InsaneJournal

Kara’s first timeslip had been a hit so far. Not only had she ended up with two wonderful, feisty future kids who she loved more than she could describe, but now, she had future Lena here. Her future wife.

Her wife – Rao, just thinking that they would come to that someday made her heart feel like it could burst out of her chest. Part of her suspected it was coming, given their relationship status now and the two beautiful kids they’d managed to raise, but the confirmation from a Lena twenty years older was such an amazing feeling.

So far, everything had seemed normal. Kara had woken up to her wife beside her yesterday morning, a little older but easily as beautiful as she’d always been if not more. Sure, Lori and Theo looked at Lena a little sideways sometimes – half-expectant, half-concerned, like they wanted her to say something but weren’t sure they should. Kara couldn’t put her finger on what the issue may be, and she decided to brush it aside. Whatever the tension may be, Lena didn’t seem concerned, and Kara trusted if something was going on, she would tell her.

Most of their time was spent with the entirety of the family, but come Halloween, the kids had gone off to the forest, and Alex had taken Esme out to go trick-or-treating with Catra, Adora, and their family. That gave them the alone time Kara was craving and plenty of time to enjoy the spooky movie marathon they’d chosen for the evening.

It was after their last, when Kara had gone downstairs to fetch them snacks, that something changed. She was halfway up the stairs again, arms laden with a tray full of fruits, yogurt, and two mugs of freshly brewed green tea when she heard Lena’s voice in their bedroom. She stopped in her tracks, brow furrowed curiously as she listened in. She hadn’t heard Lena’s phone ring, but she seemed to be talking to someone.

And yet, there wasn’t a voice that was talking back to Lena - not in person, not in the faintest sense over the phone, nothing. There was some kind of interaction clearly happening despite all of that as she sat before her vanity, earrings and lipstick off, while she moisturized her hands for the evening.

“Or you can just let me enjoy time with my wife while she isn’t angry at me,” she whispered, not wanting to be any louder than necessary. Kara’s hearing was often a blessing and a curse, and she trusted that her wife - or a younger version of her wife, even if she looked exactly the same, sans bangs - was too engrossed in a meticulous snack selection to focus on anything else.

The lights around the vanity mirror dimmed and brightened a few times as if there was an electrical issue happening around the penthouse - except nothing else was affected.

A shadowy figure could be seen walking past her briskly in the mirror. They didn’t exist outside of it.

Lena rolled her eyes. “We’ll have a conversation about it later. Keep to yourself.”

Everything she heard only served to confuse Kara further. Her hearing was, quite literally, supersonic. She heard everything if she wasn’t careful enough to block it out, more so without the lead in her glasses for an assist. Whoever Lena was talking to, Kara couldn’t hear them and that was concerning. She heard the buzz of electricity acting up – also concerning – but no voices filled in the other side of the conversation.

Her suspicions were now raised, but she took a breath, put on a smile (and it was genuine, she was nothing if not great at that), and slipped into the bedroom with their snacks. The tray went into a clear spot atop the armoire, and she plucked free a cup of yogurt and a mug of still-steaming tea to carry to her wife. For now, she would play a little bit dumb.

“For you,” she declared, bringing them to the vanity to slide in front of Lena. She kissed her cheek, then her temple. “I love you.”

Lena didn’t startle. Her heart did – ramped up in speed for a few seconds there – but she knew how to collect herself. It wasn’t as if she was lying to Kara. This wasn’t like what happened in National City, where she purposefully deceived the woman she loved just to hurt her back for all the years she’d been lied to. This was simply –

Omission of details. Details that didn’t pertain to the Kara of this time.

“Thank you,” she smiled, ignoring the creeping paranoia that she could have heard something. “Pretty healthy snacks, too. I was wondering if you’d bring up all that leftover Halloween candy.”

“I’m trying to be better,” Kara chuckled. She could easily gorge herself on candy, regardless of whether it was Halloween or not, but health was important, too. Lena had always been a bit healthier than her, but doing her best to be somewhat vegetarian while Theo was here had hit some lessons home. “Our son is a very effective lecturer.”

“And not here at the moment,” Lena pointed out, taking the tea by the handle (the yogurt too) to set down. Her beverage would need a moment to cool down anyway. “Was kind of hoping for some Skittles,” she tacked on, delicate fingers curling into the front of Kara’s top to pull her down for a kiss. “Something sweet to end the night with.”

