Hello Supergang!
So sorry this update took longer than normal...you don't even KNOW the insane hours I had to work this week, imagine my own personal Cat Grant (if I work late, you work late—the end). I just worked four twelve-hour days in a row. Every night I wanted to come home and write, and I'd open my laptop...and then around 3am I'd suddenly wake up with my computer open in my lap and realize, fuck, this is not happening tonight. Thank God I didn't have to go into the office today. Plz enjoy your next nummy Kalex treat!
A/N: Alex's song at the end of the chap is Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.
…...
I'd Carry a Plane for You
Part 4: You Jump I Jump, Jack
…...
After three whole days without getting an interview or a photo of Supergirl to send CatCo's newest brand viral, Kara overheard Ms. Grant telling James he had one more day or he was fired; so she decided a photo that wasn't too close up, but showed her in some kind of cool action-y pose, ought to keep their demanding boss happy at least for a little while. The picture that ended up on the next day's front page (and indeed went viral across every major social media platform in under an hour) was of her descending from the sky with an ambulance held over her head that had been caught in highway gridlock, and was now about to touch down in front of the Emergency Room entrance to National City Hospital. Kara was maybe twelve feet above the ground, not close enough to really see her face with the sunset right behind her; but close enough for everyone to see the now-familiar symbol splashed across her chest that wasn't actually an S, but the sigil of the house of El. Close enough to see her long blonde hair fanning out around her like a halo as she moved through the air. Kara was still incredibly nervous about someone recognizing her, but she knew it was inevitable that if she kept on saving people in public all the time, someone was going to snap a lucky picture of her sooner or later. It might as well be her friend James who got the credit. And he did have a talent for capturing her in her most perfectly badass moments.
"I still think you should have waited longer," Alex sighed anxiously as she sipped her coffee at their favorite table at Noonan's, and Kara took a bite out of her third sticky bun. "There was already a national conversation starting to happen about your heroics without anyone ever actually broadcasting your photo for the whole world to see. I'm trying to keep the DEO off your tracks as much as possible, but I told you three days ago, Hank wants you bagged and tagged for interrogation. I told you, Kara." Alex's voice was anxious, not sounding at all happy to be proven right.
"I know, I know you did. But it's gonna be okay, Lex. Please try to believe that," Kara smiled encouragingly, holding out her hand across the table and waiting patiently for Alex to take it. "They're not gonna have to bag and tag me, okay? I am coming down there myself, on my own terms, by the end of the day today. And once they talk to me—once Hank talks to me, he'll see we're on the same side. As for the rest of the country, they were going to get a look at me sooner or later. I have to trust that these babies," she tapped her lead-lined glasses affectionately, "will hide me in plain sight just as well as they do for my cousin. Please, Lexie...please trust me." The blonde girl was smiling her biggest, sunniest smile, full of confident optimism. Alex tried to hold onto her very practical concerns, but found it impossible to feel any doubts when Kara was smiling at her like that.
"God, I am so whipped," The dark-haired girl groaned, smirking when Kara giggled jubilantly and leaned across the table to kiss her. "You promise you're really coming to the DEO today? Because if they find you first, they are gonna shoot you out of the sky with Kryptonite darts and ask questions later. And that would be very unfortunate, because then I would have to murder all my co-workers and spend my life on the lam." The young agent gave an ironic little half-smile, trying to play off her anxiety for her girlfriend's safety.
"Aww...my big tough protector," Kara cooed delightedly, her food completely forgotten now as she leaned across the table, grazing her fingers playfully over Alex's.
"You jump I jump, Jack," the dark-haired girl smiled back, making no move to take her hand away from Kara's flirtatious fingers across the small coffeehouse table. They were both completely oblivious to the many eyes flickering their way as they flirted shamelessly with each other, from the regular waitstaff who'd known them for years and were silently cheering that they'd finally figured out they were more than friends, to the wide-eyed gazes of most of the male customers staring at the beautiful couple the two young women made, over cold, forgotten cups of coffee.
