Chapter Text
If any of the Superfriends were to ask you why you left, you’re not entirely sure what you would say to them other than Kara needed space to heal and recover. The cyclone of messy emotion still raging in your chest is conducive to neither of these things, and besides. You had recognized the influx of a near-hysterical breakdown rearing up over your head the moment you saw Supergirl’s slumped figure materialize on the platform, and you had enough general awareness of your surroundings to understand that this was not the time nor place for it. Constantine had warned you, after all, of the potential dangers that came with your more volatile emotions now that the magic once latent in your veins has been totally awakened.
Kara is home. That’s all that matters.
The others don’t stop you from leaving-- and in fact, you can’t be terribly certain most of them notice-- but you do catch Brainy’s eye as you slip toward the Tower doors. The proud lift of his thumb in your direction is all you need to realize that your work here is done.
You don’t expect to find anyone outside; it’s already deep into the night, and this part of town never seemed to host many souls at this time without good reason. But as soon as you exit the Tower’s private entranceway and step onto the moon-pale sidewalk, you find Constantine leaning against the exterior of the building with a freshly lit cigarette bobbing in a contemplative lull between stubble-lined lips. He exhales a perfect ring of smoke at the night sky when you approach, and for a silent moment the two of you watch as the smoke fades around the vibrant, luminous moon inching slowly past midnight over National City.
You glance at him from the corner of your eye. “Did you know from the very beginning?”
He feigns ignorance, catching your look with a raised eyebrow.
“That Elizabeth is-- was-- my mother.”
Constantine grunts. He pinches the cigarette between two fingers and flicks the glowing embers onto the concrete at his feet. “I had an idea of it when I first laid eyes on you. Spittin’ image of her, you know.” After a long drag and subsequent long exhale of cloudy smoke, he continues, “She never did tell me your name, so I didn’t quite put two n’ two together ‘till you ignited that salt on her journal.” He snorts softly; some smoke puffs from his nostrils as he does. “Lizzie did the same to me when I met her. Righteous fury can make anything catch fire, I guess.”
Lizzie. Something within you twitches at that affectionate nickname, and for a horrible moment you-- almost-- imagine your mother having some sort of an affair with Constantine. But that couldn’t have been possible, since John is hardly much older than you are. Still, you side-eye him all the same, and he picks up on it with a rough laugh.
“Oh, don’t go gettin’ all cheesed off. Your mum’d never fancy a wanker like me.”
It’s your turn to laugh low in your throat. You lean against the same wall and fold your arms. It’s almost strange to not have the squishy body of the Vertullarian wrapped around your arm any more; you’d just about gotten used to her presence after weeks of continuous contact. “No, I suppose her type’s more the rich American asshole with a rich American asshole wife and son.”
His chuckle is less pronounced this time; it echoes deep in his chest, thoughtful. “Ah, well, maybe her judgment wasn’t the most sound. Always did have a bleedin’ heart, too. But I don’t think she regretted it. Got you from that whole bloody mess, didn’t she? Not too bad of a trade, I think.”
Something soft and pleasant builds inside your heart. “Careful there, John. I might start to think you actually like me,” you say, smiling when he shoots you a quick wink in confirmation.
Constantine pulls himself upright then and mashes the lit end of his cigarette into the masonry block of the wall you’re still propped against. “Yeah, well, you can’t prove nothin,” he answers, just as he begins to roll back his duster sleeves with deft tweaks of his wrists. “Look, love, I’ve done my part here. Time for me to get right and proper shitfaced so I can forget all about having the fucking Azoth within arm’s reach. There’ll be demons crawling all over me for the next half century for having just looked at the damn thing.”
You watch as he pulls out a handful of dust, or maybe sand, from one of his many pockets. “Still feel the same about the whole ‘master-apprentice shit,’ as you put it?” you ask suddenly, nearly surprising yourself with the question.
He pauses a moment to send a short but unreadable look your way. “Sorry, but my babysitting days are over.” With a sharp gesture and muttered invocation, Constantine throws the sand in an arc over the ground. As soon as it hits the pavement, a burst of spiraling energy blossoms upward into a roughly circular portal that crackles with mystical power, not unlike the myriad of portals used hardly thirty minutes prior. He steps toward it, but stops to glance over his shoulder one more time. “Your mum was a self-taught witch. Something tells me, being Lizzie’s kid n’ all, you won’t be needing a Master. Everything you need’s right there in her journal.” Then the serious, sobered gaze he regards you with morphs into a grin. “Go get some sleep, love. See ya when I see ya-- give the missus my best when she wakes.”
You wave at him, a little melancholy, as John Constantine steps into the portal and vanishes all in the same moment. The portal collapses after him, leaving you alone on the sidewalk bathed in moonlight and feeling strangely at peace.
It doesn’t take too long to get back to your apartment. Though by the time you’ve made it to your penthouse door, the full brunt of energy loss has taken residence as a terrible headache cinching tighter and tighter around your skull.
You climb into bed thinking of Kara, repeating the vision of her draped over the platform as the explosion of light faded back like a movie reel on an endless loop. How everything up until that very moment felt so chaotic and uncertain and out of your control, yet the second you recognized her lying there, it was as though the Universe had snapped back together into a shape that made sense again. The missing piece you’ve been aching for has finally fit back into place, rendering your life whole once more.
You savor the sound of her name in the echo of your mind. On your tongue. This last memento of her keeps you from falling apart when you tuck into your sheets, because at this point you’re not capable of much more than rolling the pleasant melody of that name over and over again in your thoughts while fatigue claims your consciousness for the next few hours. The magic you expended today leaves behind a gaping void of exhaustion that you doubt even a super-powered Kryptonian could endure, so it’s easy to sink into your pillow knowing that this sacrifice was worth it. More than worth it.
Kara is home.
You don’t dream at all, which you find a relief after countless nights of restless nightmares. In the morning you will wake with her name on your lips and it’ll be a wonder, all over again, how you ever survived this ordeal without it.
--
You don’t go to the Tower when you wake.
Kara is home. It’s a truth you’d woken to at dawn with such visceral power that you’d lurched out of your bed to scramble for your phone, disoriented but driven by the manic beating of your heart in your ears. Alex had texted you a few times throughout the night, brief updates on Kara’s recovery that are summarized by the final message waiting in your inbox:
She’s okay. Stable. Woke up around 3am. Sleeping now. Get some rest, she’s not going anywhere.
Those few words nearly bring you to your knees. You are glad to have the plush mattress to sag onto when you finish reading and re-reading Alex’s text, because the relief coursing hot and blinding through your veins is not friendly to the concept of standing upright. It takes you several minutes of holding the phone screen against your chest and tears squeezing out from your eyelashes before the world rights itself enough to stand on two feet again.
