The Space Between

Kara meets Lena at sixteen. Then again. And again. And again.
Over seven years, they fall into each other’s orbit—sharing beds, secrets, silences. Never quite saying the thing that matters most.
This is the story of what they were.
And what they almost let themselves be.
It takes one final risk—but eventually, even they stop running.

Work Text:

Kara met Lena Luthor for the first time at the San Francisco International Airport, Gate 42B, two hours into a delay that had already outlasted the patience of most adults in a thirty-foot radius.

Kara was sixteen, wearing oversized glasses and a backpack twice the size of her torso. She’d been pacing for the better part of an hour, running low on podcasts, phone battery, and the will to keep pretending she wasn’t nervous about her first solo trip.

Lena was sixteen, too. Probably. She looked like she’d been born at twenty-five. Hair tied back with surgical precision, one leg crossed neatly over the other, nose buried in The Economist. Who reads The Economist at sixteen?

She hadn’t looked up when Kara sat beside her.

Which, of course, meant Kara started talking.

“It’s weird, right? How everyone acts like delays are some personal insult. Like the pilot overslept on purpose just to inconvenience this exact plane.”

Silence.

Kara pressed on. “Or maybe there’s a plot twist coming. Like, what if it’s not a delay at all? What if this is the beginning of a hostage situation and we’re the only two smart enough to notice?”

Lena turned a page. “Statistically, hostage situations in American airports are extremely rare.”

Kara blinked. “You sound very sure about that.”

“I am.” Still not looking up. “Also, you’re talking very fast.”

Kara flushed. “Sorry. It’s a nervous thing.”

Finally, Lena looked at her. Pale green eyes, all ice and precision.

“You don’t seem nervous.”

“That’s because I’m faking confidence so hard I’m basically hallucinating.”

A pause. Then—unexpectedly—a soft laugh. Not much. Barely audible. But real.

Kara grinned. “That’s the sound of you admitting I’m charming.”

“That’s the sound of me being polite.”

“Close enough.”

They talked for the next forty minutes.

Mostly Kara. Mostly nonsense. Books. Conspiracies. Journalism. Bad coffee. College plans.

Lena said almost nothing. But she didn’t move. Didn’t ask Kara to stop. And when their gate finally opened, she stood, collected her bag, and said, “Try not to catastrophise the turbulence.”

Kara tilted her head. “That’s your goodbye?”

Lena’s mouth twitched—half a smile. “Try not to talk someone to death.”

And then she was gone.

Kara watched her walk away, something odd and bright flaring in her chest.

She didn’t even know her last name.

It happened again six months later.

Kara was late for a Model UN conference in New York—late as in jogging-through-hotel-lobbies-while-trying-not-to-drop-her-press-badge late. She’d been bumped from her original flight, rerouted through Chicago, and now she was somewhere between panic and dehydration, elbowing her way past a group of future diplomats arguing about whether water rights were a human right or a privilege.

And there she was.

Lena.
In the lobby.
Sitting on a velvet chair like she owned the hotel. Legs crossed. Reading Foreign Affairs. Again with the damn magazines.

Kara stopped short.

It took Lena five seconds to look up. Two more to recognise her.

“You.”

Kara grinned, breathless. “Hi.”

Lena raised an eyebrow. “You look… dishevelled.”

“I was dishevelled the first time you met me. This is just continuity.”

Lena blinked. “What are you doing here?”

“Model UN,” Kara said, panting. “Technically I’m press. Mostly I’m chaos.”

Lena’s lips twitched. “That tracks.”

Kara hesitated. She hadn’t stopped thinking about the girl at Gate 42B. The girl who didn’t ask for conversation but didn’t walk away from it either.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“That’s the thing about probability,” Lena said, closing her magazine. “It has a sense of humour.”

“You remember me.”

“Of course.”

Kara tried to look casual. Failed. “So… you’re on a delegation?”

“No. Observer. My mother’s speaking on trade policy.”

“Oh.” Kara’s expression faltered. “Right. Of course. That makes sense.”

Lena stood slowly, smoothing her skirt. “You always talk this much?”

Kara shrugged. “Only around people I find interesting.”

Lena studied her for a second. Tilted her head like she was trying to figure out which part of that was sincere and which part was performance.

“Good luck,” she said, turning to leave.

“Wait,” Kara called after her. “Will I see you again?”

Lena paused.

Then, without looking back: “You never know.”

And just like the first time, she was gone before Kara could ask her last name.

It was spring.

The kind of spring that still wore winter’s ghost—sky bleached and wind sharp enough to bite. The trees were trying. Buds clenched like fists. Flowers blooming more out of spite than softness.

Kara had taken the train into the city for a journalism workshop she couldn’t afford but couldn’t stomach missing. Early, as always. She’d rather wait awkwardly than arrive breathless. Nervous energy had to go somewhere.

So she found a bench outside the event centre. Paper cup in hand. Foam disguised as coffee. She checked the time. Thirty minutes to kill and no one to kill it with.

Until—

“You really do turn up everywhere.”

Kara turned.

There she was.

Lena Luthor. In a black coat tailored to intimidation, hair twisted up like she'd time-travelled from a black-and-white film, arms folded in that signature I’m pretending not to care pose.

Kara blinked. “Okay. No. This is getting weird.”

Lena’s mouth curled. “Statistically improbable, not impossible.”

“You keep saying that,” Kara said, rising. “But at some point we have to admit the universe has a sense of humour.”

“Or one of us is cursed.”

Kara laughed, breath catching a little too tight in her chest. “Debate finals?”

Lena nodded once. “My school's in semis.”

“Of course.” Kara gestured to her own badge. “Journalism workshop. I’m here to ask people intense questions for no money.”

“That tracks.”

They stood there, the buzz of traffic behind them, the rest of the world conveniently out of focus.

Kara glanced down at her cup. “This is… the third time.”

“Fourth,” Lena corrected. “You’re forgetting the bookstore.”

Kara’s eyes widened. “You saw me?”

Lena’s smirk twitched wider. “You were talking to the clerk about how the biography section is always just dead white men. You were very passionate.”

“I am very passionate.”

“I noticed.”

Silence fell again, but this one felt less like absence and more like anticipation.

“I’ve thought about you,” Kara said, quietly.

Lena looked at her. Sharp. Still. “Really?”

“You’re not exactly forgettable.”

Lena's gaze flickered. “That’s not always a compliment.”

“It is this time.”

Something shifted. The line between them bent, like it wanted to disappear.

Lena let out a slow breath. “I thought about you too.”

Kara smiled, a little stunned. “Yeah?”

“I even Googled you,” Lena added, eyes flicking away. “There are a surprising number of Kara Danverses in the continental U.S.”

“Let me guess. None of them as charming?”

“None as loud.”

Kara laughed. Lena didn’t. Not quite.

“Are you… staying in the States for uni?” Kara asked, trying to sound casual and missing by a mile.

Lena hesitated.

“I got into King’s,” she said finally. “In London.”

“Oh.”

“I start summer term. Early cohort.”

“Oh.”

“I wasn’t going to tell you,” she added quickly, as if yanking the words back might stop them from mattering. “I don’t even know why I did.”

Kara looked at her for a long second. “Maybe because you wanted to. Even if you don’t want to want to.”

Lena’s breath hitched—but she said nothing.

Kara tried to laugh. It came out quiet. “So what now? Do we pretend this doesn’t keep happening? That we don’t notice?”

“I don’t know,” Lena said. Her voice was soft. Honest. “I think I’m better at leaving than staying.”

Kara didn’t respond. Didn’t know how to.

Lena stepped back. “I should go. Our prep session’s starting.”

Kara nodded. “Yeah. Sure. Knock ‘em dead.”

Lena paused. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”

Kara tried to smile. “Seems like our thing.”

Lena’s eyes flicked over her face, memorising something she’d never admit to needing.

Then she turned.

And walked away.

Kara sat back down.

The coffee in her hand had gone cold.
But she stayed.
Just in case.

The first week of university was chaos.

Not the loud, party kind—though there was plenty of that. This was the quiet kind. The kind that came with course selection glitches, misplaced IDs, and department heads who replied to emails two weeks too late. Kara had survived orientation with minimal caffeine and maximum sarcasm, and she was already neck-deep in lectures, printing credits, and the thrilling reality of being an adult with a meal plan.

Her journalism track was everything she’d hoped—tough, fast, relentlessly sharp. But for her interdisciplinary elective, she’d picked something ambitious: Constructs of Moral Authority in Modern History.

Because apparently, Kara Danvers couldn’t just do things. She had to do them.

She found the room five minutes early, as always. The circle of chairs was already half full—mostly politics and history majors, judging by the air of exhausted superiority. Kara slid into a seat near the back, tugged out her notebook, and looked up.

And froze.

There.

Two rows ahead.

Lena Luthor.

Hair sleek. Posture perfect. Notebook open and pen already moving like she was preparing for battle.

Kara stared, wondering for half a second if it was a mirage. But no. Lena Luthor was very much there. Real. Impossible. Unshakably composed.

Again.

After class, Kara made a beeline for her.

“Lena!”

Lena turned slowly. Her face went carefully neutral—but not before something flickered through her eyes. Surprise. Or guilt. Or maybe just the ghost of a smile.

“Kara,” she said. As if Kara were just someone she passed in the dining hall, not someone who haunted the in-between hours of her life.

“You’re in this class?” Kara asked, trying to keep her voice casual. “You never struck me as a moral constructs girl.”

“I’m not,” Lena said flatly. “I messed up my electives. Misread a code. Thought I was registering for microeconomics.”

Kara blinked. “So you’re here… accidentally?”

Lena sighed. “Technically, yes. But I missed the drop deadline, and now I’m stuck being morally constructed with the rest of you.”

Kara laughed, bright and surprised. “You make academic errors? Like the rest of us common folk?”

Lena’s lips twitched. “Apparently I’m not infallible.”

“That’s a relief,” Kara said. “I was starting to worry.”

They walked together out into the quad, where sunlight battled thin clouds and students lounged like they had all the time in the world.

“So,” Kara said, as they passed the library steps, “how long have you been back?”

“Three weeks.”

“I thought you were staying in London.”

“I was,” Lena said, gaze fixed ahead. “Did the summer term. Got the offer. Took it. Left.”

“What happened?”

“It didn’t fit,” she said simply. “Or maybe I didn’t.”

Kara wanted to ask more. Wanted to ask was it too cold? too lonely? too far from me?
But she didn’t.

She just said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

Lena looked at her, something unreadable behind her eyes. “You say that now.”

Kara smiled gently. “I’ve said it before.”

Lena didn’t answer.

That night, Kara lay in bed, arms crossed behind her head, staring at the ceiling like it might spell out the answers in water stains.

She hadn’t expected to see Lena again.
Not here.
Not now.
Not like this.

But now that she had, she realised the question wasn’t whether they’d find their way back into each other’s orbit.

It was what they’d do once they did.

It started with a group assignment.

Well—“group” in the academic sense. Meaning pairs. Selected, as far as anyone could tell, by some chaotic blend of alphabetical proximity and cosmic irony.

Danvers and Luthor.

Luthor and Danvers.

Kara had laughed when their names were read out.

Lena hadn’t.

Their task: co-author a profile piece on a local figure with an “unusual public narrative.” Interview. Research. Write. Present.

A simple brief on paper. Torture in practice.

“Should we flip a coin for who does what?” Kara asked as they left class, falling into step beside Lena.

“No,” Lena said without missing a beat, already pulling up her calendar. “We’ll divide the work based on comparative advantage.”

Kara grinned. “You’re fun.”

“I’m efficient.”

“Same thing.”

They started meeting twice a week in the library’s quieter wing. Then three times. Then every day, without quite acknowledging that it had stopped being just about the assignment.

At first, it was awkward. Not tense, exactly—just unfamiliar.

Lena worked like she lived: methodically, intensely, with no tolerance for wasted time. She planned, structured, outlined. Kara, meanwhile, operated on instinct. Tangents. Banter. Big ideas scribbled in pink highlighter and spirals in the margins.

Their Google Doc looked like a battleground.

Kara’s poetic metaphors met Lena’s surgical edits. Kara said Lena’s style read like a tax report. Lena said Kara’s read like it belonged in a YA novel. Kara added emojis to her comments just to annoy her.

Lena removed them without replying.

Somehow, the result was brilliant.

By the time they submitted the final piece, even the professor seemed suspicious. He’d circled the opening paragraph and written “unsettlingly cohesive. How did this happen?”

They got an A.

They barely noticed.

Because somewhere between research trips and café runs, between fights about sentence structure and arguments over subheadings, something had shifted.

It started small.

Kara began showing up with coffee—never asking how Lena took it, just always getting it right.
Lena pretended not to be charmed. She failed.
Kara started walking her home from campus. Said it was “on the way,” even when it objectively wasn’t.
Lena stopped arguing.

They filled hours with nothing—laptop screens and companionable silence. Kara talked. A lot. But she always noticed when Lena needed the quiet. She never forced her to fill space.

Lena hadn’t realised how long it had been since someone listened.

Really listened.

And then there were the glances.

Quick. Lingering. Not quite anything. But not quite nothing either.

Kara would laugh at something dumb and Lena’s stomach would betray her.
Kara would lean over her notebook, elbow brushing Lena’s, and Lena would forget what the sentence said.
Kara would say her name—just her name—and Lena would carry the sound around for hours like a secret.

Still, they were just friends.

Lena told herself that was fine.

Better, even.

Predictable.

Safe.

Because she knew how this story ended. Knew that wanting always led to wreckage. She’d seen it—lived it. Love, for Lena, had always been something weaponised. Something withheld.

Kara didn’t deserve that.

So she didn’t reach. Didn’t ask. Didn’t risk it.

She built walls with hands that wanted to reach across the table. Reinforced them with logic. With coolness. With late-night edits and carefully neutral texts.

And yet.

Sometimes, Kara would say something stupidly earnest—something about the ethical responsibility of journalism, or how stories could change the world—and Lena would find herself watching her like she’d never seen anything quite so reckless or beautiful.

And she’d think:

If I let myself, I’d ruin this.
If I let myself, I’d want everything.

First Year – Winter

It snowed harder than anyone expected that week.

Not a delicate dusting, but a full, stubborn blanketing of white that swallowed the pavements and silenced the city. Classes were cancelled. Buses stalled. The university email system descended into a loop of passive-aggressive updates and apologies.

Most students took it as an excuse to hibernate or party.

Kara took it as an invitation to knock on Lena’s door with two cups of ramen, three blankets, and the worst pair of penguin-patterned socks Lena had ever seen.

“Emergency dinner delivery,” Kara announced, already kicking off her boots. “We are officially snowbound, and I am officially overprepared.”

Lena raised an eyebrow. “You brought instant noodles and mismatched socks. I’m not sure that qualifies as overprepared.”

Kara grinned. “I also brought marshmallows and the director’s cut of Pride & Prejudice, so technically, I brought salvation.”

Lena wanted to be annoyed.

She really did.

But the truth was: she’d been waiting for this.
For her.
For the familiar knock and the brighter energy Kara always brought with her.
She always pretended she wasn’t—always kept her voice flat, her expression neutral, her arms crossed just tight enough to hide the part of her that hoped.

But Kara always came anyway.

They ended up curled on the floor, backs against Lena’s bed, ramen bowls balanced precariously on the radiator shelf, steam fogging up the window.

It was quiet. Outside, the world had softened into snow-drenched stillness. Inside, the radiator clanked in protest, the kind of old building sound that made Lena nostalgic for things she never actually liked.

Kara was blowing on her tea when she said it.

“I think I’m bi.”

Just like that.
Soft. Simple. Like she was offering a weather update.
No build-up. No warning.

Lena’s heartbeat didn’t stall. It clanged. Then dropped somewhere behind her ribs like it was trying to escape.

She swallowed. Carefully. “Okay.”

Kara glanced over, searching her face. “You’re not surprised?”

“No.”

“You’re not… weird about it?”

“Why would I be?”

