Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Hot dogs!” yelled a man down the street. “Get yer hot dogs!” He waved frantically a couple holding hands with three buns in his hands, and they walked faster past him without another word.

A man in a neon pink suit and a flashy yellow bow tie asked the hot dog man for four dozen of his buns. What a weird world National City was.

People-watching was always a favorite past time for Kara— especially when her Lena locked herself up in her office and consulted phone calls all day. Sure, Lena could still fall victim to the monthly assassination attempt, or to the scary fact alone that her office was at the top floor of her building. There was a reason she had two eyes anyway. One on her well-behaved (but also somehow very poorly behaved) human, and the other one on the busy streams of people in downtown National City.

It was loud and rambunctious where she was. Even from high above a skyscraper, she could hear the faint noises of hip hop music and shouts of a person standing on a soap box. She drank it all in with a thin straw. 

“You should be watching her,” Clark noted behind her. 

“I am.” Kara didn’t even spare him a glance. She only stared downwards, snorting when she caught an old man farting and blaming it on his wife beside him. She swung her legs back and forth when she added, “She’s in her office listening to a client drone on and on about how terrible her ‘lexicon’ is. Lena’s only letting him complain because it’s funny.”

“Being stuck in office doesn’t always mean she’s one hundred percent bulletproof, Kara,” he reminded, and Kara tried not to roll her eyes.

She pushed herself away from the ledge and twisted her body to look at him. “Well, if you wanna be so judgmental, why aren’t you looking after Jimmy?” she said, challenging him with a squint.

Clark laughed and sat down beside her. The wind in his hair ruffled it nicely, leaving his perfect cow lick stuck upwards. “I asked Lois to swap people tonight,” he explained, and looked down when Kara continued to stubbornly watched the people below. “Besides, she really likes watching the humans work in the Daily Planet. Says they’re ‘interesting’. So I thought I could give her a break from the Australian guy she’s watching.”

“What a cheeseball,” she teased, and he hit her shoulder. “When’s the wedding?” she quipped, and he hit her shoulder even harder. She only laughed louder.

“I’m serious, Kara, keep an eye on her,” he warned. He swung a brotherly arm over her shoulders and she complained, but he smothered her face with the side of his chest. He gave her a noogie as he said, “You’re gonna get caught again. I don’t want that for you.”

“Gee, thanks,” she said sarcastically, and tapped his arm to force him to let go of her. She rubbed her neck and looked down at the traffic below, much to Clark’s chagrin. “No one wants to kill Lena right now. She’s been lying low for months— so definitely no murder attempts until her next press conference, probably.”

Clark frowned at her. “You know she can die from something that wasn’t an assassination attempt, right?”

Kara snorted. “Her? No way. She double checks all her food before eating it and walks around with four disguised bodyguards at all times, I’m sure she could make it before her next conference.”

“Kara…” Clark sighed, exasperation seeping into his face. He rubbed his forehead before facing her again, putting a hand over her knee and giving it a tight squeeze. “Look, I get burnt out watching them too. But you know why I do it anyway?”

“Because you’re the best angel in the entire world and that ‘Jimmy Olsen’s my best friend even though he doesn’t know it’,” she recited, and gave him a pointed look. 

Clark quirked an eyebrow. “I learned to tolerate Jimmy,” he clarified. “I could even consider him a friend, if I wanted. Kara, the point is— there’s a reason why we say it’s best to form a bond with your person. When you care about them, you’re more likely to—”

“But I do care, Clark!” She threw her arms up in frustration. “But I also care about all of them —” She pointed below. “Taking care of one just feels— I don’t know— like I’m not doing enough. Like I could be doing more. Don’t get me wrong, Lena’s amazing, she’s wonderful! But—”

“You don’t know her.” Clark held her look with a steely gaze. He put his hand on her shoulder this time. “You watch her, and you take care of her, but you really don’t know her, Kara. Get to know her, treat her as something more than a duty. And I promise, good will come of it.”

Kara didn’t have the heart to tell him that she tried before. She tried focusing on Lena’s phone calls more, on Lena’s schedule, on Lena’s spin class past times. But it was all too bland compared to the wonders of the mass public, when she could take one glance around and fall in love with a thousand humans all at once.

But fall in love, as in infatuation— angels don’t really fall fall in love, like humans do. They just didn’t. (Whatever that meant). 

It seemed like Kara didn’t have to tell him about her situation after all. He gave her a tight smile. “Try one more time,” he said gently. “But maybe… change up your tactics. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll be backing you up about getting you a new person.”

Kara sighed through her nostrils. She closed her eyes for a second, giving herself some time to reconsider, then turned to look at Clark. “Okay, fine,” she said quickly, and he grinned at her. 

Giving her a quick hug and a quick goodbye to go and see if Lois was okay, Kara was finally left alone.

It wasn’t that she hated Lena Luthor or anything. It wasn’t even the fact that she thought Lena was boring. She was fun, in some aspects of her life (especially in her earlier life, so she’s told). But whenever Kara was given a new responsibility, a new human to stare at and watch their every move for, she always felt like it was a selfish thing to do, when there were some humans running around with reckless angel watching their backs.

