#a lil bit of angst mehbeh

[naralanis]

little bumps in the road

lena becomes aware of her brain beginning to zone out almost immediately; she just doesn’t have the wherewithal at the minute to pull herself back to attention.

instead, her focus wanders towards the noise.

there’s the incessant sputtering and whirring of a coffeemaker that looks positively ancient--there’s also something clanking inside the machine, and she can hear it from where she’s sitting. the engineer in her knows it’s only a matter of time before the whole thing goes kaput just by listening.

there’s the occasional ding of a bell, the splattering of hot oil, bubbling in a pan somewhere in the kitchen, the squeak of a door swinging open and closed, open and closed, open and closed.

there’s the abominable sound of cutlery scraping against plates--it irks her to the point of silent fury, the way the metal scratches and clinks and screams against the cheap china. but then, to make everything worse, there’s the chewing.

loud, rapid, moist, and utterly revolting, not to mention obnoxious chewing. lena levels a withering glare from under her baseball cap -- lillian would be proud, of the glare, not the cap-- and sneers with all her might.

“could you not,” she hisses, fists clenching when the slurping of orange juice through a straw joins the maddening cacophony, “could you please not eat like a complete troglodyte?”

the slurping ceases, mercifully, but the chewing resumes, almost as a direct challenge, after an indifferent shrug of broad shoulders.

“i haven’t eaten in three days. i’m hungry.”

the voice sounds equally tired and annoyed, and lena has regretfully become very well acquainted with that particular tone over the last few days. she ignores the way blue eyes look solely at the humongous (truly, the massive, inhuman quantity) stack of pancakes that is currently being decimated.

“be that as it may,” lena continues, gritting her teeth at another scrape of the knife that seems to screech louder than before, “maybe you could eat a little more slowly? or at the very least,” she scowls, “with your mouth closed?”

there’s a deep exhale from across the table--an exasperated, getting-real-tired-of-your-shit kind of sigh, and it comes with an exhausted hand running through hair that has been cropped short, now only a few inches long and tucked into a baseball cap almost as ratty as lena’s. it’s a gesture that lena recognizes from a time when that hair fell in long, blonde curls, cascading freely over blue-draped shoulders and she hates the way the memory comes unbidden to her mind.

“do you have any idea of what my usual caloric intake has to be?”

lena blinks, because no, she doesn’t, and she’s automatically trying to do the math in her head before she stops herself and remembers to scowl again.

the cutlery resumes its scraping--a bit more forcefully, frustrated, even. “a whole damn lot,” comes a muttered addendum.

lena’s rolling her eyes before she can think better of it. “one would think you wouldn’t need to meet your usual caloric intake under these... circumstances,” she begins, but trails off into silence once she’s the one on the receiving end of an icy glare.

she doesn’t learn, though, does she, because lena continues against her better judgement, lowering her voice to a whisper and glancing around them, just in case. “it’s not like you have anything... super messing with your metabolism right now. it’s not like you need the extra energy.”

the slurp is obnoxious and furiously deliberate this time, drawn out long enough until there’s no orange juice left in the cup--just the endless sound of air bubbles and melted ice blubbering and sputtering as they’re sucked through the straw.

“that’s exactly why i need more energy. i’m still recovering, so i need all that i can get.”

“but what about the sun?” lena can’t help but ask, can’t help but push, shifting in her seat and leaning over their table, letting her curiosity get the better of her for a mere moment. “i mean, i always thought that supergirl...”

“nuh-uh,” comes the categorical denial and a fork, pointed accusingly at lena. ‘there is no supergirl,” the blonde says, and her fork moves to point at the TV above the bar of this middle-of-nowhere diner they stopped at after nearly three days of nonstop driving. it’s still reporting on the chaos of three days ago.

“supergirl is dead.” kara says through a scowl that rivals lena’s. “you killed her.”

