Chapter Text
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, Rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas
Isn’t it weird, Lena thinks bitterly, how the odds keep on stacking against her?
She never asked to be a Luthor. She isn’t even a real one in the first place. And yet, here she is, dragged by the arms through cold, silent corridors, surrounded by a dozen guards in their polished armor. She is bound, bruised, and dirt; escorted to be judged for crimes her brother committed. Lena chuckles derisively. Not Luthor enough in her family’s eyes but enough to be punished in their stead by everyone else.
Lena knows this is likely to be the end for her. The war the Luthor had waged for more than a decade against Krypton would surely guarantee her a swift execution or a lifelong imprisonment. She doesn't know which one is worse, or rather which one she'd prefer. A tug against her arm makes her pay attention to her surroundings. They are going down spiraling staircases. To Lena’s surprise, the guards don’t seem fazed by the tight fit, if anything it looks like they go even faster. Lena stumbles on one of the steps to buy herself some time but the guards holding her arms straighten her up before she can fall and lift her off the steps for the rest of the way. She can’t escape.
They round a corner and she is suddenly basked in sunlight. She blinks rapidly, cringing at the sudden assault. It felt like months since she saw the light of day. She lost track of time in the first week. Lena can’t remember how long she has been held captive in that dark and cold dungeon. She welcomes the first breeze coming through the arcading caressing her face. The fresh air was a relief for her nose now accustomed to the dank smell of dirt and of her own sweat. What a sight she must be, Lena muses looking at her torn and dirty clothes, her hair in disarray, greasy and layers of dirt on her skin. Her mother would be ashamed, well, more than she already is.
She feels the weight of their stare like pinpricks at the back of her neck. Servants and maids suddenly stopping in their activities, pressed against the wall to let her cortege pass, gawking at her disgusted and revolted at her mere presence. Lena didn’t ask for this. She had just wanted to leave far away. She had tried to flee to the Outlawed Territories to make a name for herself outside of her family. Lena sighs feeling her bottom lip tremble against her will. She just wanted to be free.
She bites her lips hard enough for the tremble to cease. She bites it hard enough for the sadness to be replaced by anger. An all-consuming anger that burn her inside, fueled by fear and resentment, and awakening something far worse, far more destructive than any blade in the Five Kingdoms. Lena feels the Luthor’s pride shine bright in her eyes as she stares down every person foolish enough to make eye contact with her. She grits her teeth in silent fury and watch with satisfaction as they look away one by one. She might not be a real Luthor but she knows damn well how to play one and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t scorch a few on her way down to hell.
Her impressive cortege comes to a halt. They stand solemnly, absolutely still in front of two massive wooden doors, the El’s family crest carved into each one in silver and gold. Lena gulps nervously at the flow of chatter she hears coming through the doors. She knows what is waiting for her inside this room. She can already imagine the hunger in their eyes at the sight of her blood. All waiting in line only to have a piece of her flesh. One guard goes to the doors and knocks loudly three times before they open slowly before them.
The chatter ceases and Lena feels like her heart is going to beat out of her chest. She feels like the deafening sound of her heartbeat is trying to compensate for the sudden silence. She takes in a breath, trying to steel herself against the embodiment of steel itself waiting at the other end of the room. As one, her guards resume their walk, guiding her through the Great Hall.
The whole Kryptonian court stares at her on each side much like the servants she passed on her way here. Lena can’t stare them all down this time, instead she gazes straight ahead, head held high as she meets the Queen’s eyes dead-on.
Lena doesn’t know a lot about Kryptonians. They used to be reclusive people, keeping to themselves deep inside their dry territory. No one in her kingdom actually saw one before the war. Krypton was then a land of mystery and its people were made of legends and cautionary tales to scare children from straying too far from their homes. She remembers hearing as a child that Kryptonians could fly, leaping into the sky at night to take away those who lingers outside, past bedtime. She remembers stories about their glowing red eyes flashing into the night, deep into the forest daring anyone to cross the border and enter their territory. She remembers Lex being fascinated by those stories.
