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Lena wasn’t sure what made her pack her bags. She wasn’t sure why she’d sold her shares in CatCo, or why she’d placed Sam as the sitting CEO of L-Corp, or why she was on a plane halfway across the Atlantic. There were a lot of things she had done in the last week that she simply couldn’t explain or justify. Why had she bought a house in Ireland, or why she had sold her penthouse in National City. What was she thinking?
The weeks to come would prove she simply hadn’t been thinking. Lena had been following an impulse, as many do, though she had the means to follow much bigger ones than most. She had thought of something that made her happy, and decided quite suddenly that she deserved something nice. Simple as that, her mind was made up and it was not a choice she has come to regret.
The small house she had found on the outskirts of a noteless town was quiet in a way she had never experienced as a Luthor. The waves and winds soundtracked her days in a way that reminded her of memories nearly forgotten, memories filled with her mother’s soft eyes and gentle laugh. She had a view of the ocean, often grey and bordering on a kind of stormy she couldn’t help but find poetic. The world was calm out here, and Lena was finding a kind of peace she hadn’t previously known existed.
Even the house seemed to hold this peace in every brick. It was a small thing, exterior half run up with vines that Lena couldn’t fathom removing even if they did seem mildly dangerous for some of the wooden support beams they wrapped around. Inside it was an open layout, so few walls that it might as well have been one room. The kitchen bleed into the living room, the boundary set by nothing but a small dining table littered with various books and articles Lena had taken a liking to now that she had the time. The living room was defined as two soft couches and a large fireplace, though the coffee table and armchair that moved between every corner of the space were ostensibly the living room as well. The bedroom was the most distinguishable area, if only because it was a loft above the living room, lined with bookshelves with a simple desk and soft bed among them. All of it bleed together, making what she had intended to be individual rooms simply a space. A space warmed by a crackling fire and soundtracked with pittering rain, a space full of nothing but gentleness.
So no, Lena didn’t know why she was here. She had no idea why she had moved across the ocean, what had possessed her to all but isolate herself from the world she had built a life in. But no, it wasn’t something she would ever undo. She had found something calm here, something she was slowly starting to believe she deserved.
There was the gentle woosh of a cape heard through her open kitchen window, and soon after came a gentle knock at the door. That was the one thing Lena had yet to come to peace with. Not Supergirl, no – that wound had long since scabbed over and melted into nothing more than a slightly jagged scar. Kara, however, was an entirely new hurdle these days.
“The door is unlocked,” Lena offered from her position in the armchair. She had pulled it next to the fire, today, hopping the crackling flames would help counter the cold air from her open windows. It was a juxtaposition she had found herself enjoying immensely – cold air flowing through her home softened by a warm fire.
She watched the handle twist and the front door slowly swing open. Kara had takeout in her hands and a smile on her face as she entered, gently hip-checking the door closed behind her. “You should really consider locking your door more, y’know. Safety and all.”
“Ah yes, I hear the badgers are very aggressive this time of year,” Lena teased, bookmarking her spot in her current novel before unfolding herself from her chair.
Kara huffed as she unpacked their food, and Lena found it odd how the blonde fit into this space. In her penthouse, Kara was comfortable but always a little bit stiff in the living spaces. She only ever seemed properly relaxed when they were in Lena’s room, drifting to sleep curled together under a soft comforter after a movie night that ran a bit too long. To be fair, Lena mostly decorated that penthouse to be as impersonal as possible with the knowledge that Lillian would likely be dropping by unannounced. It was a defense mechanism that had come in very handy over the years, allowing people to feel the familiarity of being in her home without it being a space any more personal to her than her office.
In Kara’s apartment, the blonde was at home in every sense of the word. She filled the space, making it overflow with color and joy when she felt it was needed. It was, at times, hard to tell when Kara ended and the space began. Lena wondered sometimes if she was like that, now, with her cabin. She certainly felt more at home here, but she simply couldn’t imagine being so sure in her surroundings.
