She'll Never Forgive Herself

by astradanvers

Alex is on her doorstep at two in the morning, it can't be good. Angst in the beginning with a better, happyish ending.

This story starts out very angsty and not at all a happy read, in the end though it all kind of works out.

Alex is the one to show up at her door, at two in the morning, with a look that could make the meanest man alive concerned. "What happened?" she demands instantly, knowing that if Alex has that look on her face there can only be one reason.

"Can I come in? I really think you need to be sitting for this, Cat," Alex says in a rush of words and barely concealed emotion.

Cat steps back from the door, allowing Alex to enter and the two of them move to the living room. Before Alex can speak however a sleepy voice sounds from the doorway leading to the hall, "Mama?" Both Cat and Alex look up to the little blonde haired girl in the doorway, "What's Aunt Alex doing here?"

Alex looks away from her niece, too afraid that the girl will be able to see the reason for her visit written across her features. "Come here, Alura," she says quietly and pulls her daughter into her lap as she approaches. "Aunt Alex just had a nightmare and didn't want to be alone. Just like you when you have a bad dream."

Alura nods and snuggles down into her Mama's embrace, "You'll chase the dreams away, won't you, Mama?"

"I'll try my best, baby," Cat tells her daughter, pressing a kiss to her forehead while rocking side to side slightly. Slowly Alura drifts off to sleep in her mother's arms. Nothing is said as Cat stands, slipping down the hall and tucking Alura back into to bed across the room from her sister. Before leaving the room Cat places a kiss to both of her daughters' foreheads and tucks them safely back under their covers. Back in the living room Cat returns stiffly to the couch, "Start talking, Danvers," she demands instantly, veering instantly away from loving mother and sister-in-law to worried wife.

"Kara," Alex nearly chokes on the name alone, "she was going up against someone we didn't have a lot of intel on. I tried-god, I tried to stop her but this guy he," she shakes her head, "he killed a family, they had three kids all about the same age as Alura and Lizzie. She wouldn't listen to me."

"What happened, Alex?" Cat demands, her hands fisted into the couch cushions at her sides and panic in her voice.

Alex looks up at Cat, the two of them have an agreement, they never lie to each other in regards to Kara or the kids, they both care about them too much. "There was a bomb," Alex finally says, her chest tightening even as she says the words. "I've examined the fragments we collected from the blast, there's evidence," she brushes at the tears on her cheeks but they're just replaced by new ones, "there's evidence of Kryptonite in the fragments."

Cat pulls herself back into the confines of the couch, pulls her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them, "I need you to tell me what you're saying, Alex, because the conclusions I'm drawing are not," she chokes on her own tears now, "they aren't good and I cannot accept that what I'm thinking is the truth."

"Cat -"

"Don't Cat me, Alex, I need to hear the fucking words," Cat snaps at her sister-in-law, her eyes boring into the other woman.

"Supergirl was caught in a bomb blast at twelve-thirty this morning, upon investigation of the bomb fragments it was discovered that Kryptonite appears to have been present. Since the bomb blast Supergirl has not been seen and no one can find her. As of one-thirty Supergirl," she takes a deep breath, stifles a sob, "Kara Danvers is presumed dead."

Cat doesn't leave the house for five days, she keeps Carter, Alura and Lizzie home with her, calling the babysitter to say they have the flu and she's staying with them. She calls her office and tells them that she won't be in. Winn calls everyday to ask about Kara and Cat makes some excuse as to why her wife can't come to the phone while she tries her best not to break down.

Alex stops by everyday, spends her time sitting in the floor playing with Alura and Lizzie while Cat glares daggers at her from the couch and Carter watches them both with fear filled eyes. On the sixth day Carter wakes early and slips out of his room to find his mother still sitting on the couch, just as she had been the night before. There are tear tracks on her cheeks and she's wrapped up in Supergirl's spare cape.

