i. happy.
"Are you happy?"
It's the first time somebody has asked her that ever since that day in the lake, before Lena's life was turned upside down.
Lex fixes the straps of her helmet, a finger booping her on the nose, her teeth chattering a bit in the cold morning air but she's grinning so wide at her brother and that's all the answer he needs.
"Hell yeah!" She yells with all her six-year old might, throwing herself into her brother's arms. Chuckling as he gathers her in his arms.
She hears the sound of horses blustering and trotting about, getting closer and closer. Excitement courses through her veins. The first time she arrived in the Luthor estate, Lex took her on a tour and all she ever wanted to do after that was wander the stables and talk to the horses. He promised her he'd take her riding once she was big enough to reach his waist.
That day has finally, blessedly come.
She woke up with Lex at the edge of her bed, holding a purple helmet, a glittering bow on top of it. His quiet 'Happy Birthday, Lena' getting drowned by high-pitched excited squeals.
Lex carries her across the field, his footsteps sloshing on the muddy ground. He settles her on the saddle gently, before hoisting himself up as well.
Happy, Lena thinks, is what it's like riding across the estate for the first time; Lex pressed behind her, his hands guiding Lena on the reins.
With him, Lena always knows just where to go.
******
“Are you happy?” Andrea breathes, her words almost getting lost in the strong Atlantic winds. Her arms wrapped around Lena’s waist, the glittering water below them threatening to overwhelm her with its vastness.
They were standing on the edge atop the deck of the ship. What better way to celebrate graduating senior high than jumping into your family’s ship and tracing the Titanic’s route?
“Yeah,” Lena murmurs, head tilting to the side, pressing her temple to Andrea’s jaw. “So very happy.”
Happy, she thinks, is the warmth pressing across her back, anchoring her amidst the overwhelming vastness of the unknown.
With her, Lena knows exactly just where she’s headed.
******
“Are you happy?”
This time, the words are staticky and far-away. Jack is in a different city, sleeping on a different bed.
And Lena is here, in this empty National City apartment, isolated and so far above the bustling neon life.
Is she happy?
What is happiness anyway?
She thought she knew.
“No,” Lena whispers into the dark, “I’m not.”
Jack sighs on the other end of the line. “Look, I know you don’t want to hear this, but…” he trails off, sighs deeply again, “you know you can always come back to me.”
“Jack-”
“Or, I can come to you.”
For the first time in her life, Lena doesn’t know where she’s going, where she’s going to end up. She can drop dead tomorrow on her way to L-Corp for all she knows, murdered in a parking lot, courtesy of Lex.
One thing she’s certain of though is that she will never go back—she cannot go back.
“I’ll be fine,” she says, “I’ll be fine, Jack. I promise.”
She’ll be fine, she just doesn’t know about happy though.
******
"Are you happy?"
She never knew those words can be spat out in such a vile manner. But well, she should've known better than visiting Lillian Luthor.
It was rhetorical, she knows.
She wanted to say, yes.
Yes, I'm very happy that you landed in this shithole never to come out. I'm very happy because the world is a better place for it.
But the tears streaming down her face as she gets into her car says otherwise.
******
"Are you happy?"
The question was one she expected. It was her 6th month into therapy, and well, she already knew this was coming. She always asks her this 17 minutes before the session ends.
"Very much so," Lena answers; brief and truthful.
"That's good," her therapist says, she looks up from her clipboard, eyes softening at Lena.
Maybe, it's because she's been slowly but surely pouring out her soul in the span of 26 consecutive Thursdays, that she finds herself speaking, "I'm happy. I- I never thought happiness could be like this."
Lena breathes in deep, swallows, wrings her hands together.
"B-but I'm learning. I- I deserve this. I deserve to be happy. My happiness is mine, and mine alone. I worked on it. Hard. And I- it-" she stutters, breathes again.
"It still isn't perfect you know? Some days it hurts," she says, her therapist nods at her solemnly, "a lot. It hurts a lot. I hurt a lot. But it doesn't mean I deserve to hurt."
Her voice comes out stronger this time, "I choose to be happy, because I deserve to be happy. It took me a long time to see that."
"But now?"
"But now, I know better."
******
"I'm happy."