After all, it was kinda hard to bond with a person you couldn’t speak to, touch, or even acknowledge your existence with. And shocker, Kara Zor-El was a touchy-feely person. The only person she ever felt true regret leaving for was a college girl in Midvale, and she hadn’t watched over the girl in over seven years (but a pop-in now and then was nice). 

Kara hopped off the side of the building and onto solid pavement. 

She stretched her back. It did nothing for her, really, but it was a habit she couldn’t seem to break. Just out of sight, she could hear Miss Luthor talking about numbers and fluctuations in her lonely apartment. 

Kara made her way to watch her.

“Your two o’clock is coming up, Miss Luthor,” her assistant said.

Rubbing the bridge of her nose, Lena asked her to bring him up and slipped in a polite thanks. It was bright and early in the afternoon, but she already felt ready to take a hot shower and lie down in her bed for several hours. 

It was meeting, paperwork, check on assignments, rinse and repeat, for the last six years of Lena’s life.

The man who came up to see her was a kind-looking fellow with two lattes in his hands. He gave the one on his left with a bright smile, and Lena wasn’t a monster enough to refuse some caffeine. However, she left it sitting on the edge of her desk while she made introductions with him, shaking his free hand and thanking him for coming to see her all the way out into the city. 

“It’s my pleasure, Miss Luthor,” he said mildly. “Please, you look so tired. I wouldn’t mind it if you actually sat down,” he added with a chuckle, and motioned for her to sit on the wide-backed chair across from him that she was sitting on until a couple seconds ago. 

“Sorry. I get too distracted when there's a new gala to prepare for,” she apologized. She made her way around the desk to sit down, clicking a pen to start their briefing and take notes down on her ruled paper. 

“Mondays,” he said with a smile.

She tried to smile back. She really did. But all she could zero in on was the fact that the latte she had set down on the corner of her desk was gone, not even leaving a circle of sweated liquid in its wake. 

The man noticed where she was staring. He frowned, deeply, the knit in his brow getting tighter and tighter with each passing second. “Did you… throw out your coffee, Lena?” he asked, his voice low and almost threatening, in a way.

“Now, why would I throw out a perfectly good cup of coffee?” she mused, fidgeting with the pen under her fingernails. She glanced up, staring at him right in the eyes.

His face was gradually turning a pale red, fists clenched so tightly at his sides that they were shaking. When he shifted, Lena spotted a glimpse of a firearm under his shirt. 

It clicked in her mind in an instant. Losing no time, she pulled out the taser strapped underneath her desk and zapped him, forcing him onto his side with a dull thump that had Jess running up into her office with brisk clicks of the heels.

“Miss—” Jess gasped, taking a step back from the man convulsing on Lena’s marble floor. She looked less surprised and more inconvenienced than anything else, especially after Lena barked an order to call the police.

The man in question wasn’t even a citizen, nor was he even identified on several databases. Her court date was to be announced, but entire news channels tuned in on her newest assassination attempt like steak dangling in front of a dog. 

Sliding against the back of her armchair in her apartment, Lena rubbed her forehead. I can’t catch a break for one month, can I? she thought in exasperation, and reopened her laptop to type up another document. The glow of her laptop provided her the only light on her balcony, minus the glittering stars in the dead of the night.

Lena swirled a glass of dark red wine beside her.

With so much on her mind and police focused on identifying the culprit, she didn’t stop once to ponder over the disappearing act of that cup of coffee. 

You don’t know her, Clark said into her mind. You don’t know her, you don’t know her, you really really don’t know her.

And what if she didn’t?

Kara watched as she took the stage on a podium to speak out about last night’s turn of events. She crossed her arms in front of her and set her teeth, tuning her out to listen for any sound of a gun being held up, or any person that seemed to be hiding. 

You don’t know her, Clark’s voice said to her again. 

He repeated it to her again when Kara heard snippets of Lena’s speech. 

“I’ll be donating five million dollars to—”

“Today is a new day. It won’t stop me from trying again with my team to cure—”

“We have to protect one another—”

Lena, as it turned out, was going to die as a martyr at this rate. Children’s hospitals funded solely by her company, including orphanages, healthcare, free education. Kara couldn’t say she wasn’t impressed. She was doing so much to pull her family’s name out of the mud.

Kara could respect that.

Once the speech was over, Lena thanked the crowd once again. There were mixed reactions instantly. Many cheered and clapped for her as she waved goodbye, but there were definitely some hecklers among them. People who shouted, screamed, and frantically waved signs that told her to, in the kindest words to paraphrase, piss off. 

Kara frowned. She didn’t understand them most of the time. If she had to admit it, she couldn’t understand some of the motives behind Lena’s actions either. Like the fact she put milk first then the cereal, or that she regularly did Pilates by herself on Tuesday nights.

But like always, Kara shrugged it off, and made her way beside Lena to protect her.

Lena couldn’t see her, obviously. But she definitely could see every single tremor happening in Lena’s hands, or the fact that her hair glowed mahogany in the sunlight, or even that the red lipstick on her lips were finally beginning to chap. 

“Jess, could you cancel my appointments today?” Lena asked briskly, not once to turn and look at her assistant in the eye. 

