xxxXXXxxx
Two and a half weeks before Brainiac's invasion
xxxXXXxxx
He'd been calling her for days. Not on the phone. Kara stopped taking that with her. She could still hear him, hovering above National City whenever he wasn't needed in Metropolis. He never called her any more forcefully than simply saying her name in his usual patient tone. He would wait for her, however long it took.
It took Kara a week and a half.
She flew up above the clouds, and there he was, right where she'd heard him stop. In his usual red and blue suit, he sat with milkshakes in hand. How many had he gotten her, only to throw them away when she was too much of a coward to face him?
"...Cousin," Kara nodded to him. "...You wanted to talk to me?"
"I actually thought you might be to one who wanted to talk," he said. "I figured you might need it, after what happened."
"...Nothing happened, cousin. I'm fine."
"Barbara's been calling you," Kal-El returned. "Why don't you return her calls, at least? She cries sometimes when you don't answer. She worries about you."
"..." Kara hovered over to him and took a cross-legged position. When he offered the milkshake, she refused to take it.
"...I know you may not believe me, Kara, but I've felt what you're going through. When Pa had that heart attack and I had to watch him die and knew I couldn't do anything to stop it, it was like my brain just shut down all of its emotional functions. I barely ate, I barely slept. I just had this nagging in the back of my head that I had to do something, as if there was still anything I could do for him. It wasn't until I moved to Metropolis and met my friends at the Daily Planet did those feelings start to go away."
"..."
"And I think you've been here before, too. You battled with these demons before, and you overcame them. You could've overcome them this time, but...you didn't rely on your lifeline. Barbara was there. She saw how sad and angry you were and she wanted to help, but you didn't let her. I just want to know why. Why this time? What's changed?"
"...Nothing's changed," Kara said.
"You know that's not true," he said calmly, forcing her to meet his eyes with his presence alone. "Kara, you can trust me."
"...But can you trust me, cousin?" she returned. "I just killed three people in cold blood. I...I tortured one of them before I killed him."
"Manchester Black was a sadistic psychopath."
"That's never mattered to you," Kara returned, quickly losing what little control she had over her bitterness. "It never mattered to me before-" her voice caught.
"Before…?"
"..." Kara blinked away a few tears. She'd been crying way too much lately. "...He hurt her, Kal. He hurt her, and he enjoyed it. Seeing someone I love get hurt like that was...too much...I…I…" she shook her head. That was just the excuse she'd needed. Kara had wanted to kill him from minute one, it was just a matter of Supergirl agreeing. "You want to know what's changed? Fine: I hate myself. It's so hard every day to be the way that I am, but it hurts just as much to try and change, to put on that fake happy-go-lucky smile for everyone. And when I killed Black, I...I finally felt real, Kal...I felt alive again. Do you have any idea how long it's been since I felt that way? It's been since-"
"Since Darkseid," Kal-El finished. Kara looked away, but didn't dispute it. "You lost control...You broke your rule. Our rule. You killed, not out of necessity, but out of anger."
Kara brushed her hair from her face. "I guess I really haven't changed from when I was a Fury. I don't feel good about myself unless I have a target to hunt."
"No, Kara," Kal-El put a firm hand on her shoulder. "Don't say that. Don't even think it. You've improved more than anyone ever thought possible. You were able to achieve happiness."
"No, Kal!" Kara pulled away from him. "I haven't. I haven't improved, and I was never happy. I don't even know what that feels like anymore!"
"That's not true. I've seen you, Kara. I've been with you for years now. I know it may not seem like it right now, but I could tell that you were happy here, with Ma Kent, with your friends at CATCO, and with Barbara."
"You know?!" Kara snapped. "When will you get it through your head that you haven't known me for a single minute since we met?!"
Kal-El went quiet for a time, letting the words linger and make Kara feel even worse for saying them. Kal-El didn't deserve to be yelled at. He was trying to help her, but she didn't deserve it. He just needed to go away and let her deal with it.
"..." he sighed. "I'm sorry. It was presumptuous of me," he said somberly. "I didn't want it to go this way, but I didn't just come here to talk to you about what happened. The Justice League is going off-world for a while; a year, maybe more. Connor can cover for me in Metropolis, but I...wanted to make sure you'll be alright here in National City."