"Oh yeah?" Kara says, smug. She's propped up on one elbow facing Lena. Her fingers running up and down pale skin. "Mm, you know, I guess I'd be happy too, after those three orgasms."
Lena gasps, smacks her on the arm. "That wasn't what I meant, and you know it. You're insufferable."
Kara just laughs, grabs her hand from swatting her again, and brings it to her lips—kisses the inside of her wrist softly.
"M'sorry. Sorry. What did you mean?"
Lena's heart calms, and warmth blooms from that one point of contact.
"I'm happy," Lena repeats, and for some reason there are tears in the corner of her eyes.
"So happy with you. We've come so far," Lena whispers, shuffling closer to Kara. The sheets rustling, till her skin touches skin, their faces a breadth apart.
"We did," Kara murmurs back, words tracing her lips, "I'm so proud of us."
"Me, too."
And this, Lena thinks, is what happy is supposed to feel like—home.
And this, Lena thinks, is where she was meant to end up in all along.
So, running with the idea that Lena fell utterly and completely in love with Kara (first) but thought Kara was unavailable (straight, bc, c'mon Lena flirted hard and Kara didn't get it), and with Lena's love and healthy relationships deprived upbringing and young adult life...
...I will always have a hard time not head-canon'ing Lena coming to associate "best friend" in regards to Kara (a name that in Irish/Gaelic even means "friend / beloved") with "person I am truly, madly, deeply, irrevocably, utterly in ...an emotionally dependent relation-- yeah, relation with". And it got so stuck in her brain over 5 years that even when they possibly maybe totally finally become a romantic couple, certified genius Lena Kieran Luther will refer to her Kara still as "my best friend" without so much as considering the platonic implication. Like, she knows they are "girlfriends" but her brain is hard wired to thinking "Kara = my best friend". And that wouldn't even be a bad thing, tbh, because even when they become a couple, they are still best friends first, forged through fire, hell and back.
And, yeah, she'd also be a total Luthor and call dips on Kara and stake her well-deserved claim every chance she can get and refer to her as "my Kara" even outside the context of the multiverse...
Lena: *introducing* "...and this is my best friend, Kara."
Kara: *whispering* "...girlfriend, Lena. We're girlfriends now."
Lena: "Right." *clears throat* "This is my Kara, my best friend."
Kara: "..um, Lena?"
Lena: *confused* "...what?"
Kara: "...you know what, leave it to me." *shakes person's hand* "Hi, I'm Supergirl and I am dating my best friend."
Lena: *muttering to self* "...but that's what I said..."
#Kue out.
Please explain warrior nun to me. I wasn’t interested at first but you make it seem so cool I want to learn :)
I WILL explain it to you. Saddle up because I'm prepared to ramble. There will be spoilers. If you'd like another summary w/o spoilers, let me know!
First: our main character, Ava Silva. At the start of the show, she's a paraplegic and orphaned 19 year-old girl who is, quite literally, dead in the first scene. She is snarky, a little clueless but not innocent, and most importantly, she wants more than anything to live.
This is Sister Beatrice!!! She's the love interest, technically, but she's not the only one (just more of an important character than the other), and she's also so much more than that. She is a prodigious warrior who fights for the OCS; The Order of the Cruciform Sword, which is a sect of Catholic nuns that fight demons for the good of the people. She is good at everything with the exception of Not Being Gay, which is, incidentally, the reason she was sent to a Catholic boarding school in the first place. Suffice to say, her parents suck.
There's also a wide cast of incredible characters; we have (from right to left) Mary, who is The Coolest and also, somehow, more of an older sister figure than the actual sisters; Lilith, who's a bit of a bitch but we still love her, Father Vincent, who's also a bit of a bitch but we tolerate him, and then on the far left, there's Camila, who is simultaneously the Cutest and also the Smartest. (also not pictured here is Mother Superion, whom we also love.)
This show has so many good women characters. You will become obsessed with at least one of them. At least.
Essentially, Warrior Nun's plot depends on the use of the Halo, which is a literal Angel's Halo (or is it?) that fuses itself to the spine of one special nun, the Warrior Nun, who is then given the ability to see demons and also other various superpowers. However, because of its immense power, demons and other forces are constantly trying to seize the Halo for themselves, and due to a tragic series of events, a panicked nun has to give Ava the Halo.
