Chapter Text
You want a better story. Who wouldn’t?
- Time to sleep!
Kara whispered to her little charge. The three of them were cuddled up on the couch, each one on her side, she watched as two pairs of blue and brown-green eyes widened in protest. It was well past their bedtime, she’d allowed them this perk because it was a special occasion, but now they had been awake well past their extension and they needed to close their little eyes and go to sleep.
- But, mommy! - Na’eemah wined sprawling out on the couch.
- You got to finish! - Naa’irah followed after her sister, cupping her mommy’s cheeks in her little hands - We need to know if the princess saved her angel!
The little six-year-old voiced with immense seriousness making her mommy laugh in delight. Everyday that passed the girls got more and more of their personalities and it was both adorable and exasperating.
Naa’irah is a quiet, shy and adorable little girl. She had a seriousness and wisdom beyond her age, but she could also throw a tantrum fit for a brat and she didn’t take crap from anyone; she loves to read with her mom and has an unhealthy obsession with watching things blow up. Her sister on the other hand is a free spirit, loud and bubbly. She was strong minded and always wanted things her way; she loves pretty things and can never get enough of cartoons and loves to drive her moms crazy with her singing.
Kara looked towards the kitchen doorway seeing the love of her life standing there with a smile on her face, she sent out a pleading look only getting a low chuckle and a headshake.
- Came on, monkeys. - she plainly stated and added when seeing the girls turn to her in protest - If you go to bed, maybe, mommy will finish telling the story.
She chuckles loudly when Kara sends a glare alongside a pillow flying her way, she caughts it making her way to her little family; she quickly kisses Kara’s lips before picking Na’eemah up by the legs as Naa’irah climbed on her back. Kara watches with fondness as they all walk upstairs towards the girls room.
They had bought a four bedroom town house when they found out Kara was pregnant with twins, in exchange for the three bedroom one they had planned for. That way each of the twins could have their own bedroom when the time came and still keep a guest room for friends and family.
- Mommy, come on!! - Naa’irah’s high pitched little voice yelled from upstairs making her sigh exasperatedly.
She got up lazily and started making her way picking up odd toys she found in the way. As much as she loved her girls, and the story of how she came to be with the love of her life, sometimes it was a painful retell even when she made it up to be a cute fairytale for the kids. Entering the room she’s greeted by the image of each girl curled up in their own bed and Alex knelt between them whispering conspiratorially.
- Mommy sometimes gets emotional when telling this story so be gentle, okay girls? - she softly whispers - Remember when mama explained that some stories are based on real life events? - both girls nodded - I know mommy says it like a fairytale, but some of it happened in our lives and mommy still feels a little scared over it, so if mommy says no, what do we do?
- We accept it and go to sleep! - both girls answer in a staged-whisper.
Her heart swells with love at the earnestness in both their girls' voices. She walks slowly into the room and suggests they move to her and Alex’s bedroom so they can cuddle properly while she finishes telling the story.
The girls immediately get up and run with happy squeals towards their moms’ room.
- You know they will understand if you don’t finish it, right? - Alex asked after pressing a kiss to Kara’s lips.
- I know. - she lets herself be held in Alex’s arms for a while.
They part when a pair of small hands start tugging at their clothes rushing them to get ready for bed so they could cuddle and hear the rest of the story. After changing into their own pyjamas they all settle in bed, the girls in the middle with their mommies on either side of them. Soon Kara starts retelling the story.
Her heart was broken, torn out of her chest and left out bleeding for all to see.
They hadn’t moved from the room, she hadn’t moved away from the bed, it couldn’t be real. She couldn’t have come so far only to be left hanging and disappointed. She did it. She worked the serum, she managed to get the last ingredient. She went trhough all that pain, all that hurt, all that ensued getting that stupid serum to work.
But Alex was still dead, her heart stopped beating, her skin was cold and pale and lifeless.
