Chapter Text
The first time Kara notices the handwriting that is decidedly not her own scrawled across the inside of her palm, she accidentally disintegrates her pencil. She glances around to make sure nobody else saw and quickly digs around her desk for a new one.
That done, she shakes her hand viciously, like a dog shaking off the wet (as if shaking it is going to make the writing disappear) and tries to determine if any of her friends might be playing a practical joke on her.
But no.
Nobody’s touched her palm for longer than a handshake this morning and anyway, James is out of the office on assignment and Winn has been holed up trying to do something really tech-y sounding that she didn’t understand when he’d tried to explain it.
She considers the possibility that it’s Alex since her sister could totally be getting back at her for stealing the last potsticker last night when she wasn’t looking, but that’s not Alex’s handwriting.
Besides, the writing is too purposeful to be a prank.
Call Rutherford
She doesn’t even know a Rutherford. The only Rutherford she knows is the big steel mill outside of town, but she knows that there are probably plenty of Rutherfords around. Probably with little top hats and monocles and saying things like “pip pip cheerio mate!”
Kara shakes her head a little. Her thoughts are often a little scattered, but right now she needs to focus.
It’s probably not a prank.
Maybe some form of technology? Kara panics. Has Lilian been loose lately? Have any of the Fort Roz aliens managed to figure out a way to get to her? Maybe it’s something new they’ve never seen before?
Her mind is racing with possibilities. She knows she should go to the DEO and get checked out. But if she does that... well. She’ll be put under so many tests she’ll feel like a Kryptonian lab rat. Even worse, Alex will worry.
So... maybe hold off on that.
***
She texts Winn instead. Asks him to meet her outside the DEO. She’s glad he doesn’t question it.
“So what’s up Kara?”
“I need you to run some tests--”
He's already nodding his consent before she finishes and she knows he's gonna have more reservations in a second.
“--and not tell the DEO or my sister? Maybe?”
Kara shoots him a hopeful smile, trying to get him to cave.
That helpful nod immediately transforms into a look of sheer panic.
“Oh no. No, no, no, no, no.” Winn punctuates each no with a shake of his head and holds up a finger. “Sorry Kara. You might be Supergirl, but Alex scares me way more. I’m not getting between you two.”
Kara frowns. “You’re not getting between us. I just don’t want her to worry over nothing.”
Winn hesitates, and Kara can feel him breaking. She pouts for effect.
“Please?”
Winn sighs, rubbing a hand across his forehead. “If Alex asks, you made me.”
Kara beams back at him.
“Deal.”
***
“That is pretty weird. I mean, you’re an actual alien and you have a friend from another earth that you occasionally visit so it’s not like...the highest thing on the scale of weird. But definitely...definitely weird.”
“But not like...alien technology weird.”
“No. As far as I can tell your vitals are all completely normal and there’s no extra tech on you.”
She deflates at his words, shoulders slinking. “That’s okay Winn. It was a longshot anyway. Thanks for trying.”
***
She’s been sitting at her desk at CatCo for over an hour, absentmindedly staring at her hand. She’s managed to look busy when Snapper’s around, but only barely. She can’t help the feeling in the back of her mind that she’s missing something. Something big.
She bites her lip, a small idea beginning to form. Tentatively, she licks her thumb and rubs at the edge, just the C. Nothing changes.
She excuses herself to the bathroom and swipes some water over it and then more and more until she’s vigorously scrubbing the skin. Nothing at all.
She knows she shouldn’t be surprised. Winn didn’t swab her skin, but he’d probably have been able to tell if it was just pen.
She returns to her desk more flustered than she left it, at a loss for what to do.
As she stares down at her hand, willing a solution to come to her, she finds herself contemplating the handwriting.
It’s objectively quite attractive, even if it’s a little hastily written. The strokes are long and even, elegant even. It’s the writing of someone who has long had proper penmanship impressed upon them. So much so that even something quickly scrawled across the hand can never be completely sloppily done. The writing is small too, as if the writer hadn’t wanted it to be visible. Kara can’t really see it unless she flips her hand over. She finds herself wondering about the person behind the writing (most likely a woman, though she wouldn’t rule out a man). Who is this stranger? What are they up to?
