Work Text:
It had all gone so wrong so quickly.
Kara had raced off to save the alien community from the renegade CADMUS agents which were storming the homes of innocent alien civilians with the intent of murder and mayhem. She had thought she had it under control. Daisy had gone to CATCO to deal with Henshaw…but it was all a trap.
Lucy had come over her coms just as she had finished knocking out another Cadmus agent, crushing his gun negligently. Lucy had informed her that Daisy had confronted Henshaw but he had a kill switch set to blow C4 in the children’s hospital. She felt panic rise as she faced the impossible decision of who to help.
Torn in three: The alien community, the children’s hospital and Daisy.
Thankfully, Maggie and M’gann had simplified things by coming to the rescue and taking over in dealing with the CADMUS gunmen.
Sharing a nod of understanding as M’gann waded in to deal with the next group of gunmen in her true white martian form Kara tried to think logically. She felt kind of guilty that she couldn’t spare the time to be more reassuring, to be kinder to the aliens she had saved. It hurt her heart how surprised some of them seemed to be that she had come and saved them. The small Trillec boy with purple eyes who quivered in fear against his mother looked like he needed a hug and some soft words…but she couldn’t spare the time.
Daisy’s initial confrontation with Henshaw had been live streamed by a dozen bystanders and the DEO had seen the feed where she had told James she would occupy Henshaw and Kara was to use her speed and enhanced sense to find and neutralize the C4 at the hospital. Until then…well, Daisy was acting as the big damn distraction to Henshaw according to Lucy. The DEO was monitoring the situation and evacuating civilians in the area but it would all take time.
Kara felt a cold sweat break out down her back and her stomach drop. Daisy was powerful but she wasn’t invulnerable, and she had made it clear that fast attacks designed to be lethal or incapacitating were her preferred methodology. A drawn out fight with Henshaw where she couldn’t risk killing him was the definition of a bad idea for her mate.
Kara had frowned at James’ words and for a single moment she had considered going to Daisy anyway. The broken, selfish little part of herself that finally had love and was not willing to lose it after all she had lost in her life raged against her logical mind. Against what she knew was right.
Surely there had to be a way to deal with Henshaw and save the hospital? Maybe fly him at speed to the Hospital so he couldn’t risk blowing it up while he was there? But then again, Henshaw was a zealot, and killing himself to spite Supergirl while massacring children wasn’t outside the realms of what he may consider for a pyrrhic victory. That was without even considering that Hensahw undoubtedly had some form of Kryptonite on his person since he had been sent to lure her out.
Fuck.- The rare curse rattled in Kara’s head.
She had to save the kids, she had to trust that Daisy could survive and protect herself long enough for her to neutralize Henshaw’s bombs and to return to help her mate.
Mate…the word rang in her head. Her mate.
Every instinct screamed that she should race to her mate’s side..but that same mate would never forgive Kara if she prioritized Daisy over a hospital full of innocent kids.
It’s why Kara loved her.
As much as Daisy played the villain, she was a hero. A soft hearted, selfless hero who adored kids. A self sacrificing idiot to boot.
Kara launched herself at speed towards the hospital, dropping off an unconscious CADMUS gunman with a police patrol car on route.
She didn’t explain what she was doing, she didn’t reassure the suddenly fearful looking doctors or the happy, oblivious kids who cheered seeing her and waving frantically.
Kara began X-raying the hospital as soon as she arrived. Looking for the C4.
Distantly her super hearing latched onto Daisy’s showdown with Henshaw outside CATCO. Her super hearing finding the faster than human heartbeat with ease.
Kara could hear Daisy shouting at civilians: “Run!”
And then a whooshing sound, Daisy grunting and the faint cracking sound of a bone giving way.
Kara felt tears gather in her eyes. Her mate was hurt.
Henshaw was hurting her mate.
She had to be faster. She had to get to her.
With her X-ray vision she spotted a single block of C4 stashed in the roof space of the pediatric post surgery ward. She dived forward, racing to snatch up the C4 and to disarm it with all the knowledge Alex had crammed into her head about human explosives when she had officially become Supergirl. She could fly the C4 high into the sky and destroy it, but the explosion would cause panic in the city, alert Henshaw to her progress in disarming them and would actually take longer.
