Author's Notes:
This fic draws inspiration from a lot of places. The idea is based very loosely on one of my favorite Harry Potter Fics, Harry Potter And The Nightmares of Future Past by S'TarKan (warning, the fic is unfinished, and on long term hiatus due to author health issues), but it also takes ideas from Fictorium's Asking Too Much, Tender Mercy by lisaof9, and the new 52 run of Supergirl, including the Sanctuary and Red Daughter of Krypton story-lines, as well as, of course, the classic X-Men Story, Days of Future Past (the comic was much better than the movie, and easily one of the greatest X-Men stories ever written).
The Kara in this story is a bit more Kara Zor-El than Kara Danvers. She's older, wiser, and perfectly willing to channel her inner Cat and Alex to save the lives of everyone she loved.
This story was started before season two began and is canon divergent pretty much from the moment Kara says "Love Bonds Us All" at the end of Better Angels. There is no Kryptonian Pod in this universe, and no Mon-El of Daxam.
A word of warning. If you are the kind of reader who can't stand the thought of one member of your OTP even looking at someone else after they've met the other half of your OTP, this is not the story for you. While Supercat is endgame, Kara and Sara's relationship is an important part of the story, and is not as completely in the past as you might expect from the way the story starts.
In this story, Kara will occasionally lapse into Kryptonian. The first instance of this happens in this chapter. The Kryptonian in this story is taken from Doyle Kryptonian which is where most of the Kryptonian used on the show is taken from. Translation was done using the resources at , and I suspect the quality of the translation will vary widely.
In the earlier drafts of this story, I either didn't use Kryptonian, or I wrote the sections in English and set it off using special formatting, but I was unhappy with that, so I went back and rewrote them in Kryptonian. The problem with that is, the Kryptonian sections were written out of order and my skill with the language (such as it is) has improved considerably over time.
I've tried to go back and fix any errors, but:
1). The dictionary is fragmentary and I've had to work around holes in the language, or when I couldn't, construct new words with guesswork.
2). I am absolute shit at learning languages that are whole and functional, so one that only exists in fragmentary form is even worse.
Any errors are mine. Any weirdness with the language and phrasing is either me being an idiot, or an artifact of my take on how Kryptonian culture and religious beliefs would influence speech patterns. My Krypton sticks as close as possible to the show, but I have made huge changes from comic canon to make Krypton fit more closely with our current understanding of what the reality of life would be on a planet in order around a red sun.
Most translations are fairly literal translations, though the order of the words is different, because English uses a Subject Verb Object sentence structure, whole Kryptonian uses Verb Subject Object sentence structure (example: The sentence "Kara punched Maxwell Lord" would be "Punched Kara Maxwell Lord" in a Verb Subject Object language like Kryptonian). In some cases however, the meaning in English can vary from the literal translation. In those cases, I will give the literal translation first, followed by the Semantic Translation.
Three final notes.
1). I take it as a given that Alex speaks Kryptonian, because she grew up with Kara, and she spent two years fiddling with Kara's pod and the hologram, and anything in canon that says she doesn't will be cheerfully ignored because it's bullshit.
2). Kara *does* know how to swear, but she's only good at it in Kryptonian.
3). The first three chapters are going up tonight because they are already posted at Ao3. After tonight, it will be one chapter a week for as long as I can keep the pace, which should be a whole, since I just started chapter 40.
Update: This story has now been betaed by ifourmindbeso. Any remaining mistakes are entirely my own.
The City of Argo, Krypton: May 21st, 1977
Kara jumped through the shattered window of her childhood bedroom a moment before the floor gave way, but even the increased strength from Alex's old exoskeleton didn't gave her enough of a push to clear the distance to the Waverider's waiting hatch. Fortunately, M'gann was there to catch her. One second, Kara was falling, the next M'gann's right arm was a thick tentacle, wrapped around her waist, and the Martian woman was hauling her into the open airlock.
"Thanks," Kara said as M'gann sat her on the floor. M'gann didn't really respond. She just nodded as she released Kara, and hit the button to close the door. Kara tapped her ear piece. "Get us clear," she said. Almost immediately, she felt the gut twisting nausea that came with a time jump. Not trusting herself to move during a jump without her powers, she just looked up at M'gann.
The blank look on M'gann's face hadn't change since Harley had died nearly a week earlier. Kara wanted desperately to do something, anything, for her oldest remaining friend, but she didn't know what to say. She and Harley had been the only things holding each other together for the longest time.
There was a part of her that knew it wouldn't matter, not if their plan worked, but she couldn't help it. The desire to help was still there.
She waited until she felt them exit the time jump, then she stood up and headed towards the bridge. M'gann followed along silently as they picked their way through the debris-strewn corridors of the ship to where Sara was waiting for them.
"Did you get it?" Sara asked.
Kara held up the spy beacon.
"That's it?" she asked. "It doesn't look like much."
Kara shrugged. "It's not much," she said. "Just a paired-key homing beacon."
"How is that going to change the course of the war?" Sara asked.
"If I play my cards right, this will add twenty-nine very angry Kryptonians to our side. It will also keep the Hope function of the Anti-Life equation from ever falling into Darkseid's hands. If he can't complete the equation…"
"Then we'll only be fighting Apokolips, not the entire galaxy," Sara said.
Kara looked around the ruined bridge of the Waverider, then back to Sara. "Where's Thea?"
"She's bundling up the care package," Sara said.
"Good. Where'd you set us down?"
"On top of your apartment building," Sara said.
"Um, are you sure it will hold the weight?"
