The Promises We Keep: Chapter 20
By: Ryu Niiyama
I think I've been able to maintain the T rating but it is close, as I only tend to rate my work higher due to violence.
Alexandra Danvers stared out the viewport of the vessel as it hurtled through space. The trip would be short, for their destination was not far. What a difference a decimal point makes in trajectory calculations. She had to be believe that it was due to incompetence, for the alternative… the alternative would break her Dawn's heart. She ignored the glare that she could feel Var leveling upon her and she adjusted herself into as comfortable a position as her shackles would allow. It was overkill on Thara's part to shackle both her hands and legs, but the Lantern supposed she should take it as a compliment, that the General would be so wary. She allowed herself to drift and dream of better days.
As always she dreamed of Kara.
Alex tended to wake about an hour after dawn, her body still not used to the difference in daytime hours even after four years on .Jor:Krypton. Her bondmate- and Alex had to stifle a triumphant giggle at that thought- often awoke about three hours before Alex, her body naturally requiring less sleep. As such Kara usually indulged in a long workout dovetailing the last hour into Alex's workout and waiting to take breakfast after Alex had completed her own morning training. Yet this morning would be different from their norm it would seem, as she felt the heavy warmth of Kara's breasts press into her back, and the delicious brush of her bondmate's mons against her buttocks, she sighed softly at the feel of one of her powerful arms holding her gently even within repose, Kara's hand cupping her rib-cage beneath her breasts.
The embrace wasn't entirely sexual; one thing that Alex had learned from her sister and had reinforced in different ways by her bondmate is that Kryptonians highly value tactile expression. There was almost no form of casual touch between strangers, but there were thousands of gentle intimacies between family, close friends and especially bondmates. As Kryptonians rarely touched in public they had developed a number of touches heavy with ritual and social significance between bondmates. Where a human might kiss, a Kryptonian would either seek out the pulse or brush cheeks or foreheads. As such Kara often touched Alex's neck or wrist or as she was doing now, held her in a way that she could more easily feel Alex's pulse. Kryptonians also brushed against the inner thigh of a mate however once Kara learned that could be construed as a sexual touch by a human she became a bit more wickedly calculating on when she unleashed that particular caress upon Alex. Still, Kara had learned to embrace human customs and sexual expression, weaving it into her more natural expressions to meet her human beloved culturally and emotionally half-way.
Confused but pleasantly so as it wasn't like Kara to sleep in, Alex attempted to turn to wake her slumbering mate, only to be neatly held in place by the hand upon her torso. The larger woman half leaned up, her long dark fawn hair falling across Alex's shoulder and breasts and the human shuddered softly, mildly annoyed that Kryptoinans had a conscious control over their physical arousal while she was helpless against the stimuli her wife provided.
"Stay, Alexandra…"
Alex looked half over her shoulder into eyes that were glowing brilliantly and she fought a smirk. While Kryptonians could control the physical manifestation of their desire consciously, their emotions flared brightly and were often plain to see in their expressive and bio luminescent eyes. The warm purr that trilled beneath the words, especially as Kara spoke her name belied her bondmate's intent. Of course the question was how Kara intended to act upon that intent. Kara Zor-El was the most demanding lover Alex had ever taken, utterly driven to satisfy her bondmate and capable of ignoring all distractions…even her own desire to feel her bondmate's touch. She could be achingly tender or overwhelmingly passionate, yet Alex always felt buoyed by Kara's respect and adoration for her. She could take Alex until the human could do nothing more than pass out into blissful oblivion or she could shatter with exquisite surrender beneath Alex's caresses.
Alex turned in her bondmate's embrace, Kara moving enough to allow it this time as she pressed their foreheads together. Alex watched as Kara's eyes fluttered closed briefly, the gesture as meaningful as a kiss to a Kryptonian and she bushed two of her fingers against the sensitive spinal column of her lover, pulling a purring groan from deep within Kara. The Kryptonian leaned in to brush their lips together, the alien form of affection a heady addiction to her, only to squeak softly as she encountered her bondmate's fingers. Alex twitched as without skipping a beat, Kara took her fingers into the blessed warmth of her mouth, her tongue agilely flickering between and caressing the digits. Kryptonian fingers hands were more sensitive than a human's, so Alex was aware of the beautifully obscene promise her bondmate was making with every stroke and lave of her tongue.