"Mom," Carter's voice draws Cat's eyes to him and she hurried wipes away her remaining tears and throws the cape off of her. "Don't," he says, "don't lie to me, please." He studies her, "Please just tell me what's going on. It's been five days, Mom, and Ma isn't home. She always comes home to us. The girls they don't realize but I'm fifteen, Mom, I know she should have been home by now."

Cat opens her arms to her son and he goes willingly into them, curling up into her side as much as his taller frame will allow and she covers them both with Supergirl's cape. He inhales the apple blossom scent he associates with his other mother and looks up to the one holding him, "There was a bomb," Cat says quietly, she's known this conversation was coming. Carter is fifteen and he's smart even more than that. "They didn't know much about the guy but he'd killed a family with kids around your sisters' age, your mother wouldn't listen to Alex and went after him anyway. The bomb," she chokes on her words, her family has always been one thing she's never been able to put a wall up about, "it had Kryptonite in it. Kara," she sobs, "oh god, Kara's been presumed dead."

After that Carter isn't sure if his mom is holding him or if he's holding her but the two of them cling to one another and cry together. Sobs wrack their way through both of their bodies and Carter tries to remember every piece of advice that Kara or Supergirl ever gave him about courage and being strong. Right now though, Carter can't be strong. They fall asleep there on the couch, curled up together, still clinging to one another with tear tracks on their cheeks.

The phone still clutched in Cat's hand is what wakes them, the ring is shrill and all too loud in the quiet early hours of the morning but Cat's eyes instantly pop open. She's clung to her phone every minute of every day since Alex showed up on her doorstep at two in the morning. "Hello."

"Cat!" Alex's voice rings through the line, "You need to get to DEO now, there should be an agent at your door any minute, two actually. One will drive you here and the other is going to stay with the kids."

"Alex?"

"We found her, Cat."

That's all Cat hears before she's up from the couch, "Mom?"

"They found Kara," she tells her son, rushing for her room and throwing on whatever she can find in her closet. "There's an agent on the way who is going to stay with you and your sisters and I'm going to DEO headquarters with a second agent."

"Mom, is she alive?"

"I don't know," Cat says with a shake of her head as she realizes that she in fact never asked Alex if Kara was alive or not. "I feel like she is though. That's why I haven't left the house in days, I felt like -"

"Like she'd come back to us anyway she could?"

Cat nods, "Yeah, like that."

"Me too," Carter says just as a knock sounds on the door and Cat instantly yanks it open to see James and a man she's not familiar with.

"I'll stay with the kids," James says with a hand on her shoulder, he's been DEO for around two years, "They'll be safe."

Cat nods and she about to leave with the other agent but Carter grabs her arm, "You tell Ma," he starts, "you tell her she had better get home soon because I," he pauses, "I miss her."

Standing on her tiptoes Cat tilts his head down and presses a kiss to his forehead, "I'll let her know, baby," she promises and then hurries out after the agent still outside her door.

The moment she steps into DEO headquarters Alex is at her side. "I'm not going to lie," she says quickly, "it's bad. She's very weak and still has quite a few injuries -"

"But she's alive," Cat says, her eyes searching Alex's face.

"She's alive," Alex says with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes.

They stop outside a room with glass walls and Cat stares through the windows, "Sunlamps," she says, observing the sun bed that Kara is lying in.

"They're recharging her, for lack of a better term," Alex explains. "The sun energy is what her Kryptonite powers feed off of. We weren't," she takes a deep breath, "we weren't sure it was going to work." Alex is looking through the glass walls just as Cat is, "She blew out her powers right before the blast, killed the scumbag who killed the kids but he had a kill switch on him and that's what set off the bomb. At this point I'm not sure if blowing out her powers and making her human, therefore immune to the Kryptonite or her Kryptonian ability to survive a blast like that receives more credit for why she's lying in that sun bed alive and breathing and asking for her wife."

Without a word, Cat turns into the side of the woman beside her and feels Alex's arm wrap around her shoulders as she quietly sobs. She's about to pull away from Alex when she hears the sun bed inside of the room open, "She had better not be doing what I think she is," she growls.