"I promise," Kara nodded earnestly. "I am coming to..." her voice trailed off into a gasp of pain as she doubled over with her hands pressed to her ears, like someone had just blasted a megaphone right next to her. Alex was beside her in an instant, her hand on Kara's back; Kara could see her lips moving...but all she could hear was Vartox. And with a sickening jolt of guilt, Kara realized that she had only consciously chosen to risk humans recognizing her in photographs. She hadn't stopped to think about other aliens...like the Fort Rozz escapees, the ones her mother had sentenced to eternal banishment...seeing her photographed here on earth, with the proud sigil of the House of El blazed across her chest.
"Kara," Alex pleaded, kneeling down in front of her girlfriend now and holding her face in both hands, trying to force eye contact to break her away from whatever auditory overload was currently possessing her. The young DEO agent guessed correctly that some alien broadcast was being piped directly into the blonde girl's ears, on a frequency outside the very limited range of human hearing. And by the pained look in Kara's blue eyes as she sat there hunched over and shaking, it was a pretty damn loud broadcast. People were beginning to look over at their table in a nervous way now, nothing like the googly-eyed staring of a few minutes ago. Alex was on the verge of physically picking her girlfriend up and carrying her out the back door to the alley behind the restaurant, when Kara suddenly gasped and stood bolt upright from her chair, her blue eyes wide with fear as she finally looked back at Alex.
"Kara? What just happened?" Alex asked warily. When Kara looked scared, it usually wasn't for her own sake, but for others. And when Kara got scared about people being in danger...like her entire world, when she'd looked back from her pod and seen it explode into red-hot stardust just before she went into hypersleep...she often didn't think clearly.
"Oh, Rao, it's all my fault Alex," Kara choked, on the verge of hyperventilating as she threw a handful of bills on the table before making a beeline not for the front door, but the alley door, the same one Alex had been ready to carry her out a moment before. The private exit choice, the one you'd make if you were, say, planning to jump into the sky the moment after you walked through it.
"Kara!" Alex hissed, stalking after the blonde girl angrily and grabbing her hand just as she was headed out the door, knowing she couldn't stop her but refusing to just let her go leaping into danger half-cocked. When Alex got scared, she got mad. "What did you just hear?! Tell me where you're going and I'll have a field team meet you there."
"Lexie...you don't understand," Kara shook her head, her eyes growing bright with tears that she refused to let fall. "It's Vartox...he, he, he was part of my Aunt Astra's insane army, he came to Krypton to carry out her murders and now he's here, and he knows I'm here because I let James take my damn picture. He's going to kill everyone in National City if I don't come to him right now. Alone. You cannot handle this Alex. No human can. And I will not let him touch you." Kara used just a tiny fraction of her super-strength to pull her hand from Alex's (she may be in the grip of a superhuman panic attack, but she was still clearheaded enough to avoid breaking all her girlfriend's fingers). But Alex just grabbed her again, with both hands this time, and held on tight.
"Kara, listen to me. You are the one who's not prepared to handle this, not alone. This fucker knows that, and he is setting you up. This isn't like carrying planes or ambulances on your back, or pulling burning buildings off firefighters. You can't just rely on your strength, because those intergalactic scumbags are just as strong as you. And they're professional criminals. You do not know how to fight, Kara, not yet, and you know it. You are not indestructible. You're not ready for this, not alone. Tell me where you're going, let the DEO help. Please." Alex was holding onto her arm so tight, if Kara were human she'd be bruising by now. But she wasn't human. She didn't bruise. She didn't bleed. The blonde girl looked into the shining brown eyes she loved more than her own life, and leaned in and kissed her, so fast Alex almost lost her balance. But not her grip.
"Baby...if I have to break your fingers to save your life, I will. Let me go Lexie. Now." Kara's eyes blazed with such certainty, Alex knew in her bones that she had about three seconds before her stupid, brave girl would be in the sky; she could either have the use of her fingers after that point, or not. Alex let go of Kara's arm. In a span of time too short for the human eye to register, Kara shot out of her clothes and up into the clouds, her red cape flashing behind her as she streaked away. In the next moment, Alex was on her phone and running towards her car.
