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When she refused for the third time, Clark hit her.
Oddly, she wasn’t shocked. Maybe it was when she first saw him kill, and knew then that things would never be the same again. The red sun weakened them both, so when she said no to his third request to join him and lead his Brainiac-infected army, his violence was as mundane as the hurt that had settled into her heart. The slap happened fast and slow simultaneously. It had to, because even with Brainiac on his mind, there was nothing extraordinary about this. Her cousin didn’t believe in kindness and humility anymore, so his violence was without any other motive except the desire to inflict pain.
So after he finished slapping her, knocking her off her feet and onto the cold ground, Kara licked away the blood from the corner of her mouth. She had to sit still for a moment. There was a tooth loose in her mouth and she could feel the beginnings of a bruise form on her face. Her vision was the worst, though. It needed much longer to clear than she would have liked.
But it did clear in the end, and she realized her cousin was waiting for her. She lifted her head to see him staring at her with eerie green eyes that had long since glazed over with Brainiac’s influence.
“Get up,” came the cold voice that reminded her less and less of her uncle these days.
Kara did as she was told because prisoners didn’t have a choice, and she’d lost count of how long she’s been in the cage. She doubted if he even knew how long she’d been locked away without fresh clothes and showers. Kara knew she stank and could feel the bacteria and disease growing in her unwashed mouth.
One meal a day and some water didn’t do much for a growing girl, but Kara also knew that she wasn’t supposed to grow. Kal El would never let her heal to full strength ever again. She was supposed to waste away until she was just another husk. She’d die here. She knew that much.
Kal El knew it too. When she finally got back to her feet, she swung like a drunk. She couldn’t help it. The slap had knocked more than just a tooth loose.
“You don’t learn,” Kal El clipped coldly, and that hurt.
How was she supposed to know her mother had been wrong, and that life after Krypton wasn’t the answer? She’d been duped by Teth-Adam too, and when she finally thought she had a chance to do some real good, her cousin reminded her of her place in the new world.
She also knew that’s why he kept coming back. He needed to see her waste away to understand that he no longer had a need for any blood relations. He had Brainiac now. Brainiac would give him everything he’d ever need – including the false semblance of control he thought he had.
“Goodbye, Kara.” Kal El said at last, and it was no different than the other goodbyes, when he at least tried to play nicely, but there were no more niceties left to share.
Perhaps he’d made peace with the death of his wife and unborn child. Why wouldn’t he? There was a multiverse to steal from, wasn’t there? Kara had heard of the whispers of a grown son who’d found his way into their universe, but sent away by Cyborg before Kal El could do anything drastic. They’d known. The Regime had known how attached her little cousin could become to people and things he thought he was owed. She knew in her heart that he didn’t have a need for anyone of this Earth or timeline anymore. Her cousin would find a way to remake his family in his own image. He might even find another Kara with that kind of hatred in her heart.
“I wish you’d chosen differently.”
“Then make me,” she slurred, her jaw aching. She didn’t know why she said it. It wasn’t as if she had any desire to let herself get infected by Brainiac.
For once, Kal El seemed uncertain. He gripped her jaw and made her stand still for once. “We can’t make you. You’re not like Bruce. If he ever regains control, he goes back to being Bruce the human. But you…”
Kara blinked at him, her gaze still blurring around the edges. “What am I, cousin?” She groused through a mouth full of blood.
Kal El’s next strike broke her ribs easily against his fist. Her suit was hanging off her bones these days. A little harder, and he might have been able to punch through her skin and make a hole in her stomach for everyone to see.
When she fell to the ground this time, he didn’t stay to watch her gurgle and spit out the broken tooth and blood. In fact, he didn’t do much of anything. Instead, she smelled something acrid as she felt a wetness in her hair and dirty feet. Kal El walked out of the cage.
She wished she could walk out too, but she couldn’t. The flames were too quick.
When she awoke, it was snowing outside.
“Am I dead?” She asked herself softly. No one answered her. Kara counted to twenty in her head before getting up off the ridiculously comfortable bed. It was firm, like her bed used to be in Argo City, not soft like in Black Adam’s castle, and certainly not harsh like in her cousin’s prison.
