Chapter Text
“Everyone dies alone,” Cyborg Superman said as he crushed Kara’s head with his foot. The Kryptonian warrior let out a sharp scream of pain, but the man attacking her only increased the pressure, determined to end her life right then and there.
“Aunt Kara!” Jon screamed, rushing to her aid.
He flew as fast as he could, feeling space itself distort around him. The sonic boom reverberated, cracking the cement and shattering the glass nearby.
And yet, he couldn’t get there in time.
Kara let out one final, faint sound as her body gave up, her arms falling limp to either side.
And then, Jon woke up.
He managed not to scream, holding his chest tightly as he gasped desperately for air. Aunt Kara was... she was...
“Deep breaths, little Jonathan,” the Kara he knew when he was little had advised him once, after he confessed he had nightmares. “If that happens again, make sure to hold tight to something that brings you calm, understood?”
He had immediately flown up to her, wrapping his tiny arms around her waist and crying all over again. He looked up at her, his eyes telling her that she was the only thing in the universe that could calm him down in that moment.
“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to break the embrace.
“No, Jonathan,” she had said, firm and yet soft, as one of her hands squeezed his left shoulder in the gentlest way. “Do not apologize for those feelings. They are the heritage left by your parents’ hearts. When you are here with me, you will always be allowed to feel things. You will not be punished, nor chastised for your humanity.”
“Even if I cry a lot?” he asked, tears still rolling down his cheeks.
“A true warrior won’t drown in the river of their own sorrows, but they still must swim across it,” she recited.
He blinked, trying to understand what she meant, and she smiled at him.
“Feel things, Jonathan Kent. The good and the bad.”
He nodded, and she sat cross-legged on the cold, hard soil of the forest, then looked at him. Jon floated away ever so slightly, hesitant; after such a display of weakness, he felt he didn't deserve this.
“Jonathan Kent, come here,” she invited softly. “You need to rest, and we both know this is the best way to achieve it.”
He came back down, then laid his head on her lap, smiling when she patted his hair. He tried to focus on the sounds of the forest, but when he closed his eyes, he shivered once more, remembering his nightmare.
But then, a new sound reached his ears, his aunt was singing now, with a softness and warmth that he had never heard from her before. He opened his eyes and giggled when Kara covered them gently with her hand.
“Rest well, Jonathan Kent. I will make sure to lull you to sleep with one of the ancient Songs of Xu'ka.”
She kept singing, and little Jon didn't say another word...
Jon looked around him. Tonight, he was sleeping at his parents’ place, his still-alive parents, who had let him stay here in the past, where he felt he belonged, at least for a little bit longer.
He remembered when his watch had started beeping, signaling he was out of time. He had refused to leave. He had flown toward the still, torn-up form of Hank Henshaw, ripping the power core straight from his chest to jumpstart his device. He had desperately slammed it against his wrist. It had charged it up, but he made an error in his calculations, and his device exploded.
Now, he was trapped in the past for the foreseeable future (a contradictory concept that made his head hurt), at least until Dr. Luthor or anyone from his own time managed to call him back. Or worse, until time itself took revenge on him for his selfish need for his parents and erased him from the universe.
It had been a full week so far, the best week of his life, in his opinion. But tonight, he couldn’t sleep, still plagued by the nightmares. Looking around, he saw Lois and Clark sleeping near him. Both seemed knocked out cold, which wasn't surprising considering his dad was now fully human. He considered waking them up and explaining what was happening to him, but he shook his head. No, there was only one person who could help him now.
So, taking advantage of his super speed and his years of stealth training with his Aunt Kara, he slipped out of the apartment unnoticed and took to the sky, flying directly toward Jimmy's place.
Kara was laying on the ground with her eyes closed, perfectly content feeling the softness of the grass below her and the many joyful screams of the people around her. Suddenly, she felt a hand on her cheek, several fingers dancing softly across her face.
“Greetings, my warrior,” she muttered, opening her eyes to look up at the bright and beautiful face of Jimmy Flamebird.
“Greetings,” he said back, brushing her hair aside ever so slightly.
“Were you victorious in your mission?” she questioned, raising an eyebrow.
“It took seven and a half minutes, but Flip is finally swinging at the height and speed she wanted.”
She could hear the young human girl laughing in the background and turned her head slightly to the right, seeing her gliding back and forth on the playground swing. Jimmy and she were her caretakers for the day, and she had to admit they were doing a spectacular job.
“I could have achieved that result in seven seconds,” she said, obviously teasing him.
He huffed, then gave her a delightful frown in response.
“But I suppose it’s a remarkable feat... for a human,” she conceded, holding his face and bringing him closer. They shared a tender kiss on the lips, and she laughed against his cheek. He left a trail of kisses across her face, and she could feel her skin flaring up until he spoke again.
“Well, it’s impossible to compare to the great, powerful, and beautiful Supergirl,” he said. She kissed him once more, a small reward for being able to pour his heart out with such a declaration.
“And which of those characteristics is the one that you like about me the most, Jimmy?”
“You know the answer to that,” he said, whispering silly human sentences into her ear. She barely understood half of them, flustered and confused by his constant use of the phrase 'Space Princess.’
It didn’t make any sense. She wasn’t a princess, and of course she came from outer space, every single alien came from outer space!
But she couldn’t protest about how absurd that sentence sounded to her, because now Jimmy was kissing her neck and making her shiver. She moved, finding his hand with her own and squeezing it while he kept kissing her.
