The Star Striders

Notes: Find me on Tumblr at spoopercorp and on AO3 as Local_Asshole.

Summary: The friends and family that Kara - that Supergirl - used to love struggle with the transcendence that has left her memories in ruins, all attempting to spark some recognition from her.

Eliza brought her back.

To Midvale.

"Why are we here?" Supergirl inquired, hovering a few feet over the roof of her home.

Her former home; a quaint house in the suburbs under the night sky and a blanket of stars.

It was quiet, so quiet that chirping crickets could be heard. There was no chatter, not much life, just a slight breeze that rustled the greenery from time to time.

The Kryptonian set the woman down with a soft thud.

"You grew up here," Eliza said, motherly love encased in her eyes and an expectant twitch at the tips of her lips, "When you came to Earth. You don't remember?"

Supergirl did, she recalled bits and pieces, but not enough to warrant a reply that gave the woman any semblance of hope.

It was not enough for her to feel anything, to recall fully a single memory.

"Why should I?" she asked instead.

There was a moment, shown in Eliza's eyes, that cracked a little - the optimism took a beating.

"'Cause I want my daughter back," the woman answered, slightly broken, a frown pulling the edges of her lips down.

She was strong, Supergirl knew that. She also knew that this woman raised two little girls after her husband, Jeremiah, was taken by a government organization and subsequently disappeared. Supergirl could still see it in Eliza's eyes, how much she missed him, still missed him because he was still gone.

But her little girls were not.

One of the little girls being Supergirl herself, a young Kryptonian that used to have no knowledge of how to control her powers on such a fragile, foreign planet.

Eliza was strong, always was for her daughters, and that was why her voice did not break open all the way.

But she did reach out to grasp Supergirl's hand gently, her skin soft, though wrinkled and slightly callous with age and her experience as a biochemical researcher.

Eliza intended though, to stretch her arm out to caress her daughter's cheeks, wanting to feel if it had the same texture as when she landed - smooth, supple, yet wet flesh from mourning Krypton; but Supergirl was too high, too out of reach.

"Come here," Eliza beckoned.

Supergirl obeyed, descending lower, closer.

But never did her feet touch the ground.

The proximity was enough though, for Eliza to stroke her girl's cheeks, to cup them in her hands.

And she remembered, with an aching heart, how small they were just around a decade ago, trembling with vulnerability.

Then Eliza's gaze finally traveled up to meet Supergirl's eyes, no longer a bright sapphire, but a bright white glow that was now in its place.

It was divine.

"Kara?" she called out.

There was no recognition, at least not an emotional one. It was detached, somewhat, from the rest of the world.

There was nothing.

Alex brought her to her apartment - Kara's apartment.

Supergirl recalled the location in fragments, she knew it was her abode with large windows in the highest complex to easily fly to and fro in the form of her alter ego - National City's savior.

The windows were open, to let the light in and the bustling noise of the city through - a cacophony of horns, shouts, screeching tires, and crying babies.

"Sister night!" Alex exclaimed, a little enthusiastic, a little uneasy. She was wearing an apron with pale yellow stripes, and it seemed to have been bombarded with numerous ingredients, some of them questionable in edibility.

Supergirl eyed the amount of food that laid across the dining table and floated over.

Ice cream, potstickers, chocolate pecan pie, cake, pizza...

"I do not need to eat, or drink, or rest."

Alex frowned, "Yeah," she sighed heavily and intertwined their fingers, "Yeah, I know that. I read the report. I guess I was just hoping...that there would be a change."

The woman looked to her sister, a being who was her sister, hoping that this event altered something between them.

It did not.

And the silence only made Supergirl tilt her head and blink her glowing eyes in vague curiosity.

Alex quickly pulled away and averted her gaze, perhaps afraid - terrified - of what she might find.

Of what she might not find.

"Movie?" she asked hastily, untying her apron and tossing it onto the kitchen counter before vaulting over the couch and swiping the remote from the coffee table.

She tried to be relaxed, she did, but the presence of Supergirl caused her the most discomfort.

"I can stay for a little longer," the Kryptonian replied, neutral.

It sounded so empty that it forced Alex's frown to deepen, creases lining her forehead.

"Which one?"

Supergirl flied over, "What do you suggest?"

Alex's tone grew frustrated, clipped, "Right. I guess you can't have an opinion or preference either."

"You are upset."

"Very astute observation," Alex snapped curtly.

"Why is it that you are upset?" Supergirl asked, and her voice held no personal concern - it was asked out of courtesy.

Alex scoffed, brought her eyes up to look at Supergirl, quiet, "I just want my sister back."

Her eyes, her face, her body all remained the same.

There was no emotion, no attachment that one should have felt for a sister, for family.