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#nara's word vomit #supergirl #supercorp #lena luthor #kara danvers #fanfiction #femslash #a lil bit of angst mehbeh #just scribs mehbeh #will expand...mehbeh... #LBitR

[naralanis]

little bumps in the road (pt. 5)

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4

there’s a change after lena’s little breakdown back in kansas--a paradigm shift that upends their entire dynamic seemingly overnight in ways that lena cannot even begin to comprehend.

but she can categorize them.

at the beginning of this road trip of insanity, when someone had taken a bag off her head and shoved her in a jeep with kara--kara, alive, with cropped hair and new glasses and alive--they had merely existed in the same space, because... well, lena was furious, kara was furious, and so they sat together, stewing in their anger in a confined space for hundreds and hundreds of miles.

so it had been... silence, and a whole lot of ignoring one another, when they weren’t sniping, fighting, bickering. willful, stubborn, heavy and deliberate silence. but now? now that silence is often interrupted -- not always by words, but by looks.

there’s glances, all from kara, and they say things more clearly than words ever could, and they come when lena is least prepared. it’s a look that asks her whether she’s alright--the answer to that is almost always a categorical no-- while kara is driving, or through the glass of a phone booth while she attempts yet another of her mysterious calls as lena waits outside. it’s a poorly concealed glance at a rest stop that asks whether or not she’s hungry, a side-eyed gaze that asks the silent question of what’s on your mind?

lena doesn’t know how to deal with any of it, has simply no idea how. but glances are only part of this altered dynamic, of this unexpected shift, because now there is also talking.

they talk. or well, kara talks--to lena, for lena, sometimes for no reason at all. they’re not exactly having conversations--not yet, because that still requires more than what lena’s prepared to contribute--but at least they’re not arguing, either, and that feels like a considerable step forward.

kara will talk about everything and nothing; little comments on the weather, passing observations on the scenery, but that’s not all. she’ll tell lena things--not important things, because they’re not there yet, and sometimes lena wonders if they’ll ever be-- but things nonetheless, like where they’ll be stopping next, or an interest factoid about the state they’re in (like, the location of the nation’s largest inflatable donut or something equally ridiculous).

but the most worrying of all, the thing that really throws lena off her game, that unbalances completely, is the touching.

the first time lena registers kara’s casual touches, she feels like she almost has an honest-to-god aneurysm, because the last two times that kara’s touched her happened to be when lena was in the middle of a panic attack, and it’s like her body remembers those particular circumstances. she nearly jumps out of her skin the next time she feels kara’s hand on her shoulder.

it turns out to just be kara asking whether she’s done with the sink (at a motel in nebraska, this time), and lena’s heart is still hammering in her ribcage as kara gives her one of those are you ok? looks.

over the course of a few days, lena grows used to it all--kind of, but not really, but as much as she can under the circumstances, she accepts these new little facets of her current reality.

she’s lost track of time--maybe they’ve been on the run for weeks, maybe it’s been months, who’s to say? but at every rest-stop, at every shitty motel or random attraction, kara’s there, looking, talking, and touching, and lena doesn’t feel so horribly untethered any more. she’s still terrified, confused, and generally listless, but... it’s easier to breathe, somehow.

they’re approaching the state-line between missouri and tennessee when lena dares (she hasn’t tried since... texas, maybe) to ask a question.

she’s been dotting the places they’ve passed through on a roadmap she picked up a few towns ago--some are so small they’re not even on the map--trying to make sense of the route kara has been seemingly making up as they go.

she stabs through the paper with her pencil at caruthersville, missouri, knowing they’ll cross the mississippi sooner or later.

“are we going all the way to the east coast?” she asks, mostly just voicing her thoughts aloud, not really expecting kara to give her an answer. to her surprise, kara does, barking out a little laugh.

“i mean, if we have to, sure.”

lena almost drops the pencil and the map, she turns to kara so quickly.

“why would we have to?”

kara shoots her a look, but it’s got... mirth, something that has been missing from that blue gaze since... since they had decided to be enemies. give or take.

“we’re kind of on the run, lena. in these situations, it’s imperative that we keep on running.” she quips sarcastically.

lena blinks. are they talking-talking now?

“are we running anywhere in particular?”

kara’s lips press into a thin line, and she doesn’t answer for so long lena thinks that well has run dry. but, once again, kara surprises her.

“just... away.” her eyes are glued to the road ahead. “there’s no plan, if that’s what you’re asking. at least not yet.”

