of friendly competition. Is there anything at all that you’d like to say to your fellow competitors?”

Kara knows what she would have said a few days ago. Either she would have recited a canned answer directly from Cat, or she would have tried to make a joke to draw attention away from the fact that she didn’t really want to be here at all. But now, with Lena just a few seats away from her, she takes this opportunity for what it is.

“That there isn’t a doubt in my mind that I’m going to want these girls in my life after we leave here,” Kara says clearly, her eyes never leaving Lena’s suddenly wide ones. “They might not have known it before now, but they’ve become so important to me. And just because the world says we should go our separate ways, it doesn’t mean we have to do that. I think…we were meant to meet. To be together outside of this,” Kara says, swallowing hard past the nervous lump in her throat.

“As…as friends,” she adds, finally looking away from Lena to see that the rest of the girls are looking at her with everything from surprise to suspicion. Sam, at least, reaches over to squeeze her hand with an understanding smile.

 “That is so sweet!” Sam whispers, winking at Kara as William nods along innocently.

“Well said, Kara,” William says, starting a quick round of applause that the audience echoes. “Very well said. Sometimes friendship really is forged in the heat of the pageant, isn’t it?”

Sam snorts quietly at the word friendship, unheard by the microphones, but Kara hears it. Lena hasn’t looked away from her since she started talking, her eyes a little glossy as she claps absently along with everyone else, but she looks more confused than anything else. Like she got the message Kara was trying to get across, but she can’t quite believe that Kara was really talking to her.

Kara wishes she could reassure her, but it’s Lillian’s turn to ask a question now, and Kara pulls her attention away to meet the older Luthor’s stare head-on.

“Quite right, William,” Lillian says, her smile fixed. “In that same vein, as you may know, there are many who consider the Miss United States pageant to be outdated and…antifeminist. What would you say to them, Miss Kent?”

“I would have to say,” Kara says, confident and defiant in her answer, “that I used to be one of them.”

A ripple goes through the crowd. It’s a combination of gasps and murmuring, Kara’s unexpected comment causing a wave of pearl-clutching that Lillian seems bolstered by, but that confidence wanes when Kara continues.

“And then,” Kara says, loudly enough to silence the titters, “I came here. And I realized that these women are smart, terrific people who are just trying to make a difference in the world. Even if I know at the end of the day, we all secretly hope the other one will fall on her face – oh, wait a minute! I've already done that!”

The crowd laughs this time, clearly pleased by her honesty. Lillian, on the other hand, looks downright shocked.

“For me, this has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life,” Kara finishes, making sure to do the brightest pageant-smile Cat taught her while the music swells and the crowd erupts in a storm of applause.

But Kara isn’t finished. Seeing Lillian here today, sitting so close to Lena, wearing the mask of politeness while she plots to hurt her own daughter, makes Kara’s blood boil. And even though her slot is technically over, Kara keeps going over the music, catching Lillian’s eye.

“And if anyone,” Kara says clearly, the music cutting off with a discordant sound as the orchestra tries to adapt to the interruption, “Anyone, ever tried to hurt one of my new friends, I would take them out.”

The audience goes silent. The camera operators, who had been preparing to sign off once William and Lillian wrapped up the round of interviews, perk up and swivel to focus on Kara. And Kara doesn’t care. All she cares about is protecting Lena, protecting everyone here, and making sure that Lillian knows her place. Making sure she knows that Kara won’t back down.

“And if they ran, I would hunt them down,” Kara continues, keeping unflinching eye contact with Lillian. “Nobody hurts the people I love. No matter how powerful they think they are.”

Lillian, for a brief and shining moment, actually looks startled by Kara’s candor. And then Kara flashes her most brilliant smile.

“Thank you, Lillian.”

The applause is scattered, this time, but the orchestra strikes back up and after a few nervous words from William the cameras finally turn away. Through the sudden rush of getting everyone up and ushering in the next group Kara finds Lena’s eyes from across the semicircle, and the confused expression is gone – replaced with something else. Something more exhilarating. Something Kara might even, if she was feeling brave, categorize as hunger.

Cat is waiting in the wings, and in stark contrast to almost every other time Kara has come off stage, she looks somewhat tickled by the whole thing.

“One brief, shining moment, and then that,” Cat says, shaking her head. But she’s smiling, and Kara shrugs, still following Lena with her eyes as she disappears into the changing room ahead. Lena looks back over her shoulder just before she goes through the door, and Kara’s heart skips a beat.

“Maybe they’ll give me extra points for moxie?”

Cat leads Kara back to the changing room, immediately starting to help her undress, and Kara loses sight of Lena in the bustle. “Some of the judges dislike Lillian almost as much as you do. Perhaps they’ll take your side.”

“I don’t think anyone hates her as much as I do,” Kara mutters, stepping out of her dress and letting it pool on the floor. Cat tsks, picking it up and draping it on a garment rack, but doesn’t scold her. “Have you seen Lena?”

Cat shakes her head, busy with removing Kara’s jewelry and storing it at her station.

“Unlike you, I don’t track her every move. I’m sure you’ll see her at dinner.”

“I have a meeting,” Kara says distractedly, trying and failing to peek around the mirror to check the other side of the room. But Cat has her by the necklace, and she tugs Kara back into place before unfastening it and starting to remove her makeup.

“Then I suppose you’ll have to wait, Romeo.”

Kara escapes and heads back to their room to change into comfortable clothes the second Cat lets her, but she’s disappointed to find it empty. She almost turns right around and heads to dinner to find Lena, meeting or not, but with one last sweep of the room Kara notices one thing out of place – on Lena’s pillow is one of the hotel’s business cards, and when Kara grabs it and flips it over there’s one word scrawled on the back in neat, narrow handwriting.

Pool.

Kara doesn’t generally like following instructions; but in this case, she’s more than happy to make an exception.

The day is fading into sunset when Kara finds her. The pool is alight with it, vibrant orange shimmering on the uneven surface of the water disturbed only by Lena. Lena, who is slicking her hair back and turning towards Kara and –

And her dress is folded on a deck chair.

Unlike last time Lena was in the pool, she’s wearing nothing but a bra and underwear tonight. What little makeup she still has on is slightly smudged in a way that makes Kara’s stomach do a funny little twist, and Kara’s eyes are drawn down despite her every effort to be respectful - down the graceful column of Lena’s neck and onto what feels like miles of pale skin. Most of it is distorted by the water, but everything north of Lena’s chest is out in the open, and Kara’s mouth has never felt so dry.

It doesn’t help that Lena’s stare is scorching. She’s not beckoning Kara, exactly, but her eyes say it all – come here.

Kara strips without a second thought. She tosses her shirt somewhere on the grass, stumbles out of her pants with a few clumsy hops, and the moment she’s free she dives into the cool water, cutting through it in a gentle curve and coming up right in front of Lena. The freeing sensation of the water on her skin and the closeness of Lena, the water almost indiscernibly warmer around her body, is almost enough to make Kara miss the sad little beep of her waterlogged earpiece going offline.

Whoops.

“Hi,” Kara croaks, her heart stuttering as Lena winds her arms boldly around Kara’s shoulders.

“Hi,” Lena murmurs, much more confidently. “You found my note.”

The water laps at their shoulders, Lena’s breath is close enough to tickle Kara’s face, and Lena is pressed against her almost naked and Kara is having trouble thinking straight –

“Did you mean what you said?” Lena asks, so quiet that Kara has to strain to hear her over the water. “In the interview?”

Kara’s thoughts settle a little. There’s a tiny quiver in Lena’s voice, a hint of nervousness that seems somehow to make Kara’s own nerves a little better, and she answers immediately.

“Of course,” Kara whispers back, sliding her own hands to wrap around Lena’s lower back. It pulls them closer together, and Lena’s breath hitches when their thighs bump together. “Every word. We didn’t get the chance to talk this morning, but…yeah. That’s how I feel.”

For a few tense seconds, Lena just stares. Her mouth opens slightly, her breath catching on unsaid words, and all Kara wants is to capture it with her own. To breathe her in, to satisfy the persistent desire she’s had since the minute they met. Lena is so soft under Kara’s hands, the curve of her back practically begging for Kara to spread her hand wide over it, and still Lena says nothing.

“Are you okay?” Kara asks shakily, her hands bunching into fists against Lena’s hips. Lena’s eyes dart down, back up, and then Kara’s brain short-circuits just as badly as her earpiece did because Lena is kissing her.

It’s the softest, most gentle kiss Kara has ever experienced. A feather-light meeting of lips, so brief that if Kara didn’t have her eyes open she could almost convince herself it wasn’t real. But she can see it, can see Lena’s eyes drift closed and count the tiny droplets of water in her eyelashes. It’s over before Kara can properly respond, and when Lena’s eyes open again the fading light is just enough for Kara to see every fleck of grey and green in them.

“Is this sober enough for you?” Lena murmurs, her breath warm on Kara’s lips.

Kara doesn’t need words to answer. She surges forward, pressing into a kiss much more like the one she’s been thinking about for days – their lips slanted together firmly, Lena’s hips under her hands, Lena’s fingers wound tight into her hair. To Kara’s delight Lena melts into it, arching into Kara’s touch and deepening the kiss almost immediately, and Kara can’t stop the long, low groan that slips out when Lena licks deep into her mouth with no reservations. All the hesitation of last night is gone. Tonight Lena is eager, focused, and devastatingly good at this. So good that Kara doesn’t realize Lena is trying to walk them backwards towards the wall of the pool until she hooks her fingers into the front of Kara’s boxers and tugs, the cool water rushing against Kara’s most sensitive skin making her shiver, and Kara responds by grabbing Lena’s thighs in two big handfuls and lifting her half out of the water.

“Oh,” Lena breathes, wrapping her legs tight around Kara’s waist and grasping her hard by the back of the neck. “Kara.”

The water splashes around them, the ripples feeling like shockwaves on Kara’s heated skin - the water is helping a little to keep Lena aloft, but Kara wishes it wasn’t. She wants to show Lena that she could hold her up unaided, wants to hear Lena gasp again at her show of strength. Just the thought of it makes her preen a little.

It helps that when she presses Lena into the side of the pool, she immediately arches forward, pressing herself into Kara’s abs and dragging her short nails up and over the muscles of her back.

“Fuck, you’re strong,” Lena mutters as Kara nips an eager column up her throat, ending in a hot, open-mouthed kiss that sears itself into Kara’s memory.

That does the trick.

Chlorinated water or not, Kara is half on her way to a show of public indecency when Lena pulls back a little.

“Doing this in the pool is…logistically difficult,” Lena says breathlessly, laughing a little when Kara stops in the middle of nipping at her ear to level her with an affronted look.

“You’re the one who asked me to come here, you know.”

 “I know,” Lena says, stroking the side of Kara’s face with a soft smile. “I wasn’t really thinking. It just felt right.”

“You were right,” Kara admits, leaning forward to kiss her again. It’s slower this time, exploratory and affectionate, and Kara loses herself in the sensation of it all – the warmth of Lena’s skin, the taste of her, the smell of chlorine and the sound of early evening birds and lapping water.

It’s pretty much perfect, until Kara remembers where she’s supposed to be. Lena, sensing the shift in mood, pulls back.

“You okay?”

“I have a meeting in, like…5 minutes,” Kara says with a wince, letting go of one of Lena’s thighs to check her (thankfully waterproof) watch. “With, um. With my boss.”

“Of course,” Lena sighs good-naturedly, letting her legs slide back down. She kisses Kara deep, almost distracting her again, and nips hard at her lip before pushing firmly on her chest. “Go on.”

“But – shouldn’t we talk?” Kara says, torn between two necessities. Lena leans back against the side of the pool, crossing her arms with a smile.

“We have all night. The faster you go, the faster you’ll be back.”

Kara heaves herself out of the pool and sprints back to their room in record time. She manages to find dry clothes quickly, but she skids to a halt halfway out the door when her customary pre-leaving check comes up incomplete – her badge isn’t in her pocket where it belongs.

“Damn it,” she mutters, sifting through the mess on her bedside table and coming up blank. “Worst possible time –”

The desk and the bathroom both come up frustratingly empty. She’s just settling on the floor to tear through the pockets on every pair of pants she’s worn this weekend when the sliding door opens and Lena enters, her face bare and her hair slowly drying in gentle waves. She’s wearing a white hotel robe and it looks like not much else, her wet clothes bunched up in her hand, and Kara is pretty sure that both her bra and her underwear are in the bundle.

“Kara!” Lena says, looking genuinely startled. “I thought you’d be gone already?”

Kara, still kneeled on the floor, is having trouble focusing on anything that isn’t how incredible Lena looks right now. She’s never seen Lena’s face this natural before – even before bed Lena seems to keep some product on her face, washing it off in the morning and re-applying it. But the pool has washed all that away, leaving just clean skin. Her cheekbones are slightly less pronounced, her eyes equally beautiful but less prominent without liner or mascara. Kara can even see a few small blemishes in the low light.