There was nothing.

Maggie took her to the alien bar afterwards, during the night, after her shift, and Supergirl quietly followed behind.

She continued to refuse to land, and the detective took note of that because, well, she was a detective; she could not help but notice things, regardless of how trivial the details.

Like the eyes, how they were vacant, void of any genuine, personal emotions.

Then there was an absence of feelings.

And it alarmed Maggie quite a bit, knowing that before all of this, the blonde had been angry, bitter, disappointed, upset - all the simultaneously happy and painful complexities of...living.

But none of that was there, nothing in between either.

Supergirl was a shell, a holy and divine icon. From Maggie's understanding, Alex confessed tearfully to her that Rao had chosen an heir.

Kara Danvers, lover of people, food, musicals, and Disney movies, had transcended.

She was Supergirl.

She was a god.

The first thing that greeted them past the entrance was J'onn and M'gann, who both smiled behind the bar.

Except both the Martians' grins were tight-lipped and wary.

J'onn though, he looked weary, was weary.

The Kryptonian he worked with for so long was now a surrogate daughter to him, and he her surrogate father.

Along with Alex of course.

The pain in his eyes was overwhelming, and he believed deep down that he was unable to help.

His and Kara's bond had only been strengthened within the D.E.O.; it was the only place they both shared.

But it was a facility, it had walls made of the sturdiest of metals, polished floors, lab rooms, and a medical bay full of injured and dying agents. And it had aliens imprisoned there.

It did not seem like a place that could really sort through Supergirl's memories with all the chaos there.

And J'onn did not know where else to take her.

His social interactions were awkward, he was a Martian so closed up from the genocide of his people.

Though M'gann was changing that. Slowly.

Before any of them could exchange proper greetings, an unsettling silence filled the entirety of the building.

It was eerie and Maggie, J'onn, and M'gann were ready for a fight, their stances hardening.

But there was no confrontation, no conflict.

One by one, it all dawned on the patrons, and one by one, each of them knelt.

Within a minute, all the alien customers were bowing to Rao's successor, floating reverently in the air.

And then Maggie realized that maybe it was not that Supergirl did not want to touch the ground, but that she could not.

And it filled her with dread.

James, Winn, and Mon-El awaited her within their den, their 'man cave' the latter two said.

The darkly lit and cramped room was a mess of stains, food, opened drinks, video games, useless antiques, trading cards, discs, wires, and papers strewn about.

It was easy to deduce that Winn owned the place.

"I suggest you clean your abode," Supergirl recommended.

Judging from the eyeroll that Winn and Mon-El gave her, they have both heard that countless times.

Though have never seen through to it.

"Trust me," James smiled, "They're not going to listen."

Winn set down his console controller and stepped across the dangerous terrain, waving a casual hand aside, "It's completely fine."

Then he slipped, fell forward.

A slender hand was pressed to his chest, pushed him as another hand grasped the back of his shirt and pulled him back upright.

"It is not safe," Supergirl said.

"I agree," James added, his gaze lingering on the woman in the air.

Winn chuckled, dusted himself off as he regained his footing, "Don't worry about it."

"You should be careful," Supergirl advised.

"I'm always careful," he bit back with a pout, placing his hands on his hips, "Unlike you, remember that time you..."

He went on a long rant, defending his clumsiness by disclosing Kara's, while Mon-El attempted to travel to them on a trek that could last millennia through a messy room like this, and James helped him regain his balance more than once.

Once Winn finished his story, he folded his arms and nodded his head in triumph.

Supergirl simply tilted her head, "I do not remember."

And then he faltered, shoulders sagging, back hunching, arms dangling to the ground.

"Right," he sighed at their predicament, "I, uh..."

"So, I hear you're a god now," Mon-El chimed in with a toothy grin, clearly forcing enthusiasm, albeit a little awkwardly, "I hear you're really making a difference out there. Like, nonstop. How's that going for you?"

Supergirl eyed him for several seconds.

"Well."

He also faltered at the over-simplified answer.

The Kryptonian continued to stare at the two boyish men.

"So," Winn started, "You're a god. Cool. Awesome."

Then her stare rested on James, who was relatively quiet throughout the gathering.

He cleared his throat, his deep voice caring, searching for something, for someone, "I guess you're the sun then? Since Rao's the..."

He trailed off, unsure of how to really deal with the stranger in front of him while Winn rubbed the back of his neck nervously, darting his eyes between the two.

Supergirl nodded, "Indeed. I am the personification of the sun, if that is how one desires to describe it."

Winn suddenly guffawed, and it startled Mon-El to the point he jumped a bit.

"Persunification!"

The Daxamite next to him burst into laughter as well.