“I don’t know,” Kara said, wrapping her hands around the mug. “Some people are. They get weird when things aren’t… binary.”

Lena met her eyes. Tried to keep her voice from shaking. “I live outside the binary. Have you met me?”

That made Kara laugh. Light and easy. The kind of laugh Lena always felt in her skin before her ears.

Lena didn’t laugh.

She nodded toward the tea. “You should drink that before it gets cold.”

Kara didn’t seem to notice the shift. She sipped. Talked about labels, about how she never felt like she needed one until suddenly she did. About how being bi wasn’t some epiphany, more like a sentence that had been writing itself in the background her whole life.

Lena nodded. Agreed. Listened.
All while her brain spun and burned, trying to keep up.

Because Kara had just said something huge—something true and vulnerable and important—and Lena wanted to honour that.

But her body had gone cold.

Because somewhere, under the supportive nods and understanding half-smiles, another thought had taken root.

Kara likes girls.

She could like me.

But she doesn’t.

And that was the part Lena couldn’t bear.

When Kara excused herself to go find another blanket—one Lena strongly suspected did not exist—Lena stood and walked to the bathroom.

She shut the door quietly. Turned on the tap.

And stared at herself in the mirror.

The girl staring back looked the same.
Perfect posture. Calm face. Hair tied just tight enough.
But her hands were trembling.

She pressed her palms flat against the counter and focused on the cold tile under her bare feet.

This is fine, she told herself.
This doesn’t change anything.

It was a lie.

This changed everything.

Because up until now, Lena had been able to pretend her feelings were safe. That they lived in a locked box of impossibility. That the quiet ache in her chest didn’t matter because Kara would never see her that way.

But now?

Now there was a crack in the wall.

Now there was possibility.

And that was so much worse than certainty.

When Lena came back out, Kara was already back under the blankets, munching on a stale granola bar like it was gourmet, the credits of Pride & Prejudice rolling across her laptop screen.

She looked up and smiled, all soft and open.

“Missed the best part.”

“You’ve seen it seventeen times.”

“Exactly. I know when the good parts are.”

Lena sat down beside her, pulled the blanket over her lap, and smiled back.

The same way she always did.

Like nothing had changed.

Later that night, after Kara had left and the snow had finally stopped, Lena lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling.

Kara had said she was bi. Had trusted her enough to say it out loud. And Lena was proud of her. Fiercely. Quietly. Always.

But beneath that pride was something else.

A grief she hadn’t earned.

A longing she hadn’t voiced.

And a truth she wouldn’t admit, not even to herself.

She’d fallen for Kara Danvers.

Hard. Fast. Entirely.

And she didn’t know what to do with that, except hold it quietly.

And let it wreck her.

Second Year – Spring

Kara started dating Emily in March.

It wasn’t dramatic.

No big announcement. No awkward conversation. Just a shift. A quiet hand-hold on the quad. A photo posted to Instagram—Kara smiling, Emily’s arm draped casually over her shoulders, both of them glowing in the golden hour like something out of a coming-of-age film.

Lena saw the post on a Tuesday morning while brushing her teeth. She stared at it until the toothpaste in her mouth turned bitter. She didn’t like the photo. She didn’t not like it either. She saved it to her phone before she realised what she was doing.

Emily was… fine. Kind. Smart. One of Kara’s journalism cohort. She quoted Joan Didion and made Kara laugh and left affirming little notes in Kara’s textbooks. The type of person who remembered birthdays and carried lip balm and never tripped over her own feet or her own heart.

The type of person who fit.

And that, more than anything, made Lena’s throat burn.

She told herself she wasn’t jealous.

Not really.

That she didn’t want Kara like that. That what they had was different. Deeper. That it didn’t need labels or definitions or territory.

She told herself that right up until the first time she saw them together in person.

Kara had invited her to a group study session. “Bring snacks,” she’d texted, punctuated by a series of increasingly deranged emojis.

When Lena arrived, Kara waved her over—already mid-rant about media ethics—and Emily was curled up on the edge of the sofa like she belonged there. One leg tucked under her, hand on Kara’s knee, expression patient and fond and close.

It was the first time Lena had ever seen Kara physically close to someone else.

It felt like being replaced in real-time.

Over the next few weeks, Lena became… difficult.

Not obviously. She was too well-trained for that. Too good at control.

But her comments sharpened. Her tone cooled. In study group, she picked apart Emily’s essays with unnecessary precision. Called her arguments “surface-level” and her citations “lazy.”

When Kara tried to smooth things over with a laugh, Lena said, “I didn’t realise constructive feedback was now considered bullying.”

Kara blinked. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Lena said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

She never admitted that she’d memorised the way Kara looked at Emily. Or that she’d noticed how Kara’s smile softened whenever Emily walked into a room. Or how she stopped texting back as fast. How she cancelled two of their coffee plans in a row with polite, apologetic explanations Lena didn’t believe.

Instead, she said nothing.

And started collecting pieces of Kara like they might make her whole again.

She kept the empty coffee cups from the place Kara loved.
Wrote down quotes Kara liked from articles they read together.
Saved voicemails she never meant to replay.
Took screenshots of stupid messages and jokes from nights where everything still felt like it used to.

She made a playlist of songs Kara had sent her. It was 112 tracks long by April. She listened to it in the bath, in her car, while walking between classes with her headphones in and her head down.

Everywhere she went, Kara followed.

Not in body.
But in detail.

In the way she held her pen.
The way she always carried lip balm but never used it.
The way she stood slightly off-centre when she was uncomfortable, like she was trying to shrink without anyone noticing.

Lena memorised all of it.

And hated herself for it.

One night, after a party where Kara and Emily had left early—hand in hand, whispering something only for each other—Lena climbed onto the rooftop above her building and stared out across the skyline.

She was tipsy. Barefoot. Wrapped in a coat too thin for the cold. But she didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t cry.

She just sat there, knees pulled up to her chest, and tried to convince herself that this was fine. That this was temporary. That Kara would come back. That nothing had changed.

But the truth was: it had.

And not because Kara had stopped caring.

But because she’d started caring about someone else.

And that—
That was what undid her.

They still saw each other. Still texted. Still exchanged notes on lectures and met for emergency caffeine during midterms. From the outside, nothing looked different.

But Lena could feel the fracture.

Small. Splintering. Quiet.

She noticed it in the gaps between messages. In the way Kara checked her phone when she wasn’t looking. In how her stories always included we now, not I.

And the worst part?

Kara didn’t even know.

She didn’t know she was breaking Lena.

Didn’t know that every smile meant to reassure her felt like salt in an invisible wound.

Didn’t know Lena had been building a museum of memories, hoarding every version of Kara that still felt like hers.

She didn’t know.

And Lena didn’t tell her.

Because how could she?

How could she admit she’d fallen in love with her best friend’s smile, her terrible jokes, the way she pronounced “journalism” like it was a battle cry?

How could she confess that the thing she wanted most in the world was the one thing she’d never been offered?

Second Year – Summer

By some miracle of scheduling and cosmic mischief, they ended up in the same city for the summer.

Not for the same internship, but close enough. Kara was at the National Register, buried in a fact-checking department that didn’t quite know what to do with her energy. Lena was interning with a civic think tank, sitting in on policy briefings and writing memos no one read but everyone pretended to.

Their buildings were four blocks apart. Their apartments were not.

Kara had landed in a converted brownstone with a slanted kitchen and a neighbour who played the trumpet at 3am. Lena’s flat was pristine and clinical, subletted from a senior analyst who’d left behind an absurd number of linen trousers and the scent of sandalwood diffusers.

They spent nearly every evening at Kara’s.

It became routine without ever being agreed upon.

Lena would text “Alive?” around six.

Kara would reply with “Barely. Come over. I have snacks.”

And Lena always did.

She’d bring wine or dumplings or nothing at all. They’d make boxed pasta or open too many bags of crisps. Kara would put on music—always something with too much brass or not enough vocals—and Lena would roll her eyes and change it halfway through the second song.

It was easy. Comfortable.

Dangerous.

They didn’t talk about Emily.

The breakup had been clean. Boring. Kara had called it “mutual,” but Lena had seen the way she kept checking her phone for weeks after. The way she said “I’m fine” the way people say “I’m freezing” in short sleeves.

Still, she didn’t ask.

And Kara didn’t offer.

Instead, they drifted into this strange, sun-drenched intimacy—one long, lazy exhale that smelled like Kara’s peppermint shampoo and the lemon candles Lena had started buying to mask the scent of Kara’s terrible attempts at stir-fry.

They sprawled across the couch like they’d never sat on opposite sides. Fell asleep watching documentaries about weird cults and soft dramas about nothing. Shared blankets without thinking. Finished each other’s sentences without meaning to.

And every time Lena left at the end of the night, she felt a little more undone.

The moment—the moment—happened in mid-July.

The air was thick with heat and possibility, and Kara’s A/C had finally given up on pretending to function. They were lying on the floor in Kara’s living room, all limbs and sweat and half-eaten popsicles, the windows thrown open in defeat.

They’d been talking about soulmates.

Not seriously. It had started as a joke—Lena quoting something ridiculous from a book she was reading.

“Apparently,” Lena had said, “there’s a theory that your soulmate is just the person you bump into the most during your life. Like, statistically.”

“That’s bleak,” Kara replied, licking cherry juice off her knuckles.

“It’s logical. Soulmates by repetition.”

Kara rolled onto her stomach and looked at her. Really looked.

“What if it’s you?”

Lena blinked. “What?”

“What if you’re mine?”

She said it casually. Lightly. Like it was a funny idea.

But something in her voice caught. Just slightly.

Lena tried to laugh. “Then I feel sorry for you.”

“I don’t,” Kara said, quieter now. “I think it’d make sense.”

There was a pause.

The air shifted.

Kara continued before Lena could say anything.

“I don’t think soulmates have to be romantic. I mean, maybe they’re just the people who shape you. Who see you. The ones you build your life around, even if you don’t mean to.”

Lena swallowed. Her mouth had gone dry.

“I think you might be mine,” Kara said. “Even if we don’t end up… you know. With each other.”

Lena’s breath caught.

Kara wasn’t looking at her anymore. She was staring at the ceiling, her voice distant and dreamy.

“I think the people we date… they come and go. They’re chapters. But you—you’re like… the spine.”

Lena wanted to say something. Anything.

But all she could think was: Please don’t mean this platonically.

Instead, she said, “That’s a very poetic metaphor for someone who uses emojis in email headers.”

Kara laughed, soft and startled.

“I contain multitudes,” she said.

Lena smiled. But it didn’t reach her eyes.

Because this could’ve been the moment.

Should have been the moment.

And still—it wasn’t.

They didn’t talk about it again.

Not that night. Not the next.

It became another shared silence. Another almost.

Lena kept showing up. Kept making excuses. Kept watching Kara laugh with her whole body and wondering if Kara knew she was breaking her without trying.

She started learning the shape of Kara’s absence even while she was still in the room.

Because it wasn’t just that she wanted more.

It was that she already had so much—and still, not that.

And sometimes that was worse.

At the end of the summer, Kara made pancakes shaped like planets.

It was their last morning before Lena flew back to Metropolis for her final term. She showed up in pyjamas, her suitcase already packed, her heart already aching.

Kara wore one of Lena’s sweatshirts and didn’t even realise it.

“I made you Saturn,” she said, handing over a plate with a ring-shaped pancake and a crooked smile. “It’s a little burnt. Like our atmosphere.”

“You’re such a nerd.”

“You love that about me.”

Lena looked at her. Really looked.

“I do.”

Kara blinked. “What?”

“I said you’re lucky I haven’t reported you to NASA.”

Kara grinned. “That’s not what you said.”

But she didn’t push it.

Of course she didn’t.

At the airport, Kara hugged her too tight.

“Don’t go falling in love with any ethically ambiguous policy advisors.”

“No promises.”

Kara looked like she wanted to say something else.

Instead, she handed Lena a folded piece of paper. “Don’t open it until you’re in the air.”

Lena didn’t.

She opened it three hours later, turbulence shaking her tray table.

It was a list of books Kara wanted to read with her.

A playlist link.

A drawing of a badly sketched Saturn.

And one line, scribbled at the bottom in Kara’s uneven scrawl:

You’re still the best part of every day.

Lena folded the note and pressed it into her wallet like a secret.

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t smile.

She just stared out the window and let the clouds blur into nothing.

Because she’d learned by now:

Kara Danvers could love you with her whole soul.

And still not know it.

Third Year – Autumn

Lena met Sienna in a seminar called Reconstructing Identity in Post-Structuralist Literature. It was the kind of class Lena normally avoided—too indulgent, too interpretive, too full of opinions masquerading as insight. But she needed a final lit credit, and the title had sounded sufficiently academic.

Sienna was late on the first day. She breezed in like she owned the concept of lateness, balancing an oat milk latte in one hand and a dog-eared copy of Beloved in the other. She wore a leather jacket and a scent Lena couldn’t place but wanted to chase, and when she sat down next to Lena and said, “You look like you hate everyone here,” Lena replied, “I do.”

Sienna grinned. “Great. We’ll get along.”

They did.

Or at least, Lena pretended they did.

It was easy to fall into something with Sienna. She was magnetic in the way only people who’ve been adored too often and too easily can be. She flirted like it was breathing. She laughed at Lena’s dry humour. She didn’t hesitate to take Lena’s hand when they crossed the street or order for them both at coffee shops.

Lena didn’t stop her.

Didn’t stop herself.

Because there was something comforting in the ease of it. In the way Sienna didn’t ask her to explain the hard things. In the way she touched Lena like it was natural and kissed her like she wasn’t waiting for a sign.

She didn’t feel like home.

But she felt like enough.

And that was dangerous.

Because Lena had spent the past two years building a map of what almost felt like Kara.
And this? This was close enough to keep her distracted.

She didn’t tell Kara.

Not because she was hiding it, she told herself. But because she didn’t want to make it a thing.

And maybe, deep down, because she didn’t want to see the look on Kara’s face.

She still saw her. Still studied with her. Still spent Thursday nights sprawled across Kara’s couch pretending that the space between them was friend-shaped.

They didn’t talk about who they were seeing. They never really had. Kara had mentioned Emily twice after the breakup—once in a joke, once when she handed Lena a book Emily had recommended with an awkward shrug. Lena had said nothing.

So now, when Kara offered to make her hot chocolate after a late-night study session, Lena didn’t say, “I’m staying over at Sienna’s.”
She said, “Not tonight. I’ve got an early morning.”

When Kara texted, “Want to come with me to the market?”
She replied, “Busy. Next week?”

When Kara asked, Are we okay?
She answered, Always.

And Kara believed her.

Because Kara always believed her.

Sienna wanted to meet her friends. Lena stalled.

Sienna wanted to cook dinner for Kara and Sam and anyone else Lena wanted to invite. Lena lied and said Kara had a deadline. That Sam was out of town. That she didn’t feel like being social.

Sienna never pushed. Not really.

But one night, after too much wine and a shared cab back from a poetry reading, Sienna leaned her head on Lena’s shoulder and asked, “You’re not in love with someone else, are you?”

Lena didn’t answer.

She didn’t lie, either.

She just looked out the window and counted the streetlights until they blurred.

Three months in, Sienna broke up with her on a Sunday afternoon.

They were sitting on the floor of Sienna’s apartment, surrounded by the remnants of a failed attempt at baking. There was flour on Lena’s jeans and something sharp in her chest.

“You’re not really here,” Sienna said.

Lena blinked. “What?”

“You like me,” Sienna said. “I know that. But you’re not here. Not the way people are when they want something to last.”

“I—” Lena swallowed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do,” Sienna said softly. “You never introduced me to your friends. You never talk about anything that matters. You hold everything so close, and it’s like… I’m on the outside of a house I wasn’t invited into.”

Lena didn’t deny it.

Couldn’t.

Sienna reached over and tucked a piece of hair behind Lena’s ear.

“You deserve to be in love with someone who loves you back. Out loud. All the way.”

Lena said nothing.