Ava, who is dead at the time.
And it brings her back to life. Not only that, but it gives her the ability to walk for the first time since she was, like, four years old. Also, it gives her superpowers, too, but whatever.
So basically, Warrior Nun is about Ava trying to balance her will to live her life now alongside with the new duties that the OCS are trying to put on her. They can't take the Halo out, because it may kill her. Something something jesus parallels, something something taking the time to have the characters work things out for themselves, and you get this show. I cannot emphasize enough the character writing.
(Also it has one of the best sapphic slowburns I've seen in a show ever. They hit so many good tropes in such a well-paced manner. I can't even describe how well they're written. What the fuck.)
So. Watch Warrior Nun. We need a season 3!!
Kara shreds the steel door with her bare hands, brushing it away like a cobweb.
The blue of her eyes is shrouded in the dark red of tears and the raging inferno swelling inside her. Every line of her body is drawn tense and taught, ready to snap.
“Where is she?” she growls but the sound gets caught in the rumble of her chest, too low for human ears to understand. No words are necessary anyway. The sight of her is enough.
Lex’s lackeys scatter and the ones who aren’t fast enough find themselves downed and bleeding before they can blink.
In the end, Kara finds her in a back room, strapped to a table. She is pale and still, like a cadaver on a metal slab.
For the first time in three days Kara stops moving.
“Lena,” she breathes and it tastes like ice against her tongue.
-
She’s not dead.
Unconscious, dehydrated, unable to wake up, but not dead.
Kara holds onto that, the way she holds onto Lena’s hand while sitting sentry at her bedside.
Alex finds something on the back of her neck, like a microchip glowing green. When it’s passed to her, Kara looks down at it in the palm of her hand. It stings against her skin with traces of Kryptonite.
She ignores Alex’s protest and crushes it to dust.
-
When Lena opens her eyes an hour later, they are blank. She blinks once, twice, like she’s willing herself back into her body. Kara is on her feet in a flash.
“Lena? Lena, can you hear me?” is what she asks, but all she can think is please, please, please.
The sound of her voice shakes something in Lena and she’s sitting up a moment later, stiff and slow. Kara’s arms go around her shoulders, and Lena melts into her in a heartbeat.
“What happened? What’s wrong? Darling? Darling, you’re crying.”
Kara shudders out a sob.
She’s speaking Kryptonese.
-
It takes a few minutes for them to separate enough to look each other in the face. When they do, Lena gasps, trembling fingers raising to follow the curve of Kara’s cheek.
“Kara?” she asks, this time in English.
She looks like she’s seen a ghost, her face falling impossibly more ashen in the sterile med-bay lighting.
Kara presses her palm against Lena’s fingers, bringing their joined hands fully against her face.
“I’m sorry it took us so long,” Kara says quietly, and Lena’s brow furrows.
“Please, Kara,” her name sounds broken in Lena’s mouth. “Tell me what happened.”
Kara does. She tells her about her own kidnapping, about the traps Lex had set around the city, how it took them three days to find her in a bunker beneath a dark mountain.
She doesn’t tell her about the casualties. She doesn’t tell her about her own recklessness and rage.
“Three days,” Lena repeats with a shake of her head, dark hair shifting behind her like she’s sinking into darkness. “No, it. It was longer than that for me.”
“How long?”
Lena clenches her teeth together with a click and does not answer.
-
Alex examines her quickly and clinically, giving her a clean bill of health. She changes her IV with practiced hands.
It takes both of them to convince Kara to go take a shower and grab some food. Neither expect her to be gone for long.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Alex asks quietly, keeping her focus on the IV in a small act of mercy.
Lena draws a deep breath, fingers twisting against the scratchy med-bay sheets. She hasn’t said a word since Kara left, just stared into the middle distance lost in thought.
“Lex,” she says after a moment, his name falling heavily through the air. “He sent me somewhere, another reality perhaps or...”
“Or a simulation, maybe?” Alex offers. “Like Obsidian tech?”
Lena’s fingers curl into fists, and she turns her head away from Alex as if to hide tears.
