Chapter Text
“… which would eventually lead to a decrease in criminal activity, having taken into account the 3.4% projected decrease in criminal recidivism and – ”
Kara yawned.
She couldn’t help it. She’d been up for hours, trying to help Nia fight crime in the city, fighting off William’s advances while delivering her articles to Andrea on time, and scheduling in extra time for Alex to freak out about how amazing and wonderful Kelly was. Kara had helped her plan three dates in as many days, and while she was happy for her sister - exalted, even - that she had found someone so wonderful to spend her time with, Kara could just feel how it was weighing on her, just a little bit. Adding to a tiredness of the monotony of a life where something was missing. A tiredness that had been building for some time.
There was so much to do, and so little time to do it in, even for someone as inhumanly fast as her.
She was exhausted.
And it didn’t help that Lex had called her into his office for a dry meeting on crime-fighting statistics and whatnot. She had so much trouble keeping up with his monotonous droning about things she had a hard time trying to be excited about.
“I’m sorry,” Lex swiveled in his chair. “Am I boring you?”
Kara sighed and continued doodling on her notepad instead of taking the notes Lex had suggested she did. So far she had written:
Crime bad.
Numbers good.
Have to be better
And then a whole lot of doodles ranging from flying dogs to the house of El crest had followed.
An over-exaggerated cough from next to her made Kara look up. Alex was giving her a meaningful look, motioning her head from Kara to Lex’s direction. Kara raised her head to see Lex’s annoyed grimace and realized his comment had been directed at her.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, not sounding as apologetic as Lex would surely wish her to be, “what did you say?”
Lex sighed.
“Were you even paying attention?”
“Eh,” Kara glanced down at her notes. “Crime is bad and we have to do better?” she guessed.
Lex sighed even deeper.
“Supergirl,” he shook his head in mock disappointment, “you seem distracted lately. You’re not paying attention in our meetings, your performances on the street are subpar – ”
Kara rolled her eyes at that.
“ – and to be completely honest, you don’t look so great. So what is up with my resident superhero, hmm? What’s keeping you from achieving your full potential?”
Kara resisted the urge to shoot a laserbeam through his head, but just barely.
“Nothing. Lot of work is all.”
Lex smiled.
“Oh, I get that. Lena and I have been working endlessly on our projects too, so, I get being a little preoccupied.”
Kara clenched her jaw at the mention of him and Lena working together. She knew he just said it to get a rise out of her. She knew he loved taunting her, just watching her jaw clench at any mention of Lena's name.
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction.
“However, Supergirl,” he continued, “being tired is no excuse for underperforming at your job. I’m in the meeting. Your sister’s in the meeting. If everybody contributes, I think it’s only fair that we expect the same from you, don’t you think?”
“I’m flying around all day and night saving people from danger. Forgive me if I feel like my work might preoccupy me just a tad more than you fiddling around in your lab,” she bit back.
Lex’s eyebrow twitched.
“Careful now, Supergirl. The things that come out of that lab have saved your hide multiple times.”
“You mean Lena has."
“I would watch your tone, Super – ”
“Lex!”
They all turned their heads when Lena Luthor, clad in a tight skirt, blouse and labcoat stormed into the room, the door hitting the wall with a loud bang. She was panting and her heart was racing, Kara heard. She even noticed tiny beads of sweat on Lena’s forehead. Her hair had clearly been in a tight ponytail before, but some of the strands had gotten loose, and were sticking to the edges of her face. The red lipstick on her lips had been bitten off, a habit Kara knew Lena developed whenever she was very stressed about something.
Something was up. Something big enough to shake even Lena Luthor, of all people.
She barely spared Kara and Alex a glance, crossing the room in quick strides to get to Lex immediately.
“Lena, I’m in the middle of – ”
“You need to get down to the labs right away.”
“Can’t it wait?” Lex said impatiently, eye twitching in annoyance at the interruption.