James simply rolled his eyes, burying his face into his hands, but his heavy sigh held a certain amount of endearment.

After several seconds of the duo entertaining themselves at the hilarious quip, they trailed off into apprehensive chuckles when they saw that Supergirl did not look amused.

"What is so funny?" she inquired.

"It's a pun," Winn explained, "It's like a joke with multiple meanings I guess, 'cause the words used could have different definitions, but sound the same-"

"It's wordplay," James interrupted before he could go on a rambling tangent.

There was a quiet moment, and Winn felt his fragile ego bruise.

"It was funny," he hesitated, "Don't you get it? You said-"

"I understand," Supergirl interrupted, "I only fail to see how it is so comedic."

Winn's eyes bulged and then there were tears spilling out as he fell to his knees and grabbed one of the Kryptonian's legs, "I miss you so much, Kara!"

The sight was utterly pitiful. Almost comically so.

Supergirl looked down on him, then to Mon-El, who had a somber expression.

Then she glanced to James, and her gaze lingered for a fraction of a second more than necessary.

And he told himself that it did not mean anything.

Lucy came back. For her.

For Kara.

And she took her away to the other D.E.O. base, the rocky cavern with jagged walls.

She had heard, continued to hear, the great many deeds that Supergirl did for the people of Earth. Everything dropped; crime rates, suicide rates, poverty rates...

Everything was generally better. A lot better than before Supergirl transcended.

Because she wanted to make Earth a place of rapture.

She was exalted and worshipped now, by the majority, if not all, the inhabitants on Earth - alien and human alike.

Lucy knew Kryptonians were a race that upheld honor and had the greatest amount of respect from other aliens, all for different reasons: for the power they wielded in their military, for the intelligence they harbored in their science, for the influence that impacted others with their artistic talents...

So when Lucy saw her again, she was struck into a dumb sort of silence. She admired Kara, for her loyalty, strength, compassion, but the person hovering in front of her was not her.

"Do you remember me, Kara?" she asked, somewhat hopeful.

Supergirl tore her gaze away from the headquarters' terminals, "I do. I believe your name is Lucy Lane."

The brunette felt her lungs constrict with how unfamiliar the voice sounded, how it resonated with the fact that Supergirl did not know her and only knew of her.

It felt intimidating to stand in front of someone - maybe something - with so much unrelenting power.

Lucy scoffed, chuckled at herself, because the familiarity she sought in those scintillating eyes were not there.

She found nothing.

She was no longer a friend, but an acquaintance, perhaps not even that either.

And a part of her blamed herself for keeping away from Kara for so long due to her duties as major of the Army and as director of the D.E.O.

She thought she should have tried harder to maintain their bond, but business hindered it.

Or at least that was what she wanted to tell herself.

And her efforts now might be fruitless due to her absence.

"Is something the matter?"

Lucy's head snapped up at the voice, the concern almost hollow, as if Supergirl evenly spread her love to all in the vast universe until everyone was truly equal in her eyes.

Which was not a bad thing, it should not be a bad thing, but it sure did feel like it.

A part of Lucy knew that Kara - no, that Supergirl - would sacrifice her entire family if it were weighed against an entire population of a planet now. The worst part was maybe she would not even think twice about the decision. Nobody and nothing could sway her emotionally anymore.

Then another part of Lucy thought that the mere notion was factually impossible, she hoped that maybe everyone's efforts would eventually get through the celestial barrier that barred Kara.

Because Kara had taught her, unfailingly, that there was always hope. No matter what. And to never give up.

"It's nothing," Lucy answered.

Supergirl tilted her head at the lie, heard the heart in the human's chest skip a beat.

"You are lying to me."

It did not sound like an accusation at all, just an observation.

But Lucy's frame sulked a little when she corrected the sacred being.

"No. To myself."

Clark flew with her, to New Jersey, to his home.

It was a metropolitan city indeed, but Supergirl could not help but notice its mediocre size compared to National City back in California.

It was still noisy thankfully, of horns, chatter, and animals; the sounds were not the same though. Clark understood that. It was quieter. He enjoyed the quiet, having grown up in the endless cornfields of Kansas, and Metropolis was more compromising for his duties and love life.

The quiet always bothered Kara though.

However, not at first. He remembered the Danvers informing him that his cousin was experiencing an onslaught of heightened senses. The vision was easy to handle (though terrifying), but the strength and hearing, not so much.

Especially the hearing.

Clark knew that Kara thrived off of life, off of the hustle and bustle of cities and people. She confided in her sister once that if it got too quiet that it would be taken advantage of, Krypton would exploit it and come back to haunt her in her dreams - nightmares.

Alex in turn confessed to him that she had absolutely no idea what to do, and he regretfully responded with a similar answer.

