Chapter Text
She vaguely sees her own reflection on the surface of the glass. It’s much easier to look at the distorted version of her face than the actual mirrors in the medbay.
Her eyes are sunken, the purple-ish color under them giving away the sleepless and endless nights of the Phantom Zone. Her face is covered in small and big scars, presents given to her by sharp rocks and merciless creatures— she’s sure the rest of her body looks the same, thinner than usual, covered in markings, numb to almost every stimulus after days, weeks, months of pain and pain and pain.
“Do you not want water?” Alex looks at her curiously, holding the glass in place, waiting for Kara to pick it up.
Water. There’s no water. I need water.
She feels like that glass, the fragility of her being finding comfort in the hands of a loved one. Kara’s always grateful for her sister, but that tenderness in Alex always comes with a side of concern, and Kara knows her physical appearance isn’t what worries Alex in moments like these.
Scars will heal under the sunlamps. Sunken eyes will go back to normal after a couple of days and a good sleeping schedule. But no matter the extent of the medical training that Alex has, no matter how much knowledge she has on helping Kara, she doesn’t know how to fix empty eyes— given by the hushed conversation she had with Kelly.
Kara takes the water from her sister and chugs the whole thing in seconds. She doesn’t look up, even though she feels Alex’s eyes on her. Her gaze remains on the bottom of the glass and she frowns.
“When— When did you go to get this?”
“What?” Alex steps closer to her but she seems to think better of it because she drops her hand before it touches Kara. “It was like… a minute ago. Why?”
“Oh,” she nods.
She doesn’t remember that. Why doesn’t she remember that?
“It’s okay if you zone out from time to time, Kara,” Alex says, finally letting her hand rest on Kara’s shoulder and squeezing it. “No one knows what side effects the Phantom Zone could have.”
Kara nods again, looks up and begs her smile is enough to calm down the worry she can almost feel radiating off of Alex. “Can I get another hug?”
“You can always get another hug,” Alex whispers, her face crumpling with even more pity.
When she wraps her arms around Kara, it helps. At least, it helps Alex. Her sister’s heartbeat has been hammering nonstop, but it begins to slow when she holds Kara for the first time in weeks. Or is it months?
“How long have I been gone?”
She feels Alex stiffen. Too long, Kara thinks.
“Were you okay? Was the city okay?” Kara continues to question.
The illusion fades so quickly after that. The comfort of the embrace becomes suffocating as a shattered reality falls onto Kara’s shoulders once more.
She was here. She was there. But ultimately, she was nowhere.
“We were fine, Kara,” Alex replies. She pulls her body away, bringing herself back to eye level with her sister. “The city was fine too. All that mattered was rescuing you.”
“Rescuing me…”
“Yeah,” Alex nods. She looks hesitant for a moment, worry creeping up on her face, making a permanent home there. “Do you remember the rescue?”
It’s such a simple question. An easy answer, really.
And yet, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t remember. All she knows is she’s cold. So cold. But at the same time, there’s no cold. She doesn’t feel cold, just numb.
“We had to track you by foot,” Alex says, slowly, waiting for a sign of recognition. “All of us. We found you in that cave alone.”
“Alone?” Her answer is rushed, worried. I’m not alone. She’s here. “But what about—”
What about who?
She feels like there’s a name on the tip of her tongue. A name she should remember. A face she should know. But there’s nothing in her mind as if it’s simply refusing to acknowledge the Phantom Zone ever happened. But it happened. Right now, she’s here. But she was there. She wasn’t alone. She was not—there was not—there was—
“We found you passed out in that cave, Kara. Just you,” Alex says, the subtlety of her worries no longer carefully concealed once her voice squeaks.
She was not. I am not alone. She’s here. She. She. She.
She knows, maybe not by memory, but by the dread in her heart. The blood rushing through it, making her anxious and breathless at just the thought of her. She had a name, a weird one that reminded her of someone else. She knows. She knows because her heart never lies when it knows someone might want to cause her planet and her family any harm.
I am not alone. I found her on my second day. She knows there’s a name. Bangs. Chained hands shining with something that was blue. A name. A funny accent that reminds her of a friend. A name. She’s telling me about her father, a betrayal, a painful occurrence. A name. She’s telling me I gave her back her hope—
Nyxly. Nyxly. That was her name.
“Nyxly?” Nia frowns. “Who the hell is that?”
Kara looks around, surprised. There’s an apparent lack of Alex in the room. Alex, who was just here. But she’s not actually here. There’s only Nia, watching her with worried eyes.
“What— When did you get here?”
Her chest feels tighter by the second. Her mind messes with every new thing she tries to think about, only to show up empty handed. Her hands tremble with the unmistakable tick of a vibration, making the medbay’s bed shake under her when she tries to calm it down by holding onto it.
Nia uncrosses her arms and walks closer to Kara. “Just now, after Alex left.”
But she didn’t leave. Kara didn’t see her leave. And Alex would never leave without saying goodbye. They were in the middle of a conversation, one that Kara was having trouble remembering, and yet it also remained so vivid in her mind.
She didn’t know all the details of the rescue, but the memories swimmed around in a bank, waiting to be retrieved. She was too focused. That’s the only explanation. Her mind must’ve disassociated the present from the memory, not giving her an opportunity to let the two coexist. She processed a name but she couldn’t take in Alex’s exit. It was always a give and a take, a win and a loss, but Kara didn’t know how long she could keep that up for.
“Hey,” Nia whispers, placing her hand atop Kara’s, stopping her from shaking the medbay’s bed. “We’re going to figure this out together.”