National City is carpeted in a thick blanket of marine fog this morning, dense enough that the glow of early sunlight is dimmed to a gentle homogenous blue-gray from one end of the horizon to the other. On your balcony you can feel moisture beading against the skin of your arms and face, so you pull on an old zip-up Kara had accidentally thrown in with your laundry months ago. It’s probably the only piece of clothing you don’t mind all the ratty holes and frayed hems of, though it doesn’t do a whole lot to stave off the morning chill. The tea mug cradled in your hands only supplies you with mild heat, so you keep it close to your chest and inhale the curls of steam as they rise to warm your face.
A morning like this makes you feel frozen in time. A little pocket of relief from reality, as though the marine layer had rolled in through the city streets with the intent of allowing you a private moment to ground yourself from the revelations granted by the Azoth.
Not only were you now a literal exalted hero of Truth (which you can’t help but feel is laughably ironic, though less so than it had been for your brother), but this entire time you’ve been learning magic from the mother you'd lost as a young child. It's strange, having this connection to your birth mother you never would have dreamed possible. You never imagined your maternal line was anything exceptional, except for perhaps your mother’s determined good nature that you long assumed had been overshadowed by the Luthors’ more insidious proclivities. Lillian had been so effective at pummeling in the idea that all you inherited from your birth mother was her pretty face, so that even now you wonder if there wasn’t something else that lent this magic to your use instead.
But, knowing now what you do of magic and love, you can’t possibly ignore the mystifying sensation of kinship every time you touch Elizabeth’s journal. How your fingertips tingle when hovering just millimeters over the worn cover, and how you can somehow trace its faded symbol even though most of it has been lost to time. Whatever history you possess outside of the Luthors seems contained in the few scraps of your mother that still exist within these leather sleeves, and that can’t be discounted for nothing. Constantine had promised to share more of that history with you, and perhaps, someday, you will even find the strength to speak with her ghost yourself.
You wonder, stroking your hand down the ivory grimoire paper, if Kara ever felt this way about the bits and pieces left to her from Krypton. If, like for you, they hurt just as much as they soothe. You can almost imagine fitting yourself into a supersuit with your mother’s symbol woven across your chest in observance of this loss, and the thought brings a small smile to your face before you can fully process the idea. Perhaps now that you’ve stepped into the role of Paragon, that was more of a possibility than you’d ever considered before.
Paragon or not-- the closeness you feel with Kara sits golden and warm in your chest, and for once you are perfectly content to sit in this glow without restraint or shame. You can finally accept the light this revelation has given you without those familiar demons of doubt and ever-present guilt to cast their shadow over your heart. Whatever it was you measured your self-worth at, it at least no longer hinged on how everyone else perceived you.
For the first time you can remember, you honestly believe everything is going to be okay.
--
You’ve never been a particularly jumpy woman. Horror movies aside, there isn’t much in the world that can throw you so off guard as to fully unbalance your sense of calm from where it’s been forcibly ingrained over the years (except for learning that you are a witch, of all things). Sure, you can be startled and even panicked-- quarterly assassination attempts and numerous apocalypses tend to do that to a person, Luthor or not. But you are still elite, which means even in fear there’s a certain amount of face you’re expected to save at the cost of appearing weak or vulnerable. And you’ve done more than your fair share of vulnerability lately.
Which is why, after taking a moment to turn away from your empty balcony to refill your tea cup only to turn back and find said balcony entirely not empty, your first instinct is not to scream or flail or jump back from the sudden intrusion--
Instead you launch the electric tea kettle in your grasp at the figure standing just beyond the open slider of your apartment balcony, before belatedly realizing you’ve just thrown a boiling pot of water at Kara Danvers' head.
Well-- Supergirl’s, specifically. The familiar navy and scarlet blurs in front of your eyes as she zips forward to catch the kettle in a single hand before it crashes pathetically onto the floor. The temperature is of no concern; she holds the steaming silver appliance as easily as she might a delicate paperweight. Not a single drop managed to spill out before she was able to snatch it mid-air, either.
“Uh,” she begins, looking a little flustered at the unexpected greeting. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to surprise you.”
Supergirl-- Kara-- is standing in your living room. The same Kara who had stumbled into your office on the heels of Clark Kent years ago. The same Kara you’d nearly brainwashed the entire globe over. The same one who put herself between you and danger countless times, with or without the suit she wears now, and the very same you’d broken into teeny tiny incomprehensible fragments at the possibility of never seeing again when your brother banished her all those weeks ago. The one you were wholly, truthfully, undeniably, and desperately in love with.
Just standing there, in your living room, holding up your electric kettle like a theater prop.
She takes a step toward you when you don’t move. In truth, you are frozen; entirely rigid, eyes wide until they burn with the need to blink, muscles locked into place as though one flicker of movement might destroy the holy vision moving hesitantly closer to where you stand at your kitchen island.
“Kara?” you hear yourself ask, equal parts meek and disbelieving.
She stops a couple paces from you. The kettle is returned undamaged onto the marble countertop, but she leaves a hand on the stone with an air of uncertainty. You can see the toll of weariness in the gentle slump of her shoulders and how she doesn’t quite carry herself with the same noble poise, but all things considered, she looks remarkably intact for someone freshly rescued out of a prison dimension dominated by living nightmares.
“Hey, Lena,” is all she says in return, soft and perhaps a touch nervous.
It takes you a moment or three to gather your thoughts into a coherent order. “Wh- what-- how-- Jesus, Kara!” Pure instinct has you rushing forward, and you throw yourself onto the House of El’s last surviving daughter without further pause or consideration. She catches you easily and does not waver under the weight of your desperate embrace. “Kara! What are you doing here? You-- you should be sleeping, resting, regaining your strength--”
Kara stands patient and still as you pull back to look hurriedly over her, as though you were expecting this illusion of health and wholeness to fall apart after the four-second journey it probably took her to get here. When your concern threatens to evolve into a full-blown ramble, she gently closes her fingers around your wrists to stop you and says, “I’m okay, Lena, really. It’s okay.”
Kara is home. She’s okay.
“But,” you insist, almost whispering now, “why-- why are you here?” Could she not have waited for you to return to the Tower later today, when you felt stable enough to leave the nest of timelessness offered by your fog-laden balcony? Was there something amiss, something you were needed for? Taking a moment to breathe deep, you notice there is no urgency to Supergirl with her hands softly wrapped around the small circumference of your wrists. She stands tall and quiet, and you realize it’s been a long, long time since you last saw her this solemn and even-tempered.
“I,” Kara starts, as if she herself didn’t quite know how to explain the unannounced arrival, “I wanted-- I needed to see you. To… thank you.”
You are not much familiar with being thanked. And from Kara, less than twelve hours free of the Phantom Zone, it seems rather unnecessary.
But the way she’s looking at you does something funny inside your chest; your breath stutters at her attention, as if tripping over itself under her watchful study. And she notices, because you see the crisp glacial blue of her eyes dip low to the open neckline of your tee shirt where the skin just over your heart and sternum lays casually exposed. She releases her hold of your wrists, but you feel somehow still bound in place.
You inhale again, tremulous.
