Day Two

They'd slept in the building they'd woken up in the day before. They'd both wanted to get out of the there and figure out what was going on, and more importantly...to figure out a way to get home. The day before, they'd gone out and explored the streets a bit, but hadn't gotten too far before they'd had to take cover. They'd been fired upon, not by people, but by flying drones.

The city was vacant it seemed.

Dead.

"Kirsten and the girls have to be so worried," Davis breathed as they sat there munching.

Luckily, they both packed snacks in their vests. It wasn't even so much in case something like this happened, in case they ended up stranded somewhere for far longer than they'd been originally prepared for. It was because of the basic reason that it seemed like most of the DEO agents mainly snacked for the majority of the day rather than eating full meals. Snacking worked out better in their line of work it seemed like anyways.

Adler just closed her eyes as she sat there. The one thing that they needed to make sure they found was water. That was something that hadn't been on their persons when they'd ended up where they were. "Lara and I left things-"

"You know she's not going to be mad about this," he told her.

Opening her eyes, she rolled her head in the direction he was sitting in and stared at him for a long moment. "It just sucks… We both know better than to go to work after an argument, we should have talked it over and just have come in late."

"Sometimes that's hard."

"We both know that it should have been done."

"True, but now you'll know for your next argument," Harewood told her.

"I don't want there to be a future argument."

"That's not realistic."

Adler shrugged. "Our jobs don't feel realistic most of the time."

"Valid."

"What do you make of what we saw out there yesterday?"

"Better to stay under cover," Harewood said as he tucked a granola wrapper into his vest pocket. "Today, let's try not to be seen."

"There's no way this is our Earth, right?" Adler asked him. "I mean, this is something I'd normally ask Danvers-"

"This place is definitely not our Earth," Harewood told her quickly. "We're on some alternate Earth or something…"

"Maybe that Flash guy is here-"

"Do you really think he'd let things get so bad? Even if this isn't his city?"

"Crap, Davis, you don't have to make so much sense!" Alice groaned. "Geez…"

Harewood just shook his head at her before getting to his feet. "Let's figure out how we're going to get home."

"You know, I was hoping that portal would just re-appear here...since it dumped us here in the first place," Adler said as she got to her feet and motioned around.

"Like we'd get it that easy."

He was right.

She wasn't going to tell him that, though. As much as she maybe preferred having Harewood there, he could be such a pain in the ass. Adler stretched as glanced down at her watch, the one that was broken, out of habit more than anything. The reminder that her watch was broken, though, just irked her all the more. "How are we going to do this?"

"There have to be people," Harewood insisted. "Ruins and some drone that fires on people out in the open can't be all that's left of National City. There have to be people and they're probably underground."

"We don't have a subway-"

"No, but there used to be that train line that they tried doing underground, it was sort of like a subway… They did entire sections to prep for it...and then they hit that issue of their main station not being structured well enough with earthquakes factored in-"

"Wouldn't they have had to tear down an entire building to restructure it to make it work?"

"Yeah."

"I didn't realize that they'd actually gotten sections done before that," Adler commented.

"That's why Kreisberg and Winter were under all that serious construction a few years back."

Adler paused. "That's to think that there are similarities between the two worlds."

"Got a better plan?"

"Nope."

"We better get moving then."

"Are you fucking serious?"

"That's what I've been thinking since we came through the fucking portal yesterday," Adler told him. It wasn't often that Harewood talked, especially since he wasn't a very chatty person to begin with, so when he was dropping the f-bomb then it was something serious.

"I'd suspect that we'd gone back in time or-"

"That fresh 2020 election poster that looks like it's just been put up I feel like indicates that it couldn't possibly be that we went through some time portal." Adler sighed. "You know, our lives used to be just filled with just aliens...this...this I blame on that little sunny speed demon that came from some other parallel universe by accident and then helped Supergirl with Livewire and Silver Banshee… He probably popped some hole in the space time continuum."

"Nerd."

"Shut it, Harewood," Adler immediately shot back with a slight glare. "Remember, I have pictures from halloween of you dressed up as some guy from Star Trek."

"I was chaperoning kids trick or treating around the neighborhood," Harewood reminded.

"So was I, but I wasn't decked out in some pointy ears-"

"I can't help it if you don't dress up as a theme with Charlie...and Lara."