“Will we?” Even hope was struggling to flow through Kara’s veins these days.
“Of course we will. We got you out of the freaking Phantom Zone and believe me, it wasn’t easy without those stinken Kusar Blades. If we can do that, then we can figure out whatever is messing up your memory.”
“Kusar Blades…” Kara repeats.
“The ones you keep in the Fortress,” Nia explains. Her eyes focus on Kara’s once more. She looks like she is almost pleading, like she’s begging Kara to remember this one thing.
And maybe the shame of forgetting that Alex left the room sparked something in her, because Kara suddenly feels like she could do it. She is determined to remember those damn blades no matter how her mind tries to stop her.
So Kara thinks about it. She closes her eyes and she tries to really think about what the Fortress looked like. She finds comfort in the memory of the delicate stalactites, the frigid temperatures that never seemed to affect her, yet the thought alone now makes her feel cold and chilly. She tries to shake it off and focuses on the idea of the artillery, south of the entrance, which consisted of those other worldly weapons, the ones that could destroy universes.
The Fortress had always been Kara’s way of keeping those items locked away, safe from creating a threat of mass destruction, but she never imagined such a weapon could’ve helped in her rescue.
Her rescue. The rescue she couldn’t remember. The rescue where she was alone. And yet she knows she wasn’t. Nyxly was there. She is always there. Always watching. Always waiting.
What is she waiting for?
“Why couldn’t you get the blades?” Kara asks.
Something isn’t adding up. Nia knows the Fortress. She knows about the blades. She knows about the rescue. Kara doesn’t even know about the rescue. But she knows or… she wants to know?
“Defense mechanism in the Fortress,” Nia says with a frown. “Remember when Lena turned the defences against you? Similar thing happened to us when we tried to go.”
Kara shook her head. Bits and pieces were true but the picture started to look like an abstract mosaic. “Lena didn’t put any defences against you. It was only against me and it was temporary. The system shouldn’t be doing that.”
“That’s what I thought.” Nia drops Kara’s hand and shrugs her own shoulders. “Maybe you can check it out with me then? It’s kind of dangerous if none of us can enter the Fortress.”
Kara lifts her body up, already responding to the prompt call to action. Her body still feels a little sore but she could probably fly there and quickly check it out before needing another sunlight rejuice. Yet, part of her is surprised that Nia isn’t prioritizing her recovery. Usually the team would be scolding her about the importance of rest.
“You want to go right now?” Kara asks, needing that final confirmation.
“I think it’s safest for the city if we check now,” Nia says. She’s already turning away and walking towards the door, not even giving Kara a chance to answer, almost like she is expecting her to follow.
It doesn’t feel right. Nia would never turn her back like that when Kara is in a weakened state, not when they just got her home after all those… months?
She still wasn’t sure how long it had been. It wasn’t coming back to her but something else was, something that resembled a gut feeling about this line of questioning.
“But if no one can get in the Fortress, then it should be safe,” Kara says, testing the waters.
She’s the only one with the strength to lift the key anyway. And most people don’t even know where the Fortress is. Lex had been searching for it for ages but after him there was someone else also searching for it. It was that name again. That other being. Nyxly.
Kara remembers, if only vaguely, that it was in the Phantom Zone that Nyxly was asking her about the Fortress. There was something she needed and it didn’t sound like she would ever stop looking for it.
“I want to be sure,” Nia replies. She’s next to Kara again. “This is for the good of the world.”
A moment ago she was at the door, and now she’s back here. She’s moving around like magic. Like—
“Nyxly,” Kara says, her eyes narrowing on Nia.
“Bless you?” Nia mutters.
“No.” Kara shakes her head. “It’s her name. She was there with me. She was looking for the Fortress. You know that.”
“Kara, I don’t know anything about that. You were alone when we found you.”
The thoughts are fragmented in her mind but they are still present and more reliable than anything in her vicinity. As much as the mirrors in the medbay hid the truth and reflected what she wanted to see, those cracks couldn’t be hidden. Kara saw through them. She saw through Nia.
“She was looking for the blades,” Kara mumbles, remembering the questions, remembering the hours she spent with Nyxly, how she had been tortured and subjected to endless schemes in search of its location. That’s why this isn’t adding up. It’s just another ploy. Another way for Nyxly to get her way. If she gets her hands on those blades, she’d be unstoppable, able to cut even Kara in half with one single weapon. “It won’t work.”
“Kara, you’re starting to worry me.”
She levelled her eyes with Nia’s. On paper, Kara could see the resemblance. She looked like the Naltorian. All the details were right in appearance but not in fact. The only thing Kara had trouble understanding was whether Nia was a conjured up version of Nyxly, or if she’d fallen under her control. Either way, Kara knew she couldn’t let this go on any further.
“You can’t fool me, Nyxly.”
Nia looked alarmed, her eyes widening. “Kara, I know you went through a lot in the Phantom Zone, but I’m not this Nyxly person you’re talking about. We’re going to sort this out though. I’m going to call Alex to help us.”
“No, I’m not letting you get back up,” Kara says. She knows this isn’t Nia. She knows. “You thought you could use one of my best friends against me and I’d just let you walk away from it?”
“It is me!” Nia exclaims.
Kara moves to jump off the medbay bed. She has to take this into her own hands. She couldn’t let Nyxly win. Not again.
“I wish that were true.”
“Listen to me, Kara. This isn’t you.” Nia backs up and charges some dream energy with her right hand. “But I won’t hesitate to protect myself either.”
