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zimburg · 2 years

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love totem | extended

Finale rewrite. The Final Battle. The Denouement. A Luthor and a Super.

-----

The rose tattoo lost its final petal. It dissipated, burned gold across Esme’s neck for a fractal of a second. Disappeared.

Lex raged.

Fill your heart with love. Only then will love be given to you.

The totem was an erudite, elusive thing. Dangerous and fickle, trickier than the other totems, attracted to feeling. It sought the places where love hid and burned, where the fire of it was strongest. Familial love. Romantic love. Protective love. Painful, terrifying, emboldening, desperate, any form of it robust enough to ground and justify the totem’s power.

When the totem ripped itself from Esme, driven off by Lex and Nyxly’s underserved attempts to possess it, it hovered in its transitional form, scanning the universes’ liminal spaces, seeking a new host.

-----

“Lena - “

“What? Kara I’m trying -”

“LENA!”

Kara crossed the tower in five strides, past Alex, J’onn, Kelly, Brainy, and Nia, past Winn and James who had just arrived to help them -- and her heart raced as she watched the tattoo materialize, sprout from the back of Lena’s neck. It grew like a super-fertilized vine across her shoulders; it weaved down her arms, around her wrists, blooming and stretching its intricate pattern to her fingertips. Where clothing covered Lena’s skin, the tattoo burned gold and strong beneath it, remaining visible. The totem hummed contentedly in it new home. Thick rose buds, rich leaves. Thorns everywhere. The gold settled into a deep, dark red.

Breathless, Kara whispered: “Lena...”

The red Luthor stepped away from her book of spells and equipment scattered across the table. She stared at her shaking hands.

Across the room, Alex snapped out of the general consternation and disbelief first. Thunder was beginning to growl in the distance. The air outside the open balcony door grew darker, thicker.

“We need - we need to get Esme,” Alex swallowed. Then more desperately: “We need to get Esme, Kara, now. Now, Kara! She’s not useful to them anymore, they’ll kill her! We need to exchange the totems -”

“We have to go,” Kelly agreed.

“Kara!”

“Alright!”

Kara tore her eyes from Lena’s arms. She didn’t understand why she was suddenly tearing up, on the verge of weeping, why she felt the swell of something dangerous underneath her skin, but she was exhausted and terrified and prepared to give into it.

“Alright,” Kara repeated. “Alright. Let’s go.”

In the rush of departure, Lena fought to get a grip on the magic that had ruptured inside her. The totem was mixing with it, emboldening it. Too much. Too strong. Fire. As if everything she touched would turn to gold.

-----

“It’s a trap!”

The explosions came before any of them could take three steps backwards. The earth dropped out from under them. In the same breath, Lex, now in possession of six totems, shot Kara with a beam of Kryptonite so concentrated and intense that she screamed, back arched, flung into the air, paralyzed.

The world was ending.

And as Kara screamed, as she crashed into the ground, she knew that she couldn’t stop the bridge from breaking.

She couldn’t stop it from falling. She couldn’t save them. Her family. The world. She wasn’t strong enough. She was dying. They would all die because of her weakness.

At the edge of the bridge, provoked by the sight of Kara’s limp body, of Alex and Kelly gripping a crying Esme, of Alex screaming for Kara, and J’onn, Winn, and James knocked unconscious, Lillian bleeding on the ground, and Nia and Brainy staggering to their feet, and the fires raging all around them, Lena felt another surge inside her. Magic and pain.

The bridge snapped and broke apart. Lena opened her palms and stopped it.

She held it in place.

Lena felt the weight of the rocks in her bones, the unsteady chunks weighing on her, tugging at her power like a heavy marionette. Lena struggled with the unfamiliar burden. She felt it tilting, slipping -- but she held it and kept the bridge up for the interminable seconds necessary to let J’onn, Winn, and James recover; for the others to combine their powers and take over the bridge’s support and reconstruction, to launch a counter-attack.

Kara still lay recumbent in the center of the bridge.

Lex was still shooting her dying body with Kryptonite.

“Lena!”

Lena whirled around. With Esme in her arms, Alex was running towards her. She set the girl down--

“Will you stay with her--”

“No,” Lena rasped. She shook her head, grabbed Alex’s arm. “No, Alex, you stay.”

