Chapter Text
Lexie is studying the scans from the DEO agents that had had the memory suppressing devices implanted in them by Cadmus. They needed to remove them so that they could figure out what Cadmus was hiding and it would likely help them apprehend the agents that had escaped. Being that she was a neurosurgeon, she was trying to piece together a way to safely remove them but Cadmus had obviously designed them with never having the intention to take them out.
It makes the task seem impossible.
“Are you looking at a study or something?”
She jolts a little bit, having not realized that Derek had come up behind her before he’d spoken. Lexie was pretty much alone at Meredith’s house because everyone else was working and the kids were at school or daycare. But Derek had come home from his shift without her noticing. To be honest she’d been distracted pouring over the information on the Cadmus case despite the fact that J’onn had temporarily banned her from working until her mind healed and her memories were more settled.
What Lexie hadn’t considered was anyone becoming curious about what she was looking at.
“Oh, uh no, this is…” She immediately draws a blank on any excuses that she could use.
Derek is however very familiar with her mannerism when she’s caught off guard like this. She watches as the mental puzzle pieces click into place and he backs off from where he’d been hovering over her shoulder.
“Sorry, I was being nosy. If that’s like special level clearance stuff or something, I didn’t see anything.” He states, clearly perceptive of the situation.
Lexie almost lets him walk away to pretend like he hadn’t seen anything and didn’t have questions, but she doesn’t.
“Hey, wait, actually-”
Derek stops abruptly from his departure from the room, turning his attention towards her as she pieces together her words.
“You’re not wrong but I really need a second set of eyes on this.” Lexie hesitantly says.
He comes back over and sits down on the couch, patiently waiting for her to continue.
“Just don’t mention this to Meredith, I don’t want her to freak out or anything.”
She hands him the tablet that has the scans pulled up. His eyes immediately begin analyzing them.
“These scans are of implants that were found inside of the Cadmus agents. We believe that they are using the implants to block off some of their memories. We don’t know why or what they’re hiding and they only did this with a few of the agents. It’s just the only way to figure that out is removing them without causing any damage which is what I’m having trouble figuring out how to do.” Lexie explained.
“Cadmus is the terrorist organization, the one that took you. Did they do something like this to you too?” Derek eyes her cautiously as he asks.
“They are, but that’s not how they messed with my memories. This is something different they must have come up with after.” She tells him. He nods, not saying much else while studying the imaging.
“Well this would definitely be a task. I don’t know if I’ll be of much help. It’ll definitely require a skilled neurosurgeon. Did you plan on being the one to try and remove it or; is it a conflict of interest or are there security clearance restrictions on who would be allowed?” Derek inquiries.
“Well it’s definitely way above most people’s security clearance at this point, so I’m really the only option which is why my boss has me even looking at it. But I haven’t touched anything this complex in a while.” Lexie admits.That much is understandable, she’d had a shift in her career that left her mostly handling trauma injuries from DEO agents.
“Well, I’m sure if you wanted to you could use the hospital’s simulation labs to get comfortable. We have some great tech available. You wouldn’t have to interact with anyone you didn’t want to.” Derek then suggests.
“I know that it might be a lot of pressure if you were to try and take on patients to get your groove back with surgery but this would probably be easier.” He adds.
“I’ll consider that.”
At the DEO Kara paces as she listens to J’onn debrief everyone.
“-well we’ve checked every property that we’ve managed to uncover as Cadmus and we haven’t found any new information or agents.” He concludes as the debrief ends and everyone disperses to attend to more urgent matters.
Lena sighs as she glances over at Kara who is frowning at the reports on the monitor.
“It won’t do you any good stressing over it Kara. Unfortunately, my mother’s extreme paranoia has made her very good at covering her tracks. Anything we could use to uncover Cadmus’s plans isn’t going to be attached to what we’ve already found.” She wraps a hand around her elbow, trying to coax her away.
“I know, I just wish I could use my x-ray vision and just see through her plans.” Kara huffs.
“If only it was that easy.” She agrees.
A very stressed DEO agent hurries over to the two of them, causing Lena to let go of Kara’s arm much to her disappointment.
“Supergirl, Super-”
He doesn’t even get the word Superman out as Clark appears and he tenses upon seeing Lena.
“What is she doing here? How could you trust any Luthor after everything that’s happened?” He bites out quickly.
Lena however, is not one to back down from a fight.
“That’s rich coming from you, considering you’re her family but you’ve been out here defending General Lane because your girlfriend asked you to help her father. Funny considering you’ve been against him before.” She lashes out, not afraid to get in his face.
