Supercorptober 2021

Day 18: Cozy.

The couch was her best friend. Wrapped tightly in her fuzziest weighted blanket several thermoses full of strong black tea was where Lena had stayed for the last 4 days, unwilling to move from that spot for the foreseeable future.

She hadn't meant for it to get this bad, normally an evening of indulging in an overabundance of the finest scotch the Luthor name could buy and shutting herself off from the world for 24 hours was all it took to get her out of a funk.

Feel the darkness. Embrace the darkness. Then Let it go.

It had worked for most of her adult life. When she felt one of her darker moods coming on, she'd confine herself to her penthouse, lie to everyone who might ask and say that she was going out of town on business so she wouldn't be disturbed, and then lock herself up and drink her weight in alcohol until she felt nothing. Not the healthiest coping mechanism, but it's what she did nonetheless. Usually Kara would show up suspiciously soon after she said she was back in town, which always made her wonder if she knew she wasn't really gone.

This time was different though. This was a darkness that she didn't know how to pull herself out of. This darkness came from learning your Best Friend - and secret love of your life - had a secret identity in the same moment you watch her get beaten to a pulp before watching her fall from the sky and not get back up, a swarm of DEO Agents surrounding her and whisking her away before you have a chance to really comprehend what you've seen. She couldn't even bring herself to chase after her and refuse to leave her side until you knew she was ok.

No, instead Lena had gone home and cancelled all of her meetings for the week and started drinking until she could no longer stand. And then she wrapped herself up and laid on the couch staring off into the abyss. When she woke the next morning with a pounding headache, she couldn't bring herself to care.

"The best cure for a hangover is more scotch," Lena said to no one as she poured herself another drink. And then another and another once again drinking herself into stupor and then doing the same thing over and over. Before she knew it, it had been 4 days and she was STILL laying on the couch, smelling of scotch and body odor.

Pulling her phone from her pocket, Lena saw the overwhelming amount of alerts about the fight, each article more callus yet panicked at the same time. There were some news stations playing a live loop of the fight on their social media platforms. Seeing the footage, Lena was flooded with guilt for not rushing to her friend's side. Knowing that Kara wouldn't be able to answer anyway, she decided to send a text that she knew would likely never get a response.

ME [9:27AM] : You lied to me.

ME [9:28AM] : You deceived me.

ME [9:28AM] : I want to be angry with you.

ME [9:29AM] : I Want to march down to your loft and scream in your face about how you've betrayed me after promising me to never hurt me.

ME [9:30AM] : How you were the one person who I knew I could always trust not to hurt me or let me down.

ME [9:31AM] : But I can't do that because you aren't in your loft, you're somewhere different altogether.

ME [9:31AM] : You could very well be dead for all I know.

ME [9:32AM] : I may never know.

ME [9:34AM] : And you'll never know how much I loved you.

ME [9:34AM] : I never got to tell you that you mean more to me than any friend I've ever had.

ME [9:35AM] : That I wanted us to be so much more.

ME [9:35AM] : I can't believe I'm texting you when I know you aren't going to respond.

ME [9:35AM] : Guess I can blame the scotch for that.

Before she could send another text, Lena's phone screen turned black. It's a miracle that her phone battery lasted as long as it had. She didn't care to find the charger and instead just stumbled her way to the liquor cabinet and grabbed another two bottles of scotch and went back to her cozy place on the couch, this time drinking straight from the bottle. She knew that her headache should concern her. That the fact that she was dizzy even laying down should concern her. She was destroying her liver, and hadn't eaten in days, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She just kept drinking until she passed out on the couch.

TO BE CONTINUED....