Kara cut the detonator wire and fried the receiver antenna with a burst of heat vision, keeping the packet of C4 and wires close to her chest in case of an accidental detonation. She sighed in relief when it fell inert.
Distantly, Kara heard the meaty smack of metal against flesh and Daisy’s low groans as she weathered blows.
What was Daisy doing? Henshaw was beating on her!
Things were silent for a moment and Kara felt her heart stop, her breathing freeze, was Daisy alive?
Devastation opened beneath her feet like a yawning maw. No…no, Daisy had to live.
Kara’s super hearing easily picked up the sudden, distant huge crash of concrete smashing and then the wet sound of Daisy’s breathing as she choked on her own blood. Her familiar fast heartbeat a hummingbird of drumbeats in Kara’s ears. A loud echoing snap…something else breaking in her mate. Another bone, was it a leg, or an arm?…Rao please…please no. Please protect her mate. Please Rao!
Kara clenched her eyes shut, trying desperately to push back the horrible sounds, to smother her need to keen like a wounded animal in despair that her mate was so hurt. She had to focus.
She had to hurry.
She flew back, x-raying the hospital again. There were so many areas covered in lead. Some were obviously in the radiology department and those would need to be searched manually with speed. A bag in a staff locker room on the fourth floor was also suspiciously lead lined.
Kara rushed towards it, not sparing a thought as she ripped the locker open. Nursing staff who had been changing in the room staggered back with gasps at her sudden appearance.
Kara didn’t greet them or try to explain. There was no time. She dropped the mangled door of the locker and withdrew the black lead lined pouch, easily tearing it open to reveal the C4, a bundle of wires and dull blinking red LED’s. Distantly she heard the nurses gasp and some scramble for the door. Kara x-rayed the bomb, quickly assessed there were no traps and blasted the detonator wire and antenna with heat vision.
A meaty squelch, metal striking concrete and Daisy’s heart rate spiking in correspondence made Kara’s head snap in the direction of CATCO across the city. Only the frightened nurse half changed into her uniform privy to the sight of Supergirl going inhumanly still, her face a rictus of pain and concentration as she seemed to stare through the lockers in the far wall.
Daisy’s teeth snapped shut with a click that Kara’s hearing made echo in her eardrums, a low subvocalized groan of agony vibrating in Daisy’s throat. Low, so low Henshaw likely didn’t hear it, but Kara, halfway across the city with her cursed super hearing got to endure, got to hear as it stabbed at her heart,
Daisy was hurt. Badly. She was smothering a scream. Why? To not give Henshaw the satisfaction? To spare Kara?
Kara used superspeed to race to the Radiology department and began systematically searching every lead lined room and area her X-ray vision could’t see through.
James’ voice caught Kara’s attention. “You won’t get away with this.”
He was distracting Henshaw. Putting himself at risk to buy Daisy time. Kara wanted to hug him and also shake him.
“James Olsen, Superman’s personal photographer. How does it feel to know you don’t matter enough to Supergirl to even show up?” Henshaw growled as he stalked forward. His steps crunching across the shattered glass and concrete that littered the ground from his fight with Daisy.
“She’s a hero, my life isn’t worth letting that bomb at the hospital off. I’d tell her to save the hospital.” James defiantly proclaimed.
Henshaw snorted, “An Earth Traitor to the end.”
Kara tensed even as she ripped open a lead storage container that was meant to hold radioactive material for the X-ray machines but actually held another block of C4. Was this the last one? Could she disarm it and make it in time to save James?
She had other places to look, still more parts of radiology to check.
The impossible choice was taken from her hands as there was an echoing whooshing sound. Kara for a single heart rending moment thought it was Henshaw attacking James, killing him, but then she heard the sound of cracking tarmac, of stone and the very earth rumbling.
It was Daisy.
An almighty shattering noise almost deafened Kara and she flinched, her hearing ringing and zoning away from her mate for a moment. She shook away her focus from CATCO for that precious moment as every single pane of glass in the high rise seemed to shatter at once in a screaming cacophony.
