National City Rejects

So, yeah, Lena is totally not freaking out. She’s a calm, collected, logical, thoughtful CEO. She can...yeah she can deal with the whole “my ex-best friend has pulled a disappearing act after her sister maybe-kinda-has-amnesia” thing. It’s...well, it’s not fine, but she’ll cope because of course she will. She’s Lena goddamn Luthor.

(Wipe your tears Lena. Luthors are iron, elevated above the common mud)

Using all her vaunted powers of deductive reasoning, intuiting the path forward to resolve these...fleeting troubles is clear. Very clear. No doubt about it.

...She doesn’t really want to call any of the superfriends though. She was never nearly as close with them as she was with Kara. She only has so much social energy alright? She knows herself enough to realize she doesn’t really have the gumption to spend on reconciling with anyone but Kara right now. The thought of talking to someone else who’d hurt her, opening up to them again, being emotionally vulnerable well…

It feels like nails on a chalkboard.

So, of course, she decides to find Kara on her own as much as possible. She’s totally fine. She’s an incredibly smart, connected, talented woman. Finding one recalcitrant, probably depressed, likely at least some degree of self-destructive friend is a task she will crush like any other obstacle in her path.

The obvious next step involves some light facebook stalking. However, all that ends up suggesting is that Kara hasn’t been posting much on any of her online accounts for weeks now. So, clearly, this was not some spur of the moment thing. No, this had been some long, slow, systemic grind where Kara completely uprooted her life.

That’s...fine. Totally, not at all worrying. A minor road bump.

The second step is also pretty obvious. Some lowkey, more or less (less, definitely less) legal hacking cracks into some internal Catco memos to see how she’s doing at work. Apparently Kara has taken a brief leave of absence to explore some exciting personal development opportunities. Which are helpfully left vague and unnamed.

Just a setback, its totally fine.

Of course, then some slightly more illegal hacking (that causes Maggie to raise an amused but understanding eyebrow at her) reveals that Kara’s lease expired around when she took the leave of absence. So, yeah, totally, Kara moved somewhere else, probably got some nice, cushy new job that she wanted to explore further. Right. Yes. That’s it.

It’s not like it sounds exactly like her ex best friend just up and quit her job and nuked her life to go live in a yurt somewhere in the woods. That would be illogical catastrophizing.

Que one teensy, weensy, totally unnoticeable minor panic attack. She’s fine, alright. Totally fine and capable of solving this.

...Yes Maggie, she would definitely, really like a hug.

Has Lena mentioned recently how amazing, perfect and wonderful Maggie is? It really could stand to be repeated.

So, in the ultimate wing-woman move, Maggie ponies up to calling Winn and James. A move which ends up saving Lena from another minor panic attack thinking about having to get in touch with the superfriends now that most of her options have run dry. .

Unfortunately...they are less than helpful.

Apparently Kara had assured them she was okay, but had some things to take care off. She’d expressed in great detail how she wanted to take a step back and get her head on straight again. Who knows when she’ll be back from who knows where. It’s fine, Kara had assured, don’t worry about her. She’s Supergirl! Over the course of the call it becomes clear that neither man seems particularly worried, though there is a bit of mixed curiosity and concern in Winn’s tone.

Yeaaaaaah, Lena can practically smell the bullshit from across the bay. Stupid, unobservant, meatheaded men, she huffs. In that moment, she firmly reaffirmed her blossoming decision to date only women for the foreseeable future.

Sweet, stupid, self sacrificing Kara is entirely too predictable in times like this. Despite all the secrets and lies, Lena is still reasonably confident she knows the blonde like the back of her hand. Knows that this is exactly the sort of “I’m sad, so I’ll lick my wounds in a quiet corner like an injured golden retriever” stoic bullshit move she’d pull. All it’s missing is her throwing herself in front of a kryptonite coated bus to save some endangered alien snail from being slightly sad for it to be a normal Tuesday occurrence. There is absolutely no goddamn universe where Kara is even resembling okay.

So yeah, at this point Lena’s basically exhausted the extent of her and Maggie’s deductive reasoning skills. If she was willing to commit a whole host more felonies, she’d maybe consider hacking airplane records to at least try and guess where in the bloody world Kara ended up. Only, you know, she’s fucking Supergirl. Chances are pretty fucking good she just flew there. Some idle part of her considers trying to hack into Superman’s ice fortress palace thing, but that probably wouldn’t go over too well. She does not need the man of steel punting her into the sun for making is baby cousin sad.

Assuming he actually cares enough about her to keep in touch. Now that she knows about y’know the whole Supergirl thing it does put a fel memories into a whole other light. Suddenly all those quiet, late night whispered conversations about how sad it made Kara to have lost touch with her only biological cousin take on a whole new light.

