All of these summaries of what the hell goes through their brains gives me life 😂😂
WHAT A YEAR THIS GAME WAS
okay, it’s minute 76 of utah royals vs portland thorns and in what is probably the most chaotic three minutes in all of 2019 soccer, this happens:
emily sonnett, in an accidental attempt to kick things into overdrive, proceeds to tap amy rodriguez like one of those rodents you whack at the carnival sending her headlong into the turf and lindsey michelle horan HAS. HAD. IT. i know what you’re thinking: isn’t sonny the star or this capital C chaos? no, it’s lindsey.
first of all, i’m in love with her. second, the great horan has spent this entire game pushing and screaming and shoving, so that fucks! but let’s get back to a-rod, who in the midst of falling face first onto the field, hears: RECORD SCRATCH-FREEZE FRAME-YEP, THAT’S ME and instead of clutching an ankle and wondering how she got into this situation until a foul is called, she springs from the grass like a cat on it’s 8th life and proceeds to yell, not regular, but BLOODY murder to the entirety of rio tinto stadium:
she is PISSED. she wants a foul, a red card, and probably the keys to a mansion in beverly hills at the rate the ref has pranced over to her defense— like okay law and order, we get it, you literally hold the cards afaksksk. if that weren’t nuts and granola crazy enough, a-rod decides soccer isn’t any fun without a chaotic outburst and i’d be out of a job (lol i wish someone would pay me to do this) and realizes: why accept this utterly plebeian form of justice when you can… start a brawl in the middle of the pitch!
she marches over to sonnett like she’s invading a small country or kicking off a protest in the street, sending her ponytail sashaying with the sort of supermodel swagger tyra banks would be proud of. if this were a made-for-tv musical, someone’s honor would be defended by a dance-off. but this isn’t hollywood and no one is pirouette-battling to a synth-pop beat. instead this is a friday night in sandy, utah and apparently that’s all it takes for 22 people to go from earnestly playing sports to completely fucking losing it. because let’s be realistic, this is a chaotic choice. screaming and pointing at a confused frat daddy junior is chaotic. defending your ten sheets to the wind teammate while also stopping her from starting a revolution is pure, that’s right, chaos. dagný brynjarsdóttir, appearing utterly unfazed by this whole thing but still managing to scream ‘HEY’ really loudly from two feet away is one thousand percent chaotic. and still more chaos ensues when lindsey and tobin arrive:
lindsey could maybe buy a little zen garden and rake some sand around but instead she settles for one tiny tap of aggression and low-key look at this restraint, she’ll be saving that energy for later. tobin however literally shoves two people, and maybe the earth’s center of gravity, into next week the way you would shove someone into on-coming traffic in the middle of rush hour. never mind the fact that her girlfriend (wife?) is wearing the same jersey as the enemy. never mind SPORTS BEING PLAYED. tobin, who historically cannot be bothered to spare one simple fuck for shenanigans, has stolen the flag of chaos and is now waving it wildly across the field. honorable mention goes to christine ‘get off my lawn’ sinclair for the arm swinging/head nod combo that seems to say, “yeah, and don’t come back to utah, either!” but take a look at one emily sonnett crossing the middle of the screen as she…
SLINKS QUIETLY AWAY??? WTEF. sonnett took one look at this family-dividing mess of a murder and said, ‘NO MA’AM, NO HOW.’ she is in and out of this crime scene like a thief in the night. she just, and i cannot stress this enough, strikes the match for this dumpster fire then floats over that river of chaos like a baby in a basket. AND LITERALLY NO ONE NOTICES because they’re too busy grasping at the last desperate straws of sanity. PHEW. even becky sauerbrunn is like ‘linds, chill’ and lindsey gives her a look like, ‘team usa, MY ASS.’