Meeting them in real life was nothing short of disappointing. They weren’t what the legends made them to be. They weren’t mystical creatures. They looked quite ordinary even. She was only sixteen when she attended her first battle; the first time she saw them. Men and women strapped in bulky, shiny armors with their swords and shields at the ready. Thousands of soldiers standing in military standard formation on dry sand, waiting for them to cross the border, for them to attack first. She remembers her father laughing at their cowardice as he signaled the archers to begin the attack. It had been the first time Lena had drawn an arrow in battle. It had been the first time she did it with the intent to kill someone.
She had watched the volley of arrows whistle past her ears as it flew into the sky directly into the heart of the Kryptonians’ formation. Nothing happened. Her father ordered a second wave and Lena and the hundreds of archers at her back drew another arrow and let it fly into the sky, their aim still true and deadly.
King Lionel Luthor’s horse had whined nervously, his leg kicking the dirt in agitation. Lena still remembers the unease she felt then at the absolute silence following the first strike. The Kryptonians had been eerily still, not even fazed by the hundreds of arrows that had just fallen upon them. She remembers thinking that there might have been some truth in the legends after all.
That day had been an absolute bloodbath for King Luthor’s army. As soon as his army had crossed the border the Kryptonians had attacked fiercely, killing everyone that still stood in their land. The dry sand had gorged on the blood of her fellow comrades as they fell one by one against an army that couldn’t be armed by the steel of their swords. Her father died that day. Lex had sounded the horn and had ordered a retreat. The wet red sand became a reminder of what they had lost.
Lex, the Chief Engineer of the Royal Army, became King. It marked the beginning of ten long years of hatred and war. Krypton slowly came out of the shadows and became more violent each year. It had been an escalation in violence that had consumed her brother entirely. He became obsessed with Kryptonians. He had worked relentlessly to understand what made them invincible, bleeding the kingdom dry in the process. Until he finally found their weakness.
The King consort stares her down with barely disguised hatred and contempt. A sneer easily seen on his features as the guards bring her closer to the throne. Lena keeps her eyes on the Queen, regal and poised on the throne, the uniform of Commander in chief barely hidden under her deep red cloak. The Queen has the same calculating look as her mother. A cold logic and ruthlessness that testified of her willingness to do everything that needed to be done.
The guards stop a few meters before the Queen and suddenly kneel, the two guards holding her by the arms bring her down with them.
“General Astra.” Lena watches them proclaim loudly in greetings, heads down. Lena frowns puzzled, apparently even their hierarchy was different from hers.
The General stands slowly and steps down the few steps separating them. She dismisses the guards with a wave of her hand and suddenly Lena is left alone, still on her knees before this woman who is appraising her coldly.
Lena rages inside at being so defenseless. She is the best archers in her kingdom, princess by name and here she is thrown to the ground like she is nothing, worthless. Lena grits her teeth and begins to stand, hands on her knees to brace herself. Her legs wobble now that she has no one to lift her own body for her.
The woman watches her amused and it infuriates her even more. Lena hears a guard move behind her before the General raises her hand to stop him. Now at her full height, Lena stares back as fiercely as she can. The General sniggers and turns her back on her, not intimidated in the least. Lena swallows her nerves and waits. General Astra sits back on her throne and it’s like the Great Hall takes a collective breath.
“Lena Luthor.” General Astra’s voice booms in the room airily, cutting through the silence. She looks bored as if she wasn’t holding her fate between her hands right at this moment.
Lena raises an eyebrow in challenge. She is defeated, surrounded but she still wouldn’t go down without a fight. As small as the fight was.
“This is your trial,” she continues with the same nonchalant tone. Lena scoffs, she wasn’t here on a trial. She knows that in those people eyes, she was already guilty.
