Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kara never thought she would pray for a nightmare.

She never thought she would choose to live in their haunted visage.

But her nightmares had always ended.

She had always survived them.

But from this there seemed to be no waking; no end that could be found in the daylight. There was only pain and darkness too real to be forgotten.

Her heart hammered against the heaviness in her chest as she took in another unforgiving breath. The air was stale and dense as it rattled in her lungs.

She didn’t want to open her eyes.

She already knew what she would find. Already feared it.

It had always been the same and it was the same again now.

She started to think that maybe her memories of being Kara Danvers weren’t real. That maybe she was still there, that she never made it out of that pitch-black space.

Maybe it was all a lie. Maybe believing it had been the only thing that allowed her to survive.

But then the pain starts to fade, and the world she remembers begins to feel more real again.

She tries to find comfort in it, but still there is darkness; still there is the heaviness in her chest; still each breath feels too short, too lacking.

She tries to lift her arm, tries to pry the weight from her chest but something holds it back. She struggles against it, tries again, tries harder, but the weight only gets heavier and eventually there is nothing to do but give in to it. Nothing to do but pray again for it all to be a nightmare she could wake up from.

----- ----- ---- ----

When she opens her eyes again, the darkness has shifted. Light filters through at the edges of her vision and she thinks she hears her sister’s voice.

Let’s herself believe for a moment that her memories were not a lie after all.

But when she tries to listen for her heartbeat, searches for its comfort, she cannot find it, and she is left to think again that it is only a figment of her pain.

Eventually, the sounds fade altogether again into silence as her body starts to feel too tired, her mind too weak. But she doesn’t want to close her eyes.

That had always been the worst part.

Because even though she couldn’t count the seconds that passed — couldn’t tell them apart from the years — her mind was trapped in its awareness, in its pain, in the knowledge that her world was gone; that she was alone.

----- ----- ----- -----

This time she wakes to the feeling of something gripping her hand. She can feel the pressure that surrounds it, but it’s only the ghost of something familiar. Still, she tries to return it. Wills her brain to make her fingers move. But when she does all she can feel is cold metal.

She wants to yell, wants to scream, but the only thing she manages are the quiet tears she cannot even wipe away.

Something shifts above her, the growing light masked briefly by its shadow. She tries to calm herself, tries to listen to the muffled words that enter her awareness.

“Kara.”

And she starts to cry in earnest this time, choking back a broken sob when she hears her sister’s voice say her name because this time it sounds too real to be imagined.

“Kara. I need you to breathe. I need you to try and take deep breaths. We are right here. We are here with you.”

She hears then the other sounds around her — other voices, a harsh beeping, the shuffle of footsteps. And she tries; she does, and it is harder than it should be, but she manages it.

“Good Kara. Alright. That’s it.”

She tries to move, tries to look around her, but the only thing that she seems able to move is her hand. It’s then that the feeling from before returns, and she realizes now that someone is holding her hand. But still, it feels wrong, like they are too far; like they are not really touching her at all.

“I’m going to turn off the emergency support, and then you’ll be able to see us.”

Kara’s heart stutters at the sound of Lena’s voice but before she can think of what it means that she is here, a mechanical sound echoes around her and she shuts her eyes against the piercing sound, blinking them open again only when the ringing in her ears starts to fade.

The memory of the harsh light behind her eyelids is familiar too. So much like that first time her pod opened. But this time there is no rush of fresh air into her lungs, no reprieve from her confinement. This time she is still trapped. She can feel the panic start to return, watches her breath as it fogs up the glass in front of her.

But then Alex and Lena are there. They are real. But still, she can’t reach them, touch them, feel them there next to her.

Everything feels numb.

And Kara wonders if she was wrong to pray for a nightmare if this was it.

She closes her fingers around the hand in hers again, desperate for some kind of feeling, some kind of proof.

She tries to talk

“I-I-”

But a harsh cough stops her.

She tries again.

“I-I ca-an’t fe-el y-you.”

Her voice sounds foreign and broken.

“I-I ca-an’t feel any-anything.”

The beeping gets louder again, and she wants to cover her ears, wants it to stop, but she can’t, and it only makes everything worse.

“It’s too loud. Alex, it’s too loud.”

She hears the desperation in her own words, sees it mirrored in her sister’s eyes.