“I wouldn’t be here without you,” Kara says simply. Her gaze lifts to yours once more, and that stupid shaky breath repeats itself when one of her hands reaches across the space between you to connect the tips of her fingers to the smooth pane of skin that hides your heart from view. Her touch, regardless of how feather-light it presses to your skin, sends lightning bolts crackling all through your insides. There’s no mistaking the sharp little gasp that escapes you this time when her fingers slide across your breastbone to lay her palm fully flat and resolute over the pathetic bleating of your heart. Her skin is warm against yours, hot even, and you can’t remember the last time a simple touch elicited such a strong reaction from all corners of your entire being. “You saved me, Lena.”
Uh oh. “We,” is your feeble protest. There’s no point trying to disguise how your stare lands hard and dazed on the flushed pink of Kara’s lips. How it stays there, exponentially more intimate with every passing second it remains. “We saved you.”
Kara knows what you mean. You can see it in the way her eyelids fall incrementally more, leaving you to suffer the soft, hooded gaze she levels mercilessly onto you. Her hand against your chest slides up, away from your heart, grazing gentle touches against your throat and jaw before she guides your chin up to keep you from escaping that calamitous blue again.
“Yes,” she agrees, tone light and quiet still. You are probably only seconds away from dissolving into a fine mist at her touch, you think. Any moment now and you were sure to combust on the very spot. If she stares any deeper into your eyes, or even just at you in general, you could not be held responsible for whatever mess of ash and atoms you were certain to collapse into. “But you, Lena Luthor, are the reason I’m here right now.”
Christ. Could she be any more devastating? Your thundering heart doesn’t want to find out, if only because anything more would (probably) destroy you without question.
You have to close your eyes and swallow. You feel like a tiny bird caught in the hands of a titan, your hollow bones no match for the rebar grip locking you in place. It’s instantly mortifying how your breath comes out in tiny, shaky wheezes, even though you fight hard to keep your respiratory system indifferent to this onslaught of overwhelming proximity and tenderness. Under normal circumstances you’d be able to control yourself with ease, but you’ve learned over the last few weeks that your emotions are not so effortlessly governed when it comes to Kara.
“Lena,” you hear Kara murmur. It is imperative that you don’t linger on the delicate way she stresses your name, the way it sounds reverent and besotted around each gently spoken syllable. You must not, under any circumstance, commit that sound to memory. Nor should you dwell on the faint sensation of a thumb brushing against your cheek when a tear or two slips loose of the dubious hold you keep around your splintering composure, nor even the heat of a familiar palm as it carefully cups around your quivering jaw. “Lena.”
Maybe it has something to do with the Azoth’s effect on your internally conscious self; how it effortlessly blazed away all of those meticulously crafted boxes you’d spent a lifetime stuffing full of thoughts and emotions too paralyzing-- too overwhelming-- to address. Thoughts and emotions that you can somehow endure without all of the little containers you’d learned to secret them away into, because now they’re simply part of you, no less vital to your existence than oxygen. You know on some cosmic level that something about your encounter with the Azoth has rendered all of your previous coping mechanisms inert without leaving you to flounder and drown in their absence. So, theoretically, you (probably) could survive whatever it is that’s about to come next. You (probably) won’t implode from the pressure of your own feelings or suffocate under the weight of desire that’s threatened to undo you since you first met Kara. You, probably, will be totally fine and normal and intact when you eventually have to stare that truth right in the mouth. The statistics were in your favor.
That's what you reason the second your eyelids pull back open and you are met, to your immediate distress, with the angelic, smiling visage of your beloved.
You have looked at Kara a thousand times and more over the last several years. Have intensely memorized the finest detail of her face down to the placement of every sun-sprinkled freckle and silver-pale scar. Were you an artist instead of scientific genius (and now witch), you very likely could have drawn her exact replica from memory alone. Which under different circumstances might have brought a laugh to your lips, since all it took to fool you was a pair of glasses and a hair tie.
Kara doesn’t look any different physically that you can determine. The Phantom Zone hadn’t robbed her of that gorgeous sweep of wheat-gold hair tumbling down each side of her face or the sweet scrunch of nose and eyes when her smile deepens, the straight white cut of teeth near dazzling. Her eyes are still that impeccable shade of celestial blue. She still has her freckles, her scars, her unabashed gentle demeanor that permeates everything she is and does like warm sunshine.
She is so achingly beautiful that you know you’ve been long ruined for anyone else.
“Kara,” you breathe back at her, holding to her forearm to steady yourself under the intense, naked stare she’s caught you in. Her smile, still sweet, relaxes when you force the rigid tension in your muscles to surrender. She strokes away another wayward tear before you notice it’s even escaped your dark eyelashes, but her gaze doesn’t leave your face, as if you might disappear into thin air if she takes her eyes off you for one split moment. You’re secretly glad for it, since it feels as though you somehow might.
You don’t react immediately when a long, tired breath exhales from her mouth and she pulls you ever softly to herself. With her hand still around your jaw, she brings you in to cradle your face close, so close, to her own. Her eyes drift shut, but you see a streak of tears dart down the curve of her cheeks just as Kara tilts her chin upward to press her lips to the bare space between your eyebrows. She keeps her mouth there, silent for a moment. You do your best to act as though this contact isn’t the catalyst for the massive flood of shining heat that swells up your chest and throat with the force of a tsunami. Somewhere in the background, several lightbulbs intensify their illumination in a flare of energy.
“In the Phantom Zone,” Kara starts, borderline whispering. When she pulls back, you see a fresh trail of wetness spill out from those wide watery eyes. It distinctly reminds you of her from before; on the balcony of the Pulitzer ceremony, at the Fortress of Solitude, in the hologram at Mount Norquay. How vulnerable and thoroughly broken she was, even if you had refused to acknowledge it back then. “I-- I was so… so terrified.” She takes in an uneven breath. You keep her gaze, but you can’t promise your own expression is any easier to endure than hers is. “That place, it… it takes all of your fears, your doubts and guilt and sorrow, and amplifies it. Manifests it.” A slower exhale. Her hand stays against your cheek, so you feel the way she gradually deflates, how the pain of each word seems to leach out of her body as it's spoken. “It was built to psychologically break its prisoners of courage or hope. It even--” It's at this point that Kara abruptly stops, her eyes squeezing shut as the thought-- the memory, you assume-- accosts her senses.
You really don’t know much about the Phantom Zone other than what the others told you. But you do know Kara, and you know she’s hurting, even if she tries to wrestle that truth back behind a mask of unwavering strength.
She blinks at you when you reach up to dry the tear tracks on her face with the hem of your sweater sleeve. “What happened?” you pose, softer than a breath. For a second you hesitate-- you are so careful now, so cautious, of any little thing that could threaten the tenuous peace between you. It’s fragile, a wobbly-legged newborn of worry and love that you are terrified of endangering again. But your hesitation doesn’t last long, because you aren’t strong enough to resist setting your own hand on the solid column of her neck where you can feel the powerful thrum of her pulse against the skin of your palm.