It’s only after she realizes she’s spent the last twenty minutes daydreaming about what this stranger might be like and how dreamy they might be that it hits her like a bolt of lightning, the revelation so startling it’s as if Livewire had returned to strike her once more.
Soulmate.
She has a soulmate.
***
Having a soulmate was one of those things that Kara had given up on when she’d learned that Krypton had been destroyed. Just another thing she’d never get to experience like Kryptonian conception or being assigned a job by the council.
Still, she’d presumed it would be okay. Earth didn’t have soulmates so people were perfectly content to pursue dating. Dating had been reviled on Krypton, not just because it was considered a base activity--a pursuit of lower level instincts--but also because it was considered a grave insult to one’s soulmate. It was almost freeing, having so many options at her disposal. In her darker moments though, moments of indecision and paralysis, she’d longed for the simplicity of a soulmate, of knowing .
Soulmates had always been sacred on Krypton. Though there was procreation between them, sex had never been part of the equation. Kryptonians had generally reviled such desires and though Kara had heard of soulmates who’d partaken, it was always considered taboo. Instead, a soulmate was considered the mind most compatible with your own, the ultimate intellectual pursuit resulting in a perfect meeting of the minds. A strong bond and a carefully cultivated mind allowed synchronization of soulmates, many soulmates finishing the sentences of their partner. It was said that some of the most compatible soulmates managed a near full-fledged telepathy whole planets away.
Kara could still recall wistfully dreaming of her soulmate as a youngling, wondering about them and what they were like. Mostly she’d hoped that they too liked the stars. She’d hoped that her parents would approve and the match would be celebrated for its worthiness. That her mind would be validated with a mind considered as studied as her own.
She remembered every year hopefully anticipating her yearly doctor’s appointment, hoping that this year would be the year that the doctor would declare her mind fully mature and capable of latching onto a soulmate. She knew it was improbable nigh impossible because she'd never heard of one occurring before sixteen. Still, that hadn't stopped her from hoping, from desperately trying to think adult thoughts for the moons leading up to her visit.
It never amounted to anything and she always left disappointed despite her parents best attempts to soothe her.
She almost laughs at those thoughts now. She’d been so naive.
She bit her lip as she considered. Clark had Lois, but he’d never mentioned soulmates to her. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to disappoint her if it turned out he was the only one? Or perhaps he didn't even know what he had.
As soon as she got off from work, she called Clark, carefully probing the situation.
“Do you think Lois is your soulmate?”
Clark’s warm laugh filtered through the phone. “Hello to you too Kara.”
She winced. “Sorry, sorry. Hi Clark. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.”
She could almost see Clark’s boyish grin, the one that lightens his face, taking away his severity and making him seem ten years younger.
“Lois is it for me. So yes.”
“But how did you know you were soulmates ?”
“I knew when I looked at her she was special. But I don’t know,” Clark mused aloud, “it wasn’t really one thing. It was everything about her, all at once. I feel like I fall more in love with her every day.”
It was...romantic. And a lovely sentiment. But not what Kara was after.
“Okay but what specifically let you know you were soulmates and she wasn’t just someone you were in love with?”
Clark’s puzzlement was clear even over the phone. “...I don’t understand what you’re getting at?”
“Did you see the ink? Do you hear her in your head?”
Clark’s silence was her only reply.
Oh Rao. What if she’d got it all wrong and Clark and Lois weren’t soulmates after all? No. Impossible.
After a few excruciatingly long moments, Clark spoke up.
“What are you talking about Kara?”
“I--it’s nothing.”
They catch up briefly and hang up not too long after.
Kara’s head spins.
No. She’s sure they’re soulmates. But Clark was only a baby when he left. Maybe he just didn’t know how to strengthen the bond.
That was it. That had to be.
Soulmate bonds required a certain mental effort and know-how to get the real effect. And since humans generally didn’t cultivate that kind of mental strength, the link would be fuzzy at best, even if the other party did have the proper mental training. Which Clark did not.
So the link is probably so tenuous he doesn’t even notice. So. Clark and Lois. Definitely soulmates. They have to be.