She’s so beautiful that it makes Kara’s chest ache.

“Kara?” Lena says again, sounding somewhat self-conscious.

The only thing Kara could reasonably be expected to do under the circumstances is kiss her.

Lena seems surprised by the suddenness, but she falls into it quickly. The wet clothes hit the carpet and instead Lena’s hands land firmly on either side of Kara’s face, grasping her behind the neck and somehow immediately controlling the kiss that Kara started. It’s Lena who pulls her closer, Lena who deepens it, Lena who pivots and walks them slowly backwards towards the bed – but when they fall back against the mattress, Kara on top and Lena’s robe falling open, Kara is the one to freeze.

“Sorry!” Kara says, the word coming out in almost a squeak when Lena shifts and Kara sees a long, unbroken strip of skin all the way down to – oh.

As Kara suspected, Lena is not wearing her underwear anymore.

Kara’s eyes dart back up, staying respectfully above Lena’s collarbones. “Sorry. Wow. You just looked – I mean, you look amazing. But this is a step and, um, I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on you.”

Lena’s smile is as slow and sweet as honey. She spreads her thighs a little, shifting so that the robe parts even more and Kara can see the barest hint of a breast, and Kara knows that if she so much as glances down between their bodies she’s going to see everything.

“What if I want you to put pressure on me?”

Kara exhales shakily, but she doesn’t move, too caught up in a mantra of don’t look down don’t look down to really register much else. Lena, clearly seeing her internal struggle, grabs a fistful of her shirt and pulls her closer - close enough that Kara can feel damp heat pressing into the thigh of her pants. Can hear the sound of contact being made.

“Kara,” Lena says firmly, pressing herself up with an uneven little sigh, “I don’t feel pressured. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who doesn’t make me feel pressured. The way you talked today…you made Lillian stand down. You made her worried. And you did it to defend me. Nobody has ever done that before.”

“You deserve someone to stand up for you,” Kara says, her gaze fixed on the freckle in the centre of Lena’s throat as a makeshift grounding technique. Higher thought is quickly being overridden by the desire to do whatever Lena asks of her, and it’s pretty clear what Lena is asking. “I’m always going to do that.”

“I know that now,” Lena says honestly, carding her fingers through Kara’s drying hair. “For the first time I’m doing what I want to do, when I want to do it.”

“And what you want to do is…”

Lena’s answer is to slip her hands under Kara’s shirt, pulling her down hard and dragging her nails over Kara’s lower back.

Oh, Kara is going to be so late. 

The robe is discarded as soon as Lena gives that green light, pinned under Lena’s body as Kara’s resistance finally crumbles. But Lena isn’t content with being the only naked one. Almost as soon as her arms are freed she starts to tug Kara’s shirt up, interrupting Kara’s goal of putting her hands on every inch of Lena’s skin she can reach. Kara resists at first – raising her arms would mean stopping the touching, and she’s really enjoying the touching – but after a few blocked attempts Lena does something Kara has never actually been on the receiving end of. She wraps a leg around Kara’s body, braces herself, and uses her hips to flip them both and pin Kara against the mattress.

“Wow,” Kara gasps once Lena has settled above her, her heart pounding both from sheer surprise and because the swap has the effect of putting Lena on display in a way that completely wipes Kara’s brain. Especially when Lena sits up, straddled over Kara’s hips and totally bare to her gaze.

Kara forgets to breathe. Lena is a work of art even under harsh hotel lights; every curve of her, every swell, every tiny perfect imperfection equally fascinating. Kara wants to smooth a hand in the dip between hip and waist, to reach up and cup Lena’s breasts – which pull down a little with their own weight, tipped with pale nipples that are rapidly hardening in the cool air – and memorize their shape.

Before she can try to take charge again, Lena leans forward to press her hand confidently down into Kara’s sternum, her spreading fingers grounding Kara in the moment.

“Are you uncomfortable with being naked?” Lena asks plainly. There’s no judgement in her tone, but it is unrelentingly firm.

“What?” Kara says, blinking cluelessly up into Lena’s face. Lena’s dark hair is draping between them, now, half-dry and still smelling faintly of chlorine. “No?”

“Great. Then let me get you naked,” Lena says more lightly, pressing more of her weight into Kara’s chest. “This isn’t a one-way street.” Maybe feeling Kara relax into the weight, Lena leans all the way forward, finally succeeding in pulling Kara’s shirt up until it’s bunched under her chin. Kara’s bra is in the way, but when Lena presses herself into Kara’s body more than enough of their skin is still touching to make Lena’s point.

“And I want to feel you, too,” Lena murmurs in Kara’s ear, nipping at her earlobe just hard enough to make Kara twitch.

Kara almost throws Lena off the bed in her hurry to get her clothes off. It takes some struggle and a little bit of laughter, but when the final article hits the floor Lena settles between her legs, spreading them gently and taking in the view with a look of quiet wonder. Kara feels stripped bare, her skin and her heart open to Lena as she braces herself on her elbows, but it doesn’t feel uncomfortable. It feels right.

“I feel like I’m seeing you for the first time,” Lena says quietly when she’s had her fill, her hands settling over Kara’s hipbones. Her thumbs rub little circles on the sensitive skin there, and the little bolts of sensation it causes makes Kara wonder if they might be magic.

And it’s true – this is the first time Lena is seeing her without any of the layers of masks she’s been wearing. No clothes, no makeup, no hairspray or heels or padding – just Kara, naked and clean from head to toe. And Lena’s desire makes her feel more beautiful than any of those trappings could ever hope to.

It’s clear that Lena isn’t going to be satisfied with simply letting Kara do all the work. So Kara settles down on her back, raising her arms above her head and relaxing into a position she doesn’t get to take very often. Biting her lip, she opens her legs wider, watching Lena’s eyes drift down and darken.

“I’m usually much hairier.”

Lena laughs. But the laughter doesn’t dampen the desire; it seems to make it flare brighter, and Lena presses forward to capture Kara’s mouth in a fierce kiss.

“Maybe I like it that way.”

Kara isn’t sure what she expected, but it wasn’t for Lena to be quite this enthusiastic. Lena has been pretty reserved in the time Kara has known her, especially around the other girls; but ever since Kara found her by the pool, it’s like a mask has been removed. Lena is lithe against Kara, and vocal in her pleasure. It’s exhilarating to feel like she’s wanted just as much as she wants Lena, to have Lena’s reaction to seeing Kara’s abs be not detached appreciation but instead to eagerly run her fingers and then her tongue over the flexing muscle. And every reaction from Kara is rewarded, like Lena thrives on being wanted, too.

Lena doesn’t expect Kara to take care of her first, like most partners Kara has had. In fact she demands otherwise, wrapping her arms fully around Kara’s thighs as she settles at the end of the mattress to mouth messy kisses in a meandering line downwards.

“Still good?” Lena says from just below Kara’s bellybutton, pausing before she goes any lower. Her voice is deeper than usual and a little rough, her hair mussed and thrown over her shoulder haphazardly, and somehow that turns Kara on almost as much as anything else that’s happened in the last few minutes.

Kara, unsure that she could make anything besides pathetic whining sounds right now, nods furiously and clenches her fists in the blankets, resisting the urge to sink them into Lena’s hair. But Lena puts a stop to that with a sharp nip on her inner thigh.

“Don’t hold back,” Lena murmurs, her breath on Kara’s hot, sensitive skin making her pulse with almost painful anticipation, before her tongue makes Kara forget herself.

As it turns out, Lena’s eagerness translates directly to eating Kara out. The eye contact she maintains, the way she presses Kara’s hips down, the broad, firm line her tongue presses into Kara’s clit, all send little bolts of pleasure roaring through Kara – but it’s the tiny, instinctive moan Lena lets out at the first taste that has Kara losing her composure. She grabs at the back of Lena’s head, keeping her hold as light as she can, but her fingers quickly tighten in Lena’s hair when a single broad lick turns into a messy, focused exploration.

It's embarrassing how quickly Kara forgets to be gentle. Lena has her strung tight so fast that Kara can hardly keep up with her own body, her hand tugging and her hips grinding onto Lena’s face – but as Kara is approaching the fastest orgasm she’s ever had, Lena slows down. As if she wants to savour it she shifts focus from Kara’s clit to everything else she can reach, shifting up and applying suction to bring Kara back up before moving away again to explore.

It's far more time and effort than anyone has ever put into making Kara come, and Lena seems perfectly content.

The rise-and-fall, Lena’s hunger for her, the pure experience of watching Lena’s tongue drag intimately over her clit, reduces Kara to a trembling mess in more ways than one. Sex for her is usually just fun and pleasurable. About sensation and mutual delight. This moment is all of those things, yes, but it’s also something more. Like there’s a quivering thread strung between them, a tentative connection, and with every moment it gets stronger.

Kara tenses a little when she senses Lena’s fingers drift downwards, gathering the wetness under her chin in what feels like a request. Normally Kara would accept it even though it doesn’t do much for her, focusing instead on what she does like to keep from breaking the moment, but the idea of not being vocal when Lena has done so many little things to make her comfortable just doesn’t sit right.

Lena, feeling the shift in her body, slows down a little – and for probably the first time, Kara makes herself be fully honest.

“No fingers,” Kara admits in a gasp, and Lena’s hand halts where it is. “Just this, please, just this –”

She presses down on Lena’s head a little, and the moment passes without complication when Lena changes course easily. Instead she intensifies what she’s doing with her tongue, not stopping when Kara gets to the edge this time but pushing right through it. It feels a little bit like a reward, and Kara takes it gladly.

“Close,” Kara chokes out, instinct taking over as she chases an orgasm that dances just out of reach. “Lena –”

Lena moans, doubling her effort as Kara spreads her legs until her hips ache, arching up hard and reaching, reaching –

Lena digs her short nails into Kara’s hips, dragging down in eight clean lines with just a hint of pain, and the extra stimulation is all it takes for Kara to break. She comes hard, hard enough that the toe-curling pleasure of it overtakes her senses for a few seconds, and even though she loses any control over her bucking hips Lena still follows her through it. She’s there through every trembling, vulnerable minute of it, and she’s still there when Kara finally settles, licking slowly and carefully at the less sensitive edges of Kara’s clit and prolonging her leisurely cool-down.

“Thank you,” Kara breathes when she feels she can speak again, her heart pounding so hard in her chest that she’s surprised she can’t see it through the skin. “Thank you. Sometimes that’s hard for me, and you…thank you. You’re really good at that.”

“You know what they say. Do what you love,” Lena says, licking a wide but gentle stripe over Kara’s sensitive skin. She nuzzles at Kara’s hipbone, her mouth leaving a slick trail that’s far hotter than it has any right to be. “It’s even easier when you taste incredible. Can I keep going?”

“I need a minute,” Kara admits, and Lena easily presses her mouth to Kara’s inner thigh instead. “Between, you know? I can go again, just…after I fuck you?”

Lena visibly shivers, and nods enthusiastically.

“Please.”

While she enjoys both, Kara has always slightly preferred giving to receiving. Lena might be the one to finally make the two equal – Kara is still coasting on the downdrafts of her efforts – but even so, something about being the direct cause of someone’s pleasure has always turned her on more than anything else, and the idea of being the cause of Lena’s pleasure has her practically vibrating.

She flips them over easily, slotting herself against Lena’s body like a puzzle piece. Lena’s legs fall open, her arms wrapping around Kara’s back impatiently to pull her closer, and as much as Kara wants to slow the pace and savour it like Lena did she can’t help but match Lena’s energy. If Lena wants it now, Kara is happy to serve.

Kara does give herself one thing, though. She kisses Lena thoroughly first, a long and indulgent meeting of tongues that Lena thankfully relaxes into, Kara sliding her hands from Lena’s waist down to her thighs and letting herself memorize the perfect softness. Lena’s knees raise a little to bracket Kara’s hips, and when Kara finally breaks the kiss Lena’s eyes open a bit hazily. She looks as kiss-drunk as Kara feels, and it’s only when she remembers the wet heat of Lena pressing into her belly that she manages to tear herself away for something better.

Lena, much like Kara, is waxed for the pageant. But when Kara shimmies down the bed to get closer she can see that it’s a little rough, the hint of dark hair growing back now that the bathing suit portion is over, and Kara drags her mouth slowly over the stubble. It scratches at her sensitive lips, and Lena lets out a shaky sigh.

“Kara…” she murmurs, reaching down to tuck Kara’s hair behind her ear. Her lips are red and riven, bitten by the clean white line of her teeth while she clearly tries her best to be patient, but her thighs twitch expectantly on either side of Kara’s face. “Please.”

Her mouth watering, Kara obliges.

