Thea caught the look on Kara's face—the girl clearly had something to say—and was not about to sit on a curb and put on a show for the general public. She cut her off before she could start. "Come on. We're getting drinks."
The two of them headed to the Star City Women's Justice League base, where Thea took her to one of the bars she owned.
"Here. Try this." She set a glass down in front of Kara. "Truan firewater—alien-brewed. Strong enough to knock even a Kryptonian flat. Don't believe me? Find out for yourself." She waved for Kara to drink up and get to the story—she'd earmarked the rest of the evening for other people's misfortunes, and she intended to enjoy every word of it.
Earth alcohol had always been useless on Kryptonians. Kara had sneaked a few sips in the past, found it completely flavorless, and never bothered again. Now, with Thea watching her with that go on, prove it expression, she picked up the glass and downed it in one.
The golden liquid scorched a path down her throat and settled in her stomach. A wave of heat rolled back up and flooded her mouth.
"That's... actually not bad!" Kara blinked, genuinely caught off guard. Something about this particular blend suited Kryptonian biology just fine.
Thea produced a small, elegant bottle from nowhere and poured her another glass. "Now this one. Dionysus's Reserve—the god of wine's personal vintage. Most people will never get a taste."
Kara was hardly a mythology scholar. She knew Apollo because they'd come to blows twice, and she vaguely remembered running into more gods during the Underworld War, but couldn't have matched names to faces. Dionysus meant nothing to her.
What the wine itself tasted like was another matter entirely. The aroma alone was intoxicating, and the finish lingered long after the glass was empty. Even Kara, with zero appreciation for fine wine, could tell this was something extraordinary—though she couldn't have explained why if asked.
"Keep going, there's plenty more." Thea's spatial ring was stocked with a respectable cellar, and this was her private bar. No one would dare complain about a customer bringing their own supplies.
The bottles came and went. Even Kryptonian physiology had its limits, and Kara was getting there.
Thea drank differently—small, unhurried sips, letting the evening breathe. After a while, the shadow over Kara's mood lifted enough for her to start talking. The story came out in stops and starts, looping back on itself.
"I mean, obviously I was going to help with the plane crash. Right?"
"And then we ran into those attacks twice after that—it's not like I knew she was from the Luthor family. Not all Luthors are bad. Right? Lena isn't a bad person." Kara hiccupped. "She really isn't."
The girl was well past her limit, and her account came out tangled and out of order. Thea's comprehension was extraordinary, though, and she pieced it together without much trouble.
Whether it was corporate sabotage or an equipment malfunction, the short version was this: Lena Luthor had been on a plane when the engines failed. The aircraft dropped out of the sky. Kara happened to be passing by, caught it, and set it down safely. Lena, seated at a window, glimpsed a figure flying away—and from that strange chance encounter, something had begun.
Alien attacks followed. The fighting swept Lena into the chaos. They ended up taking down the threat together. Afterward, the two girls exchanged contact information. Kara—as Supergirl—began talking with Lena: casually at first, then more often. Kara hadn't had many friends her own age. She and Lena clicked in ways she hadn't expected.
One complained about an evil older brother and the crushing weight of living under his shadow. The other grumbled about her overprotective older cousin and all the ways he tried to keep her in a box. Two girls—sharp-minded, a little rebellious—found each other. Lena admired Kara's courage; Kara envied Lena's mind. By now they were genuinely close.
And then Superman found out.
Clark, to his credit, hadn't slammed his fist on the table or raised his voice. He was patient, methodical, and kind—and had spent an entire day calmly laying out his case, which boiled down to one line: there are no good people in the Luthor family.
Kara had pushed back hard, as any self-respecting older cousin would. She was older than him, technically. He had no grounds to lecture her.
Superman's patience was genuinely remarkable, especially where Kara was concerned—his only surviving Kryptonian family. He never said a harsh word. But he had worked in, somewhere between the lines, the point that she was only a few years older than his ten-year-old son, which meant she should probably take his advice anyway.
