Wild
Supercorptober 2023
"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves."
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
----
She was supposed to go to Metropolis. She was supposed to go and tell them what to keep and what to sell and what to give away. Kara's gentle arms and quiet words are the only thing that stop her before she tells them just to burn it to the ground instead.
But the ground she steps out onto is not unforgiving pavement— it is soft peat and loose stone.
The heavy oak door creaks open as she steps inside, the light following behind her as the floorboards give under her feet. She wanders through the front room, collecting fragments of her past along with the dust that falls from the air onto her shoulders. She lets her fingers trace the faded wallpaper and pauses at the kitchen door, eyes finding the four lines etched into its surface, each just a little higher than the next. She pictures her mother there, kneeling down to make each one. She kneels down too, her hand hovering over the surface. She counts the lines one by one. Four short marks. Four short years. She rubs her thumb back and forth over the last like she could somehow etch it back into the wood or back into herself — whatever would be easier.
But time doesn't work like that. It moves forward, even when we ask it to stop. Stops when we ask it for even just a second more.
She stands up and turns away from the door, stumbles out onto the small path of land, gulping in the damp air. Her breath comes in short gasps, the air heavy as it settles in her lungs. She walks until the stone beneath her feet becomes a meadow, becomes heath, becomes a blanket of tall grass. It's wild and overgrown and whips at her legs. The world in all its urgency to turn did not stop, did not end here the way the marks on the door had. So she keeps moving, keeps walking until the house is no longer there at all — until the two of them feel like nothing more than two small dark shapes on opposite ends of the earth again.
"Lena?"
She turns slowly back towards the house. Her feet slipping over the uneven ground and muddied earth.
"Lena, wait."
Kara is a few feet away, her blonde hair darker than it should be, her coat damp with more than morning mist. Lena realizes then that it was raining, feels her clothes starting to stick to her skin.
"You're here?" Lena asks, confused, like maybe she had really willed herself across the world somehow.
"I am." She pauses. "I'm sorry."
"You came." She says again, stepping forward, her feet heavy with the weight of the grass and dirt clinging to them.
Kara was in front of her in what felt like only one step, arms catching her as she fell into them.
"I did." Kara murmurs, "I'm sorry," her breath a warm contrast to the cool air, "I didn't want you to be alone. I'm sorry."
Lena doesn't say anything, just holds onto her tighter. The rain starts to come down harder, and Kara gently brushes a strand of hair from her cheek. Lena lets her head fall onto her shoulder, the ghosts of her past weaving their way between them. Kara lets them in willingly.
----
Kara's hand feels warm and steady on Lena's back as she guides her through the front door again. She shivers as they enter the kitchen. Feels all the places the damp earth has seeped into her clothes.
"Do you have anything here? Something warm?"
Lena shakes her head, thinking of the hotel across town where all her things still sit neatly packed away.
"That's okay — you're okay."
She hears the shuffle of something near the door, the sound of a zipper opening and closing, along with the soft muttering of Kara behind her.
Soft wool makes its way into her hands shortly after. She notices the sweater is hers, a deep forest green that matches the forest outside.
Kara holds a change of clothes of her own.
"Why don't we get warm, and then we can go from there. The rain is already done."
Lena nods, grateful for the distraction, for the change of pace.
When she emerges from the room, Kara is waiting for her back in the kitchen, a cup of tea in her hands and another on the table she got from somewhere that isn't here.
"Better?"
"Better," she says quietly, "thank you." She takes the cup of tea, "for this," glances at the marks on the doorframe again, "for coming."
Lena hopes it is enough to make Kara stop apologizing for doing nothing wrong.
"Always." Kara watches her, blue eyes gentle and soft.
It seems to.
"Look how little you were," Kara murmurs.
Lena's throat tightens. Four short years, four tiny marks in the wood."
"I wish..." Lena begins, but the words fade away.
Kara takes her hand. "I know," she says softly.
"Come here," Kara pushes herself away from the counter, pulling Lena with her, leading them both towards the wall.
Lena turns in her arms as her hands settle on her waist, and Kara pulls a pencil from her pocket.
"You ready?"
Lena nods. Closes her eyes as she hears the scrap of the pencil above her head, focusing on the feeling of Kara's soft kiss against her temple instead.
