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"Kid!"
The hushed and insistence whisper coming from somewhere above her serves as a much needed break from the constant ringing that had been present in her ears before. It's not quite enough to allow her to crack her eyes open and so she lays in darkness, vaguely aware of the world around her.
"Kid!"
The voice returns, preventing her from ever truly drifting off. Her body feels heavy and she's not exactly sure why. All that she knows for certain is that there's a lingering feeling of pain beneath every muscle and so she does her best to keep them still, silently praying that whoever is above her will not nudge any part of her.
"We've gotta get out of here!"
Her prayers go unanswered as he starts to shake her in a new attempt to get her up and running. The action does little more than elicit a tired and pained groan from her, but it does also get her to open her eyes. When she does, she's greeted by the sight of two long, sharp, pointed ears and a red stain marring a ususally pitch black outfit.
"We've gotta go!" Batman repeats, voice beginning to sound all the more urgent. "The Krytonians are gone, but I saw special forces on the way. They're definitely going to have a lot to say to both of us."
She's only able to pick up a few of what he says. Something about Kryptonians and talking. It brings back memories of Zod and his minions and her cousin. Kal-El. Zod had found him and...
Another pained grunt leaves her when she remembers what had become of him. It was almost too much to think of, overwhelming and choking her in the moment. When her head falls to the side she is able to see the horde of soldiers and the tanks accompanying them rapidly approaching.
"C'mon!" Sensing the coming problem at hand, he finally lets slip some of his patience and begins to lift her up.
It feels terrible and she loudly screams in pain as a response.
"Sorry," Batman utters through teeth that are ground together. He's not in much better shape than she is. There's a very visible limp in his step when he rises and the blood around his cowl is starting to look worse now that her vision has somewhat cleared up. Still he stands, hoisting her up in his arms with what little strength he has left. "Let's go," he says as he begins the slow process of limping away. It's a fool's errand, both of them are fully aware of that much, but he doesn't stop, continuing on in the heat of the desert even with the sun beating down over the top of them.
Eventually, they find themselves surrounded. A soldier on every side and at every angle and a pair of tanks for good measure. She's sure that she heard them calling in for back up as well.
"Put your hands up!" one of them yells from a megaphone. It leaves an echo that rings in her ears.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he does not immediately comply. Rather, he spins around in a clumsy circle with her in his arms, undoubtedly looking for anyway that there is to escape. A broken exhale only escapes his mouth when it dawns on him that they have no way out.
"I said put your hands up!" the soldier repeats. "Do it now! Right now!"
Batman lets her down easily, the sand coursing below her body. He stays there on one knee and lifts both his hands up, popping the fists open to indicate that he is no threat.
They swarm him almost immediately, keeping their guns trained on both of them the entire time.
She still feels weak even when she tries to muster up some strength. The urge to fight only grows stronger when she hears him whisper in a hoarse voice: "Sorry kid."
Her eyes shut at the word and she thinks back. Back to being trapped and locked away by the humans, never seeing light, let alone sun. She thinks back to the warm and gentle embrace of Barry as he lifted her from her prison and took her out into the source of her power. She thinks of the way in which she'd returned that favor, lifting his burnt and broken body up into the sky and helping him get his powers back. Everything is so clear. Crystal clear. Her intentions, what she meant to do as soon as she stopped Zod. What she had to do as soon as she stopped Zod.
A soldier stops over her and nudges her shoudler with his heavy boot.
"...the infant did not survive."
Her eyes snap open and she's perfectly upright in a second, holding him by the throat and then tossing him a few hundred miles away.
They quickly open fire on her, the bullets tickling and pricking at her skin. She stops in the midst of rushing another soldier, suddenly aware that Batman is unlikely to be as bulletproof as she is. He hides behind his cape, which keeps him temporarily safe, but it's apparent that it's resolve will not last forever. And only after tossing another soldier into the air, does she become reminded of her own fatigue, one which is pushing for her to fall over at any point.
