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It was an hour past their regularly scheduled sister night, and Alex was getting more antsy about Kara's absence by the minute. She'd already called the DEO twice; Supergirl was not currently out on an emergency. Then she'd called James, who was supposed to be her boss, but he hadn't seen her since morning.
Alex had already stress eaten an entire pizza. She was currently working her way through a gallon of mint chocolate chip. Just as she was about to organize a proper search (they'd need at least three helicopters to properly triangulate any sighting), the door opened to the only person who could still sneak up on her.
A beleaguered Kara traipsed in. She did that annoying thing where she appeared to stomp her way across the room but actually floated just off the ground so no sound accompanied her.
"Where've you been?" Alex modulated her pitch a bit when Kara winced. "I've been worried sick. I was this close to sending out a search party."
Damn, she'd have to cancel that helicopter ride.
"I took the bus," Kara grumbled as she collapsed (also silently) onto the couch.
"That lame excuse might work on every other human being you've ever—"
"No, Alex. I had to take the real, actual bus for the first time in my life and it was a genuine disaster."
It had all started with a beautiful morning; the perfect complement to a wonderful week. The clouds were those perfectly fluffy ones that looked like they'd come straight out of a cartoon. Kara's favorite waitress at Noonan's had held the last two of their sticky buns just for her.
"I knew you'd need your sugar this morning, Kara," Alicia had said with a wink.
With her widest smile, Kara had tipped a little extra. Her pastries tasted just a little bit sweeter this morning, and she was flying high—metaphorically speaking.
Alex interrupted her with a snort. "Alicia's flirting with you, Kara. She has been for months."
"No. What? I—"
"Get to the point."
"Fiiine."
That morning, James had sent Kara on a very important mission to report the opening of the new oncology research wing at the L-Corp Children's Hospital.
"I know I don't have to tell you that Lena could use some good press right now," he'd said, telling her anyway.
"Of course."
She'd intended to go straight there. But as she'd been flying across the city, she'd spotted a small fire. Perhaps Supergirl hadn't needed to make an appearance, but it took only a few minutes of her time to assist National City's finest. The fire captain had informed her that if she'd gotten there any later, the entire block might have had to be evacuated.
While she was in the area, she'd also stopped a child from running into a busy street and caught an off-leash dog before it could get too far from its owner. If she'd accidentally returned the child to the leash and the dog to the mother, it wasn't anything the good citizens of National City couldn't sort out amongst themselves. After all, Kara was almost late.
She made it just as Lena cut the ribbon. Lena looked over the crowd just as Kara appeared at the front with her handy-dandy notepad ready, looking to all the world like she'd been there the entire time. Lena's already-wide smile broadened, and Kara's heart thumped a little harder (because of all her exertions, of course).
Lena let the other reporters disperse before approaching Kara. Just the thought of talking to Lena always made Kara's insides churn. Yet in her presence, it was as easy as breathing oxygen—which was just about the only thing she could do right when she'd first landed on Earth.
"Ah, my favorite magazine!"
"We're your magazine," Kara said as Lena greeted her with their usual hug, and Kara returned her own carefully-calibrated squeeze. Lena was the only other person (besides Alex) who put everything she could into hugging Kara.
"All the same. I wasn't sure if you'd make it. I didn't want James to feel like CatCo had to come cover my event just because I own it."
"No, no, that's my fault. I'm sorry I'm late, I was—"
Lena waved it off like it didn't matter. "There are plenty of pictures of me in the media, I don't need my own magazine printing more. And I have a copy of my speech if you need it for your article."
"Thanks, Lena."
Where usually Lena would rush off to another appointment, today, she lingered at Kara's side. "So, what are your plans for the rest of the day?" Lena asked, an air of forced casualness.
"Oh, not much. Finish up this article and then…." Kara shrugged. What was it that regular millennials did in their time off? "Go home and… binge watch the Netflix?"
Lena nodded like she understood, and Kara smiled internally. Nailed it.
"Hey, if you're heading home now. Why don't I have my driver drop you off? It's along the way and—"
"No, no. I couldn't possibly."
"It's really no trouble at all."
"But…"—Kara wracked her brain for an excuse—"I was going to drop by the office first!" That was in the complete opposite direction. Perfect.
"Oh." Lena looked strangely disappointed. Kara couldn't fathom why. "So how are you getting there then?"
"T—the bus," Kara stammered. Lena lit up with an excitement that made Kara tremble before she even spoke.
