Title: Into the Fray, Unflinching

Author: gldngr7

Rating: Explicit

Began: April 21, 2017

Chapters: 20+

Feedback: Encouragement is always welcome. Flames are destroyed with my freeze breath.

Author's Notes/TAGS: This is story is heavy erotica with some plot. If you had even a little difficulty getting through any of the previous stories than don't even start this one. This story is beyond anything I've ever written and pushes all of my boundaries. Please heed these warnings. It deals with a lot of sexual elements that many people may have problems with.

Please don't read if you have a problem with the following elements/kinks: heterosexual sex, rough sex, public sex, anal sex, vaginal sex, orgiastic sex, oral sex, m/m/f threesome, spit-roasting, double penetration, spanking, light degradation and dirty talk (liberal use of the words whore, pussy, cunt, slut), cock rings, cock worship, COUSs (cocks of unusual size), cock and ball torture, cum worship, breeding kink, genital slapping, voyeurism, exhibitionism, punishment, orgasm withholding, and orgasms as punishment.

Sex toys and accoutrements included (but not limited to) are: submissive harness, kegel balls, anal beads, anal hooking, spreader bars, wrist cuffs, nipple clamps, St. Andrews cross, submissive bench. Specific role-playing kinks include Master/Slave and Predator/Prey, some DD/lg kink. Mentions of underage and age difference sex which is only included for backstory to more clearly demonstrate Daxamite culture. I neither encourage or condone those things.

WARNING: Some elements of this story may trigger those who have been in abusive relationships, especially where sex was used as a weapon. My intent with this story is NOT to demonstrate that this type of power exchange is for everyone. It's most assuredly NOT. However, my intent, rather, is to show that behavior led by one's id and unchecked by the ego, creates a state of imbalance that can create and unhealthy balance in a BDSM relationship. Do not read, if you may find it triggering.

Chapter 1/?

Flags upon the floor

And on this cold war

Battle torn

Soldiers fold

Lay down your arms

Losing all control

And down this rabbit hole

Lost souls letting go

-Banners - "Back When We Had Nothing"

"Nooooooo!" he screams, watching helplessly as a chunk of heavy stone caves in the skull of his best friend. Mon-El stands beneath the cell's reinforced doorframe leading to the stairs to the ground floor, in relative safety as the ground shakes beneath his feet. His hands clench tightly, unable to tear his eyes from the crushed foot peeking out from the rubble, a stream of blood making its way out from beneath.

And then the room explodes, rumbling from another meteor strike, this one a direct hit to the building and not just the nearby grounds. The stone ceiling gives way, dropping the remains of the room above into the cell, like a shower of death and destruction. He narrowly misses getting caught in the downpour by diving through the doorway and into the stairwell, which shakes but remains relatively intact.

He needs to escape before the entire building caves in on them…him…or risk being buried under the rubble like Ral. He loses his footing several times as he climbs the stairs. At the top, he finds the ancient iron door, at first, unwilling to budge. He angles his shoulder upwards and puts his entire body weight into the next shove, earning a few inches of opening for his efforts. One more and he might be able to squeeze through.

The next shove brings success and after some heavy resistance the door yields as though it had only been teasing and wished to make amends. Mon-El falls to the floor as he loses his balance, landing face first in the speared corpse of a prison guard. People must have panicked when the mayhem began, crawling over each other to get out, killing anyone who got in their way. From the looks of it…he was murdered by one of his own.

Scrambling to his feet, he makes his way out of the palace dungeons, where the king likes to keep his most prized prisoners. Likes to hear their screams as they're tortured. If it's quiet enough in the main hall, the screams drift up during the evening meal, providing a background music that brings a sickening smile to the king's face.

In the main hall, so close to the exit, to freedom, he discovers the damage done there is catastrophic. More than half of the walls have collapsed, revealing outside a red sky streaked with meteors while the floor of the main hall looks like war zone, littered with debris and bodies. Perhaps people seeking refuge in the great hall hoping the palace would keep them safe from the wrath of the gods that visits them now.

