Please accept this new chapter as a little early holiday gift from me to you.
Summary: Kara remembers the first promise she and Alex made each other.
A/N: So, I wrote this after watching Elseworlds and the conversation Kara has with Earth-1 Alex but it's also about how Kara searches for home and how she and Alex first learn how to help each other deal with their loses.
After everything, Kara stays just a bit longer, lets herself be lost to the world for just a bit longer. She stands alone in the meadow and looks up at the sky and thinks of Argo, of the pieces of herself she found there and the parts of herself she left there. She thinks of her Mother and of Clark and Lois and the family they are about to start. She thinks of who she is now with all the things she's lost and found. She imagines herself younger. When she first looked to the sky. When she was scared of what she would find; when it hurt too much to look at all. But she always looks now, no matter how much it hurts and no matter how scared she is. And it's a promise that took years to keep, for her eyes to see the light that was still there, to be able to find what had once been too dim and too distant.
She stays just a bit longer, lets herself look at the sky just a bit longer, thinks of that promise to herself and then again of another.
Kara holds on carefully to the glasses in her hand, her fingers running along the contours of the frames as she closes her eyes and imagines what she cannot see. Imagines the sky above her colored in a deep red hue, imagines the light from stars to dim to find. She thinks about all the nights she's spent like this, all the time spent searching and all the mornings after spent trying to forget.
She opens her eyes again and looks up to the darkened sky above her, thinks if somehow she looked hard enough she could see what isn't there. She thinks of the time Jeremiah had taken her out to the cliffs at the edge of the town where the sky was the darkest, remembers the faint glow she had seen through the small lens, remembers the tears that fell down her cheeks and the quiet words he spoke as he held her.
Sometimes she wishes she didn't know where it was. Sometimes she is grateful she can't see it every time she looks up. Maybe it is better this way, maybe it is easier to lose everything at once. Because one day it will truly be gone; it will grow dimmer and dimmer until there is nothing left to see, until there is no light at all left to reach her. And she isn't sure she could take having to watch it happen — if she was strong enough to hold onto the hope of something already lost.
She wraps her arms around herself even though she can't feel the cold air that touches her skin.
"Can you still see it?"
The question is quiet and hesitant, and Kara doesn't know how long Alex had been standing there, doesn't know how she had missed the sound of her footsteps.
She looks down at the glasses in her hand as if somehow they could answer the question for her.
But when she doesn't answer, Alex just sits beside her in the grass, her eyes focused on the sky above them.
She thinks of Jeremiah. She thinks of her parents.
She thinks about how she could stare into the distance and see everything but what she is really looking for.
"I don't, I didn't know how far away it would have been?"
Kara looks at the girl next to her this time as she tries to think of why she's there, tries to remember if they've ever spoken about Krypton like this before.
"No. It- It's still there but..." Her voice trails off as she tries to remind herself that even if she could see it, that it wasn't really there.
Alex shifts beside her, her hands reaching out behind her so she can lean back on them.
"Where would it be?"
Her voice is still quiet, but the words clearer this time.
And Kara still doesn't understand what it was about tonight that made her follow her here, what of all the nights they had both been woken by her nightmares was different now. And maybe it doesn't matter, maybe she's too lost in her own thoughts to find a reason, and maybe she just wants someone to understand. So she doesn't ask. Instead she lifts her hand slowly, her fingers pointing just above the horizon and to the four lone stars that sit there. They were small, almost lost among the expanse of sky that surrounded them, but they contained infinitely more than anyone else could understand.
"Jeremiah, he-he helped me find it once, but it's too dim to see like this."
She shakes her head, reminds herself again that it is easier to forget — that it is better to forget.
"It doesn't matter though."
But Alex looks at her with a kind of understanding Kara has never felt before, like she knows the pain of looking for something you've already lost, and maybe she does, maybe it's what she feels when she thinks about Jeremiah. And she wishes there was something other than their pain they could share.