Because she was in love with someone.

She just hadn’t told her.

And maybe she never would.

Kara found out the way Kara always did—with gentle presence and unspoken understanding.

She showed up that night with two tubs of ice cream—mint chocolate chip and lemon sorbet—and no questions.

“I got both,” she said, kicking off her shoes. “Because I forgot which one you pretend not to like.”

Lena looked at her, heart unraveling in her chest.

“She broke up with me.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t need me to.”

Lena sat down beside her on the floor.

They ate in silence. Kara let Lena choose the movie. Lena didn’t, so Kara just hit play on The Princess Bride and offered her a spoon.

They watched until the credits rolled, until the shadows stretched across the floor and Kara’s shoulder was warm against hers.

And then Lena, voice low and quiet and not at all brave, asked:

“Do you ever get tired of pretending things don’t matter?”

Kara turned to her. Slowly.

“What do you mean?”

Lena stared at the television, now black-screened and glowing faintly in the dark.

“This. Us. The space between what we say and what we don’t. I get tired of pretending that I’m not… that this doesn’t…”

She trailed off.

Kara didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

Just watched her.

Lena finally looked at her. “Don’t you?”

Kara’s mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again.

“I think,” she said, carefully, “I’ve gotten really good at pretending things are simpler than they are. Because it’s easier. Because I don’t know what happens if I stop.”

Lena nodded. Her throat was tight.

“Same,” she whispered.

And that was it.

That was the moment.

The door left open.

The truth almost named.

But neither of them stepped through it.

Because sometimes, silence was a safer kind of heartbreak.

Later, when Kara had gone and the ice cream had melted on the counter, Lena stood at her window and looked out at the campus glowing amber under the streetlights.

She imagined telling Kara.

All of it.

That she was in love with her. That she had been for years. That she’d tried, again and again, to pretend it didn’t matter—but it did. That no one else had ever felt like this. That no one ever could.

She imagined Kara turning, saying it back.

She imagined Kara turning, walking away.

She imagined everything.

And did nothing.

Because loving Kara was like holding sunlight in her hands.
Beautiful. Blinding.
And impossible to keep.

So she pressed her forehead to the glass.

And stayed quiet.

Third Year – Winter

By winter, they were everything to each other.

Not in the way that prompted raised eyebrows or gossip. Not in the obvious, hand-holding, head-on-shoulder, let-me-post-you-on-my-Instagram kind of way.

It was quieter than that.

More dangerous for it.

They’d slipped past labels and categories somewhere between the end of summer and the start of term, and now there was no going back. They weren’t dating. They weren’t just friends. They weren’t anything you could define.

They were each other’s.

That was enough.

That was too much.

It started with one night.

Kara had forgotten her keycard and couldn’t be bothered to call her flatmate. It was late, she was cold, and Lena’s building had better heating. So she stayed over. No big deal.

The second time was after a deadline. Too much coffee. Too little sleep. Kara had curled up on Lena’s bed and mumbled, “Just for ten minutes,” and fallen asleep before she could lie.

The third time wasn’t even explained.

After that, they stopped counting.

They had a rhythm.

Kara would arrive late, always carrying something—takeaway, a case file, a story pitch she was too excited not to talk about. Lena would already have her laptop open, her notes spread out in that clinical, ordered way that made Kara’s heart ache for reasons she wouldn’t name.

They’d work. Then stop. Then work again. Then give up.

At some point, Kara would change into an old sweatshirt she’d left at Lena’s weeks ago. Lena would make tea. Kara would insist on hot chocolate. They’d compromise with both.

They shared a bed like it had always been meant for two.

And maybe it had.

They never talked about it.

Never made a rule.

It was just them.

Two bodies in the same space. Two lives wound together like threads that had no business running parallel and yet… did.

Lena told herself it didn’t mean anything.

That sharing a bed with someone wasn’t the same as sharing a life.

But Kara would shift in her sleep and drape an arm over her waist like it was instinct. Kara would mumble her name half-conscious, her breath warm against Lena’s neck. Kara would whisper things in the dark that she’d never say in daylight.

And Lena would lie there, eyes wide open, every nerve alert and aching, wondering how long she could keep pretending that this was survivable.

That she was surviving it.

Because the longer it went on, the more Lena started to need it.

The warmth. The routine. The closeness she told herself was normal.

The way Kara made her feel like she was allowed to take up space. Like she was safe.

The way being near Kara was less like being with someone and more like being someone.

And still—she said nothing.

Because if she said it, it might end.

And Lena wasn’t ready to lose her.

Not yet.

One night, in early February, everything almost tipped.

They were lying in bed, limbs half-tangled, silence stretching soft between them. The radiator hissed in the corner. Outside, the wind battered the windows like it wanted in.

Kara was on her back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. She’d been quiet for longer than usual.

Lena turned toward her. “You okay?”

Kara blinked. “Yeah.”

“That’s not convincing.”

Kara hesitated.

Then she turned her head, looked at Lena.

Really looked.

“I’m scared,” she said.

Lena frowned. “Of what?”

“Of after.”

“After what?”

“After this,” Kara whispered. “After uni. After all of it. What if it all changes?”

Lena swallowed. “Change is part of life.”

“I know that. But—” Kara sighed. “What if I lose you?”

The words hung there, suspended in the dark like a held breath.

Lena didn’t answer right away.

Her chest was tight. Her throat tighter.

“I don’t plan on going anywhere,” she said eventually.

“That’s not the same thing,” Kara replied. “People say that. But life happens. Jobs. Distance. Relationships.”

“Do you think I’d just… forget you?”

“I think,” Kara said softly, “I’ve built my whole world around you without meaning to. And I don’t know what’s on the other side of that.”

Lena couldn’t breathe.

Couldn’t move.

She wanted to reach out. Say Me too. Say I’ve been terrified of the same thing every day since first year. Say I love you and I don’t know how to tell you without ruining everything.

But all she said was:

“We’ll adapt.”

Kara nodded.

But her eyes dimmed. Just slightly.

And Lena hated herself for it.

The next morning, they didn’t talk about it.

Kara made toast. Burned it. Lena pretended not to notice. They fell back into banter. Into routine.

But something had shifted.

A door opened. A door closed.

Later that week, they walked back from a lecture together, both wrapped in scarves and sarcasm. Kara was ranting about a guest speaker who’d managed to mansplain intersectionality to a room full of experts.

“I mean, he used the phrase ‘lady academics.’ Like he was handing out Pokémon cards.”

Lena laughed. “We should’ve thrown something.”

“I did. Mentally.”

“You’re so brave.”

“I know.”

It was normal. Easy. Familiar.

But beneath the laughter, Lena could still hear Kara’s voice from that night.

What if I lose you?

And she thought: You already are.

She tried to pull away.

Subtly. Strategically.

Stopped sleeping over. Stopped texting first. Declined two of Kara’s study invites with the excuse of being “swamped.”

Kara noticed.

Of course she did.

But she didn’t say anything.

She just showed up with extra snacks, sent memes she knew would make Lena laugh, acted like everything was fine even when it wasn’t.

Lena hated how good Kara was at pretending.

Mostly because it made it easier to pretend right back.

The distance didn’t work.

Not really.

Because even when they weren’t together, Lena was still thinking about her.

Wondering what she was doing.

Whether she was missing her, too.

She thought about the way Kara’s voice dropped when she was tired. About the tiny scar near her elbow from when she’d fallen off a scooter in Year 9. About the way she always tied her shoelaces double, but never quite evenly.

She thought about how easily Kara gave herself to people. How fiercely she loved. How deeply she trusted.

How Lena had never really deserved that kind of devotion.

But still received it anyway.

The next time they saw each other—really saw each other—was on the couch in Kara’s flat, watching a documentary neither of them were actually paying attention to.

Kara’s head was on Lena’s shoulder. Lena’s hand was dangerously close to Kara’s thigh.

Lena’s pulse was too loud in her ears.

Kara shifted. Spoke, barely above a whisper.

“Promise me we’ll still talk. After all of this.”

Lena didn’t hesitate.

“Promise.”

Kara didn’t ask what that promise meant.

Didn’t ask what they were, or what they weren’t.

Didn’t ask why Lena was suddenly pulling away, or why she kept looking like she wanted to say something and never did.

She just leaned into her.

And closed her eyes.

That night, Lena lay awake in Kara’s bed, staring at the ceiling while Kara slept beside her.

She thought about what it meant to be this close to someone and still not know how to keep them.

Thought about all the almosts they’d stacked between them like a house of cards.

Thought about what might happen if she tore it all down with a single truth.

She didn’t say it.

Not that night.

Not yet.

Instead, she turned her face toward Kara.

Watched her breathe.

And tried to pretend that this—this quiet, this nearness, this unspeakable ache—was enough.

Third Year – Spring

Graduation came like a wave.

Not all at once, but in pieces—caps ordered months too early, robes fitted too late, emails and forms and “lasts” that trickled in until it all felt like background noise. The kind of chaos no one took seriously until it was over.

Until suddenly, it wasn’t just finals looming—it was goodbye.

Kara handled it with the same energy she gave everything else: too much.

She joined three planning committees. Bought colour-coded highlighters for notes she wasn’t even going to keep. Designed farewell cards with glitter pens and had to apologise to half her classmates when the glitter got on their transcripts.

Lena watched her whirl through it all—laughing too loudly, hugging too tightly, pretending she wasn’t running out of time.

Because Kara Danvers didn’t know how to slow down.
Not when she was scared.
Especially not then.

The week of graduation was unseasonably hot.

Every day was saturated in golden sunlight and the constant hum of things ending. Students crammed final memories into stolen minutes—photos on the steps of the library, goodbyes shouted from open windows, champagne bottles popped in the quad like punctuation.

Lena spent most of that week drifting.

She went to her classes, handed in her last paper, met Sienna for coffee (a peace offering after silence that had stretched too long), and answered Kara’s texts with emojis and “sure” and “sounds good.”

She didn’t say: I’m not ready.

She didn’t say: Please don’t let this be it.

Instead, she stood in front of the mirror every morning and rehearsed smiles like armour.

Graduation day arrived in a blur of polyester robes and panicked parents. Kara wore hers with messy pride, a cap slightly askew and a tassel that kept swinging into her eyes. Lena’s was pristine, pressed and perfectly placed, her hair swept up in a twist that had taken twenty-seven bobby pins and every ounce of control she had left.

They found each other in the lineup, eyes scanning the crowd until they collided like magnets finally realising how close they'd always been.

“You made it,” Kara said.

“I was never not going to.”

Kara’s smile flickered. “Doesn’t feel real.”

“It’s not,” Lena said. “Not yet.”

They took photos.

Dozens.

Kara insisted on every angle—funny faces, serious faces, faces where they were mid-laugh, arms around shoulders, hands clasped tight like they were afraid of slipping out of frame.

Lena let her. Smiled for all of them. Even laughed, sometimes.

But later, when Kara wasn’t looking, she deleted the one where they were cheek to cheek.

It had hurt too much to see herself look that happy.

The ceremony was long. Speeches. Names mispronounced. Cheering that started strong and faded into polite claps halfway through the Ls.

Lena tuned most of it out.

Except when Kara’s name was called.

Then, she leaned forward—hands tight around the program, heart lodged somewhere just below her collarbone—and watched her best friend walk across the stage like she’d always been destined for it.

Kara beamed. Waved. Nearly tripped on her way back down.

Lena exhaled.

Didn’t realise she’d been holding her breath.

They found each other again after, beneath the willow tree on the east lawn. The one where they'd first shared a lecture, a cup of bad coffee, and a thousand glances that meant everything and nothing all at once.

“Nice hat,” Lena said.

Kara plucked it off and handed it to her. “You wear it better.”

Lena tried it on. “I know.”

They stood in silence, the sun spilling through the branches in dappled gold.

Kara reached for her hand.

Held it.

Not tightly.

Just enough.

Like she needed the contact.

Like she couldn’t figure out how to say stay.

They didn’t talk about the future.

Didn’t talk about the past.

Didn’t say the things that hovered just beneath the surface—glimmering, terrible, true.

Kara didn’t ask Lena what city she was moving to.
Lena didn’t tell Kara that she’d turned down an offer in London because it felt too far from something she didn’t understand how to keep.

They talked about sandwiches instead.
And sunscreen.
And how neither of them were wearing enough of it.

They laughed like they weren’t grieving something unnamed.

They stood close enough to touch and still didn’t.

Everyone assumed they were more than friends.

They’d been called soulmates at least twice that day alone—once by their professor, once by a classmate who’d cornered Kara at the drinks table and asked, “So when are you two finally making it official?”

Kara had laughed.

Lena had disappeared into the bathroom and stared at her reflection until her hands stopped shaking.

It wasn’t the assumption that hurt.

It was how easy it was to believe.

How obvious they must’ve been.
How seen.
And how neither of them had done anything about it.

That night, there was a party.

Everyone was there—crowded into the courtyard of someone’s too-expensive rental, music too loud, lights strung from every tree like hope stretched too thin.

Kara danced. Lena watched.

Kara laughed. Lena drank.

Kara found her once, near the garden fence, and asked, “Are you okay?”

Lena said, “Yeah.”

Kara nodded like she believed her.
But her eyes lingered too long.

They sat together on the curb at midnight.

Lena’s heels were off. Kara’s robe had chocolate on the hem from someone’s celebratory cake. They were quiet again. Comfortable.

Heavy.

“I’m glad I met you,” Kara said suddenly.

Lena looked at her. “You make it sound like we’re never going to see each other again.”

Kara smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I just… don’t want this to be one of those things we remember too late.”

Lena didn’t know how to answer that.

Didn’t know how to say it already is.

Instead, she leaned her shoulder into Kara’s. Closed her eyes.

And let the moment pass.

They hugged goodbye on Kara’s doorstep.

Not forever. Not officially. But long enough that it felt like an ending.

“Text me when you get in?” Kara asked.

“Of course.”

Kara hesitated.

Then: “Promise me something?”

Lena waited.

Kara searched her face like she was reading the last page of a book she wasn’t ready to close.

“Don’t let this fade.”

Lena nodded.

“I won’t.”

And she meant it.

Even as she knew it would.

Because that’s what time does.
It doesn’t rip things away—it lets them drift.
One missed call. One unanswered text.
One day when you okay? feels too loaded to send.

People would ask, in the years that followed:

Were you two ever together?

And they’d both say no.

Too quickly.

Too smoothly.

But if you asked Kara how Lena took her coffee, or asked Lena what Kara’s face looked like when she got excited about a story, they’d answer before you finished asking.

Because some things aren’t dates.

Some things are devotions.

Unspoken. Incomplete.

True.

Kara kept a photo of them on her desk.
Lena never asked which one.
She knew.

Lena kept a note Kara had written in her wallet for years.
Kara never knew she still had it.

Their friends told stories about them like legends—those two girls, the ones who were everything to each other.

People assumed.

No one asked why they weren’t more.

Because maybe the real answer was too hard to hold.

Too heavy.

Too unfinished.

Maybe it always would be.

There were things Kara Danvers knew.

She knew how Lena liked her coffee—one sugar, no milk, hot enough to risk burning your tongue. She knew it wasn’t just a caffeine preference; it was a control thing. Lena liked holding something too hot and never flinching. A small, private power trip. A tiny rebellion against the world.

Kara knew the way Lena’s voice changed when she was lying—just slightly, half a note lower, a hitch between sentences like she was editing herself mid-breath.

She knew the tilt of Lena’s head when she was interested. The way her fingers tapped when she was holding back a thought. The kind of silence Lena gave when she trusted you enough not to fill it.

Lena’s silences weren’t empty.
They were offerings.

And Kara had received more of them than anyone else.

She’d earned them. Carried them. Built a life around them.

And that was the thing—Kara knew Lena loved her.

She knew it with the same certainty she knew the sun would rise, that the moon would wax and wane, that gravity would pull and people would leave.

She knew it with the kind of bone-deep clarity that comes only once or twice in a lifetime.

She just also knew… Lena didn’t know it.