He picks his way through the stone and flames, the smell of charred flesh stinging his nostrils and forcing him to breathe through his mouth, until he hears a weak voice calling out for help. Mon-El looks around for the source of the sound but is unable to pinpoint its location. Another tremble beneath his feet has him reaching for something to steady himself and he glances toward the nearest exit. Another weak call draws his attention again.

He's already been forced to leave someone to die, can he live with another on his conscience?

Mon-El climbs over two piles of broken stone and several bodies before finding the source of the cry for help, just a grasping arm, reaching out through the rubble. Carefully, he moves aside a pile of debris, only to discover that it's her he's attempting to rescue. She wears what was once her finest gown, as though fully expecting to meet her patronage at the end of the world.

"Why?" she asks, blood pouring down her face from the gash in her scalp. The falling stone had not been as kind to her as it had been to Ral, leaving her instead to linger in death.

"I don't understand," he says, shaking his head.

"He…he left me here. Left me here," she says, as though she's been repeating the thought over and over in her head, like a data-crystal with a glitch. Her lips quiver with the flood of adrenaline her body releases as it attempts to keep her conscious and alive. "Left me here." Then she looks up, her bloody face changing as she truly sees him for the first time. She takes a deep breath, one of her last, and says, "I'm so sorry…I was too scared to say no."

"I know," he mumbles, though he still finds it hard to look at her. "It's all right. I don't blame you." He busies himself instead with trying to free her, looking for something to pry loose the larger stones under which she's buried.

"Too late," she says, her hand reaching to grab his arm.

"No," he insists, even though he knows that's stubborn denial speaking.

"This is my punishment."

It is this statement that angers him, that turns the helpless feeling of emptiness in his gut into a burning, boiling rage that resembles the fury of the skies above his head. And in this moment, he wants nothing more than to visit retribution on the man so good at getting his subjects to turn on themselves, even if just emotionally. "Where is he?" he demands of her. "Where has he gone?"

Her eyes widen, surprised by his fury. She gasps for air, her lungs gurgling now with blood as it bubbles up in the back of her throat. Too near death, the ability to speak now escapes her, leaving her only capable of pointing. Mon-El follows the direction of her finger to see another body. The deceased is unfamiliar to him, but the Kryptonian glyph on his uniform tells him everything he needs to know, as does the distinct weapons discharge burn on the man's face.

Mon-El reaches for her hand, taking it in his just before it drops to the ground. "I'm here," he promises, even as her eyes glaze over. Her lifeless grip held tightly in his strong one, he watches as the light fades entirely from her once-stunning eyes and her last breath gurgles out. He waits for another gasping wheeze, a last bid for life, but none is forthcoming and so he crosses her hand over her chest and leaves her.

As he steps over the remains of the Kryptonian he notices something clutched in the man's hand. Bending down, he pries the stiffening fingers open to pull out a data-crystal. Immediately, he recognizes its purpose and a tiny seed of hope sprouts in his chest. If his instincts about the king are correct, and they always are, there may still be time. Time to make him pay for Ral's death. Time to give Ral's death some meaning.

Finding new resolve, Mon-El grips the crystal tightly in his hand, takes a weapon from the body of another dead guard and picks his way quickly out of the building until standing beneath a sky that's on fire. He's never been in a war zone like they had in the dark times, before wars were fought amongst the stars, and until today, there's been only the beautifully repurposed remains of the ancient palace to serve as reminder. Mon-El imagines that that the dark times, the day that palace fell, must have looked something like this. Green meteors, pieces of a dead planet, rain down striking Daxam unpredictably and without mercy. He takes off at run, in the direction of the nearby Embassy where the Kryptonian Emissary would have been required by protocol to land and quarter his pod. Likely, a larger ship, perhaps a dreadnought is in orbit somewhere, shadowed behind one of Daxam's three moons. It was just like Krypton to send an Emissary of peace, but provide military back-up; to offer one hand in truce, while keeping a proverbial knife stashed behind their backs.

They could never be trusted.