Lara absolutely loved halloween. Adler was actually fairly sure that her wife loved halloween more than Charlie and basically any other holiday and/or event that occurred during the year. Ever since she'd met her wife, she'd always dress up. Sometimes it was to try to be in some sort of theme with Charlie and other times, it was just whatever the hell caught her fancy. Alice, however, refused to ever dress up. She'd done it as a kid and had always gotten crap from her peers, so she saw no need to do it as an adult.

Stopping to think about it, Alice eyed Harewood as they continued to move as stealthily as they could. "Your girls were dressed up as Supergirl and that other red, white, and blue superheroine with the lasso," Adler said. "How was your space man part of that theme?"

"Spock's a big damn hero!"

"Oh-kay," Adler exclaimed brightly.

"You know for someone who's married to the woman you're married to, I would have thought that she would have you dressing up in costumes with her and attending those crazy cons…"

"Pride?"

"I was thinking more that...Comic Con thing…"

"Yeah, that's not happening."

Harewood seemed amused now. "It's never come up?"

"And you're not going to bring it up," Adler countered grumpily.

"Isn't your anniversary coming up?"

"How do you remember that?"

"I'm a good friend."

Adler sighed. "You are."

"Now, let's figure out how the hell we're going to get back home to our wives and kids."

The racial slurs caught Adler off guard.

That wasn't all, though, as both she and Harewood were slammed against a wall out of nowhere. They hadn't seen them coming or heard anything. They'd nearly been to the underground entrance Harewood had been talking to her about. They didn't take it easy, they fought back and the men in the hoods and masks fought them right back. Adler elbowed one really good in the face and for a moment, she thought they were going to make it away-

And then it all went black.

"What'd'ya find?"

"She's one of those fucking gays!"

"That makes sense, she dresses like a man and thinks she can do a man's job. Fucking dyke!"

"When will they fucking learn?"

"Why don't you shut your backwards mouth?!" Harewood shot out.

The sound of his grunts immediately after forced her fully awake, her eyes open. Her immediate response was to go to his aid, but she was tied and in no position to do so. Adler had to watch as they kicked the crap out of her friend.

"Damn ape!"

It sounded very much like they were in the past or some other backwards part of the country, not National City. Adler couldn't just stay there quiet. No, she had to divert their attention away from Davis. "What the hell has happened to all of you? Is this because of those clown posters we saw out there?"

"Neanderthals!" Harewood shouted as they moved away from him and turned their attention to Adler.

"Shut your mother fucking mouths! That's our president you're talking about!"

"King of the ignorant might be a better title," Adler countered and received a fairly heavy blow across the face for her remark. "Freaking redneck nazis!"

"Let's just hang them or whatever and get this over with!" one of the men that was holding them shouted.

They were obviously hitting nerves, but Adler wasn't just going to sit there like some helpless silent damsel while her friend was beaten within an inch of his life because they'd landed in some twisted reality.

"You know that's not how we do things," one of the others in a red cap with some bullshit saying countered. They were all armed and looked like they were all dressed for a hunting trip, which made Adler wonder if this was some kind of makeshift militia of some sorts. It only made Alice wonder all the more what was different about their National City, their America, and their Earth that had produced this kind of hate and chaos. The city seemed to be completely destroyed, but there were obviously still people wandering around like they were looking for elk to shoot.

"We're not witches, you know," Adler grumbled.

"Might as well be," Harewood chimed in.

"You'll be wishing we were that kind," one of the men said with a snort. "Burning at the stake would be a mercy…"

"No," one of the others spoke up. "We take them to Cadmus and let them do what they want with them. Anything they do will be far worse than anything we can think up."

Shit.

If Cadmus was anything like what they had on their world, they were in for a world full of trouble. This world was already so much worse than their own planet, so Alice could only imagine how much worse their Cadmus was. Obviously Cadmus wasn't hiding its face on this world, it sounded like it was more like law enforcement if anything (well, more like the justice system without the whole right to a trial part).

They were screwed.

Day Three

It was like walking into some kind of nightmarish prison. All the walls were constructed of some kind of clear substance that looked like glass. She knew it couldn't be glass, though, because during their walk to their cells, she'd caught aliens being held (ones that she knew were strong as all hell). Adler was sort of relieved when she and Harewood were tossed in the same cell, where it was already occupied with a couple of other people. She looked around, trying to assess for any weaknesses. She didn't see any.

"Fuck this," she grumbled.

"They've got men, women, and children in here," Harewood told her.

