Kara Shreds The Steel Door With Her Bare Hands, Brushing It Away Like A Cobweb.

Kara shreds the steel door with her bare hands, brushing it away like a cobweb.

The blue of her eyes is shrouded in the dark red of tears and the raging inferno swelling inside her. Every line of her body is drawn tense and taught, ready to snap.

“Where is she?” she growls but the sound gets caught in the rumble of her chest, too low for human ears to understand. No words are necessary anyway. The sight of her is enough.

Lex’s lackeys scatter and the ones who aren’t fast enough find themselves downed and bleeding before they can blink.

In the end, Kara finds her in a back room, strapped to a table. She is pale and still, like a cadaver on a metal slab.

For the first time in three days Kara stops moving.

“Lena,” she breathes and it tastes like ice against her tongue.

She’s not dead.

Unconscious, dehydrated, unable to wake up, but not dead.

Kara holds onto that, the way she holds onto Lena’s hand while sitting sentry at her bedside.

Alex finds something on the back of her neck, like a microchip glowing green. When it’s passed to her, Kara looks down at it in the palm of her hand. It stings against her skin with traces of Kryptonite.

She ignores Alex’s protest and crushes it to dust.

When Lena opens her eyes an hour later, they are blank. She blinks once, twice, like she’s willing herself back into her body. Kara is on her feet in a flash.

“Lena? Lena, can you hear me?” is what she asks, but all she can think is please, please, please.

The sound of her voice shakes something in Lena and she’s sitting up a moment later, stiff and slow. Kara’s arms go around her shoulders, and Lena melts into her in a heartbeat.

“What happened? What’s wrong? Darling? Darling, you’re crying.”

Kara shudders out a sob.

She’s speaking Kryptonese.

It takes a few minutes for them to separate enough to look each other in the face. When they do, Lena gasps, trembling fingers raising to follow the curve of Kara’s cheek.

“Kara?” she asks, this time in English.

She looks like she’s seen a ghost, her face falling impossibly more ashen in the sterile med-bay lighting.

Kara presses her palm against Lena’s fingers, bringing their joined hands fully against her face.

“I’m sorry it took us so long,” Kara says quietly, and Lena’s brow furrows.

“Please, Kara,” her name sounds broken in Lena’s mouth. “Tell me what happened.”

Kara does. She tells her about her own kidnapping, about the traps Lex had set around the city, how it took them three days to find her in a bunker beneath a dark mountain.

She doesn’t tell her about the casualties. She doesn’t tell her about her own recklessness and rage.

“Three days,” Lena repeats with a shake of her head, dark hair shifting behind her like she’s sinking into darkness. “No, it. It was longer than that for me.”

“How long?”

Lena clenches her teeth together with a click and does not answer.

Alex examines her quickly and clinically, giving her a clean bill of health. She changes her IV with practiced hands.

It takes both of them to convince Kara to go take a shower and grab some food. Neither expect her to be gone for long.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Alex asks quietly, keeping her focus on the IV in a small act of mercy.

Lena draws a deep breath, fingers twisting against the scratchy med-bay sheets. She hasn’t said a word since Kara left, just stared into the middle distance lost in thought.

“Lex,” she says after a moment, his name falling heavily through the air. “He sent me somewhere, another reality perhaps or...”

“Or a simulation, maybe?” Alex offers. “Like Obsidian tech?”

Lena’s fingers curl into fists, and she turns her head away from Alex as if to hide tears.

“It was real,” she says harshly. “To me, it was so real.”

Kara is back in three minutes, hair damp and mouth stuffed with half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She sets the other half in front of Lena, who stares at it.

“You should eat something,” Kara urges. When Lena looks up at her there is so much intensity in her eyes that Kara stops chewing.

“Is this real?” she asks, voice so small even Kara struggles to hear it over the sound of her heart cracking in half. She swallows her bite past the lump in her throat, and places her left hand over Lena’s on the bed.

“It’s real. You’re real and I’m real.”

