Chapter Text
Lena heaves a lofty sigh past her lips. The sound is dreadfully wistful, just as her unwavering gaze is. Her bloodshot eyes track the golden hour sun as it slowly begins sinking behind the skyscrapers, the warm tones that awash her slowly turning cold as the heat is leeched from the atmosphere and a smattering of stars begin to dot the night’s sky. Her eyes grow weary when she catches a reflection of stacks of paper littering her desk behind her. Her grip on her whiskey tumbler grows tighter.
Her stare pans back to the horizon, unfocusing until the sun vanishes entirely— until the pristine windows only reflect her tired, overdrawn face. She sighs again and spins, reaching for her phone and sending a quick dismissal text to her assistant, Jess. She will probably ignore Lena’s pleas for the young woman to go home at a decent hour, but Lena still tries. She removes her disposable contacts and tosses them in the trash. She tilts her head and drips Visine into her waterlines; her body sags in relief as the burning is soothed, even if its reprieve is only momentary.
Overworked, overwrought, and over this. Put it on her tombstone. Lena has been in this god-forsaken office since 4 AM, and it’s now nearing nine at night. And while today truly has been a banner day for herself and LCORP, she is so fucking over it. She eyes her premium roll-y chair with a pout, wondering how much longer her poor bottom could remain glued to it before grooves would form around the curves of her body, and she ultimately becomes one with the fine leather. She slips off her heels and pulls her aching feet up.
Lena chuckles ruefully, thinking of the scolding Lilian would administer if Mother saw her slouched like this, collar unbuttoned, feet bare, chin resting on her knees. She tosses back the rest of the whiskey and haphazardly dons her thick-rimmed glasses before resuming to sift through her endless inbox of red tape, bureaucracy, and bullshit. Time winds on, neighboring buildings grow still and lifeless, their windows sparsely illuminated. She can hear the custodians on the executive floor emptying trash and vacuuming beneath her. Her screen adjusts to the darkness that envelopes her. She trudges on, sorting, replying, and deleting—unenthused but committed to the task— until her eyes snag on something peculiar.
Her fingers drum against her desk before gliding smoothly over the trackpad; she lets the cursor hover over the obscure notification that seems to have bypassed her filters.
Buy the Grad a Drink!
Lena nibbles on her lip, clicking on the Twitter icon against all of her better judgments. She hastily searches for the post it in one of her drawers and logs in, using the unfamiliar credentials for the first time since her public relations office begged her to be more relatable, to “get a Twitter or something.” She grimaces when the hellish site asks her if she is a robot.
“Depends on who you ask,” Lena snarks, violently selecting all the squares that include a bus. She hesitates over an ambiguous one that only contains a sliver of what could be considered a bus— if you squint and tilt your head just so— she huffs and crosses her fingers before forgoing it. When the computer finally deems her human, and she’s allowed admittance by the Twitter overlords, she whines, her body filling with immediate regret; the number of unanswered DMs causes her face to scrunch up and her hands to fist.
It takes her all of 30 seconds to realize that there is, by some grace of whatever fucking deity, a feature called “search Direct Messages.” She taps her tongue ring against her pearly white teeth and searches for the correct message, exhaling victoriously when it pops up in record time. The account it’s sent from is mildly concerning, their handle proclaiming, “@not_theFBI”. Which admittedly sounds exactly like something a narc would say. Lena hums, curious as she scrolls through the supposedly not a federal agent’s tweets. They are pretty tame, the most unruly of the recent being a verbal lashing aimed toward whoever “@KD_baby” and “@youWINsome” are. The back-and-forth between the three is entertaining, but the context is lost on Lena. She’s never been one to understand fantasy football, but she does respect the trash-talking.
Lena backs out of the feed until she finds herself staring at the DM once more. She clicks the link, blinking slowly when the screen loads. She’s unsure if this invite was sent to her on purpose, but regardless, she is already mindlessly reaching for her wallet. The bio is pretty straightforward:
Kara has graduated! Again! Let’s get her shit-faced as a reward!
Laughter bubbles up from deep in her chest, rumbling and warm. It surprises Lena, uncertain of the last time she actually laughed like that. She smiles at the grainy picture attached. It’s of a blonde, her face mostly hidden and stuck in a book. She sits in a dune buggy with her feet up on the dash, hair windswept, and dust caked on every available surface near her. The quality is reminiscent of the camera on a Nokia flip phone circa 2003, but it’s obviously a candid taken with love. And although she can’t see the woman’s face, the book entitled “The Coming of Quantum Cats” piques Lena’s sci-fi-loving interest sufficiently. She quickly makes a paypal account under a pseudonym and fishes out her AMEX to type in her bank info. She hesitates before donating to the cause, her fingers stalling above the send button. She backspaces and rearranges a few numbers, adds another couple of zeroes, and then hits send, electing to forgo the attached message and remain anonymous. Or so she figures.