Not in a way she could admit.
Not in the way that mattered.
Not in the way that would have let Kara stay.

After graduation, Kara filled her life with noise.

Noise was easier. It drowned things. Like thoughts. Like regret.

She threw herself into her job at The National Register. Fact-checking, then bylines, then full features. A blur of deadlines and caffeine and just enough chaos to keep her from noticing the silence that came when Lena stopped showing up in her everyday.

They had promised—we’ll keep in touch—and they had meant it. In the moment, they had meant it like blood oaths.

But life happened.

Time did what it always does: it passed.

At first, they texted every day.

Not long messages. Just… fragments. Inside jokes. Photos. Songs.

Then every other day.

Then weekly.

Then… when they could.

Kara didn’t know when the last phone call had been. The last real one. The last time Lena’s voice had hummed against her ear through the receiver and made everything feel solid again.

She just knew it hadn’t happened in a while.

And that she kept waiting for it anyway.

She never stopped thinking about her.

Not once.

Not when she was editing three stories on deadline. Not when she won a small press award and realised the first person she wanted to call was the one she hadn’t spoken to in six weeks. Not when she walked past a bookstore and saw The Dispossessed in the window and remembered Lena quoting it at 2am like a prayer.

She didn’t talk about Lena. Not to Nia. Not to her mother. Not even to herself.

But she thought about her.
All the time.

Sometimes, Kara would draft a message:

I heard about your fellowship—congrats.
I miss you.
Are we okay?

And then delete it.

Because how do you ask if someone is still yours when they were never really yours to begin with?

How do you say I haven’t stopped loving you when you never got to say I love you in the first place?

She kept photos.

Not on display. That would be too obvious.

But in a folder tucked away on her phone. One she opened too often. One she couldn’t delete.

Lena in sunlight, squinting.
Lena under a library lamp, chin on her hand, eyes soft.
Lena asleep on her couch, blanket askew, mouth slightly open.

Lena looking at Kara like she was trying not to.

That one hurt the most.

Sometimes Kara forgot.

Forgot they weren’t still in each other’s orbit.

She’d have a thought and reach for her phone before remembering that she hadn’t heard from Lena in days. Weeks.

She’d say something and expect Lena’s laugh, only to be met with silence.

She’d walk past a café and turn to say something, only to find she was alone.

The grief of absence wasn’t a loud thing.
It was quiet.
Like walking into a room and forgetting what you came for.
Like losing a word you almost remembered.

One night, three months after graduation, Kara sat on the fire escape of her apartment with a blanket and a beer, watching the glow of National City pulse against the night.

It was cold. She didn’t mind.

She used to hate this kind of silence. But now, it had settled into her bones.

There was something steady about it. Something cruelly honest.

She looked up at the sky and thought:

You love me.
You just don’t know what to do with it.

And she wasn’t angry.

She’d been angry once.

When Lena had pulled away. When she’d acted like nothing had changed even when everything had. When she’d stopped sleeping over. When she’d smiled and said we’ll always be friends and meant it like a death sentence.

But that anger had faded.

Now, Kara was just tired.

Tired of pretending it hadn’t happened.
Tired of remembering it alone.
Tired of wondering what it would’ve meant if Lena had said it back. If she’d ever let it be real.

Because loving someone who didn’t know how to hold it back was one thing.

But loving someone who didn’t know how to hold it at all—

That was another kind of grief entirely.

And Kara had lived in it for far too long.

She started dating again. Casually. Lightly.

People who didn’t know her well enough to ask what was missing.

She let them kiss her. Let them text her good morning. Let them ask about her writing and her plans and her favourite childhood cereal.

She let them think they were getting to know her.

But none of them ever made it past the front porch of her heart.

Because Lena was still there.

Everywhere.

In the way Kara stirred her coffee.
In the playlist she still couldn’t bring herself to delete.
In the cardigan she wore too often, that Lena had once said made her look “criminally huggable.”

She tried to move on.

She tried.

But no one else was Lena.

And Kara didn’t want almost.

Not when she’d already had the shape of everything.

Sometimes she wondered what Lena was doing.

Whether she was happy.

Whether she was seeing someone.

Whether she’d ever typed Kara’s name into her phone and then deleted it before pressing send.

Whether she’d ever once said I miss her out loud.

Kara would’ve given anything to hear it.

Even once.

Spring came.

Kara’s editor said her voice had matured.

Her inbox was full. Her schedule tighter than ever.

But some nights, she’d find herself on that fire escape again—blanket pulled tight, heart looser than it should be—whispering things to the dark.

You love me.
You just didn’t know how to love me back.

There were things Kara Danvers knew.

She knew how Lena liked her coffee.
She knew the sound of her silence.
She knew the exact distance from friendship to something more—and that they had lived in that margin for far too long.

She knew Lena loved her.

She just didn’t know if Lena would ever be brave enough to say it.

And Kara?

Kara was brave.

But even brave people get tired.

The thing about missing Kara was that it didn’t always hurt.

Not in the way people expect grief to hurt. Not like a wound or a fracture or a scream.

Sometimes, it was soft.
A dull ache in her chest when she passed a bookstore window Kara would have dragged her into—full of paperbacks and indie zines and rotating local authors.
A smile she didn’t mean to make when her coffee turned out too sweet and she remembered exactly why—Kara used to add sugar to hers without thinking, and somehow, Lena had adopted the habit. Muscle memory. Ghosts.

It was manageable, that version of missing.
The quiet kind.

It let her function.

It let her pretend.

Other times, it was sharper.

Like when she saw something on the news—an article about press freedom or AI bias or the collapse of another minor tech empire—and her first instinct was to send it to Kara.

She’d reach for her phone without thinking. Open the thread.

And then remember they hadn’t spoken in weeks.

Months, maybe.

How long had it been?

She couldn’t remember the last proper conversation. The last laugh. The last time she’d heard Kara’s voice outside of her memory.

And just like that, the missing would sharpen into something jagged.

Something hard to swallow.

Then there were days when the ache became unbearable.

It came out of nowhere. At a dinner party. In a meeting. On the back steps of her building at 2am, when everything was too quiet and her mind too loud.

The worst was the day Sam mentioned Kara might be seeing someone new.

“She’s sweet,” Sam had said, pouring wine like it was gossip. “Nia. Does something with AI journalism. Totally Kara’s type. Witty. Bright. Nerdy as hell. But in a charming way.”

Lena had smiled. Said, “That’s great.”

Then spent the cab ride home staring out the window, clutching her coat like it might hold her together, trying to convince herself that it didn’t feel like being kicked in the ribs.

That it wasn’t jealousy.
That it wasn’t loss.
That it wasn’t too late.

But it was all of those things, and more.

That night, she almost called.

She poured herself a glass of something sharp and sat on the edge of her bed with her phone in hand, Kara’s name staring back at her from the favourites list like it didn’t belong there anymore.

She thumbed over it. Once. Twice.

Drafted a message.

Deleted it.

Picked up the phone again.

Put it back down.

The ache was in her hands. In her chest. In the words she didn’t know how to say.

She stared at the screen until her eyes blurred, until the wine went warm, until she hated herself just a little bit more for being too much of a coward to say the one thing that was clawing to get out of her throat:

I miss you.

The thing was, Lena didn’t miss Kara in the way you miss a friend who moved away or a colleague who changed jobs.

She missed Kara like a language she’d once been fluent in and could no longer speak.

Like a part of her body that had stopped functioning but still twitched with phantom memory.

She missed Kara like a home she could still see but could no longer unlock.

It wasn’t jealousy. Not exactly.

It was grief.

Grief for a friendship that had once been the most important thing in her world.
Grief for the closeness they’d never named.
Grief for the life she’d imagined in flashes—Kara laughing in her kitchen, Kara arguing about documentary framing, Kara asleep beside her, fingers laced loosely between the sheets.

A life she hadn’t dared to reach for.

A life she’d watched dissolve into missed calls and shrinking texts.

And she’d let it.

She’d stood there, quiet and still, and watched Kara drift away like fog—soft and inevitable.

And now she didn’t know how to get her back.

Weeks later, she ran into Nia at a conference.

It was a media and ethics summit—panels full of people who quoted Audre Lorde and wore glasses too large for their faces. Lena was speaking on a discussion about algorithmic bias in public funding models.

She spotted Nia immediately.

She was clever, quick, radiating curiosity from her place on the panel. She asked excellent questions. Made dry jokes. Knew how to command a room without dominating it.

Of course, Lena thought bitterly. Of course she’s wonderful.

She introduced herself politely after the panel, bracing for something—anything.

Recognition. Caution. A hint of rivalry.

But Nia smiled warmly, shook her hand, and said, “It’s so great to finally meet you, Lena. Kara’s talked about you.”

And that was worse.

Because there was nothing in her tone. No edge. No possessiveness.

Just… kindness.

Like Lena was no threat.

Like Kara had never mentioned her as anything more than a blip in her rearview mirror.

Halfway through a shared lunch table, Nia casually mentioned:

“My friend Kara would love this. She’s obsessed with policy language. Drives me mad.”

Friend.

Not girlfriend. Not partner. Not even was.

Just friend.

Lena smiled. Nodded. Laughed at the right moment.

All while her heart thundered like it wanted out of her ribs.

She excused herself early and left the conference hotel with a migraine excuse and a scarf wrapped too tightly around her throat.

That night, she took a long bath. Poured two glasses of wine—finished them both.

Stared at the ceiling of her flat and said Kara’s name out loud, just to hear it in the room again.

Then, she picked up her phone.

Typed a message.

Hey.
I saw someone today who reminded me of you.
Hope you’re doing okay.
Miss you.

Then backspaced it.

Typed another.

Can we talk?

Backspaced that too.

She tried:

I never stopped—

But she didn’t know how to finish it.

Didn’t know what she was allowed to say anymore.

Because it was too late to ask How are you?
And too early to say I still love you.

So instead, she set the phone down.

Stared at the ceiling.

And said nothing.

Sometimes Lena wondered what she’d say if she got the chance.

Not in a message. Not through a screen.

But face to face. On a street corner or in a bookstore or on Kara’s front step, just like the movies she claimed not to believe in.

She imagined Kara’s face.

Imagined her smile—real, surprised, maybe even a little sad.

She imagined saying:

I was scared.

I didn’t know how to love you the way you deserved.

I thought I had time.

I didn’t think you’d really go.

But what she really wanted to say, more than anything, was simple.

I was always in love with you.

I just didn’t know how to be brave.

She never sent the message.

She kept it in drafts for a while.

Then deleted it.

Rewrote it.

Saved it again.

It became a ritual—every time the ache sharpened, she’d write something. Anything.
A confession. A joke. A memory. A photo she wanted to send. A link Kara would’ve loved.

But she never pressed send.

Because she couldn’t.

Because silence had become habit.
And habit had become fear.
And fear had kept her frozen.

And maybe, Lena thought, maybe this was the price of inaction.

Maybe this was what happened when you never said the thing you were burning to say.

Maybe, in the end, the person who left wasn’t Kara.

Maybe it had been her.

She met Andrea at a gallery opening on a Thursday night that smelled like old stone, champagne, and ego. Lena had gone to be seen, not to see. Her dress was sleek. Her hair was sharp. Her smile was the kind of curated softness that left no room for questions. She held a glass of wine in one hand and a list of exits in her mind.

Andrea Rojas was the kind of person who arrived like punctuation. She wore a razor-cut blazer over a t-shirt that read: I write better than your boyfriend, and she caught Lena’s eye with a smirk and a deliberately full glass of red.

“You’re either very rich,” Andrea said, tilting her head, “or very emotionally unavailable.”

Lena, unfazed, sipped her drink. “Why not both?”

Andrea smiled like she’d just won something. “Dangerous. I like it.”

They started seeing each other a week later.

Andrea was smart. Witty. Direct in a way that cut through the fog Lena sometimes wrapped herself in. She challenged her in boardrooms and complimented her in elevators. She sent good-morning texts with an annoying number of emojis. She ordered Lena’s coffee before Lena had to ask.

She made Lena laugh. Real laughter. Sharp and sudden and unguarded. The kind of laugh Lena hadn’t heard from herself in weeks.

So Lena decided to try.

She leaned into the life Andrea offered like it might be enough. Perfect dinners. Matching wine glasses. Thoughtful gifts. Neatly timed responses. She played the role like it was second nature—because it was. She’d always been good at playing parts.

If she couldn’t be happy, she could at least be polished. Controlled. Admired.

If she couldn’t have Kara, she could have the version of the life that should’ve been enough.

And for a while, it worked.

Andrea didn’t know about Kara. Not really.

She asked once, offhand, about Lena’s time at university. Lena gave a carefully edited version. Omitted names. Redacted feelings. Framed everything in the past tense.

She didn’t lie.

Andrea had asked‚ point blank, the way only she could. "Is there someone else?" Lena had lied. And Andrea had let her.

That was the most generous thing she'd done. She just made the truth easier to forget.

The sex was good. Not epic. Not cosmic. But steady. Grounding. It gave her a sense of rhythm, of being held without having to explain herself. It was distraction, comfort, a performance she could lose herself in. Sometimes, after, Lena would lie in bed next to Andrea and imagine they were the kind of couple people envied. That she was the version of herself who deserved someone like Andrea—grounded, generous, unrelentingly kind.

She played her part perfectly.

And if it was a performance, at least it was elegant.

But when Andrea drifted off and the room was silent, Lena’s thoughts always returned to the same place.

Kara.

Not in sweeping, cinematic waves. But in moments. In flashes.

The memory of her laugh. The curve of her nose when she was concentrating. The way she used to say Lena’s name like it meant something.

Lena tried to drown her. In candles and curated date nights. In beautifully plated brunches and matching Instagram captions. In linen sheets and decanted wine and silk robes with Andrea’s lipstick on the collar.

But grief, it turns out, is resistant to branding.

And love—real love—is louder than silence.

She found out by accident.

That was the worst part.

It wasn’t some grand reveal. Not a phone call or a tagged post or a conversation they finally had. It was a comment. A casual, cruel piece of trivia dropped at a networking event Kara hadn’t even wanted to attend.

“Lena and Andrea Rojas?” someone said, nudging a colleague. “Power couple. The fashion alone. It’s disgusting. They make the rest of us look like failed extras in a rom-com.”

Kara blinked.

Smiled. Nodded.

Swallowed the burn in her throat.

It was strange, the things she noticed after that.

The photo on someone’s feed—Lena and Andrea at a launch party. Lena in navy. Andrea in red. Lena’s hand on Andrea’s waist like it had always belonged there.

The way people talked about them.

Together. Polished. Admired.

Stable.

Kara went home that night and didn’t turn on the lights. She sat on her bed, coat still on, keys still in her hand, like if she didn’t move, the truth wouldn’t settle in her lungs.

Because Lena had always said she wasn’t ready.

That she didn’t do relationships. That she didn’t know how. That Kara was too much.

But apparently, it wasn’t that Lena didn’t want a relationship.

She just didn’t want one with her.

Kara spent the next three days trying not to feel it.

She worked. She filed. She ran until her legs ached. She deleted Lena’s contact.

Added it back.

Deleted it again.

She told herself it didn’t mean anything.

That Lena was allowed to move on.

That Andrea was safe. Neat. The kind of person who knew how to hold a wine glass and a boundary at the same time.

But it ate at her.

Because she’d spent years believing that what they had was real.

The silences. The almosts. The nights they spent on opposite sides of the same bed, whispering things neither of them dared name.

She’d thought Lena would choose her.

Eventually.

But now?

Now it felt like she’d been waiting for something that had never even been on the table.

She almost called.

Once.

Typed: Is it serious?

Then deleted it.

Because what would she do with the answer?

She didn’t want honesty.

She wanted different.

That night, she cried in the shower until the water ran cold.

She pressed her forehead against the tile and thought about the time Lena had called her reckless with her heart.

And Kara, even now, couldn’t help but think:

At least I was willing to give it.

It could have been weeks or months or even a year but it felt like a lifetime.