She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t started thinking about returning the favour as soon as Lena went down on her. Finally having Lena in her mouth, finally seeing exactly how wet she is and dragging her tongue through the perfect mess of it, makes Kara never want to leave this spot. Kara’s chest thumps with pride when after a minute of experimentation she finds the right pressure, and she’s practically ready to go again herself in record time just from the way Lena cries out and arches into her face.

Lena is so responsive, reacting to every move Kara tries with a symphony of little noises. Her hips shift constantly in search of more, and Kara follows every wordless encouragement as best she can – a little grunt when something isn’t working, a broken whimper when Kara has found a good pattern, a loud cry when Kara surprises her with something new. A crescendo of breathy sounds when Kara finally gets the perfect rhythm, her hips moving so insistently that Kara has to pin them to the bed so she can focus her attention; she’d almost be worried by the loud, sharp yell Lena lets out in response if she hadn’t also grabbed Kara’s head with both her hands, holding it in place as her feet curl into the air.

As vocal as she’s been so far, Lena seems to lose her breath when she comes. Kara can feel it in the way her whole body tenses and quivers, her heels digging into Kara’s back and her clit thrumming, until with a needy sob she breaks apart against Kara’s mouth. The taste of her turns heavier as she sinks back against the bed, panting, and Kara chases it to the source.

She’s never been this turned on in her life, and though it would be unprecedented she’s pretty sure that if Lena had lasted any longer Kara could have come, too.

“Fuck,” Lena groans, her legs un-clenching from Kara’s shoulders and falling shakily open again. It feels like an invitation, and Kara takes it, revelling in the mess Lena has made of her face. There’s a sheen of sweat on Lena’s brow, in the valley between her breasts, and Kara wants to kiss her way up the latter to pay some much-needed attention to her chest – but she also isn’t sure she’s capable of moving from this spot when Lena is still letting Kara suck indulgently at her clit.

She’d stay here for hours, if Lena could take it.

“Do you need to stop?” Kara asks, pressing a soft kiss to the swollen tip. Lena shakes her head frantically, chasing Kara’s mouth with her hips until she applies it again. Kara’s own clit pulses at that – at Lena’s desperation, at her immediate need for more. At how comfortable she feels being clear with what she wants.

“Inside, inside, inside,” Lena chants under her breath, and Kara scrambles to comply. She braces herself on her elbows, and with barely any resistance she has two fingers inside – almost in unison they both whimper, Lena arching into the fullness and Kara immediately obeying Lena’s next request.

“More.”

Kara gives her more. She gives her three fingers, gives her the hard and fast rhythm she’s begging for, and as per Lena’s repeated request she does not stop. She keeps going until her arm aches, and she’s completely abandoned using her mouth in favour of panting short breaths into the crease of Lena’s thigh.

The visual is one Kara hopes she never forgets. Lena is unrestrained, her body moving with every thrust, and her face is flushed deep red as it contorts in instinctive pleasure. Kara aches, suddenly, to kiss her – and with a start she remembers that she can. Despite being inside her at this exact moment, Kara had forgotten that now she can kiss Lena anytime she wants.

Without losing her rhythm Kara hauls herself up, hiking Lena’s leg up to wrap around her waist and using the force of her hips to drive into Lena even harder. Lena reacts beautifully, sinking her nails into the base of Kara’s neck, and when their lips meet again her moan is almost feral. It’s all tongue, Lena licking herself from Kara’s mouth and fucking herself into Kara’s hand, and this time Kara recognizes the crescendo pattern of her whines – Lena is going to come again.

“God, I wish I brought – my strap,“ Kara says between hard breaths, and Lena’s next noise is so loud Kara is sure the next room over must hear her if they haven’t already. “Could fuck you so hard –”

“Yes,” Lena whimpers, tightening like a vise on Kara’s fingers at the mere suggestion. “Yes –”

“Next time,” Kara grunts, working her arm harder against the resistance. Lena arches again – maybe at the increased pressure, maybe at the promise Kara is offering – and Kara scrapes her teeth against Lena’s throat as she comes, not hard enough to mark but hard enough to show that she wants to. Another promise for next time as Lena breaks against her like a wave.

Kara collapses herself a few moments later, nosing tiredly into Lena’s neck and shaking from exertion.

Lena’s perfume has always been sexy, but strangely right now she smells even better. It’s not perfume or chlorine but something deeper, sweat and sex and whatever body chemistry makes Lena so perfect for her - and it pulls at something base in Kara that just wants to bury itself inside her and never leave. Kara nuzzles closer, chasing it to the underside of Lena’s jaw and planting herself there as their bodies cool together.

Kara is vaguely aware that she must be heavy, lying on top of Lena like this, but Lena seems perfectly happy. Her hands trace patterns over Kara’s sweaty back, taking a slow, indulgent journey down and down until finally she grabs Kara’s ass in two surprisingly large handfuls.

Kara grunts, her hips jerking down and into Lena’s spread legs with a wet noise that makes Lena’s breath hitch. So Kara does it again, bracing her knees and rolling her hips in a motion that mimics what she so badly wants to do to Lena, and after the third time Lena uses her grip to pull Kara down and into her with a breathy little moan.

“Again?” Kara rasps, kissing a line down Lena’s sternum. The salt of her skin is strangely addicting, and Kara follows it to the soft curve of Lena’s breast, making a slow and careful trek towards a stiff nipple. She hardly got to spend any time there, and the situation needs to be rectified.

Lena laughs, low and smoky.

“You can fuck me all night if you want.”

Kara’s body, exhausted only a few seconds ago, fires back up in an instant.

“I take it your meeting was cancelled,” Lena murmurs, dragging her nails lightly over Kara’s back in a way she’s clearly picked up that Kara likes. Kara is barely listening, too busy grinding into Lena and imagining how good it’s going to be when she can sink inside her this way.

“What meeting?” Kara mumbles into Lena’s chest, inches from her destination and focused entirely on seeing exactly how sensitive Lena is there. Lena, though, seems to have kept some of her higher thinking – she makes a gentle fist in Kara’s hair, tugging her away from her prize and pinning her with a pointedly raised eyebrow until reality finally worms its way into Kara’s lizard-brain.

Kara jolts upright, all thoughts of another round evaporating.

“Shoot!”

Lena lets out a disappointed breath. “I assume that’s a no.”

Kara rolls out of bed, landing in a half-crouch and sweeping up a handful of clothes. She manages to find a bra, but her underwear has disappeared.

“I couldn’t find my badge,” Kara explains, desperately hoping that some of the blood in her body will return to her brain, “and then you came in, and…”

Kara gestures wildly at Lena’s nudity, and Lena rolls her eyes good-naturedly and points to the open suitcase on the floor at the end of Kara’s bed.

“Did you check the thigh holster you wore under your dress today?”

Kara did not, in fact, check her thigh holster. She’d tossed it into her suitcase when she came back here earlier, and Kara dives for it without bothering to finish dressing, finally finding the badge exactly where Lena said it would be.

“You’re amazing,” Kara says, taking a step towards Lena with the intent to kiss her – but Lena plants a hand on her chest, handing her a pair of pants and pushing her towards the door.

“And you’re late.”

Kara grabs the pants, shoving a leg in them blindly. “I am so late.”

“Go save the day,” Lena says, reclining against the pillows and looking so heart-stoppingly good that Kara almost stops in her tracks again. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

Kara throws on the first sweater she can reach, and does her best to set a land-speed record as she sprints across the hotel with her badge in one pocket and her gun in the other.

She’s 26 minutes late when she finally jams her keycard into the door, and Jonn seems irritated but unsurprised – he doesn’t even pause his conversation with James, and Kara sidles over to where Alex is standing with her arms crossed, scanning the room and pointedly not looking at Kara.

“Nice of you to finally join us,” Alex says tightly.

“I know,” Kara whispers back, guilt stabbing at her belly. “Sorry, I was –”

“I know what you were doing.”

The guilt turns into icicles of dread.

“What do you mean?” Kara asks carefully. Alex’s ears are crimson, and she still won’t look at Kara. She looks both embarrassed and absolutely livid.

“Your earpiece came back online. Briefly.”

Kara’s stomach drops. She reaches up to her ear where the little device she’d assumed was dead rests, and digs it out – the little light is blinking weakly, but it’s definitely on.

“You’re lucky I was the only one still listening,” Alex says, her jaw clenching so hard that Kara worries for her teeth. “I turned off the audio feed. You promised me when we started this that you could handle it, Kara.”

“I’m sorry,” Kara says, reaching for Alex’s arm. Her throat is thick all of a sudden, caught up in the terror of losing Alex’s trust. “I know – I know I’m ruining your big shot, but –”

Kara’s tongue trips on that but, on what her heart is telling her. She manages to keep it inside, but it still echoes in her chest –

But I think I might love her.

It seems impossible. She’s only known Lena for a few days, and for two of them Lena had no idea who she really was. Maybe it’s just an infatuation, and it’ll fade once the stress of the pageant isn’t pushing them together. But it feels truer than anything Kara has felt before. It feels more solid than her confidence in the bureau, and she wishes more than anything that Alex wasn’t caught in the middle.

“Lena knows, doesn’t she?” Alex interrupts, finally turning to look at Kara. The disappointment in her eyes is devastating. “She knows everything.”

Kara has never been great at lying to Alex, and when the question is so up-front she really doesn’t have a chance. She nods, biting at the inside of her cheek. “How did you guess?”

“Because I know you,” Alex says, sounding more tired than angry. “You wouldn’t cross that line unless you weren’t lying to her anymore.”

Kara has no idea what to say to that. Alex is upset, obviously, but she doesn’t seem angry. She seems more like something she’s been expecting has finally come to pass – a weary resignation, one that somehow makes Kara feel even guiltier than she would if Alex was just mad at her.

“Now that Agent Danvers has graced us with her presence, we can start,” Jonn says loudly when his conversation with James finishes, his disapproving frown even deeper than usual when he takes centre stage in front of the whole team. “We’ve caught the Cadmus agent responsible for the threats.”

“…what?” Kara says, taking a step forward. Jonn pins her with a look, and she steps back again. “Who did you arrest?”

“John Corben. He was a rogue former member, living in a cabin in Vermont,” Jonn says, and Kara’s skin prickles with dread. This isn’t right, she knows it isn’t right, and Jonn is talking like it’s inarguable. “Got an anonymous tip. We raided the place, and found all the evidence we need on his computer.”

“What about Lillian Luthor?” Kara asks, her hands matching the anxious twisting of her stomach. “Lex? Either of the people we’ve had tabs on all weekend?”

“We have the person responsible in custody,” Jonn says, his voice hard as steel. “This operation is no longer necessary. Get yourselves packed up – the jet leaves in 2 hours.”

He turns to the computer monitors, turning them off one by one, but Kara stops him dead in his tracks.

“I’d like to request to stay behind with a small contingent of agents.”

“Request denied,” Jonn says in a warning tone, turning back towards her. “You’re on thin ice, Danvers.”

“Then I would like to stay behind alone,” Kara says insistently. There isn’t a doubt in her mind that they have the wrong person, that the moment she leaves this building something terrible will happen, and even Jonn’s obvious anger isn’t enough to make her shrink back.

“Are you being willfully ignorant, or has this circus lowered your IQ?” Jonn says, his voice raised to almost a yell. Brainy flinches at the volume, and Alex’s eyes are fixed on the carpet. “We caught the guy. Your presence here is no longer needed, and the bureau will not pay you for wasting their time.”

Somehow, being belittled so publicly only strengthens Kara’s resolve. She crosses her arms, looks him directly in the eyes, and fires back.

“Respectfully, sir, you’re wrong.”

Before Jonn can build up a bigger head of steam, Alex steps between them.

“Sir, Kara’s instincts have always been good,” Alex says, but she can’t seem to actually look him in the face. “If she thinks there’s still a threat, then maybe -”

“Agent Danvers, your sister tackled a civilian on live television and almost blew this operation on her second day,” Jonn says coldly. “Excuse me for not taking her at her word. We are leaving.”

He turns back to the computers, Brainy scrambling to help him, and Kara turns to Alex.

“They have the wrong person,” Kara says, low and urgent. “I don’t even think Cadmus was involved in this. Everyone here is still in danger.”

Alex gnaws at her lip, pulling at the skin until blood rises to the surface. “I think your feelings for Lena are clouding your judgement.”

“Who do you think called in that anonymous tip?” Kara insists, and even though she can see that she’s getting through to Alex she also knows it isn’t quite enough. “Lillian knows we were closing in on her, and she found a fall guy to pin it on. She’s using Cadmus as a bogeyman, and she’s going to get away with it if we leave!”

“You have no proof,” Alex points out again, and the resulting surge of frustration makes Kara’s fists clench. She knows she has no proof, but she also knows with unshakeable certainty that she can’t leave now.