“not yet?”

kara shakes her head, sighs deeply. “not until i get in touch with some friends, at least.”

there are many follow-up questions to that, but lena settles on what is probably the worst possible choice imaginable.

“are we having a conversation right now?”

she can see kara tense a little, hears the sharper intake of her breath and regrets her words immediately; however, kara sighs once more, relaxing into her seat by degrees.

“sure. if you want to.”

lena swallows dryly, her throat tight all of a sudden. there are so many things she wants to say, so many questions, worries, so, so much to get off her chest.

“uuh,” she starts off, hoping to find the words along the way, and kara laughs a little. “what... what friends are you trying to get in touch with?”

“the usual,” kara says, looking a little wistful, and lena can tell she’s trying to keep her smile up for her sake. “mostly, i need to reach alex somehow.”

“is... is alex the one you’ve been trying to call? from the pay-phones?”

kara nods the affirmative. “we have a few codes; a system in place if we ever need to contact one another if we’re ever in trouble. she hasn’t been answering, which is a little worrying, but i’m sure she’s just waiting for the right moment.”

if we’re ever in trouble...

“did, uh... did the briefcase come from alex, too?”

“yeah. she made me memorize several coordinates across the country--said they would be useful if the fortress was ever compromised.”

which it was, lena thinks immediately. because of her.

“anyway,” kara continues, oblivious to lena’s thoughts, hands running over the steering wheel a little nervously. “i’m sure she’ll answer soon. she’s probably got too many eyes on her right now.”

lena perks up at that, brow quirked in question.

“too many eyes on her? why?”

kara seems to shrink in her seat.

“well...” she says, eyes darting like they’re looking for answers and finding none. “alex doesn’t... she doesn’t exactly know... that uh... she doesn’t know you’re with me.”

lena blinks, opens her mouth, closes it again. kara looks sheepish.

“she may be leading the manhunt for you.”

“she what?!”

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#nara's word vomit #supergirl #supercorp #lena luthor #kara danvers #fanfic #femslash #a lil bit of angst mehbeh #BUCKLE UP KIDS #I don't know where this is going either #LBitR

[naralanis]

little bumps in the road (pt. 2)

 Part 1

lena wakes up with a start when her head starts smacking against the window of the (stolen? given? borrowed?) jeep once they turn onto a bumpy dirt road in what looks to be... approximately the middle of fucking nowhere, though that’s hardly surprising. ‘nowhere’ is precisely where they’ve been for the past four days.

lena massages the side of her head that hit the glass with a displeased harrumph--she can already feel a raised bump at the point of impact. her eyes are heavy and dry, lids stubbornly sticking together as she blearily looks around.

kara is staring straight ahead, both hands clenched around the wheel in a way that would have ordinarily mangled the thing as easily as one breaks a matchstick. but her knuckles have gone white with the force of her grip, and the steering wheel is no worse for the wear, and all lena wants to do is point it out.

“where are we?” she asks instead, seeing nothing but dust and bright blue skies. the road they’re on is practically indistinguishable from the landscape--a strip of lighter, packed-in dirt that disappears into the horizon.

“texas,” kara answers, eyes still on the road. it’s so bumpy the entire car is shaking; lena is practically bouncing in her seat, so much so she feels her teeth clatter in her mouth and has to clench her jaw to make it stop. the radio is completely silent--has been that way since some news station said the words lex luthor, so the only sound is the bumping and shaking of the vehicle. lena wants to say something about kara’s driving, maybe tell her to slow down, but she thinks about their exchange at the diner one more time and tries to, again, reign. it. in.

“it took us almost three days of driving to get to texas?” lena asks, making sure to put in the us instead of you in her question even though kara has been the one driving. in truth, she hasn’t really kept track of where they’ve been--hasn’t been able to, with all the zig-zagging across cornfields and deserts and ghost towns and dingy motels... scratch that, maybe it isn’t so surprising it’s taken them that long.

kara just grunts and nods, offering no further explanation. lena continues staring at her white-knuckled grip on the wheel, wondering when--of even if--the thing will just break in two.

it doesn’t break. instead, kara turns abruptly into an even smaller dirt road, leading to more nowhere, and then she suddenly stops.