So, he was going away. Good. Maybe by the time he got back, Kara would be gone and he wouldn't have to deal with her anymore. "Good luck, then," was all she said, before flying away from him. Kal-El didn't try and pursue her. Maybe he was finally understanding that she wasn't worthy of any of his praise or his kindness.
xxxXXXxxx
Four days before Brainiac's invasion
xxxXXXxxx
"Danvers!" Cat Grant snapped as she slammed a hand on Kara's desk along with the most recent piece she'd submitted. "I wanted that article yesterday, and you give me this crap today?"
"...Sorry…" Kara could barely muster the energy to look at her. "...A lot on my mind, lately."
Cat scrunched up her nose. "What's with you lately? You only come in half the time and now you smell like a sewer. Believe me, I would know; I've been in dozens."
"...Been busy," Kara said, eyes going back to glazing over her computer screen.
"...Fine, be that way. Just don't be surprised when you're given your walking papers soon," Cat huffed and stalked away.
Win, sitting across from Kara, gave his usual spiel about how she shouldn't believe what Cat says, and Kara gave the usual response of, "Oh, I know, don't worry," along with her best smile.
Within the hour, the loudspeaker came on, which almost never happened from all of Kara's time working there. The voice was all too familiar. "Sorry to bother you, but would a Miss Kara Danvers come to Room 1231. Kara Danvers to 1231," Barbara said in a stereotypical secretary's voice. Kara's coworkers gave her strange looks, but she only sighed and shuffled to the location. It was a conference room, but it was unoccupied at the moment. It was also one of the older ones, so it didn't have a camera in it, meaning they could talk freely.
Barbara was all smiles when Kara saw her. "Finally!" she exclaimed. "I thought you were going to ignore me for a second."
You mean again? Kara thought. "...what do you want, Barbara?"
The redhead's happy face vanished in an instant at the harsh tone. "...Hey, sunshine...what's wrong? You...haven't been home in a while. I only ever hear you come in like once a week to shower at two in the morning and then you leave without even talking to me. Is...is it something I did?"
"No, Barbara. I just don't want to be with you anymore," Kara said, almost robotically. The paralyzed woman set her jaw, growing redder in the face with each word Kara uttered. "You were only ever a distraction, anyway. You took up a lot of time, especially lately, and kept me from the more important things like protecting the city."
Barbara shifted her hands to land on the armrests, leaning forward to get closer to the Kryptonian. "Okay, well this is news to me," Kara could see Barbara's knuckles turn white from how hard she was gripping her wheelchair's arm. "Then let me ask you another question: do you think I'm an idiot?"
"..."
"'You took up a lot of time,' get out of here with that. The Supergirl hasn't been seen in days. Now, are you going to tell me the real reason you've been avoiding me, or am I just wasting my time here?"
Kara blinked. "You're wasting your time. You always have, being with me," she said, turning around.
"Hey, we're not done talking!" Barbara reached forward and latched onto Kara's wrist. "I didn't hold you when you were covered in blood so you could-!" she caught herself, eyeing the door in case anyone was listening in too closely. She continued, softer. "I held you for how long after you killed those guys? I held you for how long when you cried and cried at my bedside. Are you going to try and convince me that you aren't a total mess right now and that you don't need help?"
"No…" Kara said. "...But you can't help me. Never could, never will."
"You don't know that, Kara. Give me a chance."
"I gave you six months," she said coldly, still facing away. At that, Barbara let go. "...Forget about me. It's better for everyone when they do."
"Kara...what's gotten into you…?" Barbara asked quietly, too low for a human to have heard. "...Fine, if you don't want to be together anymore, then I can't stop you," she said. Kara felt tears threaten to fall. This was it; the moment she'd been dreading. Kara heard Barbara start wheeling toward the door. "I'll move back to Gotham within the week and leave my key on the counter. You can decide what to do with all of our pictures, even though you apparently never cared about ever taking them."
"W-wait!" Kara said completely against her will. Barbara stopped. When Kara worked up the courage to face her, tears staining her cheeks, Barbara was giving her the most venomous look that she'd ever seen on her. "It's me...I'm the problem...I don't deserve you…I never deserved you..."