“No, it can’t,” Lena said, a hint of panic and urgence just barely restrained in her voice.
Kara instantly felt an urge to move, to do something. The mere idea of Lena being shaken and upset enough to set of her core urge to act. But she stayed in her chair like she was bound to it. She'd lost the privilege to think that way, anyway.
"We’ve got a situation. You’ve got to come down right away.”
Lex groaned.
“Lena – ”
“I’m not kidding, Lex. Now.”
She turned around and walked to the door before she paused, briefly. Almost as if a thought had only now occurred to her.
“Maybe Supergirl and Director Danvers should come too,” she said briskly before opening the door and walking out.
Lex sighed.
“The perks of working with a younger sibling,” he muttered. “There’s always something happening.”
“Well,” Alex said standing up, “at least the meeting finally got interesting.”
It earned her a dirty glare from Lex.
“So what are we looking at exactly?” Alex frowned, arms crossed over her chest.
A blue-ish, purple mass about the size of an office desk was floating above the ground, its surface rippling and moving around slowly.
“It seems to be some sort of portal,” Lena said, typing away on her tablet. “I’m picking up some foreign energy, but I can’t seem to locate it.”
Kara frowned, taking a step closer to the mass.
It almost seemed like a mirror they couldn’t see through. Like something was staring right back at them, they just couldn’t figure out what or who. The purple surface a living, taunting entity.
It was unsettling.
“Guys,” Kara said slowly when the surface of the blob started moving quicker, more pointed, in one direction instead of the weird rippling in all directions from before, “maybe we should clear out. This could be dangerous.”
The Luthors ignored her.
“Have you tried retracing its energy levels? There must’ve been a peak in radiation when this thing got here, it must’ve shown up before?”
“Of course I did that,” Lena snapped. “But it doesn’t seem to be from this earth. I’ve only picked up its signature here.”
Kara leaned back when the surface rippled again. This time it seemed to move in her direction. The power seemed to be going out, pushing against the edges, only constrained by the colored blob.
“Guys, I really think we should head out,” she said worriedly.
Alex took a step closer to her, her hand hovering by Kara's side, eyes trained on the mass before them.
“I think it’s some sort of portal,” Lex said. “At least, it resembles the ones the Book of Destiny created.”
“I’ve got it!” Lena exclaimed. “It’s not from this earth, but it seems to be using energy from a different dimension!”
“Which one?” Lex asked eagerly, looking over his sister’s shoulder.
Lena and Kara answered at the same time.
“The fifth one.”
Lena frowned and looked at Kara for the first time that day.
“How did you…?”
“Run,” Kara said, before repeating it louder. “Run!”
Before the word had left her lips, there was a strong push from inside the purple mass. The mass seemed to melt away, disintegrating on the spot, and opening up.
A figure clad in black pushed through the opening.
Too stunned to move, Lex and Lena watched in horror and enthrallment as a beautiful woman with jet-black hair, clad in a black suit, stepped out of the portal and into their lab in one precise, fluid move.
For a split second, for one slow, holy moment, Kara thought she might be wrong.
The woman before her seemed so elegant, so frail, so delicate, that she couldn’t possibly be the menace that still haunted Kara’s nightmares. The woman seemed a little dazed by the sudden shift in realities, surprised by the change in atmosphere.
Kara could relate, and almost felt a protective urge to help her, to take her hand and steady her. To make sure she was alright.
But the relief she felt was fleeting.
The woman moaned quietly, stretching her neck, the green eyes Kara knew were there, closed. She lifted her head and turned around slowly, before opening her eyes, and carefully - slowly - observing the room around her.
Her eyes fell on Lena. She looked at the woman for a milli-second, not the slightest bit unfazed. Her eyes glanced down just once, taking in the woman's features with mild interest, before she moved on.
Kara heard Lena gasp, and heard her grip around her tablet tighten. She couldn’t blame her. She’d reacted way stronger when she saw her own distorted face looking back at her on at least two occasions.
