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It’s been long overdue. You haven’t quite settled into your skin yet, still feel like you’re an imposter, a fake just walking around with a secret threatening to rip your whole world apart.
You don’t have any secrets anymore- at least not the ones that count.
But Kara has guilt in her eyes every time she looks at you and you can’t bear the silence anymore, the unasked questions behind every conversation, the lingering elephant in the room.
Your baby sister needs you now so you buck up the courage and you text her, god knows you need this too.
sister night tonight? I’ll bring the donuts
can’t wait!!! I’ll bring the mountain dew!
Since you cut out the alcohol, Kara has decided to replace the usual drinks with different flavours of soft drinks every time you guys have a get-together. It’s endearing and so, so sweet and one of the reasons you know you need a heart-to-heart with her.
You remember all the things you’ve learnt from your therapist, some of them still rattling around in your head, refusing to sink in. You can’t let go of everything just yet.
You’ve spent your entire life thinking you were less than, it’s not going to be easy to stop now. But you can be enough for your sister. You hear a voice inside of your head telling you that you already are.
Surprisingly, the voice is yours.
Baby steps, you got this.
-
“It’s kinda like survivor's guilt, ya know. You spent all your time with us learning how to blend in.
How to be normal, be human, be ordinary. It never occurred to you that what was happening around you wasn’t normal,” You take a pause and look down at your interlocked hands.
“And now you know, and it’s killing you inside. But it is not your fault, it never was.”
Kara’s eyes shimmer with tears and you see her chin quiver with the pressure to not let them fall. She takes a deep breath and reaches up to adjust her glasses. Kara has always been strong enough to break anything if she gave it enough pressure, herself included.
You know this is where her do-good streak comes from, how every time your mom berated you for Kara’s failures, her eyes would flit between you both, always focused on keeping the peace. How she would always strive to run faster, fly higher, save more people.
She has held herself strong because if she fell, it was you who took the brunt of it. And now she knows just how much. You fear Kara would never let herself fall again, not even into your arms.
“I’m working on letting go of the guilt but I still feel like so much of it was my fault though,” her breath stutters as she tries to push out more reasons why she should be the one to blame.
“Just because you believe that doesn’t mean it’s true. Abuse doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It splinters and leaves shrapnel in everyone around it. It quietly whittles away at everything you know to be true until only one version of that story exists. The one of the abuser,” you feel your heart skip a beat at the thought of Eliza and you wonder if Kara notices.
“She manipulated you too, Kara. She made you feel guilty for everything you did, kept you so hypervigilant on your own behaviour that you would never have time to look at hers.”
Kara is hanging onto every word you say.
“Children are not responsible for their parent's actions. That took me a long time to learn. You will too,” you lean in and pull her into your arms as she buries her face into your shoulder.
You feel your shirt start to dampen with her tears and it seems to kickstart a new wave of heaving. Kara is fully sobbing in your arms now and you jerk your head up at the sudden change and you feel the words against your skin more than you hear them. But you freeze in place as they sink in, “but I still loved her all this time. She meant the world to me!”
You let a small, defeated smile grace your face that she doesn’t see and sigh.
“I loved her too. After all this time. I probably still do if I dig deep enough. Because no matter what I will always have a little child inside of me wishing she loved me back.”
Kara seems to shrink even more into herself.
“She’s still our mom. There’s so much history there that is never gonna change. She just doesn’t have a place in my life anymore, and that’s okay.”
You peel Kara off of you and gently guide her face to look in her eyes.
“That’s what makes abusers so powerful. They’re not bad all the time. Otherwise, we would leave and never look back,” You whisper the last part, hazy memories floating around your mind.
All the times you packed a bag, hidden under your bed, wanting to run away. Of all the times you unpacked it again after a well-timed compliment, a fantasy that maybe she could love you now.
Kara has stopped crying now. It seems as if she’s starting to believe the words you’re saying. You know it’s gonna be a long journey. You know Maggie pressed a list of therapists’ numbers into Kara’s hand the last time she saw her.
You’ve already vetted at least five of them at the DEO, and an NDA waiting to be signed for when Kara finds herself ready to work through all of this.
“Hey, we’ve always been in this together. The Danvers sisters forever, remember? That’s not about to stop now,” you smile at her and try to lift her spirits a bit.
It’s clear that she’s still holding something back.
“Why…why didn’t you ever say something?” Kara starts hesitantly, finally letting out the questions she’s been buried under ever since that fateful day, “if not to me, to somebody, anybody that could help?“
You’ve been asking yourself this question since the very beginning and the answer still hasn’t changed.
“She made me feel like I deserved it,” you shrug and say softly.
There’s no way to sugarcoat it, no way to change the heartbreaking implications. You spent most of your life believing that you did not deserve love.
Now, you’ve been spending your days reversing that belief, tonight being no different. When you both are all talked out, no more tears left inside, you decide to turn the night into more comforting things.
“So, Frozen or Moana?” you ask.
“Moana, I think I’ve had my fill of sisterly trauma for one night.”
You both giggle and burrow under the covers. It was going to be okay. Eliza took so much from you, so many parts still left under the rubble, some you would never see again.
She could never take this.