Kara x-rayed the C4 in her hand and growled as she saw that the signal box and connectors for the wires were wrapped in lead. She can’t tell which one is the detonator wire and if there is some kind of trap in the signal box if she tries to cut the wires or melt the box. Fucking Cadmus, always some new trick!
Kara feels her breaths coming quickly. Anger, hurt, panic all swelling in her chest.
She almost wants to hit herself as a solution appears in her mind like a lightning bolt. A conversation forgotten in the haze of panic from long ago with Winn. Why disarm a bomb, when you can make it inert?
Kara sucked in a huge breath and then blew it out, a super breath of sub zero air. She cupped the C4 in her hands. She took a second breath and blew again. The bomb frosted and the flickering red LED lights by the antenna slowed and then dimmed. The entire secure storage room iced over like a winter wonderland. Kara used her freeze breath to reduce the C4 to a fragile heap of inert ice that with the most fragile of pressures, shattered in her hands.
Kara can hear Daisy’s slow movements. She can hear her gritted teeth, the grinding of broken bones as they rub roughly against each other…and yet, Daisy seems intent on fighting.
There is an ominous dripping sound. Something denser than water splattering onto tarmac. Kara’s mind shies away from the logical deduction that it is Daisy’s blood dripping from her body, from the numerous wounds she now bears.
Like a high frequency mosquito machine outside a McDonalds to keep kids away, Kara can hear Daisy’s power building, hear the very air molecules outside CATCO hum with her power, an almost inaudible buzz in the air.
The crude sound of Daisy spitting onto the sidewalk echoes in Kara’s mind as she flies out of the hospital…yet she hesitates. It is too easy. CADMUS always has a trick. Always.
Pulled between the need to double check the hospital, to follow her hunch, and to go and save Daisy…Kara hesitates. She hangs in the air. Her X-ray vision lances out to scan the hospital again, and the grounds around it for good measure.
Daisy’s voice came out, rough, and so painfully human as she addressed her foe, “Henshaw, we’re not done.” Kara winced at the gritty, pained sound of her mate’s voice. Anger, sorrow and pain rise anew in Kara. Daisy’s usually teasing, husky voice sounds broken, like she is struggling to breathe. A raspy bubble in her words hinting at a punctured lung.
Kara feels her fists clench in anger. Rao, she has to save her.
“These people mean nothing to you?” Henshaw cruelly mocked.
“Yeah, and? They’re still people you sick fuck.” Daisy snapped back. There was the sound of shuffling leather and then the gut churning sound of a loud dry snap and the squishy press of muscles. Daisy subvocalising a quiet, “Fuck” through gritted teeth.
Had…had Daisy just broken another bone? Or tried to straighten one? Kara’s stomach swooped with nausea.
She frantically scanned the hospital…think, think…there was always a trick with Cadmus.
Her eyes widening, Kara suddenly realized she had scanned the hospital, but not beneath it. Her brows furrowed as she scanned deeper.
Of course there were old lead pipes beneath the hospital!!
Kara dove towards the ground rushing through a sewer cover and then burrowing through the ground as she made straight for the old lead pipes beneath the children’s hospital that she couldn’t see through
Sound beneath the ground was harder to hear. Yet Kara focused her super hearing with as much of her concentration as she could spare to listen to Daisy and Henshaw’s showdown.
Daisy sounded exhausted, resigned. She was antagonizing Henshaw, trying to distract him from James and the other civilians like the big damn hero she was. “I’ll give it to you, this is the worst kind of fight possible for me. This goes on much longer, I’ll admit, you’ll kill me. But you’re going to have to work for it first, Coward!”
The words echo in Kara’s mind…he’ll kill her. Daisy thinks he’ll kill her….fuck! Nooo! Kara can’t let that happen! She can’t! She has to be faster. She pushes through the earth and comes out in the first old lead pipe, it seems to be some kind or remnant of an old defunct drainage system, and sure enough, strapped to the pipe is a C4 bomb five times the size of the previous ones. This…this thing would take out the foundations of a large part of the hospital!