She waved a hand to dismiss a bodyguard by her side, who whispered in her ear about a line of people wanting to meet her and talk to her. When Kara turned her head, she could see an excited little boy look up at her hopefully. 

Lena smiled and waved at him, but made no move to reroute herself and talk to him. Kara pursed her lips. 

If there was one thing that Kara could confidently say about Lena, it was that she was cold, calculating, and one hard woman to please. Luthors tend to be like that, Clark commented on it one day, when they were together on top of the L-Corp building to watch a protest happen.

She was a good person, Kara knew that. That was evident in everything she’s already done with her company. It just irked her, kinda, to see a woman who had already pledged over ten million dollars in helping families in poverty be so cold when it came to individuals. But that wasn’t her place to say in the long run. 

“Miss Luthor, are you sure you would like to cancel everything?” Jess said by her side, striding faster with her short legs to catch up with Lena’s confident stride. She was tapping nervously on an open tablet.

“Is there a problem?” Lena asked her, eyebrow raised.

“Well, your seventeen appointments can be cancelled without a problem—” Seventeen! Kara thought in shock, “—but it says here you have an appointment with…” Jess trailed off. 

“With?” Lena pressed.

They kept walking as Jess said, “Your ex boyfriend, ma’am. The one who’s been begging you for a dinner date for the past two months?”

By the way Lena started to slow down, Kara could tell it hit a nerve somewhere. Her sad, wistful look being cast off to the side to not show Jess her true feelings was an indication to her that Lena didn’t think of that appointment as a liability. Maybe she was even looking forward to it.

Instead of saying no, Lena cleared her throat and ordered, “Cancel it too. Apologize for me and tell him I’m incredibly sorry, but I just have a lot on my plate right now.”

“You’ve used that excuse twice now, Miss Luthor,” Jess pointed out.

“Tell him there was a problem at the orphanage and I need some time to check on it myself,” Lena said briskly, and kept walking at the same pace as she was before. 

At the apprehensive look on Jess’ face, Kara already knew that she wanted to say that Lena had used that excuse up too. 

What was so important that Lena had to cancel everything? she mused to herself. Seventeen missed appointments, plus a dinner date with someone probably hunky and charismatic enough to even get half of the wistful look Lena threw her way— well, not her way, more like the trees behind her.

She got her answer when Lena drove herself home with the help of a driver. She was on her phone the entire time, her lips pressed in a tight line and her heel jittering. Kara couldn’t lean in enough to see what her phone said.

Lena swung a satchel bag over her shoulder. She looked around her empty apartment for a second before her eyes landed on Kara. Kara felt frozen in place when she kept staring, green eyes looking back perfectly into hers. As if she could see. 

That was the first time Kara truly, truly got her first look into Lena’s eyes. With the bright lights of her expensive hand-me-down (in this case, a hand-me-down from a millionaire) apartment, it screened her eyes and highlighted them from behind a wall of pure white. Her pupils were the color of cat-eye marbles shining underneath a flashlight. When she squinted, Lena almost looked ferocious too.

Lena glanced away from her, and she shut off the lights. 

When Kara pivoted on a heel, she stared into the eyes of a commissioned painting of Lionel Luthor, hands firm on the shoulders of a little girl with dark, soulful green eyes. 

Kara tugged herself away from the painting and caught up to Lena, who was making a brisk walk in the middle of the night with a heavy-looking satchel bag. She squared her shoulders and cracked her knuckles just in case, because Lena’s chances of being mugged was just upped to seventy-five percent. 

When Lena stopped in front of a shoddy looking house on the corner of a street, Kara thought she was going to fish out her phone from her pocket. 

Instead she brushed her heels against the pavement, looking down, then back up at the house. The roof looked like it was ready to cave in, faded blue paint giving the place a ghostly vibe. Lena made her way to the front door. Kara sucked in a breath.

When she knocked, a woman with graying hair greeted her with an apron tied around her waist. She thanked Lena relentlessly as Lena came inside, her wide eyes and the preening of her hair an indication that she was not expecting Lena to even come so close to her home.

“He’s in the living room,” the woman said, wringing her hands, “I don’t know how I could ever repay you for this. We tried finding a free tutor, the ones you’ve suggested, but—”

“I’m here because I know,” Lena said, and paused in the middle of their small kitchen to look into her eyes. She gave the woman’s hand a light squeeze. Two little boys whizzed past them with trains in their hands, and one gave Lena a spare glance. If Kara took a deep enough breath, she could faintly smell the aroma of lavender massage oil. “I had a free day today,” Lena added. 

That was a bold-faced lie if Kara ever saw one.

But the smile on Lena’s face, and the softness of her eyes as walked into the living room was more genuine than Kara had ever seen on a person.

There was a middle school aged boy sitting cross-legged on the coffee table, perking up from taking a nap on a math book when Lena entered. He looked curious as she sat down and shook his hand, grinning proudly at her when she said, “You have a nice shirt. Where did you get it?”

Once Lena had broken through his shell, with the mother walking around and claiming she was picking up toys after her younger children (but the side looks she gave them told a different story), Lena scooted closer to him. There was something about seeing this woman go from giving a speech to a couple hundred people to asking a young boy to show his math to her while sitting cross-legged herself that made Kara endlessly curious.