“why are we stopping?”

lena receives no response; kara just turns off the engine and undoes her seat-belt, stepping off the car to rummage in the back for something. she comes out with a small shovel, which makes lena raise a brow in confusion, but the blonde offers no explanation as she walks a few metres away from the jeep and starts digging.

she hasn’t been asked to help, so lena stays inside the car for as long as she can muster without the air-conditioning running, watching kara’s plaid shirt darkening with sweat at her back as the blonde grunts through the effort of digging through dry, hard earth. 

kara’s still digging by the time lena steps out of the car once she feels a trickle of sweat running down her back. the heat is stifling; her head feels hot and humid under her cap, and her hair is stuck at her temples. lena approaches cautiously, taking a water bottle from the passenger cup-holder--kara looks up momentarily once she hears the passenger door slam closed, but otherwise keeps to her task.

lena eyes the blonde curiously--she’s grunting, panting, and sweating profusely with the effort, and the picture she paints is so... weird. lena has never seen kara sweat.

“why is it taking so long for your powers to come back?”

that gets kara’s attention. lena’s standing right by the hole kara’s made in the ground, one hand tucked into the back pocket of her jeans, the other extending the water bottle like a peace offering. lena’s gazing at the hole with ill-concealed ineterest, but says nothing further, waiting.

kara sighs, taking the offered bottle without looking at lena and running a hand through her hair. the short strands are drenched in sweat, and looking more brown than blonde at the moment.

lena waits, transfixed with a water droplet that escapes from the corner of kara’s mouth as she drinks in large gulps; she follows the droplet run down her jaw, then down her bobbing throat to disappear somewhere between her collarbones.

“i don’t know,” kara says, handing the empty bottle back. her voice is jarring enough to remind lena she had asked her a question, so she nods dumbly as she takes the bottle back and fiddles with the cap. “i think there’s still some kryptonite in my system.”

lena opens her mouth in surprise, but struggles to form the words. kara’s gone back to her digging, and before long hits something hard beneath the earth. she discards the shovel, opting instead to kneel in the dirt and continue unearthing whatever she’s looking for with her hands.

“still?” lena finally whispers, so low she doesn’t think kara heard her, isn’t sure if she still has her super-hearing or not.

kara grunts, tossing a metal briefcase at lena’s feet. she clicks it open, and lena just sees the green of dollar bills in neat little rows.

“well,” kara mutters, still kneeling in the dirt. “it was a lot of kryptonite.”

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#nara's word vomit #supergirl #supercorp #lena luthor #kara danvers #fanfiction #femslash #a lil bit of angst mehbeh #just scribs mehbeh #definitely expanding this one #CANON WHOMST #LBitR

[naralanis]

little bumps in the road (pt. 4)

Parts 1, 2, 3

they’re in kansas now, and for the first time since this madness began, lena is completely and utterly alone.

they’ve stopped at the dingiest motel lena has ever seen in her life--which, given the places they’ve frequented recently, is really saying something--the kind of place that is maybe definitely run by a serial killer or someone nearly equally unsavoury.

and lena? lena is not coping well.

“i’ll be gone twenty, thirty minutes, tops,” kara had said exactly twenty-four minutes ago. “keep the blinds shut, and don’t open the door no matter what--no matter what, lena.

and so lena has been sitting here, waiting, staring at the worn wood of a door that maybe had once been painted red, not moving a muscle. she’s sitting cross-legged on the miserably thin mattress and scratchy bedding, hugging a floppy threadbare pillow tightly to her chest because she’s afraid the panic will simply burst out of her if she doesn’t hold on to anything at all.

lena tries to calm herself, she does--has been trying for the past twenty-four minutes and thirty-nine seconds. she tries to distance herself from her thundering heartbeat and shallow breaths, tries to remove herself from her own fear. she closes her eyes, measures and calibrates the movement of her lungs, thinks of a metronome in her head to help her keep a smooth, steady rhythm that isn’t so frantic as it is now.

she focuses on the pilled, rough fabric of the pillowcase, lets her nails (she’d like to clip them, would like to stop digging crescents into her palms when she clenches her hands into fists with nervousness) drag across the fabric and catch onto the rough stitching of the seams, counts every little rip, every little torn seam.

then she focuses on the smells--there’s that odd, lingering odor of old plastic that comes from the phone and the tv; there’s the dust that irritates her nose a little, makes her eyes water some. and then there’s mothballs, which this room is sure to have an abundance of, which smell oddly comforting for some reason, like an old house with old cabinets.

she’s almost back in control, can feel her lungs expanding further now, with more ease, when the hum of the staticky television set--it was almost on mute, the volume is so low--breaks her concentration, shatters it like hot glass doused with ice.

