With a burning trail fit for the end of days, Fort Ross crashes to Earth. No counter grav kicks into effect, no shielding comes online to cushion the impact. Designed and built to withstand an eternity in non-temporal space as an autonomous station, it was never intended to operate in atmosphere. Fatalities are almost total, among the guards and prisoners both.

Non sacrifices himself to save Astra. Perhaps it's instinct, some vestige of sentiment kicking in as he catches sight of the spar breaking loose from the corner of his eye. Maybe it's an accident of the superstructure's destruction, flinging his body into position to shield her. Either way, she remains among the living. He does not.
She gathers herself, says a quiet prayer to guide him into Rao's light, and moves on.

Years pass. Some pass quickly, some slowly, some without any acknowledgement whatsoever.

In a pattern as seemingly random as it is eventful, cities across the globe experience upticks in homicide rates. The shortest span on record is a number of days that presumably ended when the killer ran out of gang members; the longest is just over five months. The group or individual responsible remains unknown. Their modus opperandi keeps to no discernible pattern, even within a single city. The majority of victims are criminals, with the highest numbers in violent crime, followed by dabblers in unsafe environmental procedures. The deaths coincide with increased donations to ecological causes, typically cash payments. The two are not presumed to be related. Correlation does not equal causation, after all, good deeds are seen as an excellent idea when the Eco Warrior's in town, and it's far more interesting to speculate on juxtaposition between rise in reports of crime and sharp decline of crime committed. The number of police deaths is omitted as a matter of course.

The murders – and the killings are murders, far too numerous and methodological to be simple cases of excessive force or good Samaritans caught in the heat of the moment – catch the attention of the League of Assassins, but not their interest. They have no time for petty criminals.

Their stance changes when a prominent businessman is found dead. On a balcony. Thirteen stories up. He's a League target. Someone got to him first, killed him in the time it took to drop through the windows and disappeared without a trace. The murderer, whoever he is – they flip a coin to determine the gender, otherwise things get far too confusing, especially using language as gendered as theirs – absconds before their entrance is complete.

Two years after Kara starts working for Cat Grant, the murder spike hits National City. Alex doesn't quite move back in with her, not with the hours her job at the lab requires, but Kara does find herself the owner of some sturdy new locks for her door and windows. She doesn't use them, as often as not, no matter how much Alex nags at her about acting human. Kara is well aware of her indestructibility.
Even so, she isn't as unaffected as tries to seem. She makes a point of leaving CatCo only after she's sure Cat is safely on her way home. Carter's journeys to and from school are the safest of his life. Alex, who is working on the effects of his intensity sonic waves on some new bio-material, is left alone. She isn't sure is Kryptonians can get tinnitus, but she doesn't want to risk it.

Then National City Flight 237 from Geneva goes down and is saved. The passengers aren't the only ones to see their savior, not when DEO is being actively targeted.

Alex freaks out doubly hard, after failing to get through to Kara's phone – because superpowers bad, hard evidence of using them worse, Kara – when Cat Grant, of all people, the same Cat Grant that Kara complains about and defends in the same breathe – calls her to ask – to demand, really – why Kara hasn't shown up for work. The fact that she's worried enough to call Kara by her name is worrying, even if Alex fully intends to tease Kara with it afterwards, once she's made sure nothing is wrong. And nothing will be wrong, because Alex won't let it. She is Dr. Dr. Special Agent Alex Danvers and Kara is her sister and she takes care of her sister and that means nothing happens to her.

In an ostensibly abandoned apartment, Kara slowly wakes for a third time that day.
Third, because on the second, she'd blown what was left of her powers expelling river water from her lungs, tripped over her feet and down the stairs – all three of them – while trying to find the door. To keep her from killing herself, she's sedated and put in the sun to recharge next to a small potted cactus.
She groans. The sun feels good – it always does – but it's also too bright.

"Mmnlph'lex?"

The figure at the window turns from the light of the setting sun, almost the same shade of red as Rao, and Kara has to blink herself awake, only – was it a dream, a nightmare, can this be real -

"M-Mom?"

"It's been a long time, Little One."