Gritting her teeth, she channels every last bit of her energy as she rushes over to Batman, shielding his worn cape from any more damage and grabbing him around the waist. With a simple but effective push, she has both of them immediately airborn and far from the sight of the chaos. She is unsure of where to go or really what to do as soon as the fog from earlier returns and the sky around her stops looking like the sky and starts looking more like a mishmash of blues, some beautiful, the rest ugly.
All she's able to do before collapsing from fatigue is lower them both closer to the ground and slow down, bracing for impact with both her eyes shut tight.
"Can I get you folk something to drink?" the waitress asks tepidly, looking down at their bloody and dusty bodies with an expectant gaze.
"Water," Bruce speaks up for the both of them, the dried blood on the corner of his lip becoming all the more noticeable. "Please."
"I'll get to it," she says before stepping off, loud heels clashing against the serenity of the diner.
It was one in the middle of nowhere, one which they had stumbled upon after trudging through a brutal desert. Luckily for them, it had been completely empty save for the waitress, allowing them to avoid the skeptical stares of bikers and the questioning gaze of whoever the sheriff was.
"How do you feel?" Bruce catches her attention with the question. "Has the pain gone away?"
"No," Kara answers immediately and honestly. Her hand massages the throbbing pain on her shoulder in slow circles. Her other hand is resting against her stomach, from where a different sort of pain is apparent.
Bruce studies her carefully, the smeared makeup around his eyes giving him the appearance of a dirty racoon. "You need to eat," he gives her his conclusion at last.
"I don't need food on this world," she says, even when fully aware that he's right.
"Wouldn't hurt to stay full though," he counters and picks up a menu, scanning through the assortment of America's finest delicacies. "How does a full stack of flap jacks sound to you?"
She turns away with a grimace, seeking to change the subject, "We need to figure out what happened to Barry, both of them."
At that moment, the waitress returns, two full glasses of water in each of her hands. She deposits them onto the table and then steps back with her notepad and pen raised, "Can I get you folk anything to eat?"
"Jack's Famous Flapjacks for both of us please."
"With or without eggs?"
He briefly looks at Kara to get her preference, but recieves nothing but a blank look in return.
"With and make them scrambled please."
"Alright then," she says, leaving them alone once more with a slow fan in the corner to serve as company.
The leather beneath him squeaks when Bruce shifts in his seat, "I figured scrambled just cause I wasn't sure if you liked–"
"It's fine," Kara says, cutting him off. Then she leans in closer and repeats, in a much more serious tone, "We need to find our Barrys."
"I know," Bruce agrees. "But first we need to recuperate and figure out what exactly happened to them."
"What do you mean?" she asks, hiding the fear in her voice. "What happened to them?"
"That's the part I'm trying to figure out," he admits, taking a slow sip from his glass. "Some part deep down inside my system says that I should be dead right now."
"What are you talking about?" Kara asks again, her endless questions beginning to frustrate her.
"You don't remember? Something from the past that should have happened but isn't quite there? Some lingering feeling in what feels like your last moments, but wasn't really?" Bruce leans in to meet her halfway across the table. "Something happened to the time-line. I don't know what they did, but whatever it was has left something with us both. Don't you remember anything?"
Steel pierced through her in a quick and merciless moment. There was no time to react and no time to think of what was to come next. To consider the life that had immediately left her and the way that her body had crashed onto the ground.
Kara shudders, the ice cold memory causing her to rattle the table and the salt and condiments that it carried.
"Hey, hey. Calm down," Bruce attempts to soothe her nerves. "It felt a little strange when I thought back to it too, but as far as I know, it's mostly a mental thing."
She still feels sick, even if it's only her mind telling her that she is. She falls back with nausea spinning round and round her in a three hundred and sixty degree angle.
"It's going to be fine," he says in a reassuring tone. "Drink up," he points to her glass, "you look thirsty."
In spite of her stubbornness, Kara quickly does as he advised, grabbing her glass and downing it's cool contents in just a few large gulps.
"Jack's Famous Flapjacks," the waitress returns once more, setting down two healthily plated plates of flapjacks. "And the eggs are right here," she sets down a bowl of scrambled eggs between them. "I'll let you two take all that in."