She sat down on the floor behind them and watched as Lena gently asked for his eraser to show him how to distribute binomials. Not once did Lena raise her voice or scold him for doing something wrong, only gently reminding him the proper steps and praising him with high fives and loud “Yay!”s as he did it correctly. 

You don’t know her at all, Clark reminded her.

And maybe Kara wanted to know her after all. 

The next day after that, Kara watched her five times more closely than she did yesterday. When J’onn came to check on her and found her intently staring at a man who might be or might be not watching Lena for ill intentions, he patted her on the back. 

Lena, who was chatting with an old colleague from school, got up and hugged her goodbye. Kara watched as she walked down an empty sidewalk, then stopped promptly in front of a homeless man who was petting a dirty white dog. 

“How are you today, Ernest?” she asked kindly. 

Ernest, as Kara came to learn, nodded at her with a toothy grin. “Same as always, Lena,” he commented with a quiet voice. 

Then Lena crouched down, shook his hand, and gave him a crisp one hundred dollar bill from her wallet. “I’m sorry it’s not much this time, I’m still trying to find you a livable apartment,” she said apologetically, and the look in her eyes made Kara joltingly realize that she wasn’t even being sarcastic. “Tomorrow, I’ll see if I can find that damn checkbook I keep losing. Just find somewhere warm tonight, okay?”

“You are an angel in disguise, Lena,” he said, and smiled adoringly at her. The dog under his hand barked and licked her hand. Lena petted him. “Bless you.”

With a fleeting smile, Lena got back up and continued to walk home as if it were a daily occurrence. And from inference, Kara could guess that it was a daily occurrence. 

When Lena got home, she drew herself a bath and submerged herself in mountains of bubbles. She talked on the phone as she did. 

Kara, who used to tune out Lena's phone conversations in the bath to watch other people on the street for her own enjoyment, finally tuned in. She didn’t look at Lena though, for the woman’s sake and privacy, and laid on the couch next door to listen dutifully. 

“Look, I don’t care how much you have to—” Lena paused to listen. She sighed irritably. “Then pull it from my personal account! I could spare a couple hundred grand. You know who can’t? A girl drowning in thousands of dollars of medical bills.”

Lena continued to argue with the person on the other line. She was calm the entire time, but the bite of her voice was equal to that of a cobra.

The entire time, Kara had to reevaluate herself. She plopped her head against the back of the couch and inhaled deeply. Lena Luthor was undoubtedly the kindest person she ever met. 

But she also had the softest smile when people spoke to her about something other than the vices of her last name, and the kindest voice when patiently speaking about the hardship of distributing polynomials. When Lena laughed, genuinely, not the ones forced out of her lungs at a crude business meeting, she’d throw her head back and grin, all the way up to her eyes.

So maybe she looking at Lena for more than her own protection and the overwhelming curiosity of this woman’s virtues. Maybe she thought that Lena underneath the striking light of an outdoor salad bar looked like a sculpture molded from marble. Maybe she thought that she looked at her eyes more than she cared to admit, just because they seemed to be a window into Lena's heart. 

When Lena cut the line and answered her phone with a good-hearted laugh, Kara just stopped and listened. 

“You have to put yourself out there, Lena!” Sam argued, slamming down her coffee cup particularly hard enough to shake the table.

Lena calmly sipped at her tea, forcing her quirking lips to stay steady unless she wanted her friend to cry out that she wasn’t taking this as seriously as Sam wanted. And in many ways than one, it was sort of true. 

“Sam, darling, you know I’m busy with work,” she said, and she could see Sam softening up just a touch, “I blew off Jack last week because I had things to do. And you know how much trying to make up with him meant to me.”

Sam bristled. She took a measly sip of her coffee, staring Lena down with intent eyes that kept searching and searching, just as she always did. “You won’t even give one date a try?” she negotiated instead, leaning forward against her chair for Lena’s answer. 

“Wasn’t the girl you set me up with last night a date?” Lena asked her with a tilt of the head.

Then Sam groaned, exasperated and frustrated at the situation before her. She ran her hands over her face and looked up at the sky, before sucking a breath in and looking pointedly at Lena. She pushed her coffee cup away from her. “Fine, fine,” she grumbled, making Lena beam in victory, “you win. Can you at least enlighten me with something?”

“Depends on what it is,” Lena said, taking a sip of her tea. The last time Sam wanted to be “enlightened”, she was tricked into taking care of Ruby for an afternoon. 

“What’s your type?” Sam asked her, arching an eyebrow in genuine curiosity. “I’m willing to bet half of National City is dying to hear about who’s on the list for being a bachelor to world-renowned Lena Luthor.”

Lena smiled at her. “If I’m being honest with you, Sam, I don’t even think I have a type,” she said vaguely, and Sam pointed an accusing finger at her.

“Don’t start with me,” she warned. Lena tried not to roll her eyes.

“Well, if I had to pick,” she said with a sigh, drumming her fingers against the sides of her cup, “they’d have to be kind, gentle, warm— with long white robes and an aura around them that prevents you, and us, from seeing them because even glimpsing the halo on their head would—”

Sam looked excited the entire time she spoke. She kept nodding along to Lena’s every word, hanging onto them like she was making mental jot notes to save for later. Then her smile slowly faded from her face, and Lena couldn’t stop the laugh coming out of her chest even if she tried. 

