Chapter Text
Kara
Sometimes the days seem almost normal.
You smile as you shake the mayor's hand after preventing the derailment of a freight train.
You smile as you shake the hand of the tourist, nearly crushed by the loose girder from a swinging construction crane.
You smile as you shake the soot-stained hand of the city's fire chief. He smiles broadly as a thin line of sweat cuts a path through the well-earned grime staining his forehead. It was a grueling ordeal, fighting back the blaze threatening the trade port together, but his struggle and yours were not the same. His men breathed smoke and flame, trained a flood to follow their command, and quenched a bloodthirsty blaze hell-bent on consuming all in its path. You too felt the heat, but your fire burned within – as white-hot and unruly as the inferno you smothered with quick-thinking and icy breath. Each stretch of limb, each fleeting thought, now churn up searing pain and burning memories that will not slake, will not yield to any cooling balm.
Sometimes you slip in and out of waking dreams.
It's the same dream every time, a memory that refuses to settle, refuses to let your mind find a moment's peace.
Delicate, alien hands with razor-thin nails, pulling at you, raking your skin as your veins scream with racing, red-hot venom. Hatred and desire, both blinding, rip through your body and you arch off the sterile steal table as the ropey sinew of straining muscle pulls taut, your sweat-slick skin the only barrier between tension and air.
Then comes the ice.
The sudden absence of fiery poison in you bloodstream shocks your system and your muscles relax only to tense and shiver. For a moment you understand what it is to be truly cold, to no longer feel the warmth of Rao's light, to embrace frailty and let it break you, like so much brittle glass.
You know your spirit can't take much more of this – the pain, the strain and turmoil. And just as suddenly as it began it's over, you feel the warm light of a kind sun stream across your face, warming you – soul to skin.
Familiar hands stroke your temple, clammy and cold, but strangely comforting, as if the glow of unwavering affection could be transferred through the soft friction of fingertips tracing the lines of your face.
It's Alex.
She's smiling at you, her soft, dark eyes piercing the blur of your vision as you swim in the ebbing tide of your own fleeting consciousness. You drift in and out, crashing into yourself like so much salt water beating against some battered shore.
And she's there – your sister, by your side as she always has been, calling your name, pushing the sweat soaked hair from your forehead and brushing her fingertips down the bare skin of your arm. You curl into the contact, groping at her hand, clutching at as if it's your only tether to this world, to life, to love.
You wake from this dream – this memory – alone in your empty room, your mind still swimming in the shallow pools of that harrowing remembrance and you breathe a sigh of hard-won relief.
Sometimes you forget the pain and struggle of loneliness.
You laugh, in earnest, and instead of cloying shame, you feel a hole, an abscess where it once was and that is somehow comforting. Sometimes, you don't even feel hollow, instead you grasp at fleeting joy as the moment bleeds and fades into the next, free of gaps or holes.
Sometimes you feel whole. Or feel you could be.
You realize slowly, painfully, that "dry" and "sober" hold very different meanings. Abstention – avoidance – is not the same as healing and this realization creates a path you begin to walk with renewed purpose.
Who you were and who you could be are as two sides of a canyon, bridged by pain and honesty. You can hear the difference: in the figurative snap of bone re-breaking, so it can finally be set to heal correctly. You can see it in the slumped shoulders and open face of one who has surrendered herself completely, hoping desperately for transformation. You recognize her, the one who has given herself over to change, and she recognizes you: you are the same.
You can feel it in the air, thick like smoke hanging in heavy tendrils that swirl into the nostrils of the newly freed as they breathe deeply. You breathe deeply, and for once don't feel the pang of guilt or shame or angst; instead, you feel clean, cool air rush into your lungs, and you are grateful.
Sometimes you hate yourself for what you've done; sometimes you hate the Red Kryptonite for what it's done to you. Then you hate yourself all over again for misplacing the blame and slide helplessly, sullenly back into guilt. It's a tedious process, this healing thing, and you have to hold on to hope. Hope that all this pain and doubt and struggle will leave you better than you were. This rehabilitation is of body, mind, and spirit, it is no small undertaking, and nothing of great significance or value was ever easily won.
Sometimes you can't believe how far you've come, the progress you've made.
You replay memories in your head: looming over Lena as she stands on her balcony, eyes wide and soaked to the bone in the pouring rain. You can remember the gentle way the rain-slick sheet hugs the curves of her body as she clutches it uselessly around her. You see the longing in her eyes as you hover just out of reach.
The one who wrecked her body so thoroughly, who ravaged her and fled is both you and not you. You no longer feel the splinter of your own tainted consciousness, but you can separate who you were then and who you are now. They are the same, and they are different. The path between the two is a long stretch of road and you can see all its twists and turns because you've travelled that road. You can own the reckless decisions you've made and understand that rehabilitation of spirit does not create a blank slate; it doesn't erase or excuse past action. Instead it creates a lens through which you can view and understand your past to inform a better future.
Sometimes you wonder if you're ready.
Have the broken bones had sufficient time and therapy to knit back together? Has the sickening guilt you once wrapped around yourself like a thick, suffocating blanket truly abated? You feel almost light most days, a renewed sense of purpose, a hard-earned grace welling up, deep inside. But are you ready for her?
There's a difference between training a river to divert its path and creating a dam. One takes time and patience, carving new paths through earth and hoping the chosen course alleviates the trauma to the land. The other is a hard stop, a quick fix. It may solve the immediate problem, but it can't last forever. The water will inevitable build, and no matter how well constructed, the dam will burst and the problems you never addressed will flood and consume your life.
You've trained your river; you've done the work and will continue to build on what you've discovered. You've been broken down into your smallest pieces and have managed to reassemble yourself into the woman standing in front of her door, too afraid to knock. You sigh and dip into the reservoir of grace within for a moment of peace before steeling your nerves.
Alex said she was ready weeks ago, that she had been working too and had asked to see you. But you weren't ready then. You had more work to do, more pieces to reassemble; you weren't whole yet.
But you might be now.
And what of Lena, had she found her own reserve of strength? Was she fueled, instead, by righteous anger? Would she understand the lengthy explanation – the apology – the narrative you brought for her or would she reject it outright? Would each of you, both broken down and reassembled, even recognize one another?
One way or another, you have to find out. You raise your hand to her door and pause – breathe in and out – before knocking. The world stops and the seconds between asked and answered drag into eternity. You train your eyes to the floor, not wanting to invade her privacy with your piercing vision as the latch turns and the door sighs open.
She's there, beautifully casual, and for a moment you forget to breath. Her posturing is soft and her expression momentarily unreadable. Then, an unmistakable smile slides across her lips and you let go the breath you weren't even conscious of holding, melting into the meaning behind that smile.
You see her, a pillar of strength and vulnerability and she seems to see you too. And in this moment, you know you can tell her anything, tell her everything. And in this moment there is hope, hope for now and hope for the future.