A dark, powerful Lena stood in the middle of the room in front of the dissipating portal. She barely seemed to notice its disappearance. She looked just as Kara remembered her in her nightmares. Cold, cool, distant, and overwhelmingly, stupidly gorgeous.
Dangerous.
The dark Lena didn’t seem at all deterred seeing her own face staring back at her. Either she’d anticipated it, or she just didn’t care at all. She didn’t bother addressing her own doppelgänger. Instead, she let her eyes drift over the room. She barely spared Lex and Alex a chance before she let her eyes settle on Kara.
The calm expression that had been on her face disappeared quickly. It morphed into some twisted version of determination, and Kara felt her heart sink into her stomach.
“Lena,” she whispered.
“You,” she growled softly.
Kara’s eyes widened.
“Okay, run, run, run!” she yelled, quickly darting around the room to take Alex, Lena, and Lex in a tight grip, before zapping away from the lab as fast as she could.
She contemplated leaving Lex for just a tad longer than she morally wished she had, but she took him anyway.
Kara zapped through the staircases as fast as she could, blowing stacks of papers out of people’s hands as she went. She felt slightly bad, but helping LuthorCorp’s employees to gather their work couldn’t be her priority right now. She rushed past Lena’s security team, past her secretary, and past Lillian Luthor’s office.
She got them all into Lena’s – Lex's? – office and locked the door, panting hard.
“Lillian?” she asked quickly.
“Ugh, out,” Lex groaned, clutching his head in his hands.
Kara sighed in relief. One less awful person to rescue.
“Okay,” Lena said, standing on wobbly legs but not letting that deter her from her righteous anger. “What. The Fuck. Was that?”
“Ehm?”
“Did everyone see a second Lena?” Alex asked. “Did everyone just see that? Like a second, a double – am I going insane?”
“A Lena from another dimension,” Lex mumbled to himself. “Lena Luthor 2.0, so to speak.”
“I mean, she looked like Lena,” Alex reasoned with herself. “And we’ve had doppelgängers before.”
“Fascinating,” Lex mumbled to himself. “An exact copy of Lena.”
“Maybe Maxwell Lord had anything to do with it? Bizarro Lena?”
"A Lena from another world."
"I mean there were definitely two of them. Two Lenas."
“She knew you,” Lena interrupted them.
She was standing stock-still, leaning heavily on the desk. Her eyes burned intensely as she looked at Kara.
“She knew you. She said so.”
Kara swallowed and wrung her hands together.
“I, eh, yeah, I don’t – ”
“You knew it was fifth-dimensional even before I did,” Lex said.
“Well, I – ”
“You told us to run even before she crawled out of that portal.”
“Not so much crawl as – ”
“Cut the crap!” Lena yelled and Kara physically recoiled. “Why the hell is there a version of me traveling between dimensions, and how does she know you?”
Alex’s eyes widened.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”
“Alex – ”
“Tell me it’s not who I think it is.”
“Well…”
“Kara!”
“It’s not my fault!” Kara exclaimed. “How could I have possibly known she’d come here? She’s supposed to be hypothetical! As in, not real! As in, she can’t hurt us!”
“She seemed pretty real to me!"
“Will someone just tell me who she is?” Lena asked, cutting through their squabbling so effectively that Kara and Alex instantly fell quiet. “That is my copy strutting around there! I demand to know!”
Kara and Alex exchanged a worried look.
If Lena wasn’t angry before… Kara felt her stomach squirm at the thought of having to explain any of it. For a split second she was even debating whether she wouldn't rather go back down and face the Other Lena again over having to explain what had transpired between her, a fifth-dimensional imp, and a couple of Lena's from different dimensions.
“It’s kind of a long story,” Kara said quickly, already scanning the room for safe places. “Maybe we should explain it on the way to a safe house or something.”
“No!” Lena snapped. “You will tell me, and you will tell me now!”