“I’m sorry, Nia.” Kara says before closing her eyes. She sees Nyxly towering over, a memory of sorts where she is attempting to pull the information out of her. She’s powerless in the Phantom Zone but the heat is boiling behind her eyelids. She can’t stop herself. “But you’re wrong. This isn’t you .”
When she opens her eyes, she doesn’t look right away. She feels the deadweight in her arms, the shaky breath escaping from her lips and the smell of burnt flesh in the air. She doesn’t want to look. She knows what she did. She knew it had to be done. But it doesn’t hurt any less.
For once, Kara thanks her fragmented thoughts for skipping over the moment. It saves her the torment of remembering the exact details of her murdering someone who looked like her best friend.
She drops the body to the ground, but she doesn’t feel the loss of weight. Instead, it feels as if it transferred to her shoulders, regardless of the fact that it was a necessity.
Tears flood down her face. She had no choice. Nyxly is always playing her. Conjuring up a fake Nia is exactly something she would do just to gather some information. So Kara didn’t kill her friend. She didn’t. She simply banished a ghost that was tormenting her.
“Kara, what are you doing out here?” a voice came from her right.
She must’ve blinked because she is now sitting on a park bench, staring at her lap, wondering where the body went. Wondering where she went.
“Brainy I—”
How is she supposed to explain it to him? Is there even an easy way to say ‘I killed a being that was impersonating your girlfriend because she was corrupted by an evil fifth dimensional imp. I don’t know where your girlfriend is right now. I want to protect her and I want to protect this world but the answers are all lost in my thoughts’.
“We’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Brainy starts as he approaches the bench Kara is sitting on.
“You—you have?”
“Yes,” he presses on, his eyes tingling with unwashed tears. “We found Nia’s body and thought something had attacked you too.
“Do we know what attacked Nia?” she asks. Her heart beats, beated, inside her chest. He knows. He’ll know. Won’t he?
His green hand goes to his ear and he walks away before he gets the chance to answer her. The purple and grey of his suit contrasts against the browns and oranges of the park but— was it autumn? Wasn’t it summer? Spring? How long has she been here? In the park? In the Phantom Zone?
“Perhaps it was too soon to let Kara be on her own,” Brainy’s low voice reaches her ears. “She’s acting like she doesn’t know what’s happened to Nia. We both saw the tapes—”
Brainy’s voice breaks, a deep and shaky exhale leaving his lips at the thought.
“That was not Kara,” Lena says through the comms, “whatever that was, it wasn’t her. She’s fine. And we’ll figure it out, okay?”
“She’s not fine. We saw what she did,” he exclaims before lowering his voice, “I’m worried about her too but she’s—she’s delusional. Thinking Nia was this woman— this Nyxly?”
How dare he. She’s right. She knows she is. That wasn’t Nia. Nia would never treat Kara the way she did, she’d never turn her back on her or deprive Kara of the rest she needed. It wasn’t Nia. It was Nyxly. Wasn’t it?
“She’s fine, Brainy,” Lena repeats, her voice filled with conviction. “We don’t know how the Phantom Zone affected her. We just need to figure out whatever’s in Kara and get it out.”
At least Lena’s on her side. If there’s no calmness, no rest, no certainty in anything since she returned, she knows Lena always has her back.
She’s the one constant in everything, no matter what.
When Brainy breathes in and out one last time before walking back to Kara, she makes her best to look away from him and act like she was not listening in to their conversation. But he looks at her strangely, almost with distrust— a look that has never filled Brainy’s eyes, ever.
At least, not when looking at her.
It’s that look, his sad brown eyes downcasted in fear, which makes her agree when he says they should run some tests to check that there’s nothing wrong with her after returning from the Phantom Zone, that is, to check her again. If only for Brainy’s peace of mind, if only to prove to him that it was Nyxly and not Nia.
Wind hits her face and moves her hair from left to right as they fly up into the sky. Brainy’s by her side. He always is. He even tells her what type of bird is the one they come across while they’re flying.
But the man doesn’t turn right to the tower when Kara moves to do so. He floats in the air and looks at her curiously. Kara frowns. “Aren’t you coming?”
“Why would we go to the tower?” he asks.
The waves from National City’s harbor just below Kara catches her attention. Even with the tides moving the shining water from side to side, Kara’s reflection stares back at her once again, tantalizingly reminding her of the cracks in the medbay mirrors.
“Where are we supposed to go?” Kara asks, diverting her attention away from the water and towards Brainy once more. There’s a creased line across his forehead and he looks at Kara as if she’s insane.
“The Fortress, obviously!” He extends his hand north. “Lead the way!”
If Kara wasn’t already still in the air, she would have stopped moving, the same way her breathing stilled. She watches him carefully now. He looks like Brainy. Talks like Brainy. Moves like Brainy. But why would Brainy need to go to the Fortress to get her tested? He has everything he needs at the tower. There was nothing he could gain from going to the Fortress unless—
“It’s you again,” Kara says, her voice low and angry. “You think this plan will work? Pretending to be everyone I love?”
“Kara—”
It’s not Brainy. It's not.
But whoever he is, he raises his hand and Kara flies into him, knocking the air out of his lungs before he gets a chance to hurt her—before Nyxly gets a chance to hurt her. Because that’s not Brainy. He tries to fight back, tries to pull her away. Screams to let him go.
But she’s not stupid. That’s not Brainy. It never was.
The wooden deck breaks when Brainy’s back falls against it and they both end up under the ocean. That’s not Brainy. It’s not Brainy’s mouth letting out bubbles and bubbles of air. It’s not Brainy’s arms that try to fight against her one more time before they go still, limp, beside him.