But Clark still doesn’t know anything about this.
So Kara is on her own.
***
She spends the next few days testing it.
Science isn’t really her favorite, but she spent enough time listening to Alex mutter about the scientific method to get at some of the basics.
She works her way through a few potential hypotheses.
She starts by working on the old mental exercises that her parents had taught her and she’d abandoned since coming to a planet where they would get no use.
All she succeeded in doing was giving herself a headache as the fuzziness in her head increased.
She tries writing back to her soulmate, scrawling a hello and her name and her phone number all over her arm.
The first time she does it, she’s on pins and needles all day. At first she thinks maybe her soulmate isn’t awake yet to see it. After all, she’d been all buzzed with the idea of contacting them and had woken up at 5--too early for a normal person to see the writing.
But by the time it hits 10, she knows her soulmate is probably up. She’s often seen words as early as 7 or 8 on her hand. But maybe her soulmate didn’t notice?
She tries writing bigger. Exaggerating her handwriting so her soulmate knows it’s not their own handwriting. She scrawls all over half her arm to the point Winn gives her a weird look and asks if she’s considering getting a sleeve. (Which she has to look up to realize he means a tattoo sleeve, but whatever that’s not the point).
She never gets a response.
It’s demoralizing to say the least.
Here she is, buzzing with the possibility of a soulmate and her soulmate isn’t even curious to know who she is.
It was only after a message appears, written directly over her own writing, when she realized it was probably only working one-way. Her body was receptive to her soulmate’s, but her soulmate wasn’t receiving the same way.
Like a radio where there should've been a walkie-talkie.
So her soulmate isn’t ignoring her. But she’s also no closer to meeting them and has no way of getting in touch.
All she had to go on were some incredibly vague notes.
Still. It isn’t nothing.
After Kara gets over her disappointment that they don't know she's out there, she learns to appreciate it.
They're not ignoring her.
She knows they're out there. Probably close.
And it’s kind of nice? Like getting secret messages from a friend, if she could only just figure out the code.
She figures that her soulmate is probably somewhere in National City and that’s why she’s finally getting notes from them. They must have moved in recently and like signal strength, the connection was finally close enough to come through.
It’s possible they live closer, but the connection doesn’t seem to vary no matter where she is in the city, so she figures somewhere in the city is a safe bet.
So that just left...the whole population of National City. But at least it was better than the whole universe or even the whole planet. Compared to the near incomprehensible number of alien life forms out there, having her soulmate in National City was a relatively small number.
She’s tempted to use DEO resources, but she figured knowing something like that would just cause an uproar and a trail of paperwork a mile long. She could tell them if she ever actually found her soulmate.
She thought about telling her friends or Alex, but something about it felt terribly personal. She’d rather keep it to herself. Besides, Alex’s dating life was fairly spotty. It seemed like rubbing it in her face to let her know that Kara also had a soulmate to solve those problems. And Winn and James...It’s one thing telling Winn she’s got writing on her arm, it’s another telling him that it’s because she has a soulmate. He had, after all, declared he liked her and she’s not totally insensitive to that. And she and James had had… a thing.
She really needs more friends.
***
She spends a lot of time staring at the writing on her hand. Sometimes it's as clear as the first one. A note for a meeting or a call of some kind. Sometimes it's a lot more nonsensical. Things like S-K Form scrawled on her palm in the same elegant writing.
She wants to shout sometimes. To run around shaking people until she finds them. Somewhere out there her soulmate is going about their daily business with no idea of the momentous thing that's happened in both their lives.
She wonders if it'd be easier. To not know. To go around like every other human. To date and hope that this person was the one , but never know for sure. She's still not sure.
This was never a problem on Krypton. With a two way chain, soulmates knew almost as instantly as both were old enough to maintain the connection.
She doesn’t know how to handle this.
Should she keep looking? Should she wait for them to just appear in her life?
For once she’s flying blind.
***
Kara’s absentmindedly staring at the writing-of-the-day (Verify 8-K , whatever that means) when Alex beams her in the face with a pillow.