"Why don't we go together? I've never taken the bus."
Kara's lips flapped uselessly.
"I've been hoping for some time to get to know my employees better. Come on, Kara," Lena said with a look that Alex had explained before was flirty but Kara still didn't quite see. "It'll be fun."
That was how the two of them ended up at a bus stop together. Lena looked up and down the street with a child-like excitement while Kara panicked.
The numbers on the placard above their heads matched up with the map posted to the board. Her heart pounded as she tried to figure out which line to take before the bus showed up. Ten minutes later, she thought maybe it would be the 22?
At twenty minutes, she thought maybe she had time to double check.
By thirty minutes, she would've gotten on whatever bus showed up next. This waiting was excruciating! She could've flown around the Earth four times by now!
Forty minutes later, the first bus pulled up at the stop. It just so happened to be a 22, and thank Rao, because Kara was starting to get hungry.
The crowd that had gathered around the bus stop seemed to be filtering into the bus in a line that everyone accepted had been there all along but Kara had seen no such indicators. Lena seemed to take it on trust that Kara knew what she was doing. Luckily for them both, Kara had spent all of high school and college learning human social conventions. She eyed everyone else getting on ahead of them with her practiced subtlety.
As each individual approached the bus, they took out some sort of plastic card. Kara tried to get a better look past her glasses, but she couldn't exactly sneak a peek when Lena kept looking at her with round eyes and the excitement of a train-obsessed toddler getting on her first train.
Credit cards? Bank cards? Driver's licenses? But the bus driver was the only one who drove the bus, right? Surely one didn't need a driver's license just to ride on a bus.
Each person held up their offering to a machine that beeped and flashed green. They were then allowed to walk past the driver to a seat. When Lena approached the machine, it made an unholy noise at her and flashed red instead.
Fear struck deep in Kara's heart. She looked around, but no one came to take them away. Lena gave the driver a pained smile as she tried another card. She tried it backward and upside down.
"My card has never been rejected before," she said when it only ever flashed red.
The driver pointed to an older-looking machine between them. This one looked something like the parking machine back at Midvale High. Alex used to dig through all the cushions while Kara scanned the car and directed her sister toward the loose change. From behind Lena, Kara could just make out the $1.85 on the dim green-tinted screen.
Lena tried to insert her credit card into a slot that was too narrow.
"We don't take that, ma'am. This is a bus."
Kara knew that tone. That was the tone that indicated this as some sort of life skill that "everybody knew." Her fingers itched to fall back on her usual safety net, Alex, but this wasn't exactly something where calling Alex would be helpful.
Besides, there was a non-zero chance that Alex would show up to arrest Lena no matter what Kara said was happening. She'd say something like, "Lena and I are stuck on the bus," and Alex would probably hear, "A Luthor has taken over the bus I'm on. Send a helicopter."
No, it was best to resolve this herself. After all, she was Supergirl now. She could ride a simple bus without her sister.
Ahead of her, Lena asked tentatively, "Do you take… debit?"
"No." The driver shook his head. "Your metro card or cash."
Lena broke into a smile like they were finally speaking a language she understood. She whipped out her wallet and a hundred dollar bill from it.
The bus driver looked at her like she was the alien. He pointed to the signs on his antiquated machine that said "Exact change only" and "Machine doesn't take $20s."
Lena pursed her lips and stared at the machine like she was trying to figure out how to make $1.85 out of Benjamins.
"Coins!"
Lena looked at him like she'd never seen a coin in her life, and Kara wasn't entirely sure she ever had. She dug through her own bag; surely she had something. After all, she'd bought Ms. Grant's coffee every morning for years and…
No. Noonan's had gone contactless. She paid for coffee with a CatCo company credit card now. She paid her doughnuts in the morning with her smartwatch. She paid for lunch with her smartphone. Alex bought all her ice cream. And Kara couldn't remember the last time she'd handled cash.
As if to punctuate the point, she came up with only a paperclip and a pen cap from her bag. Not for the first time, she thought that a true superpower would be a Mary Poppins type bag that had anything and everything she could possibly need right when she needed it.
The people behind them in line were starting to sigh. It wasn't yet at a human level of audible, but Kara was unusually sensitive to this sigh—having heard it most of her life on Earth.
It always went the same way. She'd get flustered by their impatience, by the scene she was causing. That always led to stuttering and then, if she rambled enough, her Kryptonian accent would sneak through. If she was going to suffer through that old high school humiliation again, with her boss beside her to boot, she might never recover from the humiliation.