“Lena!” Sam accused, and Lena kept on laughing. “You can’t fuck your guardian angel!”

“Maybe— you’re probably right. But I’m just saying, if I had one…” Lena mused, and the appalled look Sam gave her was enough for the tea to nearly go down the wrong route. 

A breeze passed along the shell of Lena’s ear. She shrugged it off and argued with Sam about the ethics of celestial being procreation. Because, after all, her lunch breaks were too short not to. Besides, angels?

She’d need to see one unfurl their wings and glow like a newly screwed light bulb for her to believe them.

There were many things in the world that Kara wished she had the power to take away. 

One of them was the tears falling onto Lena’s duvet, her room bathed in an amber glow from a nearby street lamp outside her window. 

It was such a turn around from that morning that Kara wondered if she was experiencing whiplash. Lena was so happy to wake up that morning that she made herself a stack of pancakes and drizzled it with honey and butter, a treat the woman almost never allowed herself. She bounced her heel to the sound of a pop song in the car while she typed up emails, even allowing herself to hum a bit to the pieces she knew. All the while, Kara watched her with a pressing feeling in her chest. Like warm tea going down her throat. 

But then she got a voicemail from NCPD, about her brother’s twenty-seven consecutive life sentences being driven down to a half. 

Kara sat on the edge of her bed, watching Lena cry with a frown. Her hand seemed to gravitate towards the one clutching hard around a fluffy pillow, Lena’s face half buried in it as she sobbed harder and harder. Her tears felt never ending. 

And each time Lena gripped onto the pillow tighter, hiccuped, or buried her face deeper, Kara could feel something warm and heavy in her chest start to weigh downwards. It felt like pin pricks being pushed into her very soul when Lena sobbed particularly hard, grabbing onto her slippery pillow like it was a last lifeline. 

Then when Lena stopped and crawled into bed, her frame so small and fragile, it was like a bungee cord snapped in Kara’s mind.

She waited until Lena was settled under the covers to climb on top of the bed, then pressed her shoulder against the warm mattress and wrapped an arm around Lena’s waist. She buried her face between Lena’s shoulder blades while she cried her heart out, and each sob felt like a stitch under Kara’s sternum.

As an angel, Kara was completely invisible to all of humanity— “Human contact could quite literally break a person’s mind,” J’onn explained to her so, so many eons ago. She was only allowed to manipulate certain inanimate things on Earth to protect Lena, but that was the extent of her power. That also meant that Lena couldn’t feel even a ghost of her touch, not even if she tried her hardest. 

Even with that knowledge, Kara still pressed. She forced her mind to will Lena to know that she was there, that she will always be there, no matter what variable was thrown into the equation of life. 

And it scared her quite a bit, knowing that she’d give her life for a woman who didn’t even know was protecting her. 

“I’ll protect you from whatever you want me to,” Kara said quietly. Even her voice couldn’t be heard. It made her want to shout right into Lena’s ear, but that was against her better judgement. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

That terrified her even more— just the mere fact that she made a vow to Lena without even a second thought. 

Just please, don’t cry, she begged Lena, and held onto her tighter when Lena sniffled.

In several calming breaths, Lena’s sobs were finally subsiding. They were gradually fading away into silent tears, then rapid blinks of the lashes, until she was left rubbing at her sore eyes with a sweater sleeve. 

Lena fell asleep to the sounds of the noisy city. Kara never let go of her. 

When her chest heaved up and down in a slow rhythm, Kara slowly detached herself away. Then she stared, for a very long time, at the way Lena looked so young and small curled up in a fluffy sweater and a bed too big to fit just one person. 

The blanket hiked down to Lena’s abdomen when she shifted, and even with the sweater the goosebumps on her arms were beginning to show. Kara made a unanimous decision.

Even though it was forbidden to toy with objects on Earth if it wasn’t meant for the direct protection of her faithful, technically drawing up a blanket up to Lena’s chin was protecting her from a cold that she could die from. At least technically, that was how she would defend herself, if it came to it. 

Third time’s the charm, she thought, because she didn’t leave Lena’s side without a gentle kiss on the forehead. 

Lena’s brow scrunched up in response. 

Then slowly, it smoothed out again. Her breathing reset and she was sound asleep, nuzzling her chin into the thick blanket. It felt like smothering tea was going down Kara’s throat. 

The very next morning, Lena left the house at five in the morning for an emergency meeting. She ran out of the house without even sparing a glance in her kitchen’s way, and Kara wished she could see her just to see the deep frown on her face.

Lena didn’t even bother to check if her coffee was tampered with before downing the entire thing outside the conference room. Which was very concerning— not just because Kara had to be twice on guard now and actually take her duties a bit more seriously (as if she wasn’t already), but now that Lena was vulnerable, there was a good chance that today would be her last taste of Earth, as Clark lovingly called it. 

So for the entirety of the sunny, beautiful morning, Kara was on edge. 