"Vasquez, this is Agent Grey. Search the area for broadband spectrum frequency analysis, look for any unnatural patterns in the last five minutes, and tell Director Henshaw to assemble a field team. Now."
…...
Alex was right. Kara really did not know how to fight. Every time she tried to throw a punch, Vartox reacted faster, and sent her flying through thick concrete silos and huge piles of metal construction beams. Each time, it became a little bit harder to get her breath back. But Kara did not lose an ounce of her determination. Vartox would not be adding humans to the list of species he had murdered, not while Kara Zor-El still drew breath. The shaken superhero picked herself up from the dust of the destroyed concrete wall she'd just been thrown through, and with a scream that was everything she could muster, she flew at him as fast as she could, almost breaking the sound barrier before they collided.
But before she could throw him into the nearby mountainside as she'd intended, he slashed her upper arm with a glowing green blade. Kryptonite. Vartox wasn't from Krypton, so it didn't affect him the way it did her. Kara knew from her cousin what it was, but she had never been in its presence before, let alone get cut by a sharpened blade of it. The searing, white-hot pain that shot down her arm made her hands open reflexively, releasing Vartox and sending Kara spinning off course into a pile of huge metal pipes stacked into a pyramid at the edge of the abandoned construction site. She hit the pile so hard, her body dented them like they were tubes of tinfoil. Her vision blurred for a moment, the whole world rocking underneath her like a dizzy sailboat on a stormy sea of pain, her body screaming so loudly that her brain could hardly process a single thought. The one thought she hung onto was a silent prayer that Alex would forgive her for dying. Vartox was walking back over; strutting even, taking his time, knowing full well that the young Kryptonian was not getting up again anytime soon.
Kara's desperate prayer for Alex was so all-consuming in her blinding, pain-filled haze, that when her girlfriend appeared hanging off the side of a black helicopter with some kind of ray gun, blasting huge red bolts at Vartox, the blonde girl was sure she was hallucinating. Even though her eyes told her Vartox was on the ground, unconscious and being cuffed by a team of black-clad agents, she still didn't believe it until Alex was kneeling beside her, probing her bleeding arm with incredibly gentle, loving fingers...the same fingers Kara had been prepared to break not an hour ago. Dear Rao, I am so stupid.
"Ow!" The blonde girl shrieked in pain, her arm flinching away without conscious thought. It was automatic. It fucking hurt. "Lexie, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should have listened to you..." she cried, so weak with pain she couldn't even sit up until Alex slipped a hand behind her shoulders and pulled her into a tight hug. Kara trembled against her, holding onto the heavy straps of Alex's bulletproof vest.
"It's okay Kar, shh, it's okay baby...I got you, I got you," Alex murmured fiercely, quietly, for Kara's ears only before she pulled out her comm and spoke into it in a very different voice—the voice of a Federal DEO agent in the middle of a bust. "Agent Grey to HQ. The prisoner is secured, sir. I'm bringing in Supergirl, she helped us apprehend the prisoner. Have the nonhuman med team on standby, she's hurt." She didn't wait for a reply before she turned it off and stuck it back in her belt.
"No, I'm okay..." Kara tried to resist; tried to sit up a little on her own even though her head was spinning with dizziness and it felt like she was being stabbed in the ribs just to raise herself a few inches.
"You're not okay, you have Kryptonite poisoning. Stay still and let me rescue you, you big dumb jerk," Alex half-laughed, half-yelled, wiping a few angry tears of relief from her dark eyes.
"But I don't need..." Kara didn't get a chance to finish her sentence before Alex poked her very lightly on her injured arm, about an inch from the inner edge of her bleeding gash. Kara screamed and arched her back reflexively. "Okay, okay...you can keep rescuing me now." She sniffed back her tears and blinked her blue eyes up at her girlfriend with a weak, pouty smile.
