Soulmates: Chapter XIII

(Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)

At home that night, Kara felt she couldn’t make sense of it because there was no making sense of it, and so she continued with her life as though nothing had been said about the matter. It was thought of, once in a while, put away and stuffed down, but in the shower, there was too much silence.

The matter simply couldn’t be avoided.

Quietness always allowed for thought processes to procrastinate on things they shouldn’t.

“Hi,” Lena said when the phone was picked up.

“Hey babe,” Kara whispered, juggling the phone between dripping palms as she reached for a towel. “I’m sorry for calling so many times I know it’s still working hours where you are—”

“Do not apologise.” Lena was stern about it. “You do not ever apologise for reaching out, ever, especially when it’s important like this.”

“So you know?” Guilty, Kara felt a weight lift from her shoulders.

“I know.”

“How are you?” Kara did her best to keep it all ticking and steady and without symptom of her own persistent, dribbling tears.

“I'm not the best person to ask questions like that.” Lena sighed. “I'm either great, or as you once phrased it, Miss Danvers, I am...the impulsive, erraticism and paranoia that—many now feel—aptly describes my brother’s downfall into madness—”

“Lena, Jesus Christ, would you stop?” Kara's voice bit more than she meant to.

“Woah.”

“I'm sorry,” Kara didn't skip a beat, softer this time. “I am so sorry. It. It didn't feel good. The joke. I don't know, I'm a little raw. I'm sorry.”

“That's okay. You have every right to feel raw about this too, Kara, you spend virtually every day with Cat. I should have paused and registered that. I think dark humour is my..." Lena sighed and thought. "The jokes are my healthy outlet, but I understand they're not yours. I apologise.”

“Your crutch,” Kara corrected seriously, but she was smiling, and she knew Lena was smiling too. "Don't say sorry. It's been a hard day."

Lena paused.

"How are you?" The concern was palpable.

“I mean…” Kara didn’t know why she was crying. “I mean, yeah, she’s—she’s Cat Grant, you know?”

“At the end of the nuclear apocalypse it will be the cockroaches, Cher, and Cat Grant, I know, she feels indestructible and godly.” Lena talked around all the feelings Kara couldn't quite extrapolate. “But that doesn’t make it any less terrible, baby. I can be on a flight home tonight. I might not get to you until tomorrow morning, but I want to be with you. I want to be there.”

“I feel like it has no right to hit me this hard.” Kara burst into tears. “She’s…she’s awful. She’s the meanest person I know. She’s rude, and crass, and she takes pleasure in putting people down and making them feel horrible! What kind of person does that, Lena?”

“She is all of those things, yes, and somehow also the kindest and most generous person I think any of us know. How do you even make sense of that?” Lena commiserated. “She is both the best and worst for all the same reasons.”

“It’s like…” Kara inhaled and held it for a moment, unsure of why the news had possessed her with such heartbreak. “It’s like every big milestone since I’ve been here. Every good and bad moment, every time I realised just how much I was falling for you, how drawn I felt to you, how connected I felt to you, she was there.”

Strange.

Kara registered it, became aware of it, just as it all rolled and fell off her tongue.

Kara drew a gasp too big for her lungs when she felt the birthmark throb, grow hot, clearing slightly with that distinct heat on her skin.

Lena fell silent.

She fell silent because she knew too.

“Did you…” Lena sounded as though her voice was wobbling, but she coughed and cleared it away. “You just felt the thing now, right? The…birthmark thing?”

Kara kept her palm fixed to the side of her hip and didn’t dare lift it.

“Kara,” Lena whispered. “It’s alright, darling, it’s quite alright. I love you very much and I…” She hung on her pause as though trying to convince herself it was true. “I can say with some certainty that I have known true love with two great and brilliant women in my life, and how very fortunate I am for that, so if you need to put down the phone and take stock of this situation, then I’m here and I’m only ever one phone call away. There are…no bad feelings, only love, always that if nothing else.” Lena laughed sadly, crying and unable to hide it. “I’ll call you when I’m back around.”

Soulmates: Chapter XII

(Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)

Over time, the birthmark became this shifting cloud that Kara no longer monitored. It would tingle, grow warm, sit there, melting in its own patient and prolonged way, and Kara felt no real compulsion to hurry her life along or reveal something she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to anymore.

The winter had broken into spring, a season for new things and lovely awakenings. The sixth most-charming park turned out to be the third most-charming park, once they quantified the state of things, compared gardens, took into full account proximity compared to which parks exactly had the better ice creams and coffee amenities.

Kara picked up her office phone to give the tailor a polite heads-up that Miss Grant would be fifteen minutes late to the appointment, give or take. Cat had been in her office for some time longer than expected and Kara didn’t want to disturb, if only for the frustrated back and forth she had been pacing, in circles, incrementally more frustrated as time ticked along.

When Kara picked up the phone, she found herself listening in on the live call.

“Cat, I’m sorry, I know it’s not what you want to hear but you either break the news yourself, or The Starling Post will by six o’clock tonight.”

