Chapter Text
Chapter 11
Just Let Me Leave
Kara wasn’t sure how long it had been since she’d been taken to this, more than likely, underground bunker, but what she did know was that she had a soft spot for the Lena she’d met. This Lena, more than likely a clone because she hadn’t changed shape, and the Alex clone were constantly coming to her and visiting her like this was normal. Often, they brought meals and even played games with her like it was game night, but Kara never forgot that she was a prisoner. It wasn’t like Kara was able to go to work and do other things, like, leave the place. Kara was also wary of changing her clothes and taking showers because she knew for a fact that she was being monitored and had no idea where the cameras were, but she could feel herself being watched by the man who had kidnapped, Alexander. Without ever seeing him once since she’d come here, she knew that he was watching her without a doubt, but for some reason he hadn’t surfaced just yet from whatever little hole he was hiding in and watching her every move like a creep.
Being stuck here wasn’t so bad other than the fact that she did not want to be here at all. It was nice to be able to see these facsimiles of both Alex and Lena, two of her closest people with her, but there was a longing for the real Alex and Lena in her heart. She ached to see them again.
Today, Kara was just sitting on the couch, not doing much of anything and feeling so much yearning for her Lena that she just let her mind wander. Kara was thinking about the first time they had ever kissed when she’d woken up from the coma. It had been such bliss and Kara didn’t even notice someone entering the room until the person came up to her and started stroking her cheek gently and it wasn’t Lena, but it felt like Lena’s hand and Kara felt some small part of herself cave in slightly. This wasn’t her Lena, but it was the closest Kara had been to her in however long she’d been stuck in this horrid place. “Lena, I miss you, so much.” The yearning in her voice made other Lena’s heart ache. She was starting to fall for Kara and Kara could see herself not falling in love with, but she was developing feelings for this Lena just a bit.
Lena took in a sharp breath. She leaned down close to Kara’s face without touching her. “I know. And I am so sorry, Kara. But don’t worry, I am going to help you and so is Alex, okay? Very soon. Just be ready to go but it won’t be today, not yet.” Lena’s voice was purposefully quiet, barely an exhalation and it felt purposeful, as if the room was also bugged so that Alexander could hear everything going on too. Did this man not have anything better to do with his life?
All of a sudden, someone burst into the room, angry and loud. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, looking between them and how they looked like they had been kissing each other.
Clone Lena hadn’t so much as moved her head away, looking at Kara calmly but imploringly. Kara kept quiet and let clone Lena do the talking, “I’m just kissing my girlfriend because she misses my touch. Is there something wrong with doing that, Alexander?” This was the first time she hadn’t referred to him as ‘sir,’ ‘master,’ or ‘creator’ and it made him angrier. He was absolutely livid from his tone alone, let alone the vitriol he spat.
“What did you call me, child?” he asked, looking at her with such hatred in his eyes that Kara feared he would hurt this Lena for what she had said. “Insolent, ungrateful brat, show some respect.”
“I’m sick and tired of you. You treat me like your servant. And not only that, but you’re also keeping me from enjoying my time with my girlfriend.”
Alexander spat out fervently, “she’s not yours, you indolent, useless creation of mine, Lena. Kara is mine and don’t you forget it!”
Kara interjected here, “excuse you random man I don’t know who kidnapped me out of nowhere? I am not yours. My girlfriend is Lena and she is most definitely not a red-haired man named Alexander whatever. I love her, I love Lena. As for you, I don’t know who the heck you are, but you’re nowhere near who I like let alone love, creep.”
He let out a harsh laugh that made Kara worry for Lena’s safety even if she was just a clone. “I see that it is time to put you back away in the lab. You’re done being useless to me.” With that, he called all of the other clones in and there was basically an army of clones between one that looked like Alex, Brainy, J’onn, Lucy, Nia, Sam, and even Winn. One by one they all came into the room and surrounded Alexander. They looked like his private little army and Kara was scared until they grabbed him by the arms.
“Go, go now, Kara. Lena, help her get out of here now!” she yelled, holding back and angry, bucking Lex.
“What are you doing? Let go of me you bunch of emotional, useless creations!” Alexander’s yells fell on deaf ears. “I will destroy all of you and start from scratch! You are my creations, how dare you betray me like this, fools! I am Lex Luthor!” And Kara stopped, midway to the door at the sound of him declaring who he was.
“I’m sorry, what did you just say?” Kara asked incredulously, like she couldn’t believe her ears.