Since graduation. Since the last time she heard Kara’s voice outside of memory or media. Since her final message—a careful paragraph of hopefulness and grace—had gone unanswered. Since she'd told herself she was moving on, even as she constructed a life that resembled forgetting without ever actually achieving it.

Andrea had helped. In the beginning.

She was everything Kara wasn’t. Poised. Predictable. Crisp lines and easy compliments. A relationship that worked on paper and functioned in public. Someone who didn’t leave her wondering.

Lena kept telling herself that was what she needed. Not sparks. Not longing. Just something solid. Something safe. Something she could curate.

But safety isn’t the same as peace. And curation isn’t the same as love.

She played her part. Boardroom brilliance. Impeccable style. Dinner party charm. She kissed Andrea’s cheek like she meant it. Laughed at her jokes like they reached the part of her that still ached.

She didn’t speak about Kara. She didn’t have to. Andrea never asked.

But Kara lived in the corners. In the pauses. In the way Lena flinched when someone used her full name. In the way she kept an old photo buried deep in her phone—the two of them, blurry and laughing on the quad, a moment caught by accident that had never stopped feeling like the truth.

So when Sam asked if she’d come to Pride this year, Lena said yes without thinking.

Andrea had meetings. Lena had ghosts.

Pride arrived like a riot of noise and heat and memory.

The sun was too bright. The music too loud. Glitter clung to her arms. She wore sunglasses and black on black, because brightness still felt like a betrayal. A small rainbow pin clung to her lapel, chosen with the kind of deliberation that made her feel fifteen again.

She’d only just exhaled when she heard a voice.

Familiar. Sharp. Low enough to curl beneath her ribs.

“Hey.”

Kara.

It was always Kara.

Standing by a beer tent. Tank top with Proud. Tired. Gay. sharpied across the chest. Glasses slipping down her nose. Lip bitten in surprise.

The crowd fell away.

A pause. A breath. A heartbeat stretched between them like an echo.

Lena’s throat tightened. “Hey.”

They stared.

Then smiled.

The kind of smile that’s half reflex, half catastrophe.

They didn’t run.

They got drinks.

By drink four, they were laughing. Not easily. Not freely. But with that old cadence—the rhythm of something that had never truly left.

By drink six, they were standing too close.

The space between them was electric. Untouched, but charged.

Kara’s cheeks were flushed. Lena’s lips stained with cider. Their voices climbing in volume, in heat, in volume again. A conversation disguised as confrontation. Or maybe the other way around.

“You just disappeared,” Kara said. Her cup tilted. Liquid sloshed.

Lena’s jaw clenched. “You stopped answering me. I called, Kara. I reached out.”

Kara raised her brows. “Twice. You called twice.”

“Because I got the hint!”

Kara laughed. It wasn’t kind. “Right. The Lena Luthor version of closure. Two missed calls and a signed death certificate.”

“You’re a child.”

“You’re a coward.”

It landed.

The truth usually did.

Lena looked away. Then looked back.

Kara was watching her. Not just angry.

Wrecked.

Eyes glassy. Jaw tight. Voice barely a whisper now.

“You could’ve said something.”

“You could’ve stayed.”

The music didn’t stop, but it felt like it did.

Because neither one of them had anything left to say that hadn’t already broken them.

So Kara kissed her.

It wasn’t sweet.

It wasn’t careful.

It was punishment and prayer and apology, all at once.

Lena responded like it was instinct. Because it was. Because it had always been.

They kissed like they'd forgotten how to breathe. Like it was the only language they had left.

Hands tangled. Teeth clashed. Years dissolved into touches that felt like ownership and desperation.

And then they left.

No words. No goodbyes.

Just hands pulling. Mouths chasing. Hearts still bleeding.

The cab ride was a blur. Fingertips skimming over thighs. Breath catching in anticipation.

They barely made it through the front door before Kara slammed it shut behind them.

Then Lena was against the wall.

Then Kara was in her hands.

Then Lena was gasping, and Kara was groaning, and buttons were hitting the floor.

They didn’t speak.

Not when Kara bit down on Lena’s collarbone. Not when Lena’s hands slid beneath fabric with reverence she pretended wasn’t grief.

Not when they finally, finally fell into bed.

It wasn’t slow.

It wasn’t sweet.

It was survival.

It was everything they hadn’t said poured into movement. Into moans. Into the grip of hips and the trail of fingernails.

Lena whispered Kara’s name like it was still hers.

Kara pressed her forehead to Lena’s chest like it was still safe.

They didn’t ask if it meant anything.

Because the answer would have ruined it.

So they let it be loud. Messy. Bruising.

Kara’s hand in Lena’s hair. Lena’s mouth at Kara’s throat.

A gasp. A sob. A bitten-off plea.

Then silence.

It was nearly dawn when Lena opened her eyes.

Kara was asleep beside her. Curled toward the wall. Arms wrapped around a pillow instead of her.

Lena turned her face to the ceiling.

She didn’t cry. But she wanted to.

Because she knew what would come next.

The distance. The question neither of them would ask.

The knowing that what they’d done—what they’d become—still wasn’t enough to bridge the space between who they were and who they’d let themselves be.

And it had been over a year.

And they still hadn’t learned how to say I miss you without hurting each other.

And they still hadn’t learned how to say I love you at all.

Lena moved first.

Her movements were methodical, almost clinical—a performance of normalcy, like she could will the morning into something mundane by folding her shirt with enough precision. She didn’t speak. Didn’t look up. Just pulled the fabric taut and smoothed it over once, twice, before laying it gently on the dresser like it might break.

Kara hadn’t moved at all.

She still sat at the edge of the bed, back hunched, feet flat on the floor, her hands resting in her lap like she didn’t know what to do with them. Her gaze was distant, fixed somewhere between the woodgrain of the floorboards and a past that refused to stay there. Her shoulders were tight, her spine locked in a posture of restraint.

The silence between them was not gentle. It was suffocating. Thick with unsaid things. The kind of silence that had weight and gravity. The kind that felt like it had teeth.

Lena cleared her throat. It didn’t help.

“So,” she said eventually, the word clipped at the edges. “That happened.”

Kara didn’t respond.

Not because she didn’t want to, but because she didn’t trust herself. Her throat felt like it had closed sometime in the night, and now every word sat lodged behind her ribs.

What was she supposed to say?

I’ve imagined this since I was nineteen?

You kissed me back like it was everything?

Why does it already feel like you’re slipping away again?

Lena reached for a hair tie from the bedside table and began pulling her hair back into a low ponytail. She still hadn’t looked at Kara. Not once. She couldn’t. She was afraid she’d see what she already knew.

“We were drunk,” she said. “Tired. Emotional.”

Kara’s lips twitched.

“That’s one version of it.”

Lena paused.

“What other version is there?”

Kara looked up.

Her eyes were glassy, but dry. Heavy with something she wasn’t sure she had the right to say out loud.

“The kind where I haven’t stopped wanting this for years,” she wanted to say.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she just held Lena’s gaze.

And Lena, for a breathless second, held hers back.

Then blinked.

And looked away.

“It was a mistake,” she said. “Not the worst one. Just… not the kind we talk about.”

Kara swallowed. Her throat clicked audibly in the quiet.

She didn’t argue.

Didn’t fight.

She just sat with it.

Because she couldn’t afford the illusion of misinterpretation. Not this time.

Lena took a breath. Deeper this time. Like she was prepping for impact.

“But I don’t want it to ruin things,” she said. “Us. Whatever’s left of it.”

Kara blinked slowly. Digested that.

Lena continued.

“I think we should both put in more effort. To see each other. Outside of… whatever this was.”

Kara exhaled. It was long and tired and nearly trembled.

“Like friends,” she said.

There was a pause.

Then:

“Yes. Friends.”

Kara nodded.

It was the kind of nod that was almost a flinch.

She leaned over to grab her jacket and shoes from the floor. Her movements were careful, gentle, like even the weight of denim might shatter her.

She stood.

And Lena finally looked at her.

Like she was searching for bruises. Or absolution.

But Kara didn’t give her either.

She just stood there, jacket in her arms, trying to gather what dignity she had left.

Then, just as she reached the door, she paused.

Turned.

Her voice was soft. But clear.

“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I’m still glad it was you.”

Then she left.

No door slam.

No backward glance.

Just the soft click of goodbye.

And Kara sat down on the edge of the bed, hands curled into fists, whispering into the still air:

“So am I.”

They tried.

After that night, after the messy tangle of bodies and the brittle silence of morning, after words like "mistake" and "friends" were thrown between them like life rafts that were already sinking, Lena and Kara tried.

They went for coffee. Twice. Kara sent memes. Lena responded with dry, curated sarcasm. They scheduled dinner. Kara cancelled. Then rescheduled. Then cancelled again.

Work, she said. Always work.

Lena nodded. Smiled. Made polite noises that didn’t reach her eyes. And slowly, she started to believe it was true. That it was just bad timing. That Kara was genuinely swamped. That the distance wasn’t intentional.

Until the party.

“It’s just a few of Kara’s work friends,” Sam said, fiddling with the clasp of her clutch. “Low-key. Loud music. Terrible snacks. You need to get out.”

Lena hesitated. She always hesitated now.

“Kara didn’t invite me.”

Sam shrugged. “She probably assumed you were busy. You’re always busy.”

But Lena wasn’t. Not really. Not when it came to Kara.

Still, she went.

She wore black. Always black. Easy to disappear in. She told herself it was casual. Curious. Not pathetic.

But the moment she stepped through the door of Kara’s flat, the lie collapsed.

Everyone was there.

People from work. From university. From the wider queer community that orbited National City in overlapping circles of chosen family and ex-lovers and people you always meant to text back.

And none of them looked even remotely surprised to be there.

Kara stood in the kitchen, laughing. Her eyes sparkled. Her cheeks were flushed. Her arm rested comfortably around someone Lena didn’t recognise—tall, confident, clearly familiar.

Lena just stood there.

Frozen.

A still frame in a life that had moved on without her.

Sam slipped away. The music grew louder. The floor vibrated with bass.

And Kara didn’t see her—

Until she did.

And when their eyes locked, Kara’s smile dropped like a shutter. Her whole body stilled. The ease she’d worn seconds ago vanished.

Lena crossed the room slowly. Like a wound unravelling.

She didn’t want to make a scene.

She just wanted an answer.

“Hi,” Kara said, brittle as cracked glass.

“Hi,” Lena echoed. “Nice party.”

Kara’s mouth pulled into something almost like a wince. “I didn’t think you’d want to come.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“I thought—”

“You thought wrong.”

There it was again. That familiar weight. The gravity of everything they never said pressing down on them in a room full of strangers who kept laughing and drinking and existing like nothing was breaking ten feet away.

“I can’t believe I had to sneak into a party at my best friend’s house,” Lena said. Each word honed like a blade.

Kara flinched. “Lena…”

“No,” Lena cut in, voice shaking now. “Don’t say it was an oversight. Don’t say you meant to call. You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I’ve been busy—”

“You’ve always been busy!”

The words cracked across the room like thunder. Conversation dipped around them. A few heads turned, then turned away again.

“But not with me,” Lena added, softer. “Not anymore.”

Kara looked down.

That hurt worse than anything.

“I thought we were trying,” Lena said, voice raw.

“I thought we were, too,” Kara replied. Her tone was quiet, but her eyes were a storm. “But every time I’m near you, it feels like we’re pretending.”

Lena blinked hard. “Then stop pretending.”

Kara didn’t respond.

Lena shook her head. A bitter smile pulled at her lips.

“This was supposed to be different,” she said. “We were supposed to mean something.”

She turned to go.

But Kara followed.

"Wait," Lena said suddenly, voice taut with something between defiance and fear.

Kara paused.

Lena swallowed, fingers flexing around her clutch like it was the only anchor she had left. "I wasn't going to tell you here. Not like this. But I've been offered a fellowship. In Italy."

Kara blinked. Her mouth opened, then closed.

"It starts next month. Research. Policy and economics. A full year."

The silence snapped taut between them again.

Kara looked like she'd been pushed off a ledge she hadn’t seen coming. "You weren't going to tell me?"

Lena's jaw tightened. "I didn’t know how. I still don’t."

"And you accepted?"

"Not yet. But I think I will."

Kara's arms dropped to her sides. The colour drained from her face. "Of course you will."

Lena looked down. "I need to get out of this city. Out of... whatever this is. I need something that doesn't feel like holding my breath every time I see you."

Kara didn’t reply. Couldn’t.

So Lena kept walking.

And Kara followed anyway.

They stood in the hallway of Kara’s flat, away from the pulsing bass and cheap beer and strangers who thought they knew them. The party buzzed on, muffled by walls. But in here, the air was thick and still and full of ache.

Kara leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. Her jaw tight. Her whole body coiled.

“You said it was a mistake,” she said.

Lena’s shoulders tensed. Her hands clenched around her clutch like she needed something to hold her up.

“I didn’t know what to say.”

“You didn’t think saying something would be better than disappearing?”

“It was supposed to be nothing.”

Kara let out a sharp, humourless laugh. “Right. Nothing.”

Lena bristled. “I thought we agreed—”

“We didn’t agree.” Kara’s voice was sharper now. “You decided. And then you left.”

“I didn’t vanish.”

“You left before I could even get my thoughts together,” Kara snapped. “You left without a word. That’s not vanishing?”

Lena’s tone turned cold. Measured. “We’re friends, Kara. We’ve always been friends. That night just… happened.”

Kara’s eyes burned. “But everything changed.”

They stood across from each other, a lifetime of moments pressing between them.

“I ran into Andrea last week,” Kara said, her voice quieter now. “She mentioned you broke up with her.”

Lena said nothing.

“Was that because of me?”

More silence.

“And you didn’t think I might want to know?” Kara asked, voice brittle.

“I didn’t want you to think it meant something.”

Kara staggered back a step. Like the words had physical weight.

“Well,” she said, voice like glass, “message received.”

Lena’s voice wavered. “Are you upset?”

Kara laughed, then choked on it. “I don’t even know what I am. Confused? Humiliated? Devastated? Take your pick.”

“We said we’d go back to how things were.”

“No.” Kara stepped closer, no anger, just urgency. “You said that. I was still lying there, trying to understand what the hell had just happened while you were already planning your escape.”

Lena looked at the floor.

Kara’s voice cracked. “Being with you wasn’t an accident. It was—God—it was everything. It felt like all the noise in my head went quiet. Like I could finally just be for a minute. Like I didn’t have to try so hard to survive.”

Her voice wavered, and she looked at Lena fully now, no longer hiding the ache in her eyes. “I woke up first, you know. That morning. I just… lay there. Watching you breathe. And for the first time in my whole damn life, things made sense.”

She swallowed. “I wasn’t panicking about the future or replaying everything I’d said the night before or wondering if I was too much. I was just there, and it was calm. It was good. I imagined what breakfast might look like if we shared a kitchen. I thought about how you’d complain about my coffee, and how I’d pretend to be offended. I pictured you in my shirts, standing in my doorway, teasing me about the books I never finish.”

Her hands trembled slightly. “I even thought about Christmas. What it would feel like to decorate a tree with you. Or to wake up next to you on New Year’s Day and know I didn’t have to be anywhere else.”

Kara’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I thought… maybe I could stop running. That maybe, just maybe, I’d finally found a place that felt like home.”

A breath. Shaky. Unsteady.

“And nothing—nothing—has ever hurt me as much as your reaction to that same moment.”

A breath.

“And then you treated it like it meant nothing.”

Lena opened her mouth. Closed it.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Kara’s laugh was a threadbare sound. “I don’t need sorry. I needed you to stay.”

She stepped aside. Opened the front door.

“Go. Have fun in Italy.”

Lena didn’t say goodbye.

She just walked out.

And didn’t look back.

Florence was beautiful.

The kind of beautiful that demanded something from you. Reverence, attention, admiration. Florence didn’t whisper; it shouted. Sunlight spilled over burnt-orange rooftops like a benediction, shadows carved stories into cobblestone streets, and music poured from open windows like the city was always on the verge of falling in love.

