Chapter Text
Kara did not wake up quite as hopeful as she had gone to sleep. Her back hurt, her butt hurt, her neck hurt. Kal stunk again. It had to have only been a few hours at the most. The night was dark now.
Kal was also wailing. Kara just felt tired.
She pushed herself off the ground. She was eleven. She wasn’t the baby here. She could do this. She was Kara Zor-El.
She started walking.
The ideal shelter was found in the form of an abandoned mine shaft.
Kara didn’t quite fly down but she didn’t exactly climb down either. She floated, almost, barely touching the rock wall. The industrial elevator was long since broken beyond repair, though Kara made sure to do a bit of extra damage anyway. No one would be coming down here. No one who couldn’t fly.
This place was for Kryptonians only. Kara had reclaimed it.
She set up leaving Kal bundled up on the ground with as much padding as she could come up with (which now included ripping up the bottom of her own robes), and then float-climbed back up. Another dumpster produced more of the thing black plastic and thus another mask.
It took a quarter wol to find the right kind of goods depot. But then Kara tied her mask on, slipped in, and was immediately stopped by a human at the entrance who seemed accusatory and kept gesturing for her to leave.
A half wol later, Kara found a sufficiently distant goods depot and tried again, sans mask.
She looked around at what the humans in the storehouse were doing and mimicked them as best she could. She grabbed a wheeled cart and meandered around, slowly, casually, like she belonged. She loaded up items she needed and tried to just walk out.
She was stopped again, and made to give up her cart.
Okay. Okay. So the humans who successfully left goods depots had all their stuff in thin plastic bags. Kara needed some of those. And if they weren’t in dumpsters, then she was screwed.
It took a whole wol. She had to make sure she got bags that all matched, and further, all matched the goods depot she was targeting. She hit the jackpot finding a whole crumpled-up bundle of what had to be several hundred plastic bags of different types. That someone had just thrown out, as if they were worthless. As if this wasn’t a godsend for Kara. Then she hid them in her torn-up robes and tried again.
People stared at her, the eleven-year-old blonde girl in a dirty, ripped white dress, buying diapers and water bottles and baby formula. Baby powder. Wipes. New clothes. Food in cans. Food in boxes. She kept her head down.
She tucked herself away in an aisle near the checkout area and loaded everything into the plastic bags. Then she left the store.
Successfully.
Her heart pounded and she let out a shaky breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. It was such a relief. A weight off. She ditched the cart, loaded up seventeen bags along the lengths of her forearms, and walked fast. Confident. Free.
Rao, this felt good. And it only took the entire morning.
Kal was screaming his head off at the bottom of the mine shaft.
“Oh, it’s okay, baby, I’m back, I’m back,” she said. “And I brought diapers! And wipes. Let’s get you cleaned up, huh?”
She sang as she worked. She changed Kal, scrubbed him down with wipes, and put him into new fresh clothes. Then she did the same for herself.
It felt amazing. Like she was a new person.
Kara closed her eyes and rested.
After a few days of stealing and sleeping only when Kal slept, Kara discovered libraries. She was able to get a card, even without an adult or the ability to speak English. The librarian who helped her just had her write down her name, and she knew that word, recognized it from the little English learning she had managed before losing the pod.
Name: Kara Lisnic
Then the librarian pointed her to a whole section just about leaning English.
Kara checked out eight books. She listened to audio files. She did exercises on the computer. She mimicked the words aloud and sounded things out. She went back to the mineshaft and worked some more while taking care of Kal.
She tried teaching him too. At least as much as she was speaking to him in Kryptonese, she also tried to speak to him in English.
She had to learn like how babies learned. All of the English as a second language materials relied on you knowing at least one other Earth language. So Kara started from scratch, with the toddler materials. She and Kal worked from the same books.
She was good enough to know most of the very basic words by now. And so she caught a bit, when she dropped the sack of baked items on accident and they rolled under a waste disposal unit. Kara huffed, set the rest of her haul down, and snuck her arm underneath. It wasn’t long enough. The baked goods were still inches out of reach.
“Flamebird curse this unit,” she muttered. She stood and pushed it to the side, finally retrieving her prize. She gathered up everything else that she had stolen as well.
Someone was staring at her from the mouth of the alley.
“--- --- you do ----?” the teenager asked.
Kara gripped her bags tighter.
The teen held up her hands. “--- not ----- -- --- you. I ----… --- --- you do that?”
She swore mentally. It had seemed so easy to push the disposal unit out of the way. But of course it would seem easy to her. Her super strength was coming in intermittently; she had no way of knowing when it was working or when it wasn’t. She had just assumed…
She had assumed. She hadn’t seen a human perform the same feat, but she had done it in front of a witness and gotten caught. Her own fault.
The older teenager put her hands on her hips. “--- ------ you like a ---?”
Kara bit her lip.
Screw it.
“Khap kehp zha raozh im rrehd rraop ehwores,” she said in Kryptonese. Whatever. It’s not like the girl could possibly speak every Earth language and be able to tell this wasn’t one. And speaking an unidentifiable foreign language in response to a question did get her point across.
“You ---- ----- English ---- ---?”
Kara stared at her. She didn’t know what this girl expected, but she wasn’t going to get an English response.
