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“Are you gonna try to kill me?”
She knows that any dose of Kryptonite could be considered an attempt in and of itself, but there’s a big difference between entrapment and death; and even with how long they’ve known each other, with how close they used to be, she can’t tell which outcome Lena is aiming for.
“No, Supergirl,” Lena says softly, casually, as if Kara had merely asked whether she’d be available for dinner later. “I’m not gonna kill you.” A hand slips into her coat pocket and Kara’s nervous system suddenly can’t differentiate between radiation poisoning and pure dread. “I’m not a villain,” Lena continues as she pulls out an all-too-familiar watch. “You shouldn’t have treated me like one.”
She steps through the portal, and then Kara is alone with these pulsing green walls.
Her sobs rattle through her already burning chest, but she swallows what emotions she can and frantically searches the encasement for an opening, a weak point, any fraction of an inch not charged with Kryptonite. But it’s hard to make out anything useful through her tears and Kara bangs on the wall with both fists, a sharp grunt tearing from her throat as the touch singes her skin. She tries angling her body so only her shoulder and upper arm make contact, but the proximity stings her cheek and the barrier still doesn’t budge.
Kara sucks in a few deep breaths and aims her laser vision upward, then back down, then straight ahead; the beam leaves no marks, then begins to falter as Kara’s energy drains, only for a flare of green energy to burst from that part of the wall like it’s fighting back. The force knocks her backward and she struggles to brace herself in this deadly space, let alone one so small that she can’t even sit down. Instead she wraps her arms tightly around herself and hunches over as her entire frame begins to tremble from the prolonged exposure.
Vision blurring, head throbbing, the world slowing, Kara fighting to stay upright as her limbs give in one by one—
The barrier vanishes and she crumbles to the floor.
Hurried footsteps, urgent voices, and then a pair of hands fussing over her.
“Supergirl, can you hear me?”
Kara forces her eyes open and struggles to prop herself up on one elbow. “I have to find Lena,” she mutters, voice straining against the poison that lingers in her veins.
Alex helps her get upright, but nearly as urgently as she would like. “Kara, what happened?”
“She knew,” Kara manages, using almost all of her energy just to get to her knees. “My identity. She’s known for months.” She nearly crushes her femur with the effort of pushing herself to her feet, then staggers to the control panel and relies on pure muscle memory to enter the right commands. “Lex told her and now she hates me for it.”
Brainy’s eyes scan the screen intently. “Mount Norquay.”
“Mount Norquay is one of Lex’s old hideouts,” Alex recalls, then watches as Kara strides across the chamber. “Where are you going?”
“To fix this,” is all she says, then places the anti-Kryptonite device on her chest and takes off into the sky before the suit has even fully formed.
.
She swears she remembers the detox process being much faster than this, but as the terrain below her changes from city to empty fields to rocky slopes, there’s still fire in her bones that has her dipping sporadically as she shoots through the air.
When she reaches the mountain she gives herself exactly sixty seconds to catch her breath on the snowy ground before she kicks off again and hovers toward the approximate area of the hidden bunker. A set of glowing cannons appear from within the mountainside almost immediately, all pointed right at her; they’re not green, at least, but before she has a chance to process the relief, they explode.
Three white beams hit her in unison and the massive blast of energy sends her tumbling in midair—
And then her helmet’s interface goes dark—
And then that sickening burn is back full force, dimming her senses, biting into her very atoms—
And then she’s falling.
.
The knot of agony in her side is what ultimately brings her back.
It’s sharp and ruthless and so consuming that her breaths are weak wheezes in and out, and Kara is so focused on her lungs that it takes her a minute to feel everything else. Her face has been whipped raw and numb by icy wind, a pounding ache dominates one side of her head, and underneath it all is the continued burn of Kryptonite, palpable still in the freezing temperature around her.
