Hello my sweet Karamel family! So this piece here is a direct result of the heavy feels of episode 15- In Search of Lost Time as I guess you all might be feeling the same way. Do not read this if you haven't seen episode 15 yet!

I hope you don't mind read this through some parts as I know it must be painful to reread those dialogues as they still feel soar, but I as a fan felt responsible to shed some light into it and help you all see it a bit differently.

Take on Me

"You're right. We have been through a lot together. Like that time you promised you wouldn't leave the DEO, and instead you ran off, you got wasted. You were reckless, selfish, you lied, and you didn't apologize."

Mon-El felt his heart dropping, throbbing painfully like it weighed a thousand tons. "Kara, I…"

"And then there was the time I got you a job at CatCo. I vouched for you at my place of employment. And then you had Eve do all of your work for you, and then you screwed her in the closet."

To say he was stunned was an understatement. It was as if he were falling deeper into a bottomless pitch-black pit. This was his worst fear all along. All the excitement to show Kara his suit was turning upside down. This was the opposite of how he had imagined their training session would go.

"You didn't apologize for that. And, shocker, I apologized to you for trying to make you into a better person."

The shame, the stains that could never be washed away no matter how hard he tried or how much time had passed. The demons that haunted him often in the dead of night.

The voices in his head screamed at him to stop her, to lash out in protest and denial. Yet he didn't have it in him. Never really had. Not when his mother ripped him off of his self-steam with venomous words and not even now when he was worlds apart from that person, standing in front of the woman he thought the world of and all he ever wanted was for her to see the person he had become.

It suddenly dawned on him how much he had failed in changing himself. He came to realize then more than ever, how little he deserved her. "I hear you. I get it."

"No, I don't think you do get it. I don't think you get that I gave my heart to a lying jackass, who was unaware of his behavior towards me, who disrespected me at every turn, and now is this reformed person who, what, he wants to reminisce about the good times? "

"Kara, put this on."

He barely held back the tears threatening to fall. His whole being was shaking ever so slightly under the effort, and if it weren't for Alex's timely interruption, he wasn't sure if he could have kept it together any longer.

There was no time to fall apart. No, he couldn't. He shouldn't. Not in the middle of a Martian psychic attack and when people's lives were in danger. That was his first and foremost important rule. No emotional attachments and personal matters when it came to saving others. Protect the people above all else. Just like Kara had taught him and he to the Legionnaires.

Therefore he tried to swallow down the pouring out emotions and calmed his senses in a practiced method which he had come to learn over his years of desolation in the 31th century.

Deep breaths… in… and out… in... and out…

He almost failed and had to go over it a few times because hadn't felt this profoundly disturbed for a long time. Hadn't felt his heart clench so tight and getting stabbed repeatedly with massive waves of guilt, self-loath and loneliness since his very first year in the future. This felt different though. This was excruciating in another a way he had never felt.

Flashes of his golden cherished memories with Kara in those few months, more than seven years ago, danced in front of his eyes, fading their light and darkening, twisting like microfilms trapped in fire.

All the soft smiles, random looks, all the kisses and endearments, all felt so far away and alien. They belonged to another person and not his anymore…

The alarms went off in the DEO and forced him into action.

Mon-El had spent endless months working to make the prefect suit. His friendship with Brainy allowed him access to highly advanced technology that paved his way to achieve the ultimate design, completed with a cape which was the closest copy of a Kryptonian meta-material. He proudly had realized that no one before this have ever came near to compose it. He had only succeeded in fabricating it after studying Kara's suit. Or rather what had been left of it.

It was unimaginably hard for him to work on it. Seeing the too familiar fabric torn into shreds and scorched, send shivers of distress and grief down his spine.

If this were the state of the cape, what had been the fate of its barer?

The moment Mon-El touched it for the first time, he almost lost it. This wasn't right. How could the indestructible material, once shining bright red and flowing faultlessly down her shoulders like royal robes, had crumpled and darkened at most parts like it was no more durable than a flimsy leaf.

He brought the largest and healthiest piece up to his eyes, recognizing immediately the smoothness under the tips of his fingers, causing memories to explode in his mind. All the times his hands had absentmindedly played with the fringes while talking to her, kissing her or simply holding her after she came back tired from keeping the world spinning.