“Alex, you know I’m right. You know I’m right,” Kara says, grabbing Alex’s forearms and shaking them a little with sheer exasperation. “I can see it. You brought me here to do this operation because you knew I was the best person for it, and you were right. I have to protect these girls.”

Just like Kara has never been able to lie to Alex, Alex’s face has been an open book to her since they were kids – she can’t tell exactly what she’s thinking but she can read the emotions there easily, and Alex is reading pure conflict right now. She’s torn between two things, and Kara is only making it worse.

“Jonn is the Assistant Director,” Alex says, gesturing helplessly. “If he says we’re leaving, we…we have to leave, Kara. It’s orders.”

Though her words say otherwise Kara can tell that Alex knows it’s the wrong decision, but she’s paralyzed by her responsibility to the FBI and to Jonn. Kara looks back and forth between them, between Alex’s stricken face and Jonn crouched down across the room, efficiently packing up the surveillance system, and thinks of Lena. Imagines Lillian hurting her. Hurting everyone else that Kara has grown to care about, and all Kara can do is watch it on TV.

She can’t let that happen. She won’t.

Reaching into her pockets for her gun and badge, Kara walks forward and sets them on the table in front of Jonn.

“I’m staying, with or without your permission.”

Letting go of those things, her anchors to the Bureau, has an unexpected calming effect on Kara. It washes over her as Jonn stands up to his full height, looking down at her with surprise – this is right. This is the right thing to do, and she probably should have done it a long time ago.

“Danvers,” Jonn says carefully, “don’t do this. Don’t throw away your whole career just because -”

“Just because you’d rather be right than actually help the people you swore to protect?” Kara says matter-of-factly, not rising to meet his anger from earlier but not shrinking down either. She’s quitting, and she’s completely sure about it for the first time since she joined this organization.

“You can’t leave behind 7 years of hard work based on a gut feeling,” Jonn argues, pushing the gun and badge towards her. Kara pushes them back, giving him a small, confident smile.

“Watch me.”

A blanket of silence follows her as she turns to the exit. Alex catches her wrist as she passes, her face stricken and pale.

”Kara -”

“It’s okay, Alex,” Kara says, taking her hand and squeezing it lightly. “I promise.”

”How is it okay when you’re quitting? I can’t just leave you here,” Alex says, hesitance in every word. Kara shrugs.

“Your job is your life. Don’t give that up for me.”

“You’re my sister,” Alex says helplessly. 

“I’ll be fine,” Kara insists, letting go of Alex’s hand. “You can’t put yourself on the line forever just because I can’t follow orders. I’ve been holding your career back for years, and you know it.”

Alex shakes her head, about to deny it, but Kara pulls her into a tight hug before she can speak.

“Go. Someone has to take care of the guys,” Kara says when they part, nodding at James and Brainy who are watching them with lost expressions and Vasquez looking a little shell-shocked by it all. “I love you, Alex. This is what I need to do. Everything is gonna be fine.”

She leaves before her silent, agonized sister can jeopardize her own career, closing the door behind her in what feels like a goodbye to the dissatisfaction of the life she led before. The walk back to her own room seems like it goes by in an instant, her feet leading her right back to the place she really wants to be - the sense of ease that washes over her as soon as she steps over the threshold is palpable.

Lena is waiting for her, reclined on her bed with the previously-abandoned robe tied around her and a book in her lap. A pair of thick-framed glasses are perched on her face, and the sheer newness of them with the way Lena perks up when Kara enters makes the stress of the last hour melt away.

“Hey! How was your meeting?” Lena asks, slipping a bookmark between the pages and closing it. Kara blinks at her, still floored by how frankly adorable she looks.

“…you wear glasses?”

Lena blushes, pushing them to the top of her head and rubbing her eyes a little. “Sometimes. When my contacts get irritating. You didn’t answer my question.”

Kara shakes herself a little, kicking her shoes off and coming to sit cross-legged on the bed. “Right. Uh, I quit the Bureau.”

Lena sits up straight, the book falling off her lap. “What? You quit?”

“They got some bogus tip about a guy living in the woods being the person who sent the threat, and they arrested him,” Kara explains, picking at a loose thread in the duvet. “It’s pretty obvious it was a setup. They told me I needed to leave and go back to New York to keep my job, so I quit.”

Lena lets out a long breath. She takes Kara’s hands, stilling them and rubbing a thumb over her knuckles.

“Are you sure about this?”

“I’m not leaving you to deal with whatever Lillian has planned,” Kara says firmly, twisting her hands and lacing their fingers together. “Any of you. If I left and you got hurt, Lena, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

Lena seems taken aback by her certainty, but she lets out a little laugh. “Well, that’s that, I suppose. What do we do now?”

“I have no idea,” Kara admits, shaking her head. “But now we have no FBI backup. And without it, my spot in the top 5 isn’t guaranteed anymore.”

The seriousness of the situation settles between them like sediment, blanketing the room. Lena leans forward through it to wrap her arms around Kara’s neck, the position with their knees touching reminding Kara of last night. It was such a short time ago, but with how much things have changed between them it feels like a lifetime.

“We’ll figure it out, okay?” Lena murmurs in her ear, stroking gently at the back of her neck. “We’ll figure it out together.”

Waking up with Lena naked and wrapped around her, Kara decides the next morning, is worth quitting any job for. She knows that things are going to get crazy as soon as the clock strikes 7am and they have to get up and start the day, but right now – with Lena’s breath tickling her neck, her warm limbs intertwined with Kara’s and her light, adorable snores - there isn’t much in the world that could inspire her to move.

Cat’s voice at the door followed by three delicate knocks is apparently one of those few things.

“My flight is leaving in an hour, Keira.”

Her heart sinking, Kara carefully extracts herself from Lena’s still-sleeping hold and tosses on the first two pieces of clothing she can find, opening the door to find Cat with her sunglasses already on and a hand poised to knock again.

“You’re leaving too, huh?” Kara says, clearing her throat of the sleepy rasp. Cat nods curtly.

“I have been informed that if I stay, my compensation will be denied.”

Kara rubs her eyes. They feel bloodshot, even though she slept better last night than she has in days. “Well…shoot.”

“Quite.”

“How am I supposed to make the top 5 without you?” Kara says, only half-joking. As much as the constant coaching has been exhausting and borderline physical torture at times, Cat Grant is probably the only reason Kara is still reasonably in the race.

“You don’t need me,” Cat says, sliding her sunglasses down to look at Kara directly. “I’ve taken a woman without a smidgen of estrogen –”

“Hey!”

“And made her a lady,” Cat finishes, taking the sunglasses off completely to level Kara with an unnervingly genuine smile. “I’ve never been prouder of myself.”

“Oh,” Kara says, suddenly very aware that her hair is in a tangle and she hasn’t brushed her teeth.

“Or,” Cat continues, her voice wavering a little, “of any girl I have ever coached. You are truly unique. Kara.”

Without her permission, Kara’s eyes start to water. This is far too much genuine emotion for this early in the morning, especially coming from Cat, and she shifts from foot to foot when Cat keeps talking thoughtfully.

“If I ever had a daughter, I imagine that she would be something like you,” Cat muses. Kara, overcome with a strange fondness for the person who’s been nothing but her drill sergeant for a week, shakes her head in disbelief.

“I feel like I should give you a hug,” Kara says, opening her arms and knowing exactly the reaction she’s going to get. Cat takes a large step backwards, almost tripping over two packages sitting on the hallway floor.

“Which, perhaps, is why I stopped after two sons,” Cat says hurriedly, holding up a hand. Kara rolls her eyes, laughing and wiping at her wet lashes.

“Right.”

Cat clears her throat, putting her sunglasses back on and handing the two packages to Kara – one a large box, and the other a garment bag. “Here is your makeup kit, and your wardrobe for tonight. Make me proud. I’ll still be watching. And…tell Miss Luthor that one can hide lovemarks with a little greenstick.”

“I didn’t leave any –” Kara starts to protest, but almost as soon as she’s set the items down on the desk just inside the door, Cat has disappeared into the stairwell. “And, she’s gone.”

For some reason, Cat’s departure hits her even harder than her resignation last night. Last night it was easy to distract herself, to lose herself in Lena and not think about the repercussions – but Cat’s goodbye is a reminder that besides Lena, she’s alone here now. Alex would have left last night with the rest of the team. She knows it was the right decision, but she can’t help but worry that she alone won’t be able to stop what’s going to happen today.

Lena’s alarm blares almost as soon as Kara nudges the door closed, and Kara sighs wearily. 

So much for having a few minutes longer to snuggle.

For the first half hour or so after breakfast, Kara manages to fake her way through. She washes her face when they all get to the dressing room, applies the skin cream that Cat always gives her before she does Kara’s makeup, and messes around with her costume for a bit before she realizes she’s the only person in the room not putting on her face. They only have so long to get ready before they’re expected at dress rehearsal, and everyone else is halfway through their makeup routines before Kara has even dared to open up the box Cat gave her.

It might as well be hieroglyphics for how little Kara understands what she’s seeing. There are palettes and sticks, identical-looking tubes, sponges, and about 30 types of brushes. There’s foundation and primer and blush and highlighter, and Kara hasn’t the faintest idea what goes where. Her time in the makeup chair has always been her time to catch a few precious minutes of sleep.

When Lena catches sight of Kara staring at three different tubes with a look of sheer panic, she frowns. She puts down her own brushes, moving to stand behind Kara and squeeze her shoulder.

“You okay?” she says quietly. Kara, desperate, holds the three tubes up.

“Which one of these is lipstick?”

“Oh, no,” Lena says, her eyes widening as she realizes the gravity of the situation. Nia, seeming to overhear, turns her makeup chair around.

“Oh, honey. Did your coach quit?” she says sympathetically, and Sam turns to join the conversation as well, a lash curler clamped over her eye.

“Something like that,” Kara winces, opening what she thinks is lip gloss to reveal it’s actually mascara. “Do I do my eyes first, or…?”

Sam and Nia meet eyes, and there seems to be some kind of unspoken communication between them and Lena before they group around her like a human shield.

“Ladies!” Sam says loudly, gesturing Siobhan and Andrea over. “We have a situation over here!”

And with only that as a warning, like a swarm of (mostly) friendly bees, the five of them descend on her. Lena somehow finds Kara’s exact shade of foundation and primer, thankfully doing the majority of the face-touching; Siobhan and Andrea start arguing over the best colour palette for Kara’s eyeshadow; Nia starts tugging Kara’s hair out of its ponytail and plugging in various hot appliances; and Sam works on Kara’s lips, applying lipstick and then gloss and firmly instructing Kara to smudge.

It's incredible. Within minutes Kara’s face and hair are as flawless as any of Cat’s treatments, and all five of her newfound friends go back to their own routines once it’s finished as if it wasn’t one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for her.

“I think Lex is doing AV checks right now,” Lena says quietly before she heads back to her station, nodding her head towards the maintenance door nearby. “You have a little time now to check things out. See if anything seems off.”

Kara nods, quickly claiming a bathroom trip and sidling through the door as soon as nobody is looking at her. She does intend on checking things out – but after what Lena just did for her, she also has a few calls to make, and the first of them is to the San Antonio Fencing Club.

She doesn’t find Lex, or anything out of place in the AV area. In fact, Lex is conspicuously absent during dress rehearsal. Lillian is there giving orders and critiques, but she isn’t nearly as manic as she was yesterday – in fact she’s eerily calm. Almost smug. It’s even more worrying than the screaming, and in the following bustle of lunch and wardrobe changes and the TV crew setting up Kara actually starts to worry at just how little time she has to deal with it. She still has no idea what Lillian’s plan is, no idea where to focus her attention, and the morning slides into afternoon and the afternoon into broadcast time without any change on that front.

She can tell Lena is on edge too, and it’s only a half hour before the broadcast when Lena is helping her into the identical teal silk gown they’ve all been fitted for that Kara stops for a second.

“Hey,” Kara says, focusing enough for a moment to appreciate the vision in front of her. Lena is the brightest star in the room – the dress fits her like a glove, the greenish-blue colour perfectly matching her eyes, and the light sheen of sparkles everyone has been brushed with looks particularly great against Lena’s dark hair. It looks like a starry waterfall.  “You look beautiful. Everything is gonna be okay.”

Kara has no idea if the latter is true, but it helps to say it – and she means the former with her whole heart. Lena blushes a little, straightening Kara’s necklace a bit nervously.

“Focus,” Lena says, but she gives Kara a small lipstick-conscious peck on the cheek.

Assistants flood the room soon after to hand everyone their Statue of Liberty-inspired headpieces and foam cutouts of their states, and to shepherd everyone into line to go up the spiral staircase to the stage while above them the magnified voices of William and Lillian mix with the cheers of the live audience. It’s all a little overwhelming. Kara is walking hurriedly towards her spot between New Hampshire and New Mexico, her heels clicking madly as she fusses with her headdress with one hand and clutches her New Jersey sign with the other, when she runs headlong into someone with familiar short auburn hair.