She blinks her eyes open, squinting against the wintry gusts, and realizes her face shield has shattered. Kara slowly tries to turn her head away from the cold and the rest of her body comes into view; her torso folded over an angled boulder, and the dark trickle of blood trailing from her torn suit onto the rough stone beyond it. She tries to shift her upper body and lets out a strained cry as her crushed ribs fill with an agony that’s hotter than hot, hotter than anything she’s ever felt before, hot enough that she almost blacks out at the intensity.
Kara grits her teeth and begins to push herself away from the rock anyway, her breathless grunts quickly escalating to a hoarse scream as the separation reveals an open wound surrounded by bruises so dark they nearly match the night sky. She reaches a shaky hand to grab the corner of her cape, shreds it against the edge she had landed on, then balls up the fabric and presses it to her broken skin with a hiss of pain she can’t quite suppress.
Deep breaths, looking around, looking for escape, looking for help, but she sees nothing and no one. Just the mountain.
The mountain, the bunker, and Lena. Right there. So much closer than home. Would she even make it back to the DEO in this state?
She knows the answer before she’s finished the thought.
.
One foot in front of the other is a mantra that’s always seemed simple enough, but out here in a fresh storm’s worth of snow with a body that’s further breaking down with each passing second, it feels close to impossible.
Her exposed skin is so cold that it stings almost as much as the Kryptonite still coursing through her system. The closer she gets to the base of the mountain the harder it is to ignore how powerless she is, both figuratively and literally: no super strength to carve into the rock, no super hearing to sense a nearby voice or water pipe or air vent, no laser vision to burn her way through the lead walls, no way to even defend herself. Nothing.
She has no idea what she’s going to do, no plan except that she must keep moving, because if she stops for even the briefest instant, she doesn’t think she can start again. So it’s one foot, then the other, then back to the first, again and again and again and again.
(Just as she’s reached the limit of what she can physically bear, as she’s about to sink into the snowbank and give up—)
A loud metallic groan.
Kara stumbles through her next half-step and scans the space in front of her, then sees a thin crescent of light appear a few dozen yards away as a large vault door creaks open.
An entrance.
Renewed waves of adrenaline pull her forward, refuse to be scared away by the mental images of Lena waiting just inside with any number of weapons pointed at Kara’s chest, and carry her all the way to the inset opening. There’s exactly enough of a gap for her to slip through, and she does so with excruciating effort before she’s finally enveloped in the warmth of a sterile, militaristic interior. Her ragged breathing fills the small space as she observes a dead end and only one way to go.
One foot in front of the other, again and again and again and again. Her face is damp with melted snow and sweat and tears and Rao knows what else, body shivering and burning in tandem, hands and feet frozen into unfeeling as she staggers along the corridor at less than a snail’s pace. Again and again and again and again, past locked doors and old tech parts and the same continuous trail of fluorescent lights, until she comes up on a large doorway that glows with the deep blue of a wall full of screens.
Two voices are audible in the next room, but she doesn't have the energy to hear what they’re saying from this distance.
Kara sways in place as her vision swims for a beat, then blinks away the stars and slowly approaches. Her knees threaten to give out as she reaches the threshold and slumps against the frame, gripping it with the hand that’s been bracing her ribs as the other takes its place.
“Lee—” she chokes out when she sees a determinedly stoic figure at the control panel. “Lena?” Her palm slips against the metal it’s resting on and leaves a wide smear of blood in its wake. “Lena,” she pants with what little air she has in her lungs, “I…”
But then the room tilts at an angle that doesn’t make sense as Kara collapses onto the hard concrete floor, and the last thing she sees is Lena refusing to look back at her.
.
“Miss Luthor, there’s a lot of blood.”
“Then clean it up.”
Kara burns.
.
She might be propped upright, she thinks, but her whole body feels like Jell-O.
Well—superheated, poison-weakened, open-wound Jell-O. The helmet is gone but her head is heavy, sounds around her muffled, and Kara is truly convinced she’s hallucinating when she forces her bleary eyes open and sees Eve Tessmacher crouched in front of her with a bloodstained cloth.
“Nmm…” Still so hard to breathe. “N…n-no,” Kara husks through paper-dry lips. “N—not—you.”
