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"D... Don't you get it?" she dimly hears Lex coughing out in a broken rasp of an asking, but Lena's heartbroken gaze remains trained on the still-playing recordings of Kara...
Her Kara
Catching bullets with her bare hands...
Setting fire with her eyes to the pinned-up images of the two of them together, littering the cell room walls of Lex's twisted pet Red Daughter.
"Kara Danvers is Sup...."
"Lena?"
The whisper of her name has the gun in her hand swinging around with trembling aim.
Kara stops at once, head down and seemingly just as heartbroken as Lena herself. Again, the gun in the Luthor woman's grip trembles at the etching of true mingled pain but doesn't drop altogether from its aim at her best friend's chest.
A few moments ago, Lena would have foolishly asked how the blonde had found them so quickly.
Yet she was wiser now.
So instead, she asks "trying something different, are you?"
The clothes her former friend had slipped into at first glance seemed Kara's style, yet Lena knew better.
The colors were just a shade wrong for Kara. Or at least the Kara Lena had thought she knew. Seems that was yet another thing she'd gotten dead wrong.
"This isn't you, Lena," Kara says, her voice still pitched low as she pitifully meets Lena's gaze.
"Forget your glasses, Danvers?" Lena asks, spitting out the name.
It’s so obvious to her now it was almost laughable if she could feel anything other than betrayed heartbreak at her own blind foolishness.
"You're not a murderer, Lena,” Kara says.
Maybe it was because of these words that Lena raised the gun hand higher in Kara’s seemingly district state, pulling the trigger without further hesitation, making what for anyone else would have been a bloodied fatal wound.
Kara didn't even flinch at the reaction other than dropping her head lower in remembered shame like some kicked puppy while behind her; Lex gave a few weak claps.
“You’re better than that. Better than Him." Kara keeps going in her attempting talk down.
A ragged gasping comes from the dying Lex as he strains his eyes toward the surrendering blonde.
Lena was already translating the garbled words. Her should have been dead brother choked out.
"Daughter?"
This time, it was Kara's heated glare in his direction at the title that had Lena's adoptive brother gagging on blood and laughter. “Oh, this is…” he split out. “This is just….”
Yet it's that slip that has Lena gasping for breath herself in the noticeable glowing orange igniting around those so expensive purple-blue hybrid-colored eyes. That is until Kara blinks, and the additive lilac coloring fades to her normal blue. The orange warning of fire, however, didn’t leave as Kara stalked closer.
Lena only catches a low growl of “For my sister.” Kara’s hand closed tight around Lex’s bloodied throat before the low sounds of bone snapping singled Lex’s final few moments on the Earth.
“Oh my God, Alex…” Lena gasped as Lex’s body dropped onto the floor at Kara’s feet. still with that smug, knowing half smile on his mouth, even in death.
Kara was already shaking her head in denial at this, turning her back on the dead man. Lex’s blood smeared against the clenched hand now dropped to her side as she lifted her chin to meet Lana’s widened eyes. “Alex is fine.”
Something about how Kara says her sister’s name catches Lena’s attention for a long moment before Kara’s suggestion of “We should leave now” makes the dazed woman move again.
******
“Are you sure about this?” Lana asked with a heavy sigh as she dropped back against the end of the bed. The sheets and blankets had not yet neatly righted from their rumbled state in the couple’s now far somber mood as the hours stretched into the more twilight setting.
“She deserves to be mourned, Lena. Even if they don’t realize which of us, they are mourning.” Kara’s voice answers back from the direction of the bathroom.
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Lena counters, pushing herself off the bed to cross to the now-opened bathroom door.
Kara started a little, not realizing the action until Luthor had her back against the counter edge. “Lena, I’m all wet.” That honey-coated voice laughs, fixing the towel tighter around herself.
“I know.” Lena nodes rocked forwards long enough to kiss away a stray line of lingering dampness against Kara’s collarbone.
“I mean your clothes, Lena.” a now dazed Kara groans whilst Lena quietly revels in the noticeable effect the simple offering of touch excites from her not-so-unwelcomed house guest, knowing full well the hesitant blonde could easily break her trapping arms now held on either side of her towel wrapped hips if she wanted to.
