Chapter Text
Lena was perched on the stool at the front desk, scratching Morgul behind his ears and flipping through the latest farmer’s almanac, when the door opened, the bell chiming to alert her to her latest customer's presence.
She couldn’t help but smile when Kara walked in, having noticed that she looked far less frazzled than the first few times they’d encountered each other. Instead this time, there was a calmness to her, like she was at peace with herself and the ever-present reminders of her future– now, which Lena couldn’t help but notice, without the burden of an unwanted fiance weighing her down.
“Here.” The blonde said, sliding a small ring box towards her as she approached the wooden desk. “Concrete proof that I am no longer on my way to being Mrs Matthews’!”
“And it didn’t take a hex to do it.” Lena chuckled, closing the almanac and settling it back on the shelf. Morgul pawed at the box once or twice before Lena tried to shoo him away, only for him to paw it once more for good measure. The brunette glared at the cat, opening her mouth to scold him when she heard Kara snort.
“Sorry.” Kara feigned a wince when Lena’s glare turned to her instead. “It’s just cute to watch you squabble with him like he’s a person.”
As if offended by the notion that he wasn’t, Morgul let out an unimpressed meow, giving the blonde a matching scowl to go with it.
“No offense Morg.”
“Morg? He gets a nickname now?” Lena smirked at Kara’s immediate nod.
“Yep. After all the magical nonsense we’ve been through together, I’d say we’ve reached the nickname stage of friendship.” She declared, reaching out to pat Morgul between his ears, almost too delighted by his purr to notice her own proximity to Lena.
“Happy to see the love blossoming between the two of you” The brunette teased before looking back down at the ring box sitting before her. There was something about it that had captured Lena’s attention, though she couldn’t quite place her finger on what exactly that was.
“What sort of spell did you use to make this happen anyway?” Kara asked, watching as Lena seemed to furrow her brows for a minute while looking down at the box. “I mean, they pulled their funding, but my sister Alex called me about a day later to tell me that our parents got LuthorCorp to fund their projects. The CFO even contacted them personally.”
“I didn’t have to use a spell,” Lena said, tucking some of her hair behind her ear as she looked up to meet Kara’s gaze. “It was research worth funding. I called a friend who owed me a favor, but believe me, she would’ve been interested regardless.”
The blonde woman fiddled with her glasses, the same nervous tick she had displayed the first night they’d met. She looked like she had something to say, but instead, she paused, momentarily shaking her head before speaking once more. “Well I…I wanted to thank you, Lena. For helping me.”
“And for not letting you hex yourself?” the brunette teased, making them both burst into laughter.
“Yes.” Kara managed between giggles. “For not letting me hex myself. I guess I was just so scared that I didn’t really give myself room to think of any other options but um…I am glad that I considered trying magic in order to solve my problems.”
“Oh?” Lena said, suddenly much more breathless than she had been before. “Why is that?”
“I got to meet you…” the blonde admitted softly, causing both women to smile at one another as the blush spread further across Kara’s cheeks.
Morgul interrupted the moment by meowing loudly between them, nudging the box again with his nose.
“I have no idea why you are so interested in this thing.” Lena rolled her eyes, finally opening the ring box to reveal the jewelry resting inside of it.
Her sudden deep silence at the sight of it made Kara frown with concern.
“Lena?” She asked. “Is there a reason you’re staring at the ring like that?”
“…Kara this ring is cursed.”
“It’s…what?” The blonde blinked a few times, moving even closer to the counter to attempt to get a glimpse of whatever it was that made Lena declare the ring a cursed object. It certainly wasn’t the prettiest ring in the world, which might have been part of the reason that Mike hadn’t asked for it back, but it wasn’t ugly enough that Kara would’ve thought it was cursed. Though she could admit that for a while there, wearing it on her finger, or even keeping it on her person at all had felt a bit like a curse of misfortune.
“Are you telling me you never noticed the inscription on the inside of this thing?” Lena asked, almost exasperated as she gestured towards the faint writing along the inner band.
“Oh,” Kara murmured, tilting her head slightly in an attempt to read the swirling pattern that had been etched into the gold. “I thought that was just a design choice. It doesn’t even look like English.”
“Who on earth would write a curse in English?”
“I’d ask why curses can’t be written in English but I think that would count as a question about magical rules.” The blonde half-joked, earning another one of Morgul’s unimpressed meows. “Jeez. Tough crowd.”
“Anyway,” Lena said, looking back at the ring, carefully taking it into her hands to get a better view of what the words said. “Through the laws of earth and sky combined, may this incantation hold to the test of time. For whomever’s finger this ring may land, shall never be bound to a wrongful man…”
“Magic rhymes?” Kara gasped. “I can’t believe those British Wizard movies got it wrong…”
Lena stared at her with a bit of amusement for a moment before shaking her head and returning to the task at hand. “The curse kind of works like a metal detector. Except instead of dinging when it finds the right thing, it does nothing. And instead of doing nothing when it finds the wrong thing, it brings misfortune and potential bodily harm.”
“…so nothing at all like a metal detector?” Kara said, looking away from the ring and back at Lena. “Are you saying this magical ring decided my boyfriend and I weren’t meant for each other, and so it kept messing things up?”
“Essentially, yes.” Lena nodded, putting the ring back into its box and carefully shutting the lid. “Did anything in particular happen after you first received it?”
“Other than feeling a sense of dread and urgency?” the blonde chuckled. “I mean really I just felt like I needed to find…”
Kara trailed off in the middle of her sentence, cheeks flushing red at whatever it might have been that she was about to say.
“Kara?” Lena asked. “... needed to find what?”
“You.” she said after a long moment, cheeks still pink as she lifted her eyes to make eye contact with the brunette once more. “It felt better after I met you.”
“O-Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“ Meow .”
At the sound of Morgul mewling between them once more, they both laughed, shaking their heads in tandem at the black cat as he nudged Lena’s hand toward Kara’s general direction.
“He’s not very subtle is he?” Kara asked, making Lena smile. “No.” She replied. “Lucky for us.”
“Very lucky.” Kara agreed, moving her hand to close the distance between them, carefully lacing their fingers together.
“So…” the brunette said after a moment. “Care for a drink to celebrate your singledom, Miss Danvers?”
“How about a drink to celebrate a first date?”
“Even better.”