His feet fueled by rage, Mon-El ran. Dodging rock and secondary explosions, he leapt over the bodies of those beyond help and blocked out the voices of those crying out for assistance. There was nothing he could do for them. He couldn't help his own bond-brother, how could possibly help them? So he ran, so fast it felt as though his feet hardly touched the burning ground. So fast it was almost like flying.

Just as expected, Mon-El found the coward berating one of his guards for failing to gain entry to the hatch of the Kryptonian craft. A circle of bodies surrounds the pod, a cadre of people desperate to escape, who gambled on their chance to reach the vehicle, and lost.

"Missing something, Your Majesty?" Mon-El shouted, the title more of a curse than an honorific. He holds up the crystal he'd taken from the Kryptonian corpse, dangling it from the tip of his fingers like bait before a vexlar beast.

Even from this distance, Mon-El can see the mixture of hope and terror fill the king's eyes. The older man's steel gray eyes, identical to his own, narrow to slits as he turns to the guard keeping watch. "Get the crystal," he demands.

Unquestioningly, the guard raises his weapon and points it Mon-El, who does the same, his hand shaking only a little. "Give me the crystal," the guard commands, a slight tremor in his voice. He startles when another meteor strikes nearby with a deafening report, shaking the ground beneath them.

Mon-El shakes his head slowly. "Daxam falls," he tells the guard. "Will you die for this man? This tyrant?" He can see the man's eyes the moment, when the guard's resolve waivers. The weapon lowers and without a backwards glance the guard quits the field of battle, running as though towards something for which he is, in fact, willing to die.

A glance at the second guard, offering the same silent question, results in a similar desertion, but this time the guard drops his weapon at his feet before running away. The king scrambles to pick up the gun, and brandishes it at Mon-El without a second thought. Without his guards, his ministers of pain, he's the coward Mon-El always imagined him to be. The king is the coward Mon-El was always afraid he would become.

Mon-El grabs the barrel of the weapon, the king's fearful eyes widening, but instead of taking the weapon, he placed the barrel against his own forehead. "Yes," he seethes. "Kill me," his voice shouts, a vision of Ral's crushed skull flashing before his eyes. "Kill me now." Then with a terrible laugh he reminds him, "Your 'Last Hope'."

Mon-El can see the hesitancy on the older man's face. His Majesty isn't one for waste after all, not when it comes down to the ferrovanadium rivets. And after all the currency and effort and lives he had poured into ensuring the continuance of his dynasty, he couldn't just end it all right here without at least a second thought. He couldn't just pull the trigger and end more than 40 years of planning, not after all that he'd worked so hard to build. Especially not since his plan has yet to come to fruition.

Fortunately, for Mon-El, there is no such reluctance on his part. He isn't afraid of death and hasn't been for a long time. There were times, when things were at their worst, he prayed to gods he didn't believe in for his body to fail. Prayed that there was some hidden time bomb within him, some internal traitor that would turn against him and put a premature end to the king's plan. It would serve the tyrant right. But as always, time and time again, the tide turned in the king's favor.

Until now.

Despite his reluctance, given enough time to consider the alternatives the king will eventually realize that only one of them will survive this catastrophe, and when his mind reaches that conclusion, he will not hesitate to pull the trigger. But all it takes is that moment of indecision for Mon-El to make his move.

He knocks the weapon from the king's hand, practically breaking the old man's wrist in the process. Doubling over in pain, he cradles the injured appendage in his other hand, whimpering like the coward he is. A feeling of pleasure at seeing the old man in pain rises up within him and Mon-El shoves it back down into his deepest corners. That darkness is something Mon-El refuses to give its lead.

He points his weapon at the king's head, imagines pulling the trigger and watching his face melt off like the Kryptonian Emissary's – that face he hates so much but can never escape. Killing him now would bring meaning to Ral's death, would make his brother's suffering, the loss of his eyes, of his love and of the slow drain of his life, worth it. But it would be over for the king in a second and it wouldn't hit him where it hurts the most.

Hardly an even trade, without the barest hint of justice.