It was just right.
Funny how things went. Wasting away in the prison had made Kara want to sleep all the time, but it got harder and harder with the gnawing hunger. The hunger used to keep her awake.
But now she found that she wasn’t hungry anymore.
“Definitely dead,” she mumbled to herself. She wiggled her tongue in her mouth to feel her teeth and found the broken one unmarred and sitting where it should instead of on the dirty floor of a red sunlit prison. Her hands were clean and polished, and she had on warm clothes and comfortable socks.
The clothes were native to Krypton’s coldest regions. Kara peered at the blue and green garments and thumbed the embroidered fabric. She seemed to be in some kind of purgatory. When she lifted her eyes and looked around the plainly furnished bedroom, she saw floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on a wintry landscape, a bookshelf full of tomes with Kryptonese names on the spine, and more Kryptonian clothes neatly folded on a chair next to the windows.
Argo City never got snow like this. When Kara was a child and her parents had taken her into the mountains for a family vacation, it was the first time she experienced just how truly diverse her world was. She hadn’t been able to appreciate it much but she had understood the significance. That experience in the wintry landscape never left her in the end. It was a small piece of home imprinted permanently into her memories.
She closed her eyes and willed away the comforting images, because if she was dead, she wanted to see how dead she actually was. Had her cousin set her on fire like she thought he did? If so, Kara wanted to see her burnt skin. She wanted to know if her cousin had, had a change of heart and snapped her neck before the flames ate away at her.
But when she opened her eyes, she was still in the room overlooking gentle snow and trees shimmering with green, red, and golden hues. It really was Krypton. Rao itself was shaded by the thick white snow clouds, but she knew that it was waiting for her beyond the curtain of snowflakes. How she managed to earn any kind of grace from Him after her horrendous tenure as Supergirl was beyond her, but she was grateful for his kindness.
“Mercy,” clipped a firm voice from behind her.
Kara turned around in her place to look at the dead woman she’d been forced to leave behind on Krypton. The hair was wrapped in a loose braid down her neck, and she was much older than how Kara remembered her when she’d died.
And had Kara not known intimately that she did, she’d think she was dreaming, and that this wasn’t really purgatory, but some kind of heaven.
“Mother?”
“He’s cruel for this,” she murmured to herself while the specter of Alura In Ze approached her from the corner of the room before sitting down on the bed beside her. Kara didn’t move from her spot. If she did, she couldn’t guarantee the specter would stay, and she needed the specter to stay, even if it was just a trick of her mind and a tender gift from her gods.
The older woman gripped her hand and squeezed it. It wasn’t the gentle touch of her father and it wasn’t the fleeting touch of her aunt and uncle, or even her baby cousin who was only months old when her world had ended.
No. Only her mother had such an iron grip, and the hand that held hers wouldn’t let go, even after Kara had been forced to leave her behind.
“He thinks he can burn his cousin alive and the gods wouldn’t hear it?” Alura In Ze hissed, looking at the beautiful snowy mountains through the crystal clear windows while gripping Kara’s left hand tightly. “Well, he’s wrong. He can’t control the dead, Daughter. I came here of my own volition. Do you understand? There is no sorcery here. I came here for you.”
Kara began to cry. She didn’t know if it was because she missed the sound of her mother’s voice, or the fact that she missed her ire. Her mother could have survived on her own after Krypton. Her mother was like that. She could be a formidable opponent when she wanted to be, and Kara found that she missed that. She missed her mother’s iron grip and her sound resolve.
“Am I dead?” She asked her mother weakly. Alura lifted her chin and gave her a thin smile. The shock of it froze Kara in her seat. “Mother?” She asked again, her voice rising an octave.
“I couldn’t let you suffer more than he’s already made you,” Alura told her, gripping her shoulder now. “He’s weak in spirit, Kara. That’s the difference. And don’t tell me I’m wrong. I watched you both while you grew up, the last children of Krypton. He broke a long time ago, Kara. You just have to find the fissure and destroy him entirely.”
“I can’t kill my cousin!” She wailed, the secret truth revealed, the one she pretended she couldn’t see when it was always there waiting for her.