Lena stares at their joined hands for a long time, eyes roaming like she’s looking for an answer.

After Lena chokes down three bites of sandwich and an unspoken number of sobs, she falls into a deep sleep. Kara sits at her bedside and does not look away from her face.

Behind her Alex stands stone faced, arms crossed over her chest. For a long time the only sound in the room is Lena’s steady breathing.

“What are you thinking?” Alex asks, warning flashing through her tone like an alarm bell. Kara watches Lena’s eyelashes flutter, and straightens her spine.

“I’m going to kill Lex Luthor.”

It’s Kelly who gets Lena to open up.

She takes the chair that Kara reluctantly vacates and asks her to give them some privacy. It’s a long time before Kara huffs out a sigh and relents.

“I’ll be in the lab,” she tells Lena, waiting for her nod of understanding before disappearing through the door. It clicks closed quietly behind her.

Kelly sits patiently beside the bed, hands folded in her lap. She doesn’t look at Lena for long, instead taking in the blinking lights and medical equipment around them.

“This isn’t a very restful space, is it?” she asks after a moment. “Would you like someone to take you home?”

Lena breathes out harshly and licks her lips.

“There’s no going home anymore,” she says.

Kelly looks at her then, taking in the hollow of her eyes and the resigned frown on her lips.

“Lena,” she starts gently. “The place that you were sent to...did you have a life there? People you cared about?”

Green eyes turn to stare at the closed door Kara just exited through and she swallows thickly, jaw working in a tense grind.

“Yes.”

When Kelly returns to the tower common room it’s to find the Danvers sisters locked in a tense argument.

“—you can’t. Look what he did to Lena, Kara. We don’t know what he’s capable of. It’s too dangerous.”

“Exactly,” Kara snaps, gesturing wildly toward the med-bay. “Look what he did to Lena! He needs to pay! Who knows what kind of torture he inflicted on her in that place? How much she’s suffered?”

They stare each other down for a tense beat.

“I think she was happy,” Kelly says quietly after a moment, and two heads snap to look at her. “Wherever he sent her, whatever kind of life she had there. I think she was happy.”

Alex barely catches Kara when her knees give out, both of them toppling beneath her weight.

Kara spots Lex’s helicopter just as it’s leaving the bunker. She grips the rotating blades in her hands and squeezes until they crinkle like confetti.

She looks down through the window and locks eyes with Lex, who appears equal parts smug and afraid.

Kara snarls at him, spins once through the air and hurls the whole helicopter into the side of the mountain. When the inferno of twisted metal and rock finally hits the ground below she makes sure to check the wreckage.

He’s alive. Barely.

Kara cradles his broken body as she flies them back to the tower, and tries to let her fury die in the wreckage instead.

They move Lena from the tower before Kara arrives with Lex. She lets Kelly wrap her in an oversize sweater and guide her into the front seat of Nia’s car.

When they ask her where she wants to go she doesn’t have an answer. They end up at Kara’s loft.

“Is this okay?” Kelly asks after she’s settled Lena on the couch beneath Kara’s red throw blanket.

Lena nods, and she asks Kelly to stay. Nia turns the lights down low and kisses Lena’s forehead before leaving them alone. They sit in silence for a while, both exhausted from the events of the past few days.

“Kara said you spoke Kryptonese,” Kelly says quietly, breaking the silence. Lena stills for a moment and then nods, saying something softly that Kelly can’t understand.

“Did she teach you?”

“A version of her did.”

Kelly lobs the next question with enough grace that Lena doesn’t flinch.

“Did you love her?”

Lena looks down at the blanket over her lap and runs her hands over it, feeling the familiar material beneath her palms.

“I still do.”

“That Kara or this one?”

It’s a long time before Lena answers.

When Kara gets home, after double and triple checking that Lex couldn’t possibly escape the containment force fields they’ve rigged, Kelly and Lena are both asleep.