"You're not going anywhere," he decides. "You have a lot to answer for, and I'm here to make sure you do."

"Who do you think you are?" the king spits, still bent over. Around his neck dangles a chain with a delicate flat crystal attached.

"Exactly what you made me," Mon-El replies, reaching forward and grabbing the chain and tearing it free.

"No!" the king cries.

"For your crimes against your people, I sentence you to live as one of them…in the paradise you created. That is…if you can manage to survive the wrath of the gods." He punches the king square in the jaw, sending him sprawling to the ground, and Mon-El allows himself to feel that pleasure for a microsecond. "That was for Ral," he announces, as he slips the Royal Seal into his pants pocket.

Turning towards the Kryptonian pod, he swipes the first crystal against the outer panel of the pod, which chirps happily as though recognizing its passenger. The hatch opens and grasping the external frame Mon-El uses it as leverage to leap into the cockpit. As the hatch closes he tosses out the weapon and, through the clear canopy, surveys the ruins of the Capital City, a place he never learned to love, but is the only home he's ever known. He can't stay here, not if he plans to fulfill the last promise he made to Ral. He doesn't know how, or even what his brother meant, but he knows he must live, for Ral's sake, even if it means leaving so many others to die.

He glances down at the prostrate king, who scrambles for the weapon Mon-El discarded a moment before. He won't feel guilty about leaving him to his fate, not after all that he's done. It's better than he deserves, and so much kinder than the 'justice' he's extracted from others for crimes with far less impact. The king fires the weapon at the canopy, but to no effect. The pod, of course, is built to withstand the perils of outer space after all and is nearly indestructible by normal means.

He places his palm on the control panel and without plotting a course, he ignites the engines, the pod shaking in combination with the engines flaring to life and a meteor striking just a few yards away. It's a few breathless moments before he feels the pod lift-off. Still another moment before inertia becomes momentum and he's rocketing upwards at a steep angle, picking up speed in the ship's determination to break through the atmosphere.

Perhaps the pod's course will take him to the Kryptonian dreadnought no doubt hiding in the shadow of Daxam's largest moon. If he is silent, the dreadnought's docking protocols will bring him aboard. No doubt they will throw him in the brig, if he's lucky, but at least there's a chance of survival, however miniscule.

As he clears atmosphere, the view from the canopy slides from a dusky red and gray to the black of outer space with a crackle, his ears adjusting from the onslaught of noise caused by friction and combustion, to the profound silence provided by a near vacuum. That he made it offworld without being destroyed by meteors is a miracle to be sure, but one that has yet to fully play out, if the wall of meteors headed his way are any indication.

A computer voice breaks the silence, startling him out of the sudden terror washing over him.

"Loth-El, I am detecting multiple projectiles on a collision course with this pod. Anything more than a glancing blow will have catastrophic results. Shall I plot evasive maneuvers?"

So that was his name…the Kryptonian Emissary. Apropos, it seems. His father, the king would often laugh about naming him Mon-El, rather than bestowing upon him an official name from House Gand. The Kryptonian House of El spoke loftily of hope and never giving up, and so his father had given him the name Mon-El, which translated to 'last hope'. It was a name bestowed with derision, and used with such intent from his earliest memories to his last. It seems destined, somehow, that his only hope for rescue should come in the form of pod belonging to a member of the House of El.

"Yes!" he replies. "Evasive maneuvers!"

A moment of silence without course-correction from the pod is followed by the computer's voice speaking once more. "You are not Loth-El," the voice decides. Mon-El rolls his eyes. The computer's voice is haughty and arrogant – so definitely Kryptonian. "Where is Loth-El?"

"Loth-El is dead," he replies honestly. "Killed in the first wave of the meteor shower you have obviously detected," he adds, not so honestly.

"State your identity."

"My name is Mon-El."

Immediately, as though hearing a magic word, the pod picks up speed, headed straight for the next wave of meteors. Mon-El closes his eyes and waits for death, but is instead surprised when the ship begins to weave in and out of the wall of rock until it emerges from the other side without so much as a glancing blow from the projectiles.