“It was real,” she says harshly. “To me, it was so real.”
-
Kara is back in three minutes, hair damp and mouth stuffed with half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She sets the other half in front of Lena, who stares at it.
“You should eat something,” Kara urges. When Lena looks up at her there is so much intensity in her eyes that Kara stops chewing.
“Is this real?” she asks, voice so small even Kara struggles to hear it over the sound of her heart cracking in half. She swallows her bite past the lump in her throat, and places her left hand over Lena’s on the bed.
“It’s real. You’re real and I’m real.”
Lena stares at their joined hands for a long time, eyes roaming like she’s looking for an answer.
-
After Lena chokes down three bites of sandwich and an unspoken number of sobs, she falls into a deep sleep. Kara sits at her bedside and does not look away from her face.
Behind her Alex stands stone faced, arms crossed over her chest. For a long time the only sound in the room is Lena’s steady breathing.
“What are you thinking?” Alex asks, warning flashing through her tone like an alarm bell. Kara watches Lena’s eyelashes flutter, and straightens her spine.
“I’m going to kill Lex Luthor.”
-
It’s Kelly who gets Lena to open up.
She takes the chair that Kara reluctantly vacates and asks her to give them some privacy. It’s a long time before Kara huffs out a sigh and relents.
“I’ll be in the lab,” she tells Lena, waiting for her nod of understanding before disappearing through the door. It clicks closed quietly behind her.
Kelly sits patiently beside the bed, hands folded in her lap. She doesn’t look at Lena for long, instead taking in the blinking lights and medical equipment around them.
“This isn’t a very restful space, is it?” she asks after a moment. “Would you like someone to take you home?”
Lena breathes out harshly and licks her lips.
“There’s no going home anymore,” she says.
Kelly looks at her then, taking in the hollow of her eyes and the resigned frown on her lips.
“Lena,” she starts gently. “The place that you were sent to...did you have a life there? People you cared about?”
Green eyes turn to stare at the closed door Kara just exited through and she swallows thickly, jaw working in a tense grind.
“Yes.”
-
When Kelly returns to the tower common room it’s to find the Danvers sisters locked in a tense argument.
“—you can’t. Look what he did to Lena, Kara. We don’t know what he’s capable of. It’s too dangerous.”
“Exactly,” Kara snaps, gesturing wildly toward the med-bay. “Look what he did to Lena! He needs to pay! Who knows what kind of torture he inflicted on her in that place? How much she’s suffered?”
They stare each other down for a tense beat.
“I think she was happy,” Kelly says quietly after a moment, and two heads snap to look at her. “Wherever he sent her, whatever kind of life she had there. I think she was happy.”
Alex barely catches Kara when her knees give out, both of them toppling beneath her weight.
-
Kara spots Lex’s helicopter just as it’s leaving the bunker. She grips the rotating blades in her hands and squeezes until they crinkle like confetti.
She looks down through the window and locks eyes with Lex, who appears equal parts smug and afraid.
Kara snarls at him, spins once through the air and hurls the whole helicopter into the side of the mountain. When the inferno of twisted metal and rock finally hits the ground below she makes sure to check the wreckage.
He’s alive. Barely.
Kara cradles his broken body as she flies them back to the tower, and tries to let her fury die in the wreckage instead.
-
They move Lena from the tower before Kara arrives with Lex. She lets Kelly wrap her in an oversize sweater and guide her into the front seat of Nia’s car.
When they ask her where she wants to go she doesn’t have an answer. They end up at Kara’s loft.
“Is this okay?” Kelly asks after she’s settled Lena on the couch beneath Kara’s red throw blanket.
Lena nods, and she asks Kelly to stay. Nia turns the lights down low and kisses Lena’s forehead before leaving them alone. They sit in silence for a while, both exhausted from the events of the past few days.
“Kara said you spoke Kryptonese,” Kelly says quietly, breaking the silence. Lena stills for a moment and then nods, saying something softly that Kelly can’t understand.
“Did she teach you?”
“A version of her did.”
Kelly lobs the next question with enough grace that Lena doesn’t flinch.
“Did you love her?”
Lena looks down at the blanket over her lap and runs her hands over it, feeling the familiar material beneath her palms.
“I still do.”