“They’ll dry out.” Lena hums, leaning in that much closer to the now giggling blonde back ‘helpless’ against the bathroom vanity. The covering of the bath towel soon becomes lost to the floor in the trade of kisses between them until Lena rocks back on her heels with an understanding sigh at the stabs of pain lingering in those so expressive yet hooded eyes.
“Alright.” The Luthor quietly concedes as she grabs up a hairbrush and then guides the taller of the pair down onto a small folding chair normally kept hidden away behind the bathroom door.
“I know you’re not ready to say goodbye to her yet.” The Luthor sighs along with the first brushing pass of the brush against water-wet blonde hair.
“She is my sister.” The freshly showered hero still occupying her bathroom points out as if Lena needed the reminder as she slowly worked out the lingering tangles of the seated woman’s hair for her. “But I can’t be the only one allowed to grieve for her.”
“You’re not grieving. You’re living for her.”
“Am I?” Wet blue eyes stab into clouded green in the reflection of the bathroom mirror.
“The longer I hold onto her, the more I feel like I’m disrespecting her,” Kara finally confesses. “I can’t be me if I’m still hiding in her shadow, yet I can’t keep pretending to be her either.”
“But they already know about your…erm.”
“I’ve told my family about the effects of Lex’s attack, yes, but none know the extent of it.”
“Last to know about being Supergirl. First to know about this.” Lena sighs, threading her fingers through water-wet hair as she feels more than catches when the taller blonde leans back to nuzzle against the standing woman’s side.
“Tonight is more than grieving for Kara Danvers.” Red Daughter sighs. “I’m also saying goodbye to the parts of me still grieving for what good I felt for the wrong Alex.”
Lena gives a small gasp at this. “That’s why you chose your suite.”
The blonde in front of her nodes in confirmation at this as Lena slowly finishes the intricately woven braiding of the seated woman’s hair.
“A symbol of the true evil she helped end with her light and bravery.” Red Daughter reminds. “Yet it was just as much a part of her as it was a part of me.”
“We all battle our inner darknesses differently.” Lena defends while pressing a kiss against the crown of the seated woman’s head. “and not all of us have Lex’s twisted ego attempting to groom it to his own agenda.”
With a strained sight she goes over the list in her head as she follows Lena’s guidance out of the shared bathroom.
Alex, Winn, Maggie, Cat Grant, J’onn, M’gann. Kal, Lois, Lucy, Vasquz. And, of course, her mothers: Eliza Danvers and Alura Zor-El.
Of course, the gathered group knew that no actual body could be used for the upcoming service given the delicate circumstances of the crated splintering of their separation, so improvisation was found in compensation.
Alex’s broken “Did you have to liken it to you dying here, Kar?” played like a pained loop inside her mind the longer she looked towards her own gifted offering. “I’ve already told you multiple times now I can’t lose you.” Her sister’s voice replayed, as well as the remembered feeling of Alex’s humanly tight hug as she’d said all of this in her agreement to attend.
James had passed on his offering, and his upset at not attending in person, but Lena had reached out in gratitude.
She pauses, running her fingers over it now as she drops back to sit against the edge of the mattress after a literal quick change into her darker-colored outfit for the evening.
Kara.
The true Kara is frozen forever in an image of deep, happy laughter during a game night back and forth with her chosen circle of family.
“Snowy?”
But she doesn’t lift her head from its bowed lowering towards the framed picture cradled against her knees now as the words slide with painful sadness from her trembling lips. “You have been the sun of our lives. Our prayers will be the sun that lights your journey home. We will remember you every dawn and await the night to join you in the sky. Rao's will be done.”
A quiet pause follows her whispers before Lena’s hand closes over hers against the edge of the picture frame. The woman herself is now kneeling down a breath away from her. “Did I tell you Sawyer actually encouraged me to drop the gun I used on Lex into the pod tonight?” the Luthor woman tells her. “Said just for tonight, she’d look the other way if I wanted to use this opportunity to my advantage.”
Red Daughter gives a trembling giggling laugh at this almost giddy confession as Lena twirls the weapon in her hand. Her free one held out in quiet offering with a soft "Ready?"