"Doesn't have too. I've got the Higgs dampeners running. The ship weights about as much as a bicycle right now."
"Alright then. I guess it's time."
Sara nodded, and stood up out of the Captain's chair. Before Kara could turn away, Sara reached out and slipped a hand around the back of her neck, pulling her down into a kiss. Kara reacted immediately, slipping her arms around Sara and pulling her close, kissing her with everything she had. It wasn't a long kiss, but it didn't need to be. After so many years together, there wasn't a lot left to say between them. Nothing, in fact, except thank you and goodbye.
Sara pulled back, and Kara gave her a weak smile, neither of them quite able to hide the tears in their eyes.
"Let's do this," Sara said.
The walk to the Waverider's medbay seemed both too short and too long. Too short, because she could be about to make everything worse, and too long because she was going to see her sister again, see Cat, Winn, J'onn, and all the people she'd lost since the war started.
She just had to die to do it.
"You have it?" Thea asked as they entered the medbay.
Kara nodded and held out the spy beacon. "Be careful," she said. "My sister may not be up to the same standard she was at by the time Myriad was over but she's still a DEO field operative."
Thea shrugged. "Honestly, I'm more worried about the other you," she said as she put the spy beacon in the case with the three power rings, their power batteries, the portal generator Vibe had given her after the Dominator incident, and the Kryptonian Constructor Crystals.
"I should be down there before you, even with the Velocity 12," Kara said.
"Here's hoping," Thea said. She closed the hard case, then picked it up and slid it back into the cardboard box Gideon had fabricated for them, and started taping it shut.
Kara climbed up onto one of the medical tables and lay down. "You ready, M'Gann?"
"Yes," was the only reply. The Martian stepped around the table so she could place her fingers on Kara's temple, then looked at Sara. "Whenever you're ready."
"Right," Sara said. "Gideon, I need the telepathic booster serum."
"Of course, Captain Lance," the AI said as a small door opened in the wall, and a loaded injector gun was extended.
"This stuff will work, right?" Sara asked as she picked up the gun.
"Oh course. The serum will allow Ms. M'orzz to open a telepathic link with Ms. Zor-El's past and present selves and merge Ms. Zor-El's present consciousness with her past self. However, the serum is highly toxic, and will terminate Ms. M'orzz life functions within ten minutes of injection. There is no antidote."
"As long as it works," M'gann said.
Kara watched as Thea picked up a second injector, and pressed it to Kara's neck, injecting the Velocity 12 into her carotid artery. Thea nodded to Sara, who stepped over to M'gann and inserted the needle into her neck.
"Go," Sara said as she pulled the trigger. Thea vanished along with the cardboard box in a swirl of blue lightning, and at the same moment, M'gann began to pull, tearing Kara's mind from her present body, killing her in the process, as she forced Kara's current mind to merge with her younger one. It was agony. Indescribable, beyond any pain she'd felt in a life far too full of it. Feeling her mind ripped out of her body, forced through a place infinitely too small, before being crushed together with her younger self. Her younger self, who was living everything that happened over twelve long years in a fraction of a second.
She'd been worried about this moment. Worried she'd wake Alex, who was sleeping on the couch, worried she'd wake the whole building. In the end, she needn't have.
It hurt far too much to scream.
Kara Danvers' Apartment. National City. Earth 38, September 14th, 2014
Kara sat in her bed, shaking as she stared at the box left on her bed. She wanted to reach out for it, take it, tuck it away somewhere safe, but she was paralyzed by her own fear. She'd hoped for this moment, dreamed of it, of the chance to go back and fix so many mistakes. But now, in the moment, there were so many doubts, so many things she was afraid of.
The first, though, was easy enough to take care of. Her glasses were already on the nightstand, so she didn't have to take them off to sweep the apartment. No bugs, no cameras, no surveillance. She knew that wouldn't last, but she was relieved that it was the case tonight. She couldn't afford a confrontation with the DEO, and if they saw Thea run into her apartment, or figured out that she had three power rings and power batteries in her hands, it would be an all-out war even J'onn wouldn't be able to stop. Kryptonians were powerful enough to scare the government without throwing weapons that could devastate entire worlds into the mix.
Fortunately, she never intended to keep them for herself.
She forced herself to move, to act. All the fear was still there, but time was of the essence. For now, she had to preserve as much of the timeline as possible. There would be changes, that was the whole point, but nothing that would tip her hand too soon. Nothing that would stop her sister from getting on that plane.
She used a touch of super-speed to tuck the box onto a shelf in her closet. It wasn't perfect, but it would do until Alex was out of the apartment, at which time, she could head up to the Fortress and tuck it away among all the things Kal didn't want other people finding. That would do until she could get the sanctuary crystals out of her pod.
She sat back down, picked up her phone, and checked her email. Sure enough, there was a message containing a link waiting for her. She tapped the link, and confirmed that their little stop in 1998 before they headed to Krypton had paid off. With a decent broadband connection, and seventeen years to work, the AI Gideon had whipped up for them had built up a bank account that would make the Prince of Dubai jealous.
She sent a couple of quick commands to the AI before locking her phone and lying back down, using a Kryptonian Meditation to calm herself. What she really wanted to do fish the spy beacon out of the box and turn it on, but it was too soon. If she turned it on now, it would call Astra, but it would call Non and the other Kryptonians as well. Because Astra still thought, or at least suspected, Kara betrayed her and Kara wouldn't be able to tell her otherwise. Not for another year.
But she could wait, and she could hope, and in a couple of very short hours, she'd be able to hug her sister again.