"Gee, thanks," Alex replied, making a brave attempt at sarcasm to lighten the mood and distract Kara from her pain. The helicopter hovering above them sent the rope back down, and Alex snapped it onto her field suit's belt, scooping Kara up securely in her arms so they could be pulled up together.
"Lexie...thanks for coming after me," Kara murmured in Alex's ear, one arm wrapped securely around her girlfriend's neck while the other was curled up useless against her chest.
"I already told you," Alex murmured, shifting slightly so her forehead was resting against Kara's, the way they always did when they needed comfort from each other. "You jump I jump, Jack."
…...
Kara must have blacked out before they even reached the helicopter, because the next thing she knew, she was waking up under the bright yellow glow of solar panels encircling her body, warm and soothing despite the brightness of the light as she blinked her blue eyes hazily. She must have made some soft sound of pain or distress—she felt better than she had before she blacked out, but she was still dizzy and her head ached and she didn't know where she was, or where Alex was, or if everyone was okay after the frighteningly destructive fight with Vartox that was all her fault.
"Hey, hey, you're okay Kar. I'm right here," Alex murmured gently, raising one side of the solar panel so she could reach the whimpering blonde girl, taking her hand and stroking a few loose strands of wavy blonde hair back from her face. Kara was too rattled to just lie there, even with Alex at her side, and she immediately sat up and swung her legs over the side of the solar bed, woozy and confused and desperately trying to get her bearings. Her head ached and the room seemed fuzzy and wobbly around her, and she closed her eyes again with a soft groan of pain.
"Alex...something's wrong with me," The blonde girl whined plaintively, making no move to stand up as her head spun dizzily and her legs dangled over the edge of the solar bed.
"Shh, I know baby, you're gonna be okay," Alex hummed soothingly, wrapping both arms around her groggy, disoriented girl and stroking her long hair as Kara dropped her head against the crook of Alex's neck, too dizzy to hold her head up any longer. "The knife Vartox stabbed you with was made of Kryptonite, Kara. You know what happens to your cousin when he gets too close to Kryptonite...and you had it introduced directly into your bloodstream. Not too much, thank God, but enough to give you a pretty good alien hangover. You've been under the solar panels for a couple of hours, but I think you could use a couple more, bluebird. You look like you're gonna pass out again." Alex tilted Kara's head up to assess her pained expression, the pallor of her skin and the dull circles under her tired eyes.
"Oh, Rao..." Kara cursed herself, closing her eyes again and dropping her head miserably back against Alex's neck. "I passed out in front of the whole DEO field team, didn't I?"
"Kind of," Alex half-smiled, relieved that Kara was feeling better enough to be embarrassed. "Come on baby, lay back down, you need your sunshine..." Kara didn't resist as Alex laid her back down on the solar bed and pulled up a chair beside her, holding her hand and stroking her hair again. "Just close you eyes and sleep a little longer, Kar. You're gonna feel better when you wake up, I promise."
"I was so stupid, Lexie..." Kara sniffled, tears of shame welling up in her blue eyes as she squeezed them tightly shut, trying to block out everything that had happened in the last few hours. "I should have listened to you, I wasn't ready...if you hadn't shown up, Vartox could have...he c-could have..." Kara couldn't finish her thought as she started to cry, the weight of the world crashing down on her shoulders as her mind was flooded with images of her city being blown off the map, just like her home planet had been wiped from the sky.
"Kara, it's okay...it's okay," Alex consoled her, brushing the tears from her girlfriend's pale face. "The DEO has been looking for Vatrox for years, and no one else has ever been able to track him. You smoked him out. If it weren't for him seeing you on the news and making contact with you, we might not have found him until it was too late, and he was ready to launch a full-scale global attack. Do you understand what I'm telling you, Kar? I may have saved you, but you saved everyone. You drew him out, we took him down. We're a team now, Sunshine. You and me and the DEO. We did it together."