“Lena, please, I have to--”

“Stay with your daughter.”

Alex watched helplessly as Lena turned and moved across the still-unsteady bridge that the Superfriends were fixing, towards Kara’s body. Alex took a deep breath in. Lena was right. Kneeling on the ground and gripping Esme to her chest, Alex shot electrical beams out of the Hand of the Soldier, directly at Lex, an attempt to break the protective shield that Nyxly had thrown up around them both.

“Esme?” Alex whispered evenly enough against her daughter’s hair. “Can you feel Aunt Kara’s powers?”

Esme seemed to struggle a little, twisting against Alex’s body and shutting her eyes tightly to block the noise and chaos around them.

“I can feel them,” she murmured. “But Aunt Kara can’t. She can’t use her powers, Mommy, she’s--”

“I know.”

“She’s dying.”

Alex choked back a sob and intensified the electricity she was sending towards Nyxly’s shield by a thousand. Rage and fear. Fear and rage.

“Well, If you can feel her invulnerability,” Alex swallowed, then clarified, “the way that almost nothing can hurt her, then do you think you could try to mimic it?”

Esme murmured another, “She’s...dying,” and Alex broke, sobbed, bit her lip to keep from crying.

She gripped her daughter tighter.

“Please, would you try? I know you can do it, Esme. I know you can. You’re so strong. Please. Please.”

-----

Lex Luthor regarded his sister with venom.

She had stepped forward, in front of Supergirl’s body, blocked her from the Kryponite beam. It was powerful enough to kill Lena, even if she was human. And she knew that. But if his brilliant little sister wanted death, Lex Luthor wouldn’t be the one to deny her. He relished the rich thrill of power, the promise of more, and directed the green beam at Lena's heart.

Then his eyes narrowed.

His sister was raising her hands, murmuring some incoherent absurdity, but apart from that -- there were strange, dark red markings on her skin -- floral, weaving -- they glowed, then burned, and strengthened --

“The totem!” Lex snarled, just as something punctured his chest.

Though their protective shield remained in place, both he a Nyxly froze, immobilized by some fiery, suffocating thing. The Kryptonite beam died.

“You -- you have the totem -- ” Lex screeched. “You -- how could it pick you -- what joke --”

Lena's tears streamed into her mouth as she kept Lex and Nyxly trapped in place with a spell she barely knew. Nyxly was fighting it. Hard. She would break free soon, she would escape, Lena could feel it in the pushback, the pulsing, furious pressure Nyxly was funneling towards her.

But something had changed in Nyxly; she only wanted escape. Lex wanted destruction.

Lena raised her chin.

“I have hated you,” she breathed. Harsh and dark. “I have hated you, Lex, and I know who you are.”

Lena felt something break inside her, rip through her chest. A red glow wrapped itself around her.

“And you will never win.”

“You killed me and even then you couldn’t beat me! You -- pathetic -- you think you can do it this time? You think you could ever beat me? You think you could --”

The totem was an erudite, elusive thing. Petulant. Precocious. Bad-tempered. Willful. It didn’t want to leave. It had gotten a very good grip, had nestled itself very tightly into this place where years of feeling lay buried, where suppressed power was just burgeoning, just beginning to grow, ripen, sprout, bloom. It liked it here. The potency was intoxicating. The potential.

The almost.

The totem hummed a fierce, reluctant goodbye and ripped itself away.

Darkness. The liminal spaces where the universes ended and began.

Then back again.

The totem materialized in the air above the bridge where rain was beginning to fall, and called to its brothers.

“ -- you worthless, traitorous --”

In synchrony, the six remaining totems burst from their case beside Lex and rose into the air, throwing color against the dangerously turbulent sky.

“-- useless -- you -- what -- what have you done -- what are you doing!”

The fully-formed AllStone hovered above them.

There is Courage, a voice boomed through the air, shaking everyone into stillness. Humanity. Hope. There are Dreams, and Truth, Destiny, and Love.

The disembodied voice paused.

But the greatest of these, is Love.