He laughed mirthlessly at the question. “I just said I am Lex Luthor, my dearest Kara. You were meant to be with me so we could rule over the world rid the earth of your disgusting cousin, Clark,” he said, looking at her like she was a piece of meat. “I meant for you to fall in love with me and bear my children so that they would be strong. Your cousin can’t give me what I want with his useless blood, but you, you could have given me strong children with your blood and powers. Children I can mold into a stronger, better future generation of Luthors. You were going to be my precious bride to give me the children of Krypton but with Luthor blood too. They would have been the perfect blend of your powers and my blood, Kara. Our blood. Our legacy.”
Kara was so disgusted and felt like she was going to be sick at the sound of the words coming from his mouth, which she knew he meant. It repulsed Kara beyond belief that this was something Lex had planned for and wanted from her, like she was just some childbearing machine to him and his twisted plans and his horrible ideation of what love meant. “You make me sick. I would have never let you anywhere near me, Lex. You disgust me so much I could never stomach to have your disgusting children.” She gave him one last look of repulsion before leaving with Lena, well her clone anyways. “Let’s go.”
Lex started screaming before one of the clones presumably knocked him out cold while Kara and Lena made their way out of the secret lair of doom Kara had been locked in for Rao knows how long, which Kara hoped hadn’t been too long because she missed Lena and worried about her. Kara knew that Lena would stop at nothing to find her and had likely not been eating, sleeping, or taking care of herself properly while stretching herself thin to find Kara and run both companies at the same time like it was okay to do that. Sighing, Kara walked in silence, following the other Lena for what felt like hours of walking as she was basically human now and had been for some time. Though Kara had better endurance than most humans usually, she hadn’t exactly been allowed to do much of anything and hadn’t even considered doing home workouts while in her prison.
“We’re almost there darling. And then you can go back to your real friends and family.” She sounded sad and Kara felt a small part of her, the part of her that had come to appreciate and feel for this Lena clone, ache at the sorrow in her voice as she said her goodbyes. “You can forget all about us and the things that Lex did to you and was going to do to you if he had had more time to do it.”
Kara paused, stopped moving. “Why are you helping me anyways? How long have I even been in here?”
Clone Lena sighed, “Alex and I had never wanted to kidnap you in the first place, but Lex had threatened to shelve us early on if we didn’t do as he said before this whole venture. We were made to just look like your friends and family, but then after I failed to capture you, he decided to give us personality traits too and molded us to be just like your real friends and family to trick you. That’s how Alex got you, but she is just like a protective older sister and she wanted to help get you out from the beginning after we found out what he had planned for you, Kara.” Lena looked away in shame, “the things I said to you when you first came here weren’t to scare you or be mean, but more because I wanted to tell you what he was going to do to you instead. I wanted to warn you that he was going to try and take you like that.” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “Even though I hate him for what he had planned for you, I was also programmed to think of him as our creator and want him to also love me like a sister would. But he didn’t love me like a sister and just kept talking about you. I was a bit jealous of you at first, but then you were so nice to me even when I said mean things to you, Kara.”
Kara reached out to the clone and ran her hand softly up and down her cheek and she nuzzled into Kara’s hand. “You have nothing to be jealous about, Lena. Maybe he’ll make a Kara clone for you? I’m sure that the Kara clone will also fall in love with you the way I love my own Lena.”
“I wish. For some reason, I couldn’t help but find myself enjoying your company more and more the more time we spent together, Kara. You are so extraordinary. Something about you just makes me want you, um, I mean, want to spend more time with you.” Lena blushed and looked away from her shyly. “You know what I mean, right?”
Kara laughed and left a soft kiss against her cheek. “I do. But we should really get out of here now before Lex does something crazy. Also, how long has it been?”
“Oh, right. Sorry, I forgot, it’s been about two months since Lex kidnapped you. Your friends haven’t stopped looking for you, but he was pretty confident they’d never find us because, you may not be able to tell, we’re actually on a moving island. He had this island built with a sort of underground level living space and laboratory attached to it. Lex thought it was the best way to keep his location hidden since it is constantly moving and wouldn’t be on any maps, but it is also surrounded by lead so that Superman can’t see it either nor would he notice that the island is moving.”
“Well, gee, how am I going to make my great escape then?” Kara asked, looking just a tiny bit put off by the information since she wasn’t exactly swimming in the sun’s ray’s nor did she have the strength to swim to land depending on where they were from land.