They’re curled together beneath her blanket, Lena’s head on Kelly’s shoulder with Kelly’s arm snug around her shoulders. Kara takes out her phone and snaps a picture before waking them.

Kelly excuses herself with a meaningful look that Kara doesn’t understand. When she turns her attention back to Lena, she’s looking up at her with an equally indecipherable expression.

“Will you take me to bed?” Lena asks, and a second later she’s cradled against Kara’s chest. She curls into that same position once they’re both tucked beneath the comforter.

Kara wraps her arms around her and holds on for dear life. The sun sets out the window and the light shifts from yellow to red to complete darkness. They lay snugly in each other’s arms, both feeling their first bit of true comfort since Lena first went missing.

Just as Kara is starting to drift off to sleep Lena speaks.

“I had a life there. It was, it was a lot longer than three days. It was years. It was a whole life. I had friends, a job... a wife,” she whispers into the darkness. Kara’s heart stutters in her chest, and Lena’s close enough that they both feel it.

“Do you miss her?”

“Yes.”

Kara sucks in a deep breath and let’s it out slowly, Lena’s hand that’s pressed against her chest rising and falling with the motion. After a moment Kara finds the courage to ask the question she really wants to ask.

“Did you miss me?”

Lena picks her head up just enough to look into her eyes, barely able to make out bright blue in the darkness. Her hand slides from Kara’s chest up her neck to cradle the edge of her jaw, thumb brushing the soft skin there tenderly.

“I didn’t need to.”

More Posts from Stresseddepressedlemonzestsblog and Others

stresseddepressedlemonzestsblog

3 weeks ago

I'm actually unshakeable as a Pazzi truther because of what we went through with Preath lmao. Like everytime people act like we're in the trenches with these two, I just think omg y'all would not have survived Preath. And I honestly wasn't even there for the very beginning of the Preath era but I know that shit was insane levels of literal morsels of crumbs lmao.

As a Preath 2017 fan this is so true. The only content we got was zooming in on glasses, shadows and colors of shoes to see if they are together for years! This is literally a walk in the park at least they act like they know each other and not like Preath who tried so hard to pretend they didn’t even know each other on the pitch 💀The vibes are the same though and I hope one day we get as far with Pazzi as we did with Preath (hopefully it doesn’t take 9 years though!)

AND NOW PREATH ARE OPENLY TALKING ABOUT HAVING BABIES

Like we've really come incredibly far with those two and literally who would've thunk it.

Lmao technically, it's already been like 7 years with Pazzi too? But I really do believe the last couple of weeks (and I expect the rest of this summer) are slowly building there way up to a "hard launch" next year after Azzi leaves UConn.

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stresseddepressedlemonzestsblog

3 years ago

hi i hope you're doing well. so i basically broke up with my girlfriend of four years and i feel like half a person. i was wondering if you'd had some sc fic recs that don't have a happy ending? lol it's just that i spend a lot of time reading fics and i absolutely can't stand right now to read something sweet and with happy endings and happy people

ooohhh my love i am so so sorry, i can’t imagine how painful that must be. i’ll leave this post for anyone else to add on to as well, but off the top of my head:

in which a half confession breaks them both by myselfffff

she herself is a haunted house by blymoon is less a love story and more just an ouch little character snapshot of lena

spending all my nights alone (waiting for you to call me) by dancingthru

if anyone has any others, please reply and let me know!

non-happy ending fics are very difficult because people really do not receive them well. i love them, personally, but in my experience (as a writer) the further you veer into that territory, the more risk you run of really low engagement and/or 100 comments that just say “where’s part two so it ends happily!!!!” so a lot of my really particularly angsty ideas never make it onto paper.

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stresseddepressedlemonzestsblog

3 years ago

ix. super.

“What was that about?” her fiancée asks, coming in, and leaning down to press a kiss against her temple. Kara had just shown Clark and Lois out. Tonight had been their first dinner together after Kara’s proposal. The couple flew in for a rare visit to National City for a journalism conference.