“James this isn’t a game, kill the fucking story.”

“Cat, it’s gone beyond me, beyond us, I have spent weeks killing this story but this is about to be front page national news on every media coverage platform between here and New York.”

“At least let me talk to Lena first?”

“Cat, I’m telling you this because you are my friend.” There was a deep inhale, then a pause. “Lena is—” The phone cut suddenly.

Kara glanced up. Cat was looking directly at her, furious, her fingers still driven down into the conference button to cancel the three-way line. Instinctively Kara lifted her hands in defence, she didn’t mean to eavesdrop, she just fell into the conversation at a point where she couldn’t take her ear away. Chewing her nails, the reprimand came swift and assured a few minutes later.

Kara went into the office and waited for the telling off of the century.

“How much did you hear and do not.” Cat pinched the bridge of her nose. “Do not bullshit me, Kara.”

“Something and nothing, I heard enough to know there’s a story about to break, one that you want to kill, and it has something to do with Lena.” Kara rubbed the back of her neck. “I know that you’re angry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, Cat, but please, can you just tell me…” Kara sniffed and felt embarrassed. “Lena isn’t… she hasn’t done something bad, right? I just. I just love her, very much, and that’s new for me, and I don’t want to worry that she’s lied about something I should know about…”

Cat closed her eyes and her expression slackened as though something about the statement took her by surprise, as though it just didn’t sit right with her, despite best appearances otherwise. She swallowed and shook her head, pinching the bridge of her nose again.

“Kara, I think you need to sit down.”

“Oh God.” Kara grimaced and knew what was coming. “Is she—has she done something?”

“Kara—”

“Is it going to break my heart?” She panicked.

“Kara—”

“Oh fuck.” Kara screwed her expression and kicked herself as it dawned all at once. “She’s…she’s dating someone else, isn’t she, behind my back?”

“Kara I have cancer!” Cat burst.

Strange.

Just like that…

The world had stopped on its axis.

“Wh…what?” The colour drained from Kara’s face.

“It’s nothing particularly new.” Cat kept a dour affect as though it were common and expected, typical and uncolourful. “It’s simply…progressed.”

At that Kara almost lurched out of her body.

“Progressed?” She went wide-eyed.

“Progressed.” Cat kept tight-lipped on the matter. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m having a busy day. Can you collect my lunch, and then call ahead to my tailor fitting and let him know I’m going to be late—but I will be there as soon as I can be there.” Cat sighed and strolled out of her office, prim and together.

Kara didn’t know how to make sense of it.

Soulmates: Chapter XI

(Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

In crumpled sheets, Kara awoke without a sore head, feeling fresh, and decidedly happy in a way she had never quite felt after a sexual encounter before last night.

“Hey,” Lena whispered with a smile.

“Hey.” Kara sighed. “Do I…get dressed and go? I’m guessing you have plans today.”

“If you’re busy then I’m busy.” Lena stretched. “But, you know, if you’re not busy… we could go for breakfast, maybe go see about the fifth most-charming park in the city, though it’s not technically in the city—more in the wider metropolitan area.”

“Sounds like a long morning if we’re going out to the wider metro,” Kara giggled and pushed forward, pressing her cheek to Lena’s warm bare chest. “Hi, hello again. You look…” Kara kissed her without thinking.

“You too.” Lena mumbled, kissing, smiling into the prolonged and deepened kisses that clung to her cheeks on grasping fingertips. “You looked breath-taking last night, to tell you the truth, nothing has really changed this morning.”

Kara straddled her hips, she giggled and clambered and sat on top of her because it was too hard not to. It was met with uptake, with strong palms on her spine, which wrapped into a hug that felt giddy and exciting, and kisses in stretches and paths that went in their own little pecks all over her collarbones and chest.

“Lena?”

“Yeah?”

“Could we go on a date?” Kara felt breathless but certain—certain despite the profound uncertainty of what she was asking and what it all meant. “It’s okay, you know, if the answer isn’t yes, but if it is then I want to take you somewhere and just… maybe find your sixth most-charming park, if you would like a more expansive list, if there’s parks you haven’t—” The kiss stifled the words back into her mouth.

“Yeah babe,” Lena murmured and shuffled out of bed with the little worrier on her hips. “Let’s go find the sixth.”

Soulmates: Chapter X

(Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

“You are either a perfect gentleman who got her home, safe, relatively sober, well before midnight” —Cat had answered after the second ring dialled with an instantaneous awareness of things— “Or Kara Danvers is presently in your bed, while you pretend to get a glass of water, because you were not raised properly.” She laughed slightly at that.

Lena grinned and pushed her sweater sleeve up her arm.

“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell,” she said.

The kitchen faucet ran, then the distinct rushing glug of a glass being placed beneath the water punctured the quiet, which she knew Cat Grant could hear perfectly.

“Good night?” Cat yawned.

“Something like that,” Lena said softly.

“And you’re calling because…”

“That navy blue dress. The Caroline Herrera number, with the thigh-slit that goes… somewhat too high-up for a respectable lady such as yourself.”