Kara’s pulse jumps in your hand. But she doesn’t move away. Instead she sighs, and the tears you watched fall begin to recede to a sturdy calm. “The illusions are…vivid. Almost too real to know the difference. And when-- when you’re surrounded by everything that’s ever caused you pain and suffering, it’s…” She trails off briefly, glancing away toward the windows of your penthouse balcony, “difficult to not believe them.”
You decide not to ask again. She’ll tell you, if and when she’s ready.
Kara lets her hand retreat from your face. She places it back where this started-- right over your heart. You wonder if this gesture acts as an anchor for Kara, or if it feels just as portentous and blindingly inevitable for her as it does to you.
“I saw my father,” she reveals quietly. This is the first time you’ve heard Kara sound this way-- this small, this anxious and brittle. It calls to something in you that recognizes her pain, however alien, from one orphan to another: the loneliness, the loss, that looms black and all-consuming over little girls whose families ultimately failed to protect them. “He looked the same. The exact same. He-- he smelled like my father, sounded like him. Acted like…” Kara shakes her head. “But it wasn’t. It wasn’t him, it was a Phantom using my memories, my pain, to torment me. I thought I was going to lose my mind.”
It’s difficult not to shudder under the awful thought, but you manage. “I don’t think I would have survived something like that.” You don’t mention how you almost didn’t survive losing her again, because the phantoms that haunt you here on Earth were the same ones that followed you out of childhood. Yours would always be there, lurking in the shadows. Waiting for you. If that had been you in the Phantom Zone instead, you most certainly wouldn’t have lasted long enough to recognize your own mother, illusion or not.
Kara’s gaze softens again. She looks at you, smile tucked away for now. “I wouldn’t have,” she says, blue eyes still flickering across your face, “if it wasn’t for you.”
Your mouth hinges open to protest again, but the stubborn words are intercepted on your tongue when she presses a forefinger against your lips to keep you from objecting.
“You,” she repeats firmly. “I would have been lost in that wasteland, Lena. It was devoid of hope, courage, light… love. It was empty and--and horrible. I was so close to giving up. I wanted to let go. I wanted to pretend forever that I had my father back, and honestly… I would have.” Her gaze, now bright with a conviction you’d feared gone forever, could pierce right through you as easy as heat vision. You can feel a familiar ache building behind your eyes when her thumb rubs gently against your bare skin. The air in your lungs is thinning, because you know now, with electric clarity, what she’s leading up to.
“Kara,” you whisper, half-warning, half-plea.
Her throat bobs. “I felt you,” she breathes. “The magic, it-- I felt everyone. Alex, Nia, Kelly, J’onn, Brainy. Kal. All of them, loving me hard enough to reach through dimensions. And you, Lena. I felt you. I heard you. I--” Kara falters then, suddenly awash with new tears. But these ones seem to sparkle where they trickle from her lashes, and a choppy laugh gusts out of her as she brushes a few flyaways from your face. “I was so helpless. So afraid. And then, at my lowest, there was this, this bright flash of light. I was surrounded by it. Your voice--” Her eyes close. The smile resurfaces, awestruck. “I could hear you calling me home through the light. Then… I don’t really know what happened. I remember the Phantom wearing my father’s face trying to convince me to stay. I would have given anything to be with my father again. But the light-- your light-- showed me the truth.” She takes a breath, soft but sodden. “So I chose you.”
You listen with tears still in your eyes and your heart vaulting up into your throat. When her eyes open again, you feel the precise moment that your self-control crumples; a messy sob ruptures from your chest, loud and raw and keening. The grasp you had on Kara’s neck is traded for the frantic white-knuckled grip you take of her supersuit to yank her close so you can bury yourself into her, as if determined to break into her ribcage and fold into the space there. “I thought I lost you,” you weep, muffled against her chest. “I thought I lost you forever.”
Kara is so graceful and gentle with her movements that you don’t register at first when she lowers both of you to the ground, you wrapped fiercely in her embrace. Only when she takes your face in both hands do you notice yourself cradled in her lap, the scarlet cape pooled in a neat semi-circle around her hips. “I thought I lost you, too,” she whispers, tear-thick, before her nose presses to your cheek and you can feel the flutter of her wet eyelashes, the warm puff of her trembling breath, the heat of her skin against yours. She’s so close that when she speaks again, the movements of her mouth ghost dangerously at the corner of your own. “And I am so, so grateful that I didn’t.”
She kisses your cheek first. Right where your tears have stained the skin blotchy so when she presses another tender kiss to your temple you feel the wetness there, too, then at your forehead, down your nose, over your puffy eyelids. She journeys your entire face with kisses and nuzzles along your jaw to your earlobes, then back again until you’re suddenly laughing through the tears she’s determined to kiss away.
You are still smiling when Kara finally tilts in and kisses you, sure and sweet and wonderfully poignant, right on the mouth.
A burst of light ripples out in an arc at the touch, a sparkling aurora of color and light and twinkling notes of bell-like tones. It’s already fading by the time you and Kara part on instinct, but you can still feel the motes of magic in the air and how it settles like mist on your skin, humming with an energy that sinks through your muscle to the reservoir of marrow in your bones. Everything in your living room has an almost iridescent quality to it, as though a film of glimmering light is coating every surface around where you sit curled in Supergirl’s lap.
“What was that?” Kara asks, blinking. She looks down at herself, hands turning over multiple times as she examines the same buzz of power coursing pleasantly into every cell and synapse. You wrap your fingers around her hands and bring them up to where you can gently press your mouth to her knuckles and palms. It feels somehow different to touch her now, as though your nerves have become hypersensitive to every minute shift in the glowing atmosphere left behind. The lightest pressure of your lips on her skin feels electric and powerful, and each touch you leave seems to draw another amazed inhale through Kara’s lungs as if she, too, feels the vibrant energy sparking from your skin to hers.
The answer comes to you on the heels of a bright laugh. “True love’s kiss.” It seems so easy, so simple to you now. You know it on a level that surpasses instinct or spirituality; it was the same light, after all, that had ruptured from the Azoth before Kara was delivered home right at your feet. It floods you with the same unshakeable knowledge now as it had then:
You love Kara Zor-El Danvers with your entire heart, body, and soul, and no advanced alien technology or labyrinth of multi-dimensional prisons could keep you from her. The universe would sooner break in your grasp than dare separate you from your starborn beauty a second time. Azoth or no Azoth, you will turn the world inside out to find her again if you have to.
“I thought true love was only in fairytales,” Kara whispers when you finally lower her hands from the barrage of kisses. She’s still staring at you as though she can’t quite believe the scope of events unfolded over the last few minutes. (You can empathize.) “You know, like-- like the stuff from movies.”
“Says the girl who consumes cheesy romance novels on a weekly basis,” you laugh. She rolls her eyes at you, pouting briefly. But her smile returns in full force when you brush a few blonde curls over her caped shoulder with delicate, almost bashful affection. “It’s real, apparently. Your friend John Constantine gave me a crash course in Magic 101 and I just about had a nervous breakdown about it.”