“Just get her the cliff-notes version!” Alex said, already going through her back-up ammunition to see how much firepower she had.
“Right,” Kara muttered. “Right. Cliff-notes.”
Lena did not look patient at all, so Kara scrambled to find the words that would make any of this make sense.
“Okay, so, ehm, it all started when Mxyzptlk, Mxy, for short, showed up in my apartment.”
“I’m sorry – Mxyzptlk?” Lex asked.
“Yes, he’s like a reality-bending trickster. Anyway, he showed up when Mon-El and I had just started dating and he was just, pfff, awful!” Kara explained, shaking her head. “He was all like: I want to marry you, and I will destroy the city if you won’t! And then – ”
“I’m sorry,” Lena interrupted, “he tried to marry you?”
“Yes!” Kara exclaimed. “Got me this really gorgeous wedding dress too! It was strapless and had like a gorgeous waist, but spread out into this huge princess-like – ”
“Cliff-notes, Kara!”
“Right,” Kara blushed. “Anyway, doesn’t matter. He wreaked havoc on the city, and wouldn’t let me leave, so I tricked him into saying his name backward and he was sent back to his dimension. I thought that was all. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t.”
“Will you get to the point already?” Lex asked, voice so strained it made Kara even more nervous.
“Right, well, Mxy came back a couple of weeks ago, claiming he needed to redeem himself or something. So, he ehm,” Kara shot Lena a nervous look, “offered to do me a favor.”
“What favor?” Lena asked icily.
“Well,” Kara shuffled awkwardly on her feet, “he saw that I was a little, ehm, down? After our fall-out.”
She motioned between the two of them.
Lena merely raised an eyebrow. Unimpressed.
“So?”
“Well, he, ehm, offered to show me what life would have been like if things had gone differently.”
“Different how?”
Lena’s voice was so cold it even made Kara’s impenetrable skin break out in goosebumps
Kara swallowed. “Like, if I’d told you my secret earlier?”
Lena quieted down for just a second, and Kara braced herself for impact.
“You let a fifth-dimensional genie grant you wishes?” she asked softly.
“Trickster,” Kara bit her lip. “But essentially, maybe, yes?”
Lena scoffed.
“Unbelievable.”
“Lena – ”
“Actually, you know what? It’s not unbelievable, no. Because you – ”
She pointed a finger accusingly at Kara.
“ – always try to take the easy way out of any situation! Kept a gigantic secret from your best friend for five years? Tell her when she’s about to appear in front of cameras and can’t ever afford to break down or get angry!” Lena yelled. “Got into a fight with said best friend? Oh,” Lena said, voice dripping with sarcasm, “I’ll have someone else rectify it for me so I won’t have to deal with the consequences of my own actions!”
Kara bit her lip.
“Let me guess,” Lena scoffed. “It didn’t work out and you screwed everything up.”
“Okay, calm the fuck down, Luthor,” Alex cut her off. “You’ve made more stupid mistakes this week than Kara has made all year. You have no right to play a saint now.”
Lena clenched her jaw.
“I suggest you let her explain before your evil doppelgänger figures out where we are.”
Lena looked furious, but she didn’t say anything, which Kara assumed meant she had the floor again.
“I mean, Lena wasn't exactly wrong,” Kara said nervously. “A lot of things went south.”
Lena shot a triumphant look Alex’s way, which Alex pointedly ignored.
“When I told Lena I was Supergirl right before Mercy attacked, I ended up dying,” Kara said quickly, trying not to look at her sister. “When I told Lena in the midst of the whole Reign thing, she ended up dying. Then, when I finally did it right, when I told Lena early on, and she and I became friends, things took a turn for the worst, and everyone else ended up dying.”
She held their attention now. Alex looked taken aback, seeing as Kara had never given her all the details on what exactly happened to them in alternate universes, just that it was bad. Lena’s face was icy, tight, unaffected, but her eyes sparkled with something akin to worry. Lex just looked grotesquely intrigued.