Lena lowered herself to the ground, fighting for breath in the aftermath of the totem’s departure. It didn’t feel like it had departed. Everything still burned inside her, even as rain drenched her clothes and hair. The tattoo still marked her skin. Lena’s lungs constricted, the swell of the magic tripled, amplified to a terrifying degree, and she knew, she knew that it was too much for her. Like fire. Like the sun. Lena wasn’t strong enough for it. She wouldn’t bear it. Self-awareness urged her, warned her that she was becoming danger to herself, that this power had to be directed elsewhere, or it would kill her, it would kill her -- the dark red of the tattoo burned, hummed, turned gold. Gold. Like the sun. Like the sun --

Behind Lena, Kara’s body lay limp on the ground. Limp and blue. She had stopped breathing.

Lena reached back blindly and pressed a palm into Kara’s chest. Warmth streamed furiously through her fingers.

The power Lena held over Lex and Nyxly surged; it snapped their protective shield. Alex’s electrical beam hit Lex and he fell. J’onn, Nia, Brainy, Winn, Kelly, and James all swarmed in to take over the battle.

Lena bent over Kara and pressed both palms to her chest, shielding her from the rain.

Light and energy raged through her.

“Live.”

Warmth.

“Please.”

Kara’s eyes snapped open.

Fire.

She gasped for breath.

The sun.

“Lena --”

-----

The AllStone hummed a little as it spun through the air and slid itself into Alex’s hand. Esme touched the glimmering surface of it. Sparks followed her fingertips. They remembered her.

“Wow,” she whispered.

In the center of the reformed bridge, halfway between Alex and Esme on one end and Lex and Nyxly on the other -- Lex, who was laughing maniacally, bitterly, opening the portal to the Phantom Zone even as Kelly had him pressed him against the ground by the throat, even as he bled from the wound Alex’s electrical current had seared into his side-- and Nyxly, who was fighting for herself -- and the army that Lex had summoned, Red Tornado, Overgirl -- in the very middle of it, Kara was stirring.

Alex watched her sit up. Then rise to her knees, her feet, with Lena’s help, gold veins, gold rivers still surging into her body wherever the golden Luthor gripped her, her hands, her arms, her shoulders.

Kara kept rising. She rose into the air. Her powers were back.

“Supergirl!” Alex yelled.

She threw the AllStone. Kara caught it.

Demons poured out of the portal to the Phantom Zone like black water. They slipped out and spread, hovering vulturously in small groups about the bridge; but in great droves they also abandoned the scene, already halfway to National City, already rushing towards the nearest towns and villages, to populated areas where they could prey on fear.

The rain came down harder, heavier. Dark, frightening rain.

-----

Kara rocketed upwards.

Thunder, lightning, darkness, reality itself tightened and flashed around her. Convulsed as she pushed her limits. Harder. Harder! She gripped the AllStone and it sparked fire under her fingertips.

As if it recognized her.

Almost.

Tearing through the sky, sensing her attachment to Nyxly break, sensing the imp flee this universe, different, changed, Kara encircled the army of spreading demons. Faster! Faster! She became a ring. She held the demons where they were, at first, contained and suspended like dark ghosts. Then they began to bend.

They bent to her will.

Kara’s encircling pressure forced them inwards; it grew smaller, tighter, unbearable in its insistent heat, until the demons were throwing themselves back through the portal to the Phantom Zone.

Kara dropped to the ground at the edge of the bridge and stood over Lex Luthor. She squinted at him through the rain.

The battle was finished.

Lex staggered to his feat. There in his eyes was fear, but also that invariable arrogance, that interminable hatred.

The last of the demons circled in.

“Goodbye, Lex,” Kara said.

In the end, Lex Luthor did nothing but breathe weakly, nothing but crumble under the paralyzing cowardice that had always burned right beneath his skin, the fear that masked itself as power, and scream as he was dragged into the air, passed through the portal, disappeared.

Just wind and thunder and rain.

-----

The AllStone rose into the sky and ripped itself apart.

The totems fizzled, dissipated, burned gold for a fractal of a second. Then they zipped away.

Goodbye.

Off to be wallflowers in the battle for some other universe’s story.

-----

Love is the opposite of fear.