From the corner of her vision she sees Lena reach for something and then suddenly the sound is gone but everything is still too close, she still feels too numb. Her hands finally find their strength and they grip around her head as she tries to pry the glass away from her face. She needs to breathe. She just needs to breathe, and she needs to feel something, anything real.

“Kara you have to stop! Kara!”

She sees Alex grab her arms, pulling them away from her face, but she can’t feel her hands, doesn’t understand why she still can’t feel her sister’s hands.

“Kara!”

The sound of Lena’s voice stops her as she holds onto either side of Kara’s head forcing her to focus on her. Only her. Not the sounds. Not the pain. Not the fear. Just her.

And maybe it’s the way she says her name — her name, not Supergirl’s —maybe it’s the tears that fall from her eyes, but she does.

“I’m sorry. I, we didn’t have a choice. You were dying Kara. I had to. I’m sorry.”

Somewhere in her mind, she tries to make sense of the words. She tries to understand Lena’s guilt. She looks between her and Alex, her eyes searching for the answers she can’t find.

“They altered the lead dispersal device. The whole atmosphere was contaminated.”

And Alex doesn’t have to say the rest, because Kara feels the memory of the pain then, the way her lungs had burned with every breath, the sharp pain in her heart with every beat. Knows that it had been real after all.

“We had to put you in a radiation-controlled suit that Lena had designed. It’s the only way right now to make sure you aren’t exposed.”

She sees the pain in her sister’s eyes, knows now that she had to watch her almost die again. Imagines that seeing her like this isn’t any easier.

Kara closes her eyes and for the first time really feels what surrounds her. She opens and closes her hands, feels the cold metal again under her fingertips, recognizes the same feeling everywhere else the suit touches her. She tries to let herself get used to the feeling, tries to be okay with it. But she just wants to hold Alex’s hand, just wants to wrap her arms around Lena. Wants to feel safe and warm and whole again.

“How long?”

Her voice is quiet. Like she is afraid of what the answer could be.

It’s Lena that answers her. The words laced with sadness, and guilt, and hidden anger.

“I don’t know.”

And it’s then that she feels like she might finally break under the weight she feels. But she knows Lena won't give up. That she and Alex and Brainy won't give up. So she doesn't allow herself to give up either.

Instead she tries to remember what it used to be like. What it was to not know how the world around her felt. What it was to not know someone else’s touch. Because it had taken years for her to learn. To not be afraid of how fragile everything was, how capable of hurting someone she could be. She tries to remember what it was to wake up in her pod, to long for her mother’s arms around her; to know the comfort of them only as a memory and then to have to feel as that too eventually faded away.

She tries to remember how she survived it.

Tries to imagine what it will take to survive it again.

Chapter Text

Lena stepped inside slowly, her eyes having to adjust to the artificial glow of the lamps still holding vigil over Kara. She looked around at the surprising emptiness of the room which hours ago had seemed so chaotic. Two tables were pushed together on one side, loose sheets of paper and broken pencils scattered across the surface next to blank screens, their purpose having long since been abandoned. In the center of the room she saw Alex, arms crossed, fingers rubbing small circles over the fabric of her uniform as she stood next to Kara’s bed. She looked younger than she had ever seemed to Lena. But more than that she looked like someone who didn’t know who they were or what to do; she looked lost. Lena hesitated just inside the doorway. She didn’t know if Alex would want her there. Because she had thanked her before, asked for her help, told her how much it meant in a way that Lena thought maybe she knew, but still, this seemed like a moment that wasn’t meant to be seen.

She was so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t heard Alex call her name, hadn’t realized she was talking to her.

“Sorry.” Lena’s voice was quiet even in the emptiness of the space.

“It-it’s okay. Did you find something?” And Lena hates the hint of hopefulness in Alex’s voice because she knows she has none to offer.

“No. I just – I wanted to check on her again. Make sure the suit was functioning correctly.”

It wasn’t a lie. But not the truth either.

Alex nodded, and Lena stepped closer, watching as she reached out toward her sister, her slightly shaking hand running along the edges of the metallic crest on Kara’s chest; fingers tracing the unfamiliar material as if desperate to recognize something of comfort in it.