"Unfortunately neither of us can alter time the way that they can, so following their tracks won't be easy, but I figured that–" Bruce had started to explain, twiddling his fork between two fingers when he stops, pausing to watch her stuff several flapjacks into her mouth at once. When she notices him staring, he keeps going so as not to make her feel uncomfortable. "If we can emulate the speed at which they move to alter time even if only for a few short seconds, we could gain some understanding of where in the various continuums they went."
Kara licks her fingers of golden syrup and nods, taking all the information in, "How do we do that?"
"That part will take weeks if not months to figure out," Bruce confesses with a grimace stretched across his face. "In the meantime, we'll just have to keep a low profile. There's no way the CIA doesn't know about Batman running around with a flying alien by now."
She nods again, but her attention is not on him. Rather, it's set on the bowl of scrambled eggs.
"Go ahead," he says, pushing it forward and watching as she descends on it with a mighty hunger. "Best case scenario, they evacuated into a time-line that has space for them. Worst case scenario..." he trails off, trusting that she knows what the worst case scenario actually is.
Kara does and she does not want to think of it. She changes the subject again, "You said we should keep a low profile. Does that mean..." her gaze flits over to the waitress by the counter, who is watching them both out of the corner of her eye and has undoubtedly been listening to their conversation.
"No," Bruce quickly intercepts. "You don't have to... eliminate her."
Kara nods, but makes sure that the waitress knows she is watching.
"I'll call us a taxi or something. It's a long way back to the manor," he says and starts to poke his flapjacks with a fork when he notices her watching with steadfast attention. With a sigh, he pushes the plate in her direction, "Here, eat up."
Kara sits in the room she had picked out, bored. Around her, there is little else but dust and cobwebs to stare at, as well as the stuffy old matress that was situated in the corner.
When they had eventually gotten back to the manor, Bruce had all but immediately fallen asleep, telling her to do whatever she pleased. She had taken the time to venture around a few of the dark halls and to observe some of the old paintings, but had grown tired in short time and retired to a room to rest. One of many rooms. So many that she had found herself curious of why they were all empty.
Kara and Bruce had fallen into an uneasy routine after that. Her days would usually start early and comprise mostly of contemplation whilst staring out of an open window. His days always started late, even later on the days that he decided he needed a shower. He got used to finding her waiting in the batcave, looking to help in whatever way she could. It was mostly grunt work he assigned to her, lifting heavy pieces that would leave him sore the next day were he to do it himself. Whenever he didn't need her to do anything, they would simply talk about what the future hopefully held. And whenever he needed to run through some calculations, she went to sit out in the sun. Except when it rained. She hated the rain. Which meant that she hated any day that brought rain.
Which meant that she hated today.
Kara gave one more longing look out the window to where the raindrops fell and the hail clattered against the roof tiles. If she listened closely, she could hear the start of a rumbling thunder.
She scoffs before falling back into the chair in the middle of the room and folds her arms, one of her feet already tapping away at the wooden floor boards.
She's fully aware of the fact that she could go find Bruce and ask him for something to do, but stops herself short everytime, insistent that she had already bothered him enough that day and that any more pestering would upset their routine. And so she sits in boredom, wondering how it is that humans ususally keep themselves occupied. Especially when they can't fly and don't have laser eyes like she does.
Kara feels a sudden shudder and decides then that it is colder than she had initially declared. She hustles over to the wardrobe and grabs a red and blue hoodie. Much like the rest of her clothes, it is a bit of a tight fit, but considering that Bruce had found them on a whim in the basement, she wears them in stride.
Instantly feeling much better, she tucks her arms in tight and takes only a momentary glance at her suit hanging from it's hanger at the very back of the wardrobe. Only now in the comfort of regular Earthly clothing does she realize thar Kryptonians never really knew what comfort was. And why should they have when there was always some or another reason to prepare for war?
A loud crash of thunder from outside ends her contemplation and she takes a moment to simply stare out the window again. Watching the occasional rat rush from piece of cover to piece of cover. Watching the few animals that took pleasure in being showered on with cold water coming out. Watching the bright flash of light, and sudden collision of matter against ground. She watches carefully and sure enough the figure twitches ever so slightly and it's just red enough that she can deduce out what it is.