Clark is not deterred in the slightest and moves closer towards her.
“I have always been able to trust Lois, but I also know I’ve been betrayed by the Luthors before. Clearly you Luthors are still manipulating the situation, you’ve probably put General Lane under mind control too. Lois knows her father, she doesn’t believe he could do this.” He turns towards Kara and grabs her arm pulling her towards him.
Winn jumps out of his seat nearby instinctively and immediately freezes as he realizes that is not a great idea and seems to be debating whether he should be in the room. Kara yanks her arm back from her cousin without hesitation.
“Clark, enough! I trust Lena. J’onn has read her mind and everyone else’s here. If any of them were involved with Cadmus-” She tries to reason.
“And do you really trust J’onn? How do you know you can trust him?” Clark accuses wildly, causing Kara to look at him bewildered.
“Are you being serious right now? J’onn is an alien like us. He has no reason to ever work with Cadmus. He’s the reason we even uncovered our memories.” She stares at him with a look of disbelief.
“He’s the reason I can even trust anyone right now after everything that’s happened.”
“Anyone except your own family, apparently.” Clark spits out at her.
Kara clenches her fist, a wave of emotions boiling underneath her own skin. Because if family was so damn important to him now what was his excuse when she first landed on Earth. Lena doesn’t have any reservations about throwing that in his face however.
“The audacity of you to even say that, you care more about Lois Lane than you have about Kara. You don’t even find it the least bit concerning that she cares so much about her father right now when she’s spent years going against him and his anti-superman campaign to protect you. Her sister isn’t doing that now and she was daddies’ little girl following in his footsteps and now Lucy is testifying against him. It’s almost like other people caring about you more than your own damn family makes you reconsider who’s really your family.” Her voice climbed with every word.
The words have Clark visibly seething in rage as he flies up in her face, no longer focused on Kara. J’onn has already made it back across the DEO into the room, his eyes glowing red seconds away from changing into his Martian form but it’s unnecessary. As Lena’s eyes widen and her body tenses from him surrounding her, a gust of wind is all she feels as she blinks and Clark goes from inches away to crashing through a wall. Kara’s red cape is billowing in front of her face the next moment.
“You need to leave, now. And if you don’t, I will make you leave or do I need to remind you which one of us is stronger?” Her voice is cold, arm still out stretched to keep him at bay.
Clark lay there stunned for a moment as he looked between them.
“Fine, I hope you don’t come to regret that.” He bitterly replies, leaving with haste.
Kara only eases up once she can tell he is far enough away for her liking. Immediately she turns to Lena with concern.
“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” She asks, looking like she might still hunt him down depending on the answer Lena gives.
“No, you didn’t really give him a chance.” She reassures Kara.
Kara lets out a sigh of relief giving Lena the softest smile that makes her catch her breath for a moment. Then Kara turns to look at the wall that she had thrown Clark into and grimaces.
“Don’t worry I’ll fix that.” She promises to J’onn who looks rather unbothered by the destruction.
Meredith is surprised when Lexie sends her a text asking when she should have some free time so that they could meet for food outside the hospital in the courtyard. For the most part the media spectacle has died down after the Avery foundation lawyers had put the fear of God into them citing patient safety and privacy as well as the multi-million dollar lawsuit that could follow if they continued to try and harass them for a story. But she hadn’t shown her face since the unplanned trip to the hospital.
So she makes her excuses to the residents and other attendings to make her way to the more secluded area in the courtyard. Lexie is already sitting there, a takeout container in front of her as she mindlessly munches down on her own fries waiting and presumably Meredith’s food sits in a container across from her. Meredith pops open the container and sees a matching set of fries and a simple double bacon cheeseburger that has her immediately taking a huge bite out of it. Her sister’s penchant for comfort food was good relief from a grueling shift even if it meant that her sister was clearly brimming with anxiety the way she was demolishing her own food.
“So not that I don’t love you and appreciate the food, but what’s wrong?” She asks bluntly, no need to stall because with her luck Meredith will get called away quickly and Lexie will start consuming her weight in food to abate her nerves.
“Nothing's wrong, it’s just I was curious about maybe doing surgery again. Like part time, at this hospital.” Lexie says, feigning a casual tone.
“Don’t you have a whole job as a federal agent? Are you thinking of leaving because of, well, everything that’s happened.” Meredith gestures vaguely while continuing to eat.