Kara sat with her face in her hands, uncontrollable heartbreaking sobs ripping through her throat. Eliza not so far from her in the same conditions, none of them could believe it, they couldn’t accept it. It felt unreal.
It had only been five minutes since she had arrived into the hospital but it seemed like an eternity had gone by them, like she lived a whole life in a single minute without Alex to hold her hand. Her sobs turned into a quiet and dejected cry. It felt like she lost a world all over again.
And all the noise came crashing down on her, like a tidal wave. She was surrounded by every newborn cry inside those hospital walls, every last breath, every mournful family, the car horns outside the hospital, the shouts and quiet whispers of help. She covered her ears as a loud whimper escaped her mouth trying to tune in to a heartbeat that wasn’t there anymore.
They had tried to get her accustomed with Eliza’s and Jeremiah’s heartbeat but they didn’t feel right. Jeremiah’s was a tad too loud and Eliza’s was too fast. Alex’s was steady and calm, like an afternoon in the sun on a quiet beach, it brought her comfort whenever she got overwhelmed like this, whenever everything got too much.
She felt hands on her arms and a whispered voice trying to help her, to calm her down, they were probably talking at a normal volume but all she could hear was the loud clutter of the outside world and then silence.
It all became silent as she heard it. The little struggle that was always there. The small hitch in the flow, the stop in the beat.
Her head whipped up, eyes wide and mouth slightly open, she made eye contact with her cousin that stood in the doorway, his expression one of surprise, he didn’t know what he heard but he heard it nonetheless. It took half a second for her to spring out of the chair and to Alex’s side, another half second for her hands to reach hers and her ears to strain further.
Soon a whole cacophony of noises enveloped the room as the machines started beeping widely, extracting a collective gasp from the elements in the room. All the monitos were flashing as a heartbeat soared through the darkness, Alex’s heartbeat.
It was low and unsteadily fast, her whole body started spasming and her hand grasped strongly at Kara’s and her eyes moved around her closed eyelids. Kara looked at her cousin in despair, begging him to do something, anything that could stop whatever was happening and get Alex to wake up safely, Clark looks back at her inquiring and she curses under her breath making his eyes widen in surprise. She racks through her brain trying to think of something they could do.
Before the doctors had a chance to swarm in the hospital room Kara vanished with the wind carrying a spasming Alex in her arms across the sky.
Kal-El shoots out soon after having changed into his super suit to follow after his cousin. They land in the fortress and he has to rush around to try and get a sense of what his cousin was trying to do. Kara was rushing around putting together something, she picked up metal plates, glass doors and a water pump and just as it clicked he rushed up to help her.
She was setting up a hibernation chamber. It was an outdated version of the healing chambers they used in Krypton at the time Kara was there. At the time Krypton stood, the healing one offered more curative qualities for a shorter period of time while this one took longer. It was also effective, so it would have to do so for now.
They snap pieces together, soldering them with their heat vision, reshaping outdated parts and finally getting the hang of the design.
Kara goes to pick up Alex’s overheating body from the camp bed she had been laid out in, her body stopped thrashing around but her vitals were still all over the place. She started walking towards the chamber just as Kal fit the last piece on it; she felt a sharp pain in her arm but pushed it away in order to get Alex inside and have her healing faster.
They set her up, an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth, resting her body against the cold metal of the chamber, getting a hiss of relief from the girl, Kara’s heart thumping loudly in her chest at the sound. The door was closed and soon it started filling with a water solution laced with the serum Kara had worked on. As it fills completely, the pentagon shaped chamber elevates in an upright position and Alex’s body flows in the water freely.
- Do you think it will work? - Kal-El asks her apprehensive.
- It has to work. - she whispers in a quiet sob clutching her hands to her chest.
- What happened to your arm? - he exhales allarmed.
Kara looks down at her arms and notices the angry red marks on it, what happened? Did she scratch herself? Did she stumble on something strong enough to maul her steel like skin? She hadn’t felt anything like that.