And she wishes there was some other kind of comfort that she could offer her. But, she wasn’t good at this. She wasn’t good at saying something. She was the person who broke down in silence. She was the one who pushed everything so far down inside herself that it had no choice but to be hidden. She wasn’t good at this. She wasn’t who Alex needed. Alex needed her sister. And the truth was Lena needed her too.

She took a deep breath and stood quietly next to her instead, willing her presence to be enough, to prove what words could not; you are not alone — Kara is not alone.

“She is going to be so scared. She —” Alex hesitated. “When she wakes up, she’s going to be scared.”

And it’s then Lena starts to understand Alex’s helplessness as something more. Because she knows the stories of Supergirl’s past, knows them from Lex’s journals and little pieces of it Kara lets slip, but she isn’t sure she ever understood them until now. Because when she looks down and thinks of Kara, Kara not Supergirl, she thinks of how she always insists on taking the stairs, how they always walk to lunch. She thinks of them standing on her balcony, of the way she sleeps with the windows open.

She glances at Alex, who just looked back hopelessly.

“I don’t want her to have to be scared.”

And Lena tries to think of what she can say, what words there are to assure her that even if Kara is scared, she won’t be alone; that if Alex can’t be there, then she will. And the words are hard to find because she isn’t supposed to care that much, because to the world she has to pretend that seeing Kara like this isn’t killing her. So, she doesn’t say anything, but she stays, and it feels like promise enough.

----- ----- ----- -----

Kara had started to wake up. Brief instances of awareness marked by confusion, by hands trying to grip at her chest.

Each time Alex was there, her voice gentle and reassuring, trying to give her something familiar to hold onto. Lena held back words of her own she wished she could say, her heart already aching with guilt a little each time that Alex couldn’t even call her sister by her name because she was there — because she wasn’t supposed to know. But still, she couldn’t stop herself for holding onto Kara’s hand each time, of trying to offer her own comfort. And if Alex notices she doesn’t say anything.

The next time it happens the numbers on the monitors are erratic and Lena automatically grabs Kara’s hand again, only this time she feels her grip back and for a moment she allows herself to feel relieved, but then Kara’s body is arching off the table, her chest heaving as she starts to hyperventilate.

And then Alex is calling her sister’s name, too worried to remember that Lena is there, or too scared to care anymore.

“Kara.”

But the alarms continue around them, and there is no evidence that Kara can hear them, that she understands what is happening.

Still Alex tries to get through to her.

“Kara. I need you to breathe. I need you to try and take deep breaths. We are right here. We are here with you.”

And it’s only seconds, but it feels like so much longer until her chest finally starts to rise and fall slower; deeper.

“Good Kara. Alright. That’s it.”

Her head moves side to side and Lena holds onto her hand afraid to do anything else. It’s then she remembers that she can’t see them, that the suit is only in life support mode.

“I’m going to turn off the emergency support, and then you’ll be able to see us.”

Quickly she moves to the tablet next to the bed, letting go of Kara’s hand to toggle the suit's controls.

And then for the first time in more than a day, she hears Kara’s voice.

“I-I ca-an’t fe-el y-you.”

But it sounds wrong, the words broken like the thoughts are barely pieced together, like she is still somewhere else.

“I-I ca-an’t feel any-anything.”

The monitors spike again causing another set of alarms to go off.

“It’s too loud. Alex, it’s too loud.”

Lena reaches again for the tablet disconnecting the feed to the monitors. But it’s too late, and Kara’s panic returns, her hands grabbing at the helmet, trying to find a way to pull the visor off.

Alex grabs Kara's hands, pulling them away from her face trying to stop her from damaging the suit, trying to not have to watch as her sister suffocates again.

“Kara you have to stop! Kara!”

And Lena watches as Alex starts to lose control, starts to break because this is what she had been afraid of, that they had saved Kara from one monster only to have to lose her to her own demons. And it’s too much to think that she might be right, so Lena holds onto the side of Kara’s head, eyes focusing on her, trying to imagine the familiar blue of the ones underneath looking back at her.

“Kara!”

And this isn’t how she imagined it at all. How she thought she would finally admit the truth she had known now for so long. Because it never really seemed this important before. Even when Kara pushed her about the Kryptonite, even when she said things she regretted in anger. Because she understood what Kara needed from her. She understood that she needed to be vulnerable, that she needed to be flawed and imperfect and loved despite of it. She understood because she needed the same things. But Kara needed too much else from her now. She needed her to save her, she needed her to find a solution that no one else could. And Lena needed more too. She needed to be able to comfort Kara, she needed to be able to hold her when this was over, and in case she was wrong; in case she failed, she needed to be able to tell her that she loved her.