Kara rushed forward to grab it and to begin trying to defuse it. Lead covered wires and innards again. She sucks in a stale breath of air and blows out hurriedly…but the damn thing doesn’t freeze like the last one…there is a tacky, almost metallic covering around some of the components. Kara growls, fuck, they insulated the damn thing! Some sort of specialized material? Of course Cadmus wouldn’t use their science for good but to come up with new and intriguing ways to blow up civilians and make their bombs Super proof.
Henshaw takes Daisy’s bait, he sounds enraged. “Coward!? I’m not a coward. I’m Cyborg Superman!” Henshaw’s heavy steps which reveal he is augmented like Corben thump ponderously across the ground.
It would have been funny how easily Daisy riled the man if the woman wasn’t clearly in agony, and barely standing. Daisy wouldn’t quit though, Kara knew it to the depths of her bones. She didn’t know how. Kara half sobbed, half laughed as Daisy cockily replied, “Yes, you are. A sad. pathetic. little man.”
There was the horrible sound of breaking plastic and the gritty, scratching sound of plastic being pulled from flesh. Was Daisy taking off her mask?!
Daisy’s raspy voice was scornful as she egged Henshaw on, “You saw something different, and decided killing it would make you less scared. And guess what, you’ll never stop being the scared little man, making your fear bleed the people you say you give a shit about.”
There was a sizzling sound and Henshaw roared. Kara braced herself, holding the damn C4 like a comfort toy, waiting to hear her mate be blasted back, to hear her cry out. Yet there was no cry. Daisy’s buzzing power sounded like it intensified, and there was an odd ultrasonic crescendo before Daisy laughed, obviously having somehow deflected Henshaw’s attack despite her injuries, “Look around, Coward. You’re a failure.”
Kara didn’t know what Daisy was seeing, what she was pointing out to Henshaw. Stuck below ground in this lead pipe, it was taking everything she had just to hear their conflict.
Kara glared at the bomb, it was too big to detonate in the air. It would likely create a shockwave that would shatter glass and cause numerous injuries. Worse, it would clue Henshaw in that she had found their hidden bombs beneath the hospital. If he knew his plan was thwarted, what havoc would he unleash like a cornered feral animal? Even at such a height as to be harmless, detonating this amount of C4… it would panic civilians when it detonated and it would take too long to fly it that high and come back. Time was against her.
There was a sharp metallic crack which sounded like Henshaw’s metal fist had just struck the proverbial immovable force. The air rang like an ultrasonic bell in Kara’s head, Daisy’s power trying desperately to dissipate Henshaw’s power without hurting him and risking detonating the bombs. That power being turned back and instead hurting Daisy herself.
Kara can hear Daisy’s heart fluttering. It is beating so fast…but it sounds…weaker, less blood with every beat. Her teeth are clenching, a squelch of blood and straining of jaw muscles.
Henshaw is killing her mate.
Daisy had told her that using her powers could have feedback, could injure her, and she was doing everything to control her instinctual need to squash Henshaw, to prevent the hospital from being blown up. Kara swallowed around the need to cry, she had to think.
Can’t disarm the bomb, can’t freeze it, can’t take it up into the air…then the only solution is down.
Kara rushed out of the drainage pipe, rising to the surface and shooting for the coastline in a blue and red blur.
James swallowing deliberately seemed to ring in Kara’s ear, “Come on, run,” he cried, seeingly realizing the terrible price Daisy was paying to distract Henshaw so he and the civilians could flee.
Every booming metallic blow that Henshaw rained down, Daisy’s shell of vibrations sunk into the ground, Kara could hear the tarmac crack, the stone crush and powderise beneath their combined power even as she dove beneath the cold waves of ocean off the coast.
Daisy’s breathing had a wet raspy quality to it which made Kara dive all the faster. She sounded like she was dying, gasping for breath through a collapsed lung perhaps.
Kara was almost glad of the icy sea water around her because it hid the bitter tears that she felt leaking from her eyes.
Kara released the bomb into the watery depths and pushed back before unleashing a shot of heat vision to deliberately trigger it. As she suspected, the lead covered wire she would have assumed was the one to deactivate it, was actually some kind of trip wire. There was an almighty implosion but she had not stayed behind to see it, the water blasted back from the blast and then rushed back, a huge geyser rising hundreds of meters above to the surface…but Supergirl was already gone. She had to clear the rest of the pipes beneath the hospital before she could go to Daisy. She grit her teeth and glared at the world through tear streaked eyes as she flew back to the hospital.