Her conference didn’t take too long, thankfully. In fact, the longest portion of the meeting was from getting everyone settled in, and Kara could see the clear displeasure on Lena’s face as each man in the room chuckled and chatted amongst themselves while she presented. Kara wished she could maybe, just maybe, tilt the coffee down one of their shirts. 

When it was all over, Lena stayed back to go through her company’s reports. Kara sat down in an empty swivel chair, tilting it left and right and hoping that Lena played it off as the wind. She didn’t spare a glance in Kara’s direction once for the entire evening. 

Thankfully, Jess forced her to eat before thinking about stepping into another meeting. Lena ate her salad like a hungry rabbit, getting through everything on the plate without a second to breathe. Her eyes stayed concentrated on her tablet, and for the millionth time in the month Kara was assigned to protect her, she was in awe. 

That awe stayed prolonged when Lena got up, eyes glued to her screen, and accepted a business call on her phone while she counted figures on a spreadsheet. 

It was only when everything on her plate was empty that Lena decided to finally relax. She asked her driver to take her home in the shortest route possible, propping her elbow on the side door to give herself some time to nap. Like everything in her body unraveled at once, Lena slumped and fell asleep, her chest coming up in short little puffs. 

And all that Kara could do was stare. 

For a young successful CEO, Lena looked a lot older than she was. She frowned even in her sleep, a scrunch in her brow and her lips pressed together tightly. Her eyelashes fluttered now and again, and Kara could swear that a ladybug could balance itself on the length of those lashes. 

She missed the color green. Outside, there was green everywhere, all in the grass and the mixture of the sky and the logos of shops in downtown National City. But there was a specific green she missed, one full of emeralds and diamonds in the eyes of Lena Luthor. 

Then she felt a little tug to her chest. When she looked up, a distance so far away that she couldn’t blame the driver for not noticing in the slightest, was a bus coming straight for them. The man was frantically trying to set off the emergency brakes, his face full of fear and sweat, but nothing was working. 

And then next to the bus, her ever omniscient cousin, was looking at her with a slight shake of the head. His face was grim, as it always was when he knew that there was nothing an angel could do to stop the natural death of a human, but it was set with a determination to stand his ground. An invitation extended to Kara. 

She’s done this before. Millions upon millions of times, and it never got easier to watch the one she protected be swallowed up in a war or pestilence, but she never interfered. It wasn’t her job anymore. She was to protect, never to prevent— words she had to repeat to herself like a mantra a billion times before. 

Lena’s eyes snapped open. Like a cold bucket of water came over, she tugged hard against her seat belt and looked frantically around, as if feeling the fear radiating off of Kara in waves. When she turned her head to look out the window, she finally saw the bus, less than a mile away from where she was. Her mouth opened in a scream, an arm reaching over to tug the driver to her very frightened concern.

When Lena screamed, her voice hoarse with fear and genuine dread, not for herself, but for the eyes landing squarely on the school kids a street in front of them, Kara couldn’t take it anymore. 

Like a slingshot, she snapped herself out of the car and made her way to the bus, slowing down but still two tons of death metal coming to wreck anything in its way. Hands pressed on its front and she pushed, grounding herself on the street pavement and grinding her teeth together with the effort. It didn’t take very much, really, but her true fear was looking back to see if it hit Lena before she could get there. 

It didn’t hit Lena, thankfully, because she stepped out of her black Sedan to rush to the little boy pushed aside by a pedestrian from the panic of a rushing bus down a slope. He cried over the open wound on his knee, and Lena bent down, talking him down in a hushed whisper and whipping her phone out for a quick call to the ambulance. 

Kara stood there, hands on her hips, unscuffed but a little shocked at the entire situation. There was chaos everywhere, people murmuring among themselves and others helping the passengers off the terrifying hell ride. The bus driver was speaking with arms flailing to a reporter nearby, looking dazed but overall unscathed. 

When Lena helped the little boy up to his feet and offered him a big smile, Kara allowed herself to finally relax. She grinned, slumping her shoulders, and made her way back to be in Lena’s inner circle. In case of other accidents. 

But then she looked up, right into the horrified face of Kal-El, and three things happened at once.

One, he mouthed something to her that she could barely make out, because the pain behind her eyes was so unbearable that it felt like sharpened pencils. She yelped, pushing her palms into her eye sockets and hissing in pain. 

Secondly, when she opened her eyes again, all she could see was a flashing white. It pulsed, like it had a heartbeat of its own, and then it turned green. And her first instinct was to think about Lena, because those were the colors of Lena’s clothes, Lena’s eyes. 

And then lastly, when the pain in her eyes were gone, she finally realized that there was no ground beneath her feet— or her back, for that matter.

She was falling. 

And falling.

Lena. 

That was the only thought in her head when her back pressed against something sharp and hard, an unfamiliar feeling tingling all over her body like they were fire ants pressed against every nerve. She stiffened, and it only made the pain worse. 

“Oh jeez,” Kara wheezed with a groan. She flipped herself over to her stomach, stiffening and withering on the pavement. “Gosh, that hurts. That really hurts!” she exclaimed, wincing when pain shot through her shoulder. She flipped again onto her back to alleviate the pain, wheezing and eyes pricking with tears.