The warlock’s name gives Kara pause. Her eyebrows veer together over the small smile she still wears, confused. “John? He was teaching you magic? You used magic?”
You sit back a little and squint at her. Usually there was some kind of debrief when Supergirl came-to….right? Surely Alex or J’onn or someone would have explained the arduous task of returning Kara home to Earth and the lengths of what that entailed. It wasn’t as though you performing magic was some small detail overlooked-- it’d been the entire goddamn spectacle. “Exactly how much did they tell you about what happened?”
A pretty pink color rises on Kara’s cheeks and flushes at the tips of her ears. She ducks her head, but you see the grimace she’s trying to suppress anyway. “I, uh, maybe was not completely conscious when Alex told me about it earlier.”
“Kara,” you say, more sternly now, “does anyone actually know you’re here?”
Her grimace edges into an abashed smile. God, you’ve missed that smile. “You mean, like, here here? In National City, on Earth, or…?”
You reach up and flick Supergirl on the end of her stupidly perfect nose. To your surprise (and hers), she yelps at the contact and you don’t so much as feel a twinge of discomfort in the tip of your finger. “Don’t be cute, you know what I mean.”
“Did…” Kara’s eyes are near bulging. She has a hand covering her nose from further assault, muddling her voice behind her palm. Your question goes entirely ignored, which is answer enough as far as you’re concerned. “Did you do that?”
You wag the unaffected finger at her. “Kara Danvers, I swear to God if your sister calls me in a panic that you’re already missing--”
Too late, you’ve lost her. She’s clearly not listening to your very intimidating admonishment because she’s grabbed your hand and is inspecting it with utmost care and concentration, as if all of the answers in the universe are contained in the distal phalange of your right index finger. You wonder, briefly, if your hand looks any different under super-powered sight than usual, or if there’s something else to this sudden and intense examination that you’re missing.
Then, as if it was a perfectly typical request, the woman you broke Earthly physics to save looks into your eyes and says with a profound and tender sincerity:
“Touch me.”
It’s this moment you find yourself grateful for the two decades of etiquette tutoring. Instead of sputtering and gawking like an awkward teenager, you sit perfectly still and unblinking. The vision of indifference. Your heart might be making a mad dash for the floor of your ribcage, but at least you didn’t have to show it.
“Pardon,” you manage to state without wavering, “you want me to...?”
Realization strikes Kara by way of flaming cheeks and a small, anxious laugh. “I,” she tries, blinking rapidly at where you’re trying your damnedest not to break out in a nervous sweat. Kissing Kara was one thing-- one thing you absolutely adored-- but a proposition was not quite what you were anticipating to come out of her mouth next.
Not that you’re complaining, of course.
“I meant,” she clarifies, reaching for your hands. You let her bring them across her lap to where she presses your palms up against her chest, though a safe proximity from what would have been considered scandalous. Even still, your heart doesn’t quit trying to eject itself in all directions. “Like-- like this. Push hard. As hard as you can.”
A pointless exercise, since she’d be as immovable as a five-foot-thick brick wall to you. But you oblige anyway, because she’s Kara, and you’re you, and she’d asked with such genuine innocence that you’d probably jump right through your balcony window should that be the following request.
You push on her chest. It’s with enough force to topple anyone your size (non-Kryptonian, specifically) onto their back, and you’re surprised to find that Kara doesn’t put up the resistance you were expecting. She flops backward with a winded oof, looking equally bewildered as you are when she blinks up at you still perched in her lap.
The kiss, you realize. It’d done something to her strength when used against you. You see the same understanding dawn in Kara’s expression when she tentatively flexes her thumbs into the meat of your thighs and doesn’t break your legs as a result.
“Does that answer your question?”
“I-- yes, I think so,” she stammers out as she pulls herself back into a sitting position. The playful atmosphere fades away when she slowly reaches up, hands ghosting over your arms and shoulders, to touch at the various features of your face in careful, awed study. “I always thought-- I don’t know how Kal does it. Being with a human, I mean. You’re all so fragile.” She shakes her head, huffing soft laughter. “I’ve tried, but. Usually I end up breaking noses.”
The visual this gives you is difficult not to snort over. “Maybe you need some better kissing partners,” you suggest sweetly, smiling when Kara’s thumb skims over the edge of your bottom lip.
“Oh yeah?” Her eyes are pinched in the corners, the laughter lines you love so dearly etched plain above the round of her freckle-dusted cheeks. There has never been any doubt in your mind that Kara Danvers is the most beautiful woman you’ve ever had the pleasure of staring at, and it’s difficult not to give in to the impulse to swoon right then and there. “Have anyone particular in mind?”
“Hm, maybe one or two.” You hook your arms over her shoulders and pull yourself closer on her lap. Kara’s hands fall to your sides where you can feel her strong grasp curve around your ribcage. Those hands slide up the muscle of your spine with pressure hard enough to drag the back of your shirt and sweater upward, exposing skin. It thrills you to be touched like this. The shiver that follows her touch doesn’t go unnoticed, so she repeats the motion with hands now slipping under the fabric of your shirt to press skin on skin. It’s a wonder nothing nearby catches fire from how heat blossoms through your skin at the contact. “For the right price I might even tell you. I am a businesswoman, after all.”
Propped up in Supergirl’s lap, you’re given the rare advantage of height. Kara has to tilt her head back to look up at you, and you relish the sight of the tendons flexing in her exquisite neck when you rake your nails into the thick locks tumbling free down her backside.
“What’ll it cost me?” she poses, gazing up through golden lashes.
For a moment, all you can do is look at her. Feel her. She’s home, and she’s here, and she loves you with an intensity second only to your own. You would have given everything and anything, paid any cost, to have her back safe and sound-- and now here she is, looking back up at you, her hands under your shirt and the taste of her mouth still tingling in yours.
“We’ll figure something out,” you answer softly, just before you lunge forward to kiss her again.
This time you don’t hold back. You kiss Kara with a ferocity that would have fractured your jaw bone had the magic not protected you from her superpowers. The desire simmering in your belly ratchets up into a burning ache that blazes hotter with every wet exchange between your mouths. She’s still a little unsure at first, careful and considerate as she holds you and kisses back. You lick into her mouth, bite on her lips, suck on her tongue, and it’s not long before Kara seems to be overcome by the same passionate surrender. She presses up against you in her lap, fingers digging into your hips. You roll against her and swallow every invigorating sound that escapes her throat until she’s panting and chasing your lips for more.
The kiss doesn’t stop. It evolves, you clutching at her and she responding in kind until you suddenly find yourself flat on your backside gasping for air. She has pulled your sweater off and discarded it somewhere else in the whirlwind of this spirited make-out session. You find it very unfair that only a few hairs of Kara’s have been mussed out of place while it feels as though you’ve been undone and remade in every semblance of disorder.