Barbara considered the words for a brief moment. Kara wanted to beg her to come back and fix her. She wanted to snuggle up with her and watch stupid rom coms again. She wanted to bicker over fast-food, and over how much of a mess Barbara made in the apartment. Kara wanted to be with Barbara.
But people like Kara didn't get to be with people like Barbara. People like Kara only deserved to wallow in despair.
"That was my decision to make, you idiot," Barbara said bitterly, before wheeling out of the room and leaving Kara to fall to her knees and wallow just like she was supposed to.
xxxXXXxxx
The day of Brainiac's invasion
xxxXXXxxx
The news came suddenly. Kara was in her boss' office getting a lecture about her attitude and lack of results, and she was told she'd get one more week to turn things around or she would be let go. After she was told of this, Win barged into the room. "Sorry, boss, but this is huge!" he said, snatching the remote to the TV on the wall and going to the national news. Kara's eyes widened. All heat drained from her body, her voice caught in her throat, and she would swear that her heart stopped.
Satellite images were plastered across the screen, showing what looked like a giant mechanical head floating in the sky. Kara had seen it before.
Brainiac had arrived.
The screen then shifted to show rough footage of a battle taking place in Metropolis. Connor, posing as Superman, was locked in combat with one of Brainiac's drones. He was holding his own; just one drone wasn't all that threatening to even a half-Kryptonian, but Kara knew from experience that destroying it would only make the situation worse.
She heard Cat Grant rant to her about something, but the words were just a garbled mess of sounds in her ears. Kara ignored her and Win, who was also trying to get her attention, and took off running.
She...she had to get away from here. She had to leave, go off-world, do something! Brainiac had found her, and now she was going to die. The Justice League was gone—Kal-El was gone—and Kara, she...she wasn't ready. She wasn't strong enough to stop this. No one could stop this…
Kara made it into the street and went into an alleyway, where she shed her civilian clothes and launched into the air, hoping to get as far away from a populated zone as possible. She'd go to the Fortress of Solitude. She could go to Atlantis, or Themyscira. She would even take Apokolips over being on Earth in that moment.
Kara barely made it into the sky before she was attacked. A drone slammed into her from behind, sending her careening down into the street and carving into the concrete. She hefted herself to her feet, instincts taking over long enough to avoid the follow-up slam.
Kara flew away, and the drone pursued, shooting green energy blasts that Kara would bet had at least a small element of kryptonite powering it. She avoided it for a time, but as her panic set in she grew sloppier. Eventually, the blast hit her, and she fell once again.
She landed in the park, creating a small crater where she crashed. It was made even bigger when the drone landed on her. She barely felt anything but the fear of seeing that face again. It was the face that took her home and everyone dear to her. It was the face of death.
Supergirl shot out a blast of heat vision, shooting the drone off of her. Kara scrambled to her feet and shot another blast, though the drone avoided this one. She kept firing, scorching the earth and burning down trees, but she couldn't hit it. She was too slow. She was too weak.
She stopped using her heat vision when the drone drew close. It launched a fist into her face, but it didn't hurt. In retaliation, Kara plunged a hand into the robot's chest, lifted it up, and slammed it down into the ground. With it pinned, she screamed and shot off her heat vision again, losing herself in her rage.
When she stopped, a charred hole that Kara couldn't see the bottom of was beneath her, roughly four feet in diameter. Taking several ragged breaths, Kara looked around. The people that had been there were fleeing, and those that looked at her only displayed terror.
Shaking, Kara landed. She couldn't fly away; Brainiac was up there watching the skies. He was looking for Kryptonians, or at least sending drones to populated areas to look for them. All she could hope to do was hide. All she could hope to do was let the others handle things. All she could hope to do was wait until Brainiac decided to destroy the Earth, just like he did with Krypton.
Shaking, Kara lowered herself to the ground, curled up into a ball, and buried her face in her knees to wait out her last few days to live.
xxxXXXxxx
Two days after Brainiac's invasion
xxxXXXxxx
Brainiac's invasion was in full swing by now. His initial attacks of sending one drone to every populated city ended with them systematically being destroyed by that city's resident hero, though some had more difficulty than others. His main focus had been Metropolis—he likely assumed that Kal-El was there since Connor looked so much like him. Connor fought well for being a half-Kryptonian, but his efforts were ultimately in vain.