At that point Lena shoots a glare towards her wonderful, lovely, brat of a girlfriend trying to relieve the tension by cracking a truly awful series of jokes. No it does not relieve Lena that Kara could, in fact, be in some sort of alternate dimension, because of course bloody multiverse theory is bloody real and nobody told her. Of bloody course.

How is this her life, the CEO moans.

Now that all's said and done, both Lena and Maggie are reasonably certain of a couple things.

Alex likely has some form of amnesia.
Kara has very, very, effectively disappeared in very, very dramatic fashion.
Kara is very, very, very far from okay.
They seem to be the only ones to be particularly concerned about this fact.

Which, while it’s all well and good that they’ve now got a fairly good understanding of the situation, they really have no ways forward. Shit is just...fucked. To some extent it really shouldn’t be their responsibility to look out for the blonde. After all, neither of them are key players in her life anymore. Sure, they both care about her, want the best for her, want her to be okay, safe and happy...but really it’s Alex and the Superfriends who are poised to help.

...and it’s Alex who is somehow incapacitated, and the Superfriends who are just garden variety useless.

Lacking other effective options Lena and Maggie end up on the couch, pissed off their asses and passed out after a truly aggressive series of cuddles.

Despite the rather dark clouds that hung both metaphorically and physically over the rainy city, life moved on. After all, Lena and Maggie had day jobs that were both important to them and necessary. They, at least, couldn’t afford to hare off into the wild blue yonder to chase after their wayward friend, despite how much Lena kinda wanted to. Plus, even days later they really had no idea where the hell she ended up. Despite Lena basically calling in any favor she could think of that wouldn’t raise any of the wrong sorts of eyebrows.

After all, Lex was still kicking around with damned near presidential immunity at this point. Lena did not want him to get wind of her even trying to reconcile with Kara. Knowing him, he’d take it as some sort of personal attack and start up the whole assasination/ kidnapping attempt rodeo again. Throwing all that back on top of Supergirl’s clearly overburdened shoulders did not seem like a helpful friend thing to do.

...Come to think of it, the Lex issue may actually be part of the whole disappearing act. Who knows what he’d do with the knowledge of who and where Supergirl was. Perhaps that had something to do with why Kara Danvers had all but disappeared without even telling her friends and family where she’d gone. Maybe she thought that now they wouldn’t be targets.

Not that Lena could do anything with that knowledge of course.

So, like all adults must in these sorts of situations...Maggie and Lena eventually just went back to the day to day grind of work. They still kept on showing up at each other’s houses to hang out, have dinner, fuck and just be around good company. They were still kinda sorta not dating but actually dating. They still had their date nights. Only now, when they had a free moment here or there, they’d try another new unlikely way to find Kara...to not much success. Maggie even still kept in touch with some of the Superfriends just in case. Though they really didn’t hear much.

After a week or so Kara had apparently sent Winn a vague “still alive, don’t worry” text, so that was something at least. Plus there had actually been a few one off Supergirl sightings. The next week there was some sort of catastrophic mudslide in Nepal that she’d been evacuating victims from for a few days. She’d also been seen periodically in a couple of countries dismantling old world war 2 landmines. One week Supergirl was apparently airlifting humanitarian supplies into a couple of drought ridden areas. It seemed the girl of steel was on something of a world tour. Acting less as National City’s unofficial police muscle, and more as a symbol of succor to the desperate and needy world-wide.

...Unfortunately, the only time she was actually seen in the states was to put out a few out of control wildfires in California one afternoon, so there was absolutely no chance to connect with her.

It was...a long month or two, but it passed.

Day to day, Lena rationally knew she didn’t have anything in particular to complain about. Her new startup company had been slowly ramping up research. While she was still incredibly busy as the CEO, she made sure to delegate a bit more than she used to. After all, the only people she hired were people she was reasonably certain she could trust. Whereas at L-Corp there was an even 50/50 that any remaining employee was still loyal to Lex. Plus, they hadn’t gone public yet and were mostly financed by Lena personally. There were relatively few meetings where she as the CEO needed to wine and dine potential investors.

All of which gave time for Lena to actually work in the labs day to day. Everyday brought them closer and closer to a few key patents for new medical devices and green energy. The work was tough, but incredibly rewarding as Lena could actually see as her team got progressively closer to making some truly groundbreaking strides forward. She knew exactly what L-Corp had coming down the pipes next year. So, she’d greenlit a whole host of innovative new designs that the Lex sympathetic L-Corp board would have never considered funding. After all, why shoot for high-quality, low-cost, mass market designs when one can price gouge for maximum short term profits. Everything Lena was making would leapfrog their competition in quality and yet also be sold at half the price. She was even making a point to quickly expand to a series of underserved markets around the world, a move which the American-centric L-Corp would have never agreed to.

Lena was going to undercut, outsell, outdo and emasculate Lex so hard his stupid little psychotic balls would shrivel up and die in embarrasment. That’ll show him, the fucking prick.

