Mon-el swallows thickly, palm sweaty, heart beating harder by each passing seconds. Here we go. Kara was facing him, standing her ground, her feet firmly put onto the floor, her hands resting on her hips. The daxamite didn't dare to look at her for too long, eyes diverting to anywhere but her ––the training room had seemed like a wise choice earlier on, now not so much.
"Are you gonna yell at me?" He asks sheepishly, passing his hand on the back of his neck.
"Far from me to step out of line." Kara sounded nearly bitter, and that struck him as a punch to the guts. Kara was never bitter. She was a ball of sunshine, always smiling, always so full of warmth. She was his sun. "Should I bow, your highness?"
His eyes closes in defeat, a slight sigh escaping his lips. "Kara, please––"
"Don't!" She cuts him. "I just- were you ever planning to tell me?"
He wanted to say yes, he truly did, but deep down he knew it wasn't the truth. Ever since he started having feelings for her, feelings he didn't really comprehend or knew what to do with, he had wanted to tell her the truth, but there was always this gut-clenching fear of loosing her in the back of his mind. She hated everything about Daxam, let alone the Prince. She voiced her opinion about him once and although he did believe that her feelings for him were genuine (not that he understood that because he clearly didn't deserve her) he feared that they might not be enough to keep her, and he couldn't afford to loose her. He already lost everything, his family, his planet, his whole world. Kara was his home, now. Earth was a place he did learn to understand and enjoy but Kara was the one that felt like home. He didn't had to keep up this "Mike" persona that was expected of him out of the DEO walls, he could be himself with her, all of him. He didn't need to lie, and he didn't want to. He wanted to be true, to be whole, to her, to do right by her. Be worthy of her, even though he knew he never would. He slowly look up at her, even now, looking beyond pissed, she still was beautiful. "…No, I was not."
She scoffed in disbelief. "So much for being honest, Mon-el! …Or should I even call you that? Is it even your real name?!"
Her words hurt more than her punches ever could. Had he possibly lost her trust so easily?
"It is my name!" He answered nearly defensively. "On Daxam the royalty has- had several names. My official one was Lar Gand, from the Great Royal family of Gand" he didn't miss how she refrained from rolling her eyes at that, her lips in a thin line "but my mother would call me Mon-el, this is why I gave you this name…"
"Oh… And does that explains why you lied?"
"I'm not the only one to blame in this, Kara." She lift an eyebrow at that. "Your biased view of Daxam clouded your judgment since day one. What else could I have done? I woke up thinking that my planet was dying while I was stuck into this weird place, on a foreign planet, confused and afraid of what may happen to me, and what were your first words to me? "Stay down, daxamite." Calling me a dangerous murderer all based on where I was from" She clenched her jaw, but he decided to continue. She wanted to know, well fine, he'll tell her. He'll tell her everything. "so yeah, when you asked about my identity, I did the only thing I could think of : I lied to protect myself. Because if you didn't know who I was then you couldn't use it against me or my home world. The Royal family has been targeted a lot of times, a lot of ways. I was their Prince, the rightful heir to the throne, and here I was, facing a Kryptonian, the very same people that started the war, that wanted us dead––"
"we started the war?!" He could feel her anger rising, eyes sending daggers.
"It doesn't matter anymore, Kara" he sighed tiredly "you weren't ready to hear the truth then and you're still not… I was the- how did you put it? oh yeah! ––the frat-boy of the universe. The worst of the worst!" She clenched her jaw, lowering her gaze to the ground. "How was I supposed to come clean when you said that to my face? And then we grew closer, and the harder it got, because I was all about being honest and true, and I wanted to do right by you, but I told you one thing and I couldn't go back! How could I? At any given argument, it'd come up : 'oh, he's a daxamite!' 'You're so selfish, Mon-el'" he mimics "'I don't know what else I should've expected from a daxamite!'" he threw his hands up in the air in despair. "Things were so different then, Kara. I was different. Daxam was–– exactly how it was rumored to be, maybe even worse… and we-we were not good people, none of us. I'm not pretending I'm suddenly a much better person, but I try!" Her shoulders seemed to relax for a second, and he saw that breach as his opportunity for her to actually listen, his chance to make her understand. "You have such high expectations out of me! And I try to reach them, to be different, I want to be better and I try. I try so hard but it never seem to be enough…! You're always so hard on me, Kara!" She didn't miss the hint of desperation in his voice, waving his hands around. "All it takes is one mistake and you fall on me with-with those eyes and that-that disappointment in them! You're so easy to throw me off! I- what I were back then doesn't matter anymore. I'm not… like that anymore––"
She could hear the uncertainty in his voice and she longed for nothing more than to reach out for him and to pull him in a comforting hug but she refrained. No. She was the one that was angry, that had the right to be angry for the betrayal, for the lies. It was so weird for her to acknowledge that this…this goofus outer space puppy she had put so much time and faith in was actually the infamous Prince of Daxam. He was so unlike the Mon-el she knew. Sure, at first he partied a lot, drank a lot, had affairs with his fair share of women, but that wasn't very different from earthlings, was it? She watched him evolving, changing for the better, becoming the hero she knew he could be, but more than that she had fallen for him. Hard and deep. He was such an important piece of her life now, she couldn't imagine going on without him. He was the only one that could make her laugh no matter what, he was so-carefree and that was the perfect balance with the weight she had on her shoulders. He made her so happy. He had been so open and honest with everything else that she stayed completely oblivious. She had never doubted, for even second, that he's been hiding things from her, not when he knew what honesty meant to her. He witnessed how Guardian's secret had affected her…
"I know it's not what you want to hear but… You never asked, Kara. About Daxam, about my life there. And I figured your hatred over my people was what was keeping you from asking and somehow I was grateful because if you didn't ask, then it didn't matter. So I figured not telling you wasn't a big deal. You can't be the Prince of somewhere that no longer exists. Don't you get it? I was a Prince only by the title, I left them to die." his voice croaked lightly, and it's only then she saw it ––the guilt into his bright blue eyes. "I survived because I left them die. It's not something I've been proud of... My family, my people, my whole world was gone. Yes I was the Prince but… It didn't matter anymore who I used to be. I wasn't defined by my title any longer, people saw me for me, and I never realized how much I longed for that! My life on Daxam wasn't-" he sighs. "-it wasn't all rainbow and sunshine, alright? I was privileged, yes, but I wasn't happy. And things were so different here, it was a fresh start, and who I used to be shouldn't matter."
he looked back and forth between those beautiful blue eyes ––comets–– searching for something, anything that would imply that he had reach out to her, that she understood why he did it. He swallows a lump in his throat, trying to keep his voice steady and even. "You know me. The real me! The fact that you are from Krypton, and I from Daxam, doesn't change the fact that I have fallen in love with you, Kara Zor-el… and as far as I'm concerned nothing will."