Alex finds her face-down in a Language Arts assignment.
"I hate this unit."
"Care to elaborate on that?" her sister laughs, slinging her backpack onto the floor beside her desk.
"The Greeks were stupid." she mutters. Sunlight filters in through the blinds, casting little lines of light and shadow across her desk. She wishes it would help her understand.
"Some people might be offended if they heard you say that."
"It's just," she sighs, sitting up, "I don't... get Icarus."
"What's there to get?" Alex asks.
"Why does the narrative punish him for wanting freedom?" she asks. "What's wrong with wanting to see the sun after being cooped up for so long?" With wanting to fly?
Kara wants nothing to do with earth's foreign mythologies and unstable deities. They tear away at the very beings they create, bickering amongst themselves, not caring who is caught in the crossfire. She longs instead for Rao's warm glow, for the tender, healing power of her own sun, her own religion.
Rao was kind. Earth is not.
Kara finally looks across the room, hopeful for relief. Alex only shrugs.
"All that he really wanted to do was prove that he could fly just as high as the gods. He thought that maybe he could become one, so they punished him," she explains weakly.
Kara rolls her eyes that.
"Why would anyone want to become like one of them?"
/
Years later, she encounters lesser gods; those who threw away their lives for a taste of absolute control.
/
"Go. Go!"
The paramedic team slams the ambulance doors closed before it tears down the street; Kara watches, chest heaving with effort. She can only hope that the victim she'd brought to them makes it to the hospital in time.
"Supergirl, the hostile just reached the intersection of Fifteenth and Scarborough."
She's there in an instant. The creature bellows in rage when her heat vision strikes it; she's nearly overwhelmed by the stench of saliva and blood.
"Alex, cover me."
"I've got you," her sister's voice crackles through the comm. Kara can't see her, but she hears her heartbeat, hears the shift of her finger on a trigger.
As the alien charges her, she digs her feet into the pavement, feels the cold sweat running over her aching muscles, allows instinct to take over. The moment before her fists touch its leathery hide, she wonders what kind of power cravings make a being into a monster.
/
"You're off your game today, Alex," Kara laughs, sidestepping her sister's left hook. She sweeps the front kick chaser and swings one of her own. Alex hits the floor three feet away; Kara offers her a hand up, allowing herself a short respite.
"What's distracting you? You would've pulled the same move on me twenty seconds ago."
"It's nothing," her sister pants.
"C'moooooon, Alex."
"It's just this," she waves her hand in the air, as if to swat the idea away, "scientific conference going on at the UN right now, and there was a livestream— but it'll just be the same old stuff they always talk about. It's nothing."
Kara feels her eyebrows twitch. Alex slaps her shoulder good–naturedly, a smirk turning the corner of her mouth.
"Hey, it's nothing," she repeats. "I'd rather be with my sister."
Kara nods, wiping her palms off on the front of her uniform.
"Okay."
/
Daedalus slaved over devices that Icarus ultimately wasted. She wonders, not for the first time, if her life is so unlike his after all.
/
Kara's fingers dance over the keyboard, struggling to form anything more than a few isolated words before she deletes them and starts again.
"Struggling?" Winn calls from his desk.
She rolls her eyes, resisting the urge to plunge her head through the monitor.
"Remind me again why I accepted this job?" she asks.
He laughs to himself. "Because the world needs to hear what you have to say. Don't stress over it."
She offers him a quick smile and turns back to the blank screek.
But what are her words supposed to accomplish? What duty will they fulfill?
/
Sometimes the sun is hidden behind the clouds; the hope for freedom seems to cost almost as much as freedom itself.
/
"Ma'ams, the building's clear. There's no sign of CADMUS or Jeremiah Danvers."
Alex's hand tenses around the trigger of her gun. "Is there any trace evidence showing where they might have gone?"
"Nothing," the agent replies. "It's unlikely that they were ever here in the first place."
Alex betrays no emotion.
"Have Team Alpha search the site again. I want every speck of dust in this place double-checked."
"Yes, ma'am."
They both stifle sighs as he walks away. Alex opts to sit, cradling her temples between her hands.
"I'm so sorry, Alex," Kara whispers.
"I'll find him. I just have to keep looking. But—" her voice fails her, and her hands curl into fists on her knees. "What if he's gone?"
"We know he's alive."
"No. I mean what if he's not," she looks away, shakes her head, "him anymore? What if he's like what they did to Corben?"
Kara closes her eyes. Even with the strength of the sun, there is nothing she could ever say to quell Alex's fears. So instead of speaking, she joins her sister on the concrete floor, knitting their fingers together.
"What if he doesn't know me?"
Kara shakes her head.
"He loves you too much to ever forget you."
She ignores the strange pangs of guilt in her chest.
/
She takes to hovering over the city after midnight, watching the lights twinkle in the dry California wind. Alex would kill her if she knew she was up this late, but she doesn't know, so it's fine. Ignorance is bliss.
Each life that sings out to her through the darkness is a reminder, a responsibility, a charge. She just doesn't know what that charge is to anymore.
Of course, she knows her duty. Safety. Hope. Truth, justice, and the American way. But her purpose in each of their lives — and what that takes from each of them — still evades her.
She overlooks the streets and sees every scar from every battle gone wrong; every broken window, every destroyed home, every injured civilian. Every life irreversibly changed because of her intervention. Because of her arrival. Because of her existence.
The Danvers, perhaps, know these things better than anyone. How might their lives have been different if her pod hadn't landed where it did? If she had stayed with Kal–El?
She watches the lights and wonders if they will answer her questions if she stares long enough.