Kara looks down from where she’s positioned herself over you. When your gazes meet, a brilliant smile illuminates her face. “I could do this every day for the rest of my life,” she says, in a lightness that doesn’t match the incredible weight those words settle with in your chest. At your stuttered inhale, she adds even softer, “And if it’s alright with you, I’d like to.”
“Yeah,” you answer, still breathless, “that’s alright with me.”
She traces her finger over your chest in what you soon recognize as the El Mayarah. It feels warm where she leaves it invisible against your skin, and blazes hotter when Kara dips low to press a gentle kiss to the same spot. “Who would have thought-- a Super and a Luthor, stronger together. I’m really glad I never gave up on you and you--” her eyes shine, wide and wonderful, “--you never gave up on me.”
Joy shimmers up your veins. The truth of that statement feels precious and profound in a way that leaves you with no proper response. So instead, you give into the warmth and scrunch your nose over a devilish grin to smugly remark, “Well, what are friends for?”
Kara rolls her eyes, sighing. You don’t stop laughing until she shuts you up with her mouth pressed firmly against your own.
Which, really, is all you wanted in the first place.
--
It takes the better part of the morning to recall the rescue mission in full detail for Kara. She sits on the rug with you, her legs pretzeled through yours, trying to keep quiet even though you can see the questions building behind those astounded eyes with every mention of magic. She’s exceptionally sweet when you finally explain the connection between you and Elizabeth; her fingers weave into yours and don’t let go, thumbs swiping slowly over the skin of your hands in a gentle rhythm whenever you pause to recenter yourself and squeezing when you fumble over your embarrassment of being an actual real-live witch. There are no judgments, no veiled looks of incredulity. She takes everything in stride, even the turbulent final showdown between her friends and your brother. The news of Lex’s death doesn’t elicit much of a response other than a gently whispered, “Are you alright?”
You are now, you assure her. You are more than alright now that she is safely back in your arms. Lex could die a hundred more deaths and you’d be perfectly fine with it.
By the time you finish, Kara is looking at you with such unbridled awe it makes your teeth ache. You’ve seen people look at her that way countless times; admiration fitting for a saint, a goddess, an indestructible savior sent from the heavens. No one has ever turned such reverence on you before. The Luthors didn’t exactly inspire piety the way Kryptonians do.
Yet she looks at you just like that-- like she’d worship at your feet if you’d only ask.
“You are incredible, Lena,” is how Kara ends up putting that gaze into breathless words once you eventually reveal your new status as a Paragon. You barely resist the urge to bury your face into your hands from the potent force of sheepishness that threatens to overwhelm you. She says it again, and again, until you look her in the eye and feel the full brunt of her unyielding belief coursing through your chest to the tips of your toes. It’s positively dizzying.
Unfortunately for you, it doesn’t get any better when you remember the porcelain cat. After she spends a considerable amount of time letting the tiny figurine amble all over her lap and hands, she stares up at you with tears shining in her eyes and a smile so full of wonder it winds you. This was probably a bad idea, in hindsight. National City is going to end up inundated with millions of teeny ceramic creatures if she doesn’t stop looking at you like you’d hung the stars just for her. You’d do anything, go through whatever trials and tribulations required, just to have that smile turned on you again.
Kara tucks Lil Streaky into his pillowed box for a nap, and then immediately turns to push you back onto the floor. The determined light in her eyes feels momentous and powerful as she stares down at you. “I’ve got a gift for you, too,” she says, just before she kisses you with a rough and demanding might that sparks desire in a storm of divine lightning throughout your stomach. You gasp into her mouth when she rocks herself against you; your thigh is pressed hard between hers, and even through the fabric of her suit and your leggings you can feel damp heat seeping through.
Well-- no going back now.
Her teeth latch onto the neckline of your shirt, her fist curled around the fabric bunched at your abdomen. Then she pulls and the cloth rips clean from your body, torn apart with all the effort of paper in Kara’s superhuman grip. Your breath is ragged and raw in your throat as her deft fingers hook under the wire of your bra. That, too, is yanked apart and immediately forgotten in the corner where she throws it. You fall back against the floor, bare from the waist up, and shiver at the dark look that crosses over the Girl of Steel knelt above you.
Kara’s mouth is hot where she presses it to your hip. You jerk at the scrape of her teeth and following lave of her tongue as it swipes over hip bone, stomach, and up the length of your sternum. She pants against your skin when you whine and groans at the sting of your nails digging into the muscle of her shoulder the moment her tongue and lips find the pebbled peak of your breast.
The rug in your living room is decadently plush under your naked arched spine. You grab some of the fibers with one hand somewhere above your head, white knuckled, vocalizing the pleasure that blossoms from under her mouth as she curls her tongue around your nipple. The suction sends bolts of carnal bliss through your body before it converges in a strong throb between your thighs, and you respond with a deep, breathy moan.
“Fuck, Lena,” Kara pulls away to say, her voice rough and low in her throat. You’ve only heard her sound like that as a furious Supergirl, but desire adds an element of wanton heat to her rugged cadence that you feel spread in a rush just beneath your skin, prickling and intoxicating. She stares hungrily down at you, blue eyes wide but intensely serious.
You reach up to clasp a hand at the back of her neck. “That’s the idea,” you counter, before pulling her firmly down on top of you to stick your tongue back in her mouth. The noise she makes sounds just as delicious as it tastes, and you are glad when she takes this chance to press her hips down on yours, effectively pinning you into the rug.
Her hair tickles at your nose as her kiss slides from your mouth to your jaw, throat, and collarbone. She sucks a dark mark there, humming appreciatively at the pathetic whimper it drags from you. You are a little too lovedrunk to truly appreciate how the kiss’s spell has balanced Kara’s alien strength against your human tolerance wherever she touches your body, but you are deviously proud when you bite her neck in aroused retaliation, and the mark remains red where it's embedded into the flesh of her throat in the perfectly dimpled impression of your teeth.
Unfortunately, no matter how the spell equalizes her power and your magic, you still can’t bite through the titanium alloy stitched into her supersuit. You pluck at the fabric tight around her muscled shoulder and hitch a playful eyebrow when she leans back to look down at you.
“Take it off,” you command, articulating the words slow and precise around a show of teeth that click sharply together as you lift your chin, almost domineering. Her gaze drops squarely to your mouth and stays there, enthralled.
To your surprise, Kara doesn’t crumble the way you imagined she would. You suspect this resistance might have something to do with the emblem she’s still wearing, because after a moment of consideration, Kara sits back on her heels and tilts her head, a curl of blonde hair swinging loose to shroud the full force of her stare. A small smile quirks up at the corner of her mouth as she watches you. There’s something distinctly Supergirl in the way she sits stalwart and immovable between your knees, in the way her smile tinges slightly coquettish. Her strong hands slide with purpose and leisure down your naked chest and over your stomach, and it feels like trails of salacious wildfire burn through your skin after each point of contact.
