Giant

Chapter 5: Drifty

When you leave someone
Their love lingers on,
Like a fresh wound
With no one to love.

The paper stared at her, refusing to blink. Lena knit her fingers together and rested her cheek on them as she lingered over the words that sat there. She blew air threw her lips and prepared herself to finally read her father’s words.

Behind her, the city was covered in rain, the window covered in splotches so that it became nothing more than a blurry puddle. A record played from the unit across the room, blaring a grungy kind of punk she found for a dollar in the bottom bin of a place in Berlin. Loud kind of noise gave her calm. She needed it, to imagine her father’s first attempt at possible amends. Chaos of noise was oddly calming. Took her back to when things were simple.

The best case scenario, he was raving mad, and she could dismiss it. Worst case, he was still her father, and she would have to figure out how to have a father who murdered people and wasn’t remorseful or deserved her love, though she had little choice in the matter. She had to forget him. But it was impossible. He haunted her, following behind her name, tacked on the end with that Luthor.

She was supposed to be about twenty floors below, working in some lab. That was always her plan. Her parents knew it. Her mother used to take pride in the fact that Lena was a hands-dirty kind of girl, except when it came to her taking apart and modifying household appliances. But still, even through the anger, there was pride.

Lena wasn’t supposed to be upstairs. She was supposed to have a sector just for her where she could build things and she would leave by five every day, and she would have told Kara the truth one day, and she’d go home to her and pick up dinner on the way. She’d have friends. She’d have pride. She was supposed to have a different life.

For someone who came from absolutely nowhere, Lena sure did end up in one hell of a predicament.

She should have stayed gone. Should have changed her name.

But her mother’s name was Lillian Luthor, and she deserved better.

Instead, she looked up from the envelope that only held her first name, and she stared at the few pictures on her desk. A class ring sat there. The same one she lost at the beach on the day of her mother’s funeral. It was sitting in a box on the water tower when she returned and snuck away after buying the house for herself in Midvale. It had a note attached that was simple and sweet and broke her heart. It reminded her to be good, to be kind to the world, to accept a little sunlight on her cheek from time to time.

“Ms. Luthor, your eleven fifteen is here, the representative from CatCo,” Jess buzzed, interrupting the tiny part of the day that Lena squirreled away for herself.

She had to open the letter. She had to know. And yet, not one part of her wanted to actually do it.

With a small sigh, she turned and flicked the remote and turned down the noise coming from the speakers. The envelope got folded once more and shoved in a drawer, and Lena did not miss the sense of relief that came with avoiding it yet again, for just a moment.

“Still listening to that noise?”

She didn’t have to look up and greet the guest. Her heart skipped.

“Kara,” Lena breathed the name, the smile coming automatically, a knee-jerk response that she could never control.

Lena did research, kept tabs. Nothing compared to the girl before her though, who suddenly was very far from the gawky, lanky teenager she first met nearly a lifetime ago. Her hair was almost tamed, her eyes, this warmth. She was still the sun.