And it’s not Brainy’s eyes that go empty, lifeless, after minutes on minutes on minutes under water.
“That was not Brainy,” she repeats, the taste of salt and murder on her lips as she looks down.
The body floats up to the surface between a ferry and the broken deck. Kara flies away.
That was not Brainy. Wasn’t it?
She doesn’t dare look back down. Even though she knows it was another mirage from Nyxly, Kara can’t bear seeing what she did to Brainy. Yet, as she continues flying away, she looks at her hands, watching as they shake uncontrollably, the weight of her actions manifesting themselves in a nervous reminder.
She tries to steady them, mashing her hands together, but it only makes them shake even more. It’s only when a stack of papers fall onto the desk in front of her that her hands stop shaking almost like a scare that cures a hiccup.
“Nice of you to join us today,” Andrea says, sarcasm laced in her tone and hands on her hips. “I was beginning to think you didn’t even work here anymore. Now that you’re back you can make good use of yourself and tell me which headline you prefer.”
Kara shouldn’t be surprised at this point but it still feels like a punch to the gut when she realizes she fell through time once more. She looks down at her shirt, realizing she is now in civilian clothing, her super suit forgotten at some point on her journey to Catco. Her hands move to her face, nearly slapping herself as she frantically checks to see if she’s wearing her glasses. When she finds them, she lets out a soft exhale.
Maybe this is for the best. In Catco, she doesn’t have the risk of Nyxly using someone she loves against her. In Catco, she could be Kara Danvers.
In Catco, she could be normal.
“Kara? Are you even with us right now?”
Kara looks up and nods her head. “Yes, sorry. I’ll look at them and get back to you.”
Andrea lets out a loud humph before she walks away and returns back to her office. Her exit gives Kara the breathing room she needs. Copyediting is something she could do. Reporting is her calling and it’s something that has always grounded her. But when she looks down at the articles in front of her, she doesn’t get the distraction she craves.
“Superfriends in Action”, reads the first. Behind it is “All-Star Superfriends”. The pictures on each article are the same: Sentinel, Guardian, Martian Manhunter, Brainy and Dreamer fighting side by side, stopping a couple rogues.
It’s a striking picture, reminding Kara that the team was able to go on without her. They persevered while she was stuck in the Phantom Zone, battling every demon imaginable. Even now, they persevered and she still remained stuck right here.
It didn’t matter where she was staying. Kara would never escape the Phantom Zone. She would never escape Nyxly. She might not even be able to escape her own mind.
Normal, normal, normal, Kara reminds herself. She shuffles through the papers quickly, coming to a decision before rising to her feet and walking into Andrea’s office.
“None of them are good,” Kara announces, her tone resolute.
Andrea doesn’t even look up at her. “Try again, Kara. I think you misspoke.”
“I didn’t,” Kara says. She gulps down all hesitation and continues, “We shouldn’t be publishing pieces like this on the front page.”
This time, Andrea lifts her head. “And what makes you think that you’re in the position to tell me what Catco should or shouldn’t be publishing?”
“These aren’t the stories worth telling. We should be interviewing individuals on the ground who were there the day of the attack,” Kara starts.
The words feel right. She finds her voice with more ease than she has all day long. Even with Andrea sitting there, batting her eyelashes, and looking like she didn’t care for a single word that came out of Kara’s mouth, everything finally feels normal.
“We know the Superfriends saved the day but the focus shouldn’t be on them,” Kara continues. “It should be on the communities that were directly affected by these attacks.”
She doesn’t know what reaction she expects to get from Andrea but she finds herself to be disappointed when all she sees is the CEO twisting her lips from side to side.
“Kara, are you not the least bit interested in what the Superfriends do?”
“Not really, no.”
“Well, that is our problem then,” Andrea says. She rises from her desk and walks around it, approaching the balcony on the right side of her office. “We write about what our readers care about. Not what you care about.”
“That’s not even true,” Kara counters. Anger rises in her, a feeling that she recalls once before, yet which feels out of the ordinary now. “You write about whatever gets you clicks.”
“And it keeps you employed with a steady paycheck despite the fact that you’re never here,” Andrea bites back. She raises her eyebrow as a way of getting the final word in just before stepping outside on her balcony.
With her back to Kara, the only real focus becomes the sun beaming brightly behind her. It causes glares all around the glass panels of the balcony, which reflect back to Kara, making her stomach churn in the process.
Kara looks away.
“There are so many unanswered questions out there,” Andrea mumbles. She turns to look at Kara. “Many of us are curious about things we don’t understand. The Superfriends are one of those things.”
“They help the city and that’s all that matters,” Kara says but her voice feels harsher than she intends. Something about her isn’t right. No matter how hard she tries, something within her isn’t feeling normal.
“But what do they do for a living!” Andrea exclaims. “The world wants answers! Is Supergirl seeing anyone? Where is her Fortress hidden? Does she handwash the supersuit or use a special fabric softener?”
And just like that, Kara’s world stops turning. Catco is typically her safe haven, the only place where she could get away and be normal outside of her family.
But normal didn’t feel normal here. And loved ones or not, the result is always the same.
“She got to you, too,” Kara whispers.
Whether Andrea hears her or not, she doesn’t know. “Chop Chop, Kara. I want answers.”
It all feels so familiar. The balcony. The way that Andrea is talking to her. It’s the right setting, the right moment, but the wrong players.
So, when Kara lifts her arm up and grabs onto Andrea’s blazer, she knows what comes next. She knows about the throw, the scream down forty flights, and the inevitable save at the bottom.
