Content Note: This story contains Omegaverse AKA Alpha/Beta/Omega themes, but they're pretty mild, in my opinion. All sex occurs between female-identifying alphas and omegas. If that makes your hackles stand up (hey-o! wolf puns!) check back later for one of my non-ABO works.
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Lena knew that
Non Nocere
could save the world. It still could, if she's being brutally logical about it. If she throws out all semblance of respect for free will, or agency, or self determination.
With Myriad at the core, it could force every human being on the planet to take up yoga, or dieting, or anger management. She could flick her fingers across her phone's screen and no one at a gala would ever snarl at her for teasing. No one would slice her date's clothes off with their eyes and joke under their breath about teaching them that even lesbians need dick.
Gods above and below, it's tempting. She'd be turning the key right now, but for what Lex just said. It's ringing in her ears. Echoes of his madness making what remains of her soul cringe. What remains of her mother, she supposes. Helen Connelly of Ashford in County Wicklow. She knows that because Kara found it in one of Lex's files. Before the Crisis. Sent it after their argument at the gala. A peace offering.
After that, we can fix everything else that's wrong. Everything left over. Everything that resists us.
Lex has been careful not to utter the word 'Supergirl' but the threat could be no clearer. He knows, and she knows. Information and innuendo. Like how Lillian once told her that perhaps her boarding school shouldn't take a skiing trip. Perhaps yachting? Lena had told her—gushingly, stupidly—about her first girlfriend. Somewhere in the conversation, it came up that Emilia couldn't swim.
They both know that all of six species can resist Myriad—Kryptonians among them—and two of them live exclusively in god-dimensions in the Multiverse, two are the Martians, one is artificial. Both green and white Martians, mighty and cunning as they are, can be burned out. Lex has already bent Brainy to his will. The only thing left that could resist Myriad's power for more than ten minutes is Supergirl.
Lena delicately taps on one of the controls, injecting bad code and offlining Myriad for a day or two at least. Much as it frustrates Lex, there are multiple dialects of Kryptonian on the device and in the schematics. One of them not recorded in Lex's stolen files, but it is on Lena's laptop. Supergirl's YouTube had things like language and cooking tutorials. Lex had it taken down in the new world he made. Lena had already ripped the entire channel. Hers might be the only record of that attempt at outreach.
Because she knows more of Ajatkaii than Lex, Myriad isn't hers to control, but it's more hers than it is his.
She's done deeply wicked things to herself, late at night. Belly down, chin tucked under a pillow to keep the iPad in view. Panting. Her slick dripping down her own fingers. Watching as Supergirl fired up a barbecue with heat vision and showed how to make chicken kebabs with something like curry. Something from back home.
She had no idea that
the
Supergirl was
her
Kara back then, but her omega knew that it wanted those pearly teeth ripping into her flesh. Maybe after a fight, or a close call, the sun goddess could force her to her knees. Take her. Ruin her. Make her
nothing
and take all the hard choices away. Maybe use the heat vision to stencil a brand onto her? Property of Supergirl in Kryptonian glyphs, right next to her cunt?
After a while, the most degrading of the fantasies broke the rules. Stayed behind after the heats cooled off. How much
simpler
it would be to be barefoot and pregnant in the Fortress than it would fixing her brother's legacy. Policing L-Corp with its army of psychopathic scientists that went dark when she took over.
Sam's back, she heard. Putting feelers out, trying to integrate herself with Alex and Kelly because she never really forgot her crush and sharing Alex is infinitely better than no Alex. It would probably take three mommies to save the world from Ruby, especially now that her powers are coming in. Let the businesswoman-slash-Worldkiller save L-Corp.
Lena can save the world or she can save Kara.
She's made her decision by the time she reaches for the limo's door.
"Where to, Miss Luthor?"
"Three-four-six Navy Avenue."
"Don't know it," he admits. "But you're the boss."
"And then head home, Tom. I hate to sound like my brother, but tell anyone I had you drop me here and I might have to do something
Luthor
-ish to you."
"What? Like donate to my kid's school?"
Kara
The apartment doesn't feel right, somehow. If Lex
knew
what his rewrite of reality did, he'd probably pop that vessel on his bald head. Drop dead. A single woman on a reporter's salary, but she has five bedrooms, three of them with ensuite and two home offices, and this place must cost half of what her old building did. He probably wrote something like '
small, shabby but not too many cockroaches
' and the Book of Destiny and his rich-boy idea of what 'small' means did the rest.
She used a favor that Mxy owed her to protect it from Lex. He can't take it away. When she did that, her heart was humming with
maybes
.
Who needs
five bedrooms,
anyhow? That's a bedroom for her, a guest bedroom for Alex and Kelly and the baby they
will
adopt if Kara has to heat-vision every homophobic adoption agency worker on the planet into ash.
What to do with the other three, though?
Well, she thought, that's easy. One for the boys, one for the girls. Bunk beds, maybe. The rooms are
big enough
that however many children she put in Lena, they'd be comfortable. Rao's mercy, that half-hour daydream on the way to the Pulitzer ceremony was sweet.
When she was done bawling into Ben & Jerry's, she helped Alex break into her old apartment and strip it. All her decorations and throw blankets and everything she owned barely cover the living room and one bedroom. Kelly demonstrated that yes, lesbians are better than everyone at everything. For one thing, Kelly is
amazing
at building IKEA furniture. Alex watched the turns of her mate's wrist on the hex wrench with such naked hunger that Kara's surprised the coffee table wasn't stress-tested immediately.
Her security system chimes.
"Ooh, pizza guy!"
It's not. It's Lena, her jaw clenched and her lips quivering and
pretending she's not crying
because wiping the tears would admit they're there. Her citrusy, sugary scent is soured by her sadness, but
Rao
Kara remembers it fondly. She'd prepared cheesy pickup lines.
They discontinued Sprite on this Earth, can you believe it? Have to drink you, instead.
Kara doesn't let her in, she just draws herself up and faces off.
"I've done something terrible."
Words tumble out faster than the tears.
Lena
Kara didn't kill her on sight. Didn't call for help apparently, because it's been ten minutes and Alex hasn't blown Lena's brains out from three buildings away.
She's
different
in a pink turtleneck and blue jeans that ride the razor's edge between soccer mom and 'came out of a can' and Lena's breath hitches when she sees it. Kara looks like an English teacher grading papers on a Sunday now, and it breaks Lena's heart. Her betrayal changed this too, I suppose. Gone were the button ups, the paradox of a cherry red skirt and bulging sleeves and a swagger that told the world she could do anything. She let her hair grow out, too. Maybe since the DEO fell, she decided to lose her military haircut.
Lena nearly destroyed the human race
and
took the butch out of the Girl of Steel. Maybe because Lena was a lost cause? Why dress to impress if she couldn't get the girl? Three days away from her heat and woefully unfucked, Lena feels a fresh wave of shame. She betrayed every queer woman in America by making Supergirl feminine. Probably destroyed the stock value of Duracell as vibrators sat lonely.
"Say something, Kara.
Please.
"
Kara laughs, but it's not a happy laugh. She's made of cotton candy and puppies and ice cream at a picnic at the park and Kara can't laugh. Has she not laughed since Lena ripped herself out of Kara's life?