Lena didn’t burn the lasagna, Kara hadn’t spilled the wine, and Lois made a total of just three jokes about them knocking up and getting hitched together. All in all Lena would call it a marvelous success.

“What was what about?” Lena turns face to Kara, catches her wrist and tugs. Kara lets herself get pulled, and crawls onto the couch. Fitting herself into the space between the arms Lena has up, holding her book. Lena’s changed into a soft sweater and leggings, Kara eagerly buries her nose into the fabric over her belly as she drapes herself over Lena.

“Oh, you know,” Kara murmurs, “that look Kal did. The look he gave you. As if he knew you or something.”

Before saying goodbye, Kal had given Lena this look. It was only brief, just after Lois had hugged Lena. But Kara had noticed it, had heard him whisper, “I’m happy for you, Lena. We’ve come a long way.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah?”

“Well…” Lena says, closing the book she’s started reading, in favor of cupping Kara’s face with both hands. “That’s because he did know me, Kara. He knew me.”

“What?”

“He was Lex’s best friend,” Lena explains, and she runs a hand up her hair. Her little habit that makes Kara tend to zone out completely to track the movement of pale fingers against dark hair.

“He was...my brother’s best friend,” Lena tells her again. Softer this time, her index finger tracing the slope of Kara’s nose, bringing her attention back into Lena’s story.

“Lex met him when they were in college. I was— I think? 6th grade? Or something like that.”

In her mind, Kara can see it; Kal from nowhere Kansas bumping into Lex Luthor, rich kid prodigy. She wonders how Lena met him. Was it over Thanksgiving dinner in the Luthor Manor? Was it during one of Lex’s rare visits to Lena in boarding school? Her brother arriving with his Maserati and a stranger in tow? What did Lena think when she first laid eyes on the man that would play the major part in his brother’s demise?

Kara wonders if the three of them ever knew what the future held in store.

“And then you know,” Lena breathes out. “He was just always around. Just always there. Driving around with Lex, eating in the living room. It’s disturbing how domestic all of that was, now that I think about it.”

Kara can’t help but agree. It was easy to imagine, sure, but kind of hard to believe. There would always be a loud dissonance between the boy Clark drove around in his truck to the man who would make all sorts of killing machines just to rid the planet of Kryptonians.

“I never knew you know? Everything was normal. I’d come home, and I’d get a call from my brother and his best friend. And sometimes they’d take me out bowling. Normal stuff you know?”

And yes, Kara does know. Because that was how everything tragedy begins wasn’t it? With everything going normal, until it doesn’t. Until she’s sealed in a pod with no home to go back to, until a brother goes insane, turns the sun red, and suddenly you’re all alone.

“Clark Kent is the person who stayed in his seat when my brother got a call in the middle of one of my chess tournaments,” Lena tells her. “Clark Kent ate ice cream with me after I had my first fight with Andrea. Clark was there the day before I left for college. He was one of the people who called to congratulate me on my graduation day, years later.”

“He was my brother’s best friend, you know?” Lena sighs out. “And for a moment, he was a brother to me, too.”

She tries to picture it all. She tries to imagine Kal and a young Lena Luthor sitting in an ice cream parlor somewhere in Metropolis. Kal, giving Lena a thumbs-up, and mouthin g ‘You’re doing great.’ whilst watching Lena exchange moves on the chessboard. Kal, letting a young Lena sleep on his shoulder after Lex had picked her up for spring break; Luthor Manor looming over them.

It wasn’t hard to picture. After all she’s seen every version of Lena Luthor there is; seen every stiff childhood family photo, every pretentious solo portrait Lillian insisted on, seen every shot James had taken, every magazine cover and of course, there were the selfies that only Kara would only be allowed to see ever.

Although, maybe, it wasn’t really about that.

Maybe it’s easy to imagine because Kara has spent a long time picturing Kal as the doting brother he never got to be with her. Because whilst Kal was out there living his life with the Luthors, Kara was on the other side of the world, trying hard to survive, to fit into this strange new world without anybody helping her.