Alura’s eyes softened and a finger swept away the tears on her right cheek. “It’s time to grow up,” Alura said gently, as if they were discussing anything else. “If you don’t do it, no one else will.” Then, her mother took her into her arms.
Kara sobbed into her arms like a little girl, something she knew she’d always be deep down. And how was a little girl supposed to kill her baby cousin, even if he had grown into a tyrant and let Brainiac overtake what little was left of his senses?
“If you don’t, then he’ll take your new home,” Alura said softly into her ear when her sobs had lessened. “Do you understand, Kara? The new home you found? It all goes away if Kal El isn’t stopped. Do it for yourself, if for no one else. My sweet girl. I love you, Kara. I love y-”
The pain began then, and Kara began to wail.
When she opened her eyes, she was in excruciating pain, but even the acrid scent of burnt flesh and hair seemed moot compared to the image of her beautiful mother.
“Kara? Kara, can you hear me?” Hal Jordan asked frantically through a glowing green construct that seemed to be embracing her.
And it was embracing her. The construct had doused the flames and only left Kara’s burnt flesh behind.
“We gotta hurry, Hal!” Barry Allen yelled from somewhere.
A boy around her age appeared. He wore a drab brown shirt with the House of El’s insignia imprinted on it. “She’s awake,” he said.
“I see that, Chris!” Hal Jordan barked as the construct grew tighter around Kara’s form. “Kara, honey? Can you hear me? If you can hear me, blink twice, OK?”
She blinked twice at Hal Jordan and then looked at the boy with brown hair and a tall frame. “Who are you?” Said the rough voice that no longer sounded like a twenty-one year old woman’s. Kara thought she sounded more like her mother now.
“Oh, thank God,” Hal Jordan wheezed and held up two fingers, which seemed to send Barry Allen and the others into motion.
She kept staring at the boy until they were somewhere else, somewhere Hal Jordan and Barry Allen thought was safe. A man with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a teenage girl with a blaster gun stood side by side waiting for them. Kara was still cocooned in Hal Jordan’s construct, but at least she could see and speak.
“This the little princess?”
“Be nice, Dad,” the girl said with a heavy sigh.
“I am being nice.”
The girl elbowed her father in the gut before making her way to Kara’s green cage. “Hi, there. I’m Rose.” Kara blinked at the little black girl with beautiful long braids that were in ponytail draped down one shoulder, as much acknowledgment she could afford without opening her mouth since her body was was rendered immobile.
“And I’m Chris,” the boy finally answered, coming back into view. “Kent,” he clarified. “You’re my aunt, in my world. Kinda.”
The words rang in Kara’s head, but they didn’t make sense. What world? In what world did she have a nephew named Chris Kent? Hadn’t Clark’s child died?
“You’re breaking the poor girl’s brain,” said a deep voice. “Let her rest and recover, and then she can learn all of your names.”
Kara’s heart leapt in her throat and she struggled to get out of the green construct. “Easy!” Hal Jordan barked, but she wasn’t paying attention to Hal Jordan.
She was looking at the man who’d crept up from behind Rose and her father – her uncle, Jor El.
Kara had no more hair left on her body, and all the skin on her legs and torso had sloughed off with the flames. Her face and arms were still burnt, but not so terribly that she’d need to keep them encased in a protective suit for the rest of her life. Still, she didn’t look like Teth-Adam’s protégé anymore – or an El.
For all intents and purposes, all that remained of the old Kara Zor El was whatever was left in her memory.
“Do you understand, Niece?” Said Jor El of Prime Earth. “We’re here to help you take down my wayward son, but I’m on borrowed time. I was sentenced to death for my crimes, so I can’t be here long.”
“It has to be now, Princess,” John Constantine, who was of her and Kal El’s Earth and long ago escaped with his child, said with a puff of his cigarette.
“We’ll help you as much as we can,” Chris Kent of New Earth blurted out. “I… I’m not meant for long either, I think, but something came to us. All of us. It said you needed help, so we came.”
“And they found us,” Hal sighed. “Me and Barry tried our best. I’m sorry, Kara.”