"I know It isn't the same, but when I was younger we traveled to Japan, which for a six-year-old was like really, really far away, and I missed home so much that I couldn't even sleep, but one night this girl from the village told me about a place that we could go to make a wish. She told me that if I wrote the wish down and left it there in a crack in the wall, then it would come true."
And Kara thinks that maybe this is what they had to share, maybe memories were enough to give.
"Did you go?"
Alex nodded, a slight smile on her face.
"I had never really believed in wishes and things like that before, but I wanted her to be right, I wanted to go home, so I asked her if it was really true and then she took my hand in hers and she wrapped our fingers around each other and said "Yubikiri genman, uso tsuitara hari senbon nomasu."
"What did it mean?"
The smile stays on Alex's face. "Roughly? 'Pinky promise, hope to die, swallow a thousand needles if you lie. Finger's cut' and then a small laugh accompanies it. "Which must have seemed way less creepy when I was 6 somehow."
"Did it work? The wish?"
The smile falls slightly then, but there is still something in her voice that promises hopefulness.
"I don't think wishes ever really work the way you want them to. I still woke up in the same place the next morning, but it didn't feel so far away somehow, and when I saw my mom and my dad I didn't feel so scared anymore."
And Kara wonders if she will ever be able to feel like that. If home will never feel as far as it does now.
But then the hopefulness starts to fade from Alex's words too.
"Sometimes I wonder if I could go back there and make another wish if it would be the same. If I could wish for my Dad to come home and even if it didn't bring him back, that maybe it would at least make it hurt less."
And when she looks at Alex this time she sees something of herself; thinks that maybe she would do the same if she could, wants to give them both back that kind of faith.
Kara thinks about that night on the cliff again, of the wish she had been too scared to make because she couldn't stand for it not to come true, and maybe this is her way of asking for another chance, of giving Alex another chance too.
"Jeremiah told me once that if you see a falling star that you could make a wish"
Alex nods.
"When I was little he would wake me up in the middle of the night and take me out to watch for them."
She wonders then if that will be the last part of Krypton to remain — bits of dust known to nothing but the wishes of strangers.
But soon Alex's voice brings her back from her own thoughts.
"It's his birthday today. I don't know why it matters, but it does."
And it starts to make sense to her then. She begins to understand what Alex came here looking for; understands the need for memories and wishes and promises.
"We could make a wish for him if you wanted?"
But Alex seems hesitant again, quieter again.
"You can't really see any falling stars from here."
And for all that Kara wanted them to have more than pain to share, maybe that was exactly what she needed from her now.
"Then we can go somewhere you can."
Alex looks at her with both hope and longing returned.
"Okay."
"Okay." Kara agrees, adding then with a hint of a smile "But you can't tell Eliza I took you flying."
Alex smiles back through the tears that she tries to wipe away and with another quiet laugh takes her hand and wraps their fingers around each other.
"Yubikiri genman, uso tsuitara hari senbon nomasu"
And it seems like such a simple thing, but it makes her want to offer something of herself in return, have some promise of her own to give.
"Pahdh khuhp nehv vrreiahv"
And it's the first promise they make each other, spoken in borrowed words old and new, taken from the broken pieces of their pasts. But it's enough to offer somehow; enough to make Kara realize she doesn't need to forget, enough to let Alex know it won't always hurt this much, and enough that more than once it will remind them both who they are.
In the end, Kara stays just long enough for the sun to rise.
She thinks about that night she and Alex spent under the stars together, of the wishes they both made and the promises they both kept.
She thinks of a different home, of the one she is going back to now, of all the people she loves that are there and of all the promises she's made them too.
And In the end, Kara stays just long enough for the sun to rise, but it's just long enough to remember what it is she really searching for.
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As always thanks for reading.
A/N: "Pahdh khuhp nehv vrreiahv" roughly translates to "Make I a finger vow" in Krytonese (translated with help from but any mistakes are my own)