Chapter Text
After Lex’s defeat, Lena packs a bag, gives away her shares at LuthorCorp, and moves to National City with a different name: Lena Kieran.
It’s probably foolish, not changing her first name at all, and using her middle name. But it’s also therapeutic, in a sense. Kieran was her birth mother’s last name, and Lena Kieran is who she would have been had the Luthors never adopted her.
She will be who she was always supposed to be.
Lillian would be proud. Lillian would be furious.
//
Lena donates everything.
There’s a children’s hospital owned by LuthorCorp that she gives 20 million dollars to.
An orphanage in Metropolis receives 5 million.
She also donates 8 million to a pro-alien non-profit organization.
Everything’s done anonymously.
//
There’s a little over five hundred grand in her bank account when she’s done. She manages to pull a few strings and withdraws it all out.
She leaves the Luthor name with nothing but a duffle bag of her belongings, a few wads of cash.
//
Lena still hates flying, so she decides to drive all the way to National City.
She buys the cheapest (but also cleanest) second-hand car she could find. It’s a bright blue Ford Fiesta and a Luthor would never be caught dead in it. Good thing she’s no longer one.
On her third night on the road, she remembers Jack Spheer. She buys a burner phone and sends him a text message with only two words and a million meanings: I’m sorry.
She almost regrets not saying goodbye in person, but swallows it down. He would’ve tried to stop her.
The phone is thrown away immediately and she doesn’t think of it again.
//
The drive to National City takes a week and some. She calls it a road trip and stops to sleep at a shabby motel or inn every night.
She goes through a Big Belly Burger drive through and decides that she likes cheeseburgers now. She has it for dinner more than once.
It’s midnight when she arrives at National City.
She’s waiting at a motel’s lobby when a headline from the day’s National City Tribune catches her eye:
LUTHOR HEIR REMAINS SILENT AFTER VENTURE SPACECRAFT MALFUNCTION
She rolls her eyes. Great, she thinks to herself, I’ve only been gone for a week and suddenly I’m to blame for a broken spaceship.
Curiosity nags at her, so she picks it up and skims through the article.
Following the spacecraft’s engine malfunction during its launch, the Venture has released a statement revealing that the source of the malfunction was likely in the ship’s oscillator, which was manufactured by LuthorCorp. No one from the manufacturing company has reached out to comment on this development.
Her first impulse is to be offended, because how dare they question the integrity of LuthorCorp’s aerospace division?
Before she’s able to read any further, the receptionist returns. She books a room and passes out on the bed.
//
She’s hungry when she wakes up, and she realizes that she completely missed lunch and dinner the previous day. After stuffing a few twenty’s in her wallet, she sets off to explore the city.
She buys a veggie sub from a street vendor for the first time ever and sits in the park a few blocks from her motel.
The sun shines a little differently in National City than it does in Metropolis. Metropolis is wet and cold, while National City is all yellow and warm.
She spends a portion of her time walking around the city and finds it a lot quieter. There’s still the sound of cars and street chatter, but it’s not in the same level of noise as Metropolis.
While Metropolis is all busy sidewalks, neon lights, and flashy advertising boards; National City is open streets adorned with palm trees.
She stumbles into the city’s business district and buys a National City Travel Guide booklet in a news stand (she pointedly ignores the newspapers and magazines), and settles in a small cafe.
NATIONAL CITY: THE HOME OF SUPERGIRL
It’s the first similarity to Metropolis she finds: the sprawling and ever-familiar ‘S’ that decorates the majority of the booklet’s cover. But that’s about it.
The resident Super has always been a vocal advocate of alien rights. The city’s been unofficially deemed the alien capital of the world, so extraterrestrial refugees more or less always find their way into the city to be under Supergirl’s protection.
With National City’s significant alien community, it’ll be the last place people would check for a lost Luthor.
And when Lillian inevitably tracks and chases her down, with guns blazing and all the trouble and spectacle she can muster, Supergirl will stand between them.
(Or so she hopes.)
