Author's Note: This short is for the Summer of Supergirl prompt: There are Places I remember - Kara & Krypton. It could easily stand alone or belong to pretty much any of the story universes I've created, so feel free to decide where you want to think it goes! ;)

hiraeth (n)

a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.

"Now we know there are other Earths, one of those parallel worlds has to be in a universe where Krypton wasn't destroyed. Have you ever thought about trying to skip through and find a way to get home?"

"Alex-"

"It won't hurt my feelings if you say yes."

Kara knew her sister was lying. She and Alex had been sisters on Earth for twelve years, but her life before that had been on her home planet raised by her parents and surrounded by people who loved and cared for her. It was a beautiful and loving life, one where she had travelled to many worlds...but after its destruction, she'd been grounded to this one. More or less anyways.

This was set on by Kara talking about Barry again, she knew that. Alex always seemed amused when she'd go on about Barry (normally something reminded her of him, like an ice cream cone). There had just been this wonderful joyful spark between the two of them and after all, Alex hadn't been in National City when Barry had been trapped there...so she hadn't been a part of any of the stories.

"I wouldn't leave Earth...you...Eliza...J'onn...Winn...James...Clark...you're all my family," Kara said gently. Her sister was still staring at her, obviously not pleased with her response. She let out a frustrated sigh and removed her glasses before squeezing her eyes shut and pinching the bridge of her nose. She'd had been taken over by the Black Mercy not too long before and she knew what she might have had on Krypton...what life might have looked like...and she'd lost her entire world and family all over again (and Astra taken later that night). She honestly didn't know if she could take all of that again. "I don't know, Alex… I wouldn't want to live there...it wouldn't be my Krypton...and it wouldn't be my family...and there would likely be a duplicate of me-"

"No universe would have an exact duplicate of you...you're unique, Kara," Alex said extremely emotional.

She opened her bright blue eyes and stared at her sister. "It wouldn't be home. I have that, right here with you."

"But it once was."

"Once…"

"When we were little...when you'd first came to Earth," Alex said. "You used to talk about Krypton all the time-"

"You hated it," Kara said with a smile as she slipped her glasses back into place.

"I wasn't a good sister."

"No, you were-"

"No, I wasn't."

Kara just smiled at her. "You just took some convincing...some warming up…"

"You never talk about it anymore," Alex said sadly. "Not Krypton, not your mother or father, not life there...not any of the planets you had visited…"

Kara shrugged. "It was something that made me feel not so homesick when I first got here," she explained wistfully. "When we used to look up at the stars in the sky, I liked to pretend that one of them was Krypton...even though it's much farther...we wouldn't have seen it from Earth...but I used to tell myself...convince myself...that out there somewhere...somehow Krypton had survived… That if I kept talking about it, that my mother and father would come for me."

"I just want you to know that you can talk to me...anytime...about Krypton...about any of it," Alex told her. "I know I might not really know what it was like there-"

"Thank you," Kara said sweetly. "I just…" She shrugged. "It's not my life anymore."

"You might be Kara Danvers, but you'll always be Kara Zor-El," Alex reminded. Kara wondered if that was hard for her sister to say. It had been so hard for Alex to accept her when she'd first landed, which was understandable (especially looking back on it all), but once they really both decided they were sisters-

"So much of that has been tainted," she tried to explain. Everything that she'd thought she'd known growing up, the entire time she'd been on Krypton and Earth up until seeing Astra again...it had all been a lie. Her parents weren't the people that she'd thought them to be. She'd felt partially responsible for Astra winding up in Fort Rozz, maybe if she hadn't...she wouldn't have done so much damage (though she'd likely have died on Krypton with the others). "It's hard to think of good memories and not second guess things."

"Don't do that, Kara," Alex whispered as she placed her hand over Kara's. "Don't let all of that be taken away… Your mother, your father, Astra...they all had to have been doing what they thought was right… Right for Krypton and right for you. They made mistakes. We all do," her sister admitted sadly. There was silence between them for a long moment. "Tell me a story…"

This caught her off guard.

Kara opened her mouth to argue about it and then closed it again. It had been so long since she'd told Alex stories of Krypton. "Growing up, I didn't have these powers… I could get sick, get hurt, and I did. I was with my father on another planet. I don't remember exactly why we were there, I just remember that it was beautiful." She lit up as she thought about it. "The skies were purple and there was something that looked like the Aurora Borealis in the skies there. It was just so full of beautiful vibrant color and I thought that I wanted to live there forever. I think I actually asked if we could relocate there."

Alex smiled at that.

"Nearly their entire planet was covered in these beautiful forests with jade treetops and the trunks were twisty and windy. On a hike of an area, I managed to trip and hit my head before rolling down a hill and hitting my head again." She watched as her sister gasped and covered her mouth. "I was dazed and confused and it took a while for help to get to me. The entire time I bled, I just stared up at the sky. It didn't even hurt until they pulled me away."

Even though the story was embarrassing and had resulted in a quite painful experience, she could still remember the sky and how beautiful it was. She could remember how happy being there had made her, just looking up. If only they made some kind of ceiling projector that could capture that sky…

"I'm sure Alura wasn't pleased."

Smiling, she shook her head. "I don't think she allowed father to take me out again alone on a trip. It wasn't his fault… There was just so much to look at...I didn't look where I was going." Kara grinned at her and then just smiled a bit sadly with a sigh. "I wish I could take you there…"

"You just did."

"My description did not do it anywhere near justice," Kara told her sister seriously.

"Maybe not, but a memory of a place and time is more than just what it looked like...it's how it made you feel...how you look when you're reliving that memory…"

"I do still miss Krypton," she said genuinely. Kara watched Alex's face and knew that her sister was likely upset somewhere deep inside that she'd said that, but it was the truth. "It's not the planet. It's my parents...Clark's family...everyone that we knew and loved. I think I will always deep down somewhere inside of me miss Krypton, but this...Earth...you-you will always be my home."

The End.