An Escape

Confession

Lena hadn't realized that she'd been crying until she was suddenly aware of the warm, wet trails running down her face. She made no attempt to wipe away the tears, however, choosing instead to just sit there and stare off into space, halfway in a different time and place. It was as if her tears were acting as lenses, showing her not where she was in the present, but where she used to be in the past: at Kara's side. There was just so much going on in her head at the moment: longing, bitterness, anger, hurt, sorrow. Everything. She wanted so much to be with Kara again, but at the same time, she wanted nothing more than to cut the Kryptonian out of her life forever and never look back. These two conflicting viewpoints were tearing her in half, but she couldn't tell which side was pulling harder, nor which side hurt worse.

"Why did you ask me this?" Lena finally asked Sam, turning lost, forlorn, red eyes at the other woman.

"To help you keep on sorting through your thoughts, problems and feelings?" Sam asked back with a half shrug, but Lena, emotionally distressed as she was, could still tell that this was only half the truth. It was an answer, but not nearly full enough to explain away such a complex question. Lena even managed to give Sam an incredulous look.

"I thought we agreed that secrets, lies and hiding away were not good?" she challenged and Sam winced.

"You are right," she admitted, nodding once in Lena's direction. "There is something more to it, but it is far more personal to me than it is to you and I really don't want to burden you with another problem."

"You're starting to sound like me," Lena smirked darkly. "So now allow me to pretend to be you and remind you that, as your friend, I am just as willing to listen to you rant as you have been to listen to me rant. Besides, what could you possibly sat that could hurt me anymore than already? Unless your problem pertains to Reign, I doubt it could be anywhere near as bad as this," Lena gestured to herself, still smirking bitterly, and Sam finally got the point and conceded to tell.

"You aren't going to like it, but it involves more romance problems," Sam said ruefully.

"Bring it on," Lena replied with a resigned smile, face pained but willing.

"This time, it's between you and me," Sam admitted shyly, suddenly very interested in her bedsheets.

"Wait, what?" despite herself, Lena's face went totally blank and her tone went totally flat.

"You heard me," now it was Sam's turn to smile bitterly. Lena still couldn't bring herself to respond, so Sam gave her a pitying look.

"It's ok if you don't want to hear it. Like I said, it's kind of personal, and we don't need to go into it right now," she insisted, but that snapped Lena back into the present and she shook her head vehemently.

"No, no," she cried. "It's alright, I'm fine, it just took me a second. But I really do want to hear it, please!" she insisted, even leaning closer to Sam to show her earnestness. She hadn't been bluffing. She really wanted to be able to be there for Sam, just as Sam had been there for her.

"If you insist," Sam muttered and Lena gave her a convicted nod. Sam returned the nod before inhaling slowly. Now it was her turn to confess.

"I honestly don't know where to start, so I'm just going to start from the very beginning, which means that this story is going to be long, and maybe even slightly confusing, so just bear with me here, ok?" Sam asked apologetically.

"Of course," Lena replied, waving a hand for Sam to continue, so she did.

"In terms of romance, I think my story is pretty typically," she said. "I dated a few guys here and there and on and off, and then there was one guy I met whom I thought was The One but, as we all know, turned out to not be. In a perfect storm of love, lust, loneliness and teenage hormones and rebellion, I decided to jump in headfirst and be bold. Of course, he jumped ship pretty quickly thereafter. I didn't, though. I was never one to quit or back down, even when things got hard, or didn't go the way I planned.