“Long story short, I just told Mxy that maybe Lena would be better off if she’d just… never met me,” Kara said softly.
She heard Lena take an almost imperceptible breath. Her heart was beating just a tad faster.
“And?” Lex asked impatiently.
“And it wasn’t better. If Lena had never met me, you would’ve killed her. Three years ago, remember that?” she added, glaring at Lex. “Remember how you sent those assassins after her? You were mad because she took your little company away from you?”
Evidently, it seemed to have faded in Lena’s mind too. The woman turned around to look at Lex like she’d never seen him before in her life.
“That’s right,” she said slowly. “You sent those robots after me, those machine guns. I almost crashed to the ground in that damned helicopter.”
“Well in that world, you did,” Kara said, and Lena’s head whipped around so she could look at Kara.
She stared at Kara intensely.
A beat of silence.
“What happened?” she asked hoarsely.
“You didn’t die,” Kara said, fidgeting uncomfortably with her fingers. “Lillian found you. She – well she… do you remember Metallo?”
“John Corben?” Lena asked. “My mother’s henchman?”
“The one with the kryptonite heart."
“Of course I remember,” Lena muttered. “He nearly killed me. He was behind every single attack on my life. But what does he have to do with anything?”
Kara swallowed.
“Well, in that universe,” Kara whispered carefully, “Lillian didn’t experiment on him. She didn’t give him a kryptonite core. She didn’t need to.”
“Why?” Lena asked.
“Because she gave you one,” Lex filled in the gaps, sounding way too mesmerized and interested for Kara’s tastes.
Lena looked from Lex to Kara in astonishment.
“No, she – ” Lena stopped herself. “It can’t – ”
She turned to Kara.
“Is that true?” she demanded, an edge in her voice. “Did I turn into some version of Metallo?”
Kara’s shoulders dropped just a little. Lena's grief - her unwillingness to believe that Lillian would so something like that to her - was so very palpable, and Kara wished she could go to her. She wished she could do something instead of continuing on, only adding to the cracks in Lena's eyes.
“Yes,” she whispered. “She turned you into a weapon.”
“Oh God,” Lena said, dropping down on the couch.
Kara knew she had to tell Lena everything now, even if she was so upset. If she didn’t say it now, she never would, and she’d already seen how that turned out.
“The Lena – the Metallo version of you – she got really angry. She’d been tortured for years. When she came back to National City, she took over. She created HOPE robots that patrolled the streets and hunted aliens. The city was in ruins. And, coincidentally, she had Reign by her side – ”
“I’m sorry Reign?! As in Sam?” Lena implored, almost hysterically.
“Yes,” Kara whispered almost apologetically. “She was her right-hand woman.
Lena shook her head.
“I don’t know where she is now,” Kara explained hurriedly. “When Mxy tore me out of that reality, I wasn’t exactly aware of what everyone else was doing. I just remember that the team there was trying to stop Reign.”
“Oh God,” Lena whispered in her hands. “This can’t be real. It can’t be. This just can’t – ”
“Look, I know what it’s like to have an evil doppelgänger running around,” Kara tried, shooting one angry look at Lex. “We’ll fix this. We can fix this and then all will go back to norm – ”
They all startled when they heard raised voices in the hall. The voices sounded confused – resolute. Protesting.
Lena was there.
She’d figured out where they were. Of course she had. She’d worked in an exact copy of the building they were in. That meant she knew all the ins and outs too. Hiding would’ve been impossible either way.
It sounded like Lex and Lena’s security teams were refusing to let her through. After all, they’d already seen one Lena Luthor enter the room. And the Other Lena was just a tad too different, to eerily distinct from the real Lena, nobody could deny that. Even someone who’d only ever seen Lena on TV could attest to that.
Other Lena was being stopped in her tracks.
“We don’t have time for this bickering,” Alex said tersely. “We have to leave.”