//
It’s been a week since she’s moved to National City and it’s about time she makes a life out of it.
She buys a top-of-the-line computer and builds up Lena Kieran’s resume using online classes and free certifications, because she probably can’t use her three degrees anymore.
Her resume comes out unimpressive but she gets a call back from three of the twenty-six companies she’s applied to.
She probably over-does it, but she gets a position in IT.
//
Despite being the home of Supergirl, the most powerful woman in National City is human.
Cat Grant.
She remembers meeting her briefly at a gala in Metropolis three years ago. Cat called her Lianne the entire night and left early.
Lena thinks she could make a home out of her media empire.
//
The man who tours her around the CatCo Worldwide Media office is boring and wearing a shirt two sizes too big in the most horrendous color Lena’s ever seen (it manages to be both mustard and beige).
“Here’s the server room,” he drones out, gesturing towards the panels of glass separating them and the line of computer servers at the other side.
It looks like a glorified closet and Lena has to stop herself from scoffing and saying, this is it?
When the man tells her that he’ll finally be showing her to her desk, she expects to be led to a reclusive office cube.
What she doesn’t expect is going up to CatCo’s top floor and being shown a desk right in the view of the glass-walled office so clearly labeled: Cat Grant, CEO. There’s a nervous shiver that runs down her spine that she almost fails to repress.
She barely remembered my name, she tells herself, she won’t remember my face.
Lena spends the rest of the first day being an employee of CatCo getting briefed over the company’s vision and her job’s responsibilities.
//
CatCo’s IT department isn’t quite on the same caliber as Lena’s used to. They’re mostly there to renew software licenses and assisting employees when they forget the password to their machine.
She arrives way too early on her second day wearing the most banal button-up and slacks she could find in the nearest department store. Her heels are Louis Vuitton, but it’s vague enough that people won’t notice.
When it’s five minutes to 9 o’clock, a short, curly-haired rambunctious blonde steps onto the floor carrying a cup of coffee and all but runs towards the glass door of Cat Grant’s office. Lena tracks her movements, and the blonde just ends up a few feet from her desk.
They catch each other’s eye when the woman’s flicker in recognition and she chirps, “Oh! You must be Winn’s replacement.” A confused look probably shows up on Lena’s face, and the girl must notice because she continues with, “You’re the new IT person?”
Lena guesses that she must be. “Um,” she says, “yeah.”
“I’m Eve Teschmacher,” she introduces herself. “I’m Ms. Grant’s new assistant, and Kara’s replacement!”
The only name Lena really registers is Ms. Grant, so she only nods and responds, “I’m Lena”—she gets some nerves at the practiced ease of her saying her name, so she quickly follows it up with—“Kieran! I’m Lena Kieran.”
It probably was a bad idea to use my actual name, she berates herself, But what’s done is done.
Someone whisper-shouts a “She’s coming!” that makes Eve stand straighter and everyone else hop onto their feet. Lena’s too bewildered to question what’s happening before she’s standing up herself.
A ding from an elevator that Lena didn’t even notice at first reverberates around the bullpen and Cat Grant emerges. Yep, Lena confirms, I definitely remember her. Cat sweeps up the room and almost glides towards her office amidst the silence.
Everyone watches Cat Grant settle onto her desk. It’s not until she’s seated herself that Eve enters her office with the coffee and everyone lets out a collective sigh and sits back down.
Even Lillian Luthor couldn’t command that presence, and her net worth exceeds the entirety of CatCo’s.
It’s a bit majestic, Lena thinks.
When everything settles down onto the work day, she’s given the most exciting task of sorting through spam email. She manages to automate it before it’s even lunch time.
Thirty minutes before lunch, Eve Teschmacher jogs to the elevator. She returns fifteen minutes later with a brown paper bag. Eve smiles at her as she passes her desk.