She blinked a couple times. Her eyeballs aching in the very back of her sockets, she finally had a faceful of whatever she was looking at. Blue. Like the sky.

Because it was the sky, and she was five steps away from the back doorstep of L-Corp.

Kara pressed a hand over the uneven pavement, her palm catching a fistful of pebbles and grime, and she pushed herself upwards. Unsteady on her feet, her legs made a stride over to the building.

“Miss Luthor,” Jess said quietly over her intercom. “There’s a situation in the main hall that needs your immediate attention.”

Lena paused, her fingers floating over the keyboard of her laptop. She rubbed her eyes and blinked, pressing a button on her phone and clearing her throat. “If it’s someone needing to meet with me, tell them to book an appointment,” she said evenly. She tried not to make the exhaustion in her voice too evident.

“Yes, but…” There was clear hesitation in her assistant's voice.

There was a reason that she trusted Jess with nearly everything in her life. She knew exactly how to deal with things without needing Lena’s second opinion, and she always managed to make the right call. So for her to hesitate, even for a second, was something that would always put Lena at edge. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked, and adrenaline pumped through her system for any kind of situation.

“There’s a woman downstairs,” Jess began, a drawl to her voice as she thought of a perfect way to break things to Lena, “she kept insisting that she sees you, because you’re the only one who could help her.”

Oh.

Lena tried not to shake as she promised Jess to be right there. Another one of Lex’s victims, she presumed. Or even Lillian’s. And uncommonly, but not rarely, there were people seeking her to find tribulation for Lionel’s actions. She took a deep breath, smoothing out her skirt, and then made her way downstairs.

When she met with Jess, she was nearly taken aback by the woman in front of her.

Not just by her natural beauty and the radiance that glowed off of her like a glow stick in mid-October, but by the fact that she seemed nearly… familiar. Like a name that was on the tip of her tongue. 

“Is there a problem, Miss…?” Lena said, raising an eyebrow in question. She stuck her hand out for a handshake.

She was used to people blatantly ignoring her handshakes. She wasn’t used to, however, at seeing someone so confused at a prospect of one. The blonde woman just knitted her brow, tilting her head down at Lena’s hand. 

But then it looked as if a light bulb went off in her head because she reached over and tightly gripped Lena’s hand, shaking it up and down like it was a windup toy. 

“Kara,” the woman said with a smile.

Lena cleared her throat. “Miss Kara,” she said, voice wavering, “what can I help you with?”

“Well, a lot of things, actually.” Kara tilted her head to the side, as if in thought. “But I was hoping if we could, um…” She pointed a finger in Jess’s way. 

Jess glided her eyes away from the situation, typing away at her desk as if she didn’t notice they were there. Lena respected the woman’s wishes by offering a hand to the direction of an empty waiting room.

Once they were there, Kara exploded into speaking a thousand words per minute, an exercise that almost made Lena winded from just standing there. 

“I’m your guardian angel,” she blurted out. Her hands kept wringing at her sides. “Well, I used to be, I think? I don’t have my powers at least— anyway! I think I was banished from heaven, because I saved you from dying when I wasn’t supposed to. Because, see, guardian angels are supposed to protect humans but they’re not supposed to prevent inevitable death, but yadda yadda I don’t think you really care about that. I really need your help, Lena. I know this is reversible, and I know you could help me because I’ve seen the things you’ve done before, but it’s okay if you don’t wanna help me! It’s— it’s a lot, I know, but I just really need a place to stay right now and to figure all of this out and—”

“Is this a joke?” Lena looked at her in disbelief.

Kara looked at her with the same baffled look. “Um… do you want me to make a joke?” she asked in confusion. “Knock knock?”

“No, I mean—” Lena took a step back from her. Everything under her feet felt wobbly, and she was willing to bet it wasn’t because of the thick size of her heels. “Is this a joke? Who sent you?”

“Um, just me.” Kara gave her a wobbly smile. She was playing with her nails in front of her, looking nervous and shy. Lena tried not to be deterred by that, though. “Look, I know this all sounds crazy— but I fell out of the sky and I could even show you where I fell! I really need you, Lena.”

“You—” Lena sucked in a deep breath. Not being able to take it anymore, she walked backwards until the back of her knees bumped against the edge of a chair. She sat down heavily, exhaling and pinching the bridge of her nose. Kara took a tentative step towards her, shifting her weight on either leg. Lena looked up at her. “You fell… out of heaven?”

“Booted out, basically.” Kara laughed nervously. “Just right after I stopped you from dying in a fatal car crash. Er, bus crash. But I think I was falling for a very long time, because it was afternoon when I stopped it but now it’s like, um, two in the morning?”

“Three. Three in the morning,” she replied wryly. 

“Yeah.”

Lena gulped. She steadied her eyes to Kara’s level. “So you’re my guardian angel.”

She didn’t think about the fact that if Kara really was her guardian angel, and then she had a very nice looking one. A really cute angel, if— if Kara was telling the truth, and she wasn’t just a delusional woman off the street. She had to mentally smack herself for thinking it.

Kara’s eyes were steady. Her lips pressed together in a thin line, and she said, “If you don’t believe me, I promise I’m telling the truth.”