He took her arm and examined it, it was already healing with the amount of sun she soaked in but for it to still be that red and painful looking it must’ve been a deeper wound. His eyes widened in shock and he looked towards the chamber where Alex’s body spasmed occasionally, he looked back at her arm before shaking his head and looking up at his cousin inquisitively.
- How exactly did you manage to break the formula? - he inquired suspiciously.
- Well, I didn’t exactly have the neuro-herbs they used to enhance the serum… You know, they grow it… naturally. - she answered sheepishly.
- What did you do Kara? - he urged.
- I, hm, created some… - she was looking anywhere but him - Using database genetic material, kryptonian genetic material. I was going to use mine, but I didn’t know how it would interact so I did basic material, it was more… malleable…
His expression falls into an astonished one at the implications of what she’d done. Her actions could’ve possibly altered Alex’s genetic structure, it may not even work as a way to save her, it could’ve damaged her on a cellular level.
They wouldn’t know until Alex woke up, if she woke up at all.
It had been two weeks, two whole weeks of Alex being inside the chamber.
She knew it worked slowly but she didn’t think it would be this slow, it was supposed to be an advanced piece of technology, it was excruciating to watch Alex being afloat inside that thing for days on end. Eliza and Jeremiah had been brought to the fortress to see her, to see that she was still alive. But they couldn’t stay there the same way Kara and Clark could, even if they really wanted to.
They were all currently in the fortress, it was a saturday just past mid-day, normally on those days they would have a late breakfast and lounge around the living room watching movies and having family fun together. Now they are sitting around waiting on a miracle.
They kept the subject of conversation light, only brushing along easy subjects, never going more than five words at a time. Always attentive, watchful, concerned.
Somewhere around two in the afternoon Eliza and Jeremiah were getting ready to be taken back to midvale when a sudden beep echoed through the fortress. A sudden stillness breached the air, tension filling everyone’s body.
It was followed by another beep, and another, and suddenly it was a succession of beeps and the sound of water slouching around.
Kara’s heart stopped for a split second before it began thumping wildely in her chest, she turned her body slowly in the direction of the chamber, apprehensive looking in it’s direction, her mouth hanging open as she stared at the image before her eyes.
A soaking wet Alex, hair sticking to her forehead, still in the pair of short leggings and a sports bra that she had been using under her hospital gown, eyes wide and terrifiedly scanning the area. Her eyes land on the blonde across the way and a flicker of fear passes through her face before recognition sits in and a smile graces her features. Kara on the other hand stands there paralysed, unable to believe her eyes.
It worked.
It had actually worked and Alex was sitting there, alive, and looking at her with that charming smile of hers as if nothing happened. As if she’d never died and broke Kara’s heart.
- Did I die? - she asks in a hoarse voice and the trance is broken.
Kara feels her body move before she registers that she’s walking forward. She feels impressively strong arms circle her waist as her body collides with soft skin that was surprisingly warm, as if it hadn’t been on water just mere minutes ago. The sob that escapes her lips is tortured, loud and sorrow filled, she wipped loud and brokenly, like a little kid, like the little kid who lost her home and has now just found her way back to it. She soon felt another pair of arms joining their embrace and allowed herself to feel everything she had been stopping herself to feel from the past few months.
She felt Alex’s lips touch the crown of her head in a gentle, soft kiss as Alex whispered her love to the blonde. She felt it like a promise, like a future waiting to be built and for the first time in a while she smiled big and happily.
- That’s it? - Na’eemah screeched out undignified - It ends like this?
- What about the scratch on the princess arm? Did the potion change the angel? - Naa’irah fired up, after her sister, getting up on the bed with her hands on her little hips.
Kara and Alex both shared a look before softly chuckling at their girls. Of course they would not get satisfied with a happily ever after, they always need to know more and know it to the last detail with great explanation, they really are their mothers’ daughters.