So he could destroy the first drone, so what? When he felled that one, two more came from the thing in the sky. When they were destroyed, four more came and so on and so on until Connor had to retreat, having bought enough time for the city to be evacuated.
From there, Brainiac invaded the rest of the world in full force, sending armies instead of single units, and every remaining hero banded together to fight off the legion of androids. A scant few cities were lost, as there just weren't enough heroes, but many were more or less stabilized through coordinated efforts and figuring out that the invaders could only have so many units active at once, so they stopped multiplying after a time.
Leading the charge in his mentor's stead was Nightwing, who coordinated all of Earth's heroes from the Justice League's watchtower. They had things under control. Maybe...maybe it would be different this time.
...yeah right. Kara wasn't so delusional that she thought that the Earth wouldn't meet the same fate as Krypton. Brainiac only wanted one thing—knowledge—and when he found out that Earth didn't have anything he didn't already know, he would destroy the planet in one fell swoop. It was only a matter of time, so why bother trying to stop it?
Kara sat in National City's park, curled up in a ball under a tree. A pond was to her left, and the park's running path ran along her right. No parkgoers were there today, and much of the landscape was scarred from the earlier fighting.
Just like Krypton, Kara did whatever she could to be as small as possible. She didn't want to see anymore people dying. She didn't want to watch this world's beauty die. She wanted to just rip her eyes out and be done with it; left to darkness until the end inevitably came. She'd wanted it all to end for a while anyway.
"God, really? You're here? Of all places?"
Kara shifted her head to look up. Barbara sat in her chair about five paces away, wearing her hardened face. Kara shifted back down so she didn't have to look.
"Why aren't you fighting Brainiac with the others? With Superman gone, you're the strongest hero Earth has!"
"Go away…" Kara begged, squeezing herself tighter.
"Not happening," Barbara rolled closer. "Look, I don't know what the hell's been wrong with you lately and right now I don't care. You're going to get your ass up and go fight because if you don't, then a lot of people are going to die."
"They're dead anyway...Brainiac can destroy Earth anytime he wants...I can't beat him..."
"No, no, this is where you stop pitying yourself!" Barbara snapped. "Now, listen. Dick and I think we've figured out how to stop the invasion. That giant head-ship in the sky is holding the original Brainiac somewhere inside, and each of the little bots is powered by the ship. We think that the bots work like a hive mind, where if we take out the original, the others will all shut down, but we don't have the firepower to make any plan work."
"..."
"That's why we need you. Now come on, the others are waiting," Barbara urged, grabbing Kara by the wrist and tugging. Kara didn't move. "Well?"
The Kryptonian could only shake her head. "Please leave me alone...I just want to be left alone...to be forgotten...to die…"
"Well, you're failing at one of those already," Barbara said matter-of-factly. Kara stirred, moving just enough to see her. "If you think I'm going to just forget you that easily, you've got another thing coming."
"..." she buried her head into her knees again, drawing a sigh from Barbara.
With some effort, she lowered herself down to the ground and then next to Kara. With some gentle prodding, she even got Kara to let her have a hand, though only because her touch was the one thing that Kara still wanted. "...I bet you thought you hid this side of you really well since I never brought it up, huh? Well, I did notice it. In all of the moments that you thought I wasn't paying attention, you would get this distant look in your eye. You would stare at your hands in horror like you were terrified of what you might do with them, and you would look at yourself in the mirror and-"
"And think, 'is this a life worth living?'" Kara finished, finally raising her head just a little bit as Barbara traced the lines on Kara's hand and then ran a finger over the tiny little scars on her knuckles.
"...I figured you would tell me when you were ready," Barbara said. "I thought that the smiling and the giggling and the fun we had was real. Part of me still does, or at least wants to. But even then, there was always that prick in the back of my head that you were hiding something big from me, and I think I've finally figured it out. You have this...irrational sense of self-loathing, like everything that goes wrong in the universe is your fault. And that's just not true, Kara. Sometimes...you just have to blame the villain for committing the crime instead of yourself for not being able to stop it."
"..." Kara finally let herself really look at Barbara again. The redhead wasn't staring directly at her—just at their connected hands—but Kara thought she saw love and warmth in them, even when that bitter resentment had been stained into her mind from their previous encounter.
