Chapter Text
Kāra Zor-Eł slept silently in her pod for twenty two years.
Kāra’s journey lasted twenty four.
When she awoke it was to a brilliant light, blinding her one second, and bathing her in its harsh glow the next.
Stars, thousands of them, spread out in a sea so vast she thought it would never end.
They whipped past her as she flew into the darkness, the soft hum of the engine flinging her through the gaps between them as she just brushed the edges of suns; her pod was racing the very universe itself, as if trying to outrun time.
She turned around; excited in her chair and eager to point out all the constellations she could name to her father - but she was only greeted by more stars.
In an instant, the weight of her world came crashing down on her shoulders.
She remembered.
Kāra slept.
Kāra woke.
Kāra slept.
There was no pattern to when she would wake, it was as if some being was playing a game; turning her on and off at whim like a light switch, or some bastardised version of a Kalex.
One minute she was singing a lullaby into space, the notes carried out into the vast expanse that cradled her cousin, and the next she was opening her eyes with such difficulty that she knew she must have been asleep for a very long time.
Sometimes it was minutes or hours, other times she would spend days or weeks trapped in the pod with only herself to entertain.
She never aged either, she obsessively checked her nails, her hair, tried to catch her reflection in the glass; but there was nothing, just a sea of stars and the petrified hand print of her father, forever unreachable on the outside shield.
Kāra had always been a sociable child - somewhat awkward and entirely uncertain how to interact with peers of her own age - but sociable nonetheless.
In her fathers labs she flitted from project to project, entirely in her element discussing ideas and hypotheses with his underlings.
At academics she excelled, the youngest member of the science guild and a favorite among the teachers; there was always an ear to listen to her ramble on about some obscure fact she had learned.
Which was why her solitude was like a sharpening knife, a blade grinding against her bones and with every pass becoming more painful and precise in its brutality.
So she clung to the remnant’s of her sanity by replaying her life over and over again.
In her mind she imagined the smell of slick oil, the bite of a hammer as it met metal, and the soft low voice of her father explaining how two pieces worked together.
She imagined the delicate clicking of the rings on her grandmothers fingers against paint jars as she lectured Kāra on how exactly oil and minerals blended.
She imagined the Thāra’s delighted shrieks as she lept from surface to surface while waiting in the law offices.
She imagined her life so thoroughly, that soon she could simply close her eyes and spend an entire day with her mother, learning of legislation and species from across the galaxy, and snuggling in to her side for a story of her exploits as a child.
And wasn’t there something ironic in her isolation?
Her mother, the high judge that sentenced prisoners to fort Roz, that had refused to ever call upon krypton’s most severe punishment: solitary confinement.
The judge that had argued for the practices eradication all together, who had called it cruel and savage, now sentenced her own daughter to an unending life of loneliness.
Alura had done what she swore never to do again, and locked her daughter into a prison of her own making.
So Kāra laughed.
Time was a trickle of moonlight, crawling between stars in a sweet stream of silver, and try as she might, she could not make it go faster.
To pass the time she made up games, she recited text books from memory, sang songs, scouted constellations, and practiced mimicking people.
Most of all though, she wondered about cal.
Somewhere out there, her baby cousin was lost in space, all alone and hopefully, sleeping peacefully, just waiting for her to come get him.
And in the endless quiet of her prison, Kāra vowed she would.