At 12 o’clock, Lena decides to head out for lunch so she reaches over her desk to turn off her monitors. She’s collecting her phone when a loud, bellowing voice (that she soon learns is Cat Grant’s) shouts from behind her:
“Miss Teschmacheeeer! ”
Lena jolts around in alarm, looking over the direction of Cat Grant’s office. She can see her through the glass walls and she’s standing behind her desk, leaning forward with both hands planted on the table in front of her.
She’s familiar with the look on Cat Grant’s face; she’s been on the receiving end of it a lot of times from her old boarding school dean when she’s been caught smoking behind the girls’ dorms more than once.
Before she can even look at Eve in alarm, the assistant is already darting to her boss’ office.
She doesn’t know why she hangs around, but she hears vague snippets of the very one-sided conversation happening behind the glass doors. It’s something about a drowning salad.
A few shouts later, and with a final shriek of “Call Kiera! ”, Eve runs out of her office in tears. Lena can do nothing but watch her dash out.
Lena looks around the bullpen in incredulity but no one even glances up throughout the entire ordeal. She thinks to snip a look back at Cat Grant, but ultimately decides against it.
She goes to lunch.
//
Despite the debacle between Cat Grant and her assistant, the rest of her day is uneventful. She packs her up her canvas messenger bag (A Luthor using a canvas messenger bag, she giddily thinks, who would have thought? ) and decides to go—
I’ve been living in a motel room.
She should really get an apartment.
//
Lena goes through the arduous process of apartment hunting as soon as the weekend lands.
While what’s left of her cash could possibly cover a nice apartment’s down payment and a few months’ rent, her measly income from her entry-level IT position would barely be able to keep up.
She decides to live small.
She entertains the idea of having a roommate for one critical minute and unsurprisingly dismisses it.
It’s past lunchtime and Lena’s been awake since 7 in the morning looking at places when she finally finds it.
There’s an apartment three blocks away from CatCo that’s similar in size to her bathroom at the Luthor Manor. It’s unfurnished, the walls are stark white, and the floors are made of wood look tiles. It’s such a contrast to her old apartment that she announces that she’ll be taking it three steps in.
She’s now the proud tenant of a studio apartment at National City.
It’s odd to be happy about it, Lena thinks. It’s an odd thing to be happy at all.
//
She moves in that same day. All her belongings fit inside a duffle bag so there’s not much packing involved.
It’s takes her an hour to choose a mattress at the Home Depot and too late to realize that she forgot to buy a bed frame to go along with it. The movers don’t give her an odd look when she awkwardly tells them to just drop her newly-bought mattress on the floor.
The Home Depot is 30 minutes away from closing time when she realizes that she’s forgotten to buy pillows, sheets, and blankets, too.
//
It’s a testament to how Lena’s been so disconnected with the rest of the world that the first time she hears of the Alien Amnesty Act being approved is from the fleeting conversations she hears on her way to work.
The president’s going to visit town and Supergirl’s on the welcoming committee.
//
CatCo is abuzz with activity, and Lena remembers that although it’s not known for its particularly hard-hitting articles, their editor-in-chief is still a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
She catches sight of him during the meeting at Cat’s glass-walled office. He looks and acts exactly as one would expect someone to be when they’re named Snapper Carr. He’s the first one out of as soon as they’re dismissed.
A preppy blonde woman with glasses marches after him with an entirely too affronted tone to her steps. She yells a “Mr. Carr!” but ends up getting ignored.
Lena’s gaze leaves the monitors in front of her and goes to the woman left standing in the middle of the bullpen watching Snapper Carr’s retreating back, stuttering out a mess. Lena can’t help but raise a brow in amusement at the series of stammered words coming out of the blonde’s mouth.
She almost feels bad for her.
The blonde woman doesn’t even spare her a glance when she turns around and marches back to Cat’s office.
Now Lena really does feel bad for her. Cat’s going to eat her alive with that attitude.
She decides to tune in on the impending explosion, but all that happens is the blonde ranting to Cat Grant of all people, and the woman actually listening without butting in. It ends with the blonde requesting of all things that Cat Grant talk to Snapper Carr, please.