Yes, there was yogurt but yogurt was not candy.

Or her wife, if she decidedly read that as an innuendo. It worked both ways.

“Well, lucky you.” Kara reached into one of the vanity’s drawers and pulled out a snack-size bag of the requested Skittles. She’d stashed a handful there earlier in the day, expecting this very request. “I know you.”

Then she dipped down to kiss her again, letting her worries slip away for now as she indulged in the taste of her wife’s lips. Whatever that conversation was, it could wait. She wanted to enjoy Lena.

Lena savored the kiss. Guilt simmered, the conversation prior fresh in her thoughts — but she focused on cupping Kara’s cheek, feeling the softness of her skin beneath her palm. She was unchanged, cells frozen in time thanks to the rays of the yellow sun, and she felt no different than how she did twenty years from now. It was a comfort, but the comfort was also tainted with sadness.

“You know me,” she said fondly once the kiss broke, faces close with touching noses. “I’ve missed the penthouse a little. Our room here. Most of our life together happens to be in our house.”

The one they bought to stay close to the forest for Theo’s sake. Not that their son couldn’t thrive in the city, but there was a distinct connection they felt being close to nature. It put him at peace. Made him happy. That was their goal with their children — peace and happiness. (A lot easier said than done, however, which is a parenting truth they had come to learn.)

“Should we be preparing for the house now?” Kara asked, finally sinking onto the vanity’s bench seat beside Lena. She’d been doing her best to be good about spoilers. She playfully begged for details, but she understood why she couldn’t know much. But a few helpful tips might be nice; she couldn’t help asking.

“We have a little time,” Lena smiled at her, tenderly brushing some of Kara’s hair from her shoulders, her neck – all feather-light touches, something that didn’t always register to her with that durable skin. “I’m sure you know the chronological order of things. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Theo first.”

She remembered them talking about it early in their relationship, wanting to make sure that Kara knew it was what Lena wanted. She wasn’t going to force them to be something if she wasn’t on board with having Theo in their lives. “We’ll find the perfect one for us. I do give it some upgrades over the years for the sake of convenience, but you should know to expect that.”

Her hand dropped and settled against the small of her back.

“Lori is – well.” Lena tried fighting a wider smiler. “Their age gap isn’t wide. Take that as you will.”

“Oh, but I could take that in so many ways,” Kara teased, flashing her that thousand-watt smile. Her hand wrapped around Lena’s, fingers tangling comfortably. She certainly had her suspicions that Lori wasn’t terribly far in the future; she didn’t know exactly how old Theo would be when they found him, and knowing he had a lengthened lifespan himself made guessing a little harder, too.

She lifted Lena’s hand to hers and kissed her knuckles. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “For giving us those kids. They’re amazing, Lena. So much of that is because of you, I know it.”

That guilt came back. Instead of a low simmer, it began to bubble - not close to a full-on boil, but the potential was certainly there. Lena tried to rationalize it. Tried to tell herself that it would be pointless to bring it up in this point in time. All Kara would do was try to stop it.

So she focused on the lips that caressed her knuckles, and that smile that was brighter than any sun in existence.

“Thank you for making me feel safe enough to have them,” she replied, just as quiet. “I did my best to be there, you know? I stepped back from L-Corp in a lot of aspects. I worked, but - the balance was better. I hope it was enough.”

“They’re amazing kids, so I’d say it was enough,” Kara declared. She had been mostly raised by a single parent – Jeremiah hadn’t been around long before he’d been taken by CADMUS, and that left Eliza on her own. While there was nothing inherently wrong with that, she thought having two present parents seemed to have instilled good morals in their two.

And yes, she stood by that despite the AMEX incident. She knew Lori had meant well, and she was a good girl. She hadn’t been happy at that moment, but she understood their daughter wanting to do something nice for her mom’s birthday.

“Can I ask you something else?”

That question shouldn’t make her stomach twist. It did. Guilt again, plaguing her conscience like a disease. Kara’s inquiry could be entirely innocent or entirely damning, and she hoped it was the former.

Lena kept that smile, taking in a deep breath through her nose like she was on the precipice of admitting defeat, and cupped Kara’s face into her hands. “You can always ask,” she assured her. “You might get an answer, depending on what it is.”