The first kid that came up the aisle held a quarter above his head. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand after handing it off to Lena, then ran back to bury his face in his mother's dress. The second kid shifted his book bag to his other shoulder as he shuffled down the aisle to hand over a dollar.
"My first ride, somebody paid my fare when I couldn't make change," he mumbled at his feet. "I never got to pay 'em back."
The old lady at the front, with a pushcart full of groceries, dug a few coins out from her purse. "The nice boy at the grocer's only charged me a dollar thirty for onions today," she announced. "Very good deal."
At this point, the driver tried to wave them through, but the situation had gathered too much momentum. A buzz went down the aisle as people checked their pockets and bags. A collection went up as a hat was passed forward.
"We're almost there!" called a fellow who'd ordained himself the counter of coins. "Fifteen cents does it! Do we have a hero on this bus?"
A teenager, slumped at the very back window seat with her hood up and a pair of headphones peeking out, who'd been staring aggressively at her phone the entire time, sighed heavily as she got up. She shoved a tinkle of coins into Lena's hand and mumbled something even Kara couldn't catch.
Lena counted out loud as she dropped each coin into the machine. Between all their new patrons, they made both their fares exactly. With the tinkling of the last coin, the bus broke into a cheer.
The driver ripped off a fare ticket for each of them. "Alright, alright, settle down."
He waved the rest of the line through without bothering about fares.
"That doesn't sound so bad."
"That was only the beginning."
"Oh."
They weren't even seated yet when Lena tried to pay everyone back.
"It's my civic pleasure to pay my own fare," she insisted.
Somehow, she didn't have a Benjamin in her purse for every person who'd contributed to their bus fare. The lady with the groceries complicated matters further when she insisted that she would not take a cent more than she'd contributed. This set off a wave of similar pledges down the aisles.
Lena pulled out a checkbook and a pen and started asking for names, but then a college-aged student asked, "What's a check?"
Someone in a suit suggested Lena just forget about it.
"No, no. I really could not accept. A L—" Lena wisely stopped herself. "I was taught never to take charity."
The kid who'd had his first bus fare paid by somebody else leaned forward and, with weed-laden wisdom, said, "Pay it forward." His insight imparted, his eyes drifted such that it was clear he was no longer with them in the bus.
Lena tucked her checkbook away. "I will remember this," she vowed, touching a hand to the top of her breast, her eyes shining. "All of you. Your generosity—"
"Take a seat!"
She fell more than sat into the seat beside Kara as the bus jerked into motion.
Once they were moving, Kara thought all the bumps were behind them. Every now and then, the driver mumbled something into a PA system that only further obfuscated his words. It took five blocks before Kara realized he was naming the stops. Confoundingly, he didn't stop at every one the way her childhood school bus had.
It took her five stops to realize that he only stopped when the light at the front of the bus turned on, or if there were people standing at the stop. It took her another three to realize someone pulled a cord to turn the light on.
She leaned over to say as much to Lena when she remembered she was supposed to be the expert. She was supposed to know which stop was theirs. Before she could truly panic, Lena pointed at a street as they passed it.
"Wait. That's Cordova." They were traveling in the wrong direction. "How do we get there?"
"The 22 doesn't go down Cordova," the woman on the other side of the aisle said. "You probably meant to get on the 22A."
The 22…A?
Kara stared at Lena and then they both stared at the woman like she was speaking a different language.
"Look, if you want to get back to Cordova, you want to get off at Main Street and take the 52 toward NCU."
"No, no. The 52 had a route change and no longer goes down Cordova." The old lady with the pushcart had slowly slid back toward the group that hovered around Kara and Lena. "I'd ridden that route for three years. It was the only one that went direct to NCU Hospital from Chinatown. You want the 68."
Kara pulled out a pen just as the college student piped up, "No, the 68 only runs every half hour. They often drop a bus, and then you could be stuck waiting more than an hour. What you want to do is get off at Lincoln and take the 26 until Elm Street and then the 31."
A man in a business suit leaned forward. "By the time you get to Elm, it'll be seven, and the 31 doesn't run past seven."
Lena looked back at the college kid. He shrugged. "I don't usually ride past seven. You could try putting it into Google Maps and see what that gets you."
Someone must have done exactly that. They held a phone up in the air. "They should get off at 4th, then take the northbound W."
"Nah, that's not right. The W was cut last month."
Looking up from her notepad, Kara saw a number of sageful nods. She paused. "And you all just… know this?"