Evening in the tower. Mid-first analysis of what had happened. Rain still thrummed against the balcony outside; and Lena’s eyes were raw, tired, tormented even, fixed blindly on the book of spells.

But she was there.

“Love is the opposite of fear,” she said quietly. “It builds courage. It strengthens our humanity. It pushes us to hope, to dream. To be truthful, even. We find our destiny by pursuing and acting in accordance with love.”

“All the totems,” Nia mused.

Lena gave a nod. “All the totems. Wherever love goes, the others follow. That must have been it. ‘The greatest of these is love.’ The love totem was stronger than the rest, and the others were drawn to it. They joined it when it was ready.”

Esme blinked shyly at her Aunt Lena over a cup of warm tea. “You’re very smart,” she complimented.

Everyone chuckled at that.

“Thank you,” Lena beamed at the little girl. “So are you.”

“Aaaaaand an amazingly fast learner--” Kara zoomed in, looking to Alex and Kelly for approval before intervening, just as Esme began to rise up off of the floor with a giddy, “Oh, Aunt Lena, look what I can do now--”

Kara confiscated Esme’s tea and, hand in hand, the two of them walked off to the far side of the tower.

“Flying with liquids is a dangerous thing, kiddo. Ask any of the airlines...”

Lena watched them go.

Brainy, Nia, Kelly, James, Winn, and J’onn all settled into a deeper conversation of their own, of the retrospective analyses to be conducted on the AllStone’s nature and vulnerability, how it functioned, the interactions between its totems, the gold tattoo that seemed permanently embedded into Lena’s skin, the pale gold bud on the back of Esme’s neck. Alex nodded along for a second. Then she excused herself and ducked away.

“Hey, Lena? Lena.”

Alex beckoned her over to the part of the tower furthest from Kara. Lena left her book and went to investigate this conspiratorial development.

“What is it?” she whispered.

Alex regarded her for a second. Then shook her her head sincerely.

“I am so sorry about Lillian.”

The playfulness drained from Lena’s face.

“It was a good end for us,” she said, lowering her eyes. “I’m grateful for it. I think -- well, Lillian was a better mother in the last five minutes of her life than she had been in the last five years,” Lena offered a weak smile, “so I have that. I’ll be alright.”

“Yeah, you will be. ” Alex struggled out. “You will. That’s what -- I wanted to tell you that---”

Alex’s eyes darted to Kara, who now hovered tealessly a few inches off the floor with Esme, giving her a solid lesson on mid-air stability.

Pull yourself together, Danvers.

Alex cleared her throat.

“I’ve always -- felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders, Lena,” Alex began, talking with her hands. “Because I was the one who had to -- wanted to -- protect the one person who protected the world. The one person who meant so much to me, more than anything. I was responsible for keeping Kara safe. And I know that I’ll probably feel that way until I die, and probably even after that,” Alex paused, rolled her eyes at her emotion.

“But,” Alex steadied herself. “You are the first person that I have ever trusted to protect her as well as I can, Lena.”

Lena stared rawly back at her.

“Thank you for that,” Alex said. “Thank you for saving her. Thank you for being here. I hope you know just how much we need you, because I couldn’t have--”

The words stuck in her throat and Lena stepped forward, wrapped Alex in a hug. Alex hugged her back.

When they parted, Lena pulled some of the playfulness back into her expression. She cocked her head, dark brows furrowed.

“Is this your way of trying to shift the weight of the world onto my shoulders?”

Alex laughed.

“What? No, never...” she shook her head, all faux incredulity. Then, with a little shrug: “Well, ok, maybe. Maybe like half the weight of the world.”

Alex held Lena’s eyes again and gave her a real smile.

“If you want it.”

-----

Kara sat by herself.

In the early evening, the rustle of the trees, the warm, breezy gardens.

-----

Then a Luthor sat beside her.

-----

“I’ve struggled,” Kara said quietly. “With everything. With everything,” she heard the break in her voice and squinted away, to the blustery trees. The remnants of the wedding party and the distant music.

She played with her glasses.