Kara drops her sign.

“…Alex?” she gasps, leaving the sign where it is for a second as she takes her sister by the shoulders to prove she isn’t just a stress dream. She is indeed solid and real, and she seems deeply relieved to see Kara.

“There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere,” Alex says, pulling Kara aside. Kara grabs the sign as they go, ducking away from an assistant who keeps gesturing for her to get in line.

“What are you doing here?” Kara whisper-yells, lowering her voice further when Alex gestures wildly for quiet. “You’re supposed to be in New York!”

Alex shoots her a grin that Kara almost never sees when Alex is at work – it’s mischievous and exhilarated, and completely free of the rules Alex always boxes herself in with.

“I’m disobeying orders.”

“Jonn is going to lose his mind,” Kara says, still gobsmacked that Alex is here at all let alone gleefully going against a directive from her superior.

“Let him,” Alex says simply, shrugging contritely. “You’re right about the pageant. You were right all along – I had Brainy go through the computer they found in that cabin, and it was riddled with outside hacking. Someone planted all that evidence, just like you thought. And when I showed it to Jonn he still wouldn’t let me come back, so I booked a ticket myself.”

Kara lets out a low whistle, resisting the urge to rub her face – she can’t ruin her makeup right before the show. “The FBI is your life.”

“Maybe it shouldn’t be, if it means leaving my sister to stop a terrorist attack by herself,” Alex says, and she seems as sure as Kara has ever seen her. “I’m sorry, Kara. I never should have left.”

Kara hugs her tight, and Alex squeezes back fiercely. It’s more of an apology than Kara expected, and the surge of affection she has for her sister is enough for her to wave away yet another panicked assistant. The line is moving forward, Alabama and Alaska already climbing the stairs, and she doesn’t have much more time.

“Everyone else came, too,” Alex says as they move apart, wiping furtively at her eyes. “Brainy is monitoring the TV feed, and Vasquez and James are doing a perimeter sweep.”

“You’re kidding.”

As if this day couldn’t get any weirder, the voice that answers is yet another she wasn’t expecting to see again.

“It seems your sister is just as persuasive as you are, though her methods are slightly more…forceful.”

Kara whirls around, her skepticism turning to disbelieving laughter.

“Cat?”

It seems impossible, but lo and behold Cat Grant is striding towards them dressed to the nines and fully in pageant mode despite likely having spent most of the day on an airplane.

“I’ve been waiting years to see the downfall of Lillian Luthor, you think I’d miss this?” Cat says in lieu of an explanation, reaching up to fuss with Kara’s hair - but at the last minute she stops herself, simply patting Kara’s cheek lightly. “You look lovely.”

With that, Cat heads backstage. Kara stares after her for a moment, before turning back to Alex.

“Am I hallucinating?”

“I hope not,” Alex says, clapping her on the shoulder. “You need a clear head if we’re going to pull this off. I’ll be back after the dance, okay?”

Alex jogs after Cat, and distantly Kara can hear someone stopping her before she gets past the assistant guarding the entrance.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but it’s staff and contestants only past this point.”

“But - I’m a federal officer,” Alex protests, to no avail. 

“Yeah, sure. You really can’t go back there,” the assistant says, before Cat appears again at Alex’s elbow. “Oh, Miss Grant!”

“She’s with me,” Cat says with a sultry wink, running her hand down Alex’s back to rest just above her ass. Alex jumps like she’s been electrocuted.

“Wh – hey, no,” Alex stammers, holding her hands up like someone has just pointed a gun at her rather than lightly flirted. “I’m not like, with her, with her. I’m – I’m married!”

“As if that’s ever stopped me?” Cat says, rolling her eyes lightly. She pulls Alex cleverly past the assistant, giving her a light tap on the ass for good measure. “Come on, muffin.”

Kara can’t help but laugh. Minutes ago she was panicking – but now her team is here, and her confidence is sky-high.

“Miss Kent, please,” a poor, ragged stage assistant begs her for a third time, pointing desperately at the spot in line she’s supposed to be standing at – it’s already halfway up the staircase.

“Shoot,” Kara hisses, sprinting towards the line and elbowing herself in between Ohio and Oklahoma just in time to start the ascent.

She’s sweaty by the time she reaches the top, and she has to do an awkward little half-run in front of two other groups to reach her own in time to do the spotlight section – each of them walking across the front of the stage with their signs held jauntily, waving to the crowd, and then handing them off to a stage assistant just past the wings and gliding back to their designated spot for the dance. Lena looks relieved to see her, but there’s a question in her face that Kara can’t answer at the moment. She just keeps her pageant smile screwed on, and does what she’s rehearsed for two days.

It’s only when the first soft notes of the music start that Kara realizes. With everything else going on, she hasn’t had a single second to be nervous about the group dance.

She does the first few moves almost unconsciously, her body following the music while her eyes sweep everything she can see – the wings, the rafters where the spotlights shine down, the huge Statue of Liberty set piece that looms behind them – and when the beat drops and the dance really begins, Kara is shocked to find that she’s keeping up. And not just that, she’s doing well. She’s hitting the beats, twirling in perfect unison with the group and not tripping even once on her heels. She meets eyes with Lena halfway through, and it sends a strange and unfamiliar thrill of joy through her.

This is actually kind of fun.

When the song ends with a shower of coloured sparks over the stage, everyone’s final pose illuminated perfectly, the unfortunate reality of the situation comes crawling back in the form of Lillian and William emerging from stage left, William in a dapper maroon suede jacket and Lillian in a soft pink dress that deeply clashes with the monster Kara knows she is. The spotlight follows them all the way up to a microphone stand.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!” William booms jovially, “and welcome to a night of beauty, talent, and poise – and I’m not just talking about my cohost, Lillian Luthor!”

He introduces Lillian with a grand sweep, and Lillian gives an unsettlingly flirty fake laugh, gently hitting his shoulder. Their banter is practiced, but very obviously fake – Lillian’s smile is almost a grimace, and William is clearly unsettled by her despite trying to stay professional. They throw rehearsed lines at each other until an assistant hurries across the stage with an envelope, and Lillian takes it from him without acknowledging his presence.

“Now, it’s the first of many moments you’ve all been waiting for. In this envelope are the top ten contestants, based on their performance during the preliminaries this week,” William says, while Lillian slides a long nail under the seal.

“Ladies, hold your breath,” Lillian says with a fake wink. William mimes holding his breath, and the crowd laughs again before settling into anticipatory silence.

Lillian removes the first slip of paper, and in a clear voice she reads “Alaska!”

Siobhan, almost savage in her vindication, punches the air. She flips her hair with a smile, striding across the stage at a leisurely pace and blowing kisses into the crowd in a masterful bit of showboating before taking her spot on the first podium.

William reads the next paper, putting a bit of oomph into his announcement.

“Caaaalifornia!”

Nia, unlike Siobhan, seems genuinely shocked. Her eyes are wide as saucers, and even as the girls around her congratulate her and push her forward she looks a little bit lost until she gets to the front of the stage and sees the crowd cheering for her. She laughs a little, and then with a wide, genuine grin she does her walk to stand next to Siobhan.

“New York!” is the next state from Lillian. Sam seems unsurprised, but grateful as she walks efficiently across the floor with her long legs, and when she stands next to Nia she gives her brief but tight side-hug and a kiss on the top of her head.

“Texas!” William calls, and after Andrea has done her perfectly executed victory walk Lillian’s lips purse slightly before she reads the next paper.

“Massachusetts.”

Lena has a perfect smile on, but her eyes read worry as she moves away from Kara and towards the other end of the stage with the rest of the finalists. Sam presses her hand when she walks past, grinning, but Lena’s eyes never leave Kara.

Lillian and William announce Ohio, Virginia, and Connecticut before Lillian opens the second-to-last envelope and calls out –

“New Jersey?”

Her shock is clear in the audible question mark she puts at the end, but Kara almost sinks to her knees in relief. Lena claps harder than anyone, her smile finally genuine as Kara starts to stride across the stage, waving and doing a few finger guns –

And just before she reaches the podium, she falls on her face again.

“Son of a -” Kara grumbles, popping back up immediately and fixing her smile back on. Her hair is stuck in her stupid Liberty crown, but the crowd strangely seems to eat it up. They cheer and laugh as she dusts off the knees of her dress and keeps waving, and it feels more like they’re laughing with her than at her. Like it’s a clever inside joke.

“And she’s up and at it!” William says in a bit of helpful improv that makes Lillian’s hand clench just a little too hard at the envelope. “A nice recovery from Kara-Lee Kent of New Jersey!”

Lillian practically rips the paper from his hand to announce Maine as the last top 10 finalist, and when all of them are standing in a neat line the triumphant commercial-break music starts.

“And there they are! This year’s top ten finalists,” William says, while Lillian visibly stews. “We’ll be right back with a closer look at each preliminary performance followed by tonight’s talent competition, after this short break.”

The lights shift, and while the remaining 40 contestants who weren’t chosen funnel off-stage Kara is herded through a different door back into the dressing room with the other 9 girls. Their costumes for the talent competition are waiting there at their stations, and posted on the wall is the performing order – Siobhan and Andrea are up first, with Lena in the middle and Kara falling dead last.

“You’ve got 15 minutes,” says the assistant, turning to leave. But another person appears beside him, whispering something in his ear and handing him a bundle of something that makes him frown.

“Uh…Miss Kent?” he says, confusion written across his face. “You have a visitor? But he can’t come back here. He’s waiting outside. He said to give you this?”

He hands Kara the bundle – in a plastic bag is a white outfit, a mesh mask, and a long, skinny package.

“Oh!” Kara says excitedly, ripping the paper off the long package – inside is a fencing foil, just like she hoped. “He made it! Uh – tell him to wait where he is, okay?”

The assistant nods, and now that Kara has confirmation of what she tried to throw together earlier she turns to Lena. Kara offers her the fencing foil with a grin, and Lena raises an eyebrow at it.

“What’s this?”

“I’d think you would know that, Miss Almost-Olympic-Fencer,” Kara says, handing over the sword. Lena rolls her eyes affectionately.

“Let me rephrase – why did you hand it to me? And where did you get it from?”

“This is very last minute, and one hundred percent up to you to accept or deny,” Kara says, making sure to give Lena as much of an out as she can muster, “but I convinced someone from the local Fencing Club to come do a bout with you for your talent.”

Lena tests the weight of the weapon, giving it a small practice swipe through the air but still not seeming to understand. “…for my talent?”

“You told me you hate batons," Kara says, and Lena finally seems to comprehend the offer. “That if you had a choice, you’d do fencing. So I thought I would give you the choice. If you want! If not, I can send him away.”

Lena stares at her for a few seconds, dumbstruck, and it’s just long enough for Kara to start to worry. But just as Kara is about to take the sword back and apologize for being so presumptuous Lena stands up, throwing her arms – sword and all – over Kara’s shoulders and kissing her so thoroughly that Kara’s eyes are a little crossed when she pulls away.

“Is that…a yes?” Kara says, a little hazily.

“Yes,” Lena laughs, using her thumb to fix Kara’s smudged lipstick. “Yes, absolutely. Where are they?”

Not one of the girls in the room seems surprised by the display of affection. In fact Sam gives Kara a little thumbs up as they pass, Kara guiding Lena by the hand to where the assistant told her the fencer was waiting, and once the two of them are deep in a discussion of logistics she leaves Lena with the gear. She only has a couple minutes left to get into her own ridiculous outfit, and she doesn’t want to miss Siobhan’s performance.

As expected, Siobhan blows the roof off the place. Her operatic voice fills the entire building, and she seems so buoyed by the adrenaline of the stage that she isn’t even smug when she exits. She stays in the wings with everyone else to cheer Andrea on, and even though her attention wanes during Connecticut’s dramatic monologue she seems to want to stay and watch everyone.

Lena appears just before her performance is set to start, looking professional in her white body-suit with her hair in a sleek ponytail. The helmet is under her arm, the foil hanging loosely from her hand, and she looks so supremely confident in this new talent that Kara has never been happier for deciding to take a risk.

“Ready?” Kara asks, while behind them Ohio finishes up her turn with a piano piece. Lena’s eyes are sparkling.

“The music guy knows not to play my song, and my partner is waiting on the other side of the wings. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

The piano fades out to applause, and William’s voice welcomes “Miss Massachusetts, giving a spirited baton-twirling turn – Lena Luthor!” to the stage. Lena bounces on the balls of her feet, rolling her shoulders and neck, and with a wink to Kara she emerges to a mixed reaction. The crowd seems confused, Lena’s outfit not meshing with what they were expecting, and when Lena’s partner emerges from the opposite side and takes up the first position Kara sees William frown a little, touching the radio in his ear. His expression clears after a moment, and he laughs a little.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been told there’s a change in the program – Miss Massachusetts is instead going to be giving us a taste of her fencing skills! Take it away, Lena!”

