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(This world is not your world.)
The first face to greet her on this shining, new planet she’s finally reached is Kal’s. A grown man - not a baby, not a child, but a fully matured adult, with dark hair and blue eyes and the same smile as his mother. He pulls her from her pod - from the last remains of her world, her entire life, everything she’s ever known - and leads her into the wide, open spaces of the United States of Earth.
He doesn’t have many questions past who she is, how she’s there. He has answers to questions she doesn’t voice, can’t think to ask. He promises her he’ll take her somewhere safe. He doesn’t answer her when she asks if they’re not safe where they’re standing. He doesn’t answer her when she asks if she’s in danger.
“I know a family that you can live with,” he assures her, and takes her there before she can ask why it’s not his.
(This world is not your world. These people are not your people. This family is not your family. This home is not your home. You have to remember that. The air you breathe, the language you speak, the clothes you were - this is not yours.)
Everything is wrong. She was supposed to arrive with Kal, supposed to protect him, help raise him, learn this new planet and civilization and species with him. But she’s so late, and Kal isn’t Kal - Kal is Clark Kent, Kal is Superman. Superman is a stranger with a smile that blinds her, and no real grief for a world that he never knew.
He takes her to the Danvers, to scientists, to people who promise to keep her safe and secret, like there’s something wrong with her. They take away her house and give her their surname and dress her in clothes to match the girl they say will be her sister. He tells her to trust them and leaves, because he’s not Kal, he’s Superman, and Superman belongs to this world.
Not hers.
(This world is not your world. No matter what the people who kiss you good morning and see you off to school and tuck you in at night say.)
Kara hates the taste of the atmosphere. Hates how loud everything is. How bright. How flimsy and frail. Hates all the strange smells and the way her eyes see people and then organs and then bones, sees right through them and their walls until she’s staring so far into the distance that she doesn’t know where her vision is, but it’s not even in the same state anymore.
Kara hates the ugly alphabet and letters and the strange numbers and how limited everything and everyone is. Hates how her throat freezes up and her eyes burn and her hands smash and crush and shatter anything if she’s not always vigilantly careful.
(This world is not your world. This sun is not your sun. These stars are not your stars.)
Most of all she hates all the signs that humans and Earth are spiraling towards the same violent end that Krypton met. Most of all she hates the nightmares that are memories of her parents watching her pod take her away, the taste of her tears fresh when she wakes screaming so loud the windows shatter. Most of all she hates the voices of those she knew and left behind, screaming at her - ‘Why was it you? Why did you live? Why did you get to flee?’
(Your world is the rubble and ruins that you see out of the corner of your eyes. Your world is the echoes of dying wails that rings in your ears when you aren’t concentrating. Your world is smoke in your nostrils, your lungs, the lack of oxygen, of any air to breathe that leaves you crumpled on the floor of the school hallway, gasping for what you know is there but your brain and body are convinced it isn't.)
Most of all she hates when they whisper and cackle behind her back and tell her that in the end she can’t escape. Kara Zor El or Kara Danvers, she’ll face destruction and death all the same. She’ll bring this world down with her, she and Kal. Krypton’s reckoning will find them, and it will have them.
(Your world is dead and gone. Nothing but chunks of what was once a planet and asteroids floating in an ocean of stars.)
Most of all she hates the fakeness in her new sister’s smiles. Most of all she hates the ghosts who haunt her every night and day. Most of all she hates the symbol of House El claimed by these people as a symbol of theirs. Most of all she hates the same loud, angry voices saying the same loud, angry denials.
(Your world was beautiful once, like this one. Your world was safe, was home, was solid and stable and certain. Your world was a lie. Maybe in that way, this world is not so different.)
Everything is all so wrong. This was supposed to be a second chance. They were supposed to fix their parents’ mistakes. Kara was supposed to take care of Kal. This world was supposed to become their new home, where they would be safe, and could start anew.
But it's already dying, and Kal is someone she doesn’t know, and she’s only safe as long as strangers keep pretending she’s their daughter, and Kara can’t fix things if all she can do is destroy.
(The people who took you in told you this was your home, this is your world now. They call themselves Mom and Dad and Sister, and they tell you they love you and will keep you safe - but all you see are skulls and bones, charred and ashen. Their skeletal fingers stroke your hair, and their lipless teeth kiss you temples, and you try not to scream.)
This yellow sun that was supposed to save them, make them better, make them something more than they would have been on Krypton, it feels like violence in her veins. She soaks it up and can only spew it back out in brute force or burning vision or freezing breath. She can only scream it out in glass shattering volume. It’s hot and overwhelming and so much more than the red sun of Krypton, and all Kara feels is grief and rage and helplessness.
This world is not her world.
(Your world is gone. All you have left are the ghosts.)