Clark told Alex that she was the closest family Kara had, knowing his absence left a hole of abandonment.

A part of him knew that he purposely evaded his cousin whenever she sought comfort from her last blood relative from the House of El.

But he knew, still knew, that he could not help. He was born a Kryptonian, but raised a human; he never experienced Krypton, he did not know how his tongue should twist with the frustrating inflections of Kryptonese, he did not know how to celebrate their traditions, he did not know anything apart from learning the surface of his culture and heritage within the frozen Fortress of Solitude.

He did not know how to keep the remnants of Krypton from dying, fading with a pathetic whisper.

But Clark knew that no one could really comfort Kara, could actually protect her from the destruction she witnessed with her very own eyes, the memory now a nightmare for the majority of her childhood into her adolescence.

He could not fathom the loneliness she felt when she landed, or even the isolation she might have felt in the present.

She always mourned for Krypton alone and he could never quite understand the depth of her loss. He could never comprehend the pain that flashed in her eyes when he said flatly the name of Krypton's god.

She was too late, and there were countless times where she never acknowledged that it was not in her control. It still happened.

Sometimes Clark saw her, really looked at her, and he knew that she was genuinely the last child of Krypton.

"Kara..."

When he scanned her face, in his small apartment, on his dinner table with Lois by his side, he saw nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

And he knew Lois was equally startled.

Cat was, quite frankly, just as alarmed as the rest of Kara's family and friends when she showed up in her office.

Well, not really in her office because the glorious deity remained just outside of the door.

Cat swung out of her chair and stood, "You may enter...Kara."

She tested the name out upon her tongue, trying to record any flash of recognition, of emotion, but there was nothing; Supergirl continued to defy the laws of gravity, continued to never set foot on the ground.

She was not tethered, not quite bound to Earth. No trace of anything mundane.

Not quite.

Cat recognized that everyone who Kara cared about had a fragile string attached to her, to Supergirl, weighing her down, but not fully connecting her to Earth.

And the strings were so very breakable, one by one, each of them slowly detaching as time passed.

Alex and Cat herself were the only strings that remained.

And she could feel all of them weakening further, felt hers loosening, and she knew it was futile to try and repair it against the pull of someone so almighty, so godly.

Cat was aware that just because the other bonds have snapped before hers did not in any way mean that they were lesser in value.

Sometimes Supergirl went where the strings could not follow, and the gentle tugs finally clipped them off because none of them could heave at just the right time with the right amount of strength to guarantee some sort of...human reaction.

Cat could feel that it was only a matter of time before hers was yanked apart, wrenched away from her control.

And it did when Supergirl gave a small nod, and it felt like a goodbye disguised as a greeting.

She was too far away, too unearthly to set foot on such sodom land.

Cat felt her string draw, drag a little until it finally fell, and her expression was one of resignation, but still filled with a spark of hope.

There was only one left, and that was Alex, and she was a fighter.

Then Supergirl gazed out, towards the balcony - no - past it, to something else.

It was almost forlorn, a little bit longing, a little bit confused. She slowly brought a hand up to rest over her chest, over the insignia engraved into her suit.

Maybe it was someone else that she was looking out to.

Cat had an intuition that was arguably unparalleled by anyone else, and she prided herself in that, but she was baffled to realize only just now that there was someone else that could still save Kara too, another string with her older sister's.

Both of them were more flexible than the others, both of them knew where to follow, when and where to pull.

But Alex's string was tired, exhausted, from trying too long and too hard, becoming more worn out with every rejection from Supergirl.

It was also the only one that was still tugging.

And this other person's was still strong, perhaps because they have only been analyzing the plight from afar, never directly encountering Rao's child, never beckoning Kara to come back.

Maybe it gave up too early, right from the start; it never pulled and probably never will pull.

The person just watched as everything around Supergirl fell apart and Cat momentarily felt anger boil in the pit of her stomach. She thought the mysterious person a coward, that if Kara never came back, that it was on them for not trying like the rest.

And she thought that they were close, so close to getting her back judging from how small the proximity the ground was from Supergirl's feet as the distance gradually shut.

The anger flared again, at the coward, because if Kara was lost, then it was their fault.

Cat saw the decision being made by Supergirl, the resolve to leave and to finally answer the question that everyone had been asking.

"Why haven't you done anything?"

Alex's tone was agitated, distressed through the phone.

Lena shut her glistening eyes, took a measured breath, and leaned against her desk in the dim light of her office - so dim it barely contrasted the darkness of the night out the windows of her balcony.

Her hand came up to press against her forehead with trembling fingers, and her voice shook within a whisper.

"I don't know," her voice cracked, "What am I supposed to do?"

Notes: Constructive criticism appreciated.