"All done."
Lena turns in her arms. Five short marks. The weight of all the years between them.
Lena takes the pencil from her and reaches out for Kara's waist. She can feel the way she lets herself be moved, the way she gives under the gentle pressure of her hands.
She lifts up onto her toes, and lets out a small huff of effort as Kara keeps her steady. The pencil marking out one more line.
She settles back down on her feet.
Kara takes a step back, so she's right beside her.
The lines sit off-center from each other, and hers is just a few inches shorter. But it's an odd comfort to see them together all the same.
And for a second, she thinks maybe it was selfish to ask Kara to be a witness to this part of her in such a way. To force this part of her to catch up with the wild landscape outside that has already moved on — moved forward. But then Kara's hand finds its way into hers, fingers threading together, solid and real. She leads them back outside, back through the heath, back through the tall grass, until they reach a small patch of ground that the rain seems to have spared. Kara lays her jacket on the grass, and together, they lay down, disappearing into the wild green sea around them and approaching night above them.
Lena turns her head, strands of dark hair spilling across Kara's chest and the crushed stems beneath them. She lets out a shuddering breath and feels as all the regret and sorrow that drew her back here slips away into the indifference of nature and Kara's love.
-----
follow along here or on Ao3
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Falling
Not Everything Feels Like Something Else
A bit of a choose-your-own adventure…the story starts halfway to the ground
What does falling feel like?
Surely, there is pain.
But was there some beauty in it?
Not everything feels like something else?
also thanks again to @eqt-95 for reminding me I had this WIPs … it was fun to finish!
---- ---- ---- ----
There is a point right between floating and falling.
There is an uncertainty to it.
A feeling of both passing through the sky and it passing through her.
Weightless and heavy all at once, sometimes it's hard to tell — she is too familiar with both to know the difference.
But soon, all that contradiction gives way to inevitability.
And it's inevitability that propels her downward.
Because even if she could lie to herself.
Gravity could not.
The ground would not.
Her cape snaps violently behind her, leaving a trail of red unraveling from her body. She twists, grasping at the tattered fabric, trying to find purchase, to climb her way back into the sky. But it slides through her fingertips, unraveling further with each desperate tug until they both slip further through the clouds.
There is no uncertainty left, then.
There is nothing left.
Only the waiting.
She goes from being a body in motion to a body at rest, and it isn't just the act of two objects colliding — it is an act of one swallowing the other — it is as if the whole earth opened and closed around her in an instant.
Her body presses into the ground.
Dirt all at once under her and all around her. Her limbs spread out in a desperate attempt to grasp onto something solid. But the earth offers no help — the weight of her body and the weight of the soil merge into a new kind of gravity.
The ground beneath her, a patchwork of damp soil and crushed grass, clings to her. Blades poke into her skin, mud seeps in through her cape until it pulls even heavier around her shoulders.
The texture is foreign, alien, yet somehow familiar.
She can taste the dirt mingling with the coppery tang of blood in her mouth. She can feel its gritty texture against her tongue as she runs it over her teeth. The earthly flavor lingered as if the ground was trying to work its way inside her body — she has never felt more human.
She tries to spit it out, but her mouth is too dry.
So she swallows it instead.
She has never hated the taste of something so much.
There's a noise—or maybe it's silence, the kind that echoes. It's heavy like the rest. Her ears ring with it. Her body vibrates with it. She can still feel herself sinking with some residual velocity. Wonders for a second if she is still falling. But then the dirt presses deeper into her skin. She feels nothing left of the weightlessness that she must have just consumed.
Did she imagine the fall? That trail of stars that had followed her tumbling back to earth – were they nothing more than a memory? How many times had she been chased by them? Maybe she should let them catch her. Replace the earth that had become a part of her with them instead. Would they still feel familiar?
But lying in a crater of her own making, the indent of her body feels like proof enough.
Why turn it into something it's not.
The earth feels like earth.
The sun feels like the sun.
The pain feels like pain.
Why turn it into something it's not.
The stars are in their place, and she is in hers.
So then why is there this tugging behind her sternum as insistent as gravity, pulling her not down but up?
