It was all up to her then.
Lena could see the Kryptonite's effect deepening by the minute—Kara had started the fight with barely more than ten percent of her normal power, and now she had less than half of that. She kept her eyes on Metallo's chassis, thinking hard.
Metal skeleton. Let's see how you handle electromagnetic interference.
She moved fast and stayed out of Metallo's line of sight, placing magnetic field units in three corners of the room. Then she caught Kara's eye and flipped the switch.
The field began building. At first Metallo registered nothing. Twenty seconds in, he noticed the drag in his limbs and tried to break out of the affected zone—but Kara was planted firmly in his path.
At maximum output, Metallo's motor control collapsed entirely.
Kara hit him like she meant it. Lena cut the field the moment he went down. Both girls let out a long breath.
The Kryptonite heart couldn't be removed—it would kill him—but it couldn't be ignored either. Lena thought for thirty seconds, then produced a full-lead housing machined to fit over his chest. She set a complex lock: any forced breach would trigger a charge that would reduce the housing and everything inside it to fragments.
With the radiation gone, Kara's recovery was almost immediate. A call to the Martian Manhunter brought DEO agents to take Metallo into custody.
The stepmother was handled separately: a police report for attempted kidnapping and extortion. Lena knew Letitia had connections and would likely be back on the street within days. That was fine. The point was to make the woman's week as miserable as possible.
They left the office looking like a crime scene for the morning staff to sort out, and agreed to find somewhere to sit and talk.
Lena had long since treated the building as a second home. Just down the hall there were two small bedroom suites.
Kara had taken a significant amount of punishment. The radiation was gone and her self-repair was running at full capacity—she was mostly healed—but the blood said otherwise. Lena, having grown up adjacent to enough of Lex's lab work to know Kryptonian biology when she saw it, pointed toward the bathroom without ceremony.
"I'm fine, honestly — " Kara started.
Then she caught her reflection in the window.
She looked like she'd walked out of a horror film.
"I'll go wash up."
A few minutes later she emerged, hair pinned back, wearing one of Lena's dresses—her own clothes hadn't survived the fight. Lena was a few inches shorter, which meant the dress landed mid-thigh on Kara rather than at the knee.
"You're completely healed?" Even knowing what Kryptonians could do, Lena stared. "That was you on the floor twenty minutes ago?"
"Of course!" Kara straightened up with the bearing of someone who had thoroughly earned the right to be smug about it.
With the mood lighter, Kara said what she'd come to say. When Lena heard that her new friend had flown across a city, half-drunk, specifically to say this in person—she felt something shift. In the world of cutthroat deals and calculated relationships, genuine friendship was nearly mythological. She hadn't expected to receive it.
"We're practically battle-tested friends at this point. Let's celebrate." Lena's taste was impeccable even in a temporary space; a small bar cart was tucked against one wall, its rack carrying a curated selection of world-class bottles. She started to reach for one.
Kara paused. Something had occurred to her. She dug through her ruined jacket, checked every pocket, and eventually produced a small bottle.
She held it up, gave it a shake. Still well over half full. She beamed. "Let's drink this!"
Lena accepted it—barely bigger than a fist. She turned it over with the professional composure of someone who knew better than to say what they were thinking. "This is lovely. It almost looks like an art piece."
"It's from Thea. Aged by some god, she said?" Kara tilted her head and scratched her cheek, completely failing to retrieve the name Dionysus. She remembered the wine was extraordinary and that Thea had told her to drink it slowly. She'd shoved the bottle into her pocket while half-drunk, and it had somehow survived an entire fight with Metallo without breaking.
Hearing it was Thea's, Lena's expression shifted with new attention. She quickly discovered the bottle's remarkable property: two full glasses poured, and when she checked the bottle again, it was exactly as full as before. The weight hadn't changed.
"Drink it, come on!" Kara had no interest in the physics of a self-replenishing bottle. She just wanted her friend to try the good stuff.
Lena set aside the question, skipped the ceremony, and drank.
"That is genuinely extraordinary." The warmth didn't hit like alcohol—it crept in soft and deep, like sunlight settling into the blood. Lena had been served a great many fine wines in her life. None of them had felt like this.
"To today's victory!" Kara raised her own glass.
They drank together, taking turns across the small bar. For this moment, the El name and the Luthor name meant nothing. Kryptonian, human—irrelevant. They were just two young women under enormous pressure, sitting quietly in the same room.
Kara had been drunk once already, and was now embarking on a second round bolstered by post-fight adrenaline. The god of wine's vintage was famous, even on Olympus, for its slow-burning finish. Had she fallen asleep after the first round like Thea had, she'd have been fine. Instead, she'd gone straight from a fight into another drinking session, and the accumulation was showing. Her words started tumbling out of order, subjects jumping without warning—though she held onto enough of her presence of mind to avoid ever saying her cousin's actual name, referring to him only as "him."
Lena, for her part, was a normal human being drinking Dionysus's personal vintage, which put her in an entirely different category of trouble. The woman known for razor-sharp composure had quietly forgotten her own last name.
"Who does he think he is?" Kara's indignation was fully operational even in this state.
"Absolutely," Lena had been swept along in Kara's energy and was thoroughly committed to the ride. She flung an arm around Kara's shoulders. "They're all people who can't mind their own business. We are best friends. End of story."
Then, with the casual intimacy of someone who has already decided to ask: "So, Supergirl—tell me honestly. Do you have a boyfriend?"
Kara's expression soured, and she poured another glass. "Too many people in my business already. And the guys at school are all so shallow. They only care about how you look."
"Have you ever kissed anyone?" Lena's voice dropped—softer, closer.
"No," Kara answered. "Have you?"
"No." A beat. Lena tilted her head slightly. "Want to try?"
The better part of Kara's judgment had left the building. But a small, stubborn kernel of clarity still burned somewhere at the back of her mind, and she hesitated.
Then she thought about courage—the word Thea had used, not once but several times. Lena was right here. Lena was someone she trusted. And honestly, it wasn't going to kill her.
Fine.
What followed required no instructions from either of them. They turned toward each other, close enough to share the same air, breathing each other in.
(five hundred words omitted)