“As per Krypton’s law, I will allow you to have a defendant even though you are not Kryptonian. Please state this person name now before we begin…” General Astra smiles obligingly, waiting, making a show of sweeping the room with her eyes before looking back to her. “No?” Lena feels her insides boil with rage.
“Very well.” General Astra looks toward the bloodthirsty crowd behind her. “Dear honorable Kryptonians. We are gathered here to determine the responsibility of Lena Luthor, here before you, in several crimes committed in Krypton prior to her capture last month. I, General Astra, will preside this trial.” General Astra focuses her intransigent gaze back to her. “Lena Luthor did you or did you not trespass into Kryptonian’s territory armed with weaponized kryptonite?”
It had been Lex’s great discovery, green glowing rocks that proved to weaken Kryptonians. Lex had fused it into the steel of their weapons and now, they could actually kill them. After so many years, Lex’s work paid off. It had been their only defense for years. It kept the war at a standstill, reducing it at skirmish along the border. Lena keeps her head high. “I did.”
General Astra nods and continues with suddenly more fire. “Did you or did you not assault with the intent to kill four guards of the border patrol on your way into this territory?”
“They attacked me first and I didn’t kill them. Just unconscious,” Lena blurts out, the bruises on her ribs still fresh in her mind; General Astra waits, her cold gaze freezing her to the bones. Lena scoffs; they weren’t here to determine her innocence but to prove that she is guilty. “I did.”
General Astra nods solemnly; Lena hears the beginning of grumbling at her back as the General continues, her face this time is distorted by a barely controlled rage and hatred. “Did you or did you not ordered the attacks of three Kryptonian’s villages….”
Lena stares frozen, “What? Wait…” She tries but her protest is swallowed by the rumbling crowd behind her.
“Liar!” she hears someone yell.
General Astra raises a hand to silence the crowd. “…Resulting in the death of innocent children, honest women, and men…”
“I didn’t.” Lena bellows vehemently. She takes a step toward the General but is immediately stopped by two guards gripping her shoulders. Lena struggles against them; she won’t let them accuse her of mass murder. “I didn’t! It’s not me! You have the wrong person!”
The crowd behind becomes even more agitated, she hears someone shout, “She is a Luthor, she must pay!”
“…a week before your arrest.” The General finishes, she stands at her full height, the man next to her does too and extend a hand toward a nobleman who walks toward Lena and stops just before her with an open letter carefully deposited in a case protected by glass.
Lena stops struggling and looks incredulously at the letter presented to her.
“Is this not your seal, Captain Lena Luthor of the Luthor’s Royal Archers?”
Lena keeps staring, dumbfounded at the irrefutable proof presented to her. A letter that shows she ordered a massacre she never approved of. It was her writing, it was the paper she used only for her correspondence with her Lieutenant, and it was signed with the seal she always kept with her but had destroyed just before she left for the Outlawed Territories. Lena keeps staring, dismayed at what she sees in front of her.
The crowd screams what must be profanities at her but everything feels muted, far away; Lena knows she is in shock. She was being framed by her own people.
She hears someone being brought in at the back of the throne room, struggling against their guards, and hers diligently turns her toward the commotion. General Astra stands next to her and murmurs quietly over the babbling crowd, “Isn’t he a Lieutenant of yours, Captain? We found him fleeing the scene of the third massacre and captured him with your letter just before he could retreat behind your kryptonite mined border.”
Lena knows the General is watching her. She knows she is being scrutinized and every micro expression of hers is being filed into the General’s head. She looks into Luke’s eyes who widens at her sight and she knows; she knows that it’s not him. Luke was being framed too.
General Astra suddenly blocks the view of her Lieutenant, gagged and brought down to his knees, her attention focused back on her and whispers, “It’s not you, is it?”
Lena looks into her eyes and shakes her head. “You have the wrong person,” she repeats softly. Lena ponders if she should tell the General why she was in Krypton in the first place; the reason why she risked everything to reach the Outlawed Territories.