It seems to be what snaps Cat Grant back to her usual self. “Kiera,” she says, chastising but firm, “If he won’t give you a story, then you go find one yourself.”
“But he won’t even listen to me!” the woman whines. She sounds like a petulant child and Lena’s unimpressed.
“Because he thinks you’re not worth listening to,” Cat tells her. “You have to show him that you are.”
It’s pretty good advice, Lena thinks. And she’s surprised that it comes from Cat Grant telling off a peevish employee that she seems to like (which is saying a lot, considering that it’s Cat Grant). But she’s even more surprised that it works.
The blonde woman (who’s apparently named Kiera—or is it? She never knows when it’s Cat Grant), marches out of Cat’s office with a new resolve.
Lena is left feeling a little bit dumbfounded at the outcome of the conversation.
What the hell?
//
Not being a part of the news division of CatCo also means not having anything to do during momentous occasions such as these, because the office is mostly empty and no one’s around to tell you to work if you aren’t.
Reporters are all hands on deck, running around National City gathering up sources and interviewing key people surrounding the event.
Photographers are already at the venue of the signing, scoping out the area, looking for the most optimal angles.
Cat Grant isn’t at her office either. She’s probably at some exclusive VIP viewing of the event in an undisclosed location.
(She wonders—if she were Lena Luthor right now, at National City, would she be interviewed by a CatCo reporter, too?
She mentally scoffs.
Of course she would be. She’s the sister of the most notorious alien-hater in the world, after all.)
The office is quiet, and there’s also barely a trickle of spam mail coming in so she literally has nothing to do. It’s like all the people on Earth took a break to watch this world-changing moment.
...and Lena’s at her desk, sorting out spam email. She bites at her bottom lip and contemplates.
She might as well join in.
//
As if it wasn’t too big of a spectacle already—the Earth is at the beginnings of opening its doors to beings all over the universe, then an alien decides to shoot fireballs at the President of the United States just as she’s about to make history.
Everything happens all at once, after that.
It’s the first time she actually sees Supergirl in the flesh, landing in front the president with a loud boom. Another fireball gets shot at them and the hero throws her cape around herself like a shield but she still gets blasted off the stage.
Lena looks over to the source of the projectiles and sees what would look like a regular woman a few feet away—except both her hands are poised in front of her, aflame. It’s also the first time Lena actually sees a hostile alien, and her stress level skyrockets, alarm bells ringing in her head. Her fight-or-flight response kicks in and she curses—really curses—that her immediate response is to fight.
And fight she did, albeit uselessly. She grabs cracked up cement debris from the ground and just flings it towards the alien. It hits her square at the back of her head just as she’s propelling her hand back to presumably throw another fireball at the president.
The rock Lena throws doesn’t really seem to outwardly harm the literally red-hot-angry alien, but it does get her attention. The alien’s head snaps towards her direction and Lena immediately sees the consequences of her actions.
I’ve made a terrible mistake, she off-handedly and inappropriately thinks.
The alien’s eyes that are menacingly looking at her start glowing and Lena can do nothing but stare right back at it and take several stumbling steps back. Just as the alien’s about to tear a flaming hole in her skull, Lena’s suddenly getting tackled, all the air leaving her lungs in one fell swoop as she hits the ground with a surprising amount of force.
“Holy shit!” her tackler exclaims, voice laced in adrenaline, “You really just threw a rock at an Infernian!”
Before Lena can even comprehend what she’s done, the body on top of her suddenly heaves and rolls, bringing Lena along with her. A blast of heat vision hits the spot they were just at and Lena decides to just make sense of the situation she’s gotten herself into when she’s out of immediate danger.
Somewhere in her peripheral, a woman shouts, “Maggie, stay down!”
Whoever’s on top of her—presumably Maggie—shields her head under their arms and braces. Gunshots are fired, but there’s also the tell tale sound of heat vision going off.
Maggie springs to her feet and draws out her gun before she can even stand—she does it as if it’s second nature to her, and Lena deduces she’s a cop. “Get out of—!”