Eve just continues to dab at Kara’s face and she flinches away from the contact, tries to bring her knees up as a barrier between them, but the attempted movement sets her side on fire and she lets out a broken yelp.
“Your ribs are broken,” Eve says matter-of-factly. “Please stay still.”
Kara’s swallow is dry and thick as she tries to make sense of each different type of pain coursing through her system, distracting her enough that she doesn’t see Eve reach for her again. But the next touch brings back all of her fear and confusion and she jerks out of reach, pitches to the side, then tries to crawl clumsily across the floor. She’s barely made it an arm’s length further before her knee slips on something slick and she lands belly-down, crying out as her ribs scream beneath her.
Sobs ragged and breathless, limbs trembling and spent, and Kara can’t even hold her head up and lets her cheek rest against the cold floor. She watches a pair of simple high heels approach and can’t do anything about it as Eve kneels, moves Kara’s hair aside, then pokes her neck with something sharp.
“Please stay still,” Eve repeats.
It’s the first command Kara obeys, and her world dissolves into nothing.
.
She’s stuck.
Every part of her is stiff and still and rooted down and she knows it’s not right before she knows she’s hyperventilating.
“Calm her down,” Lena says somewhere nearby, yet her voice sounds far away and so empty that it sends a chill down Kara's spine.
Kara looks at her just in time to see Lena’s eyes flash green and the stiffness increases tenfold, her muscles snapping to attention and frozen so taut that she trembles at the intensity despite having no control over what’s happening. Even if she had the strength to sit up, whatever Lena’s doing ensures that she can’t, and—
“What—?” Kara gasps, barely able to squirm in place as her limbs and torso remain locked. “Can’t… Why—can’t—?” Her thoughts are too jumbled, too confused, too tired. “Lena—?”
“Calm her down,” Lena says again, “or she’ll make it worse.”
Eve approaches with another syringe and Kara immediately flinches away from the needle.
“N-no,” she blurts with an obvious voice crack. “Please don’t—please…”
Eve glances at Lena, who sighs and waves her off. “The device is mostly repaired. That should be enough.”
Kara’s heart is pounding inside her overworked chest. “Lena,” she begs, “what’s—going on?”
No response; at least, not to Kara.
“Put this on the center of her insignia. It will activate automatically.”
The familiar square disc is placed in position. Kara feels it unfold across her torso in every direction, wrap around her shoulders, up her neck, curl around her chin, then re-form the helmet around her head—
Dark—
Small—
Ship—
Krypton exploding—
Hurtling through space—
Completely alone—
Elevator—
Completely alone—
Helmet—
Completely alone—
Ship—
The memories hit her like individual electric shocks and Kara thrashes against her paralysis in earnest now, can’t move can’t breathe can’t move can’t breathe can’t move can’t breathe—
Ship elevator helmet ship elevator helmet ship elevator—
Swirling darkness, lost in her own body, physical pain temporarily fading as pure adrenaline floods her system—
Ship elevator helmet ship elevator helmet ship elevator helmet—
—suddenly goes away, along with the entire anti-Kryptonite suit as the device is removed again, then the hold on her body released—
Kara rolls onto her uninjured side and vomits, face contorting as her ribs throb with the added pressure, breathes and breathes and breathes and breathes and finally sags into a sweaty, boneless mess.
“Clean it up,” Lena instructs somewhere behind her, right behind her, and a few minutes later she’s vaguely aware of the smell of chemicals wafting up from the floor.
“If you hate me so much,” Kara asks in a broken whisper, without moving, “why didn’t you just leave me out there? Why are you helping me?”
The proceeding silence is so long that she almost forgets she said anything at all.
“Because I told you I wasn’t going to kill you, and I keep my promises.”
As quietly as the words are spoken, they’re still filled to the brim with venomous hurt, and fresh tears fall from Kara’s eyes as they fall closed.
.
When she hears her sister’s voice, she thinks she’s dreaming.