The crowd bellows behind them and Lena reads into her eyes that it wouldn’t matter. The crowd wanted their blood and couldn’t be reasoned with, not anymore. General Astra nods and smiles sadly; the only apology a leader could give. Lena is a casualty of war. She is so used to lead the charge and her archers to be the first one to strike in battle that it feels suddenly funny to stand on the other end, struck in the back by one of her arrow.
General Astra faces the crowd and raises a hand asking for their attention. The silence is deafening. “After close examination of the evidence presented to us, I declare Lena Luthor to be guilty of all charges brought against her.”
Lena hears Luke, still gagged and restrained, scream and trash against his guards. A few of her initial cortege goes to help the others restrain him.
“Lena Luthor is sentenced to death, along with her Lieutenant Luke Perec, tomorrow at noon.” General Astra looks at her one last time before going back to sit on the throne.
A huge cheer resonates in the Great Hall. She watches Luke gets dragged back out of the throne room. She feels her own guards guide her away by the arms as they surround her like when they first brought her in. But instead of making sure she doesn’t escape, they are now trying to protect her from the prying hands of the crowd as they carve a way out of the Great Hall. Lena walks head held high, looking straight ahead as people scream profanities at her.
*
Lena never thought about death before. Unless it was to find a way to give it as quickly and painlessly as possible. She never thought she would have to face it one day. Not that it never occurred to her that she might die; she had been living in wartime for most of her life after all. But she never thought death would come to her like this. Her last moments spent in a dungeon that smelt of molds and body fluids; far away from her people and betrayed by one of them.
Lena sighs, wishing she could feel the breeze on her face or see the stars one last time. Luke was somewhere here in the tower with her, hands and ankles chained to the wall, cold and alone, plunged into the dark like her. They form quite the pair. Partners at their first archery competition when they were both eight years old, both entering the army at fifteen, the first and only person she picked as her Lieutenant when she became Captain at twenty-two. And now at twenty-seven… Lena feels a few tears slide down her cheeks.
She doesn’t even have the time to dry her tears that she hears outside her door a thundering sound: footsteps. And then, a body fall heavily against her door. Lena stands up quickly, her shackles rattling in the sudden oppressing silence. She hears the jingling of keys as someone takes it from the guard’s belt and slots it into the lock. Lena presses herself against the wall, giving herself as much momentum as the chain would allow her, ready to pound on her attacker if needs be. The door of her cell opens. A hooded person enters, tall, a cape concealing everything else from Lena’s eyes. They show their hands in a non-threatening manner.
“I won’t hurt you,” says the voice. A woman if Lena hears correctly.
“Who are you?” She asks still ready to swing her shackled hands into that person’s face.
The woman steps toward her slowly. “You need to come with me. We don’t have much time.”
“Why?”
The person huffs and looks behind her quickly. “Look, we really don’t have much time and I’d rather we be out of here before the rotations come. So, I’m going to come near you and I’m going to take those shackles off, alright?”
Lena nods, still wary.
“Please don’t hit me.” The person murmurs before going down on her knees and unlocking the bounds on her ankles and then her wrists. The woman steps away, hands in evidence.
Lena breathes a bit easier as she rubs her wrists. “Thank you.”
The person nods and if it wasn’t this dark Lena might have been able to see her smile.
“We have to go. Now,” she says going back to the door, watching carefully into the corridor.
Lena follows her quietly. “There’s someone else with me. We have to get him back.”
“Luke Perec, isn’t it? Don’t worry, I already have people get him out. He’s on the opposite side of the castle with fewer guards than you.”
Before the person could fly out of the cell, Lena grabs her hand, stopping her for a moment. The woman looks back at her, her face still obscured by her hood. “How can I know you are telling me the truth?”
The woman shrugs. “I guess, you’ll just have to trust me.” She squeezes her hand and goes into the corridor, motioning Lena to follow after checking the turns at the corridor.