Henshaw was laughing, the sick bastard. There was the creaking and groaning which Kara associated with the pliant metal of a car from a crash or from when she lifted one in combat and threw it at an opponent.
There was a brief ultrasonic buzzing and then the almighty crash of a car hitting the ground, but no screams of dying or hurt innocent civilians.
The only muffled scream belonged to Daisy as there was another sharp snapping sound like the breaking of a crisp celery stick.
Daisy cursed “Shit.”
Henshaw’s ominous marching steps beat against the road as he closed on his prey.
“Why won’t you just die!?” He snarls.
Kara speeds beneath the hospital, uncaringly smashing through stone meters below ground, she can come back and fix it later. She enters the lead pipes and begins super speeding through the labyrinth.
Daisy spat and there was the sound of something skittering across the ground, a tooth? Kara felt her stomach drop again, her breathing coming faster as she pushed her speed even more in panic, praying to Rao that she could be faster.
“I never liked doing what I was told.” Daisy mockingly replied but it was undercut by the weakness of her voice and the sudden dull thump of leather and an injured body hitting the ground.
“I’m going to tear you apart, Alien Scum.” Henshaw snarled.
Kara felt a matching snarl rip from her own chest. She would kill Henshaw…she was going to pull out his spine for hurting her mate! Kara didn’t recognise the almost feral part of herself.
There was a scuffling sound and the distinct but wobbly noise of Daisy’s heavy combat boots hitting the ground. Kara would know her footsteps anywhere. “Better scum than a weak little psychopath,” Daisy sneered.
Fuck, why couldn’t Daisy stay down. Kara was almost done, just a few more tunnels to check…close…so close.
There was an almighty crash, louder and more visceral than any before. A huge boom and a mess of crashes and the sound of tortured concrete pulverizing as Daisy and Henshaw fought.
Meaty, metallic strikes, one after the other rained down on Daisy, a dull echoing and ultrasonic vibrations that made Kara’s head ring.
Then, it stopped as there was the metal clanging sound of something hitting Henshaw, likely his skull.
God bless the heroic idiot. It was James. He had attacked Henshaw, “Leave. Her. Alone.” He commanded as though he could ever possibly stand against the cyborg.
As Kara turned into the last tunnel she choked back a sob, she was going to lose a friend and her mate.
There was the dull blinking of another bomb in the last tunnel, because of course there was.
Kara raced to it. Hoping it wasn’t lead lined or insulated like the last one…but of fucking course it was!
She took off for the surface, racing for the ocean again.
There were sounds of a scuffle, bodies hitting the ground, the heavy metal of Henshaw’s body being one.
Daisy screamed. Legitimately screamed. A ragged sound of raw agony and desperation. Kara felt her muscles spasm in sympathetic pain and she flinched back from the sound. What had Henshaw done to make her scream? Kara fought back the sob as she dove beneath the waves with the bomb.
Even through the dulling sound of the water, Kara could hear the rasping breath as Daisy struggled to breath, her combat boots scraping against the ground as she struggled. They were grappling, Daisy fighting for breath.
Kara threw the bomb the last few meters into the depths of the ocean and blasted it with heat vision but did not hang around. She didn’t even turn in the water as the huge explosion churned the water, displacing thousands of gallons of salt water. She just willed herself to the surface in a straight line, uncaring of anything in her path. As she broke the surface there was a sonic boom, she tore across the sky faster than she had ever flown before. Faster than she ever dared in populated areas. Aerodynamics and the laws of physics bent and the very air wavered as she used her powers, as she pushed her flight to throw herself towards Daisy without delay. Her usual perfect flying form that graced posters and James’ favourite publicity shots was cast aside for a predatory rush that lacked grace or heroic charm but exuded an aura of power.
Buildings wavered as she passed, the odd window broke with spider webs of cracks. She was barely keeping herself to a speed that wouldn’t wreck the very city she had fought to protect.
She didn’t care.
Her heart beat only for her mate. Daisy. Daisy. Daisy.
