WHO: Viola Vance → Lena Luthor WHEN: Morning of August 4 WHERE: Viola's bedroom SUMMARY: Viola has a dream about an experiment that Lena is attempting and the aftermath of it. WARNINGS: Spoilers for season 4 of Supergirl, if you're worried about that
Sitting at her desk, Lena stared at her recorder. She knew what she had to do. There was no reason to put it off. She ought to be impartial, to treat this as just another run of an experiment. And though she knew it was a lie, she took a deep breath and tried.
"We have concluded our first human trial."
That was what he was meant to have been, after all. Simply a human trial, who understood that there was a high probability that he would not make it through the testing alive. He had signed the paperwork. He had given his authorization. Even after finding out the truer details of what it was Lena was planning to do, he had agreed. It should have been as easy as that.
But even as Lena had tried to take precautions to think of the young man as nothing but a human trial, it had been impossible. It was precisely that empathy that those who loved her said set her apart from the other Luthors. Most of the time being set apart from the Luthors was something she wanted. In that moment, she might have benefited from their colder hearts.
"Test Subject 0331 exhibited what could be considered extrahuman powers for precisely three minutes and 14 seconds. Time of death, 4:03AM."
He had known the risks. He had accepted them. He was, in fact, the reason that Lena had decided to move forward in the first place, even after she had grown attached to him and had been unable to see him as just a subject. He was willing to take the chance, if it meant saving people -- and Lena still truly believed that what she was doing could save millions, hundreds of millions.
"Despite the expiration of the subject, the trial reaped new and critical information on the human genome. Future trials run at an 87% probability of success. Payment will be sent to the subject's next of kin."
But even though there had been some success and hope for future trials, it didn't change that Adam was dead.
Lena stood, walking across her office to look out at the window. Her heart ached. When she spoke, her voice had lost the cool calm that it had exhibited when speaking into the recorder, instead wavering and betraying her emotions. "I'm so sorry, Adam," she said. "I moved the spider."
As Viola woke, the heavy guilt and weariness that had been settled onto Lena's chest and shoulders fell squarely upon her own. She sat up slowly, blinking in the morning sun that cast through the gap in her curtains. Rather than peering out into the darkness of National City, she found herself in her bedroom in Dunhaven. It wouldn't be her bedroom for long, indicated by the starting of boxes scattered across the normally well-organized and spotless room. Her future move was the last thing on her mind, though, as it began to right itself, separately what was Lena Luthor from what was Viola Vance.
But even as her mind did that, Lena's pain still held firm to Viola's heart. It wasn't until she lifted a hand to rub at her eyes that she realized they were wet. Lena herself hadn't been crying, but she had always been better at controlling her emotions than Viola was; it was something that she simultaneously pitied and was jealous of the woman regarding. Her circumstances that had led for her to need to compartmentalize her emotions were nothing to covet, but Viola wouldn't have minded being able to do some of that herself, at least to a deeper degree.
As she lifted her blanket and used it to dry her eyes, Viola drew in a deep breath. It wasn't just the loss of Test Subject 0331 -- Adam -- that weighed on her, but the situation that Lena had walked into in its entirety. She thought that she was doing right. She thought that by evening the playing field, she would simply be eliminating the obstacles that seemed to be causing such strife between humans and aliens.
But it wasn't that simple. It could never be that simple. Viola could feel Lena's conviction and drive as easily as her own, but her own life experiences left her worried for the other woman. Perhaps Viola would find herself surprised, but she couldn't see how any of this could go the way Lena hoped it would.
When it didn't, Viola knew that she would feel Lena's disappointment and weary as easily as her own, too. And she didn't know if she would ever be ready for that.