The tears prickled at the corners of his eyes, a silent sob locked in his throat as he pressed the fabric to his nose, inhaling and seeking her aroma. But to his utter disappointment, all he smelled was smoke. Ashes that had kept the ruined cape hidden for a millennia had rubbed off her unique scent, denying him the small pleasure.

Time was a cruel master. It had taken everything from him, unfairly, way too soon.

When Mon-El finally got to wear the suit, he was a nervous wreck. What he wouldn't give to have Kara there with him to see it on him. He tried hard, but couldn't help himself and kept fantasizing how she would react. Going over scenarios in his head about the kind of things she would say, the way she would look him up and down with a bemused smile or maybe even gasp and probably ask him about the empty pattern of a Kryptonian glyph on his chest. He knew he had no right to wear that sacred symbol. It wasn't his place, but he had decided that this was the best way to keep the flames burning. A way to remind others of Supergirl and what she stood for.

Help, Hope and Compassion for all.

The suit became his second skin. The manifestation of the new him and soon the dawn of the Legion. His obsession with the smartcloth had helped him learn all the spectacular features of his cape and soon his cape tricks were the common word amongst his fellow Legionnaires, stablishing his reputation as their unbeatable leader.

It was a pity that a few years later, after the Legion had officially formed, his fight with the biggest gangster mobs on Rimbor, ended with a big gash on his thigh. The alien gun used on him was from a very advanced civilization with over energetic photons that managed to penetrate the suit and injure him. He didn't care about his wound though, his only concern was for the suit to be fixed and him going back into the battlefield with his friends as he laid down in the medical room, waiting impatiently for his leg to be cured.

The situation was worse than he had initially predicted. Key members of Titan authorities were involved and the major fraction of the planets were united against the Earth. He was out of options, out of clues. There was no time and he as the leader needed to act fast to prevent another slaughter to happen and wipe the humanity away for good. He couldn't let that happen. Not when he had sworn to protect earth in Kara's absence and so he would do whatever necessary to do that. Even if that meant marrying Imra.

Mon-El needed some sort of suit to wear when he next set foot into the field. His original damaged suit was waiting for Brainy to finally fix it. He had been too busy with the fights that even he who claimed to be from an overtly multi tasking race, hadn't find the time to do it. Thus Mon-El had to improvise with simple dark gears. It was temporary after all. That was what he kept telling himself. He could go back wearing his suit very soon.

Everything happened too fast afterwards. Next thing Mon-El knew, he was saying vows in Saturnian while holding Imra's hand on Titan soil, under the scrutinizing supervision of Titan leaders, pledging his loyalty to both planets and bringing peace back to Solar System.

Despite knowing that he was doing the right thing, the ache was sapping away his will power. He didn't want this, didn't want to betray all his feelings for Kara and be tied to someone he had no real feelings for. Imra knew him better than anyone after five years. Had been by his side through his worse and had heard all his stories about the girl of steel willingly, and if Mon-El had to choose someone to be his second, Imra was his most trusted person.

Albeit they both knew that his heart wasn't this union, they also were aware that they had no other choice and went along with it. It was to save earth after all. And that was all that Legion was trying to do.

Processing and going through the whole changes that came after their marriage was one of the hardest things Mon-El had done in his life after being stranded in the future.

For most parts he complied willingly and without any complains. Nevertheless there was one particular change that he was resentful towards. This change wasn't forced on him per se and rather a decision he had come to make on his own.

He needed to put away his original suit. Not because it couldn't be fixed. Brainy was far more than capable of doing that in less than an hour. No, he was putting it away because he felt it was too much. Too much for Imra, too much for him. He couldn't go on everyday wearing something that was a constant reminder of his true love. Someone he could never be reunited with. Hence he left it behind in order to gradually move on. It wasn't fair to Imra either.

He wasn't crazy to think that he would forget Kara or heal from the abandonment simply by not wearing the suit. That wasn't even remotely enough to change that.

Mon-El folded the suit and tucked it in his personal closet on the Legion ship after gazing at it longingly for minutes in a row and chasing the empty symbol on it with his fingers around Kara's necklace which was laid on top of it, at the center of the glyph. He was wrestling with himself whether he had to stop wearing it as well or not.

He slammed shut the door and strode away with clenched fists.

He didn't go far before turning sharply and running back to the closet. Mon-El snatched the necklace with a racing heart and returned it back to where it had been all these years, over his heart, as if to alleviating a suffocating ache.

There was no amount of reasoning, rational or irrational, enough to convince him to put away this keepsake. Ever.

