Everything is shaking and you can barely stand upright. Your spare hands shoots out to a wall as Krypton jolts suddenly, Kal-El against your chest screaming and crying. Jor-El trips up ahead of you.
"Come on, Lara!" He calls as if it had been you, getting up and rushing to the pod station. You can hear Alura and Zor-El behind you encouraging Kara down the corridor and you pray they reach the pod station too. Bracing yourself, you run flat-out, bashing into Jor-El as he comes to Kal-El's pod, opening it up and sequencing it – and all its sister pods.
You gasp, "Jor-El!" The pod beeps out the secondary pod call, another pod further down the station flashing, opening, before another does too and another. You don't know where the fifth pod is, but it must be off-world if no other pod is responding.
"Get him into the pod," Jor-El tugs you closer and you see the inside of the pod, waiting for Kal-El's tiny body and you feel like you can't breathe, even as Jor-El wraps his arms around you and your son, pressing a hard kiss to your head. "He has to go, Lara. We'll be the death of him, if he does not go now."
Across the station, behind you, just waiting for Kara – who now rushes over to it, Alura and Zor-El at her elbows. You look to Kal-El's pod, heart bursting in your chest as you place Kal-El in, hands shaking as Jor-El presses the engine of the pod on, shutting the door. It seals shut, blue engines starting up before zooming off, out of the station and into the orange sky, filled with ash and dust.
You look to Kara, expecting to watch her go and then to die with your planet, but Jor-El begins pulling you to the other activated pods. As Kara sails off into the sky, Zor-El rushes Alura over too. It occurs to you what the brothers are about to do and you shake your head.
"No, no, please, no-"
"You have to be with Kal-El!" Jor-El pulls you over to the pod and manhandles you, pushing you inside. You scramble, trying to pull him in with you, but he shakes his head, pressing a kiss to your head. "Go!" Then, he shuts the lid and your pod sails off into the sky, Alura following you as you scream, sobbing, crying. A giant hole is in your chest, a gaping maw of terror and loss.
You watch Krypton explode and feel your pod jolt, before the air tastes sweet and there is darkness-
You suck in a shock of air. Dry, dusty air that tastes so strange and alien. Your eyes open, yellow sunlight filtering through the lid of your pod, before it's ripped open, an unfamiliar blonde woman looking at you in shock and worry.
"Aunt Lara – Aunt Lara, it's me, it's Kara."
Your mouth opens and closes and you don't know what to say. Krypton just exploded in front of your eyes and now a fully-grown woman is taking your hands, pulling you up and out of the pod. You feel wobbly, the gravity of this world lighter and strange. The strength of the woman's hands ground you even as tears well in your eyes. Kara's hands, somehow, this is- this is Kara? I don't understand, she's only supposed to be thirteen-
"This is Earth?" You question instead. Kara nods.
"Yes, it is."
"Oh," you look around, catching sight of a silver pod just before it hits the ground. You flinch at the sound of rock on metal, earth shifting and scraping in an unusually loud fashion before you see Alura in the pod, through the clear window. "Alura!" You start towards it, but before you even make it five steps, Kara has run over, ripping the lid off in a terrifying show of strength. "Alura?" You hurry over, watching as Alura blinks through the sunlight, kneeling by the pod to reach it, to take her hand. "Alura, we're here. We're on Earth."
"Kara," Alura gets out, confused, "Where is Kara? And Kal-El?"
You suck in a deep breath, immediately concerned, looking around and up, trying to find another pod. "Kal-El? Kal-El!"
"Aunt Lara," Kara starts, before you round on her, finally.
"Who are you? Who are you really? My niece is just a little girl!"
"You were trapped in the Phantom Zone – you've both been there for years," Kara states, looking between you and Alura quickly. "I landed after a few years of space-travel. My pod got- it got lost, I think. Something knocked it off-course. Kal-El's pod, too, but he found me. His pod followed the signal of mine and I was eighteen, five years had passed. Kal-El has grown up, Aunt Lara, I've grown up too."
"Oh, oh no," Alura murmurs, getting to her feet. She approaches Kara carefully, Kara reaching forwards to hug her tightly. You watch the reunion, feeling a rise in your chest – a rise of bitter anger and fear.
"How old is Kal-El?" You ask, breaking the moment of happiness. Kara looks at you, eyes wary and face betraying all her nervousness for you to see.
"Kal-El's fourteen. He's fourteen, Aunt Lara."
Fourteen.
The number thuds in your heads. Fourteen. My son is fourteen years of age.
"You raised him," is what you croak out. Kara nods.
"I'm his mother."