And Lena hated it for that.

Because she was here to vanish. Not to feel.

She wandered those streets anyway. Late afternoons stretched into violet-tinted evenings. The air smelled like espresso and old stone, and if she let herself, she could pretend for brief, dangerous moments that she was someone else. Someone untouched. Someone unscarred.

But every turn held a ghost.

Every corner echoed Kara’s name.

Kara would’ve loved Florence.

She would’ve pointed out every crumbling fresco and every tucked-away bookstall like they were buried treasure. She would’ve climbed towers just for the view, laughed at signs that didn’t quite translate, taken photos of alley cats like they were royalty. Her camera would’ve dangled from her neck, forgotten, because Kara never cared much about capturing the moment—she just wanted to feel it. To remember it. All in. Always.

Lena couldn’t look at the city without imagining her beside her.

The fellowship was prestigious. The lectures were sharp, the peers sharper. Lena sat through seminars with world experts, her notes immaculate, her insights respected. She was brilliant here.

But she felt like a ghost.

The applause at the end of her first keynote was generous. She smiled politely, folded her notes with practiced grace, and escaped into the golden courtyard where the world buzzed and bloomed. She didn’t feel any of it.

The ache had settled in her chest days ago. Maybe weeks. At first, she thought it was jet lag. Then guilt. Then some twisted blend of both. But now she recognised it with bitter clarity.

Absence.

A marrow-deep sense that something vital had been amputated. Like a phantom limb.

Like Kara.

She hadn’t called.

Not once.

And Kara hadn’t called either.

Lena thought she would. She really did. Thought there’d be a text. A photo. A voice memo, maybe, with Kara talking too fast and laughing at something stupid. But there was only silence. Clean, cold, deliberate.

And for all her genius, Lena hadn’t expected that silence would feel like punishment.

She told herself Kara was busy. Probably buried in work at CatCo. Doing interviews, saving the city one story at a time. Folding laundry with that infuriatingly serious expression, like socks were a moral obligation. But then she saw the photo.

It was an algorithmic fluke. A suggested post on some app she barely used. Kara and Nia at a community event. Smiling. Kara’s arm around Nia’s shoulder. Nothing overt. No caption.

But Kara’s eyes—

Empty.

Lena knew that look. She’d worn it too long not to recognise it.

It wasn’t sadness. It was withdrawal.

Kara was retreating.

Not out of anger. But out of self-preservation.

That realisation gutted her.

Lena closed the app and opened her messages.

No new texts.

No missed calls.

It hit her then, fully and irreversibly: Kara had stopped waiting.

Not out of spite.

But because she finally believed Lena didn’t care.

And that—that was unbearable.

She sat down on a weathered bench in a half-forgotten piazza, elbows on her knees, hands trembling.

Nearby, a violinist played something slow and aching. Children laughed in the distance. Church bells rang.

And Lena sat there, in the most romantic city in the world, drowning in regret.

She thought about the way Kara used to look at her. Like Lena was a compass. Like she was real. Like she was loved.

She’d thrown that away.

She’d been afraid. She was always afraid.

Of being seen. Of being chosen. Of not being enough.

But Kara had seen her. Had chosen her. Even when Lena couldn’t choose herself.

And she had walked away from that love like it was survivable.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

The apartment she was renting was charming in theory—high ceilings, lofted beams, an abundance of natural light. The kind of space someone might fall in love in. Or out of.

There were star stickers on the ceiling from a previous tenant. Fluorescent green. Peeling. Childish. Lena had considered scraping them off the first night. Now she just stared at them.

That night, she lay in bed with the lights off and stared upward.

The room was too quiet.

The sheets were cold.

And all she could think about was that night in Kara’s bed.

The curve of Kara’s back. The hush of her breathing. The way her fingers had traced Lena’s spine like it was a sacred thing.

And how Lena had slipped out before the sun finished rising.

She’d told herself she had to. That it was better that way.

She hadn’t expected to feel like this.

She hadn’t expected to still feel it.

Kara’s words haunted her.

Being with you wasn’t some throwaway accident, Lena. It was—God—it was everything.

And it had been.

But Lena hadn’t known how to stay. She hadn’t known how to say: Me too.

Because Kara didn’t just love her. She saw her. Saw every fracture, every flaw, every sharp corner.

And still, somehow, she wanted her.

That terrified Lena.

She’d spent years building a life no one could get inside. And Kara had walked straight through the front door, barefoot and beaming.

Lena had let herself believe—just for one night—that maybe she could be loved anyway.

Then morning came.

And she ran.

And now she was here.

In Florence. In a bed that didn’t smell like Kara. With star stickers on the ceiling and a pain in her chest that wouldn’t let up.

She whispered into the darkness, “I didn’t mean to make it hurt.”

But the room didn’t answer.

Because Kara wasn’t here to hear it.

And Lena knew now—really knew—that no apology would ever sound the same as staying.

The next morning, she walked the Arno before sunrise.

It was quiet. Almost kind.

And she made herself a promise.

If Kara ever gave her the chance again—

She’d say it.

Out loud.

All of it.

Because she was done running from the truth.

And the truth was simple:

She loved her.

She’d always loved her.

And this time, she would choose her.

It was a voicemail from Alex that broke her.

She'd been in Florence for just over 14 months. Long enough to start lying to herself. Long enough to realise it wasn't far enough.

Lena had been sitting in her Florence apartment, a suitcase open but untouched at the foot of the bed. The city was behind her, technically. The lectures, the gelato, the empty cafés she pretended to enjoy. Her ticket home was booked, but National City didn’t feel real yet. It wasn’t home. Not without Kara.

She hadn’t slept. Had barely eaten. Her final lecture had ended in polite applause, and she’d walked out of the university halls like a sleepwalker—drifting, not moving. She’d thought the ache would dull when she put distance between herself and Florence, but it hadn’t. It had sharpened.

She’d turned her phone off for most of the day. Airplane mode was easier than facing silence. Easier than watching Kara not call.

But then, in a moment of weakness—or maybe something stronger—she turned it back on.

One voicemail. From Alex.

“Hey. I thought you should know… Kara’s leaving. Some off-the-books UN thing. War zone advisory—aid coordination, field intel. I don’t know the details. She won’t talk to me. She’s just… gone. Said she needed time. Said she needed space.”

Click.

The message ended, and the world collapsed.

Lena didn’t think. She moved.

The next six hours were a blur—grabbing her passport, stuffing whatever clothes she could find into the suitcase she’d spent a week avoiding. She barely remembered locking the door behind her. She called in favours like a woman possessed—rerouting through London, leveraging flight status, whispering “priority clearance” into phones like it was a prayer.

She didn’t stop moving.

Because stopping would mean thinking. And thinking would mean accepting what she had done.

She landed in National City by sunrise, skin dull, heart raw. Her coat was still damp from the Roman rain. Her hair was tied in a knot she didn’t remember forming. She didn’t go home.

She went straight to Kara’s apartment.

The cab dropped her off at the curb. The city hadn’t quite woken up yet—just delivery trucks and early joggers. The building loomed familiar and too still.

She buzzed in. No answer.

She used the spare key Kara had never asked for back.

The apartment was empty.

Not deserted. Not ransacked. Just… hollow. A few books missing from the shelf. A pair of shoes gone. The duffel bag that Kara always travelled with—military green, patched at the seams—missing from its usual hook by the door.

Lena stood in the entryway, arms slack at her sides, eyes flicking from couch to kitchen to chaos.

It was like Kara had evaporated.

But the smell lingered.

Coffee. Paper. The sweetness of that ridiculous lavender hand lotion Kara only used before bed.

Lena took one cautious step in.

And then another.

She ran her hand along the back of the couch, like touching the space might conjure Kara from the shadows. She was still standing there, stunned and empty, when the apartment door creaked open behind her. It was Sam.

“Jesus, Lena,” she said gently. “You look like hell.”

Lena blinked, her voice cracked and dry. “Where is she?”

Sam didn’t answer immediately. She stepped inside and shut the door behind her. She didn’t bother asking how Lena got in.

“She’s gone.”

“I know that,” Lena snapped, too brittle, too broken. “Where?”

Sam exhaled. Crossed her arms.

“She pulled some strings. With Cat. Got a temporary placement with the UN’s humanitarian intelligence division. Technically she’s way too inexperienced to go, but—” Sam gave a wry smile. “It’s Kara. And Cat’s still got strings no one else even knows exist. Cat had pulled every string she had to get Kara placed in the civilian strategy unit‚ technically, she was too green, too unqualified. But Kara Danvers was relentless. And people listened when Cat Grant asked.”

Lena’s knees buckled slightly. She sank onto the armrest of the couch.

“Why?”

“She said she needed to figure herself out. Needed to be somewhere where no one expected her to have all the answers. Where she wasn’t the golden girl. The fixer. The one who always knew what to do.”

Lena’s throat tightened. “And she thought she’d find that in a war zone?”

Sam’s voice softened. “She thought she’d find that away from you.”

The words landed like glass. Not cruel. Just true.

“I thought if I came back,” Lena said, barely breathing the words. “If I apologised. If I explained—”

“She waited,” Sam said.

Lena looked up sharply.

“She waited longer than anyone else would have,” Sam continued. “She let you go to Italy. She gave you space. But space becomes distance. And distance becomes silence. And silence…”

Sam shrugged. “Eventually, even Kara stops waiting.”

Lena stared at the bookshelf. One space was noticeably empty—an old copy of A Wrinkle in Time. The one with Kara’s annotations in the margins.

“She didn’t tell me.”

“She couldn’t.”

Lena shook her head. “I didn’t mean to make it hurt.”

“I know.”

They stood in silence. Sam eventually perched on the windowsill, looking out over a city that had no idea one of its brightest had left.

Lena stood. Moved slowly. Reverently.

“She’s still got her copy of Jane Eyre, though,” she said quietly. “She always said she’d never travel without it.”

Sam smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Told me once it reminded her of you.”

Lena turned back toward the apartment. Her fingers brushed the edge of the dining table. Her chest ached.

“What do I do now?”

“You let her find herself,” Sam said. “And you hope, when she does, she still wants to be found.”

Lena nodded. Once. Slowly.

She didn’t chase Kara to the airstrip. She didn’t hack into the UN’s travel manifests or launch satellites from old Luthor tech. She could have. She’d done worse for less.

But this time, she didn’t.

Because for the first time in her life, Lena Luthor understood that love wasn’t about control. It wasn’t about fixing. Or proving. Or earning.

Sometimes, love was about letting go before your fear could ruin the very thing you wanted to protect.

She stood in Kara’s apartment one last time.

The air still held a hint of warmth. Of sugar and ink and something lavender-soft.

Lena walked to the door.

Rested her hand on the frame.

Whispered into the quiet:

“Come home to me, when you’re ready.”

Then she left the door unlocked. Not out of hope. Not out of habit. But because some part of her still believed Kara might come home. And she couldn't bear the thought of her trying the handle, and finding it shut.

The first time Lena saw her again was on a livestream.

Kara, standing in a wind-blasted outpost in eastern Ukraine, her press badge clipped to a battered flak vest. She held a mic like it was a lifeline, her voice steadier than her breath. Behind her, the sky stretched wide and grey and war-worn, the kind of sky that didn’t allow for sentiment.

Her piece wasn’t sensational. It was quiet. Careful. Measured in a way that told Lena she was trying very, very hard to stay objective. That she was trying even harder to stay upright.

She was also clearly freezing. And slightly underfed. And absolutely brilliant.

There was dirt on her cheek. A graze healing along her temple. Her hair was tied back in a braid that looked like it had been done in the dark, and the camera kept catching her wincing when the wind picked up. But still—there was no mistaking her.

She didn’t smile for the camera. She didn’t need to.

Because what Kara did was something deeper.

She didn’t just report facts. She told stories. The kind that brought people home in a different way than planes and buses did.

She talked about displaced families, about temporary classrooms in abandoned tunnels, about communication breakdowns between aid workers that led to missed supply drops. She translated chaos into meaning. She made the war feel human. Lived-in. Real.

And Lena couldn’t look away.

She watched every broadcast. Read every article. Subscribed to papers she’d never considered before just to track the dispatches, the footnotes, the barely syndicated pieces that never made it to the front page but carried Kara’s cadence like a watermark.

It was never just the writing. It was her.

Kara had lost that wide-eyed brightness she used to carry like a badge. The sunshine sincerity that softened even the hardest interviews. But what remained—what emerged—was something else entirely.

Not jaded. Not closed off.

Focused.

She had fire still. But it no longer flickered with every passing breeze. It burned steady. Controlled. Contained.

She was different. She was stronger. She was terrifyingly distant.

And the world noticed.

Articles began appearing in places Lena would never have imagined Kara’s name.

The Atlantic ran a cover story: “Embedded Civilian Strategist Kara Danvers Talks Field Ethics, Frontline Coordination, and Hope in Conflict Zones.”

Lena read it five times.

The photos were stark. Kara in dusty fatigues, her vest two sizes too big, boots laced with improvised string. Her eyes—so tired, so sharp—looked into the camera like they’d seen too much. Like they’d kept going anyway.

One photo undid her entirely: Kara kneeling beside a boy holding a bandaged puppy, notepad balanced on one knee, her free hand resting lightly on the child’s shoulder. Her expression was unreadable. But her presence—

It was undeniable.

The journalist had called her "relentlessly human."

Lena closed her laptop and walked away.

But the stories kept coming.

She never mentioned National City.

Not once.

She didn’t speak of CatCo. Of friends. Of family. Not even in passing.

Lena waited for it. An anecdote. A memory. Something.

But Kara had drawn a line.

The woman she had been was gone. And the one left behind didn’t look back.

That silence? It gutted Lena.

She had let Kara leave. Had stood in that apartment and said nothing. Had let her walk into the unknown without reaching out.

And Kara had stopped waiting.

Now she was building something else.

“She’s constructing a version of herself she can survive inside,” Alex had said, once, during a rare and fractured call. “Not a life. A refuge.”

And Lena… Lena was still in National City. Still drinking the same overpriced coffee. Still waking up at 3AM expecting to hear a key in the door.

She’d memorised Kara’s schedule without meaning to. Time zones. Aid convoys. Press deadlines.

She couldn’t stop.

She didn’t want to.

Because each update, each article, each grainy image of Kara scribbling notes by the firelight or hauling supplies on a fractured ankle, made Lena feel like she was reaching through a pane of glass—forehead pressed to the cold, knowing she couldn’t break it.

Because she didn’t just miss Kara.

She missed belonging to the same world Kara had chosen to reshape without her.

One night, weeks into the silence, Lena sat in her darkened lab, the only light coming from the harsh glare of her screen. A livestream buffered. The translation struggled.

It was a UN-hosted event. A hybrid summit. Kara’s face appeared—washed-out, pixelated—but unmistakable. She wore a black jumper under her vest, her hair pulled back again, her posture straight as steel.

She spoke slowly. Clearly. In Ukrainian, then English.

She outlined policy. Strategy. Human needs over politics.

Her voice cracked halfway through.

She paused.

Lena held her breath.

Kara glanced at her notes. Swallowed.

Then continued.

Lena imagined, in that pause—just for a moment—that Kara had been thinking of her.

That single second became a thread Lena couldn’t stop pulling.

It unraveled her for days.

Lena never saved the number under Kara’s name.

She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Because if she saw it—if she saw "Kara (Home)" light up her screen the way it used to, she might never recover.

That name used to mean safety. It used to mean familiarity. She used to smile at it. Reach for it. Now, it would feel like a fracture each time. A wound torn back open.

So instead, it was just digits. A string of numbers. A lifeline to nowhere.

Maybe someone else had the number now. Maybe it had been reassigned. Disconnected. Sold to a stranger on a SIM card continents away. But Lena texted it anyway.

The first message was tentative. Simple. Her thumb hovered for five minutes before she tapped send.

Saw you on BBC World News tonight. You look... thinner. Please eat something.

No reply. She didn’t sleep that night.