"And aliens," she added and then shook her head, her hands on her hips. "We're fucked." She just stared out of their cell. All of the other cells reached out for as far as their eyes could see. That's how it had felt walking in there too. It was like this huge complex that was dedicated to locking up people that they didn't like.

"What were you doing out there?" someone asked.

"What are you wearing?" someone else asked.

They were wearing their standard DEO issue field black clothing, but of course all of their weapons and devices had been removed from them upon entering Cadmus. "We were trying to get home...obviously we weren't going the right way," Adler mumbled.

"What military group are you with?"

"Department of Extra-Normal Operations," Adler spit out without thinking about it much. Normally the DEO was a secret, but she figured that it really didn't matter much since they weren't even on their Earth. "But we sort of came here through a portal...dropped into this hellhole of a world."

"You're from someplace else?"

"Yeah," Harewood said. "We have a Cadmus, but it's not like this. They're small. They go after aliens-"

"They're never going to let you out of here," someone muttered.

And Alice felt like they were right.

Finding a spot near the cell door, she pressed her back against the wall and slid down until she was in a sitting position. She was keeping her eyes out and ready, but she was also thinking about Lara and everything that she had fucked up at home. They'd taken her picture of her with Lara and Charlie. The stupid redneck hunting militia had taken it. It still pissed her off that she and Davis hadn't been able to take them, but they had been outnumbered by far more than they apparently could take.

"Alice? You can't give up hope," Davis said.

"Trying to see a way out of this...so far, not seeing it," Alice said. "And Lara and I fought before I left…"

"Lara's just going to be happy to have you home, you know that," Harewood told her. "She's not going to still be upset about whatever you fought about."

"I'm just happy that the boss didn't send her with us this time."

It was so ugly there.

Hopeless.

Day Four

She'd been moved.

They'd come the night before and separated everyone that had been in the cell with her and Harewood in a fit of screams and resistance. The screams still hadn't stopped. Alice had learned very quickly on in Cadmus that the screams never really stopped, they just sprung anew from someone else's lungs.

She was alone.

She was terrified.

They'd done simple things to her, taken blood and asked her questions (though she really hadn't given them much in the way of answers). She'd done what she could to conceal her identity. It wasn't so much that she was Alice Adler, it was that she didn't belong on that Earth.

Harewood being somewhere else, having no idea what they were doing to him, that was hard. She'd tried to express her concern to the doctor who had come in and taken her blood (which had only been done as she'd been held down by several security guards), but she'd gotten no information. The only response that she'd gotten was an eerie one, that her friend was being taken care of.

Day Unknown

Time passed differently there.

Slowly.

Confusingly.

The room was always the same.

Sterile.

Solitary.

The lights were always on.

Awake.

Exhausted.

The somewhat routine was now almost constant.

Leave her for a while.

Take blood.

Leaver her for a while.

Knock her around and demand information.

Do it all over again.

They'd threatened her more times than she could count. One think that she was thankful for was that there was no way on this Earth that they could use her family against her. If it had been her Earth, she'd do anything to keep Lara and Charlie from being harmed.

Anything.

There was no escape.

No hope for a rescue.

Alice had given up all hope completely. She'd accepted her fate and actually was ready to welcome death...if only it would take her. Right now, she was fairly sure she was going to die from boredom over anything else. They never actually injured her enough that she actually thought that she would die. It was just pain...and in a way, it was mindless pain.

She'd just lay there in the cell, pushing the pain away. Ignoring the light that would never darken. Wishing to stop time that already felt like it was halted. Alice would just lose herself in memories. Sometimes they were happy memories, domestic memories, romantic memories, sexual memories, and sometimes they were stupid memories. Even the horrible ones, they were better than anything that Cadmus spit out at her.

Time passed by, but it didn't.

The numbness remained.

Lara…

Charlie…

The DEO…

Home…

It was like a black void that refused to swallow her up. It was so much easier being lost in her memories...in dreams that she made up...to ignore the world that she was trapped in.

There was a disruption in the normalcy-

Gunfire.

It yanked her out of her memory...a moment where she, Lara, Danvers, and Vasquez were out drinking. It had been a happy one where laughter and embarrassing stories filled the space between them. It hadn't been interrupted by the shattering shock of gunfire punching through.

Blink.

Blink.

Breath.

Blink.

Gasp.

It was like the entire world came tumbling into reality. The harsh reality of it all. The unyielding lights, the pain, and the truth that she was alone in that room...on another Earth. Sitting up, she tried to process what she knew she heard.