“I’ve hid behind these glasses and it’s gotten in the way of everything, of every job I’ve ever had, everything I’ve ever wanted to do. Every relationship, every friendship. Every...chance...” Kara's voice broke again and she got to her feet, set her glasses down, paced to alleviate the pressure under her skin. “I don’t even know what that would feel like for me, connecting with someone as my whole self. I’m terrified the people I love will be hurt, Lena, I’m terrified.”

Lena watched her, heart aching.

Fire.

“I give speeches,” Kara was saying, “telling others to live their best lives, but I’m too afraid to live my own--”

“Kara--” Lena tried, getting up to follow her.

“-- and I haven’t been. Hiding myself was the reason I couldn’t pass the courage gauntlet. But it’s more than that, I’ve struggled with every part of it, the humanity, the truthfulness -- ”

Burning.

“-- destiny --”

“Kara,” Lena said steadily, stepping in front of her. Sparks under her skin. “Listen. I was always framed by someone else. By my brother, by Lillian. By what the world thought a Luthor should be. I felt I had to make up for the burden of my existence and it wasn’t until recently that I realized I hadn’t been living my life. And it devastated me. Because I never had the chance to grow up to be the person I was supposed to be.”

Lightness poured out of Lena despite the severity of her styling. Despite the black hair, the tears that were forming in her eyes, the faint gold scarring on her arms, across her chest, the dark purple--

Sun.

"But our ability to grow isn’t finite,” Lena insisted.

Kara felt on the verge of weeping. The sky burned, draped itself in red and gold.

You make me want to fight for you.

“You grow when you’re ready. And if somebody does come, Kara,” Lena said, taking a step closer, darkness scraping at the words, “and tries to mess with this family, then we will take them on together. You know that.” She reached out, gripped Kara’s shoulders.

You make me want to fight for you.

Lena slid her hands up to cup Kara’s neck.

“El mayarah.”

Kara felt the something finally mature and break inside her. It ripped through her chest, her arms, her face, warm, desperate, emboldened, ripened, ready, gold, as the evening rustled, the aging sun glowed all around them, the wind picked up--

Searching Lena’s brilliant eyes for permission, Kara leaned in and kissed her.

-----

It hums and swells.

At last, at last.

That erudite, elusive thing.

-----

And Lena Luthor kissed her back.

-----

Read on aoo3.

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zimburg · 3 years

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it was love | Lena and Kara

Esme.

“Esme! Esme! I’m here! Esme!”

“Mama!”

“Esme!”

Everything was pulsating, blood rushing, fire, lights flaring, rage. And fear. And life. Life. Life. Life.

Alex.

She was there, bleeding, running to her. Taking her into her arms. Her daughter, who had mimicked Nyxly and fought her off until Kara took over, and saved herself with powers she didn’t yet understand. She crouched on the ground crying, terrified. But she had saved herself.

“J’onn!”

“Kelly - they’re there! They’re there! Nia!”

“Brainy - Brainy!”

Kara.

There was pain, only pain, and weakness, in her skull, in her blue arms, her blue chest, her blue eyes that fought to stay open. Kara couldn’t do anything but try to breathe. Alive. Alive. Alive. Stay alive.

Lena.

Kara could see her, far down the shadowy corridor, lit by red.

Lena’s hand was around Lex's throat. She had him pressed against the wall, eyes raging into his. Breathing through her teeth. And Lex seemed afraid. He seemed weak, pathetic. He always had been. Kara heard him rasp something about not deluding herself but Lena, in her dark, dangerous, Earth-ending way, fueled by a lifetime of anger and betrayal and disappointment and emotion that she had never been able to give or accept or cultivate, looked so powerful in that moment, so strong, that Kara felt something break inside her, cry out - and she caught her breath and lost it all at once, gasped through the pain in her bones, the emptiness left behind the disappearance of her tie to Nyxly.

Alive. Alive.

“You will not win, Lex,” Lena whispered to Lex. The red light swirled menacingly, enchantingly all around them. “You never have.”

She glanced down the long corridor to where Kara lay in blue dust. Lena remembered her mother. She remembered every second of the fear and pain. The loneliness. Nights and years spent wishing for a different reality than the one she woke up to. The fight inside herself, the dark conviction that it was herself she had to fear, that it was her blood and her mind that carried danger. Her heart. It all built up a pressure under her skin, ready to come out. Heat and life. Heat and life. Lena moved her eyes to her brother again.