Kara hesitated. She was looking right at Lena, gazing at her with soft hands against her face, and she knew well how to read this woman. She saw something going on behind her eyes. She was struggling to identify what, but that breath she took made her even more certain there was something on her mind. And if Kara was a betting woman, she’d say it was the same thing that was on her mind, too.

“I overheard you talking before I came back,” she admitted. “I didn’t mean to, but – you know.” The hearing; Lena knew about every one of those Kryptonian quirks of hers, she didn’t need to elaborate. “Is there something going on I should know about? Are you… sick?”

That was the most feasible explanation she could come up with for hearing Lena have a conversation with no one. The thought made her anxious, but assuming that was the case, she was sure they were dealing with it, getting what help they could. One of Vallo’s pluses was that there was never a lack of options for illnesses that Earth hadn’t conquered yet.

That was exactly what Lena was afraid of. The hearing. She should have ignored the voice when it spoke to her - when its words hit her ear like cold air, dotting her skin with goosebumps. But it would make its presence known in other ways if neglected too long, and engaging in a conversation, had been the safer route.

Not that it helped if that’s what Kara was asking about.

Lena sighed. “I’m not sick, darling. It’s nothing like that.” The hands on her cheeks pushed back towards her hair, fingers threading down the blonde strands. “It’s… a magic thing,” she added, carefully. “I’ve gotten stronger with it over the years. Much more than I thought I’d ever be with it. And in doing so I made a –”

The vanity lights dimmed again. She looked almost annoyed by the fact.

“Friend.”

There went the lights again. Kara hadn’t seen them flicker before, but she’d heard that strange buzz of electricity acting up. Both times, nothing else seemed affected. The shift was concentrated to the room, to the vanity in particular, and she didn’t like the implications it carried. Even the word friend seemed to carry some connotations she wasn’t sure were good.

Still, she was treading that very thin line. She didn’t want to know too much and mess things up for them and a future that seemed wonderful. Timelines were constantly shifting here, and this one with Lena was one she wanted to keep rock solid as it was. She wasn’t sure that was possible in Vallo – or any universe at all – but she wanted to do her best to try.

“I don’t know if I want you to tell me,” she said after a moment, “or keep it to yourself. I’m not sure if it will eat me alive wondering when you’re gone, but I know I want to enjoy the time I have with you.” Her hands circled Lena, sliding down her shoulders and settling against the middle of her back. “I can’t believe I’ve had two more decades with you.”

Lena didn’t know that either. To tell Kara or not to tell Kara felt like a Shakespearean dilemma. Omission didn’t particularly have her at ease, but she was afraid to stir the pot in this timeline when she’d already caused so much distress to her wife back home.

“A couple more is the goal,” she strained out, lips tight. Several, in fact. Living forever in its literal sense was not something Lena wanted. That hadn’t been the end game. It was simply time that she needed; something beyond a human life expectancy, something to give Kara when she could potentially have eternity.

Because, eventually, Lena would just be a distant memory to her.

Everything about Lena seemed tight right now. Kara could feel it. Some self-preservational part of herself wanted to make Lena keep whatever this was – the magic, the friend – to herself. But she never wanted her to feel like she couldn’t talk to her either. Ever since they’d found their footing again after Non Nocere, they had worked so hard together to have an open, honest relationship. Timeline things were tricky, but she didn’t want that to change now.

“Tell me,” she said, her decision firm despite the softness of the words. “What’s going on?”

Telling her wasn’t something she wanted to do. Lena didn’t hide how the hesitance creeped in every part of her - the way she looked at Kara, how her eyes traveled down and then up her wife’s form. Tongue in cheek, gears in her head turning, and turning, and turning.

Guilt coming to a boil, ugly and hot.

“I would have died before all of you,” she started, giving in despite every shred of logic telling her to not say a damn thing, don’t alter time, preserve it. “You, Theo, Lori. What I did isn’t meant to be a permanent solution.”

The lights brightened this time, almost too much, as if the electricity was seconds away from shattering glass.

“But it gives me time to find one that’s better,” Lena finished, looking into the mirror. A blur of a shadow passed.