“I’m sorry. I, we didn’t have a choice. You were dying Kara. I had to. I’m sorry.”

And she feels so angry, so guilty because it was something she made that did this.

Alex’s voice is calmer again as she speaks, trying to help Kara make sense of everything that was happening.

“They altered the lead dispersal device. The whole atmosphere was contaminated.”

Lena sees her nod her head slightly and knows Alex doesn’t need to say the rest. Remembers the pain that Kara once described and knows it wouldn’t be something she could forget.

“We had to put you in a radiation-controlled suit that Lena had designed. It’s the only way right now to make sure you aren’t exposed.”

The guilt in her chest eases slightly at the gratefulness in Alex’s eyes, but Kara’s silence goes on too long for it to go away.

“How long?”

And Kara’s voice sounds so small and so broken that it makes the guilt and anger turn into fear. Because as she looks down to see Kara’s hand in hers, she tries to remember the last time they held hands, the last time she felt the warmth of Kara’s skin against hers. She tries to remember because she is afraid to forget. Tries to remember because she knows there is a chance she won't ever be able to feel it again.

“I don’t know.”

Chapter Text

In the end it takes two weeks.

Two weeks.

Fourteen days.

Three hundred and thirty-six hours.

Twenty thousand one hundred and sixty minutes.

Some measured by nightmares, some counted in heartbeats; others lost to fear or heard in broken prayers.

In the end it takes two weeks, but the first night is the longest.

The one that is the hardest to accept.

That cannot answer as many questions as it asks.

How did this happen?

How can they fix it?

How long will it take if they can?

What will happen if they can’t?

And there are other questions too. Ones about her and Lena. Ones about truths and lies and forgiveness.

But when they finally talk it’s a conversation lacking all the things that Kara really wants to say, the questions that she really wants to ask, because it doesn’t feel right to say them like this. Not when Lena can’t see her, not when she can’t touch her, not when the things that need to be said require more than words to prove them. But words are all she has to offer in that moment so she uses them to thank her for coming, for staying, for saving her in more ways than she realizes and more times than she remembers.

----- ---- ---- -----

The first night seems the longest, but it’s the second day that feels the hardest.

Because she still has to try and be the hero the city needs.

Because Alex keeps asking her not to be.

Because sometimes we feel angry because we feel helpless.

And because Lena doesn’t come back, not after the fight at the pier, not after Mercy.

Lena doesn’t come back, and Kara knows that she is alone, that she’ll convince herself that somehow she deserves to be, that she will think of Mercy the way she thinks of Lex and no one will be there to tell her how wrong she is. And nothing about that feels right or fair, but Alex won’t let her leave, and she doesn't know what she could do even if she did, so Kara asks her to make sure Lena is okay instead, asks her to be there when she can’t. And despite everything that’s happened, Kara smiles when Alex sends her a picture of Lena asleep on the couch in her apartment wearing one of her old NCU sweatshirts that she thought she had lost.

----- ----- ----- -----

The third day she lets herself feel hopeful.

She lets herself feel hopeful even though she promised herself she wouldn’t. Because Kara knows that hope can destroy someone as much as it can save them but when Lena looks at her she realizes how much she needs her to have hope for both of them, how much she needs her to believe in her like she told her she always would.

So Kara breaks her promise to herself to keep the one she made to Lena. She lets herself feel hopeful as they tell her about the nanites, when they show her the clean room they’ve managed to build, when she takes off the suit for the first time and it at least feels like she can breathe easier like this.

She lets herself be hopeful and tries not to think about how isolated she still feels, tries to hide the restlessness of her hands as they run along the rough sheets of the bed or the way they rub up and down her own arms mimicking the memory of someone else’s touch.

She lets herself be hopeful because hope is easier to give than it is to have even if losing it still hurts the same.

----- ----- ----- -----

It takes 12 days for her and Alex to fight again.

For her to ignore her sister’s orders and Lena's warning.

But the Children of Liberty target one of the refugee centers and the fire was spreading so fast that she couldn’t wait for Brainy to clear the building, that she didn’t see the lead-encased bomb in the basement.