It doesn’t hurt --she’s Supergirl after all--but she does splutter a little at being caught off guard.
“Earth to Kara! Come in Kara!”
Kara winces. “Sorry, sorry.”
“Seriously, you’re being a space cadet tonight. It’s supposed to be sister night.”
Kara apologizes again, trying to refocus on the show they’re watching, but after only a minute or two, her eyes wander once more to the writing. To her erstwhile soulmate.
“Okay,” Alex cuts in. “Seriously. What’s with the weird fascination with your hand. It’s your hand. You’ve seen it before.”
Kara bites her lip and holds up a hand as if to preemptively ward off attacks.
“Don’t freak out.”
***
“So you have a--”
“Yeah.”
“And he's writing those--”
“Yeah.”
“And you don’t know who--”
“No.”
“Right.”
Alex purses her lips contemplatively, but otherwise doesn’t respond.
After a few moments, Kara lifts her head a little from where she’d been staring hard at her shoes. Alex looks thoughtful, but she’s not glaring at her and she hasn’t immediately launched into a rant about safety. Kara guesses that’s a good sign.
“You’re sure?” Alex asks finally.
Kara nods. “We didn’t really use pens back on Krypton, but it makes sense with everything else.”
Alex hums and Kara can’t help but blurt out,
“So does this mean you’re not mad?”
Alex blinks a few times rapidly, as if to clear her head.
“Mad? Why would you ever think I was going to be mad?”
Kara winces.
“Because I kept it from you? And I dunno. It probably means the DEO has to file a ton of paperwork or something.”
“Kara,” Alex chides gently, “you’re more important than anything the DEO could make me do. You know that right?”
Kara bites her lip. She should know that. In theory, she does. Sometimes it’s hard to remember though when her thoughts get all jammed up going five thousand miles an hour. She’s pretty sure there are times her thoughts could break the sound barrier with how quick they’re going and breaking the sound barrier means a sonic boom that inevitably scrambles everything up there.
What was she just thinking about? Oh, right.
Alex is still looking at her expectantly, so Kara gives her a little nod and then burrows her way into her sister’s arms. Alex makes a mock show of protest, but Kara knows that Alex craves the contact as much as she does.
Kara’s always been pretty tactile and Eliza and Jeremiah were never the most hands-on parents so Alex is starved for touch. Once they started getting along, it was one of the first things they bonded over.
Alex huffs a little, whining, “--ouch! Kara stop squirming your elbows are really sharp; come on, quit it Kara!” as Kara rearranges herself to wrap around her sister so that they can both fit on the couch.
Kara ignores her whining, beaming up at Alex when she’s comfortable.
Alex rolls her eyes, but she forgets (or maybe she remembers and just doesn’t care) that Kara’s got far better vision than the average humanoid and can see the tiny lift at the corner of her lips that indicates that Alex is pleased and just trying to hide it.
They settle there for the night. Alex knows that Kara has been fretting about telling her and now is exhausted, her entire body goes limp as she lets that tension seep from her bones.
They don’t talk about it for the rest of the night, instead turning to the tv for some good old fashioned Buffy.
Kara finds herself at a loss to describe how relieved she is that Alex is so understanding. Luckily for her, Alex already knows.
***
“So,” Alex says, mouth partially full of the potsticker she’d swiped before Kara could get to it (resulting in a heavily pouting Kara), “how does this whole soulmate thing work, anyway?”
Kara shrugs helplessly. “I don’t really know? All the soulmates I knew were two Kryptonians bonding together so this is pretty unprecedented.”
“Ooh unprecedented. Big word,” Alex teases.
Kara, as a now mature and dignified adult with a real job, real apartment, and real responsibilities, responds by sticking her tongue out.
Alex laughs at Kara before taking another swig of her beer (some new craft brand Alex is obsessed with that Kara had wrinkled her nose at, but dutifully bought for when Alex was over).
“No, but seriously. What’s the game plan?”
Kara twitches. Her knee is bobbing up and down faster than strictly human and her hands keep coming up to play with her glasses even though they haven’t slid down the bridge of her nose at all.
Alex is still looking at her expectantly with one brow raised.