You feel her fingers slip beneath the elastic band of your yoga pants still snug around your hips. “Hm,” she starts, her eyes finally releasing their hold on you to follow the path she’d just traced down to your leggings. “No, I don’t think so. Not yet.” There’s no time for a rebuttal; with an indelicate tug, Kara rends the black fabric from your legs in a single motion that simultaneously yanks you into her lap and forces a gasp of approval involuntarily from your mouth. The two halves of the ruined leggings are still attached at your ankles, which Kara slips from each foot with the gentle ministrations of a devout servant.
“That pair was fifteen hundred dollars,” you think to chastise breathlessly.
“You’re a billionaire. Buy another one.”
A laugh rasps in your chest. It was true, you had all the resources at your disposal to procure an identical pair at the drop of a hat. The entire store, easily. And part of you already knows you’ll be investing a decent chunk into said leggings, just to have enough supply on hand to experience the exhilarating sensation of being ravished by the most powerful woman on Earth as she divests the cloth from your body like a god desperate to return home to her temple.
“Tell me, Supergirl. Do you make a habit of ripping the clothes off your lovers?”
Kara pauses a moment to chuckle. Though she keeps her expression carefully nonchalant, you feel her hands cup beneath your ass and clench full-fingered into each cheek now relieved of all clothing, aside from the thin straps of the black thong you’re still wearing. She cocks her head as if seriously contemplating the question, then flashes you a smile. “Mm, no. Just you.”
The effortless strength she wields quiets any other thought in your mind as she lifts your hips up to adjust your position in her grasp. When she lowers you back onto the rug, Kara has shifted down your body until she’s bracketed by your thighs, which she then slings over each shoulder. You can feel the hard sculpt of muscle along her spine as your bare soles press against her back, even through the thick material of her cape and suit.
Kara doesn’t seem as intent to rid you of your underwear as she was the rest of your clothes. You watch, propped up on your elbows, as she carefully dips two fingers along the top hem of the thong. Just the faintest touch has you twitching, verging on ticklish. Then she readjusts to slip a single finger around the little triangle of black fabric covering your pelvis, and you can’t help the loud intake of air as her knuckle grazes through neatly trimmed hair.
“Are you ready for your thank you present, Miss Luthor?” Kara murmurs into the soft skin of your inner thigh, her teeth lightly pressing around the tendon that pulls taut as you spread your legs for her. But she doesn’t give you a chance to answer-- just as you’re about to fire off an impatient quip, a bold finger slips beneath your thong again and through your most intimate area with slick ease. A noise somewhere between a yelp and a moan is pulled inelegantly from your mouth as your entire body jerks against her hand. Kara’s smile is almost too pompous for you to handle when she adds, “Oh yeah, she’s ready.”
You’re close enough that you can reach over with one hand and cover Kara’s face with a full palm, only to push her playfully away as she laughs at you. “You are intolerable.”
She grins. Soft laughter in her eyes and breath, she leans down and plants a kiss on the sensitive skin just beneath your belly button. “Nah, I think you can tolerate me just fine.”
‘Tolerate’ isn’t what you’d call it. Without further taunting, Kara pulls your thong to the side and presses into you with her mouth, hot and wet and eager wherever her tongue manages to lap between your labia. Golden pleasure riots through your bloodstream like a drug, and your consciousness feels suspended somewhere between time and space and euphoria. Your body has craved Kara for so long that surrendering to her now is almost second nature to the gasps of air you take at each subtle movement of her mouth-- like your physical being has collided into ecstatic harmony with whatever starstuff composes your soul, and only the rhythm of Kara’s jaw working between your thighs keeps you grounded in the moment.
You clutch one hand into the roots of her golden waves and the other into the rug, writhing and whimpering and crying out when she takes your swollen clit into her mouth and sucks. Then the broad flat of her tongue delves through to your core, where you feel the distinct rush of liquid heat course from your body the moment you feel the vibrations of her moan. Your hips stutter and the rest of you arches, head tilted so far back your throat begins to ache from the strain. Her tongue dips into you several more times before it’s suddenly lavishing the full of your dripping arousal, and then-- eliciting a full-volume, wordless note from your lungs-- the tip of Kara’s tongue flutters in a firm and dizzying speed right at the hood of your clitoris.
Your hips slam upward, forcing Kara to fit her mouth around you fully again. All of your movements now take a desperate edge, seeking a path through the haze of rapturous bliss unfolding throughout every fiber of muscle, sinew, and neuron. Everything Kara does just feels so good and right; everywhere she touches responds with ardent vigor to the point that you can already tell you’ll be unraveling in her mouth in an embarrassingly short amount of time.
“Kar- ahh,” you breathe raggedly, pitch wavering at the edge of a feminine whine. Sweat has dampened your temples, chest, and the backs of your knees, but Kara looks no more worse for the wear when you finally manage to gaze down at her. She’s got her eyes trained up on you, irises so shadowed they’re nearly black. As you watch, she takes a brief moment to grab the thin fabric straps of your thong in one hand and wrench it fully from your hips with all the resistance of wet tissue. “Please, Kara , oh--”
She is so, so good. Her mouth continues to devour you, hungry and aggressive, but the second whimper of her name is rewarded by a finger slipping deep into velvet heat just below where Kara’s chin presses against your wetness. You feel the delicious stretch of her knuckle once she pushes fully into you, and you can’t find it within yourself to care when another high-pitched noise escapes your lips just as she pulls back to thrust in again. When a second finger joins, you cry out and vice grip the sides of her face with quivering knees.
Pleasure ricochets through your entire body. Your nerves are lit like sparklers; light surges together behind your eyelids, drowning out every sensation beside the flood of ecstasy breaking like a wave where Kara’s mouth meets your clit. The pressure of her two fingers driving inside you is the final push you need-- one more thrust and you are shattering in her mouth, around her fingers, beneath her smoldering star-blue stare. You come hard and fervent and loud. Kara guides you attentively through it all with gentle curls of her fingers, light touches of her tongue, and softly spoken murmurs of encouragement. You think the powerful climax will ebb away within moments, but are proven horribly (wonderfully) wrong when a sudden swell of pleasure careens up from where she’s buried deep inside you. Kara watches, lips parted, as you come a second time in tremulant peals of erotic gasps that verge on a squeal.
Distantly, you are aware of glass breaking as every piece of electronic equipment in your apartment surges with power and then explodes in showers of sparks and flying debris. Some of it rains down on where you lay exposed on the ground and into Kara’s hair.
She lifts her head slightly to peer around. “Is that,” she starts, blinking, “uh. Normal?”
The encroaching midday sunshine keeps your apartment from going too dark, though the loss of your overhead lights leaves Kara’s face gray in dim shadow. With one hand, you brush some sprinkles of glass from your bare stomach. “I guess it is now,” you say, before a strangled noise erupts in the back of your throat. She’s still inside you, two fingers deep, the movement of which has reminded your body of the very predicament.
She seems to understand the issue and glides out, slow and merciful. When Kara lifts her face fully from between your legs, the liquid sheen coating her skin from nose downward sends a storm of pride racing wild through your blood. A pulse of heavy arousal centers at your clit when her tongue darts out to lick at her shining lips.