Two days later, she tried again:

I passed a golden retriever in the park this morning. It chased pigeons and fell into a fountain. Made me think of you. Stay safe.

Still nothing.

Weeks passed.

The air strikes intensified. Humanitarian corridors faltered. Field reports sounded less like stories and more like obituaries. There was a raid in Luhansk. She read the casualty report twice. Kara's name wasn't on it. But her unit had been close. Too close. The terror was cold and exacting. It rewired her.

God, Kara—the latest shelling hit just outside Luhansk. That’s where you were last week, isn’t it? Are you okay?

That night, she poured herself a glass of red and sat cross-legged on the cold floor of her kitchen, phone pressed to her chest like she could absorb comfort through contact.

She didn’t call. She nearly did. She nearly broke her own rule.

But instead, she sent more messages. Each one more instinct than intention.

Your article about the convoy delays—Jesus. I hope you weren’t on that route. You’re scaring the hell out of me, Danvers.

You wrote about that teacher in the bunker. I haven’t stopped thinking about her. Or you.

You’d hate the espresso at this new place near L-Corp. I miss your bad taste in coffee.

She never said the things that mattered. The things that dug down and clawed at her ribs like they wanted out.

She didn’t say I miss you.

She didn’t say I’m sorry.

She didn’t say Come home.

But every message carried all three.

She pictured Kara reading them in the quiet between explosions, curled up on a cot, or squinting in the blue wash of a laptop screen lit by backup generators. Maybe she smiled. Maybe she scoffed. Maybe she rolled her eyes.

Or maybe Kara never saw them at all.

That was the worst part.

Not knowing.

Not knowing if she was reaching the woman she loved, or haunting a number that had long since gone silent. A line severed by time or distance or grief.

It wasn’t a life-or-death moment that finally broke her.

It was something smaller.

Crueller, somehow.

She’d been leaving a board meeting, distracted by spreadsheets and shareholder appeasement, heels clicking against slick pavement. She stepped off the curb and caught the edge of her heel—an awkward twist, a stumble that flung her hard against the metal edge of a newspaper stand.

Pain bloomed sharp in her hand. The skin tore just enough to sting. Not enough for stitches. Just enough to feel stupid.

And then she looked up.

Kara’s face stared back at her from a half-folded paper.

"Danvers Wins Photojournalism Award for Work in Ukraine."

Below it, a headline.

"The Voice in the Rubble."

Another.

"Where She Walks, Stories Follow."

There was a photo of her.

Kara, smiling faintly. Hair in a loose braid. Dust on her cheeks. A camera slung around her shoulder. A pen behind her ear. The caption didn’t say where she was now. Only that she had made the world listen.

And Lena… Lena stood there, bleeding slightly, hair a mess, eyes glassy, chest tight with something she couldn’t name.

Because that—that moment—was when she knew.

Kara wasn’t coming back.

Maybe she never intended to.

Maybe Kara had already found her peace. Her purpose. A rhythm that didn’t include Lena at all.

And maybe Lena deserved that.

She went home in a daze. Cancelled her afternoon meetings. Slid out of her coat and poured herself another glass of wine.

She sat on the floor again—same spot, same phone.

The digits glowed back at her.

She could recite them from memory now.

A code burned into her skin.

She stared at the screen. At the messages she hadn’t sent. At the truths she hadn’t spoken.

And she finally did the thing she should have done years ago.

She said it.

I love you.

God, Kara, I love you. I think I’ve loved you since the first moment you started rambling about Pulitzer ethics and forgot your own coffee order.

I wish I’d had the courage to say it to your face. I wish I hadn’t needed you to leave to realise it. But I do. I love you. I miss you.

Please come back.

Her thumb hovered over Send.

She let it hang there. Let the fear build and crest and break.

Then she added:

I know the messages don’t reach you. I’ve known for a while.

But this one’s not for you, really. It’s for me. Because if you ever do come back, I want to be someone who didn’t stay silent.

She hit send.

The screen blinked. The message bubble popped up.

Delivered, it read.

For the first time in months.

And then it vanished.

No reply.

No read receipt.

Nothing.

But Lena didn’t cry.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t throw the phone across the room or drink herself into a fog.

She just sat there, in the stillness of her flat, and let the truth live outside her body.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic.

But it was real.

And sometimes, that was enough.

Kara was in a crowded tent outside Mykolaiv, balancing her laptop on one knee while a portable heater coughed warm air into the stale winter air. The place reeked of sweat and dust, the metallic scent of freeze-dried rations and the lingering tang of stress. Every movement inside the tent was tight with purpose—translated orders, makeshift logistics, people trying to stretch limited supplies across impossible distances.

A translator was arguing softly with an engineer in the corner over the specs of a broken water filtration system. Someone nearby was patching the sole of a boot with duct tape and quiet prayers. Somewhere just beyond the canvas walls, a child laughed—sharp and sudden, the kind of sound that felt too loud, too alive, too careless to belong in a place like this.

Kara had just filed her latest piece: "The Road That Wasn’t There – On Infrastructure, Hope, and the Cost of Waiting." She’d written it under firelight, weaving stories from interviews she barely had time to conduct, sending it out into the world with fingers still numb from the cold. The signal here was unstable, the upload slow, but eventually the article pushed through.

She closed her laptop with a tired sigh and leaned her head back against the metal pole of the tent’s frame, eyes closed for a moment of silence she couldn’t quite afford.

And then, almost without thinking, she reached for her phone.

Not the work phone—the battered Nokia they all carried for field updates and press credentials. The other one.

The one she kept charged out of superstition, tucked inside her coat like a relic. The one no one in Ukraine had the number to. The one that didn’t belong to her life here.

The one that still tethered her, however thinly, to home.

To Lena.

Lena’s name wasn’t saved. She hadn’t saved it. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. But the number? The number was etched into her bones.

The first message had come months ago. Kara had been sitting on the floor of a relief station, blood still in her hair, dirt in the creases of her palms. An airstrike had rattled the nearby ridge, shaking the tin roof so hard the bolts screamed.

And then her phone buzzed.

Saw you on BBC World News tonight. You look... thinner.

Kara had stared at it, blankly at first. Then something inside her cracked. She laughed. Quietly. Brokenly. Then cried for the first time in weeks. Not because she was hurt. Not because she was overwhelmed. But because Lena had noticed. Because someone, somewhere, still saw her.

After that, the messages came irregularly. Unpredictably. But they came.

You wrote about that teacher in the bunker. I haven’t stopped thinking about her. Or you.

You’d hate the espresso at this new place near L-Corp. I miss your bad taste in coffee.

God, Kara—the latest shelling hit just outside Luhansk. That’s where you were last week, isn’t it? Are you okay?

Each one came like a breath. Like an anchor. A tether to something unbroken.

And Kara never replied. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

She didn’t know how.

What was she supposed to say?

I miss you too?

I haven’t stopped thinking about the night I left and how your silence nearly killed me?

That I’ve been waiting—for what, exactly?

Waiting for Lena to say something she never had.

She read the messages. Every single one. At night, when the generator was still working. When her bunkmates were asleep. When the world outside the tent was so quiet it roared. She’d scroll through them with frozen hands, committing them to memory. Lena’s voice, folded between lines of sarcasm and care.

And sometimes—when it was very bad, when the cold got in too deep, when the screams from outside hadn’t faded yet—she would close her eyes and pretend Lena was still near. That the texts were being spoken from across the room, muttered through a yawn or barked through a laugh. That she could reach out and find her there, warm and brilliant and infuriating and hers.

But she waited.

Waited, because for all the messages—sweet, sad, sideways declarations—Lena had never once asked her to come home.

Never said I love you.

Never said stay. Or return. Or be mine.

And Kara—Kara Danvers, who had once leapt into burning buildings, who had once given speeches with shaking hands and stubborn hope—wasn’t brave enough to go back without being asked.

She had already left once, uninvited. Unwanted. She couldn’t survive doing it again.

That night, the text came.

She had just powered down her laptop. Her breath fogged in the air. Her knuckles were scraped from hauling crates.

The phone buzzed once. She reached for it with a half-numb hand.

I love you.

God, Kara, I love you. I think I’ve loved you since the first moment you started rambling about Pulitzer ethics and forgot your own coffee order.

Kara froze.

The tent, the heater, the flickering lamp—all of it faded.

Please come back.

She stared at the screen.

Then she laughed.

A real laugh.

A disbelieving, dizzy kind of sound that startled the woman sitting across the tent. Kara waved her off, eyes wide and wet.

Her hand went to her mouth. Not to stifle the sound—but to ground herself. To believe it.

She read the message again. And again.

There you are, she whispered.

Because Lena had finally said it. The thing Kara had been carrying like a stone in her pocket. The question that weighed down every step.

Now, it had an answer.

She didn’t reply.

Not yet.

She didn’t need to.

She just sat there, the phone warm in her hands, her heart fuller than it had been in months.

She stayed like that until the heater sputtered out. Until the lights dimmed.

Outside, the wind shifted. The cold eased for just a second.

And Kara closed her eyes and let herself hope.

After she sent the message, Lena’s world didn’t change.

The sky didn’t crack open. Her phone didn’t ring. The stars didn’t rearrange themselves into a sign. No lightning struck. No divine chorus sang.

Instead, the world did what it always did: it kept going.

She went to work the next day.

Took the elevator in silence. Nodded politely to interns. Filed quarterly reports with the same robotic efficiency she always did. Met with investors who only cared about projections, not people. Not pain. Answered emails about numbers and trends and cost curves that meant nothing beside what she’d said the night before.

"I love you."

Three words. One admission. And a quiet revolution in her own chest.

The message remained read. No reply.

And somehow, impossibly, that was enough.

Because she hadn’t said it to get something back. She hadn’t written it expecting a miracle or even a crumb of forgiveness.

She’d said it because it was time.

Because keeping it inside had become unbearable. Because pretending she didn’t love Kara had become a cruelty—to herself most of all.

It had begun to rot things. Her focus. Her sleep. Her patience. It had been colouring every conversation, every relationship, every empty glass of wine and late night where she sat alone wondering how she became the person who let Kara walk away.

So she let it out. Let it hang there in the ether, a kind of offering.

Let it live.

And every time she walked by the window, she found herself glancing up at the sky—just in case. Not because she expected Kara to appear like magic, but because some part of her still wanted to believe that when you say something true, the universe listens.

The next few weeks blurred like weather for Kara.

She travelled between towns by rail and convoy, dodging frozen roads and communication blackouts, documenting what she could and helping where she wasn’t asked. There were air raid sirens and hasty shelter runs. Her notebook filled faster than her hard drive could back up.

But through it all, she kept her phone in her coat pocket, right above her heart.

She didn’t write back.

Not yet.

Because this—this wasn’t the kind of love you rushed.

This wasn’t a fairytale. It wasn’t a movie with grand gestures and orchestral swells. It was real. And real meant messy, and slow, and sacred.

She read Lena’s words over and over again. In tents lit by battery-powered lanterns. On rooftops with her breath fogging in the air. In the dark, lying on a cot too short for her legs.

She held Lena’s words close. Turned them over in her mind during interviews, in moments of quiet between relief runs, in the static silence of waiting.

Sometimes, she’d imagine what Lena looked like when she typed them.

Did her fingers hesitate? Did she whisper the words aloud before pressing send? Did she regret it the second it left her outbox?

Kara didn’t regret it.

Not for a second.

But she couldn’t answer yet. Not just because of the distance. Not because she didn’t want to. But because she needed to finish what she’d started.

Not just the article. Not just the contract.

The becoming.

Because this journey—this brutal, clarifying, expansive journey—was never about escape. It was about alignment.

Making sure that when she met Lena again, it wasn’t with apologies or compromise. It wasn’t to fit herself into the outline Lena had drawn in her absence. It was to arrive fully.

As the woman she was becoming.

Because Kara had learned the hard way that sometimes, you leave not to disappear—but to build the kind of person who can come back without breaking.

So she waited.

Not to be asked.

But to be ready.

They didn’t speak.

But they thought of each other constantly.

In headlines. In weather forecasts. In the shape of a sunset that hit the pavement just right. In dogs in the park. In second cups of coffee gone cold on forgotten desks. In old songs. In archived texts. In moments so small and sudden they took the breath out of the day.

They lived separately.

But not alone.

Because some messages—real ones—don’t need replies. They just need time.

Lena would sit in meetings with her mind half elsewhere, Kara’s words folding around her like warmth she wasn’t supposed to feel. She walked the halls of L-Corp and remembered the way Kara used to tease her for needing two passwords to access her office fridge.

At night, she replayed memories with surgical precision. The time Kara fell asleep mid-sentence on her couch. The way she insisted on over-tipping at diners. The way she used to say Lena’s name like it was a secret and a promise all at once.

And Kara… Kara imagined Lena all the time. In every crowd of women with smart eyes and sharper heels. In the soft glow of streetlights when she rode through towns too small to have names. In the shape of resilience Kara saw in every girl who had lost too much and kept going anyway.

She imagined her working late, coffee in one hand, tablet in the other. Imagined her listening to Kara’s old broadcasts, eyes narrowing at phrasing she would have edited.

Imagined her whispering the words she had finally written—into her mug, into her mirror, into the space Kara used to fill.

And that was enough.

Because love—the real kind—doesn’t always come with fireworks or doorsteps or last-minute airport confessions.

Sometimes, it waits.

Sometimes, it breathes.

Sometimes, it travels quietly across continents in the form of an unread message that says everything.

Sometimes, it arrives without reply. Without return ticket. Without timeline.

Because real love isn’t a plea.

It’s a homecoming.

And even if neither of them said it aloud, both Lena and Kara were beginning to realise:

Love doesn’t always knock.

Sometimes, it just… waits outside the door, hands in its pockets, watching the sky, knowing that someday, someone will open it.

And maybe—just maybe—they’ll both be ready when it happens.

The plane touched down just before sunset, painting the tarmac in honeyed light. The sky was soft around the edges, and the clouds scattered like old pages across the horizon. Kara stepped off with nothing but her duffel, a single strap over her shoulder, her boots hitting the ground like a heartbeat she’d almost forgotten how to listen to.

National City felt both familiar and foreign. The air was warmer than she remembered, saturated with the sounds of traffic and distant sirens, the scent of roasted peanuts from the street vendor that still stood outside Terminal B, as if time hadn’t passed at all.

But everything had changed.

She didn’t go to L-Corp.

Didn’t go to her old apartment.

Didn’t go to Alex.

She went to the last place they’d stood together.

It wasn’t dramatic. Just a quiet, residential block outside Kara’s former building. A slice of pavement tucked between city noise and late winter silence. There had been no goodbyes that day. Just Lena’s voice in the cold, her arms folded tightly over her chest, saying: “Go on. Italy’s waiting.”

Kara had replayed that moment a thousand times. Not because it had been cruel—but because it had been honest. Lena had let her go. And Kara had needed to be let go.

But now she was back. Not just in body. She was back in spirit. In skin. In stillness.

She stood on the pavement, wrapped in the same coat she’d worn the day she left, fingers cold inside her pockets, and pulled out the phone that still held every message.

Every word Lena had sent. Every fragment of hope dressed in casual deflection.

She scrolled.

Paused on the last one.

I love you. Please come back.

She hadn’t replied to that.

Not because she didn’t want to.

Because she hadn’t been ready. Not then. Not until now.

She found Lena’s contact.

Pressed her thumb against the name that wasn’t saved as a name, but as a number she’d never forgotten.

Hit Call.

It rang once.

Twice.

Three times.

Then—

“Kara?”

The voice wasn’t steady. It cracked like ice thawing after a long winter. Like Lena hadn’t expected it to really be her. Like maybe she’d been dreaming of this moment and had finally, breathlessly, stumbled into it.

Kara smiled. Just a little. Just enough. “Hi.”

There was a pause. A held breath between continents. “Where are you?”

“I’m in National City,” Kara said. “Just landed.”

She could hear Lena’s breath shift. Could almost picture her—the sharp intake of air, the fingers pressed against her temple like she was trying to believe this was real.