She’s done this before.
But as the screams are heard around the city, Kara tells herself that this is different.
This isn’t Cat. This isn’t even Andrea. This is someone that is trying to destroy the world. This is someone that is determined to make Kara’s life a living hell just to get her way.
Andrea wouldn’t care about the Fortress. She shouldn’t even know about its existence. But Nyxly would care. Nyxly does care. And she’s proven time and time again that she will stop at nothing just to get Kara to reveal the Fortress’ location.
The chaos is easy to tune out after that realization and Kara doesn’t even look at the crumpled up figure on the floor. She doesn’t acknowledge the blood splattered on the pavement around them. She doesn’t even feel the Green Kryptonite being inserted into her neck, or J’onn hovering over her body and talking to someone in his ear.
“It must be Red Kryptonite,” are the last words that she hears before her eyes shut.
When she opens them once more, she finds herself in a new room, seeing Kelly peacefully sitting on her sofa with a cup of tea in hand.
“I thought they were holding you at the Tower?” Kelly says, standing up abruptly once she recognizes Kara.
“I—I don’t. I don’t know,” Kara stutters. Because she doesn’t. She doesn't know how any of this is happening or how any of this is possible. All she knows is that it’s all wrong.
She puts her hand to her neck but she doesn’t feel anything. She knows they must’ve contained her, questioned her, tested her, and yet here she is, standing in Kelly’s home, with no one watching over her and with no apparent weaknesses despite the kryptonite injection she knows she received.
Her chest contracts painfully, air fills her lungs, hits the back of her throat— but it’s cold, empty. Is it somehow the wind that Andrea created as she fell down? But, even then, should it be cold? Isn’t it summer? Or was it autumn? It’s empty. Nothingness. She’s there.
No, she’s here. With Kelly. In the pretty little apartment she and Alex bought, with the light coming through the windows and reflecting itself on Kelly’s engagement ring, blinding Kara momentarily. But she still feels like she’s choking, like Nia’s last breath, but on what? There’s nothing here.
“Kara?” Kelly’s shooting voice calls, pulling her back in. “Are you alright?”
Yes is on the tip of her tongue. An automatic response she had feeding and feeding her entire life, so reflexive as breathing, as flying. Because Supergirl is always okay, she has to be. But— but— she’s here.
Kelly’s here and she can talk to Kelly.
“I— I think something is wrong with me,” she sobs, the tears she didn’t know she had begin to fall and touch her lips, letting her savour a taste of the ocean that drowned Brainy. “I hurt them. It was me, I—”
Kelly whispers soft shusses and heys as she places her cup on the coffee table and walks over to Kara. But with every step the woman takes forward, Kara takes a step back. She doesn’t want to do it again. Don’t make me do it again, she begs. But, to whom?
She backs up until her back hits the kitchen sink. She sees the bubbles filling it — and part of her knows, knows, that Alex hates it if the dishes aren’t washed and put away. Alex would never let bubbles stay in the sink too long — but she doesn’t want to think much of it. She begs, begs, to the cold empty air not to do this again. Not drowning again. Not Kelly—
“Kara,” the woman says, extending her arms to comfort her, “come here, honey. Let me help you.”
“No!”
Kelly’s comforting arms go up in the air, trying to hold onto anything, but only finding air itself as she falls down. Even with Kara’s super speed, it all happens too fast, and as she falls, Kara can only watch as black hair bumps itself against the greyish marble of a kitchen island.
The blood slowly starts to create a pond of red around her head and Kelly does not react, her eyes do not open, her chest doesn’t move up and down, and Kara quickly falls onto her knees in front of her, taking limp arms into her own.
“K— Kelly? Oh, Rao, no. Kelly?” She tries again, her hands covered in the crimson slime as she tries to stop the blood from leaving the wound. Her own cries overshadow the creak of the door opening, the sound of heavy and rushed steps coming over to where they are laying.
She sees Alex’s keys falling to the floor, making the blood splash, and a droplet fly towards Kelly’s cheek, forming a crimson tear. Kara doesn’t want to look up, she can’t, she won’t, but then—
“What the fuck happened?” It’s not a scream from Alex. She doesn’t yell. She doesn’t cry.
Her voice is firm, unwavering, only filled with anger. Kara feels the rage coming off her like she feels the effects of a far away shard of kryptonite— close enough to hurt, distant enough to be bearable.
She looks up, her sister’s image blurred by tears, but she’s there, standing still, unmoving, eyes focused on her fiancé’s corpse. Kara hears the drumming of Alex’s heart and she knows that kind of sequence means shock, disbelief and the lingering of hope that what’s in front of her is not real— she’s heard it enough in accidents, in chaos, in her own heart.
“Alex, I—”
“What the fuck did you do?” she asks and this time, the kryptonite is close enough. Kara flinches back.
“It was an accident, I— She—”
Alex scoffs, and turns around to pick up the coffee maker, throwing it against the wall while letting a strangled scream escape from her lips. When the pieces fall to the floor, Kara finds that she can’t look away. She sees herself in a shard of the broken coffee maker, and it reflects her shattered face all alone, vastly different from everything around her which is too cracked and broken to be anything more than glass. She’s alone. But she’s here.
“Of course,” Alex scoffs. “Of fucking course. I tried to believe it wasn’t you. I really did.”
“Alex—”
“—you fucking killed her!”
“No. No, it was an accident. I— I’m sorry, I’m—”
She can’t move. She can only look up, sob and implore that her sister believes her. But Alex’s eyes are cold, angry, almost empty— only filled with anger— as she looks down at Kara. Brown eyes turn soft, broken, desperate when they land on Kelly, and she falls to the floor, hands shaking as she reaches towards the woman.