Lena exhales quickly and disregard, just for the time being, her instinct telling her that it’s a trap. She’ll ignore it until they are out of here and then, she’ll shake away that person too. Lena quickly joins her new ally. A few strands of hair fall out of her hood as the woman turns her head toward her and grips Lena’s hand before making her way further and further away from Lena’s cell. She’s blonde, Lena remarks distractedly. The woman seems to know her way around the castle, she walks fast without hesitation into many twists and turns, never letting go of the hand she had gripped earlier.
As they go down the spiraling staircases, Lena had used earlier with her guards; she tries to keep her ears out for any sound that might alert her of guards nearby. But she doesn’t hear anything, no signs of life in the tower, only the sound of her blood pounding in her ears. She doesn’t know if it’s a testimony of the Kryptonian’s arrogance or a side effect from her month-long isolation with her thoughts for only company. Lena knows it’s a tactic commonly used to break an enemy. And she is reluctant to admit that it does work. She feels like her breathing is too loud or that the sound of her heart will echo onto the stone wall and alert any guards in the vicinity. The bright lit torches make her surrounding fuzzy, creating shadows on the wall, ready to pounce on her.
Suddenly something tug on her hand harder and pushes her against a wall, into an alcove, a body draped against her own. Lena first reaction is to push the person away; she thrashes against the warm body before a hand grabs her jaw and forces her to meet their eyes.
“Breathe,” the blue eyes says.
Lena obeys and it’s like a fog had lifted itself away from her mind. She feels the cold on her skin, the wind traveling more easily through the castle. They are at ground level, Lena realizes suddenly. She hears the thundering footsteps of guards passing through another corridor near them and the intense blue eyes, still fixed on her, asking her to breathe.
Lena nods slowly and calms herself down, feeling the woman release the gentle grip on her jaw and smile softly, relieved.
The warning bells suddenly ring throughout the castle.
“Shit!” The woman steps away from her and looks carefully outside the alcove.
“What do we do?” Lena whispers and grips her hand tightly, her front pressing softly against the woman’s back to have her own view on their surroundings.
“Wait; let me think…” she whispers over her shoulders, looking a bit surprised to find Lena so close. “We only have five minutes before the guards flood the ground and block all exits; five more before they begin to search the whole place.” She pauses and Lena sees a plan forming quickly in her blue eyes. “We’ll have to go to the upper levels,” Lena raises an eyebrow perplexed. “… just trust me on this.”
Lena sighs; she didn’t have much of a choice anyway. “Alright, lead the way.”
True to her words, countless of guards appear out of nowhere, running toward different parts of the castle. They use the confusion and the haste to their advantage to flee toward a stairwell that leads to a quiet wing, dark and dusty. Far away from what used to be its initial state.
They sneak into a room and Lena feels her heartbeat finally settle down. The familiar adrenaline of impending danger flowing back easily into her veins. “What now?” She asks watching the woman open a big window and look outside. Lena joins her and sees the moat just below. A high drop into the dark water. Lena chokes looking back incredulously at the smiling woman.
“What? Afraid of heights?” She asks teasingly.
For a matter of fact yes, Lena is. But she won’t admit it, infuriated by the absolute confidence radiating from her. She watches her take her cloak away, finally revealing herself. Lena is stunned by the beauty before her. She had been with a fair share of women but no one compared to the way the moon highlights this woman’s cheekbones and her slender nose; how it paints her body with shadows and lights, giving her an intriguing sense of mystery and confidence only depicted in legends.
The woman folds her cloak into a bag Lena doesn’t remember seeing, and straps it to her back.
“Sorry. But we really do have to jump, it is the only way.”
Lena gulps but for an entirely different reason. They hear footsteps somewhere outside the door and Lena knows she’ll have to jump, quickly. She feels a warm hand slide into her own, her savior standing next to her, smiling reassuringly.
“It’s okay, we’ll do it together.”
Guards are opening doors, one by one on their wing, approaching slowly to their location. Lena nods, taking a deep breath before they jump from the windowsill into the dark night.
For a few infinite seconds, Lena feels like she is flying.