Yet Alex hadn't brushed her teeth yet, and she could see that Kara's training uniform was missing from its place near the door, meaning her mate had actually gotten up and then returned to bed. Carefully extricating her fingers despite Kara's insistent and provocative suckling, Alex broke her hold and moved to the ensuite. Opting to merely brush her teeth and wash her face, knowing that if she tried to hop in the shower, Kara would join her and any attempt at seduction would be lost beneath her wife's insistent desire. Teeth cleaned, the human emerged from the ensuite only to nearly run over her mate, who caught and steadied her with ease.
Rather than continuing their earlier interactions, the taller female moved behind her bondmate and began to massage her shoulders and back. Alex groaned at the attentiveness of her Dawn; she was still undergoing gene therapy treatments and while she could move much more freely than when she first arrived, she stiffened horribly even under the lighter gravity of their quarters. As she felt Kara's thumbs carefully dig into her lower back and hips she knew that her wife's earlier mood hadn't abated in the slightest. An eyebrow arched as Kara knelt and carefully instructed her to bend over to stretch further... only for her to gasp as she felt her bondmate's tongue lick a scorching path between her legs before biting softly at her buttocks and continuing her massage as if she had kept her touch innocuous. After she finished her ministrations Kara stood and moved in front of her bondmate, gently tugging her back to their bed and Alex as always felt her mouth go dry at the sight of the other woman's sculpted body. Alex paused briefly as she realized that a Kalax unit had brought in a light breakfast and Kara turned back, her face staid with calm expectation even as her eyes nearly lit the space around them.
"You'll need your strength."
Alex clenched as she was pulled forward again, positioned to sit with her wife at her side as Kara carefully stroked her warm hands over any bit of skin within her reach. Alex cleared her throat, willing to play along and she began to eat even as Kara pressed closer, kissing and nuzzling her skin. When perhaps Alex was drawing out the anticipation longer than even Kara's patience could bear, the Kryptonian sensually took over feeding her beloved. They traded kisses as Kara fed her, dark azure eyes burning bluish white in her excitement and when finally the last of her breakfast had been consumed, and Kara had chased it's journey with kisses and soft nips down her throat and down her torso before tonguing her belly button, the umbilical remnant still fascinating to a being that had been born in a gestation chamber rather than from a mother's womb, before she paused between the human's legs. Alex looked down into burning eyes and she felt her wife's desire scorch her soul, and Kara smirked, full of promise and intent.
"All done, te:Ehl:zeht? Wonderful, as I am due my morning repast…"
Alex could only grip the sheets and moan as her wife proceeded to make a meal of her.
The feel of cloth impacting her face startled the Lantern to wakefulness and she grimaced and pulled the fabric of one of Var's cloaks from her face. She supposed she should be grateful that the kryptonian woman didn't throw one of her war capes as they were armored with chain link and that would have surely broken her nose. Annoyed, Alex glared at the other female and Var crossed her arms, the tips of her ears red. She lamented the loss of her dream, that morning had been particularly satisfying not just for the lovemaking they shared, but what had prompted it. Kara had began her morning as normal, only to find a message from the Healer Guild updating her on the status of the birthing matrix. Their daughter had remained viable and was now out of the danger stage, and in her gratitude to the her bondmate for the joy she'd bestowed upon her she'd loved and pampered her until their appointment that afternoon. Unbeknown to either of them, not only had the zygote been viable, but it had split forming identical twins. Alex had stared at the small, developing hybrids in shock and awe, but it was the sight of her wife pressing her hands against the birthing chamber and weeping in pure joy that had made that moment real in her heart. She had lost everything once…and now she'd been given everything anew.
"You talk in your sleep, human."
Alex rolled her eyes, it had been about a decade since Var had called her that and she wasn't sure if it was due to the General's embarrassment or if she was that angry with Alex. Thara rose and punched the bulkhead, her body trembling with repressed emotion. Anger it was then. She and Thara had endured a bit of awkwardness when it came out that Talena, Alex's first Kryptonian lover, was a distant cousin of Thara. Her wariness had boiled over to outright animosity, even though Talena was low enough in the Var House line that her dalliances would have no impact on Thara directly. Alex would gladly state that she was not the most emotionally self-aware person in the universe, preferring to put others first and ignore her own feelings until they caused her harm in her daily life, but Thara was an absolute stoic unless Kara was involved.