“That Kara or this one?”
It’s a long time before Lena answers.
-
When Kara gets home, after double and triple checking that Lex couldn’t possibly escape the containment force fields they’ve rigged, Kelly and Lena are both asleep.
They’re curled together beneath her blanket, Lena’s head on Kelly’s shoulder with Kelly’s arm snug around her shoulders. Kara takes out her phone and snaps a picture before waking them.
Kelly excuses herself with a meaningful look that Kara doesn’t understand. When she turns her attention back to Lena, she’s looking up at her with an equally indecipherable expression.
“Will you take me to bed?” Lena asks, and a second later she’s cradled against Kara’s chest. She curls into that same position once they’re both tucked beneath the comforter.
Kara wraps her arms around her and holds on for dear life. The sun sets out the window and the light shifts from yellow to red to complete darkness. They lay snugly in each other’s arms, both feeling their first bit of true comfort since Lena first went missing.
Just as Kara is starting to drift off to sleep Lena speaks.
“I had a life there. It was, it was a lot longer than three days. It was years. It was a whole life. I had friends, a job... a wife,” she whispers into the darkness. Kara’s heart stutters in her chest, and Lena’s close enough that they both feel it.
“Do you miss her?”
“Yes.”
Kara sucks in a deep breath and let’s it out slowly, Lena’s hand that’s pressed against her chest rising and falling with the motion. After a moment Kara finds the courage to ask the question she really wants to ask.
“Did you miss me?”
Lena picks her head up just enough to look into her eyes, barely able to make out bright blue in the darkness. Her hand slides from Kara’s chest up her neck to cradle the edge of her jaw, thumb brushing the soft skin there tenderly.
“I didn’t need to.”
loving someone to the point of invention just hits different
she's not pretty but she's done
if anyone has any edits or additions they would like me to make just let me know
The best thing for me? How Andrew Garfield got a chance to redeem his character, a proper way to say goodbye, an ending that will make him proud and happy instead of sad and disappointed.
I can’t stop thinking about how his eyes were shining all the time. How his happiness radiated from him. How he got to be side by side with his hero (Tobey) and be spiderman with him! To get his ‘blessing’ (“you are amazing!”).
About his character: how he got his hope back, his colors back. Meeting the other Parkers was so important for all of them but him most of all. How saving MJ from the exact same accident he lost Gwen to was heartbreakingly healing. You could see it, Andrew nailed his acting here. The absolute pain he felt, the ‘I could’ve saved her too’ mixed with ‘at least I saved MJ, and this Peter won’t have to go through that’.
Andrew got a chance to make things right for himself, and he did it graciously. He gave all of himself and I am so absolutely proud and happy for him. For me, this was the best thing in a film full of great things. I just… you deserve it, Andrew and amazing!Peter. You both deserve it!
I would just like to remind the sideline refs:
CHRISTEN PRESS IS FAST
VERY
VERY
FAST
If she looks offsides, chances are SHE GENUINELY JUST BEAT THE DEFENDER
DON'T LET THE PREVIOUS OFFSIDE CALLS FOOL YOU
I'm actually unshakeable as a Pazzi truther because of what we went through with Preath lmao. Like everytime people act like we're in the trenches with these two, I just think omg y'all would not have survived Preath. And I honestly wasn't even there for the very beginning of the Preath era but I know that shit was insane levels of literal morsels of crumbs lmao.
As a Preath 2017 fan this is so true. The only content we got was zooming in on glasses, shadows and colors of shoes to see if they are together for years! This is literally a walk in the park at least they act like they know each other and not like Preath who tried so hard to pretend they didn’t even know each other on the pitch 💀The vibes are the same though and I hope one day we get as far with Pazzi as we did with Preath (hopefully it doesn’t take 9 years though!)
AND NOW PREATH ARE OPENLY TALKING ABOUT HAVING BABIES
Like we've really come incredibly far with those two and literally who would've thunk it.
Lmao technically, it's already been like 7 years with Pazzi too? But I really do believe the last couple of weeks (and I expect the rest of this summer) are slowly building there way up to a "hard launch" next year after Azzi leaves UConn.
“Close some doors. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they no longer lead somewhere.”
— Paulo Coelho