Taking care to run instead of fly though the hallways and even then not caring for the rule which she is breaking, Kara quickly makes her way down the grand staircase and toward the doors. Just before leaving, she makes sure to shout Bruce's name as loudly as she can, certain that he will hear it from wherever he is.
With the rain pelting her hair and her feet falling into the soft grass of the marshes, she makes for what she hopes is a still alive Barry.
Her immediate diagnosis upon reaching him is that he is undeniably in a rough condition. Arguably even more alarming is the fact that this is only one Barry. She picks him up gently and quickly flies him back to the manor, working fast to get him onto a couch where he can be better observed. She is about to pull away to find out why Bruce is taking so long when he seems to gain consciousness, gripping onto her arm and muttering too softly to hear. She leans in closer to hear what he has to say:
"No one else... died."
After tucking his arm back under a sheet she had found, Kara jogs back off through the manor, Bruce's name on her tongue and Barry's rapidly drying blood between her fingers.
It takes a few weeks but eventually Barry is able to stand on his own again. A few weeks after that, he is able to walk on his own. A month later he mostly regains the use of his right arm. The scar from where they had removed the large piece of shrapnel would of course remain, although he did not seem to mind that part.
Despite still not having tested his ability to run at superhuman speeds, he still had the appetite of a horse and spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Time that had only gotten exponentially longer after he'd convinced Bruce to start stocking up the fridge and to stop forcing pizza delivery drivers to come all the way out to his manor.
That's where Kara found him as soon as she starts looking, standing by the stove top and singing a song called Holy Grail by an artist called Jay-T. The smell of freshly frying eggs strikes her nose the second she walks in.
And we all just media makers
And we're so dumb, and contagious
Know we all just media makers
"Oh hey," Barry looks up as soon as he notices her. "Want some?"
"No thanks," Kara waves him off and goes to sit at the table. "I'm not hungry."
"Suit yourself," he says casually, bringing the heat to a simmer to get them just the way he likes them.
As she watches him whistle and work, the uneasy worry that had gripped her heart before slowly begins to leave. It was stupid, she knew, he had been out of her sight for all but fifteen minutes, but ever since he'd returned from what he called the "speed force", she had not been able to keep him out of her sight. It was to her that he ususally woke up to and with her that he had slowly picked up on walking again. Yet even once he had grown mostly independent, she could not help shadow him wherever he went and when he did not complain, she kept it up, even when trying to be more casual about it.
"You know something," he remarks while stirring the pan. "These eggs are really starting to look like updog."
Kara tilts her head curiously, "What is up dog?"
Barry immediately snorts, hiding his chuckle as best he can. When he sees that there is nothing but a blank look on her face, he clears his throat awkwardly, "Wow. Tough crowd."
"How is your arm feeling?"
"The same as it did when you asked me fifteen minutes ago and just slightly better than it did when you asked me thirty minutes ago."
She hums in acceptance of the answer, "I apologize. I'm not use to the long periods of time that it takes humans to recover from injuries."
"I'm not just human you know," Barry protests. "I'm part whatever other Barry is too."
Kara rolls her eyes at the whine behind his voice and asks, "When are you going to try using your powers again?"
"As soon as I feel energized enough to do so."
"And when will you feel energized enough?"
"When I feel energized enough."
"But when?"
He's unable to detect the frustration in her demeanor, until she lets slip:
"Bruce is doing his best, but it's taking too long. With your powers, we could find Barry."
Barry grimaces and it's noticeable enough that she instantly asks, "What?"
"So," he starts off, switching the stove off and leaning his hands onto the counter behind him. "I've been thinking about this whole find Barry thing for a while now and I gotta tell ya, I don't think it's the best idea."
She is taken aback, "What do you mean you don't–"
"Barry's back in his own time-line safe and sound. Why should we go disturb the peace?"
Kara gives him a look that he had long since given up trying to decipher, "You think he's safe and sound, there's no telling what the time he now occupies looks like."
