Irish
(soft season 6 ficlet)
Kara knew something was wrong.
Not dangerous wrong. Lena’s heart rate was steady and calm, and there was no one else in the apartment with her. But as Kara flew above the few buildings left to her apartment, she could see how Lena was hunched over, see the stress and sadness in her body. And it made Kara’s heart ache.
Landing in the open window, Kara stepped inside, the small taps alerting Lena to her entrance. “Kara,” Lena said, trying to hide the distress on her face as she rose from the couch, grabbing at VHS tapes spread in front of the TV. “You’re home early.”
“They put out the fire before I got there,” Kara said softly. “The winds weren’t as bad as they thought.”
Lena nodded, hurriedly placing the pile of tapes into a familiar box. Kara had flown the box back to National City herself - one of the many artifacts carried over from Lena’s mother’s home, which Lena inherited at the age of 18. Lena had only gone once or twice as an adult, until the discovery of her magic made her curious to reconnect to what she could of her mother. “Are you okay?” Kara asked.
“I’m fine,” Lena said.
“Lena.” Kara stepped forward, kneeling on the rug, gently taking Lena’s busy hands into her own. “Lena, I’m here.”
Lena paused, leaving the remaining tapes next to the TV, taking a slow breath as she dropped back to sit on the floorboards instead. “I just didn’t expect to feel this way.”
“Feel what way?”
Lena stared down at the floor, not quite ready to look Kara in the eye. “I was so young. There’s so much I don’t remember.”
Kara took a seat in front of her, still holding Lena’s hands. She waited patiently - silent, and comforting, letting Lena take her time to think or talk as she wished.
“In one of the tapes,” Lena said, her voice a touch deeper than normal, “She sang an Irish lullaby. I haven’t heard it in decades. The melody slammed back into me.”
“I’m sure it was lovely,” Kara said.
“She spoke to me. In Irish. She spoke to me, and I didn’t understand what she was saying,” Lena said, frustrated. “And in the tape, I spoke back, and I didn’t understand what I was saying. It’s all gone.”
And that’s when Kara stiffened, a bolt of lightning running through her as she understood. It was different in her case, of course - she had once thought herself the last to speak a language, carrying a dead culture in her soul. Through sheer luck, she was able to get her father, her mother, her people back - but the feeling of being orphaned, she understood, if in a different way than Lena. “The Luthors don’t speak Irish,” Kara replied.
“Language attrition is common in children who stop speaking their first language before the age of 12,” Lena said softly, in a tone that made Kara realize that Lena must’ve read about this a dozen times before. “I didn’t know what I was losing until it was too late.”
“Lena,” Kara said, leaning forward to give the brunette a hug. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know it sounds so silly,” Lena said. “It’s not like I have much need to speak Irish.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t mourn what you’ve lost,” Kara said, thinking back to a million conversations she’d had with Kelly about her own traumas, even if later they were reversed by fate. “You can still be sad about it.”
Lena sighed, melting into Kara’s arms, and Kara felt relieved. They sat, wrapped in each other’s embrace and breathing in the peace of the evening, Kara rubbing gently at Lena’s back until Lena was ready. “Well, I can put the rest of this away,” Lena said, pulling back, her voice steady for the first time that evening. “We can start cooking dinner.”
Kara nodded, watching as Lena gazed back - a bit mournful, a bit sad, but a certain lightness compared to before. “If it helps,” Kara said gently, with one last thought, “I can learn Irish with you? It may not be like before, but sometimes getting some of the pieces back can mean something.”
Lena looked at her for a moment, before smiling. “I’d like that.”
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