Kara clears her throat. “There kind of...isn’t one?”
Alex immediately starts choking on the sip of beer she’d just taken, spraying some on Kara’s new rug. Kara pouts. She kind of wishes her powers extended to steam cleaning things.
Alex is wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“You verifiably have a soulmate, somewhere in this city, and you’re not going to look for him?”
“It’s not like I have a ton to go off of!” Kara argues.
“Still! People would kill to have that kind of security in their relationships. I’d love to just get a relationship to work for more than a few months, never mind the rest of my life.”
Kara stares guiltily down at her shoes.
“Sorry.”
“Oh hey, no. Kara don’t feel bad. That’s incredible that he’s out there. I’m really happy for you.”
Kara smiles tentatively, but Alex is genuine and she soon finds herself beaming back at her sister.
“I just think… when the timing is right, we’ll find each other.”
Alex sighs, but she’s only faux exasperated. “You always were the relentless optimist of the family.”
***
Things go back to normal after a while. Well. As normal as they can be.
She still wonders who her soulmate is, but without anything definitive that can link her to them, it’s a pretty fruitless search.
So mostly she goes about her daily life, punctuated by the daily intrigue of what her soulmate will write next.
She’s come to think of them as a sort of pen pal. She finds herself wondering at times what they’re up to. When she greets the sunrise, she wonders if they’re an early riser like her. If they’re the kind to smile and greet the day or if they snuggle down, wanting an extra hour or two of sleep.
She resists the urge to google everything that shows up on her arm, searching for clues. That’s a dangerous rabbit hole that she doesn’t want to go down.
It’s a quiet kind of ache, born from simply knowing they’re out there.
Because as far as anyone else knows, there are no such thing as soulmates. It’s just one more way she is totally alone.
But there’s something hopeful there too. That at some point, she’ll meet her soulmate and she’ll be just a little less alone.
She hopes that someday comes soon.
She hopes.
***
She’s been staring at it all day.
Daily Planet- 2.
That could be--could be anything. There’s no reason to think it’s her meeting. Well. Clark’s really.
But she can’t help holding her wrist side-by-side with her own planner. L-Corp at 2 with Clark.
It can’t be? Can it?
But the Daily Planet doesn’t often have reason to cover National City so unless her soulmate is visiting Metropolis for the day...well. Kara can connect the dots.
She’s jittery all day, the sense of potential filling her veins and flooding her senses. James has already banished her from his office twice because she keeps popping in for no other reason than to burn off a little excess energy.
She can’t help her guilty feeling of wanting a crime to stop just to quell the tingling that lingers in her extremities. On the other hand, if something big comes up, she might have to miss the meeting entirely and that won’t do.
It won’t take longer than ten minutes to get to L-Corp, even if they take public transport. Still, she leaves her desk at ten past one, no longer able to sit in her seat and goes to track down Clark.
Clark raises an eyebrow at her, but otherwise doesn’t comment. She’s grateful now that she’s with him and not Alex. Alex would’ve known something was up with her and would’ve wanted to know why. Clark might sense she’s got jitters, but probably chalks it up to her first reporting assignment.
She smiles brightly and bounces on her toes until he finishes what he was working on.
They’re still too early, but Clark humors her and lets them leave a little after half past one.
The moment she steps into the building, that fuzzy feeling in the back of her head begins to build. Her head feels static-y, like there’s too much there, but she can’t quite get a read on it.
It’s a little like when she’s in the middle of a busy place and there are just too many voices, but it’s also not quite the same. She doesn’t really know what to make of it.
They take the elevator up and the sensation builds, slipping down her spine until her entire body feels infused with something . It’s not exactly unpleasant. If it wasn’t so foreign, she might even like it. But at the moment it’s doing nothing but unsettling her.
The secretary--Jessica is what the name plate on her desk reads--directs them inside.
When Kara steps into the room, everything intensifies like woah . This is it. Her eyes are trained on the floor, but she lets them slowly drift up, past the shapely calves and sharply dressed figure of a woman so stunning she almost gasps.
But all of that pales in comparison to her eyes.
Because the moment she locks eyes with Lena Luthor she knows.