Lillian looks murderous. Her eyes follow Lena like a hawk as she takes the stage, waving to the crowd before she secures the mesh helmet over her face, and in an act that greatly endears him to Kara William starts an enthusiastic running commentary as soon as the bout begins.

“And we have a first attack from the opponent – oh, and a beautiful parry from Lena! Really impressive, great reflexes, really showing her fundamentals – and she’s lightning-fast on the counterattack!”

The crowd gasps, and then erupts into applause as Lena scores her first point. It’s clear that they love her – and surprisingly, William sounds like he actually knows what he’s talking about. Kara makes a mental note to send him a fruit basket when this is all over.

“She just…changed her talent?” Nia asks, stunned from the sidelines. “Just like that?”

“I helped a little, but yeah,” Kara says, not taking her eyes away from the stage. Lena is winning handily so far, and she doesn’t want to miss a second. Siobhan scoffs.

“If she fucks up doing improv, all the better for us.” But there’s no venom behind it. In fact Siobhan is watching with interest, because Lena is unequivocally killing it. She’s fluid and controlled at the same time, meeting every advance from her opponent and turning it on them easily. It’s easy to see how she almost made it to the Olympics, and when she finishes out her time and takes her mask off to give the crowd a bow and a brilliant smile, they give her the biggest round of applause yet.

The moment Lena steps out of sight of the audience and into the wings, she throws herself into Kara’s arms.

“Thank you,” Lena whispers, her voice quivering with adrenaline and joy. The foil clatters to the ground, and Lena clings to Kara’s shoulders with both hands. “Thank you, Kara.”

The thick vest of Lena’s suit is a little bulky, but Kara hugs her back as tight as she can. “You were amazing. I’ll totally wear fancy clothes and eat cucumber sandwiches at a fencing club to watch you do that again.”

Lena laughs, letting go and pushing Kara towards the prop area.

“I’ll remember that. Go on, your slot is coming up – get your water glasses, maestro.”

Kara’s good mood shatters into a million tiny pieces when she enters the prop area to find about 10 girls grouped around her cart, casually sipping away at the water that needs to be at very specific levels.

“Woah, woah, hey!” Kara yells, jogging forward and waving her hands. “You’re drinking my talent!”

The girls, to their credit, look horrified. They all put the glasses down, and Miss New Hampshire starts trying to rearrange them into the order they were in originally.

“I am so sorry! Lillian said it was a refreshment table?”

“Of course she did,” Kara mutters as the girls scatter to the winds, frantically testing off-key notes and shuffling glasses around. “Crap, crap, crap -”

If there was ever a moment in this whole weekend to despair, this feels like the right one. With less than 5 minutes to go her talent is non-existent, and she has zero time to salvage it. Even Alex and Cat showing up does nothing to encourage her – she’s doomed.

“Hey, you’re up soon!” Alex says, pointing at the stage as if Kara doesn’t know how fucked she is. “What are you doing?”

“They drank my talent!” Kara says despairingly, pointing instead at the sadly depleted water glasses. Alex winces, and even Cat pinches the bridge of her nose when she realizes the situation.

“Wonderful. Is it fixable?” Cat asks, businesslike. Kara shakes her head, finally giving up trying to rearrange the glasses – they’re all out of tune, and she has no time.

“No, this took half an hour to calibrate! I’m screwed.”

“What else can you do?” Alex says frantically. “You have to make it into the top 5!”

Cat nods in agreement. “Can you whistle? Make hand-puppets?”

“No!” Kara hisses, but Cat isn’t dissuaded from her mission to find Kara a new talent.

“I once had a girl who could rearrange furniture.”

Kara glares at her silently. It’s hard to imagine walking onto that stage and doing anything besides the ridiculous talent she managed to scrounge up in the first place – she isn’t like Lena. He doesn’t have Olympic-level talents just laying around – she has her job, decent baking skills, and maybe painting. None of which are helpful right now.

“Come on, Kara, you have talents,” Alex says, shaking Kara a little. Kara wiggles out of her hold.

“No, I don’t! Remember what Cat said? All I have is the ability to convert oxygen into carbon dioxide.”

“Yeah, that and a killer right hook,” Alex mutters, looking down at the waterglasses with a frown. Cat looks equally as frustrated as Kara feels, and a grim sense of finality settles on Kara’s shoulders. This is it – she’s worked her ass off this weekend, and all she has to show off are a talent that’s functionally useless and a decent set of self-defence skills.

Wait.

“A killer right hook,” Kara says quietly, the idea building up momentum in her mind like an avalanche. “A killer right hook!”

“What?” Alex says, perking up a little. “What about it?”

Kara just grabs Alex’s hand, yanking free the buttons on her stupid frilly dress with the other and dragging her sister towards the dressing room.

2 minutes later Kara is in leggings and a t-shirt, and the look on Siobhan’s face as she arrives just in time for her announcement is almost funny enough to distract Kara from her nerves.

“Kara?” Lena asks, her own eyebrows practically touching her hairline. “What’s going on?”

“Lillian screwed up my talent,” Kara says, bouncing back and forth and starting to limber up. “Gotta improvise. Wish me luck!”

Nobody really has time to reply before Lillian is announcing “the musical stylings of Miss New Jersey, Kara-Lee Kent,” with a tone of smug satisfaction, and with a final thumbs-up to Lena, Kara jogs onto the stage.

Kara hardly notices what the crowd is doing. All her focus is on Lillian, who looks hilariously confused to see Kara showing her face at all, let alone strolling out in workout clothes to take the microphone. Kara taps it a few times, clearing her throat and swallowing her nerves.

“I, uh – I know the program says I’m supposed to be playing the waterglasses for you, but it looks like some of the girls got dehydrated.”

Kara glances at Lillian as she says it. There’s a big, angry vein pulsing in the older woman’s neck, and it only eggs Kara on.

“However, I strongly believe that no woman should be without a basic knowledge of self-defence,” Kara continues more confidently, sweeping her arm out in a presentational way, “so for this demonstration, I’m gonna need a little help!”

There are murmurs in the crowd as Kara gestures to the other side of the stage, where a white-faced Alex stands stock-still. She looks like she’s been paralyzed, and she only takes a few unwilling steps forward and into view when one of the other girls nudges her in the back.

“This is my assistant, Alex…uh, Olsen,” Kara fudges, gesturing wildly until Alex finally shuffles close enough. Thankfully Alex’s default outfit is pretty neutral – black on black, all utilitarian with no FBI logos – and she genuinely does look like a hired combat partner, despite her obvious aversion to being in the spotlight. She squints into the crowd, shielding her eyes from the lights with her hand, and Kara throws an arm over her shoulder with a big grin.

“Now, the first thing I want to demonstrate is how to inflict the most amount of damage with the least amount of force. The element of surprise, if you will. This works best if your attacker comes at you in a frontal assault,” Kara explains, taking a few steps back from the mic and then giving Alex the signal.

Alex very clearly does not want to do it. But Kara gives her an urgent look, and with a wince Alex comes towards her in an attack pose.

Kara tries her best to use less force, she really does. But she doesn’t want it to look fake, and the result is that her hand connects with Alex’s face with a crack loud enough that the microphone picks it up. Alex doubles over, hands over her nose, and Kara rushes back to the mic.

“If you saw there, I used the heel of my hand and thrust it up,” Kara explains while Alex checks to see if her nose is broken, “this will cause your opponent’s eyes to water, giving you a chance to get away.”

She gets a decent round of applause for that, and with it comes a deep sense of relief. Lillian might be livid, but miraculously it seems like this is actually working.

“Next, I’m going to show you the most effective way to break out of an attack from behind,” Kara says, and after a brief pause Alex’s arms wrap around Kara’s shoulders in a typical kidnap-grab. Kara struggles against it for a second, talking loudly so the mic will pick it up.

“As you can see, I’m trying to use my arms and legs to get out, but she has the advantage,” Kara grunts, finally planting her feet firmly to show one of her favourite moves. “If you’re ever in this situation, just remember to S.I.N.G. That stands for solar plexus –”

Kara elbows Alex hard in the stomach, then stomps her heel into Alex’s toe. “Instep –”

Alex grunts in pain, and Kara whispers an apology before she keeps going and throws an elbow into her face. “Nose –”

Alex has mostly let her go by the final step, but Kara has to follow through with an elbow to the pelvis.

“Groin!”

Alex sinks to the floor, her hands over her stomach, and Kara gives the crowd a thumbs-up.

“Sing!” Kara says, and the applause continues. The judges seem somewhat confused, but they’re clapping as well, and Kara turns to Alex – still on the floor – to offer her a hand.

“Is this some kind of punishment for leaving yesterday?” Alex wheezes, taking a bit reluctantly. “Because it’s working.”

“Of course not!” Kara hisses back, hauling Alex up and helping her dust herself off. “It’s all for the cause. Now, grab me again.”

Kara does two more intermediate maneuvers, each getting a bigger round of applause, before bowing out and running backstage with a limping Alex. The elegant outro music - hilariously incongruous with Kara’s performance - swells dramatically while Lillian and William take centre stage again to banter into the commercial break, and Kara’s friends swarm around her as they’re all led back to the dressing room for the last time.

“You’ve both lost your minds,” Andrea says, shaking her head, but there’s a smile on her face that takes the insult out of it. Sam seems on board with the whole thing, claiming that if she’d have known this was the plan she would have brought her rollerskates instead of her pointe shoes, but Kara only really cares about Lena. Just Lena, who is looking at Kara like she wants nothing more than to pull her into the nearest janitor’s closet.

Unfortunately, there’s no time for diversions. Alex manages to slip past security with them unnoticed, and she leans close to whisper in Kara’s ear when everyone turns their attention to getting changed. “If something is going to happen, it’s going to be now.”

“Tail Lex,” Kara mutters back, her nerves making a roaring comeback now that she’s past the gauntlet of the talent show. “With Lillian busy on stage, it has to be him.”

“Where is he?”

“I’ve seen him around the maintenance area, but I couldn’t track him down. He must have some way of getting around that isn’t the normal halls.”

Alex nods, disappearing through the door Kara tried earlier, and Kara gets down to business wiggling into the dress Cat left for her. It’s a long one with thin straps, encrusted with some kind of rhinestone that makes it glitter like a diamond. Kara wishes it wasn’t quite so heavy and difficult to move in – not so much as a thigh slit to help her run if she needs to - but she’s just going to have to deal with it.

Kara doesn’t see Alex or Lex on the way to the stage. Lena is holding her hand so tightly that Kara is sure it’s cutting off her blood flow, but it’s reassuring that she’s so close. They very well might be separated if Kara doesn’t make the top 5, and Kara takes the comfort while she can as William welcomes them back in front of the camera.

She’s unsurprised when the first name announced for the top five is Texas. Andrea strides forward like the cat that got the canary, followed by Sam much more demurely when New York is called next; Maine is the third, but Kara is barely listening to her biography. Lillian drones about her being a science major with a passion for nuclear fission, but Kara is focused on the Liberty setpiece behind them. She could have sworn she just saw a shadow behind the face, but the erratic light movements are making it hard to tell if it was just a figment of her imagination.

Lena’s grip on Kara’s hand tightens when William flips to the next card.

“Massachusetts!”

Kara can tell how little Lena wants to let go. Her eyes spell worry, terrified of what it might mean if Kara doesn’t make the top 5 and gets barred from the stage, but with a final squeeze she moves forward with the others, leaving Kara behind. The stage lights spin again, and Kara glances up to where she saw the shadow – there’s nothing now, but something keeps bringing Kara’s mind back there. She’s so focused on it that when William reads out “New Jersey!” for the final spot, she doesn’t really comprehend it until Nia is nudging her forward.

"Kara, it's you," Nia says, looking genuinely happy for Kara despite her own clear disappointment. “Go!”

Kara, blinking into the sudden blinding spotlight, takes a few unsteady steps forward before she remembers Cat’s many reminders to smile. She manages to make a few disbelieving faces, waving to the crowd and mouthing ‘thank you’ like she remembers past winners doing in all those videos Cat made her watch on the plane ride here, and as soon as she gets in range Lena seizes her hand again like a lifeline.

The excitement might have been fake, but the relief of still being by Lena’s side is very real.

The five girls who didn’t make the cut file off stage quietly – all except for Nia, who breaks away from the group halfway to run to the front of the stage and steal the microphone from Lillian’s hand.

“I just wanna let all the trans people out there know, if I can make it to the top ten, so can you!” Nia shouts, pointing directly at one of the cameras and clearly speaking from the heart. “All my gays, lesbians, bisexuals, you can be whoever you want to be in this world – you’re all beautiful! I love you!”

The last few words are distant, security having already taken the mic and firmly started to escort her away, but Kara doesn’t let the moment pass quietly – she starts to clap, loudly and obnoxiously, giving a whoop for good measure.