"Well done!" he shouts, breathing a huge sigh of relief.

"My name is Benix, Mon of the House of El," the pod replies. "I have taken the liberty of laying in the next course as Loth-El requested upon his arrival on Daxam."

"Excellent," he answers. "Where is the dreadnought hiding?"

"The last Kryptonian dreadnought was destroyed when Krypton exploded," Benix informs him, her voice modulator shifting to a sad tone. "Fourteen thousand, three hundred and thirty-six souls lost in the escape attempt, Mon-El. Sixty-two percent of which were children under the age of sixteen."

Mon-El feels a pang of sadness at the incomprehensible loss, wondering why Benix feels the needs to share that devastating data. "But if there's no dreadnought…then where are we headed?"

"To the Sol System," she answers succinctly. "The journey will take four Kryptonian years. Deep space stasis will commence in five…four…three…two…."

"No, wait!" he has more questions. What's in this Sol System? What can he expect to find there? How will he survive? Will there be others?

"One," Benix intones, her voice followed by the hissing sound of the pod valves releasing the stasis gas.

He has no choice but to breathe in. There's nowhere to hide from the gas that will keep him in a sleep state until the counteragent is released upon landing and it's time to awaken. Darkness closes in around him like he's being dragged under the surface of a lake kicking and screaming.

When his eyes open again, he's back in Ral's cell standing over the dying body of his brother-in-bond. The brother he can't save. The brother he knows he'll be forced to watch die.

Again.

Three days.

Three days of sitting by his bedside and begging him to wake up and just…talk to her. Three days of leaving the safety of National City in the hands of Martian Manhunter and…Guardian. Three days of learning frustratingly little about Mon-El's condition.

Kara sits on the toilet in the last stall of the bathroom, waiting for the next wave of tears to hit. She's been here for nearly an hour, maybe even two, it's hard to tell time when every minute feels like an hour. She's managed to wrangle her emotions into submission, but the twisting, stabbing pain in her gut tells her that isn't going to last long.

She came here because it was only the place she could get any privacy, escape the looks of pity, and remain close to him. She could be by his side in a second, and even now she has one ear trained to the beeps and drips of the medical equipment attached to him. Which is why Kara doesn't hear her sister coming until the bathroom door opens.

Damn. She forgot to lock the door.

"Kara?" Alex pokes her head in the room, her body language suggesting that some pushback is expected. When none is forthcoming, she slips into the room and does what Kara forgot to do. Locks the door. "I know you're in here."

"No, I'm not," Kara answers. It is inside joke between them that began not long after Kara started junior high school after arrival on Earth. More than once Kara hid out in bathroom stalls during her sixth-grade year. More than once, eighth-grade Alex tracked her down to a bathroom stall to talk her into rejoining the world that still frightened her. Alex had always been good at tracking her down, at which time she would call out, 'I know you're in there', and Kara would reply, 'no, I'm not.' It usually put a glimmer of a smile on her face.

But not today. Today it feels like she may never smile again.

"You've been in here for nearly three hours," Alex informs her. "I was starting to worry that you fell in."

Three hours? Her mind and emotions had distorted time worse than she thought. Her emotions having been coming and going in waves like nausea. Just when she thinks it might be okay to step out of the stall, the tears well up again. Like now. Kara tears another strip of toilet paper from the roll, and catches the tears before they can roll down her cheeks.

Alex slips into the next-door stall and sits down on the toilet. She leans her ahead against the shared wall, and hearing the discreet thunk, Kara does the same. "Want to talk about it?" Alex asks.

Kara shakes her head, knowing that even though Alex can't see it, she will sense it. "Is there anything new?" she asks, not sure if she wants to hear the answer.

"His brain has maintained a low Theta wave state of consciousness for three days now."

"What does that mean?"

"People experience Theta wave consciousness when they're in a dream state, but after a brief period in Theta we usually slip into Delta, or 'slow wave' sleep. That's where we enter a restful state, where our minds are able to rejuvenate. That's not happening with Mon-El. Something's going on in his brain."

