Kara was too nervous to rest, even though the DEO doctors had insisted she should take it easy after her experience with Cadmus. But how could she just lay in her solar bed doing nothing, while Alex and the DEO were currently raiding the Cadmus facility where she and Mon-El had been held and were hopefully rescuing Jeremiah? She wished she could have gone with them, but without her powers, she was pretty useless and would only hinder their efforts.
Her eyes drifted to the clock on the med bay wall. It had been nearly two hours since Alex and the team had left. It would only take twenty minutes at the most for the DEO to reach the place where they'd been locked up, so what was taking so long?
Kara's mind kept drifting back to her last few moments with Jeremiah, giving him a hug and saying a quick I love you before fleeing for her life, the memory bringing back a terrible sense of déjà vu when she thought about how similar the experience was to her final moments with her parents. The thought that her adoptive father may suffer the same fate as them terrified her.
Lillian Luthor had to have discovered that Kara and Mon-El had escaped by now. The woman was not only evil, she was obsessed, and Kara had no doubt she wouldn't hesitate to hurt anyone who got in her way. So what would she do if she discovered that Jeremiah helped them escape?
Different scenarios kept plaguing Kara's mind until Alex finally came back to the med bay. Her sister didn't appear to be hurt nor did she look like she'd been crying, Kara noted, but something in the heaviness in Alex's step and the way she wouldn't quite meet Kara's eyes worried the Kryptonian.
"What happened?" Kara blurted.
"They're gone." Alex said, still not quite meeting Kara's eyes. "We couldn't find any sign of Dad or what happened to him. The whole place has been cleared out without any trace that they'd ever been there."
Kara suddenly found herself wishing she had a car to punch—of course without her powers she'd just hurt herself if she actually tried to punch one. No, I've already lost him once, I can't go through that again. Alex and Eliza can't go through that again. She couldn't accept that the trail had gone cold.
"But what about satellite cameras from the area for last several hours? Maybe they caught footage of some of their vehicles leaving. Has forensics gone over the place? They must have left some kind of evidence behind that can give us a clue about where they're going."
"Kara, I've already gone over all the surveillance footage from around the area, and we have a team checking all the footage from a five-block radius. But so far we are coming up empty, the only thing caught on camera entering and leaving that facility, besides the DEO team that raided, it is you. Forensics is going over that area now but given how Cadmus managed to stay off the surveillance cameras we don't expect to find anything. These people know how to stay under the radar." Alex's tone was weak, it was so inconsistent with the strong independent sister Kara was used to. Even ten years ago when they'd been told that Jeremiah had been killed in a plane crash Alex had been devastated, but not like this. Now she just looked so defeated. And Kara knew exactly who was to blame.
"Alex, I'm so sorry this is all my fault. I never should have left him."
"Kara, even if you hadn't left him, we'd still have no clue where Dad is. All you would have changed was you and Mon-El would be still be Cadmus' prisoners or worse and the risk that Dad took to get you away from those people would have been for nothing."
"He shouldn't have had to take that risk in the first place. If I hadn't gone to that facility alone, then the DEO could've raided the place and rescued Jeremiah. I knew I couldn't trust Lillian Luthor, but she said she'd kill Mon-El if I told anyone where I was going."
"Kara, you had no way of knowing Dad was there, and we don't know that we could have even rescued Dad if you hadn't followed her orders. I mean yeah, I wish you haven't risked your life trying to take on Cadmus by yourself, but I know you were just trying to protect Mon-El. And knowing Lillian, she would have had some kind of backup plan if you had told the DEO what you were doing."
"Alex I appreciate you're trying to spare my feelings, but I know you and I know when you're mad and I don't want you to pretend you're not just to protect me."
"Kara I'm not mad, I'm furious."
Kara opened her mouth to apologize profusely for leaving Jeremiah behind and to beg Alex's forgiveness, not that she thought she actually deserved it, but her sister held up a hand and cut her off.
"But not at you." Alex continued. "You are one of the few people I'm not mad at right now. Cadmus kidnapped you, took your powers, and could have killed you or used you in some kind of inhuman experiment and we had no idea you were even in danger until you escaped. I'm furious at those…" Alex paused trying to find the right name for those people, "bigots for taking you, but I'm also mad at J'onn, Winn, James and most of all myself for being too distracted with our own problems to even realize you were missing."
"Alex, that's not your fault. You had no way of knowing I was in trouble and from what I heard you had a lot going on today."
"That doesn't matter Kara! I knew something was wrong when you didn't check in, but I was so busy dealing with everything else, I let myself believe you'd gotten busy at Catco or something. It's my job to protect you and I should have checked on you and made sure you were okay instead of just assuming you were. If I had we would've realized that something was wrong, that you were missing and maybe we could have rescued you and Dad. But I didn't and now we've lost our only lead." Alex's voice started to break and tears began to roll down her cheeks. Kara had to strain to hear the rest of her words. "I not only let you down, I let Dad down too."
"Hey," Kara said as she wrapped her sister in the tightest hug she could give, without her powers she didn't have to worry about accidentally hurting Alex. "you have never let me down. I couldn't have asked for a better more protective sister and you haven't let Jeremiah down either. I told him how you've looked after everything when we lost him and he said you've always been too strong for you on good. I could see how proud he is of you, Alex. And he knows that we won't give up, that we're going to keep looking till we bring him home."
"How are we going to do that Kara?! I promised you and Mom that I would bring him home, and yet when he was right here in the city, I let him slip through my fingers!"
"Alex, I know right now it seems like we're right back where we started, but we not. We know now that he's still the man we remember. Even after being held captive by Cadmus for over a decade, they couldn't change him. He's still your dad, Alex."
"He's still our dad." Alex corrected her.
"He's still our dad." Kara agreed. "And no matter how long it takes, we're going to bring him home."
Author's Notes: Personally, I'm not completely sure there is not something up with Jeremiah, I thought him having such easy access to the Kara and Mon-El even though he is supposed to be a prisoner himself seemed a tad too convenient. But for Alex's and Kara's sakes, I hope he has not changed (what can I say, I'm a sucker for a happy ending). Either way, I don't think his daughters would suspect him, hence the scene above. Thanks for reading. Happy New Years!