A feeling of dread clawed inside Kara’s chest. She didn’t know much about magic. She knew it brought them here (most likely), that it was an important part of life in Vallo, that it was an important part of Lena that she’d discovered so much later in life than she should have. She didn’t entirely trust it, knowing it could and had been wielded against her, against Clark. They didn’t have many weaknesses under a yellow sun, but magic was one of them.

This was beyond the extent of magic as she’d known it. The way it manipulated the lights, that blur that her eyes just barely caught passing by in the mirror. It wasn’t Lena’s magic that had done this. She didn’t know what it was, exactly, and she was still reluctant to find out. It seemed like a mistake to pry, but they’d come this far.

“Do you think you’re meant to change it?” was her next question. “Making this choice, I mean.” She wasn’t touching on what Lena’s intention was just yet. She’d had that thought before, unfortunately. Facing her long lifespan and what it meant for the people she loved wasn’t new territory for her.

“No,” Lena replied, just as soft and firm as Kara herself had been. “It’s crossed my mind a few times, in this time - I remember.” Sometimes the thought just popped up without being prompted; her dying, Kara living several lifetimes after her, seeing what would become of their children, grandchildren, everything and everyone after. Possibly even moving on to find someone else to be happy with, which was her right if she ceased to exist thanks to the natural end of a human cycle (but there was a dark, possessive part of her that loathed the idea).

As the years passed by, it became harder and harder to dismiss the thoughts. She changed. So did their children, but their changes would eventually slow to a crawl.

Kara would remain as she was.

“But things don’t stay the same, and I’d like a few lifetimes with you before I let death take me away. I want to see the years you see. I want to see Theo and Lori as they grow in their lives a hundred years later.”

Kara sighed. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand; she did. She didn’t want to think of Lena’s life coming to an end, but she knew it was inevitable. Just like it was with Eliza, Alex, James, Cat, Lois, Lucy – so many of the people she loved, she would outlive. There were plenty of people here she could spend time with when that day came, and at home, she knew she would have Clark and J’onn. That didn’t mean thinking about a life without those people – without Lena – was something she wanted to accept.

“I don’t know if this is the way,” she said. “I want you there, too, you know I do. I never want to let you go.” She didn’t think she ever would; some immortals would move on, and find other loves, but all Kara could imagine was Lena. “But this seems dangerous, honey. I don’t want you getting hurt over this.”

“I have no intention of getting myself hurt,” Lena assured her, though she knew it wasn’t guaranteed – everything she dabbled in was dangerous. Science. Magic. Both took experiments, trial and error, risks. “Someone we know–” Caleb, but she was hesitant to casually name drop it, “figured something out. He’s in the same boat. We’ve been helping each other. You’re not exactly pleased with me back home, but I need you to know that everything I’m doing is because I love you.”

And there were times when her love could be misguided, yes – she was trying to be more aware, she was trying to stay honest and open.

But she also didn’t want Kara to stop her.

“I love our life,” she continued, squeezing her shoulders. “I don’t want to let it go anytime soon.”

“I love you too,” Kara murmured, leaning in close to press their foreheads together. “And I love our life more than anything.” Another second later, she had wrapped Lena up and pulled her in close to hug her, chin hooking over her shoulder. She needed her as close as possible, needed to know she was making her safe in this moment – her heart was still beating, her breath still gusted warmly across her skin.

Lena may not intend to get in danger, but very few people ever did. This choice she’d made came with an inherent feeling of danger, though there was no sense of malevolence, necessarily. Whatever she’d anchored herself to, whatever that blur that had passed them by had been, Kara had to hope their intentions were good. She had to hope that Lena was smart and savvy enough to weigh her options as carefully as possible.

“Has this been on your mind a lot now?” she asked, pulling away so they could look at one another again. “My now, this present? You haven’t seemed worried.”

Lena wasn’t particularly eager to let space exist between them, but she understood needing to reel back a little. It was a conversation that required eye contact. The topic was uncomfortable and heavy, full of so many unknown details for Kara – she owed her at least that.

“A few times,” she admitted, hand rubbing up and down one of her wife’s arms. “Not enough to where I act on it. I think at this point in time you and I are floating along with this honeymoon phase – where everything is new but comfortable, and the end isn’t something I see yet. But when you have kids, it’s as if the years are gone in a blur. All those moments you think last too long, every phase and tantrum you wish they’d hurry up and get over seem like nothing. I keep changing. You stay exactly like this.”