“Kara, I’m sure you’re a nice person,” she said sincerely, shifting on her chair, “but you know how… ridiculous this sounds. Right?”

“If you don’t believe me, check the cameras,” Kara said confidently.

Lena quirked an eyebrow at her. “Kara, this is so lovely and all, but I’m not going to waste my time checking my security cameras for a joke that’s going way too far,” she said steely, gripping her hands together in her lap to prevent herself from yelling or, even worse, bursting into tears. 

Having a prank pulled on her at three in the morning by a gorgeous runway model in a bright white t-shirt and jeans wasn’t a good color on her. 

“I’m not pranking you,” Kara insisted. She took a step towards Lena, and Lena tried not to make her flinch so obvious. Kara’s melting blue eyes peered into hers with a sincerity that made her heart jump wildly in her chest. “Look, Lena— if you check the cameras and you don’t find anything, I promise I’ll get out of your way forever.”

“It still wastes my time, Kara,” she said, her voice small even in her throat.

Kara pursed her lips. After a moment, she said, “I’ll do anything you want, for as long as you want. Just please, Lena. You have to believe me.”

The candor in her voice wasn’t what made Lena stand up and walk all the way to the security room in dangerous heels that were already killing her feet. It was the way she kept saying her name— like it was coated in syrupy honey, just as golden and as sweet. It was a drawl on Kara’s tongue that made her melt just as much. 

When they were in the security room, the security man snoozing in a nearby chair, Lena cycled through every camera. Kara told her when to go back or click onto the next one, the concentration in her eyes only making Lena believe that either this was a very well-made plan to make a fool of herself, or a bizarre situation coming to life from the pages of her dreams. 

“There!” Kara exclaimed, pointing excitedly at the camera positioned over the back of her building. People usually didn’t hang around in that area, mostly because it was a tight space cornered between two buildings. 

When she checked the feedback, there weren't any loiters of any kind. There was a slight indent in the ground, however. 

Kara asked her to rewind thirty minutes, and she did. There was no indent in there this time. “Fast forward,” Kara said quietly. 

She did. 

Slowly, the sky was turning a brilliant blue, light and shining like on a summer day, except that it was two in the morning and there was nothing to atone where it came from. It was a tear in the sky, almost, because it was still so dark in the background of the sky, save for the slice of whitish blue above her camera. It almost looked like a piece of paper covering the lens. 

Like a flash of lightning, the camera was met with blank white for an entire second, before it came back to find a woman writhing in pain on the floor. 

“See!” Kara looked like she was ready to bounce off her feet. “That’s me right there.”

Lena held her tongue and let this play out. Because, really? A flash of white? That was textbook editing. Anything could’ve happened in that split second. Kara could’ve tampered with the camera and laid herself on the ground. She could’ve taken a hammer and made that indent. 

But then Kara shakily brought herself up, and it left Lena with a dry mouth. Her tongue felt bitter and swollen.

Kara’s entire back was exposed to the camera. There was an open wound from the nape of her neck to an inch away from her waist. Two slices in her shirt. There wasn’t any red. It was a blinding white, one that made purple dots dance in her vision when she blinked, even though her cameras were programmed to dampen any color too bright to see. 

And in front of her unblinking eyes, they sewed themselves up. Her shirt was repaired with it. Kara fell onto her knees and got back up again, staring into the logo of her company and her eyes lighting up in a way that somehow melted her heart (because really, no one ever had a reaction like that to the name of her brand, no matter how many times she changed it). 

Lena was aware of CGI. She worked with it, she breathed it, she knew of it. She knew that people could go a long way just to make cruel jokes. 

But when she looked at Kara, who looked into her eyes with watery blue that held hers without a single flicker of distaste or shame for her, Lena believed everything she saw. 

Besides, her body was long overdue for some water and rest, and she told herself that she could deal with this in the morning. 

“So…” she said lamely, blinking sleep away from her eyelids. “Did it hurt?”

Once the words were out of her mouth, Lena couldn’t snatch them back into her throat even if she desperately wanted to.

“When I fell from heaven?” Kara split into a grin. “I know humans usually say something about being in hell, but I think this is heaven when I saw you,” she declared, and the light in her voice and her eyes meant that she meant it as something friendly.

Lena turned her head away to laugh under her breath, switching the cameras back to its standard wide view. A little warm heat creeping into her neck, Lena cleared her throat and said, “How about I call my driver and take us to my apartment?”

She swore at herself for sounding like she was suggesting something, but Kara didn’t even seem to take it into account. She only beamed at Lena, relief clear in the way she was slumping her shoulders.

“I have so many ideas on how we can get me back home,” Kara said excitedly, following Lena out of the door. “No angel has ever gone back to heaven after they’ve been banished. But I know this one’s a mistake! They just need to hear me out, that’s all, and—”

“Kara,” Lena said tiredly, her phone lighting up with a confirmed reply from her driver. Kara stopped talking. “We can deal with this in the morning. I just need some sleep. You need some sleep. Okay?”

“Oh! Sleep. Right,” Kara said, nodding her head up and down. She scratched her head, looking a little embarrassed. “Um. How exactly do you go to sleep?”