"El mayarah,” she whispered into his face.

And she gripped his throat harder. Pressing her forehead against his, she let sparks light her fingers and her eyes. She let go. The magic poured through her into him: strange, immense, everything that he had done to her, every injury he had caused, every death, all the damage he had done to this universe and the rest, every broken life, it all rushed right back into him and broke him in return; and the fiery sparks ran up the walls now, across the floors, down the corridor, burning like the sun, cracking and breaking and reviving and killing, life and death, life and death, anger and astonishment and joy, red and gold and blue. Lena felt herself shaking. She felt the tears build, swell, stream into her mouth and down her neck as she trembled and held onto Lex’s.

The hatefulness in Lex’s eyes remained there to the end. But in the end, he was nothing. Disintegrated, disappeared.

Lena’s hand closed around thin air. Just a shaking fist pressed against the wall.

He was gone. He was gone. He was gone.

She had done it.

Far down the corridor, Kara took a full breath.

She would live.

Forehead against the wall, fading fast, Lena pressed her hand to her heart. For the first time, she felt that she could trust it. In all its capacity. In all its fear. She could trust it. She could be trusted with it. Gratitude swept through her just as the weakness did, and Lena breathed in the red dust around her, lowered herself to the ground.

She was aware of someone approaching, stepping over ash and debris, gasping, something blue stumbling to her knees beside her.

Lena. Lena!

Arms around her.

Lena!

She gripped the arms, grasped at her, her back, pulled her close, held her tightly.

Lena.

---

The warm night wind blew across her face.

In her red dress, heels off, Lena sat at the table on the balcony. The golden vein-like scars on her arms and hands were already fading. She glanced back into the reception hall where Kara was giving Alex one last hug. It was dark and nearly everybody had already said their goodbyes.

The wedding and the celebration afterwards had been beautiful. Packed floor to ceiling, wall to wall with lights, music, and platters of food flown in from the restaurants and bakeries of Paris, Tokyo, and Rome, while red and orange leaves and sunset glowed outside. Tables overflowing with flowers. Everyone crying and laughing. Esme had danced the evening away in her flower-girl dress, surrounded by her mothers in white, her grandmother, her uncle, J’onn, Nia, Brainy, Cat, Kara, and Lena, all twirling and cha-cha-sliding and performing various intricately-choreographed pieces from the future.

“Lena!”

“Oh!”

Esme had leapt at her and Lena caught her just in time, threw her head back, laughed as she lifted the little girl into the air -- “Fly?” -- “Fly!” -- and spun her around in a circle, did a little shoulder shimmy that Esme imitated perfectly.

That made Lena smile.

Knock-knock.

Kara quietly knocked on the balcony doorway before stepping outside. She was in shimmery dark blue, heels off.

“Hey,” she said.

“It really was a beautiful,” Lena said back.

Kara smiled, nodded contentedly. “Yeah. It was.”

A long beat passed of just the warm wind blowing around them. Kara took a deep breath in. She traced a finger across her own forearm.

“Is it alright?”

“Yeah,” Lena hummed, “it will be.”

Kara nodded and let another stretch of silence pass. She took another deep breath.

“You know,” she said, leaning away against the balcony railing, “you once told me that I was your hero." Kara shook her head a little in embarrassment, squinted up at the night sky, fought for the right words. “But I don’t know, I think it might be the other way around. I’ve always been so in awe of you. And when it mattered most, you’re the one who saved us.”

“It was magic,” Lena said.

“it was you,” Kara bit back. As if it mattered to her. She turned, gripped the table, shook her head. “It’s you, Lena.”

Lena peered at her, searched her eyes. Kara felt both their heartbeats speed up.

“It always has been--you know how important you are, Lena,” Kara said. “To me--” she pressed on, voice wavering, “--to everyone--I hope you know I--”

Lena slipped off her chair, stepped forward.

“--how grateful I’ve been to have you--”

Lena took Kara’s face in her hands and kissed her.

Kissed her.

And Kara kissed back.

A slow, deep, once-in-a-universe kiss.

---

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