...Shut up Maggie! I know I have a stupid irish temper. Stop laughing at me! Fuck off, it’s not cute! It’s ferocious and awe inspiring! Men fear me, women want to be with me! That’s it, get on your damn knees brat!

Ahem.

Then one Friday night Maggie and Lena decide to go to dinner at the cool new gastropub that opened up outside the local Star Labs office and the status quo got blown to hell.

Should’ve guessed something was up with a name like ‘The Drake Equation’ even if the yelp reviews were amazing.

Lena stepped into the restaurant a half step behind Maggie. Glancing around, she saw the walls were absolutely covered in an eclectic mishmash of different paintings, prints and small art pieces. Apparently from a variety of new and amateur artists, with little price tags at the bottom if the diner was interested in taking one home. The couple waited a bit awkwardly for the server to look up from leaning over the bar and chatting with a couple of blonde women. Lena herself wasn’t the biggest follower of the art world. However, fundraising at L-Corp had almost always come from schmoozing at some upscale entertainment or other. Art galleries were always popular, so she’d started to develop something of an eye. With vague interest she started taking a closer look at some of the paintings.

A couple oil landscapes of forests and lakes seemed to fit the rather rustic fittings pretty well. Hipster pubs loved their cement floors and exposed structural beams after all. Others were more abstract, often filled with bold reds, silvers and golds of seemingly alien cities, spaceships and skylines. Here and there were even a bunch of eye-catching pieces of pop art. In-fact, an entire wall was devoted to prints of genderbent, queer or just plain crossdressing superheroes hanging out, making out, or just plain existing day to day. A particularly enthralling scene by the washroom had Lena giggling over its depiction of a gorilla-esque Frank Miller style batman bent over Superman’s knee while wearing bright red stockings under his batsuit.

What really made Lena’s heart clench though was a beautiful oil canvas skyline hung over the door. It was wickedly detailed, almost photographic in its obsessive attention to detail of what had to be the National City skyline. Only, instead of being taken from a convenient rooftop perspective, it was aerial, almost as if from a flying drone. There was a palpable sense of loneliness as the viewer looked down on the shining towers of the city. Each building was filled with an incredible number of details the closer you looked. Almost every close window had at least one person making coffee, or working a photocopier, having a meeting or otherwise just going about their everyday life.

...All as the viewer hung in silence, isolated, removed from the flow as a pair of burnt but recognizable red boots hovered at the end of bruised legs hundreds of feet above the ground.

Whoever K. Z. El. (K) was, Lena was impressed. A glance around showed they were even pretty prolific. It seemed like somewhere around a quarter of the art on the walls was from them in some way or another. Something that was especially interesting, since instead of sitting in a comfortable artistic niche they seemed to flit almost absentmindedly through a wide array of styles and mediums.

Luckily though, just as Lena’s limited interest in art was waving (though she suspected Maggie would be happy to tease her about her art nerd ways for another few minutes) the server ended up bouncing over. In short order they ended up seated at a nice little booth with a good view of the bar. Service sped up rather promptly for a bit after that point, as their orders were shuffled out what felt like only a few minutes later. Though, of course, Lena’s perception of time was perhaps not the most accurate at that particular moment.

...After all, Maggie had taken to being a little shit by cuddling up in the booth and running a warm hand up and down Lena’s thigh.

Either way, the night picked up wonderfully with good food and wine. Lena was all smiles as she plowed her way through a massive salad filled with delicious berries, couscous and candied nuts. Maggie was just as enthused by a thick portobello mushroom burger and some of the best fries either woman had had in weeks. They were definitely planning to make the restaurant a more frequent regular in their diets, though they might consider just ordering takeout rather than waiting for the somewhat spotty wait staff in the future.

Which, of course, got distracted once a boisterous, loud and colorful group of people wandered in off the street and joined the two blondes at the bar. Most were in rather obvious business casual dress, clearly having come over from working a bit late at the lab across the street. Which, to be fair, was a totally reasonable idea. Having an office pub night seemed like a great idea when one had access to such a nice, reasonably priced hipster joint.

Interestingly though, a good portion of the group was, unless Lena was drastically mistaken...not so human. It was hard to tell through the somewhat dark lighting, especially as everyone was moving around and talking animatedly, but there were more than a few little oddities. A surprisingly hard looking ridge over the forehead here, some viciously sharp looking nails there, impossible eye or skin colors over there again. It was...yeah, she was coming to realize this may, in fact, be something of an alien bar.

Which...well, it wasn’t that uncomfortable, but it was a bit awkward. Lena was fairly well known at this point for being an ally of Supergirl (even if they hadn’t been seen together in a few months) and the ‘better’ Luthor for whatever it was worth. Maggie apparently dealt with the alien community pretty frequently at the homeless shelter she helped to run. So, really there was no reason to worry. Even if there was some awkwardness Maggie would be able to easily bridge whatever conflict happened.