The other girls join her immediately, Lena whistling loudly with her fingers and Sam gesturing for the crowd to join, and soon thunderous applause fills the space. It’s so loud that the only thing that cuts through it is William’s amplified voice, a little surprised but still enthusiastic as he says:

“Quite right! And uh, we’ll be right back with our final five lesbians. I mean, contestants.”

He lets out a loud laugh at his own stumble, waving at the cameras to go to commercial and then joining in the applause (Lillian notably does not participate) while Kara and the rest of the top five are brought backstage again. The moment they step out of the lights Lena turns around, stops the line dead, and throws her arms around Kara’s neck so tight that Kara lifts her off the ground a little bit. The assistant behind them sighs impatiently, tapping his watch, and Kara simply takes a few steps forward with Lena still in her arms, the toes of Lena’s heels drifting across the hardwood.

“Thank god,” Lena mumbles, finally letting go and allowing herself to be put down. “I don’t think I could have gone back out there without you.”

“I would have stormed the stage,” Kara says, only partially joking. The assistant tries to hurry them to the green room where they’re supposed to wait for the commercial break to end, but Kara walks intentionally slowly – she’s hoping to see Lex, or at least Alex tailing him, but in the last-minute rush all around them she can’t find either.

“What do you think is going to happen?” Lena asks in a whisper, waving the assistant away impatiently when he tsks at their slowness.

“I have no idea,” Kara says, chewing on her lip before she remembers that she’s wearing lipstick. “But I think it will be at the crowning, for effect. Statistically these things usually end up being bombs or shootings, but the original threat was so vague that we can’t be sure.”

“Right,” Lena says, swallowing hard and nodding. “Okay.”

It’s clear in Lena’s voice that she’s scared, as much as she’s trying to put on a brave face. Kara stops dead, to the assistant’s obvious disappointment, and holds Lena’s gaze to make sure she understands the gravity of what she’s about to say.

“Lena, I am not going to let you get hurt.”

“You can’t guarantee anything,” Lena says, smiling a little. “But I appreciate the thought.” She kisses Kara softly, making sure not to transfer any makeup, and together they finally follow the harried stage assistant to the green room.

Kara wishes more than anything that time would pass slower. But it seems like in its infinite wisdom it’s decided to speed up just when she needs a few extra minutes to figure out how to stop the inevitable disaster, and barely a minute of chit-chat passes before they’re being rushed back to the stage. Every step she takes with Lena in front of her feels like a mistake, but without the FBI behind her she has no way to stop the show completely. Lillian would just drag her off the stage like Nia, and probably get away with it.

It isn’t until they’re lined at the edge of the stage that Kara finally spots Lex again. He’s holding the winner’s crown on a black satin pillow, and he hands it to Lillian with a smile that makes Kara’s skin crawl – and almost immediately he turns and disappears from sight, and a few seconds later Kara sees Alex. She’s looking around like she’s lost him, somehow.

Lillian carries the crown past Kara, and Kara follows it with her eyes. She can’t see anything wrong with it, but it’s too far away now to really get a good look – and they’re barely given a second to think, paraded back out in front of the audience like a line of show-dogs. Lena grabs Kara’s hand again as soon as they find their places, and while William banters with the crowd and Lillian holds the crown in preparation for the announcement Kara starts to feel real panic unfurling in her chest like a dragon. Her every sense feels overly tuned, hyperaware of everything but unable to tell where the danger is going to come from.

“Our fourth runner-up,” William says importantly, flicking the envelope open with a flourish, “is Maine.”

Maine steps back, clearly disappointed, and Kara’s heart pounds harder. She can see Alex in the wings, but without their FBI equipment she has no way of talking to her.

“Our third runner-up…New York.”

Sam accepts the decision easily, smiling and taking a step back with Maine, who hugs her in consolation. But Kara hardly sees that – a shadow flicks again behind the Statue of Liberty set, and this time Kara doesn’t look away. She stares at it, willing it to appear again – and when it does, a shot of equal fear and vindication goes through her. Lex.

She wants more than anything to be able to tell Alex, but she can’t gesture in front of Lillian or the cameras. Instead she flicks her eyes urgently from Alex in the wings up to the Statue, but Alex doesn’t seem to get it.

“Our second runner-up,” William continues as if there isn’t a major terrorist event about to happen, “Texas.”

Andrea’s lips are pressed into a thin line as she steps back next to Sam. Kara, still trying to mime I think Lex is up there without making too much of a fuss, doesn’t realize the implications of that until Lena tugs on her hand – she’s in the top two. The crown is between herself and Lena now, and Lena is ghostly white, clutching Kara’s hand for dear life. 

“One of these two women will wear the crown,” William says, and the words seem to echo in Kara’s head. “The first runner up, who will have to take the winner’s place if for some reason she can’t fulfill her duties, is…New Jersey.”

Lena’s mouth drops.

“Which means that our new Miss United States is Miss Massachusetts, Lena Luthor!” William announces happily, as the confetti starts to fall over both of their shocked faces and someone drapes a Miss United States sash over Lena’s shoulder.

Kara isn’t sure what makes her look at Lillian just then. Some kind of intuition, maybe, or purely the suspicion she’s had this whole weekend - but when Lena’s name is announced, something happens on Lillian’s face. It’s almost nothing, just a ghost, a twitch - but Kara sees it. It’s surprise. The barest hint of regret. Lillian does nothing to stop what’s happening, dedicated more to her plan than to her daughter. But for a second, she gave herself away. Lillian wasn’t expecting Lena to win; but it isn’t stopping her from finishing out her plan.

And when the previous year’s winner takes the crown from the pillow, Lillian’s eyes follow the movement of it across the stage like a predator watching prey.

Kara’s heart drops to her feet.

“It’s the crown,” Kara breathes, amidst what feels like an explosion of sound and movement after the announcement of the winner. Her body flares into overdrive, and she turns to Alex fully now that everyone is distracted enough to shout “it’s the crown – Alex! The crown!”

Alex can’t hear her. She points to her ears, shaking her head and trying to read Kara’s lips – Kara, desperate now, gestures wildly at her head and imitates a bomb, pointing up at the Statue and hoping to everything she believes in that Alex gets it.

When the recognition dawns on Alex’s face and she finally sprints away in the direction of the Statue, Kara almost sinks to her knees in relief. But she can’t – Lena isn’t even close to being out of danger yet. The stage is pure chaos, sparks showering and music blasting and William’s voice reciting the stupid pageant song, and Lena looks at Kara in pure shock as she’s swarmed by people – and to Kara’s horror she’s pulled away a few seconds later, their numb hands pulling free.

“No! Lena – Lena!” Kara shouts, grabbing for it again but missing completely, her voice hardly rising above the din. “Don’t take the crown! Lena!”

But it’s so loud - Lena is shocked and confused, and she can’t seem to understand Kara through everything that’s happening. Kara tries to elbow her way forward, fighting the small crowd of judges and stage-hands around her, but as soon as she makes a move that wasn’t scripted, Lillian spots her. Kara can see her shout to security, pointing, and in a few precious seconds Kara is rushed by three officers.

In just a moment, everything has spiralled out of control. Kara can hardly breathe, can hardly think - and as one of the guards grabs Kara by the arms and tries to drag her off the stage, the crown is set perfectly on Lena’s coiffed, sparkly hair.

Lena looks completely overwhelmed. She’s standing stock-still, her feet planted while everyone around her gives congratulations and tries to nudge her forward for her victory walk, and something inside Kara snaps seeing that crown on her head. She rears back and throws off one of the officers, shoulder-checking another and almost getting away until the third grabs her fully around the waist.

“Let me go! Please, please, she’s in danger, I have to - Lena!” Kara screams, the absolute terror of it ripping at her throat as desperation takes hold of her instincts. Lillian very intentionally takes a step just in front of her so that she can’t keep eye contact with Lena anymore, and Kara kicks her legs up frantically, her dress whirling through the air in what feels like slow motion. She can feel every millisecond slipping away, an invisible clock tick tick ticking down the moments until something happens to Lena.

She can’t let it happen. She promised.

Movement from above draws Kara’s eye back up to the statue, and there she can see that she was right – Lex is there, but so is Alex, wrestling him effectively to the ground on a maintenance platform. Lex is putting up a fight, though, and there’s something in his hand that he’s trying to keep hold of –

A remote detonator.

It’s as if seeing that, seeing the exact way this plan was supposed to work, clears Kara’s mind. In a moment of pure lucidity Kara plants her feet and uses the skills she showed off just 20 minutes ago, throwing a perfectly executed elbow into the stomach of the man behind her, and the other two fall even harder with a few well-placed knees to the groin. She’s barreling past a startled Lillian when she’s stopped by one of the last people she expected.

“I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you,” Andrea growls, holding Kara by the shoulders in a surprisingly strong grip, “but I am not going to let you hurt her over a stupid beauty pageant title –”

Andrea, protective of Lena to the last, thinks that Kara is attacking her out of spite. It would almost be sweet, if it wasn’t so dangerous – and so Kara winces, curling her hand into a fist.

“I am so sorry,” Kara says, before she punches Andrea full in the face.

Andrea falls back into the crowd holding her clearly broken nose, and Kara runs towards Lena full-tilt, kicking off her shoes.

“Take the crown off!” Kara shouts, and Lena finally seems to hear her, if not quite comprehend what the words mean. “Lena!”

A few feet away from her goal, Kara is rugby-tackled by a fourth security guard.

She lands painfully on her shoulder, the full weight of another person on top of her, and Lena’s confusion turns to alarm. She rushes forward, reaching to grab the officer and pull him off, but Kara points desperately up to where Alex and Lex are still struggling in a last-ditch bid to warn her.

On the platform, Alex has Lex half-pinned and struggling, but Lex is reaching with some success towards the remote which has fallen a few feet away. Alex grabs for his arm to stop him, but that only gives him more leverage to get out from under her – he lunges for it, but rather than seizing it he knocks it off the edge of the platform and it clatters onto the stage below.

Lillian, in an obvious final moment of desperation, dives for it.

In that moment, Kara watches as a grim understanding washes over Lena’s face. Kara doesn’t have to intervene, in the end - Lena reaches up to rip the crown off her own head, staring down at it and then up at her mother standing in the shadow of the Statue with the remote in her hand.

There’s a half-heartbeat of a standoff – Lillian and Lena meeting eyes, a final showdown between mother and daughter. Lillian’s face is vengeful, caught up in her own self-righteous fury, but seeing the crown in her daughter’s hands, she hesitates.

She hesitates, but she doesn’t stop. Kara can see the moment the decision is made, and heartbreakingly, so can Lena; almost simultaneously Lillian hits the button, and Lena hurls the crown with all her strength towards the rafters.

The impact of the bomb shakes the building to its foundations. It takes out most of the ceiling with a fiery blast that rains burning plaster and wood onto the stage, burying Lillian and knocking Lex off the platform, but Alex manages to roll backwards and cling to the railing of the maintenance staircase. Kara watches her pull herself to safety, carefully starting to pick her way down to the stage through warped beams, and the security guard pinning Kara is so shocked by the commotion that Kara manages to wiggle out from underneath him and get to Lena.

Unlike most of the people around them who hit the floor when the bomb went off, Lena is still standing. She’s staring up at the place it exploded with almost no emotion at all, and she only seems to come out of it when Kara grabs her arms, checking her for injuries.

“Hey! Hey - are you okay? Are you hurt?” Kara asks, rubbing a thumb over a small cut on Lena’s forehead from the debris. Kara’s ears are ringing from the blast, the commotion around them seeming like a distant muffled echo, and Lena’s hair is full of confetti and plaster dust. Lena nods absently, looking at Kara like she’s an oasis in the desert.

“My mother tried to kill me,” Lena replies, her voice hoarse. Kara nods, straining to hear it and rubbing Lena’s arms, dusting the debris from her shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Lena.”

Lena nods again, even though Kara didn’t really ask a question. “You saved my life.”

Kara shakes her head, kissing Lena on the cheek. It leaves a faint pink lipstick mark, and Kara rubs at it with her thumb, sliding the hand over to cup Lena’s face. “You saved yourself.”

Again, Lena nods. It’s a slow, contemplative thing, totally mismatched from the crowd currently screaming and running for the exits behind them or the security guards swarming the stage with fire extinguishers, and before Kara knows it she’s being kissed senseless.

It’s a deep, breath-stealing, world-ending kind of kiss. It blots out the chaos, everything narrowing to the meeting of their lips, and Kara does her best to pour into it the indescribable depth of feeling she has for the woman in her arms.

After coming so close to losing her, Kara can’t really deny it anymore. She’s stupidly in love with Lena Luthor.