"And what of it," Barry argues. "What if he landed in some war zone or dies by the hand of some villian? It isn't our place to change when and how time works. Messing with it is what caused the whole mess with Zod in the first place and it's what turned me into..." he trails off, ashamed of admitting out loud for a second time what had become of himself in the future.
Kara stands from her spot at the table, "These powers you have are more powerful than you realize. The things that Bruce has told me are possible, the endless vastness of what you could occupy. All it would take is you finding Barry and making sure he's really alright. Do that and then you can put this speed force nonsense away."
He struggles to form the words that he wants to form. Stopping short and looking down he mutters, "I'm sorry... but I can't."
"Don't you care about him!" Her hands come down hard onto the table, causing the pepper shaker at the end of it to fall to the ground. "He had your back all those times and now you're just going to let him possibly run off into a world that could mean he dies?"
Barry takes a moment to answer, his teeth slipping lose to nibble softly at his lip, "You're right about one thing, he did always have my back. And the last thing he said to me at the last moment he had my back is that not every problem has a solution." He's cautious about it, but approaches her never the less and gently takes up one of her hands to squeeze it, "Sometimes you just have to learn how to let go."
"B-but–"
"You remember what I told you about canon events?"
"Yes," she nods slowly.
"My mom dies and my dad goes to jail. That's a canon event and it's one I can't stop without causing all the damage that Barry caused. I've lived all these years with them in my life and now just like that, they're gone."
"Oh Barry," Kara says before drawing him into a tight hug, the guilt starting to weigh against her chest.
After that talk, Kara stops shadowing Barry and stops helping Bruce. Most of her days are spent hidden away in her room. The grandfather clock's occasional chimes are all that keep her company and the only way she has of keeping track of the time apart from looking out the window.
On the rare occasion that she does emerge from her room, it's only because she felt a brief bit of courage before quickly losing it and retreating back to the mattress in the corner.
Barry and Bruce can tell how obvious it is that she is working overtime to avoid them. Still, they do their best to give her all the space that she needs. At most, all that Barry will do is knock on her door a few times during the day, trying to engage her in some sort of banter to which she'll respond in a muffled voice "Go away Barry!" Bruce tries slightly harder, slipping her notes under the door with yes and no questions to try and get to the bottom of whatever is troubling her. She ignores all of them.
It ashames her to confess that she finds some pride in her ability to avoid them, keeping up a good track record until one late Tuesday night when she's on the staircase and hears Bruce's voice from behind her.
"Barry's not going to be happy about you eating his ice-cream."
Kara turns slowly, the carton of ice-cream open and a spoon on it's way to her mouth.
"Vanilla," Bruce points out as he begins to ascend the stairs. "Nice."
She's unsure of how to respond and goes with the first thing that comes to mind, "I prefer chicken."
"That's not a–" he starts but stops halfway through. "Look, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she says, her tone reminiscent of a simpler time. "I was just hungry."
"I left you a note asking if you wanted me to bring something up," Bruce points out.
"Dammit," Kara thinks, "I should have read at least one of them."
"What's up kid? I've barely seen you this past week."
She lets the spoon fall into the carton before answering, "We don't have to see each other everyday, you know."
"Yes, but everyday for the past three and a half months, we have seen each other," Bruce counters. "Is it something I said, because if it's something I said then I'll apologize. Right now."
Kara bites her lip and turns away, not sure whether she is in the mood to admit her guilt. She sinks down onto one of the steps and sits there with a sigh, "I miss him."
"We all do."
"When I first opened my eyes and saw the first light that I had seen in a long time, his face is the first thing that I saw," she starts to explain. "He went through so much to save this world even when it wasn't his own. He's selfless just like..."
When she trails off, he picks up for her, "He told you all about his 'Superman' didn't he?"
Kara nods in quiet confirmation, "It's the only thing I could think of doing after defeating Zod."
Bruce slowly lowers himself down besides her, their knees almost touching, "Do you think your's would have been the same way?"
"Why wouldn't he have been?" There's a stubborn scoff behind her rhetoric. "I would have made sure of it and Barry would have helped."