“----- -------. I can ---- ---- ----. ---- --.”
This was the worst planet.
“Khap kehp zha raozh im rrehd rraop ehwores,” she repeated. Slowly.
The teenager gestured for her to follow. Frustration built up in her chest. Whatever. Whatever! It’s not like she could get hurt anyway, probably. Maybe.
She followed.
The other girl led her down the street and across several more before ducking into yet another alley and then knocking in a rhythmic pattern on a door. Someone from inside called something out, and the girl shouted back.
The door was opened, and she all but pushed Kara in.
There were other teenagers and even more young adults in there. The room was a wide open space with little furniture—mainly a green table and wooden boxes. At least, it looked kind of like wood, albeit in strange colors. It was light, somehow.
It was admittedly a bit impressive that they were able to defeat so many trees, with the technology on this planet being what it was. Tree poaching used to be a highly regarded warrior’s sport on Krypton, thousands of years ago. Then things changed, and killing trees got easier.
There were no more Kryptonian trees, now.
Then everyone started speaking very fast in English, and so she zoned out.
Kara hated English, just a little bit.
The older girl who had brought her here was trying to speak to her again. Only Rao knew why. She was making completely nonsensical gestures, too.
“Rraopo nahn ju kuvaiumo,” she said, because she could.
A teenager—a man?—stood up. “------, I ---- ---- what -------- ----- --------, kid, --- -- you can do ---- -- what ---- says you can, ---- ----- in.” He paused. “You ----- ----- it -----, ------. ---- the ---- -----.”
She should probably head home. Kal couldn’t be alone for too long. Half a wol was the limit she had set for herself.
“---- ----,” the girl from earlier said. She walked excitedly over to the strange green table, and then mimed lifting it up from underneath.
Oh.
She narrowed her eyes.
“Rraosi khap?”
Someone pulled something out of a fold in their clothes and then further pulled out a green piece of fabric. A very familiar type of green slip of fabric.
They held it aloft, enticingly.
She had already gone this far. She wasn’t setting her bags down, though, not while surrounded by people who looked about as down on their luck as she was. She picked her way through the room and crawled under the table so she could get a good angle.
She lifted it up above her head. Stared at shocked faces. Set it down.
Kara took the money.
She made to leave, but someone grabbed her, and she spun around and punched them. They fell on the floor with a cry, blood spurting from where they clutched at their face.
Kara bolted.
Two weeks later, the girl found her again.
This time Kara’s hands were free, at least. The girl held up her own hands like Kara was animal about to spook. She slowly reached into a bag, into a fold of thick material, and pulled out another green slip.
Kara hesitated.
It would be so nice to buy things instead of stealing them. Even just a few things, for Kal. She had a baby to think of. She couldn’t be selfish here.
She needed money, however she had to get it.
She followed the girl back to the hideout again. It was mostly deserted this time, with just one other teenager in it. He was small and young, maybe only a few years older than Kara, and he perked up immediately when they walked in.
“You ----- her!” he said. “-----! Now she can help us ---- the --------- ---!”
The older girl held up a hand. The boy quieted. She put her hand on her chest. “Tess,” she said, staring at Kara as if wishing hard enough could will her into understanding. She then put her hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Gavin.”
“Kara,” she said.
“Kara.” The girl nodded. “---- to ---- you, Kara.”
She walked over to the singular desk in the space and pulled out a drawer, getting out some papers and flipping them to the blank sides. She picked up a stick and started to draw.
Stick figures of Tess, Kara, Gavin, and other unlabeled people. A building. Them all inside the building. Grabbing items. Walking out. The items gone in the next image and small rectangles in their place.
Money.
Kara looked at Tess consideringly. She nodded.
It would certainly be easier to steal in a group.
Robbing a house was different than robbing a store. The group scouted ahead. They took days doing it. Planning. Watching. And then they broke in at night, with Zach—the leader—doing something to the door that made it open without a keycode.
Though Kara didn’t even see a place to input a keycode. Was it all biometrics? How was Zach doing this?
Anyway, they got in. The group scattered about, seeking out technology and jewelry. Kara was assigned to lift the heaviest things. Big, bulky tech items that made eyes gleam.
And the cold storage unit that was just chock full of food.
She loaded everything into their van and began to eat. Others stared at her. She held out half a food item to offer it to Gavin, who shook his head, a strange look on his face. Kara shrugged and kept eating.
They let her take whatever she didn’t eat back home with her that night.
She fed Kal fingerfuls of sweet mush. He cooed and gurgled.
“Oh, you like that, huh?” she asked. “Well there’s plenty more where that came from.”
The food goop dribbled down his chin, and Kara pushed it back into her cousin’s mouth.
“I found friends,” she said. “Good friends. They let me take the food. They helped me steal. And they’ve been giving me money. I’ll probably get more once they sell everything we stole tonight. Maybe then I can buy you special baby food. Super healthy baby food with tons of nutrients, how about that? You exited?”
Kal gummed at her fingers.
“Yeah, I figured you were,” she said. “Things are gonna be good, Kal. Everything’s about to get better for us.”
She kissed the downy hair on his little head. Kal smiled up at her, mouth full.