Lena laughed at her. “How do you think we go to and from this place without superpowers dear?” she asked, looking at her so softly that Kara felt guilty about how much she felt for this version of Lena since she had her own. Kara knew that it wasn’t love, but she couldn’t help but feel a soft spot for this other Lena who reminded her of how her own Lena looked at her and made her miss her more than ever. “We use a boat that is tied down to the island in the sand. Whenever we want to use it, we just uncover it and then go to the nearest dock on land and use that to go to and from the island, darling. I have the nearest coordinates from the last time I checked since Lex has been using us to spy on the super friends as surreptitiously as possible so he can continue to avoid them. But I guess that doesn’t matter anymore now, does it?” her gaze became distant.
Kara worried about them. “Why don’t you all leave him? Leave him to his own devices and find your own way somewhere else instead? You don’t need him anymore and you can all find something else, a different life, away from him now instead. Maybe you can build a life somewhere else and start over fresh in a different country and find something that fits you and your lives somewhere? You all deserve better than being with him because he might have made you, so to speak, but he didn’t do anything else and has done nothing but treat you like free labor at this point.”
Clone Lena sighed at that, sounding wistful and almost reluctant. “I wish, but we don’t know what we would do without him because he made us and gave us the lives we have, which isn’t really much, but it’s still something we wouldn’t have had without him, you know, Kara?”
“But that’s no way to live! If you were my Lena, I would want better for you and would never let you live like that, even if you are just a clone! You deserve to live a whole life, a full life, and discover for yourself someone better than Lex and what little he has had to offer you at this point! And even though you’re not my Lena, I still care about you and want you to understand that there is better there and it’s just waiting for you to find it, okay? You can find it if you just leave and find a better life somewhere that isn’t here stuck on this island with a creator who has done nothing for you.”
Lena pulled Kara in and nearly kissed her, but Kara turned her cheek quickly, feeling bad for even thinking about it in the first place, but she didn’t want to betray her Lena even if she did like the clone. Clone Lena jerked away suddenly after their skin made contact and she’d left a chaste kiss against Kara’s cheek before pulling away. “Oh, I’m, I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking, Kara.” She nearly ran off after that, but Kara grabbed her by the arm gently, her grip intentionally loose in case clone Lena wanted to pull away from her.
“No, no, it’s okay. I understand. But you know I’m with mu own Lena and I can’t do this to her, can’t kiss someone else even if they look like her, even though youlooklike her, Lena. You’re not my Lena, but there is a Kara out there for you, I’m sure of it, Lena.”
Clone Lena sighed but nodded her head, still looking contrite. “I may never find another Kara out there for me but go. Go now before I change my mind and imprison you here instead forever and you never get to see your Lena again.” Lena nodded at the boat in the distance. “I’ll talk to everyone else about whether we want a liberation or not and whether we’ll throw Lex into the ocean, never to be seen again. Technically, I think we have more than enough to just sustain ourselves here if we wanted since he had plans to keep you here for forever. We can just sustain ourselves here for a while, but I’ll talk to them and see if they want to leave and maybe we will all have an exodus and find somewhere else to live instead.” She paused, looking at Kara thoughtfully, “if we do that, will you help us? We will need new identities and a safe place to be so that we can actually move on and become our own persons outside of being your clones.”
Kara smiled at her gently, sincerely. “Of course. Thank you for everything. You don’t know how much I appreciate this. Without you, I may never have been able to go back to my Lena, to my friends, to my family, and to my life. I know that we got off to a rough start, but you remind me so much of my Lena that I started to see her in you, but I need to go back to my own life and you need to think about it seriously, Lena. We should all do what is best for us and that includes you too.”
Lena smiled. “Get going, before you lose yourself and get lost in the ocean. We’ll be here and we have other ways of getting off of this island. Maybe, someday, we’ll meet again, Kara. And if that day comes, please greet me as warmly as you treated me while we were getting to know each other here even though it was against your will.” Kara smiled, starting to feel better in the fresh air and with the sun beating down on her. With one last look, Kara moved the boat off of the sand and waved at her before she disappeared off into the distance to go back to Lena, to her friends, family, and home. “I miss you already. Thank you for showing me how to be better, Kara.” Clone Lena let a single tear fall before she wiped it away and went back to her fellow clones to discuss what they wanted to do to Lex and how they wanted to proceed with their newfound freedom.