Kara added, “I’m standing outside my old place. Where you last saw me.”

The place Lena had walked away from.

The silence on the line was different now. Not empty, but dense. Full of realisation.

“You’ve been getting them,” Lena whispered. It wasn’t a question.

Kara’s voice cracked—soft, sure. “I read them. Every single one.”

Silence bloomed again. Not heavy. But full. Saturated.

Kara breathed in once more. Let the air settle in her lungs.

Then she said it.

“Come here.”

Not a command. Not a plea.

An invitation.

A truth.

She waited.

Lena didn’t speak.

Kara didn’t push.

Because this time, she was the one waiting.

And for once, waiting didn’t feel like a wound.

It felt like hope.

Lena had been halfway through an exhausting day. Her inbox overflowing. A board meeting that turned into a twelve-person argument about quarterly forecasts. She hadn’t eaten. Her head ached. Her coffee was cold.

When her phone buzzed on the edge of her desk, she didn’t look immediately. Just another notification. Another demand. Another thing that wasn’t Kara.

Then it buzzed again.

And something—instinct, maybe—made her glance over.

No name.

Just digits. Numbers she hadn’t saved but had memorised long ago.

Lena froze.

The kind of freeze that doesn’t come from shock—but from a breath too sharp, a hope too dangerous.

She didn’t remember crossing the room. One second she was sitting. The next, she was answering, heart pounding like it was sprinting to catch up.

“Kara?”

It came out small. Like it was made of paper.

Then—her voice.

“Hi.”

Lena exhaled, all at once.

The kind of exhale that breaks you.

She closed her eyes. Every inch of her back let go. Like the air had shifted. Like the world had finally decided to give her back the one thing it had stolen.

“Where are you?” she asked. It was all she could think to say. She needed a location. An anchor. Something real to pin this to.

“I’m in National City. Just landed.”

Her knees went soft. She sat down hard in the nearest chair.

“I’m standing outside my old place,” Kara added. “Where you last saw me.”

Lena’s eyes stung.

She knew what that meant.

It wasn’t just about location. It was a map back to a moment. To a decision. To an ending that had never really settled.

And then the match caught.

“You’ve been getting them.”

Kara didn’t hesitate. Her voice caught slightly—barely enough to notice, but enough to be real. “I read them. Every single one.”

Lena felt herself fold. Not in pain. Not in relief. Just in something so sharp and full it nearly undid her.

The silence between them turned holy.

And then Kara said:

“Come here.”

Not please. Not maybe.

Just come here.

Like she was offering her a place in the world again.

Lena didn’t speak.

Her throat was too full.

She just sat there, phone pressed to her cheek, eyes wet, heart sprinting.

And she realised, without a doubt, that she had never wanted anything more in her life than to run toward a voice in the dark and find it still waiting.

Lena didn’t remember the elevator ride down. She didn’t remember telling her assistant to cancel the rest of her day, or the board meeting she was supposed to chair, or the warning look Sam gave her as she shoved her phone into her coat pocket and bolted. She didn’t remember the quiet panic that fluttered in her chest like wings made of wire, or the way her driver blinked when she barked the address out like a command she hadn’t used in years.

What she remembered—what she would always remember—was the building.

Kara’s building.

Or, more precisely, the sidewalk outside of it.

The place where Lena had once let go of the only person she’d ever truly wanted to keep.

And now, somehow, impossibly, that same person had returned.

The car stopped.

But Lena didn’t move.

She sat with one hand on the door handle, staring straight ahead, her breath fogging up the glass in uneven bursts. Her pulse was a wild, uneven drumbeat in her throat, her chest, her fingertips. It drowned out everything else. The city. The traffic. The rational voice inside her head.

What if she’s changed? What if she’s moved on? What if I waited too long?

And beneath all of that:

What if I break again?

It would be so easy not to get out.

To stay safe inside the warmth of the car, to protect what was left of her pride. To pretend she hadn’t opened her heart to someone who had once walked away from it. To pretend this wasn’t the moment she’d been waiting for since the night she sent that message.

But then—

The door opened.

Lena barely registered her own movement.

One second, she was inside the car.

The next, she was standing on the pavement.

And there—exactly where she’d said she would be—stood Kara.

Leaning against the wall like she belonged to the moment. Like she'd never left. Her coat zipped up to her chin. Her duffel bag at her feet. Her posture guarded, but her eyes—

God, her eyes.

They undid Lena.

No one had looked at her like that in years. Like she wasn’t a headline. A scandal. A disappointment. Like she was just a person. Lena. No title, no armour. Just… Lena.

Kara looked up fully, and the street went still.

Neither of them moved.

Seconds passed.

Lena could hear her own heartbeat echoing in her ears.

Then—slowly, carefully—she stepped forward.

One step. Then another. Like the distance between them wasn’t just physical but emotional. Like she had to cross a canyon of everything unsaid.

Kara didn’t move to meet her.

But she didn’t look away either.

That mattered.

Three steps later, they were face to face.

Lena’s throat burned.

Her fingers twitched at her sides like they wanted to reach out, but she didn’t trust them not to shake. So she stood there, barely breathing, held together by sheer will.

“I didn’t want to assume,” Kara said, voice low. Uncertain. Soft in the way only Kara Danvers could be soft—honest and unguarded and full of hesitant hope.

Lena didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

The words would’ve crumbled if she tried.

So she reached out instead.

Her fingers brushed Kara’s sleeve, tentative at first—like maybe if she touched her too firmly, she’d vanish. But Kara didn’t vanish. She didn’t even flinch.

She just exhaled.

A soft, fragile sound. The kind you make when you’ve been carrying too much for too long.

And Lena stepped closer. Closed the last of the distance.

Arms around her.

No hesitation.

No fear.

Just need.

She buried her face in the crook of Kara’s neck, breathing her in like she was the only oxygen left in the world.

And Kara—Kara folded into her like she’d been waiting to be held.

Like the pieces of her that had fractured finally remembered how to fit together.

They didn’t speak.

Didn’t need to.

It was all there—in the grip of Lena’s hands at the back of Kara’s coat. In the tremble of Kara’s shoulders as she clung to Lena’s waist. In the way Lena closed her eyes and whispered, almost to herself, “You’re really here.”

And in the way Kara replied, “You still smell like jasmine tea.”

It was absurd.

It was intimate.

It was everything.

And it broke something loose in Lena’s chest—a knot that had been choking her for too long.

She held on tighter.

Because this wasn’t some cinematic reunion with orchestras or speeches. This wasn’t a grand declaration at an airport gate or a love letter on a train platform.

This was two people, standing in the cold, clinging to each other like it was the only thing keeping them alive.

And maybe it was.

Because love—real love—isn’t always loud.

Sometimes, it’s just a hand on your back when you’re breaking. Sometimes, it’s someone showing up when they said they would. Sometimes, it’s standing on a street corner in the middle of winter and feeling like the sun just came back.

When they finally pulled apart, it wasn’t far.

Their hands stayed tangled. Their foreheads nearly touched.

Lena looked at Kara. Really looked.

She saw the exhaustion. The quiet lines carved from months of war zones and sleepless nights and meals eaten in haste. She saw the weight Kara still carried. The grief she hadn’t spoken. The resilience she hadn’t flaunted.

But she also saw something else.

Peace.

Like Kara had finally stopped running—from the world, from herself, from the truth of what she felt.

“You came,” Kara said quietly.

It wasn’t a question.

It was reverence.

Lena’s eyes filled. She let out a shaky laugh. “You called.”

Kara nodded once. “I didn’t think you’d answer.”

“I didn’t think you’d ask.”

They smiled then.

Just a little.

Just enough.

“I’m here,” Kara said.

Three words.

Not dramatic. Not poetic.

But Lena felt them like a promise.

She nodded, unable to speak. Her voice had curled up and hidden in the back of her throat, overwhelmed by the storm of everything she’d wanted to say but didn’t need to anymore.

Kara reached up and brushed a strand of hair behind Lena’s ear. Her fingers lingered against her skin.

“You’re freezing,” she murmured.

“So are you.”

Another pause.

Then Kara tilted her head.

“Come with me?”

A question, this time.

An offer.

Not to fix everything. Not to pretend nothing had broken.

But to begin.

Lena nodded again.

“Yes.”

They picked up the duffel bag together.

Not because Kara needed help carrying it.

But because it felt right.

Because starting over doesn’t always begin with a conversation.

Sometimes, it starts with a shared step toward something neither of you can name yet—but both of you are ready to try.

And as they walked down the street—shoulder to shoulder, fingertips brushing in the dark—Lena finally understood something.

She hadn’t been waiting for Kara to come back to her.

She’d been waiting to be the version of herself that could meet Kara again and say: this time, I won’t run.

This time, I won’t let you go.

And Kara?

Kara was already smiling. Already lighter. Already whole.

Because she hadn’t needed Lena to promise anything.

Just to show up.

And this time, Lena had.

They didn’t go anywhere at first.

They just sat on the stoop, side by side, like no time had passed—or maybe too much had. Kara’s duffel sat between them like a neutral party, and neither seemed to know what to do with their hands now that they weren’t reaching.

It was Lena who finally spoke.

“Are you… back for good?”

Kara looked out across the street, watching headlights pass in slow procession. “I don’t know what ‘good’ means anymore.”

Lena nodded. Fair enough.

Kara glanced sideways at her. “But I’m not leaving again. Not without telling you. Not without us deciding.”

That word.

Us.

It landed somewhere deep in Lena’s chest. Not like a weight—but like an anchor.

She turned to Kara, studied her. There were new lines around her eyes. A small scar near her hairline Lena hadn’t seen before. A stillness in her posture that hadn’t been there when she left—like she'd finally made peace with being in her own skin.

“You really read all of them?”

“Every one.” Kara smiled gently. “Even the one where you sent me a blurry photo of a dog in a sweater and called me a ‘coward with a soft spot for idiots.’”

Lena flushed. “That one wasn’t for you. That one was for my therapist.”

Kara laughed—low and warm and real. And just like that, the years cracked open a little. Not erased. Not undone. But softened.

A car horn blared a block away. Neither flinched.

“Do you want to come inside?” Lena asked, voice barely above the breeze.

Kara looked at her. Really looked.

“I want to come home,” she said. “If that’s still something I’m allowed to want.”

Lena didn’t hesitate.

She stood. Offered her hand.

And when Kara took it, Lena didn’t let go.

The apartment was almost exactly as Kara remembered it. A few new art prints. A softer rug. The same terrible kettle.

Lena made tea, like muscle memory. Jasmine.

Kara leaned against the counter, watching her. Still not used to being still.

“You kept everything the same,” she said quietly.

“I tried not to,” Lena replied, setting down two mugs. “But it turns out I liked my life better when you were in it.”

That silenced them both.

They sat on the sofa, not touching at first. Just being.

Eventually, Kara reached over and laced their fingers together. Like it was a habit she’d never broken.

Lena squeezed once. “You don’t have to talk about it. Not tonight.”

Kara let her head fall against Lena’s shoulder. “I will. Just… not yet.”

Lena nodded. “Whenever you’re ready.”

The silence returned.

This time, it wasn’t heavy.

It was the kind you wrap around yourself when the war is finally over.

The apartment was quiet. Still.

They sat together on the couch, legs barely touching, two steaming mugs of jasmine tea between them. The kettle had whistled earlier than Lena expected—Kara had always known exactly when to pull it off the heat.

Some things, it seemed, hadn’t changed.

But Kara had. And Lena didn’t know how to ask how much.

So she didn’t.

Not yet.

They sat in the hush for a long time. Until Kara broke it

“You haven’t asked me why I left,” she said quietly.

Lena didn’t respond.

“You think I left to find myself,” she said, voice low. “But that’s not what happened.”

Lena swallowed. “I thought… I assumed it was to figure things out.”

Kara gave a soft exhale—almost a laugh, but without joy.

“No.”

Lena turned to look at her. Kara wasn’t crying. She was calm. Clear-eyed. Braver than she’d ever been.

“I left,” Kara continued, “so you could find yourself.”

Lena opened her mouth. Closed it again.

Kara pressed on.

“I didn’t know how to stay without becoming a weight around your neck. Every time I looked at you after that night, I saw it—the panic. The regret. The fear that loving me would cost you something. And I couldn’t… I couldn’t be another thing you had to apologise for.”

“Kara,” Lena breathed, but Kara shook her head gently.

“I waited. Not because I wanted you to chase me, or beg, or say the right words. I waited because I needed to know if you’d choose me when no one was watching. When it wasn’t convenient. When it wasn’t safe.”

Lena’s voice was a whisper. “I did choose you.”

“I know.” Kara finally smiled. Small. Soft. “You told me to come back. You told me you loved me. Not when I was there to hear it—but when I was gone. When you didn’t even think I’d see it.”

“I wasn’t ready before,” Lena admitted. “And you still left.”

“I didn’t want to. I loved you then.” Kara’s fingers found Lena’s. “I only wanted to love you. That’s it. Not fix you. Not prove anything. I just wanted… to be allowed.”

Lena’s throat caught. “And I wouldn’t let you.”

Kara didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.

“I thought letting you go was an act of love,” Lena said softly. “But maybe I was just afraid that if you stayed, I’d ruin you.”

Kara let out a quiet laugh—gentle, not bitter. “You did. And I still stayed.”

Lena looked up sharply. Kara’s smile widened, tired but true.

“You ruined the version of me that waited for permission to feel anything,” she said. “And I’m grateful.”

They sat in that truth. Hands clasped. Breath shared.

And then Kara leaned in, forehead to forehead.

“I don’t want a fresh start,” she whispered. “I want this. The mess. The memory. The after.”

Lena pulled her closer.

“Then stay.”

“I already am.”

Sunlight spilled through the half-open curtains in golden ribbons. The city outside was already humming, alive with schedules and headlines and forgotten alarms. But inside the apartment, time had slowed.

Kara blinked awake to the faint scent of jasmine.

She was warm. Blanketed. Safe.

And Lena was there.

Curled on her side, hair mussed, mouth relaxed in sleep, one hand still resting lightly over Kara’s wrist like her body hadn't quite let go, even unconscious.

Kara didn’t move. She just watched her.

It was the first time in years that watching hadn’t felt like longing.

It felt like home.

Lena stirred slightly, eyelashes fluttering. Then: a soft, groggy sound, half-word, half-breath.

“Hey,” Kara whispered, voice still hoarse from sleep.

Lena blinked open her eyes. Focused. And smiled.

That was it. Not a grand proclamation. Just a smile—quiet, knowing, still wrapped in the disbelief that this was real, and yet somehow certain it always would be.

“Did you sleep?” Lena murmured.

“I did,” Kara said, and it surprised them both. “Really well.”

“Good.” Lena’s fingers traced a small pattern along Kara’s wrist. “You used to talk in your sleep, you know.”

“Oh no,” Kara groaned. “What did I say?”

“Nothing embarrassing,” Lena teased. Then, quieter: “But you did say my name once. Just my name. Like it meant something.”

Kara’s breath hitched. “It still does.”

They lay there a little longer. Tangled up in the silence, not because there was nothing left to say—but because everything had been said. And now there was just life to live.

Eventually, Kara sat up. The sheet slipped down her back. Lena watched her move, watched her reach for her mug from the night before.

“You’re really here,” Lena said, like it hadn’t quite settled.

Kara turned back to her. “I never really stopped being.”

She leaned forward, brushing a kiss to Lena’s temple. Then her forehead. Then—finally—her lips. No urgency. No apology. Just presence.

When they pulled apart, Lena sighed. “So what now?”

Kara smiled. “Breakfast?”

“Start small, huh?”

Kara nodded. “Start honest.”

They got up together. Made toast. Burnt it. Argued about butter-to-jam ratios. Spilled tea on the counter. Laughed.

It was ordinary.

It was everything.

And so it wasn’t about the return. Or the waiting. Or the words they should’ve said sooner.

It was about waking up.

And choosing each other—again. And again. And again.

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