And when it happens she has just enough time to hear the warning that comes over her coms, to turn her back toward the blast, to shield the last person still held in her arms.

The force sends her slamming into the ground, and it isn’t the pain fron the impact that she feels most. The screen of her visor is scrambled, but the flashing lights and beeping alarms tell her what her body already knows — that a piece of shrapnel had punctured the suit.

Her hands try to find it, try uselessly to cover it. She sees Alex’s face through the fractured screen, hears Lena’s voice in her ear — Alex who had to watch as she struggled again to breathe, Lena who had to listen.

Everything that happens after happens in pieces. Brainy and Lena pulling the suit off of her, Alex dragging her into the decom station and then into the clean room.

And somewhere her mind registers the irony of it all; that this was the only time she had felt someone else’s touch in over a week but she wasn’t even conscious enough to know it.

Eventually, they get her stable, but it takes another 6 hours for her breathing to even out and another 12 until the last of the kryptonite leaves her lungs.

Alex stays the whole time, standing on the other side of the glass as she watches the monitors and Kara lays under the sun lamps. But it wasn’t until that night that Kara saw Lena again. She pushes past Alex and comes up to the glass without pause, eyes red-rimmed and tired, the same clothes she had been wearing that morning wrinkled and her feet bare. Kara stumbles off of the bed and onto unsteady feet, stopping only when her hands meet the barrier between them. She tries not to cry as Lena’s voice breakes with an anger born from fear when she yells at her, as she tells her how stupid she was, how reckless. And it’s the first time in more than a week that she isn’t able to ignore the part of her that needs to touch Lena, that needs to hold her, that wants nothing more than to be able to comfort her. But all she can do is let her hand rest on the glass and wait until Lena stops, wait until her words are replaced with tears, wait until Lena’s hand rests against the same place as her own and hope that it's enough.

And that night it’s the first time she lets herself break down. And that morning, she promises to listen next time. She promises to hold back when she needs to, to be more careful when she can't. She promises them both she won’t always try to be a hero. And she knows the last is a promise that she will break one day, knows that if it means Alex’s life or Lena’s that she would break it every time, break it over and over. But still she promises because after everything she owes them that much.

----- ---- -----

It takes two more days for the atmosphere to clear.

Two more days until she is able to find comfort in the things she had tried to forget, the things she tried to convince herself she could survive without.

And it’s just before midnight on the last day when Lena shows up at her door.

And Kara still hasn’t held her like she knows she needs to.

Still hasn’t been able to prove to her the things she wants to.

Because it had all felt like too much at first. Like every touch made the world feel louder somehow. And Kara had wanted so desperately to feel everything she had missed, everyone she had missed, but it was all she could manage to feel anything.

So Lena left and Alex took her home and she let herself at least feel grateful it hadn't felt like the goodbye she had been fearing. That there was time enough still to show her she trusted her, that Lena had room enough in her heart to be able to forgive her.

But now, after so long, with no more seconds left to count, they are finally standing in front of each other with nothing left to keep them apart.

Kara reaches out, the movement so impossibly slow, so impossibly gentle it is easy to forget the strength that is held back as her fingers graze the side of Lena’s cheek, as they tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Lena’s hand is just as gentle in return, just as sure as it covers hers and she leans into the feeling of Kara’s simple touch. And until tonight, touching Lena had always felt like a secret shared between her hands and heart but now it feels like something she doesn't have to hide anymore. She wonders briefly if this alone could be enough, but then Lena’s hands are reaching around her back to grab the fabric of her shirt, to pull her closer, to wrap herself around her and rest her head over her heart. And Kara knows for sure then that nothing short of everything with Lena would ever be enough.

But right now, she didn’t need everything, right now what she needed more than anything, was to be held like this, to be forgiven in a way words could not offer, to be made whole in a way she never thought she could be. And she realizes then, there, in Lena’s arms, with the steady rhythm of her heartbeat in her ears, that Lena needs the same thing. So Kara leads them both into her room and she pulls Lena down with her until they are laying down beside each other, and it’s together like that, in the promise of each other’s arms that they begin to feel again, that they accept their faults and vulnerabilities, that they listen to the fears and doubts they’ve kept hidden.

And by the time the sun rises they have both retreated from the numbness that had once felt so safe, and by the time Kara kisses her it’s the only secret she had left to tell.