“Oh, quaint, you deduced that little Anna Delvey didn’t happen across it at a swap-meet then?” Cat sounded disinterested. “You’re calling me about the dress for what reason?”

“To apologise, profusely, and enquire how many zeros I should place on this cheque I’m presently writing to you.”

“You ripped a fucking pre-season Caroline Herrera gown?”

“Something like that.” Lena took a gulp of water. “Will five zeros suffice?”

“Place a two before the five zeros.” Cat sighed. “I’m going. Do not—and I mean do not—be disrespectful with her, Lena. You take her for breakfast tomorrow morning. If you don’t have the time, then make the time, otherwise I might just have to re-open that story I killed for you a few months back...”

“Ah, I see. So, you’re Kara’s fairy god mother?” Lena grinned and took another swig from the glass. “I told her the first time I met her that you didn’t hate her half as much as she thought.”

“Dorothy’s fairy god mother?” Cat murmured. “Her Good Witch of the North, maybe.”

“Well, Glinda, I’ll let you get some sleep. I’ll make sure the cheque finds you quickly and discretely.”

“Do.” Cat put down the phone.

Soulmates: Chapter IX

(Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

Lena wasn’t going to go out tonight, and if she was, then it certainly wouldn’t be to her third fundraiser this week. Lena had sent a sizeable donation, of course, but felt somewhat determined to enjoy a rare evening of mindless nothing.

That had been the plan until Kara had sent the second text.

The first text, the initial request, Lena had already been half-way thumbing a reply to politely decline the invitation. Then the second text came through, or rather just the photograph.

“I was going to wear this tonight?” Kara had written underneath.

Lena stared at her phone, blinking, astounded as one woman could ever be by the sight of another. It felt for one shining moment as though she were feeling it all again, all anew, all lovely and exciting in her chest, that wonderful sensation of falling in love or just… falling, blindly, unsure of whether she would hit the ground or something much softer.

Lena remembered that feeling.

She felt guilty for just a moment.

She felt guilty because the feeling of attraction didn’t inherently make her feel guilty like it would have done a sparse few months ago.

Her lack of guilt did nothing to tarnish what had once been—and in some small way would always be—because death didn’t stop the perseverance of love moving forward, despite itself, in the absence of rationality, meandering alongside those who were left behind, regardless of that big, horrendous void where someone else used to exist and…

Read books. Lena remembered with a smile as she glanced at the armchair, crooked and facing the window, tucked away in this untouched nook of the apartment with a set of reading glasses that hadn’t been moved, just because it felt nice to keep them there, on top of the Kindle, not because she couldn’t bear to change with the times or adjust around the absence. Lena just…

Liked remembering, in the right moments, when she felt capable of sitting with it all.

Death if anything turned love into a shadow, one that casted wide across future days, just as evening sunlight strikes the skyscrapers in the city, sometimes, at just the right angle, that the darkened outline stretches over entire boroughs with an imprint of itself as though it’s kissing and hugging the entire world goodnight.

Love, a lot like that, had eventually became grief, which was little more than an imprint of itself reaching, hugging, kissing the world goodnight, from some point in time where it once stood proud, tall, and mighty.

“What do you think?” Kara went for the triple text.

Lena sighed and rolled her eyes, amused, and got up completely resigned to hair and make-up with less time than she would like for such things.

“I think I’ll pick you up at seven if that works?” She thumbed back.

Soulmates: Chapter VIII

(Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

A few weeks later, Kara came into work to find an opened letter on her desk that had been addressed to Catherine Grant. Cat was on a business trip to the Cayman Islands concerning business that had absolutely nothing to do with offshore bank accounts—she was quite clear.

Still, the envelope sat opened, which meant Cat had not only read it before some reason overnighted it back to the office, and it was placed on top of a large opaque plastic bag.

Kara turned the envelope in her hand.

Cat had scrawled a note on the back.

Kara,

This invitation arrived too late for me to do anything about. The gala is tonight, at the Dorson Hotel. It’s a fundraiser for the Alzheimer’s society, naturally your name was the first one that came to my mind. I believe Lena Luthor is attending too.

If she isn’t, I should imagine you might want to wear this dress and invite her to reconsider her schedule.

Cat.

Kara opened the package already knowing, deep down, on some level, and yet when she saw the colour and felt the silk on her fingertips, it felt necessary to place it down and take a walk to the coffee machine, if only to compose herself.

Inside of her soul there was—as there had always been—a little girl still laying on her childhood bed, ankles kicking, mucky socks, enamoured with pictures of immaculate and fashionable women that she so desperately wanted to look like one day yet knew, with resolution, she would never get the chance.

When would a farm girl ever need a navy silk evening dress, expensive, like that one, with a thigh slit high enough to startle the sheep and send the cicadas blushing?

Internally, the little girl felt like Cinderella going to the ball, like her whole life had just arrived at the moment it was supposed to, and despite knowing it would make for a beautiful photograph, Kara didn’t want to share this—not with anyone she didn’t already know.