It crackles in and out and Kara can barely make out half the words, but as she slowly pulls herself back into consciousness, the voice comes with her.
“Alex?” she mumbles without thinking, and a mechanical whirring sound elsewhere in the room suddenly cuts off. A barrage of questions fill her ear as she opens her eyes and finds herself laid across the same table she last woke up on, but her body can still move freely, and she lets out a single breath of relief. “I know, I—I’m sorry I didn’t check in.”
Footsteps striding in her direction—
“No,” she manages after a surprisingly brief hesitation. “I haven’t found her yet. Still searching.”
The footsteps stop.
“I’ll be home soon. I promise.”
Her comms go silent and Kara squeezes her eyes closed again, mentally scanning for what’s still broken and bruised and burning, then carefully turns her head to the side. Lena is standing about halfway between her workspace and Kara, arms crossed tightly over her chest as she stares daggers at the broken Kryptonian looking back at her.
Kara thinks of a million things she could say but knows none of them are good enough, and so she doesn’t say anything, and neither does Lena until Kara accidentally reacts to a prickle of radiation burning near her throbbing ribs.
“The sooner your suit is fixed,” she hears a beat later, “the sooner you can stabilize and get the hell out of my sight.”
Her ribs pulse even more angrily as if in response to Lena’s statement, and Kara finds herself sucking in her biggest breath yet. “You sound—pretty pissed off—for someone who shot me—right above some really—sharp rocks.”
Lena’s jaw is visibly working, even from this distance. “And you sound rather scandalized for someone who did the emotional equivalent to their supposed best friend.”
She turns away and Kara shakes her head. “Lena,” she calls out, but she’s already winded and doesn’t quite manage to hold in a grunt of pain as her ribs protest again. “Lena!” Still no reaction, so Kara swings her legs off the table and eases herself up, already panting with the effort of standing on her own power. Her hunched form hobbles forward, stumbling once or twice as her concussed head reels, with no plan for what she’ll even do when—
“Hope, keep her quiet.”
The command is so abrupt that she doesn’t have time to process it before something rams her legs from behind. Her knees buckle and Kara drops heavily into a metal chair, where her wrists are swiftly duct taped to the armrests and another strip is pressed over her mouth and all she can do is absolutely nothing.
“Lmm-mm, pmmm —”
“I said quiet,” Lena snaps as she returns to her work.
Eve—Hope?—hurries over to Kara with that syringe—
“Nmmm!” she pleads, shaking her head even as it pounds. “Mmm smm-mmm, mmm smm.” Kara holds the woman’s eyes and doesn’t blink until she lowers her hand, then Kara gives her a small nod to confirm her promise.
There’s a stretch of silence as the three of them wait for each other’s next move.
“I’ll be done within the hour,” Lena says finally, all traces of emotion removed. “And I can assure you that it’s in your best interest to let me focus.”
Kara nods again, unsure of whether to one or both of them, and the next forty-five minutes are the longest that she’s spent with Lena in months.
.
At some point she nods off.
The Kryptonite has been in her system for hours now and each burst of energy she’s used to speak or move or defend herself seems to lessen her ability to fight it. She wonders if Lena realizes that for all the talk of not wanting to kill her, Kara is slowly dying right just a few feet away.
She’s way too hot on both the inside and on the outside, sweat coating her forehead and neck and breaths getting shallower as her aching abdomen cycles through various waves of pain.
“Supergirl.”
The voice echoes between her ears before shattering into a thousand pieces that disappear into the darkness. Is Alex calling again? Is someone in trouble?
“Supergirl.”
Closer, but still invisible. Why can’t she see anyone? Where is—?
“Kara.”
This time, crystal clear.
She blinks her eyes open and Lena slowly swims into view, standing beside Hope, both of them watching her. Lena’s face is unreadable.
“I’m going to activate your suit.”
Suit. Heal. Leave. Home.
The words flash through her mind and she struggles to latch onto any of them, can barely even keep her eyelids up.
Lena’s gaze remains intent. “You need to stay calm.”