Kara has no real idea how long they stand there at the front of the stage, kissing like they have all the time in the world. They only part when a small piece of wood hits Kara on the arm, and she pulls regretfully away to see Alex standing nearby with another one in her hand, ready to throw. Lex is nearby, cuffed and held by Vasquez and James, but Lillian is nowhere to be seen.

“This is all very romantic, but we do still have someone to arrest?” Alex says, pointing at the now-moving pile of setpieces that buried Lillian. A hand appears, and then an arm, and finally Lillian drags herself out of it, coughing and waving away the remnants of the smoke from the fires her own bomb caused.

Grinning, Kara reaches into her bra and pulls out a pair of handcuffs, tossing them to Alex.

“I’ve wanted to see this for days.”

Lillian fights Alex every step of the way from the theatre to the waiting SUV. Vasquez puts Lex in a separate one, completely ignoring his protests and insults to her intelligence, but Kara can’t help but give Lillian a piece of her mind.

“You’re a sick piece of work, you know that?” Kara says forcefully, leading the way past the police line outside the building and past a crowd of interested onlookers. “You were going to sacrifice your own daughter just because you got fired?”

“I don’t choose the winner,” Lillian says, as if that makes any kind of difference. A well of fierce protectiveness rises in Kara, and she opens the SUV door with perhaps a bit more strength than is really needed.

“You knew it was a possibility, and you brought her here anyways as an alibi,” Kara says, Lillian’s complete lack of regret or shame making her angrier than she expected. “You looked her in the eye and you pressed that button -”

“Mother?”

Kara turns towards Lena’s voice to see her jogging towards them, looking bright and strangely confident. Lillian seems surprised to see her, and draws herself up to her full height as Lena approaches – but Lena doesn’t seem bothered at all. In fact she smiles, looking up at Lillian with an expression of pity.

“Mother…thank you,” Lena says, a little breathless. Lillian’s body language shifts from defensive to shocked.

“Excuse me?”

“If you hadn’t done this, I might never have been free of you,” Lena explains, stepping closer to Kara. “I would have operated under the delusion that you actually love me, and let you keep controlling every step I try to take. Now I know for sure. The only thing you truly love is yourself.”

Lillian looks stunned. Alex, seeming to decide that that is just about the perfect thing to send her off to prison with, quickly guides her into the backseat and closes the door firmly behind – Lillian stares at them through the window, but when Kara taps twice on the roof the vehicle pulls out quickly, taking Lillian away for good.

Now that Lillian and Lex are clear of the perimeter and Alex is heading back into the crowd to help out, Kara finally has a moment to take in the scene. The fire department has arrived, and the local PD is interspersed with the FBI talking to witnesses. Brainy is a few feet away talking to Nia, ostensibly taking her statement but not actually writing anything down in favour of staring at her with an obvious crush. James is the one handling Siobhan, who seems determined to explain both what she saw and why she was robbed of the crown, and Andrea is having her bruised nose looked at by a paramedic.

The thing Kara is most surprised to see is Jonn, who pauses his conversation with one of the security guards to head towards herself and Lena.

“Danvers,” he says gruffly when he’s in earshot, at least having the decency to look a little ashamed, “you did good work today.”

“Thank you, sir.” Kara nods, and Jonn averts his eyes before saying what’s obviously a somewhat embarrassing statement for him.

“I’d like to formally invite you back into the Bureau. Your suspension is lifted.”

Kara laughs a little, and Jonn’s eyes snap back to her.

“I appreciate that, but I actually have to refuse,” Kara says easily. “I wasn’t suspended – I resigned.”

“Refuse?” Jonn says, shock spelled out clear as day on his face. “Danvers, you saved this pageant. You’re an invaluable agent. I apologize for what happened yesterday, but -”

“I don’t belong here,” Kara interrupts frankly, squeezing Lena’s hand for courage. “The issues I have with this job aren’t going to go away. I think I’m better suited for something else, and the fact that you expect me to come back with almost no mention of the fact that you basically fired me yesterday for being right proves that. This isn’t for me.”

Jonn is silent for a few beats after her speech. He’s frowning, but then again he’s usually frowning. Lena rubs a little circle on the back of Kara’s hand, and somehow it steadies her more than anything else until Jonn finally nods.

“It’s your decision, Danvers. If you ever change your mind, you know where to find me,” he says, holding out a hand. Kara shakes it with a relieved smile.

“Of course. And, Jonn?”

Jonn raises his eyebrows as their hands part.

“Alex was the one who held this operation together at the seams,” Kara says, nodding over at her sister. Alex is efficiently directing the local PD, and as she walks past Brainy she snaps her fingers in front of his face with a knowing smile. He blushes, quickly pretending to write something down while Nia talks animatedly. “She’s the invaluable one. Maybe start treating her like it?”

For probably the first time since she’s known him, Jonn laughs. It’s short, but he’s still smiling a little when he nods in agreement. “Noted.”

“I can’t believe you really quit,” Lena says quietly once he’s left them, tugging Kara closer by the ripped, dusty skirt of her ruined dress. “What are you going to do?”

Kara shrugs, feeling lighter than she has in a while. “I have no idea. For the first time in a long time, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Lena seems buoyed by Kara’s mood. Some of the tension leaves her, and when Kara leans forward to kiss her she loops her arms loosely around Kara’s shoulders.

“But I do know that I want to pursue this,” Kara clarifies, her hands landing on the perfect curve of Lena’s waist. “With you.”

Lena’s next enthusiastic kiss tells Kara everything she needs to know.

“So…Massachusetts?” Kara murmurs when they part for breath, nuzzling Lena’s nose with her own. “That’s not terribly far from New York, right?”

Lena laughs, her head falling back a little. She toys with Kara’s hair, teasing out a sparkly tangle with gentle fingers. “Only for another few more months. Once I finish my PhD, I can go wherever I want. And I suppose that since I won, I’m going to be travelling a lot this year anyways.”

“Oh, yeah! You did win,” Kara says, grinning when Lena raises a brow. “Have I congratulated you yet?”

“Are you sure you didn’t have the FBI rig my results, too?” Lena says flippantly. Kara snorts.

“They weren’t even rigging my results at the end. And you deserved to win. Whether this circus is a scholarship program or a beauty pageant, you’re the smartest and the most beautiful person here.”

Kara could be perfectly happy, she thinks, making Lena blush like that every day for the rest of her life.

“And I almost got blown up for my trouble,” Lena scoffs, clearly trying to hide it – so Kara just holds her a little tighter, settling into it when Lena presses her warm face in the crook of her neck. Lena seems grateful for it, pressing a quick kiss to Kara’s collarbone.

“Well, I’m jobless now,” Kara says, giving her a light squeeze. “I can just follow you around the country. Do you need a bodyguard, by any chance?”

Lena doesn’t answer – she just chuckles indulgently, pulling away from the embrace to lead Kara towards the hotel block.

 “Come on. You’re not an FBI agent anymore, and we still have our room for one more night.”

They slip away before they can be questioned too much, and when Lena pulls her into the shower to wash off the dust and grime of the night Kara steps gratefully out of her dress for what she sincerely hopes is the last time in her life.

Lena tries her absolute best to convince Kara to go to the farewell luncheon the next morning, but despite her best efforts Kara staunchly refuses. It’s too complicated and frankly too embarrassing to consider – she’d have to unravel the web of lies she’s been stringing for this entire weekend to a room full of people, and as much as she’s come to care about a lot of them, it’s probably easier to just slink away on her flight home with Alex.

Instead, they say various private goodbyes between waking up and actually leaving the room. There’s the good morning we survived goodbye, the very thorough and syrup-sticky post-room-service-breakfast goodbye, multiple enthusiastic goodbyes in the shower, and then one for good measure when Kara finally gets dressed in her usual white button-down and blazer instead of her pageant wardrobe and Lena drags her eagerly back to bed by the lapels.

The last one is a firm goodbye for now as Lena heads to the luncheon and Kara meets Alex in the hotel lobby, and even with all their time together this morning Kara still finds it hard to let go.

“I’m holding you to that bodyguard offer, you know,” Lena says at the end of a long, indulgent hug. “I expect a résumé on my desk within the week.”

“Is saving the Miss United States pageant not enough of a résumé for you?” Kara jokes, and Lena pretends to consider it deeply.

“I suppose,” she says finally, nodding to confirm. “In that case, I’ll see you in San Diego next Monday.”

“As long as I can wear pants,” Kara jokes, and Lena finally leaves her with one last kiss – but as Lena walks through the revolving door, Kara stops.

“Wait, are you being serious?”

Lena doesn’t answer. She just smiles enigmatically, gives a dainty wave, and disappears. Grinning with a mounting sense of excitement, Kara turns to Alex.

“Was she being serious?”

Alex shrugs, heaving her own suitcase and two of Kara’s onto a baggage cart with a grunt. “Sounds like your dream job. Congratulations on being a kept woman.”

Kara doesn’t stop smiling the whole way to the cab stand.

Kara should have suspected something was off when Alex makes them miss several cabs in a row, first claiming that she forgot something in her room and then waving one off because her shoe is untied. But Kara is still caught up in the idea of travelling the country with Lena, and so when Cat comes rushing out of the conference centre doors and insisting that there’s been an incendiary device found at the farewell luncheon, she doesn’t think twice before she’s sprinting (thankfully in her sensible leather boots, this time) towards where she thinks Lena is in danger.

When she bursts through the doors, Alex and Cat a moment behind her, Lena is instead at the podium on a small stage, completely unharmed and smiling at her. There’s no bomb – just a room full of people, all looking at Kara.

“She saved the pageant, she saved our lives, and here she is,” Lena says into the mic, smiling at Kara and gesturing for her to come to the stage. She’s wearing her sash and what is clearly a replacement crown, and even as she wants to melt into the floor and disappear Kara still thinks Lena looks beautiful. “Kara Danvers, formerly of the FBI.”

Kara turns on her heel and tries to sprint for the exit. The girls are all cheering for her, clearly not hating her at least, but her flight instinct has taken over and there’s no stopping it – except for Cat, who catches her around the waist just like she did at the swimsuit competition.

“You’re a hero to them, Kara,” Cat says, pushing her down the aisle with her tiny mutant strength. “Put on your big girl pants, and go say goodbye.”

Kara has to admit, it does feel a little nice to be appreciated. All 49 of the other states are there, with Siobhan, Sam, Nia, and even Andrea right up front. Andrea has a brace over her nose, and Kara winces a little as she walks by, averting her eyes and straightening the wrinkles on her blazer.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Lena says quietly when Kara finally makes it to the podium, the new pet name soothing some of her nerves, “I know you didn’t want to come. But all of us wanted to say thank you in person. And even though you were a federal agent and don’t technically qualify, the vote was unanimous.”

“What vote?” Kara asks, frowning. Lena turns back to the mic.

“Everyone, I’m happy to introduce Kara Danvers, this year’s Miss Congeniality!”

The room erupts into cheers. Sam is fist-pumping, yelling at the top of her lungs; Nia is standing on her chair, and even Siobhan is giving a genuine smile. Andrea claps slightly more demurely, and Kara mouths a sorry at her that she accepts with a nod.

Lena drapes a sash over Kara’s shoulder, one that looks just like her own but in a slightly different shade of pale yellow, and Kara accepts a bouquet of flowers from her with a disbelieving sort of laugh. It seems strange now to be in this room with these people accepting a pageant title while wearing her normal clothes, but it doesn’t feel bad. Nobody seems to mind that she isn’t dolled up – she’s just Kara Danvers, now, comfortable in her men’s shoes and ponytail, and everyone seems to be fine with that.

“I’m, uh. Not great at speeches, but I’ll try my best,” Kara says, adjusting her glasses and stepping in front of the mic only when Lena gently leads her there by the sleeve of her jacket.

“I came into this thinking it was going to be the worst weekend imaginable,” Kara says honestly, after a few seconds to gather her thoughts. “I did it as a favour to my sister. I dragged my feet the whole time. And while there was a brief threat of death,” the girls all laugh, and Kara chuckles a little to herself, “mostly, I was wrong. I loved getting to know you guys. I was uncomfortable, I was exhausted, I was starving – but I needed to protect all of you. I wasn’t lying in my interview. You’ve all become…my friends.”

Lena is absolutely beaming at her, and Kara’s heart does a little pirouette.

“So I guess what I’m saying is, I’m really…really touched by this,” Kara says, clearing her throat and raising the bouquet a little. “And…honoured. And…”

To Kara’s own surprise, the words catch in her throat. Her chest is tight, and it feels a little like if she keeps talking, she’s going to burst into tears. So she sniffles a little, wiping at her eyes and giving a wet laugh. She’s never been more grateful to not be wearing makeup, and that’s truly saying something.

“And I’m never wearing heels again for the rest of my life.”

The room laughs with her. Lena strides forward and gives her a real, unashamed kiss, her smile brighter than the Texas sunlight filtering through the big windows, and against all odds, Kara belongs.