The college kid pulled up a website of timetables on his phone. "I swear some of the routes change every semester, and I have to learn it all over again," he grumbled. "But at least the website is usually accurate."
Kara exchanged a look with Lena at the word "usually," but Lena was already engrossed at the appearance of a chart full of data. "Send me this link," she demanded.
"Uhh, Airdrop?"
Lena's face fell. "Android."
"I have an iPhone!" Kara beamed at being useful for the first time since this calamity began.
And that might have been the last of all their problems, if either one of them could read a bus timetable.
Lena spun the phone around again. The screen rotated to display the same thing. Her jaw couldn't have been tighter if she'd wired it shut. Even Kara could tell this was fruitless.
"So, what's the problem?" she prodded as gently as she could.
Lena's jaw ticked. "I don't know what any of these names mean."
The kid squinted at them. "They're streets. Intersections."
Kara nodded like this was obvious to her too. It wasn't. In her usual mode of transportation, flying above the city, the streets weren't labeled like it was on Google Maps. Oh. She should make the suggestion to Alex and Winn.
"Where are you going exactly?" the kid asked wearily as he took the phone from them.
"Catco. We work there." Kara adjusted her glasses. "Reporter."
"Ok that's easy."
He wrote out a set of instructions that looked as alien to Kara as when she'd seen English for the first time. Lena translated them into plain English. For which, Kara could've kissed her on the mouth. She never thought she'd be so happy to see those strange squiggles.
They had a way home! She was so excited, she didn't notice Lena's face fall.
"We don't have the 'coins'"—Lena said the word like it was foreign on her tongue—"for this many bus rides."
Kara's shoulders dropped. They'd been so close.
The college kid looked at them like they were stupid. "Yeah, um, the driver can print you a transfer ticket. I think it's good for like four hours?"
The bus driver printed them two transfer tickets. As they headed back for their seats, a man leaned forward.
"Hey, you look a little like Lena Luthor," he said. "You're much prettier though." Then, like he realized how that sounded, he gave an easy wave of his hand. "Don't worry, I'm not hitting on you. I'm gay."
Lena did not relax. Kara tried to break the tension with laughter but it came out like a wheeze.
"Can you imagine?" the man joked. "Lena Luthor, riding the bus?"
"She probably wouldn't know the first thing about paying a fare," Lena joked with a gleam in her eye.
Kara choked as everyone around them laughed.
"That woman probably wouldn't know the first thing about fair pay," a man in a business suit grumbled.
The gay man, who'd not been hitting on Lena, stopped laughing. "My ex worked at LexCorp for years," he said. "He could never get his insurance to cover me. Lena Luthor walked in, and day one, she made it company policy that their benefits extended to all domestic partnerships.
"She saved my life. I had an emergency appendectomy last year, and I never would've gone to the hospital so early if I hadn't been covered."
In the corner of her eye, Kara saw Lena wipe away a tear. She put her hand on Lena's knee and gave her a little, human-sized squeeze.
* * *
Two world-weary travelers finally made it back to CatCo offices in the twilight hours. They'd braved transfers, rush-hour traffic, and even a panhandler who'd rejected Lena's hundred-dollar bills as fake. The building was mostly dark, and even the evening janitors had gone home for the night.
Lena had been quiet for the last two transfers, and now her jaw had a grim set to it. Kara was too scared to even look in her direction. She could wait to assess the damage. She could wait years… forever even. She was very patient.
"That would've taken no more than fifteen minutes by car," Lena said.
"It would've been like two minutes flying," Kara muttered. Her eyes widened. Alex always did say she should think before she spoke. Lena barked out a sharp laugh that made her wince.
"Darling, we're not Taylor Swift."
Lena let them both into James Olsen's office. From a decanter, she poured them each an amount Kara knew as "Alex had a bad day. Do Not Ask About It." But instead of downing it the way Alex did (and then pouring herself another), Lena sipped thoughtfully.
"If that's what public transit is like in our city, how does anyone on a schedule ever take the bus—no offense, Kara."
Kara blinked.
"There's something seriously wrong with the public transit in this city if even a regular commuter like you can get lost so easily! Please don't take this the wrong way, but it's no wonder you're always late. It's a wonder you make it to any appointment at all. Time is money, and the way the transit is structured in this city, it's clear the average citizen's time is not important. Buses should come by every fifteen minutes at least—"
"That's actually a pretty common—"
"Not to mention, this fare system is so archaic. Change? Coins?"