"I don't know if there's a way back for you. I don't know how far gone you are since you won't tell me. But if you can, a good first step would be to look up in the sky and see a really big villain that's about to commit a lot of crimes. You can try and stop him, or you can sit here and keep hating yourself for not even trying."
Kara took her other arm and wiped away any lingering tears. By now, Barbara had raised her gaze and was staring at Kara expectantly. Kara let herself loosen just a bit, feeling some of the pressure on her chest recede. A small bit of it, maybe…
"I...I'll try…" she said quietly. For the first time in a long while, Barbara smiled at her, genuinely and without trying to force it. "..." Kara slowly got to her feet, and helped Barbara back into her chair, before flying them to where Barbara said; the National City cave, where dozens of heroes were waiting.
The Team was there including Nightwing, though they all avoided looking at Kara. The Teen Titans were also present, meaning Raven, Beast Boy, Red Robin, Solstice, Blue Beetle, and their leader in Starfire. "I've got her," Barbara called to the large group, pressing a button on her chair which let it float slightly above the stairs to go down them. "Plan's a go."
"Good to hear," Dick said, going to the Bat-computer. "Alright, people, gather around."
Kara stayed to the back of the group so that they wouldn't look at her, holding herself closely by latching onto her elbow. Barbara rolled up beside her and put a hand on her back to calm her, which helped a little bit.
"Reports say that Brainiac's ship is going to descend on National City again in approximately two hours. In that time, we need to get as many people out of the city as possible. From there, our main priority is getting inside that ship. We haven't been successful so far, but we also haven't had as many of us trying at once so far," Dick brought up a high-resolution image of Brainiac's ship, which was shaped like his head.
"God, could he be more egotistical?" Red Robin questioned.
"Brainiac is an 'it'," Kara said from behind him. Almost at once, the crowd's eyes snapped to her, judging her.
Dick regarded her. "...Kara, did you have something to add?"
"N-no, I-"
"Kara's dealt with Brainiac before," Barbara said, though Kara had never outright said that. Maybe she just put two and two together. She urged Kara a bit forward. "Anything you can tell us?"
"...It uses drones that it controls from its ship," Kara said, though knew that they already figured that out. "It wanders the universe searching for knowledge and eradicating beings that threaten it. It attacked Krypton for both of those things…"
"Do you think it came to finish the job he started before?" Beast Boy asked. "Taking out the rest of the Kryptonians?"
Kara nodded. "...It probably knew Earth didn't have any value to it, so…"
"Do you know of any weakness that it might have? Acid, short-circuiting, limited mental capacity?" Dick questioned. Kara shook her head. "Well, it was worth a shot. Alright, focus in," they all looked to the monitor. "From Connor's initial fight with it, we found that the weakest part of the structure is in the center of its 'eye,' so we need to push as hard as we can to get to that. Brainiac has fought us the hardest when we've tried to get there, but I don't think we're ready to give up just yet."
"What's the plan?"
"The plan is to blow those drones to hell and back until we get access to the mothership," Dick said. "Superboy, Miss Martian, Wonder Girl, Solstice, Beast Boy, Raven, Starfire, Blue Beetle, Supergirl, you're all responsible for finding a way inside that mothership. The rest of us are going to do whatever we can to keep the drones' attention on us. Barbara will be here coordinating everything via a mind link, so stay aware. This invasion ends today, or we die trying. Got it?"
The others cheered their affirmative. Kara moved to Dick. "Um...I can't...do a mind link thing," she said.
"Why not?"
"Don't ask that," Barbara told him, handing Kara a comms unit. "Don't worry about it, Kara. I'll keep you posted."
She nodded, put the link in her ear, and darted out of the cave before Dick could ask anymore questions, as he typically did.
Kara did her best to follow the lead of the other flyers. She's grown sloppy these past few weeks. Making turns in the air was a little bit awkward, and stopping kind of hurt to do suddenly since her body wasn't as used to it anymore. She had to really concentrate to use her heat vision properly, whether to let it out in a focused beam or in a wide spray. Or maybe Kara was still just sabotaging herself. Maybe she was as fit as ever, and she just didn't want to be as good, didn't want to be as powerful as she was. Maybe if she wasn't so strong, the others wouldn't look to her to be their lynch pin.
The evacuation effort went smoothly. From the first two days, there weren't really that many people still left in much of the city, but the group of superheroes didn't have any difficulty clearing the rest of them out so they would be safe from harm.