"What if I broke him?" she asks. It's the question that's been percolating in the in the back of her mind for three days. She hit him pretty hard after his powers had flared out, leaving him as vulnerable and as frail as any human. "What if I…damaged his brain?"

"You broke his nose," Alex says. "And his jaw. Both of which healed after we hooked the electrical leads to him. He probably had a concussion, but there's no reason to believe that wouldn't have healed as well. Scans show there's no bleeding or swelling. His brain is fine."

"Then why won't he wake up?"

"His brain is fine," Alex reiterates. "But…like most brains…his is still a mystery. It's clear that, so far, his autonomic reflexes remain intact. He's breathing on his own and reacting to pain stimuli, all promising things." Alex sighs a deep breath, putting a pause on the conversation. "But I didn't come in here to talk about Mon-El, I came in here to check on you. You need to be taken care of too," she says.

"I'm fine."

"You haven't slept in three days. Barely eaten. You must be running on nothing but rads by now. First, you refused to leave his side at all, and now you've suddenly gone to hide in the bathroom for three hours. Your guests have been asking about you, by the way. Talk to me, Kara. It's just us, okay? Is it about the things he said before the meltdown?"

That's what they were calling it now. The Meltdown, as if he were a nuclear plant that simply lost control of its cooling systems. Kara grimaces, because in a way, that's exactly what happened, and she is primarily responsible for the fallout.

"It's not uncommon for people in the throes of a PTSD episode to enter what's called a 'dissociative fugue'," Alex explains, filling the silence while simultaneously trying to reassure her sister. "It's likely that, when he wakes up, he might not remember anything that happened."

"You mean he might not remember that I stabbed him in the back?"

"You did what you thought was best."

"No, I did what you thought was best," Kara corrects. "I knew before I even talked to you that putting him in containment might be a possibility, but I stupidly assumed it would be a last resort and not the knee-jerk reaction."

"Maybe you're right," Alex sighs. "Maybe I could have been more delicate, and for that I'm sorry."

"I'm not the one who deserves your apology." Kara wipes at another tear that rolls down her cheek and sighs. "Some of the things he said, Alex," she shakes her head. "What happened back there?"

"Whatever it was…Kara…it doesn't sound like his PTSD started with the destruction of Daxam. It may go back farther than that."

"He wanted me to kill him," she says.

"Kara, he wasn't in his right mind. You don't even know if he was lucid."

"What could be so bad…that he'd want to die?"

"Whatever it was…he's going to have to face it. One way or another. Or it won't be last time he detonates like that. I don't know him as well as you do, Kara, but I like to think he wouldn't want that to happen."

"No," she agrees. "No, he wouldn't."

"So," Alex drawls, "are you ready to tell me what drove you in here? After three days of refusing to let him out of your sight?"

Damn. Kara hoped that their conversation had been driven far enough off topic that it wouldn't make its way back around to the starting line. She isn't going to let this go, and lying and telling her she just wanted privacy isn't going to fly. Not with Alex. The lump of sadness—of grief she shouldn't even be allowed to feel—rises again in her throat, choking off her voice.

"Kara?" Alex presses.

"Cramps," she confesses with a sniffle, her voice like gravel and clearly thick with unexpected emotions.

"Cramps?" Alex echoes, her tone exhibiting surprise at this reply. "You don't usually—"

"I know!" Kara bemoans, tears gathering again. "And it came a day early!"

"But you're never early! I could set a clock by—"

"I know. I'm freaking Universal Mean Time, okay? But this time I was early – like my body decided to add insult to injury."

"Wait a minute," Alex shakes her head in confusion. "I'm lost here. Did you think you might be—"

"Yes!"

"So you an Mon-El had unprotected—"

"It was an accident!" Kara defended.

"That pushes the boundaries of the definition of accident," Alex quips. "You promised me that—"

"It was just the once. We got a little caught up."

"So that's why Mom asked me to—"

"Did you figure it out?"