Mon-El walked into the training room quietly without raising awareness and watched Kara rehearsing the moves all by herself, without the suit, executing all the moves flawlessly and even adding new tricks of her own already in her unparalleled genius style.

"And the student becomes the master."

He was still hurt. Didn't know why he was even there when he was so unsure of what to say or ask to make things okay between them.

Kara avoided his eyes, clearly feeling regretful for the things she had said.

"Can we talk about yesterday?"

He'd expected this and he knew what she wanted to say. Still knew her that much, and didn't wish to hear her apologize.

"You were whammied by the psychic attack."

"Yes, that's true, but I… the things I said…" She paused meaningfully and Mon-El raised his, wondering for a second if she would repeat them.

The comet blue met stormy gray and his heart started thumping in anticipation.

"I thought I had dealt with my feelings about us." An unreadable expression appeared on her face and quickly diverted away as she walked towards the nearest bench before continuing.

"But when we were in this episode, it made me realize that our relationship was not perfect."

Mon-El shoved his hands deep into his pockets solemnly, waiting for her to complete her words. He hadn't been able to sleep last night, lying awake thinking, contemplating, hoping beyond hope and trying to comprehend what Kara had actually meant. Psychic provocation aside, there had to be an underlying precision to it and while he didn't like to believe that Kara regarded their relationship so imperfect, he'd had more than enough time to go over every little detail of their time together, in the span of not so short seven years, to admit it to himself how ignorant he had been back then.

"But especially when you were gone, I was so busy missing you and romanticizing us…"

It was as if she were pulling the words out of his mouth. I've been there too Kara…

He wanted to say them out loud, but he kept to himself and let Kara finish what she had started, allowing her to open up to him for the first time.

"I do feel… a big weight off my shoulders. So in a way, I'm grateful that it happened."

Mon-El came to sit beside her, half glad to see her finally feeling relieved after all the months she had spent pining after him, and half sorrowful that she had been carrying all this inside her for Rao knows how long and not having been able to help her.

"I'm just really sorry that it took a Martian attack to make it come out. And I'm sorry it was it was so brutal."

"You know what, the truth can be brutal…"

Mon-El knew first-hand how the truth could come to gut you more times he could count. Like when he finally understood the mistakes of his path as the frat boy of the universe and then the pain of finding out that his mother had killed his father and then there was the truth of learning that he could never come back home to 21st century or the moment he realized he had to get married to Imra and the newest one, hearing her saying she and Brainy had been lying to him all along.

"It's not news to me that I used to be a jerk."

Kara nodded, but the somber look on her face with her crinkle was telling him how much she never had wanted to say those words or hear them back from him, despite those bottled up, frustrated, maybe even jealous and betrayed voices inside her that have urged her to spit them into his face in the first place.

"And I'm… I am sorry." He willed her inwardly to hear him and forgive him. "I'm sorry, for all of it." I'm sorry that I never deserved you. "I didn't really grasp your perspective back then."

"Yeah, but still, I shouldn't have hit you. I'm sorry for that. And I'm sorry for…" She sounded lost for words and bowed her head and huffed in what he presumed showed how remorseful she really was and he hated it. "I'm just sorry."

This needs to stop! "Can we make an agreement?"

"Yes."

Mon-El offered his right hand with the Legion Ring as it was a custom on Titan when making oral deals.

"No more apologies."

To his delight Kara shook his hand immediately and beamed, which ensued a smile to his own face. And soon her face became all playful in a way he hadn't seen in such a long time.

"Do you wanna go be heroes?"

The smile that came his way next was blindingly original and painfully familiar in equal parts, leaving him with paradoxical and turbulent emotions.

This all felt like an ending and a change. He couldn't tell if it were a good thing or not. He decided just for this once to let go of the meaning and live in the moment while it last.

When something ends, something else begins…

End Notes:

Sorry if this made you sad, it was angst after all. But I do hope that it helped you to finally let go of the hurt and move on to the next level like Kara and Mon-El have.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments. You can also find me on tumblr:

Another apology for not being active for weeks, some stuff came up that needed my constant attention and then uni started, so I have barely found the time to sit down and write. But I promise I haven't abandoned on my fics and return to yall eventually. Please be patient with me!

Ok, as Valor once said, "No more apologies! ;)". Stay strong my friends! SuperValor have Risen!

Peace 3