Her control was fraying.
She rounded the shattered shell of CATCO and her eyes fastened on the scene below her. Her hearing had let her follow the fight but hearing alone could not give her the full horror of what was happening.
The front of CATCO was in shambles. Broken glass, torn up tarmac, craters, smashed cars and decorative bollards, even the ornamental pink statues of large Cats were smashed to pieces.
Henshaw held Daisy in the deepest crater. His cruel hands wrapped around her neck, squeezing the life from her mate. His face a rictus of glee and savage delight as he drowned in his sadistic satisfaction at killing her lover.
Daisy was trying to wrench him off but her movements were slow and weakening as her restricted breathing wheezed. One arm was clearly badly broken and barely answered Daisy’s instructions to move, flopping uselessly over Hensahw’s arm. A pool of blood was filling the crater, dripping from a head wound and more concerningly from the piece of rebar that was thrust through Daisy’s leg.
Henshaw’s eyes glowed as he prepared to use his cybernetic optical laser to kill Daisy, trapped and prone beneath him.
Something snapped inside Kara. Snapped unlike anything she had ever felt before. The desolation of watching Krypton burn was nothing compared to this, the anger she had felt when she had burned Non’s eyes from his skull was but a flickering candle to the tsunami of rage she felt burn in her body. The part of her mind and heart that usually fizzed with the joy of her growing latching bond suddenly burst into an inferno of primal rage.
Not her mate!!! Her mind cried.
She swooped to the ground behind Henshaw for a clear shot that wouldn’t hurt Daisy. Her feet cracked pavement as she landed.
Her own eyes burned with heat vision and it felt like they would boil inside her skull as she unleashed her power, her fury onto Henshaw.
Boom!
White hot heat poured like a sword from her eyes and crashed into the back of Henshaw’s skull. It didn’t stand a chance. Even with his metal reinforcements.
Beneath him, Daisy flinched back, the white light of the heat vision too bright to look at as it immolated Henshaw’s head.
Daisy rolled onto her side retching. The world around her erupted into glowing light so white it was blue and blurs of color. It was like footage from some old nuclear test.
Kara panted in a mix of exhaustion and still bubbling fury, ice frosted the air just past her lips. To those civilians brave enough to still be watching the site of the conflict, Supergirl had never looked so alien.
So powerful.
She was damp from the ocean, her hair half dry from her fast flight and patches of dust covering her. She panted like a race horse, her fists clenched so veins and tendons stood out sharply.
Even with her attack finished, and the smoking corpse of Hneshaw falling into the crater,
Supergirl’s eyes still glowed like a vengeful gods.
Her eyes burned with heat vision and wisps of instantly evaporating tears floated before her eyes. She stood there, planted, as she realized Henshaw was finished.
The threat to her mate was gone. He was dead. He was wiped from this world as was only right and proper for one who dared attack the mate of one of the House of El.
Something feral and primordial rejoiced in Kara’s head at his death. Foreign and so unlike her usual hopeful and forgiving demeanor. The place in her chest that she associated with the latching bond hummed in satisfaction.
Then, then the world came rushing back to her, her rational mind and her true priorities: Daisy!
She spun and shot for the mangled heap that was her mate, her Daisy.
“No, no, no, no, no, no.” she mumbled as she raced towards that too still form.
She dropped to the broken ground beside her mate, uncaring of how the ground gave way. She knelt like a supplicant before her god, hands hesitant to touch the broken form, yet desperate to know if she lived, desperate to touch her, to offer comfort. Daisy’s heart beat slowly, too slowly for her alien mate.
Everywhere Kara looked seemed to be blood, injuries and signs of broken bones. Where was even safe to touch?!
“Da- Quake, oh no, no, no, no.” Kara beseeched.
Daisy wheezed, her lolling head twisting slowly to face her, blackened and swelling eyes cracking open. “Sup” she hissed between shallow bubbling breaths that were barely there.
“Oh Rao,” Kara reached out, brushing the synthetic purple hair out of Daisy’s bloody face, her hand fluttering over the horrifying rebar through her leg.
She was hurt…but she was alive. Her mate was alive!
The End.