She wanted this moment to last forever. She grabbed his clothes, perhaps a bit too furiously, dragging him toward her. She needed him, and if it wasn’t for the fact that chaperoning the hyper enthusiastic Flip was an incredibly important task, she would have flown back to their apartment carrying him in her arms.
But her wishes weren’t going to come true. Just a few seconds later, Jimmy stopped.
“Okay, it’s time for me to go,” he muttered, all of a sudden.
He got up, still smiling, and she instantly missed his comforting presence terribly.
“More duties at the Daily Planet?”
“Oh no, none of that,” the human said dismissively. “I just got bored of this date, so I have another one lined up already.”
The world grew cold and dark. The laughter disappeared, the grass around her died away, and the sun vanished as Jimmy Flamebird’s smile became incredibly fake.
“What do you mean ‘bored’?” she asked. If this was a practical joke, he was going too far.
He laughed directly at her and shook his head left and right, as if she were an idiot child who had trouble understanding what was happening.
“It means you’re boring me. So, thanks for nothing, Kara.”
The Kryptonian felt her heart shattering as darkness engulfed everything around her.
And that was when a soft knock on her window woke her up.
She opened her eyes, scanning the room. She was at Jimmy’s place, but not at his side. She'd had a nightmare, yet another one in which Jimmy Flamebird broke her heart in an irreparable way. This had never happened; he had never told her those things. But she had also never shared an afternoon in the park with him, with him kissing her softly and telling her how much she mattered to him. Perhaps that was even more heartbreaking.
They were currently at his apartment, but sleeping in different rooms, and that distance felt like a galaxy. She knew she should talk to him, that she should be clear about what she was feeling, hear him out, and try to find a reason why he was acting so silly, dating so many other women and not her. But there were no words she could use, no way to express the pain and the longing she felt for him.
Another knock on her window interrupted her, and she realized there was someone outside. She rubbed her face with her hands, wiping any trace of tears off it. Floating gently, she opened the window and let her visitor come in.
“Is there a problem, Jonathan Kent?”
“Do you remember the Songs of Xu’ka, Aunt Kara?” he practically spat at her.
She blinked. Her brain processed the words for a moment, thinking that Jon was probably referring to an event from his own timeline, but then she realized something.
“I do remember the songs,” she said in a soft voice, fidgeting nervously as she looked away. “When I was little, Brainiac taught them to me, using them as a way to pretend he cared about me and the history of our planet.”
She could see the immediate pain and regret in Jonathan’s eyes as he said, “I’m sorry, it’s just… I had a nightmare just now… and when I was little, you…”
“Ah, I see. I sang the Song of Sleep to you, didn’t I?”
He gave her a little nod.
“Would you like me to do it again? Or rather, in my case, for the first time, Jonathan Kent?”
Another nod.
She flew to the bed, sitting at the edge of it, and Jon followed her, laying at her side. He looked at her like he was about to ask her something but remained silent, so she cleared her throat and sang:
“Sakar, lallen sitien
Zaroo, askol…”
She stopped, noticing that Jon was looking at her with obvious confusion.
“Is there something wrong, Jonathan Kent?”
“You used to sing to me in English.”
She frowned at that. The Songs of Xu’ka were never translated into any other language that wasn’t Kryptonian; there was a certain cadence and rhythm to them that didn’t work with any other idioms. But Jon was looking at her with desperation. Right now, she had the opportunity to help him. Brainiac had told her once that the Songs of Xu’ka were effective against these sorts of mental crises. She knew she couldn’t trust the words of her old master and controller, but she had to try something. So, she thought about it for a moment and came up with a translation.
“Let my voice
Be the compass,
To guide your heart aright.
Let my voice
Be a safe pass,
My dear, to a peaceful night.”
She repeated the words over and over again, her voice becoming softer and more melodic. She remembered breaking into an impromptu song with Lois a few weeks ago at the mall, and yet, this felt so much more special than that.
Jon had looked heavy and rigid at first; maybe he even thought this was a bad idea himself. Perhaps he feared that because the Kara singing to him wasn’t the exact version he knew, she was destined to fail tonight. But then, the obvious tension in his shoulders melted away. His hands, clenched tightly into fists, loosened until his palms opened, yet, one of his hands was still shaking.
“Let my voice
Be the compass…”
She repeated the line, and instinctively, she reached out for Jonathan’s hand. Her voice was calming him down, but she felt that confirming her presence in another physical way was necessary. Surprisingly, he curled up into a ball while still holding her hand. He opened his eyes ever so slightly and whispered, “Thank you so much, Aunt Kara.”
Oh, how much had this young Kryptonian-human warrior suffered in his life, Kara wondered as she kept singing. How much pain had Jonathan Kent endured, that the simplest of her gestures could be met with such raw, emotional gratitude?
Finally, her voice was accompanied by a new type of rhythm, the steady, quiet sound of Jonathan’s snoring.
Kara smiled, thrilled by her success. She had taken a piece of her own dark past, one of the multiple stratagems Brainiac had used to control and twist her mind, and used it as a shield to protect her nephew. She stayed there, completely unmoving, willing to sacrifice her own rest for his benefit. She would guarantee his peace, this night and every night, she promised, with the stars shimmering through her window as the only witnesses to her oath.
Or at least, that was the idea, until her phone started to vibrate.
She frowned at the device, flying toward it, fully prepared to destroy it with her heat vision if it broke Jon’s peace in any way. But she stopped the moment she saw Kal-El was the one calling.
A tiny bit worried, she pressed the green circle on her screen.