“I just need to get Mxy here,” Kara said. “He can put her back in her own reality.”
“Oh, we’re going to rely on the tricks and spells of a sex offender now are we?” Lena asked incredulously.
“He’s not a sex offender!”
“He tried to force you to marry him,” Lena arched her eyebrows. “That constitutes a sex-offender and just an all-around horrible person in my book.”
“Look, he’s okay now,” Kara said quickly. “And we need his help.”
Lena shook her head. “God, I’d forgotten how god-awful you people are at making plans.”
“Our plans aren’t god-awful!”
“Just sometimes,” Alex added.
Lena rolled her eyes.
“We just need to get him here,” Kara said pacing around the office. “We just need to – Mxy!” Kara exclaimed. “Mxy! Mxyzptlk! Mxyzptlk, we need you!”
Nothing happened.
Her cheeks heated up when she saw Lex and Lena exchange a look.
“I don’t know why he’s not coming,” Kara said awkwardly. “This usually works. Mxy! Mxy, this isn’t funny! Mxyzptlk, I need you!”
Not even a fifth-dimensional spark lit up in the room.
They were alone and helpless.
Lex sighed.
“How calm I feel knowing that the citizens of National City can rest easily at night knowing that this,” he gestured at Kara, “is the hero they can count on to protect them from harm and evil.”
“Hey!” Kara said angrily. “A lot of that harm and evil is caused by you, so screw you! This isn’t my fault!”
“Not your fault?” Lena said slowly. “Not your fault? If you hadn’t been incredibly, imbecilically irresponsible enough to make that wish – ”
“I know that, okay?” Kara shouted frustratedly. “I did a stupid thing! But I couldn’t have known she would come here, so instead of pointing fingers, can we just leave?”
Lena clenched her jaw and shut her eyes for one tense second before she calmed herself down.
“Okay,” she said shaking her head. “Fine. Fair enough. Where is she now?”
Kara focused her ears.
“Still in the hallway,” she said decisively. “Your security team isn’t letting her through.”
“But you don’t think they’ll be able to stop her?” Lena asked worriedly.
Kara shook her head. “They don’t stand a chance. My powers are useless against her, so I can’t protect anyone right now.”
“Then – ”
Other Lena raised her voice in the hallway and this time it was loud enough to reach everyone in the room.
The Other Lena was starting to sound annoyed, threatening. She wanted to be shown through the door, and she wouldn’t stop until she was inside. Those security teams were an annoyance, a hindrance at most.
Other Lena had probably dealt with enough hindrances taking over National City. Kara doubted she would let a few security people stand in her way of vengeance now.
“This isn’t good, you guys, we have to leave!” Kara said.
“No!” Lex said, a disgustingly excited glint in his eyes. “Let her come. I feel like she and I have a lot to talk about.”
“Are you insane?” Kara exclaimed. “You don’t know who that is, but I promise you, she’s nothing like the Lena you know.”
Lex didn’t spare his sister a glance.
“Would that be such a terrible thing?”
Behind Lex, Kara could see Lena snap her head up in disbelief.
“Lex,” Kara said hurriedly, stepping closer to the hateful, spiteful, downright vindictive asshat of a man. “I get that we don’t get along, believe me, I don’t even think we should. But one minor detail I forgot to mention? Lena killed her Lex. And Lillian. She doesn’t have the same scruples about murder as our Lena.”
“Our Lena? That seems a bit rich, don’t you think?” Lex asked, but he did seem at least a tad perturbed.
“Well,” he shook his head. “This Lena tried to kill me too, and we still get along splendidly.”
Lena rolled her eyes.
“Guys,” Kara said, but they were interrupted by a short storm of screams and gunfire in the hall. It was silenced as soon as it had sprung up.
They all shot up from their places.
From the sound of it, those couldn’t have been warning shots.
“Oh my God,” Lena said, clasping a hand in front of her mouth. “Oh my God.”