Kara hated it. She wasn't the type to win a fight against gentleness. Clark's soft, steady approach left her no foothold to push back from. She'd ended up storming off alone, wandering with no particular destination—which was when the equally at-loose-ends Thea had scooped her up.
Thea chose her words carefully. "I've met Lena. She's Lex's sister, yes—but she's not a bad person."
"Exactly!" Kara, pleasantly drunk at this point, clapped Thea on the shoulder with enthusiasm that would have demolished most people.
"And Clark's position—no good people in the Luthor family—that's far too broad a brush. Lena has never done anything wrong. Even Lex, honestly, isn't simply villainous in any clean sense."
Thea had dealt with Lex Luthor on several occasions. He was arrogant, vain, ambitious—the kind of man who walked into a room already assuming he was the smartest person in it. But he had lines he wouldn't cross, and he was, in his own way, trying to protect the Earth. In some respects, he and Batman weren't entirely unlike each other. Lex feared an uncontrolled Kryptonian and had spent enormous resources on countermeasures. Strictly speaking, the Luthor family had produced exactly one genuinely rotten person: their mother. That woman was truly, bone-deep awful.
Thea had never thought of Lex as an enemy. He was a man of genuine charisma—without Superman, without Batman, without her own presence, he would have been exactly the kind of leader who could have carried humanity to its peak.
Her access to global intelligence gave her a clear picture. The Luthor family was effectively divided into three camps. Lena still ran what remained of the old LexCorp, and under her management it was showing signs of slow, steady revival—she was the moderate. Lex, out of prison, was quietly rebuilding his network; he'd apparently spent time behind bars developing a solar power generation system and was laying early groundwork for it—the neutral. And their mother, Letitia Luthor, struck Thea as a walking case study in menopause-fueled volatility. That woman had taken over the Cadmus Project and was buried underground running experiments of questionable legality, using every manipulation and underhanded method available to her—a radical, through and through. Unfortunately, she had neither Lex's brilliance nor Lena's people skills. All ambition, no results. Thea had always considered her too marginal to bother with.
Letitia came up in conversation, and Kara found immediate common ground. "She's terrible! She really is!"
"Forget about Clark. Trust your own judgment. If you believe Lena is a good person, there's nothing wrong with being her friend. Don't worry about Clark—he's just been burned by Lex too many times."
"Coward!" Kara had precisely zero mercy for her older-but-technically-younger cousin.
Thea, several drinks in herself, patted her impressively endowed chest. "Be bolder. What is there to be afraid of? Look at me—I'm completely fearless. If you want to give other people courage, you have to give it to yourself first. Right?"
"Right!"
"Well said. One more round!"
Two more glasses went down. Thea's "fearlessness" was, if she was being honest, specifically about standing her ground against terrifying opponents—a bit of alcohol-fueled self-encouragement more than anything else.
But Kara heard something entirely different. She'd heard about Thea's enemies in the abstract, but had never faced them herself, and couldn't really grasp the particular mix of caution and relentlessness that Thea meant. Her mind went somewhere else: Thea and Diana, facing the world's raised eyebrows with complete composure. That was courage. She'd been brought low by a few words from her cousin, while those two walked their path with their heads high. They'd earned the title of warriors.
Thea, falling into the role of wise older sister, kept going—a loose ramble about living joyfully, trusting your instincts, this and that and the other thing. Her spiritual energy was still taxed from the long stretch in the timestream, and even with her double returned, she wasn't at full strength. When she decided she'd had enough drinks and enough of other people's problems, she found a room and went to sleep.
Kara had two more glasses after that, then floated unsteadily toward the exit.
Kryptonian genetics were extraordinary. She'd nearly lost her sense of direction, but ten minutes in direct sunlight cleared her head by several degrees.
Still a little hazy, Supergirl changed into her blue suit and red cape, got her bearings, and flew hard toward National City. She had something to say to Lena—that the El family and the Luthor family were not enemies by blood. Even if Lex and Superman stayed on opposite sides, that had nothing to do with the two of them. They were going to keep being friends. Best friends.