"How are you feeling, Supergirl?" Barbara said over the comm.
"I'm not Supergirl. Supergirl wouldn't have been curled up in the park," Kara returned.
"Kara, are we really doing this right now?" she heard on the other end.
"Just don't talk to me," she said flatly.
"Yeah, look where that lack of communication got us," Barbara returned. "I was actually going to suggest that we sit down and have a long talk after everything settles down."
"I told you to forget about me," Kara said.
"And I'll say in response that you need to get over yourself," Barbara said harshly. Kara paused in the air, glaring in the direction of the cave. Barbara paused, likely giving orders telepathically, but Kara didn't need that kind of help; her super hearing was enough to help her locate any stragglers. "Listen, Kara...I may not know your whole story. I don't know why you're acting like this, but that doesn't just erase the past six months or the past few years that we've been friends. I wouldn't be a very good girlfriend if I just got up and abandoned you when you obviously need someone to be by your side through this."
"I thought we agreed-"
"I'm picking up life signs three buildings down to the south of your location," Barbara stopped her from questioning. With a huff, Kara followed the directions and quickly found the family. She scooped them into her arms despite their complaining and started flying to the pickup point, where the government was waiting with transports to take them to nearby bunkers. She passed Cassie as she returned to the city, who shot her a wary glance before quickly looking away.
"Kara, you read?" Barbara picked up again.
"I don't need your help," Kara returned sharply.
"I beg to differ."
"I can find people on my own. Stop coddling me," she said through gritted teeth.
"That's great. Now, I think it's well past time we talked about how you came to Earth. I never got the full story, and it might help me understand where you're coming from a bit better."
Kara blinked. Oh...that kind of help...she played me, like she usually does, she thought, sighing.
"Supergirl, do you copy?"
Kara clicked her tongue and stopped in midair. She reached up, took the comm from her ear, and dropped it, now in a sufficiently bad mood. Kara Zor-El should not be trusted with bad moods. It usually didn't end well for whoever she punched.
Soon, Brainiac arrived in National City and let loose its army of drones, which meant Kara once again had targets.
Feeling her muscles burning with adrenaline, she launched herself into the biggest clump of them and began systematically tearing through their metal bodies.
Brainiac's drones came in several shapes and sizes, from humanoid, to more spider-like, to strange tentacled monstrosities of wire and metal plating. All of them shared the sickly green eyes of their creator; the sentient AI, Brainiac.
Kara tore through a group of three that were flying to her using her heat vision. As a tentacle wrapped around her body to drag her from the sky, she grabbed it, crushed it, and yanked the robot it was attached to into her waiting fist. As was the standard, for each one she destroyed, two more replaced it. To their knowledge, no other drones were deployed around the world, so Brainiac had all of his cards in National City.
It would've been too much for even Kara, but luckily she wasn't alone in this fight. She saw Cassie use her lasso on one of them to use it like a big hammer, bashing them out of the sky by the dozen. M'gann was crushing them telekinetically—which Kara made sure to steer clear from thanks to her recent bad experiences with telepaths—Superboy was punching them into putty, and all of the other heroes were doing their parts both in the air and on the ground.
But eventually, it still became too much. Young and inexperienced Cassie was the first to be blasted out of the sky by a group of drones, followed by Solstice and Beast Boy. Soon, only Connor and Kara were left flying and fighting; the others had all been downed and were struggling to rejoin them.
A group of forty drones opened fire on the two of them, and the two Kryptonians—in Connor's case, half—launched themselves into the fray, weaving around and trying to get close. Connor was hit about halfway along, and from there more green blasts hit him and shot him down.
Now with all of the focus on her, Kara had to work doubly hard to get close. She flew between the drone army, causing them to start blasting themselves as she swirled and flew within their ranks. She thought she was making some progress, but soon saw a group of eighty approaching from the mothership, all shooting their lasers.
Kara was hit once, and then again, and then again and again until she finally felt the pain. She cried out and retreated. Her heat vision fired out and was met by the combined energy blasts of the army of drones, and hers was quickly overpowered.
She fell from the sky like a flaming comet, and crash-landed onto Main Street. No one came to help her, though both Dick and Connor moved nearer to her from their positions to cover her as she got up.