Here, though? Here, in the open-concept cabin off the coast that Lena had made her own, Kara moved with reverence. Everything she did, though far from stiff or uncomfortable, was intentional. Each takeout container was placed on the counter with care, cupboards opened and plates found with gentle purpose. Every action was delicate in its execution, a show of unconscious respect Lena had never seen before. Because it truly did seem to be unconscious, for Kara, how she moved through Lena’s space. It was clearly natural, comfortable.
Which was just the start of how Kara was confusing her, lately. Kara slotted herself into Lena’s new home like she was meant to be there, bringing with her care and precision and delicacy. She had started weekly visits, flying out every Sunday for lunch and bringing food from a new restaurant each time and somehow always picking the exact cuisine Lena had been craving that day. She gave Lena these looks, each week. These looks that made the woman question everything and yet made her feel like she knew everything. She sent streams of texts every day, topics ranging from puppies on the street to Supergirl missions, making Lena wonder if the very idea of not sharing everything with her had become foreign to the blonde.
None of these were things that bothered Lena, of course. She quite enjoyed the company, and the two days that Kara was on Earth-1 and couldn’t send her updates had been achingly empty. No, Lena very much loved everything Kara offered her, gathering up every piece of the reporter she was allowed and holding it to her chest with all her will. These things did confuse Lena, though.
They confused her because they felt… domestic. These pieces of Kara fit into her life with a delicate precision that had been nice in National City, offering a sort of warm comfort to fall back into when the sharp edges of being a CEO became too much. Now, when everything around her was the epitome of the gentleness her therapist constantly told her she deserved, Kara’s warmth fit differently. It fit not like a balm, a treatment for a wound she would never truly outlive. Rather, it fit like a watch, or a necklace. Something that completed the outfit, accentuated certain features or color pallets. Kara’s presence was no longer contrasting and Lena found herself unsure of what that meant.
Of course, a few months in a bubble of peace and contentment did not an emotionally healthy Luthor make, so Lena shoved down the thoughts. Each week, she allowed herself the time it took Kara to unpack their food for observing and pondering things as deeply as she could imagine. Then, when the blonde reached for plates, Lena shut down the thoughts with practiced precision and move to get them each a glass, picking the drinks that would go best with that week’s food.
“I picked a place nearby this week, a mom and pop I think,” Kara shared, filling a bowl to the brim with some sort of stew that smelled heavenly. “I mean, if you were looking for places to go? Not that you have to, of course, but if you wanted to have a meal you don’t have to cook during the week, this place is close. Just into town, I think. You might even be able to walk to it, on a nice day.”
Lena smiled at the thoughtfulness. She had always enjoyed cooking, and since she had the time to do it properly she had come to love it. The science of it was comforting in its familiarity, but also a kind of challenge she had never had the chance to explore. She had even cooked a few times for Kara, enjoying the way the blonde’s eyes would light up and she would wiggle in her seat whenever she made something particularly good. Despite her newfound love for cooking, she was starting to miss the ease of letting someone else make her a meal. And of course, Kara had brought her a solution to a feeling that had only begun to arise mere days ago. Even better, it reminded her of the few things she remembered her mother making her, once upon a time. Shepherds pie and some sort of chowder – seafood, for sure – stood out the most notably, along with a golden-crusted soda bread that made her think of picnics and gentle winds.
Her voice was thick when she remembered to reply. “Thank you, that sounds lovely.”
That was another thing about her time here that Lena hadn’t fully expected – the feelings. Predominantly, she felt an all-encompassing contentment that she had yet to fully accept as her reality. Beyond that, however, she felt a wider array of emotions than ever before. There were memories in every corner of this land – storms undercut by the echo of a soft lullaby, crashing waves intermixed with faded but genuine laughter. Trips to the grocery store brought out the accent she thought she had long since buried, and the soft woman behind the counter suggested recipes that brought ghosts into her kitchen with each attempt. She had left behind the easy feelings, it seemed, in National City. Anger and regret were foreign to her these days, replaced with nostalgia for something she hadn’t known she’d lost.
Lena found herself quite out of her depth these days, not that she had ever been the best with her feelings to begin with. Her feelings had always been a war, was the thing. She was raised on a battlefield, surrounded by sharp tongues and heavy fists. Every second of her life had been a conflict, two beasts at war. The desire to earn her family’s love against the knowledge that she would have to be a horrible person to do so. The need to help the world against the bitter mistrust she was greeted with at every turn. Her love for her brother against her repulsion at what he had become, and her trust in Kara against the betrayals of Supergirl. Everything was a battle, building her into a monument to a war she had never wanted to partake in.
