Hello, lovelies.

This is post "Ace Reporter." There are a few events I've altered for all of this to make sense, you'll see. This is not a retelling of that episode, though. The alterations will be mostly mentioned.

It's always worth noting that English isn't my first language. I'm sorry about any and all mistakes.

I hope you enjoy this one as well. :)

Chapter 1

This Saturday morning had not started as Kara had expected.

The plan was for her to have the day off on both of her careers.

She spent the entire week anticipating that.

When she fell into bed the previous night, Kara was hoping to wake up only when her alarm went off. She would then get up, take a shower, select a laid-back outfit for the day. After that, she would pick Lena up so they could have breakfast and, maybe visit an art gallery they both had meant to check out, but their busy schedules never allowed them to do it until the next day, hopefully.

However, like most aspects of Kara's life, things didn't go according to plan.

As a result, that day had started with Kara getting a call from the DEO asking for her presence at the cave officially known as the DEO headquarters. The old facility she had as a base when she started her work as Supergirl. During the night, apparently, there had been an attempt of escape and they needed all hands on deck until they knew who was behind the endeavor.

Kara sighed.

She was really looking forward to seeing her best friend that morning.

It had been days since they last saw each other. She had flown over L-Corp a few times during her Super business and she would see Lena seated at her desk typing her day away or reading over documents, but in none of those instances, Kara could actually stop by and check in with her in person, like she so often did.

Oftentimes, she would quickly change and drop by to say hello to Lena. They would talk for a little while and then she would continue with her patrols, but not even that she had managed that week. There was that one time Lena saw her passing by and they waved at each other, smiles plastered on both of their faces and that was it.

But Lena didn't even know she was actually waving at her best friend since Kara was in disguise.

Kara missed her friend.

Before heading out, Kara pressed 2 on her phone to call Lena to let her know she would be a bit late, and to ask if they could turn their get-together into a late lunch date instead of a breakfast one.

Kara looked at the time on her phone and realized that Lena would have already been up for at least an hour. Probably perusing her tablet, looking at the stock market reports from the previous day, or she would already be reading the newspaper while sipping on her morning coffee. A habit that Kara had learned about in the times she stayed had over, when a movie night would end up morphing into the middle of the night movie sessions, when they would marathon a show or watch movies till the early hours of the next day.

They had gotten closer in these past several weeks. Ever since Jack passed away, Kara had been faithful on her promise of being there for Lena. They had regular meet-ups, they called each other almost daily to check in, and when that was proven impossible due to their crazy hours, they relegated it to texting. Truth is, they hadn't gone a day without any sort of communication, and that pleased Kara immensely.

Because they had gotten so close, Kara was very familiar with Lena's routine. That was why when her friend didn't pick up the phone or had, at least, declined the call so Kara would know she was busy and would call back as soon as she was available, a system they had worked out between them, Kara's first instinct was to zoom in on her friend and listen for her.

When Kara was finally able to focus on Lena, she became surprised by two things.

First, Lena was still fast asleep as per her heart rate. Kara remembered how her friend had complained about being tired this past week. And the day before, when they quickly spoke on the phone, Kara had noticed Lena's voice was lower than usual, weaker. When she asked, with concern in her tone, if Lena was feeling okay, Lena said she was just tired, that her week had been rather exhausting. Kara believed it, since it was Friday after all and Lena hadn't even had the time to meet for coffee or lunch during the business days. Their interactions that week had been all through texts or quick phone calls.

Kara sighed in relief as she realized everything was fine and she smiled to herself, pleased that Lena was finally indulging on a much-needed extended night of sleep.

That was when another thing, or sound, caught Kara's attention. There was another set of heartbeat that Kara could pick up when listening for Lena's. Once her first assessment concluded that everything was fine, Kara was able to register the extra sound. She tried to refocus thinking that maybe she was picking up someone else's heart rate in the vicinity as well, but when she zoomed in on Lena for a second time, again, it was there. A series of discernible fast-paced thumps that was impossible to dissociate from Lena's own pulse.

Kara almost crushed the phone she still had in her hand.

Oh, Rao.

For Lena, the start of her business days was always the same.

If no one was attempting on her life, that is.

Which, thankfully, was not the case on this particular Thursday.