"She can hear you crying, even without the super hearing, you know exactly what she's doing."

Cat pushes herself away from Alex and marches into the room where her wife is, "Get your ass back into that sun bed, Kara Danvers-Grant, or so help me I will finish the job that bomb started."

"Cat," Kara begins.

"Get back in the damn bed, Kara," Cat demands, "you can talk from inside it, I know you can."

Reluctantly Kara returns to the sun bed while Cat reaches for the rolling stool and pulls it closer to the side of the bed, "Cat -"

"You scared the hell out of me, Kara," Cat snaps, not giving her wife time to say anything. "For five days, Kara, five! I had no idea where you were and they said you were presumed dead because of the bomb and the Kryptonite and I," Cat shakes her head and covers her eyes.

When she feel strong arms wrap around her she doesn't demand that Kara return to the sun bed, instead she sinks into the embrace of the woman she loves. "I didn't know he had a kill switch."

"You shouldn't have been there in the first place. You knew nothing about him."

Kara sighs, runs her hands up and down Cat's back, "There were three kids in the family he killed, Cat, three little girls who every time I looked at them all I could see was Alura and Lizzie's faces. I tried," she says, "I tried so hard to talk myself out of going but he killed them, Cat, he killed them for no other reason than he could. He thought the Kryptonite as a poison, not just for Kryptonians but for anyone, he was trying to use it to blow up a hospital but I got to his hideout first." She pulls Cat tighter against her, "I know I scared you," she whispers, pressing her lips against the top of Cat's head, "I'm so sorry, my love."

Cat pulls back from her wife, traces a fading bruise along her cheek, "Still human then?" Kara only nods as a response. "If you ever do this to me and the kids again," she says firmly, "Kryptonian or not I will murder you in your sleep, do you understand?" Kara nods. "Good," Cat says and then leans in to kiss her wife who hisses when Cat presses too firmly against her left side.

"Broken rib," Kara says quietly. "Several actually." Neither woman says anything for a long while, "Do the kids -"

"Carter knows," Cat says, "I should actually call him. And he said to tell you that you better get home soon because he misses you."

Alex enters the room just then, "Kara, you can go home. We don't know how long the blowout will last, you used a lot more power than any time they've blown before now and it's already been five days."

"They will come back though, right?"

A shrug is her response, "This isn't an exact science," Alex says, "we don't really know if they will or they won't, only time will tell." Kara nods then stands up, leaning heavily on Cat who has wrapped an arm around her waist. Alex steps forward into her sister's personal space, "The next time I tell you to stay away from something, Supergirl," she growls, "you will listen," she meets Kara's eyes, "because I will NOT watch your wife and children go through what they've been through the past five days again, do you understand me?"

Kara nods, "Yeah," she glances to Cat beside her and can see the fear still written across the other woman's face, "yeah, I've got it, Alex." She leans forward, presses a kiss against her sister's cheek, "Come over for dinner tonight?"

"Yeah," Alex says, tiredly, "I'll be over in about an hour, I'm gonna run home and shower and change, I've been in the same clothes for five days."

"Bring some extra clothes," Cat says, "you can have the guest room for the night."

Alex smiles at her sister-in-law, pressing a kiss to her cheek, "Thanks, Cat," the two of them understand each other when it comes to Kara in a way that no one else ever will. "Take Supergirl home and put her to bed, try to keep the wild ones from rebreaking her ribs otherwise she's gonna have a rough few days while we wait for her powers to return."

"Duly noted," Cat says with a grin, "we'll see you in an hour or so, Alex." She squeezes the other woman's hand, "Be safe."

"I will," Alex promises and then steps away to let them pass her by. She watches them until they're far enough up the hall that they can't see her anymore and then she sinks down onto the stool beside the sun bed and sobs. She'll never forgive herself for letting her little sister get hurt and putting her family through the past few days, never.