Lord, Save me from your Followers (a Supergirl Kara x Lena fanfic)

Monday (again)

Kara ends up writing a puff piece for the website about herself. Snapper is less than amused by Lena Luthor not playing the villain he'd been trying to set up in the narrative. Kara gets the sense he doesn't give much of a damn what aliens do in the city, but the picture Lena posted on her Instagram makes it hard to ignore that the powers that be are choosing sides.

It's a picture from the center of the #alienswelcome counter protest to the #ETGOHOME protest. Lena's got an American flag bandanna around her wrist and t-shirt printed with the L-Corp outreach program's logo: always welcome National City. Kara, well, Supergirl's got her arm slung around Lena's waist. She's holding a sign that someone handed her that reads: Alien, National City resident, taxpayer. Someone in the crowd took it for Supergirl, using Supergirl's phone. It isn't exactly posed, but it certainly isn't a candid shot either.  Kara stares at it for a long time before sending it to Lena from an encrypted JLA email account late Sunday night, with permission to use it if she wanted. She isn't sure what, exactly, Lena's angle is, and the fear of seeing herself – only not herself – on Lena's Instagram feed with all those intense people scrutinizing her is... well, it's a bit much.

Lena posts it the next morning with a carefully written caption that Snapper's pretty damn convinced was written by her press office.

#alwayswelcome is an initiative started by L-Corp close to a decade ago to be inclusive of LGBT individuals working within our organization. L-Corp believes that everyone who comes through our doors is worthy of dignity and respect, and we believe that this protection should extend to those from beyond the confines of our planet. #alienswelcome

"Lena goddamn Luthor isn't following the script," Snapper grumbles when he sees the picture. "She's supposed to be an anti-alien bigot, not some black sheep."

"I think she just wants people to get along," Kara says. Snapper scowls at her, but Kara's mind is a million miles away. She's thinking about L-Corp's alien detection device and how Lena looked at it and saw dollar signs. She's pragmatic, and her bias is far more subtle. She wonders if Lena even realizes it, if that's the lesson she's going to have to find a way to help Lena to see.

"I want 500 words on the protest, with quotes from Luthor and Supergirl for the website by three so we can hit the afternoon lull and the evening commute." Snapper rubs his chin for a moment before rounding on Kara. "And Danvers?"

"Yes, sir?"

"No bias this time."

"Of course not, sir."

"Quoting yourself in articles now, sis?" Alex says over their private com channel. Kara's flying, well, more accurately she's dodging some sort of bright orange beam weapon that packed a punch like the force of a semi and could fire rapidly. There was, naturally, violence at the #ETGOHOME protest. The DEO followed the signal to somewhere in the vicinity of the warehouse district and Kara's tracked down the source.

"What the hell was I supposed to do?" Kara demands, rolling to the side and landing a good kick. The guy she's fighting hisses in pain. Kara cracks an elbow over his head for good measure. "Tell him I couldn't get a quote? Or that Supergirl didn't want her to post the damn picture?" Which was not technically true, but made Kara feel better about Alex's ire.

"He's not stupid, he's going to figure it out." Alex shouts something unintelligible and Kara has to throw herself to the ground to get out of the rain of bullets the DEO sends in a volley over her head. The guy with the orange beam gun falls to the ground and Kara's pushing off the ground to grab his weapon and roll to train it on him. He shouts a curse at her, a lewd term in a language she hasn't heard in over a decade. Kara's knuckles go white, her finger itches on the trigger of the gun. Her expression is closed, dark.  She wants to pull the trigger and kill this man, and the urge is so strong it takes all she has to break the gun over her knee and throw it to the ground.