“Mmwmph,” Kara tries to say, forgetting that her mouth is sealed.
“Remove the tape,” Lena says to Hope.
She approaches Kara, lifts her chin with a few fingertips, and rips off the tape in one quick motion. Kara doesn’t even bother to react—this is the least worst pain she’s felt today.
Lena steps forward, sets the disc on Kara’s chest, then steps back again, then waits.
The disc begins to unfold, but goes slower this time, and as it spreads up to Kara’s neck the sensation is less smothering; more like the gentle pressure of sinking into water. This pace gives her the chance to brace herself, and even in her deteriorated state, she can still track the movement of the nanotech around the back of her neck, then up, then over the top of her head before coming down over her face—much less jarring than darkness swallowing her up from below.
She still holds her breath as the interface comes to life, then lets out a gasp of relief when she’s shown a sprawling, completely unobstructed view, as if the entire helmet were crystal clear. Then the filtration system kicks in and she feels the familiar soothing pull of the suit leeching the Kryptonite from her body. Her head falls back as Kara takes her first real breath of air, her first breath of hope, since she left the Fortress of Solitude. In, and out, and in, and out, and not the panicky kind, but actual productive important kind. In and out, in and out, in and out.
By the time she looks back down Lena has already returned to her console and Hope is gone. Kara keeps breathing, makes sure, then speaks.
“Lena, I—”
“You can let yourself out once your strength is back.”
She half-expects Lena to storm off and leave Kara alone in this room now that there’s no reason to babysit her, but Lena just brings up a schematic on her tablet and continues to work. Posture rigid, shoulders set, and back to Kara… but still here, with her, nonetheless.
As Kara slowly recovers, she never once takes her eyes off of her.
.
“Thank you,” Kara says some time later, shattering the silence between them.
Lena doesn’t flinch, doesn’t respond, doesn’t react in any way--externally, that is. Because Kara can hear Lena’s heart, now, and has been listening to it long enough to know that it’s beating way too fast for someone who’s sitting still. At Kara’s words, her pulse skips a beat then continues to pound.
“You didn’t have to open that door.”
Still beating rapidly, still not acknowledging her. Kara lasers the duct tape binding her wrists then uses her freeze-breath to cool the burning material so the smell doesn’t reach Lena, then presses the center of her chest, and the anti-Kryptonite suit folds dormant back into its disc.
“You saved my life.”
By the time Lena gets to her feet and turns around, eyes blazing and ready for a fight, it’s just plain old Supergirl standing beside the chair.
“How long have you had your powers back?” she asks, and her attempted indignance is a little too soft at the edges.
“A while.”
Her throat works to hold back something she doesn’t want to let out. “Why haven’t you left?”
“The same reason you haven’t forced me to,” Kara answers, as gently as she dares, “even though we both know you could.”
Lena doesn’t move a single muscle aside from the slight quiver at the end of her chin.
Kara mirrors her stillness, doesn’t try to get any closer or make any grand gestures, just gives Lena a long moment to breathe before she says the words that have been in her head since the radiation helmet went back on.
“I do fight villains, Lena. But I fight for my friends, and I won’t stop fighting for you.”
Lena shakes her head the barest fraction of an inch. “We’re not friends,” she whispers, each individual word quivering and cracking on its way to Kara’s ears.
“But we were,” Kara counters, “and that’s what matters to me. It always will.”
“It shouldn’t. Not if all of it was a lie.”
She throws her arms out in surrender. “You know what, Lena? You’re right. It was a lie. My identity, my history, my birth family… all the way down to my species. I kept all that hidden away and deflected and told you half-truths, and yes, I lied about who I am.” Kara’s voice gets thick after she pauses for a beat. “But I never once lied about how I felt.”
Lena’s heart thuds so loudly that Kara can’t believe it’s silent to human ears, but then it slows just a little closer to normal, and Lena folds her arms across her chest like she’s trying to hide that traitorous muscle; to protect it.
Kara leaves the bunker without looking back.