“We might need to put out some job applications for a new security team,” Lex said dryly, but his face was white and tense.
“I – I should go help. I should – right?” Alex mumbled, almost catatonically. She was pale. She was afraid. “We – I – ”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Lena whispered. “Not if she’s singlehandedly capable of attacking my security team.”
“We need to leave now!” Kara interrupted. “She’s going to be here any second!”
“And then we do what?” Lex asked. “Outrun her? Leave LuthorCorp for her to take over? I thought you were a fighter, Supergirl. Don’t tell me the big, powerful alien is afraid of our little Lena?”
Kara felt everybody’s eyes on her and she clenched her jaw in a suppressed furor.
“I know who I am. I know exactly how powerful I am,” she hissed. “I fight when it’s useful and necessary. And I am telling you right now, this is not a fight I can win! You don’t know who you’re dealing with, Lex, but I do! She’s dangerous!”
“How dangerous can she be?” Lex scoffed. “She doesn’t have her little army with her.”
“She killed me!” Kara yelled. “She killed me, that’s how powerful she is! That’s how dangerous she really is!”
Her statement was followed by a deafening quiet.
So quiet, in fact, that Kara almost immediately regretted her words.
“Y-you died?” Alex was the first to speak up.
“She killed you?” Lena almost whispered. “I – she killed you?”
Kara opened her mouth, wishing she could say anything to make it better, but she was interrupted by Alex before she could utter a word.
“Lena killed you?”
“It wasn’t – ”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Alex asked, hurt. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t think it mattered,” Kara whispered. “Alex – ”
“Didn’t matter?” Alex asked disbelievingly. “Kara, someone killed you! Someone hurt you, and her doppelgänger is someone we talk to on a daily basis, and you didn’t think that was something I needed to know?”
“Oh, trouble in the Danvers household,” Lex muttered.
“Shut up!” both Kara and Alex yelled at the same time.
Lex raised his eyebrows but didn’t interrupt.
Alex turned back towards Kara, furious.
“If someone hurts you, Kara, it is my business,” she spat. “When someone kills you, you tell me!”
“Alex – ”
“No, Kara!” Alex snapped. “That is not something you keep from me! Especially if the threat is still out there!”
“The threat was supposed to be hypothetical!” Kara shouted. “Why doesn’t anyone get that?! She wasn’t even real! How was I supposed to know she’d come back to finish the job? How was I supposed to know – ”
The gunfire in the hallway fired up again – this time a whole lot closer to them than Kara liked.
The Other Lena had lost her patience. She was done playing nice.
“This isn’t a discussion anymore,” Kara said tensely. “You all need to leave right now.”
“I’ve already told you that I don’t plan on leaving, Supergirl,” Lex said. “Someone needs to be here to deal with your mistakes.”
“I’m not letting her roam this city any longer,” Alex said. “I’m not letting her get to you again.”
“Guys!” Kara was growing more desperate with each passing second. “This isn’t a discussion. She’s dangerous!”
Alex cocked her gun. “Which is exactly why we need to take care of business right now.”
“What do you mean?” Kara said, eying the gun wearily. “Alex?”
“That isn’t our Lena,” Alex said, not looking at Kara. “If she’s as dangerous as you say she is, we have to deal with the problem head-on.”
“Alex… what – ”
“Oh of course your first impulse is to kill her,” Lena scoffed. “Doesn’t that sound familiar. Don’t have a bomb, use the gun. Whatever’s available, right?”
“Listen, Luthor,” Alex snapped. “When you and your little family decide not to hurt my sister or this city again, I’ll be happy to stay as far away from you as humanly possible for the rest of my fucking life. Unfortunately, every single version of you seems to be hell-bent on making my life a little harder, so,” she checked the magazine of her gun, “I make the tough calls.”
“Alex!” Kara interjected. “You can’t be serious! We can’t shoot her! That’s insane!”