Jealousy, vile and wicked, rises in your chest. You can't help but glare hatefully at your niece, who shrinks slightly under the onslaught, genuine pain, genuine apology, genuine everything in her eyes. Your jealousy fades as your own regret forms. This is Kara – this is a girl you love and cherish, almost as much as your own son. Her son, your traitorous mind thinks, corrects. Kal-El is her son.
"We need to leave," Kara then says, interrupting your thoughts. "Brainiac Eight hacked into Aunt Lara's pod as the primary pod of the fleet and got you both out of the Phantom Zone, but dragged Fort Rozz with you. It's going to come crashing down within a couple of hours, probably right here."
"What?" Alura's grip on Kara visibly tightens, before Kara winces and shakes her off.
"Ow. Right, yeah, good point to mention as well – on this world, we have powers. The yellow sunlight gives them to us. You'll find that a lot of things will be hard to handle at first, like sound and x-ray vision. Flying is harder to do accidentally, unless you're jumping about-"
"We can fly?" you interrupt, unbelieving. "I don't understand," and you truly don't. You're part of the Artists Guild, not the Science Guild…
You were part of the Artists Guild. Krypton is gone, now.
"It's complicated and I can't explain now, but we do really need to go. I'm taking you to my home – you'll both be safe there. My- my soulmate and the boys are there."
Soulmate?
Alura glances to you and the two of you share a look of similar confusion, before Kara floats up into the air, shocking you.
"To get started, do a little run, then jump up," Kara instructs awkwardly. You look to Alura again, hesitant. "It's the only way we're leaving this desert," Kara then reveals.
"Magnificent," you mutter, before looking out to a clear patch of ground. Breathing in deeply, shouldering the ache in your chest that screams Kal-El, Krypton and Jor-El, rushing across the cracking ground and jumping up-
You feel like you're flying, for a moment, for more than a moment, for at least six seconds before it goes away and you start falling. Panicking, you try to summon the feeling again and it comes – a power at your beck and call that stops you from reaching the ground. Swallowing, you float upwards, your stomach flip-flopping as you straighten up, twisting a bit further back than you expected.
"Come on mom, your turn," Kara says, going down to the ground to encourage her. You feel a spark of frustration as she runs with her mother, holding her hand as she jumps and jumps, trying to fly and eventually getting it, after twenty seconds.
"Can you stay in the air?" Kara questions you both, receiving two nods before she nods back, going over to your pods and picking one up with a single hand. She carefully drags it over to the other pod, taking it before flying up a little more. You think then of the fifth pod of the fleet. Had it landed too? Was it coming, now that the primary pod had rediscovered the true destination?
You don't ask these things of Kara as she guides you both through the skies, keeping above the clouds and out of sight. Alura holds onto a pod tightly, fearing that she will fall, but you don't. You have this, or at least you think you do. You'll be able to keep it up, you think. It might simply by harder for you to start again, after you've stopped.
Kara's house is small, surrounded by houses that look the same, painted a mixture of white, grey and dark blue. You all touch down inside a 'garage', where Kara stores your pods, setting them side by side two other pods, which look mangled and broken apart in that familiar, engineering way rather than that of damage.
"What were you doing?" You question, peering at the wires and propped-up screens. "You took them apart."
"I was using the parts. I didn't realise I'd need to fight against a computer half-way across the galaxy for control over the fleet." Kara tries to pull a threaded blue plastic sheet over the pods, but while you see it might fit over three, at a stretch, four is far too much. "No-one is in the house right now – they're at the penthouse."
"They?" Alura questions as you heart thuds. Kal-El, he must be there, at this 'penthouse'.
"My girlfriend, Cat Grant, her son Adam and- and Kal-El." Kara looks to you then, just staring. You only barely understand what it might feel like to be her right now. You haven't raised your son but you love him, with all your heart and Kara- Kara must feel like this, tenfold. It's like I'm stealing him. Like she did.
"We're willing to go where you like," you speak in the silence, breaking the uncomfortable tension. You glance at Alura, who nods quickly, stepping forwards to take Kara's hands.
"It is still foreign to me, that you have spent these last nineteen years on Earth when it seems-" Alura's face flickers then, filling with pain and despair and you shut your eyes as she continues on, a stronger woman than I could ever be. "When it seems as if Krypton has only been destroyed mere moments ago."
A sound of pure grief echoes through the room and you realise it's coming from you as your legs give out beneath you, knees cracking the hard, grey flooring. You press your hands against the symbol of the House of El on your chest, feeling as if your heart has been flayed with poisoned knives. Tears form in your eyes and you sob, joined by Alura as her arms wrap around you and then Kara's around you both.
Krypton is gone! Home, my planet, dead, gone forever!
Your grief consumes you.