so for the first time in her freshman frat boy life, emily ‘well what happened was’ sonnett decides to act like the only adult on the field and casually goes to check in with the ref. with the mass hysteria going on, it’s clear red refy has completely forgotten sonnett’s previous offenses and the gentle, some may even call it soft, elbow touch alerts him to the fact that her playing time is over but not forgotten. sonnett takes one long walk back to the bench and just when we think things have taken a turn for the mundane, lindsey love of my life horan decides, IT’S TIME TO RUN THIS MF TRAIN AGROUND:
lindsey takes one look at a-rod standing over the ball and charges over like some little christmas elf about to pilfer frosted cookies, yeets her a foot off the ground, and then casually scampers away because LINDSEY SAID NO ONE TREATS FRAT DADDY JUNIOR THAT WAY. LINDSEY SAID GAY RIGHTS. LINDSEY SAID WORLD PEACE AND DIVINE UNIVERSAL ORDER. she just launches her with the velocity of a ten-ton truck, backwards, WITH A FLIP. (another special s/o to dagný brynjarsdóttir because wtef do they pipe into the water in iceland that no amount of first-hand murder witnessing will ever phase her?? SHE LITERALLY LOOKS UP THEN LOOKS AWAY HOLY FUCK)
idk what lindsey is saying here but she’s screaming. and if you listen closely, you can hear laura harvey screaming. everyone is screaming. in fact, everyone is losing it. FFS WHERE ARE THE LOCUSTS?? but also, if ever you were going to order more soup for say, twenty-five people at an italian fast-casual restaurant and then encourage the waiter to throw in free breadsticks, it might look something like this?? maybe a teammate of club and country can help calm things down…
with an ass pat??? ad franch, my guy, it is too late for ass pats of tranquility. you tried. but that card the ref is hunched over is yellow and it has lindsey’s name on it. does she care? no. but for the rest of the game, lindsey will roam from box to box, leaving no square of grass un-crunched, daring any utah player, even the injured ones somewhere hundreds of miles away on a stationary bike slowly pedaling through rehab training, to challenge her. she is both lonesome cowboy and trusty hunting dog, tracking signs of royals blood through the vast plains of utah and that distant sound you hear? lindsey. howling in the name of emily ann sonnett at the crescent moon.
“I forgive you.”
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.”
You up? Alex Krokus
i hope you heal from the things no one ever apologized for
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CGbBfpzgEvv/
may this be the LAST TIME i see someone doubting how much taken Christen Press is
The depth and important messaging and often overlooked nuance in these subjects that Azie Tesfai brought to tonight’s Supergirl… bravo. Genuinely amazing.
By the way… the little girl. The Kelly/Alex convo. And the hair moment. Powerful.
The ep was beautifully written and executed. Alas it was also a frustrating reminder of what the show could and should have always been (and at one point was), if handled with more care by people who truly understood the characters and stories and messaging that they tried to touch on but instead so often misfired or took the silly, superficial, or even at times outright offensive route for.
Speaking of, that promo gave me whiplash. I went from tears in my eyes and feeling intense awe to making a wtf face and shaking my head, right back to my usual annoyance. Can’t believe I’m saying it but no promo would’ve been better than that promo, after that incredible episode.
Anyway, back to what matters most right now: Azie Tesfai, everybody. 👏
the parallels
wait why am i getting emotional over the fact that this is christen’s first major tournament in the solid starting position that SHE ALWAYS DESERVED
Yoooo bruh do you have any fic recs?? I saw you recommend and when im feeling alone you remind me of home by mooosicaldreamz and it has been one of my fave since.
welp. brace urself.
you prolly know this but anything and everything by ms. @searidings and ms. @coffeeshib cos come on, man. what more could u want? but special mention to "i'll take the desert, you take the coast" (cos i think its very underrated but i love this fic so damn much, so. there.) and to "is it gravity (or are we falling in love?)" YES U WERE FALLIN IN LOVE, U GODDAMN IDIOTS. TF DOES GRAVITY GOT TO DO WITH IT? anon that will be u screaming that after u've read a couple chapters.
forever girl by @theevangelion (which i feel like you've already also read. but ya know u can read it again and we can ugly sob about it together. I MEAN ITS A FIC RIGHT? IT SHOULDNT BE THAT DEVASTATING. but oh it is. oh it really really really is.)
this one series by @rainaftersnowplease called "doctor lawyer beggar man thief" (it's a college au that i also think is so very underrated. but its so so so great and most of their other au's are also very lovely so check 'em out)
and since we're on the topic of college au's, here have another one: "Lena Luthor: hot girl bummer" by @/Rouser on ao3 (this one is an on-going fic. BUT MYGOD IT'S STILL SO GOOD. ITS AN ENEMIES WITH BENEFITS SITUATION. its a gift from god.)
oh and my favorite au thus far, "Accidentally Till It's Not" by @indathreneblue (IT'S SO WONDERFULLY WRITTEN, AND KARA IS SUCH A SIMP BUT WE LOVE HER FOR IT.)
im also gonna go ahead and insert "fire meet gasoline" by @stennnn06 (cos rojarias and look i know this isnt a supercorp fic BUT STILL. i urge u. GIVE. IT. A. SHOT.)
and if youre in the mood for the slowest slow burn of slow burns: "A Rich Girl With Issues...Lots of Issues" by @inkedroplets (theyre gonna kiss soon i can feel it.)
oh and another favorite of mine: "take flight" by @fixyfics (its just such a joy to read) and check out their other fic too: "she's cursed"
hey anon all of this are pretty much au so whats one more right?
"Until Time is Undone" by @lena-in-a-red-dress (i read all 15 chapters of this at like 3 am in the morning and it was so damn worth losing sleep over. im not big on fantasy or medieval au's but this. oh this was an exception.)
so uh yeah...there's prolly a shit ton of other fics that i forgot to add here but that's it for now. hope u were satisfied with that anon! happy reading!
they did it together. 🥹