A fireball hits the ground near Maggie’s feet and Lena quickly pulls her back by her shirt before the cop stumbles into the flame it makes.
“Son of a—”
Then suddenly Supergirl is there, firing at the alien with her own brand of heat vision. The Infernian—as Lena’s been informed just earlier—reciprocates.
A loud boom fills Lena’s ears.
The contact of both energies creates an explosion small enough to not harm anyone around them, but big enough to knock Maggie, Lena, and the woman from earlier away a few feet.
Infernian runs through Lena’s brain. She goes through the memory Lex’s database of different species of aliens and she remembers.
(Infernians: capable of creating and controlling fire.)
“Vacuum!” Lena wheezes out, her breath a little short from being forcibly thrown to the ground a little too much today.
The woman from earlier snaps her head towards her. They lock eyes for a split second before hers widen in sudden realization, then she twists to look over at Supergirl and yells, “She’s right! Supergirl, you have to make a vacuum!”
Supergirl nods in acknowledgement, then she takes off, flying small, tight circles around the Infernian.
It’s exhilarating to watch her in action, Lena thinks, even though she sees nothing but a red and blue blur, her speed too much for her eyes to register.
It’s different from hearing about a hero saving the day, or seeing them carry the weight of a plane through a TV screen. It’s mesmerizing, right now, to see a Super’s abilities in front of her eyes, and for a brief moment of clarity, she finally understands Lex’s fixation.
Then suddenly it’s all too much. The meaning behind her thoughts hit her like a freight train, and the absurdity of the situation catches up to her.
The Infernian is subdued, her flames tapering out.
Lena’s heart is racing. She scrambles to get back up on her feet, but her hands are shaking so much she only manages to get on her knees. Her heart feels like it’s about to jump out and she wants to reach inside to stop it, but she only ends up clawing at her chest.
Someone’s kneeling in front of her, she notices. They bring Lena’s hands into their own and presses a palm against her chest. They’re saying something, but Lena honestly can’t hear with all the rushing and ringing in her ears.
The sight of whoever’s in front of her blurs in and out, and whatever she breathes in never quite settles in her lungs.
Oh god I’m gonna pass out is the last thing she thinks of before passing out.
//
Lena comes to in a hospital. She’s still in her own clothes.
“Hey,” someone says from a few feet away.
Lena turns to look at the source of the voice and sees the cop who tackled her, now wearing an NCPD windbreaker, peeking through the curtains separating her from the rest of the room.
“I’m Detective Maggie Sawyer from the NCPD. Can I come in?”
Lena only nods. No use stopping the inevitable.
Maggie steps closer and sits down on the chair placed beside her bed. Lena expects her to immediately fire off questions that need answers—How did you know what to do with the Infernian? What are you doing in National City? Who are you, really?—but instead, she only tells her, “It’s a brave thing, what you did today.”
Lena blinks at her. “I—” Her voice is hoarse and scratchy, so she clears her throat and tries again. “I had a panic attack and then passed out.”
“Yeah, you did.” There’s a twinkle of amusement at her eyes, and Lena realizes that the detective isn’t patronizing her at all. “But not before saving the president’s life, then saving my life, then figuring out how to stop an Infernian.”
Lena lets out an indignant scoff. “Most of those were split-second reactions than actual conscious decisions.”
Maggie actually laughs at that, but her voice is serious when she says, “You still did them. It doesn’t matter why in situations like those. You saved lives, including mine and the president’s.”
“Intention is the basis of the goodness of an action.”
“Accept the compliment, lady.”
Lena sighs. “You saved my life, too,” she says. “Thank you.”
Maggie smiles at her. “It’s my job.”
There’s a beat of silence before Lena asks, “When do I get to leave?”
“I’m just here to see if you’re up to giving us a statement,” Maggie tells her. “But the doctors have told me that you’re free to go once you regain consciousness and the nurses check you out.”
Lena chews on her bottom lip. “Do I have to?”