"This is getting us nowhere," Dick said. "We need to regroup."
The others seemed to get the message telepathically, and Kara had to follow suit even though all she wanted in that moment was to keep fighting. The heroes met up several hundred meters back from Brainiac's ship. Its drones appeared content to simply wait: Brainiac knew they'd just come to it eventually anyway, which made it all too clear to Kara that its main goal was to finish what it started on Krypton.
Brainiac was there for her and Kal-El.
"Fighting Brainiac's army isn't going to stop him soon enough," Dick said. "We need to redouble our efforts in getting into the mothership."
"I'll go. I'm stronger and faster than any of you. I can beat it if I can get in there," Kara said boldly. Why are you lying? You know it can't be beaten.
"You're sure? We can provide backup and send-"
"Just me," Kara insisted. So that it can kill me first.
After some deliberation, the band of superheroes agreed to Kara's plan. They would thin out Brainiac's drone army as much as possible by starting their approach slowly and from the ground, before rapidly speeding up as they got closer to the mothership so it wouldn't have time to spawn enough to stop Kara from getting in.
"You got that, Batgirl?" Dick asked through his own comm. He looked at Kara, eyes wide. Kara happened to overhear Barbara calling her a selfish bitch and worse names through his earpiece, but eventually, he brought up a map on his wrist computer. He cleared his throat, regaining his voice after listening to Barbara's tirade against Kara for leaving their conversation. "Okay, well, Batgirl is calculating our ideal path. Everyone pay attention."
Kara only memorized the route, not who was going to be covering her at what time. In the few moments that she had while the others learned their parts, Kara strained her ears. Despite what would be their last conversation, she wanted to hear Barbara's voice one last time. She wanted to hear her in her 'detective' mode where she was analyzing every possible outcome and variable. If she could, Kara would like to look at her face one last time.
"Everyone got it?" Dick asked the group, and they all answered in the affirmative. "Then we need to move. Kara, get flying."
She nodded, and took off at a slower speed, trailed by the other flyers, and pursued by the non-fliers—Kid Flash running and the others on bikes— as they made their way through the streets of National City.
Drones attacked almost immediately, but Kara forced herself to ignore them and stay on the route. Half of their non-fliers charged past them and cut off the approaching drones, ensuring Kara could continue unhindered. The same went for the next group of drones, at which point they were almost directly underneath the mothership.
Kara curved up and was trailed by the fliers. The drone clumps were thicker now. Kara had to bend and angle around them as her allies distracted them, until she was almost flying directly away from the mothership at eye level. Connor gave her a nod as he engaged the final group of drones, meaning Kara was alone. It was now or never.
With a roar, she sharply curved around and flexed her powers as far as she dared. She immediately created a sonic boom and only got faster. Brainiac noticed her approach and pushed for its drones to ignore the others and focus on her. But no matter how many blasts she took, Kara didn't waver, only pushing harder with each new scar she received, like she'd always done.
She crashed through the eye with an incredible force, and tore through many of Brainiac's walls until finally landing and skidding to a halt in a large control room. In an instant, a hundred drones appeared and approached Kara. This was it, what she'd been simultaneously begging for and dreading ever since her home was first taken from her. Kara Zor-El wanted to die, and now she was going to be granted that.
And it was at that moment that Supergirl took over.
Her heat vision exploded out of her eyes, carving through the approaching bots by the dozen and searing away the walls she'd just rammed through until the control room was open to the sky. When any drone drew close, the Kryptonian was waiting with hands ready to tear them apart. Within a minute, she was alone with Brainiac.
It looked much like its drones, only more seamlessly put together. While its drones had only partial plating and a lot of visible wires, Brainiac looked more or less like a human made of chrome, only standing roughly ten feet tall.
"An intriguing display, Kryptonian. My calculations showed you perishing to that encounter."
"A hundred robots is nothing for me," Kara returned, in constant battle with herself over whether to fight or kneel. "Leave this planet, and you'll continue existing."
"I will continue existing no matter today's outcome. Brainiac lives until Brainiac no longer has a reason to live. So long as there is more knowledge to accrue, there is a reason for Brainiac to live."
"Fine. You got your warning," Supergirl launched herself at the android, fists flying and hitting it in the chest a hundred times a second. It stumbled backwards, seemingly stunned by the blows, only to suddenly reach its hand up and snatch Kara's mid-assault.