Kara pulled the little six-year-old to her lap and drowned her in kisses before moving on to her sister and doing the same. Both girls settled back in their mommies arms with tired yawns rubbing their eyes. At Alex’s nod she resumed telling the parts she let out of the story, the after.
After probably an hour of their crying together, Alex’s stomach growled loudly, extracting a loud laughter from them all and Alex turned as red as a tomato from it.
They all got up and Kara rushed to get the clothes Eliza had brought for when Alex woke up, because she was certain Alex would wake up just as much as Kara was. Clark had left to go grab food for them all as Alex cleaned herself and got dressed in a plain white shirt and a pair of jeans, pretty much similar to Kara’s current attire, which spiked the blonde’s mind.
- Aren’t you cold? - she asked, confused.
Alex looked at her with confusion written on her face as well. She wasn’t cold, she knew she should be freezing being in the arctic without layers on her body.
Kara took a step over to Alex and started examining her, she looked the same, but different at the same time. Her body seemed to have magically gained back all the weight she had put off the last few months, she looked even more toned than before. Her skin looked thicker, and her whole body exhaled a warmness similar to the way hers and Kal-El did.
- Did… Did the serum do what I think it did? - Alex stuttered out her question, eyes wide in concern and range of fear.
Kara nodded her head slowly trying to wrap her mind around the fact that she had potentially managed to make Alex, to some unknown extent, Kryptonian-like.
- What are you talking about? - Jeremiah asked worriedly.
- I… I think they are implying that… the serum turned Alex - Eliza turned her whole body to look at her daughter - into Kryptonian.
The room fell eerily silent as the words sunk in on each of their heads.
Jeremiah was the first to act. He walked up to Alex and in a swift motion punched her on the arm making Eliza and Kara screech out a scream of his name in surprise and worry. Their faces soon turned from worry to shock as Alex simply stood there looking at him as he clutched his hand crouched down in pain. Alex and Kara shared a long look before bursting out in laughter.
- Let’s see what else I got!
Alex exclaimed, grabbing Kara’s hand and dragging the girl with her to a more secluded area. She stopped mid-stride realising that she managed to pull Kara along with her.
- I guess we can cross superstrength and superspeed.
Kara said nonchalantly, pointing to where Alex had been standing and where Kara was, which were a good feet away from each other. Alex’s eyes widened in pure shock at her lack of awareness of it, she had just crossed that distance in mere seconds without noticing it.
Soon they were all huddled around a table eating the food Kal-El brought, which was enough to feed an army, and with the addition of Alex’s newfound appetite, it seemed like it was true.
They later found out that not only Alex had gained impenetrable skin, super speed and super strength; she had also gotten the ability to fly. She had almost all the superpowers they had, with the exception of heat vision and freeze breath. Kara and Alex were both thrilled to be able to go flying together side-by-side instead of Kara carrying Alex in her arms.
As soon as they finished their lunch, Kara pulled an excited Alex outside and started coaching her on how to start floating and flying. After yeeting herself around for a good half hour, Alex finally got the hang of it and they were soon flying around carelessly hand-in-hand. They settled down in a small bank of snow far away enough to give them the illusion of privacy.
- Thank you. - Alex whispered after minutes of silence - Thank you for not giving up.
Kara felt the tears prickle at her eyes and the familiar burn in her throat knowing that she was about to cry again.
- I wouldn’t give up, Alex. - she said with a shy smile - You’re my home on earth!
Before she knew it Alex’s lips were on hers in a slow and passionate kiss. Different from the first one they shared. This one was not laced with finality, it wasn’t an end, it was not closure.
This one meant hope and promise. It meant future and promises to come, it meant togetherness and a bond that would last a lifetime.
Kara looked down to see that her three bed mates were fast asleep all cuddled up to each other. She giggled quietly and pressed a kiss to each head in her wake.
She settled down under the covers with a happy sigh. This was home, here with the love of her life and their daughters. This was her happily ever after.
The End