But her hands don’t touch her, they close themselves into fists before they have a chance to. And Kara can only stay still, kneeling there on the floor with Kelly’s cooling body on her arms. Alex closes her eyes, tears falling from each one. She breathes out deeply before opening her mouth.
“It would have been better,” she says, “if you had never returned from the Phantom Zone.”
“Alex— please,” don’t say that, she wants to say, she wants to scream, but she can only cry as her sister, the woman that had always looked at her with love and kindness, looks at her as if she’s nothing, her eyes only glazed over now.
“You ruined my life.”
Alex stands up, leaves as soon as she comes in, ignoring all of Kara’s pleas to stay and come back. But she doesn’t come back. She doesn’t turn around when Kara follows her out of the apartment, leaving Kelly’s body behind just like she had left Nia’s, Brainy’s, and Andrea’s corpses earlier that day.
She has to follow Alex because this is her sister. They always get in small spats but Kara has to be sure that Alex didn’t mean those last words. Because she would never say that.
Would she?
Kara shook her head. She’ll find her sister, and they’ll figure it out. She’ll forgive her. And yet— Kara’s heart beats with uncertainty, with fear, her breathing becomes shallow and uneven because she doesn't know if Alex will ever forgive her.
There were no lies in her heartbeat. No doubt in her words.
When Kara walks out of the elevator, she hopes to find the lobby of Kelly’s apartment building, but when she looks around, the only thing she sees is the greyish floors and brick walls of the tower. Did she lose herself in time again? What did she do during that time?
Her hands shake at the thought of having done something horrible to Alex, just like she had done to every single loved one. She’s tired. When will it be done?
Her clothes change, or glitch, once again. She’s back to her suit, red and blue and golden and red— Kelly’s blood is still covering her hands, slowly drying and like paint, it smears its place steadily in Kara’s memory. Again. Again?
She’s cold. The tower’s steps are cold under her but it’s a minor inconvenience amongst everything else. There’s something wrong with her. She needs to stop it. She needs to find Nyxly and make her put a stop to it. But how? How does she find someone no one believes exists and she cannot find? How could anyone help her when she’s killed most of her friends? How could her remaining loved ones help when she’s done such atrocious things?
She’s alone, so alone.
She’s here.
Lena exhales loudly when she sees her. The woman hurriedly walks the steps towards Kara, bends in front of her, gentle hands falling on top of Kara’s knees, trying to coax her into looking into her eyes.
“Kara,” her voice sounds almost as if she’s saying a prayer. “There you are. Are you okay?”
It’s a weird question to ask when clearly everything is not fine. When clearly she’s not okay. And yet, it’s such a Lena thing to ask. Lena, who always asks for the problem so she can deliver a solution, no matter the day, no matter the hour.
It’s always Lena who Kara can tell the truth to.
“There’s—” her voice breaks. She swallows down the tears, her eyes unable to find Lena’s. “There’s something wrong with me.”
Lena purses her lips and says nothing. She knows, Kara knows, everyone still alive knows that something is wrong with her. But Lena looks at her with no fear in her eyes, and only a smidge of resignation, before she tangles their hands together— bloody palms and cold fingers the last of their problems.
“How can I help?” she asks, voice filled with nothing but determination against a villain they know nothing about.
“Just… be here with me.”
Her whisper is broken, her own feelings slipping out as she tries to hold back the tears. She exhales shakily as Lena sits beside her, finds the crook of her neck and treasures the warmth of it, the strong heartbeat resonating through Lena’s carotid. It’s there. It’s comforting. It does not go away and it remains strong.
“Do you want to order anything?” she hears and feels the echo of the question. “I’ve been missing my favorite food expert these past couple of months.”
Kara chuckles, low and still hidden in Lena’s throat, before sobering up and pulling away to find green eyes.
“Anything you want,” Kara smiles softly at her, but she feels the fakeness in it without even seeing it. Her thoughts aren’t focused on food right now, not when there’s so much happening. She sighs, “I thought about what I could do once I came back… while I was… up there. It was hard to think about anything nice there. But if I tried really hard, I could focus on something else and I’d try to... make up plans we could do in the future. Together.”
“We should do them,” Lena smiles softly at her, a mix between encouraging and timid. “What did you think about?”
And that’s a complicated question because, under the biggest fogginess her mind has ever conjured, she knows her plans were more abstract than Lena could possibly imagine. Her plans were things like holding Lena’s hand as they walked down the street and having the bravery to ask her out and giving her a flower while telling her she looks beautiful.
She had imagined the situations, and acted like Lena had responded according to her fantasy, but somehow, even in the midst of wanting to hide herself in a safe place, she never knew if that would have been the truth. She never knew if that’s how Lena would’ve reacted, if she’d ever get to do and feel those things.
But she has now. She only has now. And now feels as empty and as demanding as her hands, itchy with dried blood and yet begging for even more attention. In the creases of her palms, the crimson shade is engraved like the idea that’s stuck to the back of her mind, the one that keeps telling her that none of it is okay. But she only has now. And she’s here .
Lena looks at her with gentle eyes, calm eyes, those bright green eyes that should remind Kara of her biggest weakness and yet it only brings her calmness, the alluring feeling of walking through the forest in Midvale, back when nothing was easy and yet it was still easier than it is now.
“I thought of you,” she answers finally. “Us.”
Lena’s eyes glimmer with unwashed tears and in the name of honesty, she confesses.