Still, Lena had to take a deep breath to brace herself when she got tired of trying to catch the eye of the waitress. She and Maggie, being huge fans of the glasses of wine they’d ordered at the start of the meal, wanted to get a bottle to split as they chatted the night away. Only, of course the waitress had gone back to her conversation with the two boisterous blondes. It seemed that the only thing that even momentarily got her attention were the other patrons wandering up beside the bar to order.

Sighing, Lena stood up to brave the crowd and get their drinks. Carefully she sidled through the crowd, coming up to the side of the two, increasingly tipsy blondes. As she neared the bar, the CEO had a brief moment to appreciate the surprisingly broad shoulders of the two women. Both had on jackets in supple leather. Though, the jacket of the girl on the left was black, while the one one right was a more creamy pale white. Either way, they both went pretty nicely over the tight blue jeans they both wore.

...helped, of course by the fabulous muscle definition on their legs.

“Hey, could I get a bottle of the red for our table?” Lena said as she sidled around the women to the bar. An awkward blush rose up her cheeks after she gave a rather embarrassing cough. Giving her a smile the waitress nodded and quickly started rummaging around the closets under the bar.

Only, a second later the conversation beside Lena paused. There was a strange panicked choking sound. Out of the corner of her eye Lena saw one of the blondes pounding the other on the back as she coughed. Though, she wasn’t looking particularly closely as the server had stood up by that point and shoved a bottle of wine in Lena’s hands. It was only as the CEO was turning around to go back to her table that she stopped briefly. A hint of something was pinging away at the back of her mind, but she didn’t pay it much mind. It probably wasn’t particularly importa-

“L-Lena?” A hoarse rough rumbled out, interrupting Lena’s thought process.

As she turned, Lena was a bit weirded out by the strangely familiar lilting quality to it. There was a strange harmonizing hum to the sound, almost like a piano melody played over top of a backing harmony. The effect was beautiful, but definitely, definitely alien. There was absolutely no way for human vocal chords to play two entirely separate sounds at the exact same time with that amount of ease.

Then the CEO’s eyes came up to actually see the blonde’s face in full instead of just a brief profile as she was walking by. Pale, clear skin hung perfectly over sculpted features under long silky silver-blonde locks. A thin faded scar arched over a lovely shaped brow. Full pink lips pursed in shock.

...Impossibly blue, blue eyes pierced into Lena, full of a familiar sort of despondent loneliness with the smallest shred of fragile hope.

Actually the more the CEO looked, the less and less the descriptor “blue” even really seemed a sufficient description. Those perfect eyes were flecked all through with a dusting of ethereal silver flecks. The main blueish hue seemed to almost reflect off of them, bouncing around and intensifying to the point the eyes literally glowed sapphire. Even the pupils, such as they were, were works of fascinating abstract art. As if some painter had been trying to draw a portrait of a human from only the barest description of what a human was supposed to look like. After all, they were slitted like a cat, and a pure white instead of the black of a standard human.

Still, strange and alien as they were, those striking features resolved quite readily into a familiar friendly face.

“K-Kara?” Lena stuttered back dumbly as her breath left her throat. A burst of hope frizzled through her chest and the CEO felt her lips curling up in an unconscious smile.

“Yeah, uh, it’s me.” The blonde alien murmured back, her voice thrumming warmly with a truly painful sense of nostalgic warmth. Kara’s fingers twitched and she shifted forward in the way Lena knew meant the blonde was just barely holding herself back from throwing Lena into a big squishy hug. Kara was here. Kara was real. Kara didn’t...well it didn’t seem like she hated Lena. Despite whatever venom she might have launched after their fight.

Dear gods below, Lena did not deserve a woman capable of such forgiveness. A niggling thought that wormed its way inescapably into the CEO’s brain as she just kept staring at the blonde.

Even as those perfect lips curved into a hint of a concerned frown. Even as she realized that all these differences in her appearance now implied Kara had been hiding things as basic as what she truly looked and sounded like for years from everybody. Hell, had Alex ever seen this? Lena worried about that unsettling thought. Even as she realized that the thought of Kara hiding who she was didn’t make Lena mad anymore...just sad. Sad that Kara didn’t trust her, or rather didn’t trust the human world enough to truly be herself before this very moment. Sad that it took something as monumentally large as her foster sister getting some form of amnesia to bust Kara out of her comfy closet. Sad at how Lena had reacted and probably reinforced all those worries, but impressed at how her best friend had persevered.

Lena worried about all of these things, even as she failed to realize she’d promptly stopped breathing and started having a mild panic attack.

...Even as she realized her vision was going dark, there were concerned shouts from Maggie and Kara and Lena was tumbling to the floor into oblivion.