"Listen, a lot has happened in a pretty short amount of time. I shaved and put the ol' suit back on, we broke you out of a secret Russian research facility, you and I both died until Barry and Barry fixed the time-line and now I'm trying to build a machine capable of breaking that very time-line," he gives a soft sigh of his own. "I can't speed up the process and I definitely can't guarantee that it'll work, but I need you to stop beatig yourself up over something that you can't control. These scars that we carry with us, they make us who we are. It's what we decide to do with them that really matters."
She appears thoughtful for a long time, before answering with a simple: "Yeah." Then she holds out the carton of ice-cream to him, "Want some?"
"I prefer the kind with nuts... but sure. Why not?"
They fall asleep on the stairs, an empty carton of ice-cream between them.
She had felt it since earlier that morning, the fearful and terrible dread underlying the ususally jovial atmosphere.
The day had arrived for Krypton's fate to at last reach it. The ground shook beneath her feet, and the skies rumbled with a deafening roar. It was as if the very core of her world cried out in its final agony. Tears streamed down her face as she held baby Kal-El in her arms, knowing that the moment was to mark the beginning of their separation, however brief it should have been.
In that final embrace, she whispered words of love to her nephew, vowing to protect and guide him from afar. With a heavy heart, she watched as the spacecraft soared into the unknown, carrying with it the last remnants of her shattered world.
"Welcome to McDonalds," the voice blares through the speaker. "I apologize but our kitchen is currently unable to serve the drive-thru. Please order from inside."
Batman sighs as he pulls out of the drive-thru and comes to a stop at the nearest parking spot. It's also the only parking spot large enough to fit the batmobile.
"Alright," he says looking into the rear view mirror to where Barry and Kara are seated, both of them dressed in their suits as well. "Let's just make this quick and then we can go stop that hostage situation. Okay?"
They both seem cordial enough as they agree with him and even more so as they enter the McDonalds.
The checkout is to the far right, but there is an immediate sign pointing customers to the digital ordering system. Further down are a few tables and chairs which are only partially filled, meaning that they do not get that many strange looks.
"Go ahead," Batman says, letting them order whatever they want.
"Done," Barry says almost instantly, stepping back from the screen.
Seeing that Kara is taking significantly longer, most likely in an attempt to figure out how the machine actually works, he decides to pay for Barry's order first, only stopping to do a double take when he sees the price reflected on the screen, "Sixty dollars!" He then goes through the sheer size of the order, "Three Bigmacs, two quarter pounders with cheese, a Mcdouble, two sides of fries, a vanilla cone and a Happy Meal. Barry I know you have an appetite, but there's no way you plan on eating all of this."
"Most of it is leftovers," Barry argues, "seeing as someone keeps forgetting to fill the fridge."
He only sighs and pulls out his credit card.
"Is it weird that I always imagined you had like a bat card?"
"That would be stupid," Batman says while entering his pin. "It would be like putting nipples on my suit."
Once Barry's is paid for, he turns to Kara's which is a modest eight dollars consisting of... a small fries and a snack-sized Mcflurry. Oh well, he's not one to judge, especially not an alien that was still getting use to most of human culture, and quickly pays for her order.
The worker putting it together hums while he works, going over his list carefully to make sure that he gets it right. When he reaches the Happy Meal, he holds up two blue minions and asks, "Would you like Stuart or Kinsley toy with the Happy Meal?"
Barry opens his mouth to eagerly answer, but is beaten by Batman.
"Neither. You should still be making toys about me, not about those overgrown hemorrhoids."
"Okay..."
As he drives, he steals the occasional glance at Barry, stuffing down several burgers at once and Kara, looking torn between eating her fries and Mcflurry together or eating them separately.
A few short years ago, he really did think that he had nothing to live for. Now here he was in full attire, two young heroes in the back of the batmobile with him on the way to stop a group of terrorists that had wired bombs to detonate should any of them die or fall unconscious. It was the type of thing that Gotham had long ago sworn off, the type of thing that he had long ago sworn off. Yet here he was now.
It did feel pretty good, even when he knew that he would later have to scrub dried tomato sauce from the backseats.