With a groan, she raises a trembling hand to the back of her neck, her fingers fumbling for the clasp of her cape. It is tangled around her body, her legs, pinning her down. She tries again and then again, but her fingers refuse to cooperate — the ground refuses to give her up. Her frustration mounts with each failed attempt. Defeated, she lets her hand fall back into the mud.
The pulling in her chest settles into an aching...up will have to wait.
The earth, content with its part of her, lets the sun take its turn. Its light spreads across her face, but it's warmth from the inside out—foreign, alien, yet somehow familiar.
It grows closer to her skin.
It grows fingers.
Then hands.
Then a voice.
More familiar than Rao.
More familiar than Sol.
"Just breathe..."
Lena's voice takes the place of the ringing in her ears.
Kara feels her fingers on her skin; her gentle hands brushing away the dirt and the blood to cradle her face.
"That's it," Lena murmurs, but Kara doesn't remember doing anything.
She opens one eye and then the other, feeling tears prick at the corners. Her fingers twitch, tired yet impatient at her side.
All the words she knows crowd somewhere at the back of her throat, unwieldy and misshapen after having done nothing but rattle around in her head.
They don't sound right.
They taste bitter, coated in dirt and blood like the rest of her.
"I-I fell." are the only ones she manages to scrape past her teeth.
Lena's hands move to the ruined cape still wrapped around her body, unclipping it from her shoulders and untangling it from her legs.
When it's finally unraveled and discarded, she settles back on her heels, hands coming to rest on her own thighs, unbothered by the mud and grass and bits that cling to them.
Kara touches each of her fingers one by one, easing their ends together until she has weaved them all together.
"Did you fall, too?" Kara's eyes search her body as if there were no other way for her to be here. As if falling was ever the only way to reach each other.
Lena's brow furrows and there is a flicker of confusion. She wants again for more words, for better words, but is left still with only what can make its way out.
"No, Darling," she answers, voice gentle as it soothes the raw edges of Kara's panic.
Without her cape, the ground is even colder.
She wants to sit up. To be closer to the sun. To be closer to Lena.
She tries to sit up.
But even if the earth is willing to let go, gravity is not so kind despite that tugging feeling in her chest again.
But this time she does not have to wait.
A hand slips beneath her shoulders, around her waist.
She is heavy until she isn't. The earth tilts in time with her body. Or maybe it's the other way around.
"Easy."
She leans against Lena, allows herself to be still, even as the ground still moves beneath her.
She knows she will not let her go.
Kara closes her eyes, feeling the warmth of the sun on her back. She breathes in the scent of earth and grass and tastes the lingering grit of dirt in her mouth. She picks out hints of tea, and ink, and bergamot rind. She draws it all into her lungs — the Earth and Lena together and even the bits of stars that followed her down too— her ribs protesting but eventually relenting.
Lena cards her fingers through her hair. Kara turns into her, lets her head fall into the space between her shoulder and her neck — feels her heartbeat through the thin sun-drenched fabric, moves with the gentle rise and fall of her chest.
Around them the world is alive with subtle movements; right here they are alive by the same measure.
The earth feels like earth.
The sun feels like the sun.
Pain feels like pain.
Love feels like love.
Why turn it into something it's not.
----
read or come say hi on Ao3 too
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just... john deciding to retire after being awarded the title big boss, he's just immensely traumatised tired and he doesnt want.. cant fight anymore
adamska demanding why john is quiting everything and learning the truth from john about his mother and not really understanding why john would quit but he respects his decision
john uses his skills to hide himself away from the world and adam uses his skills to visit john from time to time (bc really you think he'd stop being a spy or stop missing john? never)
years later, as adam is visiting john in his surprisingly ever growing farm, john asks about his retirement and adam laughs
"retirement? i dont think i'll even get to that age"
this makes johns heart clench, he knows better than anyone else that everyday could be adams last "but if you got to, what would you do"
"i don't know" he shrugged "i never thought about it"
"you should join me"
"what?"
"you should join me, i have plenty of space and i could use a helping hand"
"you can't be serious"
"i am, you should give it a thought"
and the conversation ends there leaving adam quite baffled
though the idea sticks to his mind and finds that he actually quite likes the idea of growing old next to john in their his farm
and so another couple of years later, adam finds himself in front of johns farm asking if he has an extra room for him to which john receives him with open arms and a warm smile
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