There was a small pause and a soft chuckle.

“Well,” Lena began again, brushing the back of her fingers across her forehead, “with bangs. The only thing that changes is your hairstyle every few years.”

“That’s the one thing I’m going to put a stop to,” Kara sighed. The bangs weren’t necessarily bad, but they weren’t her usual style. They usually indicated some sort of not-well-hidden secrets about how she was doing emotionally, too, and she needed to work those feelings out instead of hiding them behind a questionable hair choice.

“If you think this is something you have to do, I won’t change things,” she decided after a minute. “I would prefer–” She paused, took a breath, and considered how best to phrase what she wanted to say. “I want you to be careful,” she continued. “And I want you to communicate with me, even if you think I won’t like what you’ve chosen. I only freak out because I’m so scared of losing you, Lena. You have to know that.”

Lena’s throat ached as she swallowed. “I know.”

She could admit the decision was made from desperation. The time clock was ticking for her, and her life was sand swirling down an hourglass - and it felt like almost all of it was on the bottom now. She should have looked into it sooner. She should have done something when those gray hairs became stubborn and insisted on multiplying. Nothing magic couldn’t cover up for her, but every strand reminded her of what could be inevitable if she didn’t do something.

Her cheeks were on the verge of becoming wet, and that was why she lifted a finger to wipe beneath her eyes - dainty as if she still had eyeliner to work around. “I appreciate you wanting to love me anyway, even in my old age. I’m getting a little up there.”

“You’re perfect.”

There was not a hint of insincerity in those words nor space for a breath between Lena’s words and her own. Kara loved Lena, no matter how old she was or how age showed. There was always the chance she was biased (she was), but she thought the ‘aging like fine wine’ comment Lena had joked about hearing as she’d gotten older couldn’t be more true. She looked older, yes, but she was hardly falling apart. She had laugh lines around her mouth, a few silvery strands that made her look a little more distinguished and like she’d lived a good life.

She would love Lena until the end of time, whether she found the key to this longevity she wanted or not. If she turned ninety and became a hunchbacked old woman, Kara would still love her just as fiercely and still think she was just as beautiful.

“You’re it for me, no matter how old you get or how it shows. You will always be it for me.”

“You say that until someone mistakes you for my daughter,” Lena dared to joke, the cracks in her voice all too obvious. It hadn’t happened yet but she was waiting for it. These words weren’t new. Kara had said them to her several times, over and over like a broken solar-powered record.

But she couldn’t let go. She didn’t want to. And if there was a way to preserve everything, to give them dozens and dozens of decades together - what was the problem?

Her eyes grew bloodshot. They watered but didn’t streak down her face and she’d call that a triumph. “You’re it for me, too. I wouldn’t be fighting so hard to stay with you if you weren’t.”

Oh. The insecurity in that statement struck Kara harder than she’d been expecting. She’d never considered that someday, there could be a completely innocuous comment that could cause that kind of sting. Because Lena did age. Kara stood by her aging well, but she was certainly noticeably a little older than Kara herself.

“If that ever happens, I will correct them faster than you can blink,” she assured her, knowing that was true no matter what. Her hands slipped back to Lena’s cheeks, stroking across her cheekbones, sharp and gorgeous as ever. “They’ll think you’re the cougar, but we’ll know the truth.”

Okay, yes, she may be resorting to trying to make her wife laugh. She recognized this was a serious topic, but Lena needed some lightness. Maybe she’d get some tears out of her – hopefully happy ones.

“I know you will,” Lena laughed softly, tucking her face into Kara’s neck to hide the look in her eyes. Her wife never once made her feel insecure - she was loved, and her body was worshiped like it never changed. These were all her own hang-ups. Her own dilemmas.

Against her skin, she let out a sigh.

“I know you made me tea, but - take me to bed?”

Kara smiled and kissed the top of Lena’s head. That laugh was just what she needed to hear. She knew it didn’t make any of the problems, personal and interpersonal, disappear, but she deserved a moment to just breathe. This situation was tense and strange, and although Kara had promised not to say anything and influence her Lena-of-the-present, some part of her wondered if she should relieve that weight when she returned.

For now, she scooped Lena up in her arms. “I’ve got you,” she murmured, unhesitating as she carried her wife across the room to the bed they shared. “Always.”