“Oh, um.” Maggie’s eyebrows draws together. “You’re not required to.”
“I’d rather not.”
The detective’s jaw unhinges for a moment before she collects herself. “Alright then,” she tells Lena, standing up. “Thank you for your time, Miss—”
“Kieran,” Lena supplies. “My name is Lena Kieran.”
“Well, thank you for your time, Ms. Kieran.” Maggie moves to leave. “I’ll send the nurses in to check you out.”
Lena nods once. “Thank you, Detective Sawyer.”
//
Once the nurses check her out and she signs the discharge papers, Lena heads straight for her apartment.
She dreams of nothing that night.
//
Lena goes to work the next day.
She sits at her desk, fires up her automatic spam email sorter (it’s an incredibly over-engineered email sorter, and possibly the most advanced software in the building), and decides that she doesn’t want to be around the people in the bullpen.
The head of the IT department is named Mackenzie, “But you can call me Macky.” She’s an Asian woman with immaculate hair.
“Macky,” Lena tests, “can I borrow the key to the server room?”
“Hey, you’re the new hire, right? The one assigned to Ms. Grant.”
“Um, yeah.” Lena hesitates. “Assigned to Ms. Grant?”
“Yep,” she confirms. “We always have at least one of us near the boss in case she has any sudden, crazy requests. The last guy resigned.”
“And you put me there?”
“You seemed like you knew a bit of everything during your technical interview, so you were pretty much perfect for the job.”
Lena did show off a bit during her technical interview, but it was just to compensate for her frankly lacking resume.
“Oh.”
“Anyway, what did you need?”
Lena perks up a little. Right. “Um, the key to the server room.”
“The boss finally put you up to something, huh?”
“Sure.”
Macky chuckles. “It was only a matter of time.”
Sure it was.
“Anyway, your keycard has full access. Perks of being assigned to Ms. Grant.” She winks.
//
True to Macky’s words, the lock dings with a green light when she swipes her keycard.
The size of CatCo’s server room is pretty much nothing compared to LuthorCorp’s (theirs spans an entire floor—and that’s just for the main headquarters, which doesn’t even house the servers for the international offices).
She’s already sitting and facing the terminal when she realizes that she’s forgotten to ask for the login.
Lena chews on her bottom lip and slumps down on the chair to contemplate her next move. She stares at the keyboard and just… she could probably guess, maybe, but come on, how many times have that actually worked in real life?
(She remembers a story Lex told her about the day he had to fire an entire team of scientists.
“An entire team?” Lena asked in disbelief.
“The password to their console was taped on their coffee maker, Lena,” Lex explained. “It’s that sort of disregard for information security that LuthorCorp can’t risk.”)
Lena takes a deep breath and shuffles around the desk, rummages through the drawers, flips through misplaced documents, checks under the mouse, mousepad, and it’s when she lifts up the keyboard to check underneath it that she finds what she’s looking for.
There’s a worn and stained piece of paper taped to the table with only one thing written on it:
@LLid0!sW1nn
She can’t help but laugh at the obvious pun. No, Winn, she thinks to herself, All I do is win.
To be completely honest, she’s only here to hook up her automatic spam email sorter straight to the server. Her computer’s starting to stutter with the amount it’s processing all at once, so having the emails sorted before it even lands in anyone’s inbox could possibly lessen the load.
Once she sets up her system, she works on establishing a connection when she gets the sudden alert that the port is already being used.
She quirks up brow in confusion and looks at the existing connections to the server and gets back a list of all the IP addresses of all the machines at the CatCo building. She idly scans it when she notices that one of the addresses are not like the others.
She leans in closer to the screen just to make sure she’s seeing right.
It’s a remote connection.
She opens up the request logs for the server and filters out the local connections.
There’s a timestamp along each request, and she scrolls up a considerable amount and sees that the connection’s been there for months.
She notices, with increasing uneasiness, that there’s a request to and from the remote network every single day, in one hour intervals.
And as if sensing her, a new request pops up.
What. The. Fuck.