Lena was staring at her laptop, lost in thought, when something tapped against the window.
Knock. Knock.
Supergirl was hovering outside, her expression uncharacteristically solemn.
Lena snapped the laptop shut—she had no idea whether her behavior from earlier had been visible through the glass, and she was not going to find out—and opened the window with the practiced composure of someone who had survived considerably worse.
Inside, however, she was a mess. Years of reading a room had her calibrated: Kara had barely held herself together to get here. Coming to this window had cost her something.
"There's something I want to talk to you about." Kara's voice came out approximately normal for the first three words and developed a slight tremor by the end of the sentence. Neither of them noticed.
"The roof?" Lena suggested.
"I'll wait for you up there." Kara was gone before Lena finished the sentence.
Lena held very still for a beat, then slapped both palms gently against her own cheeks. Focus. She was a woman who had spent years in cutthroat deal-making. She was not going to be undone by one conversation.
She found approximately none of her usual confidence and jogged to the stairwell anyway.
Kara was sitting on the roof's edge when Lena pushed the door open.
She had her back to the door, looking out at the city, and with the distance and the light she looked small—not fragile exactly, but reduced somehow, like something that was waiting.
Lena started to call out and stopped. Tried again and swallowed the words. Then she did what made sense when no words worked: she walked to the edge and sat down beside her.
It was a significant height above the street below. Lena was human, with human consequences for falling from it.
She sat down anyway.
"What are you—how are you —" Kara turned, visibly alarmed.
"You'd catch me," Lena said simply. Not a question.
It was the most uncomplicated trust Kara had ever been offered.
They sat side by side in silence, looking at the city. The wind moved through the space between them. Down below, the morning rush had started—small figures, distant sounds.
"Do you like me?" Lena asked.
Kara had spent thirty minutes flying in circles to cover a ten-minute trip. She had prepared for this conversation. She had run every version of it in her head. And she still looked like a deer caught in headlights when Lena said it straight out, no preamble, no warm-up.
Lena watched the panic move across Kara's face, and felt the familiar weight of bracing for an answer she wasn't sure she wanted. She released her grip on the ledge. Leaned forward.
And dropped.
Kara didn't have time to think. Her hand shot out and closed around Lena's wrist before a tenth of a second had passed.
"Let go." Lena's voice was perfectly calm, dangling in open air.
"I won't." Kara had both hands on her now, wide-eyed. "Lena, why —"
"Do you care about what happens to me?"
"Obviously!"
"Then hold me properly. Not here on the ledge. In the air."
Kara, operating entirely on instinct and residual panic, lifted her into the air and wrapped both arms around her. They rose up away from the building's edge, into open sky.
Below, the morning crowd was beginning to notice. Phones came out. Some were filming. At this altitude, no one could make out the details.
"Will you be with me?" Lena asked. "Kara Danvers." She paused. "I'm sorry—I don't know your Kryptonian name."
"Kara Zor-El."
"Kara Zor-El." She said it again with the matter-of-fact clarity of someone who had made a decision and was following through on it. She had assessed the situation: Kara was someone who could be nudged in all the right directions and still take forever to move without a push. So she was pushing. "Will you be with me?"
Supergirl, now acutely aware of the gathering crowd below, made an executive decision. She tightened her hold and flew.
"Is this—oh." The wind hit Lena all at once. She opened both arms wide, laughing, and let it take her. "So that's what flying feels like."
"Say yes! Say yes, say yes, say yes—" Lena's voice carried over the wind—half laughing, half urging, completely undignified and not remotely sorry about it.
"Yes! Yes, I will!" Kara finally said what she'd been carrying all day.
And the weight was gone—all of it, clean, like a door finally opening—and Kara flew faster just because she could, and Lena laughed louder, and the two of them swept across the sky like they'd invented it.
High above the cloud layer, two figures materialized.
Mercy had filed her report three minutes earlier. After that, Gideon had located the scene via satellite: two young women, staging what appeared to be a rooftop confession with full aerial follow-through.
Thea stared.
Superman had beaten her here, somehow. They stood side by side and watched Kara and Lena become distant specks against the blue.
"Lena's not a bad person," Thea said.
"Kara deserves to be happy," Clark said.
"You're very open-minded about this."
He laughed—the laugh of a man who'd run the math on all his other options. He raised a hand and disappeared.
Thea signaled Mercy to erase every record captured in the last twenty minutes, then teleported herself back.
She'd spent enough time with Kara to know what she was looking at: the girl had committed nine-tenths of the way and was carrying a tenth's worth of hesitation. As the relevant elder-sister figure, Thea felt a certain responsibility to do something about that.
The original timeline's Kara had ended up with a Daxamite who, in Thea's considered opinion, had the bearing of someone who had never earned anything he had. She wasn't going to let that happen twice if she could help it—but how to handle this would require some thought.
Back at the office, Mercy arrived with one more piece of news: Alex Danvers had spent the night with a police detective named Maggie Sawyer.
"Well." Thea looked at Mercy. "You know Lena reasonably well. Do you think there's anything we can do to help move things along?"
Mercy considered. "Lena isn't quite ready either. She might need a push."
"Then we're hosting a party." She decided on the spot. "Something casual. Give everyone a chance to relax and drop their guard." She picked up her phone and started calling.
First on the list was Kate Kane—Batwoman, Bruce's cousin, and a pioneer in certain circles since before most of the current generation had figured it out. She'd been openly out for over twenty years, had been expelled from West Point for it, and was currently with Gotham detective Renée Montoya—who would, in due course, become the second person to carry the Question's mantle. Kate answered on the second ring, heard the purpose, and agreed immediately, offering her private residence as the venue without being asked.
Thea worked through the rest of the list.
The final headcount: Kate and Renée as hosts. Thea and Diana. Mercy and Pamela. The Danvers sisters and their respective situations—Kara and Lena, Alex and Maggie. And Aquaman's companions, Yawara and Cassina.
Twelve people. Perfect.