"Really?" Kara whispered, tears still spilling down her pale face.
"Mm-hmm," Alex nodded gently, still running her fingers through Kara's long, shiny blonde hair. Kara wanted to feel better, she knew Alex wanted her to feel better; but she just couldn't, she felt so guilty for putting Alex's team in danger and so ashamed of how easily Vartox had beat the snot out of her, even more ashamed of what kind of first impression the DEO now had of her, a stupid, impulsive child who couldn't handle herself when it mattered most. She just laid there under the solar panels and cried, wanting Alex to climb in next to her and hold her tight, but too ashamed of herself to ask for the comfort she didn't feel she deserved. Alex didn't need to hear Kara ask, though; she knew what her sweet little alien needed, and without a word she hopped onto the solar bed next to Kara and pulled the open panel down, enclosing both of them, and pulling the crying blonde girl tight against her. Kara snuggled up to her gratefully, her tears soaking into Alex's shoulder as their arms wrapped tightly around each other.
"Do you want me to sing you to sleep, honey?" Alex murmured softly. She knew everything they said could be heard in the control room, but she didn't care. She outranked all their asses except for Director Henshaw, and for all his professional bravado, Alex knew he loved her like a daughter. He wasn't about to pull her out of the sunroom when her crying, Kryptonite-poisoned girlfriend needed her. Kara just nodded wordlessly against Alex's neck, sniffling as she buried her face in silky dark hair. Alex trailed her fingers lightly up and down Kara's back, feeling her shake and shiver miserably. Once Kara was feeling better, Alex was going straight down to Vartox's holding cell and punching his alien balls straight up into his intestines and yanking them out his mouth.
"If I lay here...if I just lay here...would you lie with me, and just forget the world?" Alex sang softly, resting one hand in Kara's soft hair and lightly rubbing the back of her neck. "I need your grace, to remind me to find my own...all that I am, all that I ever was, is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see..." The young DEO agent could feel her girlfriend's trembling body relaxing against her, one hand slipping up Alex's shirt to rest against her skin, seeking out more contact, more comfort. Alex held her a little tighter. "If I lay here...if I just lay here...would you lie with me, and just forget the world?"
Twenty minutes after the soft voices of the two young women in the sunroom had gone quiet, Hank Henshaw silently entered the room, unsurprised to find his top agent curled up around National City's mysterious new superhero on the sunbed, fast asleep together. When Alex had first returned to the DEO with the unconscious, bleeding alien girl in her arms, he'd had to put on a big show of being shocked and angry, reaming her out the same as he would any other agent who kept such a huge secret as having a personal relationship with an unknown alien they were actively tracking for interrogation. Agent Grey had been completely unrepentant, and Hank—J'onn, though no living human knew his real name—had been secretly, silently proud of the young agent he had come to think of as a daughter.
He couldn't tell her that he already knew she was keeping Supergirl hidden from them, because then he'd have to explain how he knew, and confessing his own alien origins to Alex or any of his other agents would only put them in the same danger he himself faced every day that he kept his true identity secret. Alex was only trying to protect the one she loved in the same way. He wished he could tell them both the whole truth, and maybe some day it would be safe to do so...but not today. Today, he was content to simply watch over them, using his own telepathy and x-ray vision to assess Supergirl's—Kara's—recovery from her Kryptonite poisoning, pleased to see that the harmful radiation had almost completely cleared from her bloodstream after several hours under the bioengineered solar panels.
Soon enough she'd wake up, and they could begin the lengthy process of official alien interrogation, though Hank already knew how it would end: the DEO was about to get its first official, out-in-the-open alien ally. And once they'd trained her up, once those in power saw what an asset an alien ally for justice and national security could truly be, then maybe, just maybe, someday he'd be able to show the world what he could do, too. He shook his head and gave a little half-smile at the two brave young women asleep under the solar panels, feeling at the same time proud and ashamed that they were already braver than he was...and he was almost three-hundred years older than they were.