“Kara, that woman on the other end of the door is evil. You said so yourself."
“It’s Lena!” Kara exclaimed desperately. “It’s Lena! Our friend, remember?”
Alex glanced over at Lena before looking back at Kara.
“How well did that last one work out, huh?”
Kara let her mouth fall shut.
After a beat, she whispered, “That’s not the same, and you know it.”
The sounds on the other end of the door grew louder, more desperate.
“I won’t let you kill her."
But Alex ignored her, her agent instinct rising up.
“Alright, everybody, get behind me,” Alex ordered. “Kara, you cover me. Lex, Lena, behind the desk.”
They all shuffled through the room, getting close to the balcony should they have to escape.
When they were all in position, Alex raised her gun and pointed it at the door. Her hand was steady, strong. She’d already done this a million times over and she was ready to do it again.
She was picturing Lena as just another target, and Kara wouldn’t have that.
“I won’t let you hurt her,” Kara said forcibly. “I don’t care that she’s not our Lena. We’re not killers. And we definitely don’t kill people that are good. People who still stand a chance.”
Alex scoffed and shook her head.
“You’ve always been blind when it comes to her.”
Kara blushed when she felt Lena’s eyes on her.
“And you’ve always been quick to dismiss an entire friendship over a moment of doubt,” Kara bit back.
Alex rolled her eyes but didn’t reply.
“She’s not evil, Alex,” Kara added softly, a desperate edge in her tone. “She’s misguided, she’s scared – I, I know that. But she’s not evil,” Kara stressed.
Alex clenched her jaw.
The slight glistening on her forehead was indication enough that she was at least taking the discussion seriously. Alex may be the strongest, coolest, most badass agent there was, Kara knew she also had a heart.
No matter what she may have claimed earlier on, Kara knew Alex wouldn’t just disregard Kara’s feelings on the matter. And she wouldn’t be able to shoot Lena as easily as she claimed she could.
Kara remembered all the times Lena and Alex had spent laughing on the couch, bonding over whiskey and their love for Kara. She remembered how Alex had drunkenly admitted that Lena was the best friend Kara had ever had, and the one she could stand the best. She remembered how Lena had come over when Maggie and Alex had broken up, and Alex needed emotional support in the form of many, many girls’ nights.
And from the tense look in Alex’s eyes, Alex remembered that too.
She was wondering whether she’d be capable of killing Lena’s copy too. It was the only thing that reassured Kara just a little, in the face of the upcoming attack.
The noises in front of the door swelled for a second more, the gunfire escalating, the screams getting more desperate… before they suddenly, all at once, ceased.
The overwhelmingly loud gunfire, the screams, the yelling… it all stopped. The hallway was dead quiet.
They were in it now.
The noises in the hallway had done an excellent job hiding Lena’s presence. They had all masked the subtleness that was Lena Luthor. Now that the noises had died down, Kara could hear the click-clack of the woman’s high heels on the tiles clearly, just inches away from the door.
The heels paused.
“Is the door locked?” Kara whispered.
“Yes,” Lex said. “It’s a bionic code, we installed it just two weeks ago. It would require a thumbprint, an eye-scan and so – ”
“And so she would have immediate access,” Alex hissed.
Lex seemed to realize that too.
“Right. Well, we didn’t exactly take doppelgängers into account when we installed the lock.”
“Clearly,” Alex said dryly.
“For a guy who loves doppelgängers so much, you’re woefully unprepared when one actually shows up,” Kara snapped back.
Lex rolled his eyes, but Kara couldn’t focus on that for more than a second, because she heard a light tapping on the door. Someone was fidgeting with the lock.
Kara tensed up, focusing all her senses, preparing herself for the inevitable shock that would come seeing that woman again. The distorted mirror of her best friend.
“Okay,” Kara whispered quickly, “if we all – ”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence, because with a swift and loud boom, the door was blown open.
And Lena Luthor stepped into the room.