“No,” Lexie immediately begins to clarify. “I just, is it wrong that I want both? Like, I want to take back the part of my life that they took from me but I don’t want to lose some of the things I’ve gained. Not everything was fake. And I don’t want to miss out on what I could’ve had.” Meredith nods along considering her words.
“Also, my boss will probably believe that I’m taking care of myself if I actually process things by doing things I used to do and not just be hold up at the house or work.”
That last sentence causes Meredith to snort, which sparks some contagious snorting from Lexie.
“Well it’s good to see you’re keeping up with the Grey family tradition of how we deal with our trauma.” Meredith cracks.
“Listen, in this family I’m pretty sure we don’t have a choice considering the things we’ve been through.” Lexie tries to justify to her.
“Yeah, it’s a little outside the scope of my therapist’s wheelhouse, that’s for sure. He had to go take a walk during my last session.” Meredith informs her.
The two of them take a moment to settle down from their morbid sense of humor.
“So even though the idea is definitely making you anxious and I can tell by the way you’ve been devouring your food, although I’m impressed you still have any left, you want to do this.”
Lexie nods, more confident than she was earlier.
“Alright, I can set something up with Bailey. She’s the chief right now, so we can figure this out for you.” She tells her.
“Thanks Mer.” Lexie pauses. “Also there were onion rings and a hot dog before you got here by the way, so I was stress eating more than you think.”
“I should’ve guessed.”
Unbeknownst to the two of the sisters, they had some nosy on lookers.
“You know you could just go and say hello.”
Mark let out a startled squeak that in no way fit his normally deep voice as he jumped away from the voice behind him.
“Torres.” He uses Callie’s surname to chastise her. “Don’t scare me like that.”
He turns around to glare at her and sighs as he sees that Arizona is also lurking behind him in cahoots with her wife.
“Mark.” Callie raises her eyebrow at him.
“Callie, look I don’t want to make her uncomfortable. Let’s just let her do things at her own pace.” He defends his decision making.
Arizona rolls her eyes at him before speaking.
“We’re not saying to make any big declarations of love like it’s a Shakespeare soliloquy, just start off by being her friend again. Simple, nice.”
Mark’s pager buzzes to save him from this intervention.
“I’ll think about it, but I’ve got to go.” He knows that they know that it’s a flimsy defense for now. Callie of course has to get in one more word before he leaves.
“You can’t avoid us forever Mark, you made the mistake of sharing a mortgage and co-parenting with us.”
For the second time in her life Kara has lost her entire life as she knew it. There’s no clear path forward. There’s no Krypton for her to go back to. Her life on Earth was a carefully crafted story for her to play a part. To follow in her cousin’s footsteps, to be a hero like him, a reporter like him. She’s not sure that’s what she wanted anymore. Clark had abandoned her, why should she chase his shadow. She feels lost.
At the moment Kara is still hiding out at Lena’s place, going to work is out of the question. Attempting to do anything reporting wise would just be like jumping into shark infested waters wearing kryptonite. Every reporter out there wants the scoop on Cadmus’s brainwashing project.
The only thing getting Kara out of the apartment is an occasional Supergirl rescue. It turns out her life was pretty much centered around work and Alex, so she’s at a loss what to do. She feels bad that she’s essentially free loading at Lena’s so she has resorted to doing anything that could be helpful.
Mostly cooking, light cleaning because Lena is a tidy person. The mess is mostly Kara’s from cooking. Lena’s fridge is fairly packed at all times now. It was pretty bare before much to Lena’s shame because it turns out being raised in a wealthy family means she has never really cooked for herself. She mostly survives on takeout with her busy schedule running L-Corp. So Kara had taken it upon herself to fill the large luxury fridge that was otherwise a waste sitting there.
Currently Kara is finishing up dinner, she’s timed it to be done shortly after Lena arrives back home. The front knob turns and there’s the clicking of heels against tile.
“Cooking again? I know the fridge is huge but you’re running out of room in there.” Lena comments as the smell reaches her.
“Not really, I have the appetite to clear it out just as fast.” Kara justifies.
“Have you done anything besides stock my fridge, like maybe call Alex?” Lena broaches the topic for the umpteenth time.
“Oh that, I uh-” Kara hurries around the kitchen feigning being invested in her task.
“So you didn’t. Kara, you and I both know that Alex wouldn’t be bothered by you. Not in a million years.” She chides her friend.
“She also deserves time to reconnect with her family. I don’t want to intrude on that.” Kara tries to argue with her.