Don’t get her wrong, she was happy that the important people in her life had each other somewhere along the timeline, once upon a time. During a period in their lives where they still haven’t known Kara, yet. She was glad they had each other then.

Still, Kara can’t help but feel a slight twinge of envy.

Because if Kal could play the role of the dorky, loving big brother to Lena, why couldn’t he have done it for Kara? Why was she the one left in the dust? But today wasn’t about Kara. They can talk about it some other time. She tunes in again just in time for Lena to say, “And then, a super came around. Superman happened. And Lex—”

She doesn’t need Lena to finish that.

“And then everything went to hell?”

“Yeah,” Lena whispers, “and then everything went to hell. I grew up. Clark stayed away. Superman won. Lex lost.”

“And then you met me?”

“And then I met you, yeah.” This time she can hear the smile in Lena’s voice, it makes Kara’s lips turn up a little too.

“I’m sorry he hurt you. That day, when we came to interview you.” Kara can still remember the none too subtle jabs Clark had said; can still remember that even then she already felt the inexplicable urge to protect this woman. Kara just knew, right away. Lena’s just as full of good as any Super out there, deserved just as good a chance the world had given to the two of them.

“I’ve forgiven him a long time ago, Kara. Lex damaged us both. And Clark was just trying to protect himself.”

“Still,” Kara says, “you deserved better than that. If he really cared for you at all, he would’ve checked on you, after what Lex had done. Instead, he assumed the worst.”

“Yeah, he shouldn’t have done that, I know. But that was a long time ago, darling. And we’ve both made amends.” Her finger traces the slope of Kara’s nose again, smooths out the crinkle that had formed.

“He’s family now,” Lena says slowly. “And families tend to be just a bit complicated, I’ve learned.”

Kara fully grins up at that, hearing Lena talk about her family— their family like that.

“Mm. You’re right. They are.”

Lena smiles at her, “I’m always right.”

Kara laughs, “Yeah, yeah you are. Can’t argue with that.”

She surges forward a bit to catch Lena’s lips in a soft kiss.

When they pull away, Kara’s eyes are sparkling.

“So…” she says, “wanna hear about how I used to change Superman’s diapers?”

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stresseddepressedlemonzestsblog

3 years ago

There'll be a moment when you realise you're 27 when yesterday you were just 17; and you wouldn't be able to tell how a decade passed away and your life got divided into before and afters. The fury of youth will subdue and nothing will really change but everything will feel different when you look at old photographs and blurry videos taken on cheap mobile phones. Scents will remind you of childhood and certain friends you don't talk to anymore, hangouts will become reunions and mom's burnt pie will become the best food you ever had. And I know on some days you won't be able to show anything of those 10 years but I hope you remember to breathe, and let go of the knot in your chest. I hope you go out in the sun and live a little, because tomorrow is 37.

Edit- I added the visualizer for this piece on my YT, check it out here

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned

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stresseddepressedlemonzestsblog

3 years ago

Hundred Episodes Later And It’s Still Cool Seeing It. (2012 / 2019 / 2021)

Hundred episodes later and it’s still cool seeing it. (2012 / 2019 / 2021)

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stresseddepressedlemonzestsblog

2 years ago

The first time Ava brings it up, it’s too soon. Yes, they have, by some miracle, not been excommunicated for their actions at the Vatican, but it’s still a raw wound for all of them that it was their actions which set loose a centuries-old demon who was, until recently, safely ensconced in concrete. So when Ava tries to joke, “Well, Beatrice did blow up the Vatican for me,” Beatrice pulls a face.

Keep reading

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stresseddepressedlemonzestsblog

3 years ago

“And when you told me what your favorite book was, I bought it and read it over and over… trying to find pieces of you in it.”

— Unknown

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stresseddepressedlemonzestsblog

3 years ago

I apologize for the person I will become when the Olympics start and the USWNT start playing

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stresseddepressedlemonzestsblog