It hadn't taken much for her to figure out that the then Acolyte had given more than her loyalty to Kara when she took her vows, but her standing was far too low to ever be considered worthy of petitioning Kara for her hand. Thara's disdain for Alex had not been for her dating Talena, but instead for the impact their relationship had on Kara. Upon first realizing that, Alex had tried even harder to distance herself from the Kryptonian that was an alternate version of her sister, hoping that if love bloomed between Thara and Kara, maybe her own heart would stop feeling so torn between her guilt and affection for her sister and her guilt and burgeoning passion for Lady El who was genetically her sister and yet life, age and circumstance had made them nearly strangers.
For nearly four decades Thara loved Kara as her sword and shield, safe in the knowledge that while she could not possess her Lady's heart she knew her love as a trusted retainer and Kara held herself apart from all, refusing any bonding petitions in the hopes of counteracting the low standing of her cousin and adopted son Kal-El. Yet Alex had upended all of that, and mostly unintentionally and for the longest time Var didn't know what to do with that. She didn't trust Alex, and yet she wanted Kara to be happy so she pushed her Lady towards the confusing human when Kara lamented her unrequited affection and the burden that another Kara Zor-El had placed upon her. Lady El's diligence had borne fruit and Var had contented herself in knowing that her Lady was happy.
Yet now the human stood accused of a willingness to destroy it all. Var had acted on Alexandra Dan-Ver's order to dig deeper into Analyst El's telemetry and trajectory projections, and yet she found sabotage and treason, all pointing at Alexandra as the source with Kal-El trying to cover up the transgression. She didn't want to believe that the human was foolish enough to betray the people that saved her, to betray the bondmate and family that loved her…yet she could also understand the call of home. What would she give to see her beloved Lady bathed in the sweet light of a Raorise or to be able to visit the other cities of Krypton without requiring a ship or for that matter able to see more than the lands that surrounded each city that had formed the Zhiutidh:Rurrelahs that kept the Kryptonian people alive.
After all Alexandra Dan-Vers already had a Kara Zor-El of her own; perhaps she didn't care if she broke the heart of the great and wondrous Lady that she'd bound herself to, perhaps she didn't care that her children carried Lady El's blood within their veins. Yet the heartbreak losing her light would bestow upon her Lady…she'd seen a glimpse of it when Oa had reported Alex MIA during one of the many disputes between the Sinestro Corps and the Green Lanterns. Her Lady would not eat, nor sleep and she spent all hours in her lab, trying to find some way to locate her bondmate. Only their infant daughters brought her some measure of peace during that dark time. When Alex had returned, Lady Kara removed her bond bracelet as she slept and inserted a tracking beacon in both of their bracelets. The thought that this human would turn her back on that…Var couldn't forgive that. Alex slammed her chained wrists against the bench she was sitting on, glaring at the General and imploring her to understand.
"You know I wouldn't betray her Var."
"Even with the promise of home?"
"I am home, Thara."
"Does she know that?"
Alex flinched as if she had been slapped, her face flushing red with frustrated anger at the implication. In agitation, she rose and stomped towards the General, leaning into her personal space. Var didn't move, she was naturally more powerful than Alexandra Dan-Vers and the Lantern was shackled with her ring removed. She was powerless, and yet Thara Ak-Var felt impacted by the emotion she saw in light brown eyes brimming with tears. The Green Lantern reached around Thara to key in commands to the nearby computer and Thara looked up as the damning transmissions began to pop up. Yet she wasn't done, Alex kept typing until several transmissions sent on the same dates were opened and Thara's eyes widened as she noted that many of the timestamps overlapped.
However, what was most compelling was when the transmissions were reverted to code and Alex pulled up their encryption encoding. The messages that Analyst El had hidden were missing the encryption and yet every single message that Alex sent bore it. Yet it was when she broke the encryption that Var stumbled back. Part of the encryption was generated by a program but it also bore two unique algorithms, one was a modulus of the Naming Days of both Kara and the twins, while the second bore a leading modulus of Alex's birthday and the death of her father and a secondary modulus that was actually an encrypted message in itself. It was encryption for the sake of encryption and Var remembered that encryption was a hobby of her Lady but it was what was hidden for Lady El's eyes only that made tears of her own fall from her eyes.