“And I’m sure they’d love to meet you, not everyone treats family like,well, Clark.” Lena pointedly stares down Kara who is avoiding her eyes.
Clark was a sore topic since his recent visit. Instead of apologies he was clinging to denial. It’s like he was trying to absolve himself of any blame for the situation. For abandoning his family. The entire reason Kara had been vulnerable to Cadmus in the first place. Lena had been a little more than pleased that he’d left with his pride bruised. But it didn’t mean that he hadn’t caused any damage. After Lena could only watch as Kara was spiraling.
If she could figure out a way to drag a Kryptionian without using Kryptonite and stick her in the trunk of her car to deliver her straight to Alex she would. Bringing Alex to Kara would probably be a lot simpler if she could guarantee that Kara wouldn’t flee at superspeed. But it’d be preferable if Kara would give in herself and accept that Alex would be there for her so that she wasn’t liable to distance herself in the future.
“Kara-” Lena’s displeased words are cut off as Kara’s phone buzzes on the counter.
In a blink she answered the phone as if nothing was wrong.
“Winn, yep, I’ll be right there.Sorry, Lena, I’ve got-”
Kara doesn’t actually bother to give an excuse, just immediately jumps into Supergirl mode and disappears. The oven is now off and the food is plated as well but Lena is alone as she sighs looking down at it.
Even as Kara literally runs from her problems, it seems like the universe is conspiring against her. Her assistance as Supergirl is short-lived when the emergency is a quick fix. She’s not eager to head back to Lena’s place but she doesn’t have a whole variety of options for hiding out. So her only available refuge is the DEO.
“Got anything else for me, Winn?” Kara asks as she lands.
“I think at this rate National City will have a zero percent crime rate if you continue to have this much free time.”The sound of Alex’s voice makes Kara nearly jump. If she didn’t know that Lena wasn’t fast enough to coordinate this with such short timing she would suspect it was her doing.
Kara turns on her heel towards her but not really looking at Alex but more focusing on J’onn as she tries not to give anything away.
“Well it’s not like Kara Danvers has much of a social life thanks to Cadmus right now.” She winces internally at how that sounds,she’s trying not to worry Alex.
The words don’t cause any concern though.
“Ugh, you’re right about that. I haven’t had much of a social life outside in the real world since all of this happened either.” Then Alex pauses for a moment. “Speaking of that though, I asked my sister Meredith about coming back to the hospital that I used to work at for part-time.”
The words make Kara’s heart twinge a bit, to hear Alex refer to someone else as he sister still makes her irrationally jealous even though she knows better.
“-I figured that I could use the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, I can get some ideas on how to remove Cadmus’s implants and I can rebuild some of my old relationships.”
J’onn nods agreeingly as he hears this.
“That’s good to hear, it’s important to rebuild those relationships to help repair your memories after Cadmus’s brainwashing.” He tells her.
There’s a selfish part of Kara that says to tell her no, don’t do that. But she can’t. She can’t do that to Alex.
“Yeah, that’s a great idea.” She forces a smile to her face instead.
Alex returns a smile in response and then asks a question she wasn’t really prepared for.
“What about you? Have you thought about returning to Catco? I know it’s difficult to be surrounded by other reporters when you’re literally the center of the biggest news story right now.” She asks.
Kara almost flinches at the question. Her job at Catco had been deeply rooted in her desire to follow in her cousin’s footsteps. It all felt so tainted now that everything had fallen apart. She honestly didn’t want that reminder hanging over her, that her cousin didn’t actually care about her. But now she was lost.
“I’m not sure, I actually was considering maybe a career change would be good for me. You know a clean slate, something that I won’t feel like Cadmus had a hand in my decision. You know?” Kara bites her lip, holding back the deeper reasons.
And because Alex has always been a great supportive sister to her she’s quick to validate those feelings.
“Of course, if that’s what you want. You should absolutely do that. Have you had any ideas about what you’re interested in doing instead? I mean we can workshop some together if you want?’ Alex looks for eager that Kara literally can’t say no to her.
“Of course.”
After agreeing to meet up later, Kara has no choice but to cave and head back to Lena’s place. She knows better than to make excuses to J’onn, Winn or James as to why she needs somewhere else to stay. They’ll snitch faster than the Flash can blink.
It’s fairly late as she sneaks back into the guest room, a quick peek around and a moment to listen she realizes that Lena has gone to sleep already. Kara sits on the edge of the bed and stares up at the skylight at the night sky.