Gunshots.

There it was again.

A rescue?

Alice pushed herself up to her feet and stumbled forward, catching herself on the clear door of the cell. She pressed against the smooth surface, looking for the cause of the stark sound. The sounds of shouting and fighting brought her a sudden rush of hope.

Two familiar figures immediately caught her attention.

Hope completely filled her over.

A rescue!

The cavalry had arrived to save them! She didn't know how it was possible for them to find them and then get them out...and have the whole return trip part figured out...but she was thrilled. She pounded on the door and started to shout. She needed to get their attention. Sure, all of these people needed to be freed, but they were there for her and Harewood (and they would be able to help with the prison break.

"Supergirl! Danvers! Over here!" she shouted in between pounds.

Kara was the one who turned in her direction, her adorable sunny face scrunching up. The conversation between the Danvers sisters was brief, but they moved towards her cell.

"I can't believe that you found me, I was starting to think that no one was coming," Adler rattled off. "Who else is with you? We have to find Harewood. We also need to let all of this people go free before we go back to our Earth-"

"Our Earth?" Kara echoed. She looked even more confused.

"Who are you?" Alex asked next.

"This isn't funny!" Adler said upset, tears forming in her eyes. "This place is completely upside down! It's been hell! They separated Harewood and I! We couldn't get back-"

"That portal," Alex breathed. "I told you it had to go somewhere."

"How do you know us?" Kara questioned.

"Some things are the same on Earths, like me having a Supergirl...an Alex and Kara Danvers…" Adler said, hoping that this meant that they were like her Danvers sisters and that they were going to help her. "Some things are vastly different, like whatever happened to your Earth."

"It wasn't like this a year ago," Alex said sadly. "A new president took over, I don't even know how that happened...it's still a shock...and then...then it was like the world lost hope, that hate bled into so many souls, and the world started to slowly self destruct."

"Please," Adler begged. "Let me out. Help me friend my friend. I'll help you free these people and destroy this place if that's why you're here…"

The sisters were now looking at each other. "We could send them home," Alex told Kara.

"What if she's some kind of spy?" Kara countered.

"I could tell you things," Adler offered. "That's probably stuff so many people could know, though." She sucked in a breath and held back her tears and her overwhelming emotions. "On my Earth, you're Supergirl...but you also work at CatCo...and Alex works with me and Harewood at the DEO."

"DEO?"

"Department of Extra-Normal Operations," Adler said. "We protect the world from aliens. The bad ones. We help those that we can."

"You help?"

Adler gave a nod. "Yeah… The DEO was once all about alien hunting, but that's changed. You're a hero to so many, you both are...including my little girl." It was at the point where she felt like she needed to appeal to them emotionally. "Her name's Charlie, she's only five. She and my wife, Lara...who Alex, Harewood, and I work with...she's probably completely devastated that I've been gone as long as I have…" She sucked in a breath, realizing that her emotions were getting the better of her. "And that's not even talking about Harewood...his wife and his girls…" She shook her head. "I know that your world probably feels like hope has been taken away and it's been set on flames, but there are other Earths out there… There's better versions of it. There's probably worse versions of it. What I can say is that you can inspire people, you can change this world...both of you...you're a symbol of hope...to so many…" Adler sucked in a breath. "Please, help me."

Day Forty-Three

They'd been in Cadmus for more than a month and Alice felt sicker knowing that now as the twisted Earth's Alex Danvers escorted her and Harewood to the portal. It was guarded, which was good. They'd taken an extra day to get to it because the Danvers had insisted that both she and Harewood get medical treatment and have access to things that would make them feel more human again. As much as it was nice to feel like she did in that moment, she had felt like her heart was breaking thinking about how that was just an entire extra day that she didn't need to be away from Lara and Charlie.

"Ready?" Alex asked.

"More than ready," Harewood responded.

"I'm glad that we could do this for you and I hope that we never see you again."

Harewood gave her a smile and a nod before heading through.

Adler stood there for a moment. "You're doing good work."

"Trying," Alex replied.

"Use the emblem...the House of El symbol...broadcast it as a symbol of hope. Figure out a simple message that can be translated. Get the word out there that hope hasn't been locked away from this world," Adler told her. "The people of this Earth will always need the Danvers sisters…"

"Don't you mean Supergirl?"

"No," Adler said with a slight shake of her head. "I mean both of you."

"You should go."

"Good luck."

TBC…