“I never stopped looking for you,” she brings Kara’s hand to her lips, kisses her knuckles, ignoring the crimson in it, and Kara melts at the action because it’s all she’s ever wanted. It’s all she’s ever wanted. “I’d have done anything to save you because I kept thinking that maybe someday we…”
Lena trails off, never quite finishing the thought, but Kara knows what she means. It’s the same way she feels, has felt, for days, weeks, months. It’s all she thought about in the Phantom Zone while she was keeping Nyxly at bay and surviving yet another day.
But things are different now. She isn’t surviving anymore. Everything is finally starting to catch up to her and even though she hears the words she’s always wanted to hear, Kara knows it isn’t like her perfect fantasies of this moment.
She’s done too much. She’s far too gone. And yet she’s still here.
“Lena, I—” Kara starts choking out. Tears are flowing down her face, an endless supply, creating a stream down to her chin. “You can’t save me. I hurt them all. I did it. I killed them.”
Lena drops Kara’s hand, and even though it’s what Kara wanted, she still feels her heart shatter. But a breath later, Lena’s fingers are wiping away at Kara’s face, pushing all tears to the side, leaving red streaks of blood in their place, splitting the streamy sea altogether.
“Anyone who knows you knows that you would never hurt them,” Lena whispers with a smile. “That’s what you told me when no one believed in me when Edge said I poisoned the children. Even when the evidence was insurmountable, you always believed in me.”
She quits wiping away the tears after they miraculously stop and she moves her hand to delicately cup Kara’s face.
“Let me believe in you too,” she finishes.
Maybe it’s the way that she whispers her belief, or the way that she holds Kara in her hands, but despite every inkling in Kara telling her to run away, she leans into the hold and closes her eyes, letting herself savour the moment.
“Okay,” Kara mumbles in resignation. She takes a deep breath before opening her eyes. “Where do we go from here?”
She says it in the literal sense but Lena must take it as a different type of invitation because her eyes immediately start bouncing towards Kara’s lips. “Wherever you want.”
The moment is too good to be true— Lena believing in her like this, ignoring all logic and admitting to having some sort of feelings for Kara. It’s that perfect fantasy that Kara dreamed of. A fantasy which should be impossible in a reality like this. That’s why when Kara leans in, she half expects another glitch, another drop in time, taking away a moment she’s always craved, but the jump never comes.
Instead, Lena stops the moment prematurely, lowering her hand to Kara’s chin and asking, “Are you sure? Maybe we should figure out what’s happening to you before we get into…this.”
Kara’s inches away from Lena’s lips, and she could almost taste the forbidden fruit, but Lena voicing the exact apprehension that’s in her chest breaks through all desires.
“We’ll get through this together just like every other time,” Lena whispers. She leans her head against Kara’s, pushing their proximity to the limit without stepping over the line. It’s both maddening and endearing because Lena looks like she wants this kiss as much as Kara, but she’s stopping herself on both their accounts.
“You’re right,” Kara says, nodding along with downcast eyes. “I just don’t even know where to start with figuring out what’s wrong with me.”
Lena offers her a sad smile but she has an answer right away. She always has an answer.
“Hey,” she whispers, grabbing Kara’s full attention once more. “What if I grab my jacket and we go to the Fortress to do some research together. Like old times.”
It’s nostalgic, it’s soft, and sympathetic, but for once in her life, Lena’s answer isn’t the one that Kara wants to hear. In fact, it even startles Kara back, making her remove herself from Lena’s hold, creating much needed distance between them because those words feel like a slash of kryptonite against her heart.
“Tell me it’s not you,” Kara says, the forgotten tears from earlier welling themselves up in her eyes once more. “Tell me you didn’t use her too!”
Her words are loud, angry, probably higher and colder than Lena has ever heard— even in their broken-up and heated arguments, words haven’t gone up higher than a slight rise in their voices, higher than a broken and desperate sob. But Kara’s yell echoes in the room, making Lena stop in her tracks and almost look at her with something akin to fear, something akin to wonder as she’d never seen the darkest, angriest, side of the blonde.
“Kara? It’s me. It’s Lena.”
And it’s another flash that goes through Kara’s mind, a glimpse of another reality, another world where those words came out of Kara’s mouth in an entirely different situation. A situation a certain fifth dimensional imp helped her create.
A foe before, a friend now, though it happened to be a reversed situation with Nyxly.
The signs had been there. They are always there. She is always there. The back and forth of it all, the way that Lena is bringing her closer and still pushing her away— it is the embodiment of torture, and only one creature is capable of something so evil and conniving as using Lena’s good heart against her.
The realization makes Kara fall to her knees. “I can’t do it again. I can’t hurt again. Not you.”
“You’re not going to hurt me,” Lena continues whispering. But it is a tactic, a way for Kara to listen and fall into the trap. “We’re going to get you somewhere safe.”
“Don’t you get it? I can’t control myself!” Kara shouts.
Her hands are shaking once again and she knows what comes afterwards. She knows because she can already see the smeared blood on Lena’s knuckles after she held onto Kara’s hands without a care in the world.
They were her family too and she still stayed by Kara’s side. The signs were there. They always were.
“You can fight this, Kara. I know you can,” Lena says as she walks a bit closer.
But every step she takes forward reminds Kara of Kelly and she knows, she knows, that even if she wants to fight it, even if she tries to fight it, the result is always the same.
“I can’t,” Kara mumbles.
She looks down at her shaking hands and she knows there isn’t much time. It feels like a never ending supply of kryptonite is flowing through her bloodstream, like she only has one shot left to stop herself from causing anymore suffering. Do no harm, echoes in her mind.