"Who do you think you're talking to here?" Alex questions, only slight offended. "Of course, I figured it out. But let's take a step back. I want to get this straight: you wanted to be—"

"Not at first, don't be ridiculous. But then…after we talked about it, I knew that everything might be okay if I was. It's not like I was keeping my fingers crossed for a positive result though."

"So then why are you in here—"

"I don't know, okay? I just am. I got my period and I started crying and now I can't stop. The thing is…I started to wonder, you know? What it might be like. Would we have a girl or a boy? I imagined this little girl…" She wants to go on, to tell Alex all the things she pictured about her imaginary daughter, but can't bring herself to say more. In her life on this planet, there have been few things Kara couldn't share with Alex, and this is one of them. It's just somehow, too personal.

"You got attached to the idea," Alex concludes.

"I let it become more than just an idea," Kara explains, nodding. "We talked about it…about starting a family." She crumbles and the tears begin in earnest as though they a starting for the first time…again. "I just feel like everything's falling apart!"

"I know," Alex says. "But it's not, okay? We're all here for you…and for Mon-El. J'onn is holding down the fort…with James. I shouldn't have been surprised by that," Alex comments, referring to James' coming out as Guardian, "but I was."

"You and me both," Kara snorts.

"Thanks to the device that gives you a direct line to parallel worlds, Dr. Snow is working with the rest of the medical team to figure out how to bring him out of this…whatever it is. And Winn is working with Cisco to find a way to help him control his new, and more dangerous, abilities when he does wake up. When…not if," Alex stresses. "And they've had some progress on that front."

"They have?"

"It's one of the reasons I came looking for you. They seemed awfully excited. They were even finishing each other's sentences, which is ridiculously cute."

"What did they find out?" Kara wonders, sniffing away the last of her tears.

"They could probably explain it better than I. How about…you splash some water on your face, straighten yourself up and join the rest of the world again?"

"Alex…?"

"It's just between us," Alex answers Kara's unasked question, standing up from her seat. "When your period ends, you can start taking the pills."

They exit their respective stalls at the same time, Alex taking Kara into her arms as soon as she's close enough. Kara sinks into her sister's embrace as though it's the balm for which she's been searching. Between the two of them, Kara has always been the strongest physically, but Alex is the stalwart – with the uncanny ability to put emotions into context and events into perspective.

"I miss him," Kara whispers into her sister's hair.

"I know." Alex strokes Kara's hair, just as she did when they were teenagers and Kara had rough adjustment days. "We'll figure this out, Kara. He'll come back to you. I'm certain of it."

"How can you be so certain?"

"I'm taking a page out of your book, Kara. I refuse to believe that God or Rao or the Universe or whatever, brought him all this way for you, just so you can lose him now."

"What about not believing in that stuff?"

"I believe in what I can see and what I can measure. I believe in cause and effect – actions and reactions. And I can see it all now," Alex announces, pulling Kara out of her embrace so that she can make eye contact. "You are right, Kara…too many things had to happen in just the right order at just the right time to bring the two of you together. A few too many coincidences to make the generally random nature of coincidences a plausible rationalization."

"What are you saying?" Kara asks.

"The Blessed Path, remember?" Alex replies. "Maybe it needs you to keep the faith."

It made an odd sort of sense to Kara. As if this were merely a test, an obstacle in their way that needed only to be hurdled. When she thinks of it this way she can feel the determination bubble up inside of her. He will find his way out whatever darkness has sucked him under – find his way back to her. And she will be by his side, waiting, when he does. This is just another obstacle. And if there's one thing Kara knows how to do, it is tear down things that get in her way.

With a new lease on her innate tenacity, Kara stalks to the sink and turns on the faucet. She splashes cold water over her tear-stained cheeks while Alex hands her a few paper towels to dry off.

Examining herself in the mirror, she straightens her spine and tugs at the hem of her thoroughly wrinkled blouse in hopes of making it appear slightly more presentable. "Let's go see what Cisco and Winn have come up with," she says.

Alex nods, succinctly. "Atta girl."