Her mornings always began with her alarm going off. While she went around on her waking up routine to get ready, her pre-programmed coffee machine worked on the extra shot of energy that would be more than welcome on a day that was bound to be full of meetings, phone calls and an absurd amount of reading from the moment she stepped into the office.

That Thursday, however, when Lena's alarm went off, she could barely register the sound before she felt an upsurge of nausea flowing through her body jolting her awake, a task that had become quite challenging in the last few days.

As sudden as it came, the queasiness assuaged, so Lena made a point of not thinking much of it, attributing the reaction to being pulled from a dream she could not remember its contents.

When she felt sick again just after drinking her morning smoothie, which resulted in her emptying her stomach in the private bathroom in her office, Lena knew it had nothing to do with a dream she couldn't remember.

Lena knew that because she had a vivid memory of the event that had led to this very moment.

On top of that, the signs she'd been experiencing in the past few days corroborated those memories.

It was impossible to deny what was going on any longer.

"Shit," she muttered to herself.

She got up, flushed the toilet, washed her hands and mouth, and went about with her morning as if nothing had changed. Just like she'd been doing for the past week or so when the pieces of evidence started to reveal themselves. Or, at least, when they had become so obvious she couldn't exactly disregard them anymore.

For anyone who interacted with her, she just looked tired. Nothing too alarming seeing as she was a very busy woman with a very demanding schedule. Inside her mind, however, there was a continuous stream of Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no playing over and over and over for the past several days.

The first thing she had noticed was that she was experiencing some discomfort in her breasts, with that they'd gotten a bit more engorged and they were also a lot more sensitive. Lena didn't think much of it at the time. Her birth control could result in some hormonal imbalance from time to time, that symptom alone didn't mean anything. Lena had convinced herself.

Life went on.

The second warning came when Lena caught herself almost sobbing once the characters in the book she was reading reunited. It was a sweet scene, something the author had built up for several chapters, but the outcome wasn't even close to the most romantic scene Lena had ever read. And even then, she didn't remember crying. She teared up, yes, which was something she did a lot, especially when she'd be opening up to Kara, it seemed, but that was it. To have a full stream of tears rolling down her face over a book? That was a first for Lena, and that's when alarm bells started to go off inside her head. Until Lena shut them down, that is.

And life went on.

The third sign had been a fatigue like Lena had never felt in her life. Getting up in the mornings was so hard now that she started to set three alarms to make sure she wouldn't oversleep. She dragged her feet through the afternoon, her body and mind in desperate need of a nap. Her body had also become increasingly sore as the day progressed, and even though she had slept for ten hours the night before, four more than she usually got on her best nights, she felt like she could sleep for another ten hours and still it wouldn't be enough.

This was how her days have gone for the past week or so. Lena's body was trying to tell her something while her mind did everything in its power to refute it. Until that Thursday, that is.

But if Lena was being honest with herself, she had adjusted to the signs ever since the day she cried over that book. When minutes after, she had pushed her glass of wine aside, not allowing a single sip of alcohol to enter her body from that night on. Or when Jess would bring her a cup of coffee and Lena would drain the brown colored liquid down the drain. Sometimes, with unshed tears in her eyes because she was so, so tired, and in desperate need of that dose of caffeine. Not to mention the deep breathing exercises she had indulged on various occasions to prevent her from bursting into tears at the most random things like the toilet paper commercial that aired the other night, or when the local news had reported that a lost puppy and its family had finally reunited after days apart.

Despite all evidence, Lena managed to not outwardly give into her worries. She was aware of what was going on. Her body made sure of not letting it be forgotten. But to acknowledge it, to say the words even if it was just to herself, or to merely think them, it would mean recognizing the magnitude of it all, what the change in paradigm would mean, the challenges that it would entail, the adjustments it would require, the additional fears it would arouse.

She wasn't ready to face any of that yet then. She was certain she wasn't now. But it had been days, and she needed to take action. Whatever she decided, she only had a frame of a period before the ability to choose would be taken away from her.

If there's interest, I'll continue with it. I have a few thousand words of dialogue already written, and the plan was to post it as a very long one-shot, but I was afraid of dropping a 13k (or more, probably) all at once. So, we'll see how this goes chapter by chapter.

I'd love to read your thoughts!