“...and it’s... it hurts, really, that i was not able to see the madness; it pains me that my own sister was capable of such atrocity...

lena jumps, fumbles for the remote and raises the volume until it is deafening, so loud and deafening it’s like her brother is yelling at her--but he isn’t, he’s speaking calmly to some reporter, a grief-stricken expression plastered on his face, with tears--actual tears--pooling at his eyes.

“i blame myself,” lex’s voice booms from the old tinny speakers, distorted and haunted, rattling the glass from the windows as much as lena’s bones, echoing in lena’s brain like a well-crafted taunt.

“i should have seen it. i should have done something to stop her--i should have saved supergirl.”

lena wants to scream, but she can’t even breathe, she can’t do anything but tremble and she hates, hates the sound of his voice in her ears, hates, hates and hates herself for falling for his tricks over and over and over again.

“hey! turn it down, lena, are you crazy??”

kara materializes out of nowhere--lena didn’t even notice her stepping through the door. the blonde yanks the remote and shuts the tv off , and lena doesn’t register her worried gaze,  doesn’t feel the arms rubbing at her shoulders. she can’t hear the concern in kara’s voice as she repeatedly asks her what’s wrong.

“i can’t do this,” lena finally chokes, words caught in a sob--her shoulders are trembling, her throat is tight, and her eyes are burning with tears, and she can’t, can’t, can’t do this. “i can’t do it, kara, i just can’t.”

“what are you talking about?” kara asks, brow crinkled in that way that is so, so familiar, from a whole lifetime, a whole world ago and it only serves to untheter lena further, disconnects her from this reality, makes her want to wake up from this nightmare.

“i can’t do this with you. i’m” she’s gasping now, words stuck and hurt in her throat, hurting and breaking her from the inside out, but lena has to say it, has to speak it into truth. “kara, i’m crazy.”

kara shakes her head vigorously, but lena doesn’t let her speak.

“i’m-- i’m insane; i’m the luthor who tried--oh my god, i’m, i’m the luthor who did kill a super!”

“stop it,” kara hisses, and lena finally registers the force of the grip on her shoulders as the blonde practically shakes her. “stop that nonsense right now, lena -- you’re not crazy, i’m not dead, i’m right here--”

“but you were!” lena practically shrieks, because can’t kara see? “you were dead, kara, i killed you.”

kara’s hands tighten--lena will definitely have bruises on her arms later--but what stops her is the intensity of that blue gaze.

“lena,” kara says, biting out the words like they hurt. “this was all lex’s fault. don’t let him get in your head, not again.”

“he’s always in my head,” lena cries, because isn’t that the truth? ever since they were children? “he’s always--he’s always there, and he’s, he’s taunting me, kara! i didn’t see his madness before, and now in this world, i’m the crazy luthor who’s killed a super!”

“and yet, here I am,” kara points out, gently, but with a fear in her eyes she simply can’t conceal. “right here, in front of you, in a motel in Kansas, because we are running from your brother. because he is the crazy one. not you. we’re gonna take him down, you hear me?”

lena’s madness has gone into hysteria, that’s the only explanation for the incredulous laughter that bubbles out of her, choking out her sobs momentarily. “take him down? maybe you’re the crazy one. how the fuck are we going to take him down, kara? he’s the good luthor in this earth.”

kara’s brows furrow, but it’s a crinkle of determination, this time. lena is shocked to recognize it, shocked she understands the sheer force of will behind kara’s voice.

“together. we take him down together.”

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#nara's word vomit #supergirl #supercorp #lena luthor #kara danvers #fanfiction #femslash #a lil bit of angst mehbeh #have a lil morsel on this fine monday #BUCKLE UP KIDS #LBitR