“Come here,” you tell her, voice low and sultry from the orgasm still fog-thick in your veins. Kara obeys without protest, climbing over your naked form with powerful ease. Her hair hangs like a sweet-smelling curtain from where she holds herself just above where you lay. Though bodily movement seems impossible, you reach with both hands to push her hair out of the way as you drag that beautiful woman down to kiss her deep and ravenous. She makes little sounds of pleasure in your mouth as you kiss her, which then converge into a moan rumbling through her chest when you sink your teeth into her bottom lip.
She doesn’t let you get too far, regrettably. With a sigh, Kara pulls away from you and sits back on the carpet. “You’re covered in glass,” she reminds you, as though it was your fault-- which you suppose it is-- and gently she picks a few larger shards out of your hair before you can do something stupid like roll over on top of them. “Come on. I’ll help you get cleaned up.”
You lift an eyebrow at her.
“I’m using a very loose definition of help, here,” she adds when you don’t move. That gets you to roll over and make for the bathroom. Before you know it, you’ve got Supergirl playfully chasing you into a massive glass-walled shower in a fit of delighted giggles and eager, loving touches. She yields this time when you tug on her suit, but only because you manage to use one of the detachable showerheads to drench her entire frontside with a jet of water.
When Kara is finally naked before you, it’s like having the world falling out from under your feet again. But you don’t have to worry much over keeping yourself upright, because Kara slams you back against the tiled wall as soon as the glass is safely rinsed from your skin. Tile cracks from the force beneath you, and it’s delicious; the weight of her pressed against you, moving and slippery wet and demanding, promptly vacates your mind of anything other than the feral, urgent desire to meld your body to hers.
You bite at her collarbone, at her shoulder. Scratch your nails down the beautiful expanse of smooth muscle of her back. Water streams down her face and into your eyes, soaking you through. She trembles when you lap water off the peaks of her breasts and dip your tongue across the hollow of her throat. Her little whines and gasps send jolts into your stomach and lower, yet nothing compares to the obscene sound Kara makes when you flip her face-first against the tile and sink three fingers to the knuckle inside of her. It’s dangerously addictive; every curl and thrust of your fingers is met with that same elegant note, and you’d be perfectly happy to do nothing else but listen to that sound on repeat for the rest of your life. But it doesn’t compare at all to the chorus she sings when you press her flush against the wall, facing you, and drop to your knees to lick up every last trace of her arousal before it’s washed away.
Kara, to her credit, is every bit the animal you need. When she regains control of her faculties again she pins you roughly up against the glass, threatening to wrench the entire panel from its fastenings as she fucks you at a satisfying and enthusiastic tempo. The frenetic movements leave all sorts of streaks and shapes etched into the steam-clouded surfaces of the glass, and more than once the wild kick of a foot or passionate swipe of an elbow takes out the row of various body care products lined up along the back shelf in a clatter of half-empty bottles scattering around the drain. Your panting breaths and her silvery sounds of bliss are broken occasionally by cries of ecstasy and climax, and you even find yourself with a brand-new shower niche when Kara shoves a fist right through the tile during her keening release, which echoes through the steamy chamber like holy music. The face she makes when she comes turns your insides into jelly; she keeps her eyes half-lidded, fixated on yours, mouth opened in a profane shape to release a guttural noise of gratification that immediately prompts every faucet in the whole of your apartment complex to gush forth with vigorous, magical power. Only when the hot water begins to wane into lukewarm do either of you manage to stop wrecking the building any further.
Kissing Kara under the shower stream feels like kissing her in the rain; you have to pull back and marvel at the dark bronze slick of her hair pasted to her neck and face, at the dribbles of water streaking freely from the tip of her nose, chin, and over her flushed cheeks. She stares back at you in much the same way, lips parted and gaze sweetly enraptured.
"You’ll prune if we stay in here much longer,” she whispers to you, though she doesn’t seem all that motivated to leave the silky warmth cascading down on you both, even as it becomes progressively more cool.
You lean in closer, appreciative of how her stare keeps flickering down to the water pooling in your cleavage. “Well we can’t have that,” you husk, low and breathy into her ear. Your tongue flicks out to draw her earlobe into your mouth, teeth lightly scraping, before you finish in a challenging purr, “Whatever will you do about it, Supergirl?”
She takes off so fast you don’t even see the transition between bathroom to bedroom. One moment you’re framed in by walls of glass and Italian sandstone, and the next you’re being pressed down onto the satin sheets of your mattress, already half dry from the extreme speed of her movement.
It takes you a moment to collect your breath. Then you laugh, loud and sincere.
“You’re my favorite,” you tell her as she falls into place beside you. Right where she belongs.
Her gentle smile deepens. Her lips find yours again and for a moment you just enjoy the sensation of Kara kissing you soft and slow, as though she were savoring the taste of your mouth on hers after years of starvation. “Yeah,” she answers, grinning when she pulls back. “I know. And you’re definitely mine.”
--
Your name is Lena Kieran Luthor.
You are 32 years old. You have five degrees that mark you as one of the most versatile scientists on the planet, and a shiny new plaque that claims you as the first witch to successfully fuse technological advancements with the mystical and wyrd. Someday these achievements of yours will lead to curing cancer and a host of other diseases, but for now they simply serve as a reminder of all the struggles you’ve endured to be where you are today. You’ve saved the world more times than you can remember, and you are more than prepared to do so over and over again for as long as you live.
With your brother’s mysterious disappearance, LuthorCorp falls back into your hands. This time when you rename it, you have Supergirl standing proud at your side when you unveil the bold new EL-CORP lettering down the facade. There are no bombs or madmen shooting into the unsuspecting crowd; there’s lively cheers and applause, with the only explosions contained to the brilliant firework display Brainy had expertly rigged for the celebration. It will take the company a few years to recover from Lex’s contamination, but you know it will heal and recover. You believe it with your entire heart.
You are a person, most days. Even a hero when you need to be and a Paragon when necessary, though you’ve declined tasteful spandex and capes in favor of the wardrobe you’ve slowly begun to fill with pieces that reflect you more than tights and emblems ever could. Heels are traded for comfy sneakers, revealing cocktail dresses for slacks and button-ups. You wear your hair down more often than up nowadays. Whenever you manage to catch sight of yourself in billboards and magazine covers, the happiness shining out of your own face is no longer startling to witness. Those demons you’d become so accustomed to rarely bother you anymore, though they’ll never be gone completely. But you know now that you don’t have to confront them alone. You have all of the Superfriends by your side when you need them, and even a few others scattered across the globe thanks to support from Constantine.
Most of all, you have Kara. She’s your light, illuminating the path whenever you feel you might stumble and serving as your reminder that the world, the Universe, was not black and white as you’d been previously taught;
It’s full of all sorts of different colors, shades, and patterns. But most importantly, it is also full of love.
And if there’s one thing you will always believe in, it’s love.