AN: Hey everyone! Welcome to a new fic. I was inspired by a writing prompt I found on Reddit and the plot bunny wouldn't leave me alone. The prompt reads "you adopt four teenage girls, as time passes, you begin to realize each of them represent a horseman of the apocalypse. All hell breaks loose when Famine steals War's boyfriend." I'm not going to address the second sentence for now (though that might happen eventually), but the first sentence got my creative gears spinning. What would happen if our favorite heroine (and maybe also Lena, Mon-El, and Sanvers) ends up having to raise some very dangerous yet also very typical teen girls? I don't know, only time will tell…
The first chapter isn't very long, but I think it does a good job setting up the underlying drama. The action really begins in the second chapter.
I'm not sure if I want this to be a real story where all the action is consecutive or instead just write random vignettes of this super-dysfunctional yet equally adorable family. I welcome any feedback y'all might have. Expect a chapter of Earth's Last Daughter soon as well.
Chapter 1: Supergirl's Biggest Fear
If you were to ask Supergirl (or Kara Zor-El depending on how well you knew her) what her biggest fear was, her answer would depend on who you were.
If you were a reporter who asked her that question during yet another press interview, she'd smile her patented sweet smile and give some version of her traditional answer, one which always concerned not being fast enough or strong enough to save someone in danger. An admirable reply, you would respond, and then the procession of questions would move on.
If you were an acquaintance of hers, such as Agent Vasquez or M'gann, someone who knew her slightly better, you'd probably get a similar answer, perhaps accompanied by an anecdote. She'd failed to save her planet, failed to protect her cousin, failed to save Mon-El from the lead, almost failed to save Alex from drowning (twice, actually). You'd probably buy it, because you had no reason not to. Kara Zor-El never lied, right?
If you were her close friend, someone like James Olsen or Winn Schott, perhaps even Cat Grant (but let's face it, Cat's powers of perception are such that she'd know no matter what), you'd know that was a lie. Failing to save someone was only her second-biggest fear.
Her biggest fear was that Krypton would fade. Not be destroyed, as that had obviously happened decades ago, but be forgotten.
Millions had wept for National City when the Daxamites came.
Who wept for Krypton?
Millions had wept for Star City on that other Earth when the Dominators came.
Who wept for Krypton?
Millions wept for Metropolis when General Zod came.
Who wept for Krypton?
Only her. Kara Zor-El was the only one who wept for Krypton, and it hurt. Perhaps Astra had still wept for Krypton years ago, but she was gone, wrenched away from Kara by the whims of the cruel universe (not by Alex; Kara had given up on blaming her long ago).
An entire world, gone.
Billions of people, gone.
Thousands of years of culture, history, scientific achievement, gone.
Kara was no slouch when it came to reading and remembering, but it grieved her deeply to know that her knowledge of Krypton was the barest fraction of what it could have been.
Even that fraction, she was certain, would die when she did.
Kal-El had no time, no inclination for preserving the traditions. He had never experienced them, so she could not really blame him (she blamed him anyway, when she woke up in a cold sweat in the dead of night, screaming the names of those she had lost; he would never understand, and he did not want to). He could hold a basic conversation with her in Kryptonian when she felt nostalgic, but he cared not for reading or writing it.
Mon-El would never really understand, even if she found some way to save him, to call him back to her. She missed him, this was true, profoundly even, and she might even say she loved him. That did not mean that he understood her pain. His parents and the other Daxamites had poisoned him against Krypton for so long that he would always reject it in some way, even if she knew now that he would never reject her. And it would be wrong, of course, to force her culture onto him. Krypton had tried that more than once against Daxam, and it had always ended poorly.
Perhaps Non and the few remaining Kryptonians locked in the deepest cells of the DEO would understand, but they were not there. They did not see the last days of Krypton. Besides, their souls had been so twisted over the years that there was nothing left of Rao in them anyway. They were a lost cause, shadows and whispers of Krypton, nothing more, best forgotten.
If your name was not Alex Danvers, your knowledge of Kara's pain stopped there. You felt for her, you really did, but it was hard to weep for a planet you knew nothing of, especially since Kara didn't often bring it up in the first place.
If you were Alex Danvers, you had indeed wept for Krypton, though not as often as Kara had, and never when she did, because you knew that the sight of you crying would only drive Kara into further hysterics. You were supposed to be the strong one.
If you were Alex Danvers, you made Kara's twentieth birthday extra special by gifting her a chapter from a history book about the House of El which you had been able to salvage from the databank of her pod, most of which had been ruined by the machinations of the Phantom Zone. You had even gone the extra mile, painstakingly copying the document onto paper in your own hand, burning the thirty-three letters of the dead alphabet into your brain and using linguistics programs to decipher as much of it as you could.
Kara had gasped when you gave her the pages handwritten in elegant Kryptonian script.
She had wept the next year when you congratulated her birthday with a few sentences of Kryptonian which you had drilled endlessly in front of your apartment's dusty mirror.
But this time, they were tears of joy.
If you were Alex Danvers, you knew that Kara longed to be able to pass her knowledge of Krypton on to someone else, to ensure her fear would never come to pass. You also knew that she wanted to have a family some day, and you knew that those two strong interests of hers were aligned.
Unfortunately, you knew something else as well. Microbiology did sometimes come in handy (though you often found yourself using your black belt in karate more often). The ravages her body had undergone in the Phantom Zone, coupled with the rapid restructuring that had occurred under the light of the yellow sun had changed Kara's physiology in such a way that almost no one would be biologically compatible with her.
After the whole 'James Fiasco,' you struggled to find a way to explain this to her.
Then, like a miracle, Mon-El arrived. In a biological sense (though perhaps not in any other sense; you still had your doubts about him, though you had to admit that he had smartened up significantly), he was perfect for Kara. He had undergone the same combination of Phantom Zone radiation and yellow sun radiation as she had (though his body hadn't been changed quite as much), and he wasn't related to her like Kal was (despite the fact that they shared a family name, a coincidence Kara had never touched on). Eventually, she fell for him. Hard. Perhaps, you thought, that meant that you wouldn't need to explain after all.
Then came the battle against Rhea, and the revelation that her blood was tainted with Kryptonite. Since Mon-El was not exposed for very long before he escaped Daxam, perhaps this would be okay, but you'd need to run more tests to be sure.
Except you couldn't. Kara had made the right choice, forced the Daxamites away with lead, but that meant Mon-El was gone too.
You weren't sure how Kara would react if you told her, so you put it off again. Maybe someday you'd tell her, if you ever stocked up enough pizza and potstickers to assuage the grief that was sure to follow.
At least, that's what you thought until the fateful day when Lena Luthor came a-calling and Kara, you, and the rest of your 'Superfriends' met a girl named Phyllis who didn't have a home.