“There is nowhere safe for me, for you,” Kara says. She gives Lena a sad smile and with that alone, Kara makes her final decision and speeds out of the tower, racing towards space, with only the idea of saving Lena, and everyone she loves on her mind.
It isn’t the first time that Kara speeds towards space on a mission to save the world. The last time she did, Alex was there to bring her back, ground her, and help her recuperate every step of the way.
But this time, Alex isn’t coming. Nia isn’t coming. Brainy isn’t coming. No one is coming for her. No one is there to bring her back into the light. She’s far too gone, and the only person who could help her is the only person she has left to lose.
Lena.
The soft hearted brunette, who is always there, always rooting for her, always making Kara feel at home. Losing Lena on top of everyone else would be the final nail in the coffin. Kara wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she hurt Lena.
But flying away from her home hurts more than she thinks and Kara doesn’t have the strength to completely ignore Lena’s pleas either.
“Don’t do this!” she hears as she rises higher and higher in the air. She’s still a long way from the ozone but she can feel herself losing her breath with Lena’s cries alone.
“Kara, please!” She closes her eyes and she can almost picture Lena letting her screams echo throughout the walls of the tower. The empty tower, hollow and vacated because of Kara’s actions. She opens her eyes and speeds even faster towards space.
By the time she reaches the stratosphere, her breathing starts slowing tenfold. She can still hear Lena sobbing in her ears but she isn’t entirely sure if it’s still Nyxly playing games or if this is really Lena begging her to come back.
What if she snapped out of Nyxly’s puppet strings? What if she isn’t under her control anymore?
“Kara!”
But what if she still is?
Kara makes it past the ozone now, long past Earth’s gravitational pull, and instead of holding her breath in like she normally does, she lets it all go, her voiceless scream having no effect in the vacuum.
“Please. I can’t lose you again,” Kara hears once her eyes start fluttering and the remaining oxygen in her system falls to a dangerously low level.
Her body floats in the vacuum, letting zero gravity move her wherever it desires, right now being in a direction that is distinctly further and further away from Lena. But no matter the distance, Kara still hears her anguished screams, and even though her heart is telling her to race back to Earth and hold Lena one last time, there isn’t enough strength left in Kara to do so. In the end, it’s hearing Lena’s final cry, her final “I can’t do this without you” , that kills Kara more than the last breath that leaves her lips.
And then it’s just darkness.
Nothingness.
Coldness.
It’s the same feeling she’s been having all day long. Her eyes are still closed but nothing changes. Except the fact that she can now breathe again, and hear noises again, feel her body, weaker than it’s been in ages, but it’s still there and moving again.
She’s still there.
Kara opens her eyes and like a bad memory that she can’t escape, she finds herself back in the one place she dreads with the one person who she despises.
“My my,” Nyxly starts with a giggle. “Killing yourself yet again? Has it not proven to be futile when we always end up right back here.”
Kara looks down at her arms, seeing the magical bindings holding her in place, making her even more powerless in a place where she didn’t have powers to begin with. Because she never left the Phantom Zone. Here, her memories aren’t jumbled. They’re clear and she remembers every little detail of Nyxly’s torture, and how she’s been undergoing it for days, weeks, months.
Is it autumn? Summer? Spring? There aren’t any seasons in the Phantom Zone. It always feels like the cold of winter, and no one is coming to rescue Kara to restore some of her warmth. She’s been here the whole time, under Nyxly’s mind games, avoiding unveiling what Nyxly desired.
The creatures roam around her, taking as much energy and life force from her as the chains on her wrists. Nyxly looks the same as she always does, rested, devilish smirk on her lips, not a care in the world for the torture she’s subjecting Kara to, her only care to find the one thing she wants. The one thing Kara won’t let her get.
Kara finds Nyxly’s eyes, and she clenches her jaw, showing no fear or pain or heartbreak at what she saw as she ignores the headache and the ache in her heart. “I’m not giving up the location of the Fortress.”
“I know,” Nyxly says while rolling her eyes emphatically. “You say it every time. But bit by bit we are getting closer. You described the artillery this time and it paints a beautiful picture in my mind.”
“My family is coming to get me. You won’t win,” Kara says. There’s conviction in her voice, that lingering hope inside her chest that nothing kills.
Because nothing kills hope. Hope is the last thing she’d ever lose. But hope can be diminished, hope can slowly and surely be weakened until it’s just the moonlight instead of sunlight. And after enduring so much torture, it’s starting to turn the world, Kara’s world, on its axis— transforming daytime into nighttime.
“Sweetheart, you can keep counting on that,” Nyxly smiles back. “But I’ve been here for ages and no one is ever coming.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Kara tries reasoning again. She doesn’t know how many times she’s tried but it’s her only move when she’s stuck in this cycle. “I helped you get your magic back. You can leave whenever you want.”
“But what good is leaving if I can’t unleash wrath with the deadliest weapon in the universe?” Nyxly asks. “The Kusar Blades are mine for the taking and once you tell me the location of the Fortress, then I’ll leave you be.”
“Do you really think I’m going to let you destroy the world?”
“No but it was worth a shot waging a deal, right?” Nyxly giggles again to herself. “Well, if you don’t think so, I think it’s time we go again.”
She snaps her fingers, letting a swarm of blue magic escape from the tips, moving its way towards Kara, infecting her mind once more and giving her the mirage of home.
“Give it up for attempt number 6742,” Nyxly mumbles to herself before Kara’s world fades once more.