/
The seas below are dark and deep, and they mercilessly consume any who cannot stay above the waves.
/
"Come on, Kryptonian, let's see you fight!"
Kara staggers with each impact, trying to absorb the shock and conserve whatever energy she has left. Though Gamran strikes a somewhat delicate figure, Kara knows not to underestimate her hits.
There's a commotion below them — Alex and Strike Team Alpha have to be part of the action, even if they aren't — and Kara can see the next move before it even happens. She's already too weak to continue, but she won't let anyone else be hurt at her expense.
Kara dives, pushing the team back and taking the blows aimed for them. Fiffy yards later, she lands eruptively, biting back a groan as dust rises from the crater her body has made in the ground. She tastes copper in her throat.
"Feeling weak yet?"
She draws herself up to her knees, shoulders shaking with her efforts not to cough. Glancing to her left, she finds her sister safely out of the way, out of Gamran's line of sight. Good.
"You were never meant to be this way, you know," the alien continues. "Won't you just listen to me?"
"You're a criminal," Kara spits. "No one owes you anything."
"The world owes us their allegiance. We are their superiors."
Kara takes in great gulps of air, trying to find her balance; something warm trickles down her arm and across her midriff.
"The agents at the DEO seem to treat you highly," she gestures to the team, scattered and still picking themselves up off the ground. "What about the one that follows you everywhere? What of her dedication?"
"This is between you and me. You'll leave everyone else out of this," Kara pants.
"Your equals died with Krypton," Gamran presses. "You are a lion plagued by insects. You burden them with your presence."
"You don't know me."
"But I do," she snarls, circling Kara in the air. "They exist only by your kindness; you could crush them all. Haven't they ever groveled before you? How did it feel?"
She feels fire in her belly; Gamran grins, and Kara pities her.
"You've never been loved, have you?" she asks, slowly raising herself to her feet.
"Love is the inferior crowning the great with godhood," Gamran replies. "You came here to be greater than they are. You deserve that."
Kara lets the sudden flare of rage smolder behind her eyes. She came here as an invader; everything she's done since has been at someone else's expense. The word "deserving" doesn't exactly appeal to her better nature.
"Enough games, Gamran."
"You are a god, Kara Zor–El," she screams. "And they worship you, whether you accept it or not!"
Kara roars and surges into the night.
/
She feels the unfamiliar mortal weight in her bones before the hospital bed beneath her, the IVs in her arm, the sunlamps high above her. She can't hear beyond the soft hum of the machines close by, and the permeating scent of alcohol and sterilization hangs in the air, clouding her thoughts.
Alex is with her; the infirmary lights cast a brilliant glow around the crown of her head. Kara winces.
Her sister hushes her and squeezes her hand tightly, tightly; like she's tethered to her and can't ever let go. If she hadn't been walking the fine between lucidity and delirium, Kara might have laughed, because that's the way it's always been. She swallows her shame like an addict.
"What happened?"
"You saved me and my team, but," Alex manages. Even without her powers, she can still hear the sharp intake of breath, the slight tremor in her voice. "But you fell."
"When?"
"Three days ago."
"Have you gone home since then?"
"No."
Kara's eyes drop closed again, letting the agony – both physical and mental – roll over her in waves. Perhaps it's Alex's present concern and attachment to her; perhaps it's years of hiding and safety by her protection. No matter the cause, Kara cannot understand and she cannot contain it any longer.
"Why?" she whispers. "After all that I've cost you, why can't you see that I'm ruining you?"
Silence hangs between them for too long before Alex can reply.
"I don't think we've been in the clear with each other lately."
She rolls her lips between her teeth, nodding quickly. Alex's thumb brushes tiny circles over the back of her hand.
"You're not a burden."
"You wouldn't tell me if I was," she cuts in, cursing herself when her voice cracks.
"Kara—"
"No. You go to the end of yourself to take care of me, but there's nothing left for you."
Her sister's grip slackens, and she wonders what repercussions she will have to face for this untended rift between them.
"You're right."
"I won't let you destroy yourself for me," she manages. "I meant what I said. I want you to live a good life. And I've kept you from that. I've kept so many people from living normal lives, but especially you."
She finds Alex's eyes, sees the heartbreak and rage and desperation and kindness stirring within. She prays for strength as her sister begins to speak.
"When I push myself, it's not only because I don't know how to do anything else or because I feel like I don't have a choice," she begins, and Kara can see her cracking at the edges, breaking under the effort of exposing her own thoughts. "I do it because I'm good at it. And I'm following your lead."
Kara closes her eyes and sees Alex's every bold, self–sacrificing, life–saving decision; sees every discipline, every articulation, every ounce of self-control that she's won for herself.
"You can't say that."
"I can, because you're my sister. You take care of me the same way I take care of you."
"I don't."
"Kara, you are invincible. Nothing but the strongest alien forces can hurt you — and I have seen you put your life at risk for others more times than I can count. You've been lying here in a coma for three days," she swallows hard, voice beginning to shake, "because you put yourself in danger to save me."
Kara nods, but she cannot bring herself to look at her sister. It's too much, too close, too great for her to bear.
"I didn't sacrifice my career for you."
"I didn't know what hope was until I met you."
Kara covers her face with her hand.
"I— I was never challenged before you came. And I didn't have any clue what courage or perseverance or goodness was. You're a light in a dark world."
You are brighter, she wants to say.
"And more than that," Alex smiles, and it pierces her through to the core, "I love you, Kara."
And she weeps, because she knows.
/
The blinding brightness melts her wings away, and she is falling, falling into a sea of gratitude and goodness and love; and what is godhood, compared to love?
/