Kara looked at her hands that were covered in gauze. She didn’t dare touch her face and feel the sin her cousin had enacted against her. “You came from across the multiverse?” Kara asked at last, her voice harsh and low.
“Infinite Earths full of infinite possibilities,” Jor El grinned when she raised her eyes to him. “My grandson and his friends in my universe made it happen. They shattered the laws of reality.”
Kara turned her head to Chris. “Are you him?
“W-who do you think you I am?”
“The unborn child,” Kara rasped.
Chris gave her a pitying smile and shook his head. “I’m adopted. My father is General Zod, but Lois and Clark took me in and raised me.” He pursed his lips and scrunched his eyebrows for a moment before continuing. “I’m supposed to be in the Phantom Zone. I sacrificed myself to save, Dad. I’m supposed withering away next to my guardian, Mon.”
“But he didn’t,” Constantine interjected, “because I was living life nice and proper.”
“Until he started to feel bad and the ghosts started coming to him,” Rose Constantine quipped.
“Mostly because the ghosts wouldn’t shut up,” Constantine drawled. “Your mother, princess. That’s one incessant broad.”
“It’s part of her charm,” Kara found herself saying with a little laugh.
When she looked around the room, she saw people who’d lost homes and made new ones. She saw an uncle whose world was destroyed because of his own scientific creation instead of Brainiac’s lust. She saw a nephew who she never met, who remembered a Kal El who still had love in his heart. She saw Kal El’s old friends who still hadn’t given up on him. She saw a man who’d taken his daughter and ran, to hell with the world.
“I know what broke him,” she said through new teeth Hal Jordan had helped put into her mouth.
They looked at her with undivided attention. Kara clenched her fist and let the pain flow through her.
And when it did, so did the power.
It was easier to tell to people who’d already died. Jor El, Chris, and even Hal Jordan and Barry Allen, whose memories of Parallax and a paradox that had once destroyed the multiverse, they all understood what Kara meant because they’d all sacrificed a piece of themselves a long time ago.
“He tried it once, and it didn’t work,” Constantine noted.
“That Kal El hadn’t lost,” Kara noted. She looked at her uncle who was researching the infinite earths with her list of filters. “He has to have lost and it has to be his own fault. If he doesn’t understand, then he can’t defeat our Kal El.”
“There’s one,” Jor El said.
“Who did he lose?”
Jor El grimaced. “The human that took him in.”
“He killed the Kents?” Barry balked.
“Jonathan, specifically. Traded his life in for a woman’s. Seems they didn’t last either. How’s that for loss, Niece?”
“Enough,” she said.
In the end, it was much simpler than expected. Clark Kent of Earth 167 was older than their Kal El, and had been around longer. He’d fought Brainiac in his youth and won, even when it’d taken control of his best friend.
He’d also done the inconceivable and traded in his adoptive father’s life in for his then-girlfriend’s.
“You know, I expected this from Jor El,” he told Kara as they got ready for what Kara assumed would be her last battle.
“Why?”
“I didn’t know it was my father’s life I was trading in that day. I just wanted Lana to come back.” This Kal El had grays mixed into his hair and beard, and always seemed to be smiling amiably even though there was an insurmountable amount of grief coloring his aura.
“Jor El did that?”
Clark Kent nodded. “He did that and a lot more.” He looked at her and gave her a warm smile, and it was perhaps the warmest smile she’d ever known to see on a Kal El, save for the one her little cousin used to gave her when he was just a baby. “But I guess it was different for you.”
Kara didn’t say anything. She only remembered her uncle as a kind and brave man.
But if there was one thing Kara understood, now that she’d lost his skin, hair, and the last semblance of what made her look remotely Kryptonian, it was that the dead didn’t mean gone. It didn’t mean that, that was the end. It didn’t mean closure either.
Dead just meant different, and in Kara’s case, it meant power.
“I won’t kill him,” Superman of Earth 167 promised her. “Death might not be permanent, but there’s always a price, Kara. I’ll go home but you’ll still have to deal with him, but at least you won’t have to deal with a body. I promise you, you won’t have to bury him. The gold from my world works better than most. He’ll be human by the end. Maybe then you two can talk.”
But Kara didn’t know if there was anything left to say anymore.