[right][sub][color=436eab][b]Kara Luthor, Supergirl[/b][/color][/sub][/right]

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“Not every college freshman lives where there’s a doorman and a wine cellar, Kara.”

The words were dry as primed powder, there was a danger to them to her ears, but it wasn’t a danger that would kill—it would just hurt. She’d seen it before; jealousy, resentment, mistrust. Worse, she’d seen it from friends before. That was the trade-off to being adopted by Lionel Luthor…everyone you ever met, on one level or another, would hate you for it. 

In one way, or another. 

“Call me,” the pretty girl said, and leaned in on tippy toes to steal a kiss from Kara’s lips. Kara smiled, sanguine and silent, and watched the girl walk back to her car down the street. 

“…everything okay, Ms. Luthor?”

It made her chuckle, the irony of it, before answering in a sad, wistful tone, “Yeah, Marcos, I’m just watching her ass as she walks away. Its why women walk away.” Kara liked the girl, but the well was poisoned, and she’d ridden this ride enough to know how it ended. When the girl ducked into the car, Kara walked for the door of the building, thanking Marcos as he held the door open for her. 

She ignored the front desk, and security, as she walked towards the elevator. Biometrics and a security device unlocked the elevator for her and allowed her entry, allowed her to pick the penthouse floor, allowed her into the place the Sterling and Sharpe Design House had decorated in Midcentury Modern, with touches of Bohemian and Glam, because, as they explained, ‘it fits your personality.’

As if they really knew her personality. 

The heavy Prada saddle brown leather bag was shrugged off onto the table in the middle of the vestibule table, warm dark brown wood and a seamless glass top that seemed to melt right into the sides of the table. Through the double entry way and into the main space of the apartment, she saw the figure and stopped, dead. 

“…who the fuck are you?”

The voice was strange; strained, filtered, with an electric buzz to it. The shape the figure cut was masculine, but not overly large, or overly thin…medium built but tall enough. The robes it wore were dirty, time-stained, and decorated with embroidery that had lost its color long ago, but the shapes left behind teased symbols, or a language, decorating the edges of the time tattered cloth. 

It stood between custom lavender-gray sectional, and wooden kitchen island, a five-foot length of cherry wood cut straight from the center of the tree, black wrought-iron hooks and shelves underneath holding pots and pans that she liked to use. 

“This is a first for me,” the chuckle that followed made her skin crawl. Unknown, self-satisfied, and brief. “You’ve beaten him before, but never like this…”

He seemed to wander, mentally, as she waited for him to go on. When he took a moment too long, she simply sighed, “Who the fuck are you, again?”

“…well, anyway, I guess that doesn’t matter now. Flying yet?”

Her head…tilted. “Who. The—”

“—heard you the first time. I’ll take that as a ‘yes’, then.” The voice came, but the face behind it stayed crystalline and unchanging, as if it was a facet of nature hiding from nature, a mask of gemstone she almost thought she could see what might have been eyes blurred through, staring at her.

Into her. 

“You were always more dangerous than he was, I’ll give you that, but you each had your touchstones…yet that’s been taken from you. Robbed, I imagine, given the name you carry with you.”

Her hands were stuffed neatly into the front pockets of the black leather quilt Prada waist length jacket she wore over the simple white silk button up, the blue jeans with their slight fade and perfectly tight fit felt a little tighter now than they had minutes ago as her anger began to rise, deep down, tucked away where Lionel had trained her with coldness to keep it. 

“Yeah? Wanna share with the class, mister? Or shall I test just how unbreakable I’ve become against your face?”

It made the figure with the multi-faceted disguise laugh, a harsher sound than it should have been, “It’s not a thing you can be told. It’s a thing you must see…and I can’t just show it to you. Nor would I; this is the most fun I’ve had in…well, time is different for me, but let’s just say too long.”

“Where do I look?”

Something felt wrong. It sounded like he was smiling as he spoke, now, “Into the abyss as you stand on the cliff of death, child, which you’ve been to before…but sadly she didn’t let you look.”

“She who?”

The surreal sound of his chuckle chortled once more, quicker, finished much quicker now, “Death, of course.”

Her bright blue eyes couldn’t have rolled harder, “Of course. Death is a fucking woman. Story of my life.” She moved towards him, a walk but one with real purpose. 

“I wouldn’t,” he warned, “I don’t think you’re ready to see this yet.”

Her shoulders rolled in a shrug, “Take my chances, pal.”

He never flinched as she got close and reached out with the intent to grab, squeeze, see just how soft and squishy his flesh could be compared to her hardened steel grip. The texture of the robe was as rough and strange as it looked. It was the heat she didn’t expect, it was the sudden pulsing of kinetic force through her fingers and hand and wrist and arm and shoulder that kicked her like a shotgun going off in a loose hold, sending her body reeling.

It was the heat that scared her. Hotter than anything she’d ever known. It was the silence that panicked her; no scream, just a goodbye she barely registered as she convulsed onto the hardwood floor below her. Stars and shine and catastrophe and love flashing so fast she might have thrown up. It was infinity that stretched like a line that ran through all of it, and right into her. 

“…fuck.” was the first sound she heard herself make as she woke up in a pool of vomit in an apartment lit only with the burning gold of the setting sun. It was a blur, it was a dream, a nightmare that she’d been awoken into. Her mind raced to make any sense of it, even if in her heart, she knew the figure had been right: she wasn’t ready to make sense of it. Not yet. 

She stared at the phone, bent over the marble counter of the washroom with towel over her washed and wet hair so it would dry, instead of looking in the mirror. For the moment, the phone was scarier than the mirror. It wasn’t the first time the phone had been the evil in the room, her fingertip with its black paint starting to chip and flake finally hit the name.

It rang, and rang, and she silently cursed him. [i]Pick the fucking phone up. I’ve called you three times the past few days with nothing. You promised—[/i] The line went live, as she heard his voice. 

[i]”I’m sorry, Kara, it’s been…crazy.”[/i]

She smiled, despite the instant worry, “You okay?”

The pause was too long, the silence was secrecy. She knew him. “…no.”

“I’ll be there in an hour.”

The second silence actually hurt. “Don’t, it’s…you don’t want to be here right now. I’ll be okay.”

[i]You PROMISED me.[/i] “What is it?”

He sighed. He rarely sighed. “I’m sorry, I know our promise, but…I’ll tell you soon. I’ll come see you. You really don’t want to be around this place right now. Forgive me?”

Sadly, Kara smiled, “You’re my brother, Lex.”

“You didn’t answer me. Forgive me?”

Blue eyes closed, hot, to keep tears back. “Yeah, Lex, I did. See you soon.”

States away, in the subterranean vaults of a building he didn’t know existed until a week ago, Lex Luthor stared at the phone and the line went dead, the picture assigned to the contact of ‘Sister’, of the two of them together, smiling, staring right back at him. It took him a moment before he regained himself and slid the phone back into the interior pocket of his blazer, his eyes going back to the woman holding the gun on the secret scientist in the secret lab that his father had kept from him. Then, slowly, his eyes went back to those of the scientist.

“Go through it again, Doctor Sadler, and this time…don’t lie.”

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