To the ones we love

Broken Pieces

    The next two weeks passed with few remarkable events. Lena's passion was beginning to reignite as she returned to L corp slowly. She was beginning to remember what exactly her work meant to her: making the world a better place. She had actually begun developing a technology that would allow people with limited sight more easily navigate their world. She was cautiously optimistic on the impact it could have on her life.

    Lena woke up at 4 in the morning in a cold sweat on the day of her surgery. She panted trying to catch her breath, she couldn't remember what her dream was about, but she only remembered the awful feeling that remained long after the pictures had faded. She tried to picture Kara's face, but she was forgetting. She was forgetting the shape of her eyes, and her nose, and the tiny details that made up her face, all the things that made Kara so beautiful. She remembered how much she enjoyed looking at them, but for the life of her, the blurry image refused to come into focus.

    "Lena are you okay?" Lena hadn't even noticed Kara sit up in bed. Kara could hear Lena's heartbeat quicken, her breaths were quick and shallow as panic rushed through her body. She put her hand on Lena's back and rubbed it to help her calm down.

    "Don't touch me!" She shouted and Kara pulled her hand away. Lena and her had been getting more intimate and closer, but now Lena was pulling away again. Lena pushed herself to the edge of the bed, trying to distance herself from her girlfriend.

   "Lena, what's wrong?" Kara pried gently.

    "No!" She panicked, "No, no, no." She repeated the word over again, unable to get this sinking feeling out of her stomach. She felt the need to guard herself, to push everything and everyone away but she couldn't remember why she felt like that.

    "Lena, Lena you need to calm down." Kara moved herself closer to Lena but she didn't touch her. She made herself as present as possible without actually coming in contact with her skin. Lena's breath began to slow, and eventually her heart rate slowed too. Once Kara saw that Lena was calmer, she reached out her hand. She touched Lena ever so gently on the arm, before moving her hand to her back and rubbing it in small circles. It was something Alex did, it always calmed her down.

    "Lena, are you going to tell me what's going on?" Kara asked again.

    "I don't--" Lena started to answer and then it hit her. She said her revelation out loud before she could even thing it in her head, "Everyone who gets close to me gets hurt." As she realized this she pulled away from Kara again, pushing the arm off her back. "Alex, Nia, they're all hurt because of their ties to me. If none of you guys knew me, if I had died that day, you would all be safe."

    "That's not true Lena. Lex hates me because of my cousin not because of you. If anyone is responsible for Nia's and Alex's injuries, it's me. They got hurt because I was so anxious to catch Lex that we went in with a half-baked plan."

    "I'm forgetting things Kara!" She was yelling again, she was panicking again, "I can't remember your face! I don't remember my own face!"

    "It's easy to forget a face, but you will never forget me. Here." Kara took Lena's hand gently, and put it up to her face, "fill in the blanks." Lena began to use her hand to navigate Kara's face, she danced her fingers over her nose, and the shape of her cheeks, the gentle curve of her lips.

    "See, is that better?" Kara asked but Lena didn't reply. She strained her eyes in a desperate attempt to see something her brain was no longer able to process, to fill in the holes in her vision. "Lena, you could still get some of your vision back. Is your peripheral vision clearing up at all?"

    "A little, but not much. I can tell what shapes things are but I can't see what they actually are, just fuzzy lines and shapes of color and shading."