Here, though?
Here, the feelings were gentle, even in her misery. Her days here weren’t a conflict, they simply were . She woke up every morning with an odd feeling that she had come to recognize as the simple absence of unnamed guilt. She tended to the small garden she had begun to cultivate with a singular intention – to find beauty and bring it to her space. Her projects were complex in their design, but never in their inspiration. She found herself tinkering away at her toaster simply because she thought she could change the distribution of heat for a more even crisp to her bagels. She built a shelf simply because she wanted something to fill the corner by her back door and thought the driftwood she’d found on the beach had a nice grain to it. She went to bed every night with a smile that felt foreign in its persistence but fitting all the same. Here, her days were simple. Sadness brought a quiet day looking across a gloomy ocean, Joy offered soft music and a new cooking endeavor. Anger was becoming rare, these days, but it was accompanied by a new project in front of the fire, tossing unneeded scrap into the flames as a form of catharsis. Her feelings existed in companionship with her, rather than being at odds as she had always known them to be.
Lena wasn’t sure what had possessed her to do this. She didn’t know why she had moved halfway across the world, or why the Atlantic sounded softer than the Pacific. She didn’t know what about this place was special, she simply knew that it was. And despite how foreign it all was – the peace, the comfort – she found herself embracing it fully.
She knew it would end at some point, the itch to fix something outgrowing the projects provided by an old creaky home. She felt it sometimes when fixing a leaking pipe or replacing the stone mantle of her fireplace. That need to do something larger, something that could be bigger than herself. For now, though, she enjoyed her slow days and small projects. She enjoyed her Sunday visits from Kara and her Tuesday FaceTime with Sam and Ruby. She enjoyed Brainy’s occasional calls to talk through ideas and Nia’s texts about fashion choices.
Even the ambiguity that had always been her and Kara’s relationship seemed simpler than it had been in National City. She wasn’t foolish enough to think they had a strictly platonic relationship, she saw the ways lines blurred and edges frayed. It had always been like that, really, but it wasn’t something to be avoided or corrected anymore. After years of lying to herself — she’s straight, she doesn’t like me, I don’t do relationships, I’m imagining things — Lena found herself simply existing. She had found a sort of inevitability in her days and weeks. The roof leaks in storms (right over the sink, conveniently), the small harbor porpoise breaches a few miles from her small dock in the mornings (she named him George), and she and Kara toe the line of friendship whenever they feel like it (constantly). It was simply how things were. And just like she never asked for George to appear in the afternoon, she never asked for anything to change with Kara. She knew, inevitably, George would migrate — harbor porpoises can be found off the coast year-round, but they are rarely stationary for long. Just like, inevitably, she and Kara would shift into whatever they were becoming.
She had found a peace previously unimagined, healing something in her previously thought whole.
Eventually, Lena will go back. Someday, she will return to National City. She’ll find a simple masonry with a nice garden to restore, and she’ll wake up every morning with her face tucked in a mess of blonde. Lena will return to L-Corp, though Sam will still share many of her duties so she can help Kara and their family save the world when needed. Eventually, Lena will find a way to carry the peace of this cabin into the unforgiving violence of the world she was previously accustomed to, building a true life for herself there. Someday, she will be making dinner with her children racing through the kitchen and her wife working on an article at the table.
When Kara hesitantly crawled into bed next to her, a Sunday lunch bleeding into dinner and a late enough evening for Lena to insist she stay the night, Lena knew that day would come. She would order that wireless phone charger Kara had almost cried over last week (it was shaped like a dinosaur) and she would buy dozens of paint cans for the blonde to paint a mural on the wall opposite their bed. There would be hours spent debating which couch to get and which wood they should redo the floors with.
With only blonde curls and the edges of drooping blue eyes visible over the comforter, Kara mumbled a sleepy “g’night”, and Lena found herself rather fond of the tranquility she had built.
A peace well earned, she thought.