Love letters.
Often written in a Kryptonian poem format similar to the Earth haiku or in snippets of text, in every single transmission Alex had submitted for the past 14 Earth years bore this encryption. Alexandra and Lady Kara had begun their courtship the fifth year that Alex had been on .Jor:Krypton, the human having learned in her second year that they didn't have the resources to send Alex back home and overcome the temporal dilation effect. She could go back to Earth but she would likely end up in a different time period than when she left and if she tried to return to Jor:Krypton which was both constantly moving and under the temporal effect that stranded her in the first place, she could end up lost in the middle of space separated from .Jor:Krypton by both space and time. These were not the actions of a woman that believed that she needed only to bide her time to escape from her Kryptonian captors…these were the actions of a woman so besotted with the female she'd fallen in love with that she was sentimental enough to incorporate that love into a security algorithm. Var already knew that any answering transmissions from her Lady to Alex would contain a similar encryption. Lady Kara was both an artist and a poet, and it had been those mediums as well as her scientific prowess that broke down the walls around Alex Dan-Vers' heart. Yet it was Alex Dan-Vers' next words that reminded Var of why she served…both of them.
"She has to. Or else, what am I fighting for?"
Yet the transmissions that Analyst Kal-El possessed were designed to implicate the human but they left out a key part of the encryption method that was used in every message. Var closed her vibrant green eyes, wounded at the implication and she felt the human's shoulder press against hers, knowing that they both came to the same conclusion. Kara Zor-El had still been betrayed by family, that it was her son rather than her bondmate didn't mean that it wouldn't devastate her just as thoroughly. Sighing softly, Var opened her eyes and moved to unlock the shackles that held Alex captive. The Lantern shook her hands, trying to restore the circulation to her fingers and she paused when Var held out her Lantern Ring. There was something wrong, her battery had not been returned to .Jor:Krypton, nor was it still on Earth, and now she knew that she no longer had to wonder who had taken it. The only question left was why? She still had charge to her Ring but she remembered the fear that gripped her when she nearly plummeted to her death…Fear, sickly yellow and terrible, the eroding light of Will itself.
He couldn't…he wouldn't…would he?
They docked at their destination, the far side of the moon. Alex used her Lantern power to cloak her body and simulate an atmosphere, grateful that space adaptation was one of the ring's most basic functions. She had to admit, if all Nor-Zar had been working with Kal-El...or worse had been used by him, there was no better place for him to hide. Yet she swore she would bring him to justice and she would keep that promise if it was the last thing that she did.
Astra waved away the healer that offered her pain relief for her two broken legs, for she needed this pain. She would bear it until Alura awoke…and if…and if she never did, then living with ruined legs for the rest of her life was a small penance to bear for what she'd done. She had no choice and he knew it and she could see it in his smile as he commanded her wake her Grand Nieces and give them to him. Astra's heart shattered at the thought, but Alura…he would kill her and Astra would not be able to survive that. Her sister's love would grow cold and her niece would never forgive her, but at least Alura would be alive. She would take whatever judgment they passed so long as she had that...
If only her beloved sister would wake up.
Reminder Ladies, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Lady El is abusing PT privilege but I don't think Alex minds. If anyone is confused by my portrayal of Kal, I'm using a very specific version of him as my inspiration for this fic but still of course using my own twist to it. To be honest, his and Alex's roles in the story were the most solidified when I first started this. It may or may not be obvious that I am a fan of the Lantern mythos (the whole spectrum more than the Greens themselves, as John Stewart is the only GL that I like. Blackest Night got me back into reading DC again for a little while.) Also keep in mind that this fic is not tagged as a romance and I did say this wasn't happy Kalex...its going to get bumpy from here on out.
I did see the Supergirl Infinite Earths ep (and I'm glad I did because I was originally going to use Crisis as a backdrop since I had no clue that the tv show was going to use it since I've not seen past the first few eps of season 2 and I don't watch the other shows aside from Batwoman). I'm of mixed feelings about Kara's suit. I'm always happy to see a female superhero in a practical suit, but those cape clasps...geez who thought that was a good idea for a woman with long hair?