"That's—"
"I think it's time we had an investigative reporter looking into National City's public transit. Doing a deep dive into how other cities around the world do it, and what we could learn from their implementations." Lena looked up at Kara with a wicked grin. "And then, I'm going to turn the heat up on the politicians of this city."
"Well, I mean… I—"
"I'm so glad you're volunteering, Kara."
"And now I have to write an article on National City's public transit when I've ridden a bus exactly one time."
"Do you want me to stop by L-Corp with a tac-team?" Alex asked, half joking, but also half planning out the helicopters that would need to be involved in such an operation. "I can keep her so busy, she forgets about this bus article entirely."
"No…" Kara put another spoonful of ice cream in her mouth. She could handle it herself. She should handle it herself. "Well…"
"You know"—Alex put down her moose tracks ice cream, cuing Kara that this was a serious conversation that could not be had with the moose—"we've seen enough of her now, and she's stepped up enough for Supergirl, that maybe you should consider just telling her."
"Wait. You're okay with me telling someone my secret? You almost killed Winn when you found out he knew."
"Yeah, well. Winn has turned out to be pretty useful, and Lena's really smart. We could use her thoughts on some of our projects. Anyway, just think about it."
Alex grabbed the remote and put on a movie. They almost made it to the title card when Kara realized what was up and burrowed under the blanket with a squealing, "Aleeeeeeex!"
With a grin, Alex settled into the couch. If Kara was going to make her go gray early with all her shenanigans, the least she could do was take a little heart-pumping horror in return.
"Hold the door!" Kara shouted as she ran for the elevator.
She'd been held up this morning when she'd helped an old lady cross the street and then moved an eighteen-wheeler that had blocked three lanes of the interstate. She managed to slip between the doors of the elevator before the occupant even reached the button, and in the midst of congratulating herself, she realized that the occupant—and the sole occupant—was Lena.
"Oh, Lena!" Kara nearly dumped her coffee on Lena.
"Running late? Was it the bus?" Lena joked. Her smile intimated that she was in on the secret, that she now also knew how terrible the City's buses were. "Buses crawling today instead of flying?"
Yeah okay, maybe Alex was right.
Kara stopped the elevator. It took every ounce of strength in her not to crush the cup of coffee in her hand.
"I've been meaning to talk to you about something, actually." There were a million things she needed to say, and she didn't know where to start. She blurted out, "I've never been on a city bus before yesterday. I'm Supergirl."
It was only as she found the expression on Lena's face unreadable that Kara realized the openness Lena usually gave her. Alex was right. She'd messed up by not telling Lena sooner.
"I didn't know how to tell you, and then I was afraid to lose you, but it's not fair of me to use what I know about you as Kara when I'm Supergirl."
"I'm glad you said something," Lena said haltingly. "You know, I'd honestly thought that you were toying with me. Playing Kara as the carrot and Supergirl as the stick."
Kara almost swallowed her tongue. Lena had known! But of course she had. Kara's mind raced, trying to remember all of their interactions as both Supergirl and Kara to pinpoint when she'd known.
"I wasn't sure whether Kara was the mask or Supergirl. But then, I had a new theory. I think they're both you. And Kara, she shows she likes me by being kind to me without expecting anything in return in a way no one else has ever done. While Supergirl… she's over there doing the equivalent of pulling the hair of the girl she thinks is pretty."
Despite the lightness of her words and tone, Lena's eyes shimmered. Kara wanted to comfort her, but she also knew that it wasn't her place anymore.
She settled on giving Lena the truth.
"I haven't been fair to you. I'm sorry for that, and I know I can't ever make that up to you—"
"Why don't you start with dinner?" Lena interrupted her self pity. "Tomorrow night. We'll see where it goes from there."
Kara was speechless at the suggestive tone. Was she…?
Lena stepped up to her. Kara leaned forward too. As they met, Kara stopped herself just in time. Lena was human, and the aftermath of every kiss Kara had ever shared with a human flooded into her mind. But Lena wasn't afraid. She took control, kissing Kara with enough heat to warm the both of them.
When Lena broke away, Kara was still trying to catch her breath. The heat of Lena's breath hit the shell of her ear.
"Don't think this is getting you out of that article. I want a draft on my desk in two weeks. It's about time Supergirl applied herself to the practical everyday issues of National City."
With that, Lena exited the elevator, leaving a stunned and breathless Kara headed back down to the lobby again when the doors closed.