Kara is no more

She is supposably a waitress in a small coffeeshop in the middle of Italy. When Lena gets there, she is shocked. It is a cute but rundown place. The interior is only about 20 square meters big, there are small tables for two in and outside. Only three people work there, Kara and two other Italians. Kara seems to speak almost fluent Italian by now. She takes orders and serves the people with her kind sunshine smile.

Then someone drops a mug and Kara goes to clean it up. Lena is shocked to se when Kara cuts herself and bleeds. Supergirl doesn't bleed from a shard! One of the other waitresses come and bandage her. Then they silently go back to work.

At the end of the day Lena follows Kara home. Kara doesn't even seem to pay attention to her surrounding, because if she had she would have noticed Lena right away.

Kara's house is small and even more rundown than the coffeeshop. The walls are made from solid rocks from the area. It has only three windows, which are covered by old red curtains.

When Kara goes to bed Lena stays a while to explore the surrounding area. The people here seem to make just enough for a living. The infrastructure is questionable, especially the powerlines don't seem save. Most houses don't seem to have running water, because they have well in front of their house. Lena had watched Kara getting water from the well tree times that evening.

Lena decides to check on Kara one last time before leaving to her hotel. When she arrives at Kara's house the blood freezes when she hears a sharp scream. The next thing she sees is the light turning on in Kara's house. Lena decides to stay, even though it is way past midnight. Lena sits in her car reading and looking up to the house every few minutes. The lights don't turn of until the morning.

The next morning Lena sees a small flickering light inside the house and hears a small scream from pain. Kara looks tired when she comes out to the well to get some water, but she barely can lift the weight. As a Kryptonite Kara should be easily be able to lift a bucket of water. She spills some on the way back to the house, but doesn't care.

About an hour later she leaves for work. That is when Lena finally decides to go to her hotel and get some sleep. She has been up all night.

Lena follows Kara a few days silently. She has to find out that her routine is the same every day. Kara leave around eight or nine to do her shopping and go to work. She is working every day, even Saturdays and Sundays. Apart from her work colleagues she has no friends. She is friendly with everyone around, but she doesn't meet up with anyone after work. She always eats on her own, goes to bed at midnight and wakes up about two hours later, screaming. Then she stays awake until the morning. Lena can't believe that she is barely sleeping at all. She always looks tired, but keeps kind with everyone she meets. Every morning she does her ritual with the flickering light and screams out in pain. The neighbours don't brother. On the fifth morning one of the curtains isn't closed completely and Lena can see inside her house.

She sees Kara putting on some kind of helmet, with a glass in front of her eyes. Then she sees her blowing out her hear vision until it dies out. Lena is shocked. Why would she do that? She hurts herself everyday to take away her powers. Over the last days Lena has seen Kara just as vulnerable as any other human. She gets hurt like everyone else.

Kara runs away from everything, everyone. She even runs from her powers, the very thing that makes her, her. She has taken a different name and lives from one day to the next. She doesn't even try to save people when they get in trouble.

Lena saw on the second day how a drug deal was made as Kara walked by. She didn't even look the them and they don't seem to know that she used to bust guys like them. They didn't even try to hide it from her. She helps out with easy things like opening a door for an old lady or standing up at the bus for a mum with kids. But her heroics are limited to these kinds of acts. She is like a distant shade to who she once was. Hallow, living a less than ordinary life. She doesn't show any feelings apart from her nightmares.

Realising and seeing all of that Lena heart falls deeper every day. What has she done? What has happened to that hero? All the loss, all the anger, all the pain it final got to Kara, broke her. If Lena had been there for her after her sister's death, if she had been forgiving and kind, maybe she would have come back from that. Maybe the hero would have continued on. If she hadn't been so blind and ignorant towards Kara's feeling maybe Kara would have survived that tragedy. But instead Lena was so preoccupied with her on feelings and hurt that she never even looked at Kara's. She never even considered why Kara kept her identity a secret from her. What if she only wanted to protect her? After what happened to Alex, Kara must have felt so guilty? Alex was killed because someone found out who Kara was and wanted to hurt her. So, what if all this time Kara has been keeping this a secret to protect her from Supergirl's enemies? What must have been the tall on her? No being able to talk to her best friend, to tell the truth because she was afraid of losing her. And then she lost her anyway. Lena's eyes start to fill with tears, when the realisation hits her. Kara was only protecting her, at her own cost?

She really needs to bring her back, but how? She wants to bring Kara back. National City needs their hero and CatCo needs their reporter. Lena needs her best friend. How can she bring Kara back, if everything that used to make Kara, Kara, is gone? There is only a hallow shell of her left. A shell that supresses her feelings, distracts herself with other things, so she doesn't have to face the harsh reality of her life.

On the evening of the fifth day, a Monday, that Lena has watched Kara, Lena gets a call. The DEO tells her that they can't put off the funeral of Alex any longer. If no one finds Kara until the end of the week the funeral it going to happen with or without her on Sunday.

Lena's heart start pumping louder. She needs to talk to Kara, she needs to tell her. Kara needs to come to her sister's funeral. It is not right to do that without her. Kara deserves to say goodbye to her sister properly. She is scared though, is Kara even going to talk to her? She talks as few with everyone around as possible, without being rude. Lena is scared that of being rejected by her former friend. She knows it is her own fault, the way she rejected her friend, when she needed her the most, it wasn't right. She should have been stronger than this. She should have been strong for Kara only once.