"A pitiful attempt," it said, before casually throwing her away. Kara slammed against the wall head first, and the impact sent even her vision reeling. "You Kryptonians are always stubborn and arrogant. The universe will be a better place when you are gone," it said. Supergirl snarled at that, while Kara was inclined to agree. "Anger? And so acute? Quite interesting indeed; most Kryptonians of your age would never display such blatant emotion. Intriguing…"
She flew towards Brainiac again and once again hit it with a flurry of blows. Once again, it seemed relatively unfazed. This time it grabbed her leg and made to snap it with its other fist. Kara grabbed its arm and tugged it back with all her might. She nearly flung herself off when it suddenly stopped fighting her. Instead, wires and blades appeared on its hand, and it cut Kara. Red blood dripped from the slash to her stomach, but Kara was taught to ignore pain like that.
She latched her legs onto Brainiac's neck and tugged it forward in a throw, but it didn't even have to decency to land roughly. Instead, its wires caught it and set it gently down on its feet. "You seem to misunderstand, Kryptonian: you believe you are fighting Brainiac, when in reality you are fighting Brainiac's body. Even if you somehow exceed my calculations and destroy this body, I can simply build another one."
"It'll be a good start at least," Supergirl returned. She built up her strength and flew forward to hit it with the strongest punch she could muster, only to feel her wrist snap from the strike. Shocked at the sudden acute pain, Kara tried to cry out.
Brainiac gripped her by the throat and lifted her off her feet. She kicked it several times, to no avail, and she charged up her heat vision to blast it away. Brainiac's other hand folded around her head right as she let it fire. She could only sustain the self-harming blast for about a second before Kara blacked out from the pain of slowly melting her own head.
She was barely aware as Brainiac threw her away and toward the hole she'd made. She rolled until she almost fell out, body unresponsive and mind struggling to focus. Brainiac approached. This was it. Kara stopped trying to move, stopped trying to fight. It was long past time she stopped pretending to be strong.
It lifted Kara by the hair, facing out to the city. "Fear not, Kryptonian, as you have surprised me today. Tell me: were you there when I destroyed Krypton? If so, how did you escape? Were you, perhaps, off-world at the time?"
"After...your first attack," Kara managed to answer, letting her body just hang limply in the air as she saw her city burning from the fighting. Kara saw its drone army hovering nearby, not bothering to pursue the heroes that Kara could see were gathered on a nearby rooftop, waiting for her return that would never happen. "I was...fifteen…" tears fell as she said it out loud for the first time. "You took my life from me...you took my home...you took my soul…"
"Soul: a metaphysical concept revolving around a sentient life form's 'inner self,' as a way of conceptualizing a collection of personality traits," Brainiac said. "By my calculations, you lack a Kryptonian one. Fits of wild emotion are much more akin to humanity. All the more reason to end your existence."
Kara let out a choked gasp as Brainiac hit her in the spine. Her limbs tensed so harshly that it was painful. By now, the gash on her stomach had leaked so much blood that she was starting to become lightheaded. Brainiac hit her again, with much the same response. Then, he hit her a third time, and by then her body was so battered that it couldn't even muster an instinctual reaction. "Please…" Kara whispered. "Please kill me...I've wanted you to kill me ever since you took my planet…"
Brainiac didn't respond for a moment. When it did, it did so by dropping her. "You have forced me to pursue you across light-years to finish a task, Kryptonian. You will be made to see your new world die as you saw Krypton die. Only then will you perish."
With that, his drones started moving again, flying down toward the group of heroes who had to scatter to stay alive. With renewed energy, Brainiac quickly began to overwhelm them.
Kara laid there and watched, body almost completely numb from the amount of pain she was in. All she managed to do was prop herself onto her elbows, and even then just barely. "Stop...please…" she begged, letting the tears fall as she saw Cassie be ganged up on and shot out of the sky. "Don't do this…" she lowered her head. Keep fighting, Supergirl begged. "I can't...I'm not strong enough…"
Everything disappeared around Kara. All she could focus on were the tears running down her face. The distant sounds of battle were so muffled that they became indistinct. Her pain fully subsided into complete numbness. The light of National City burning became a writhing mess of shapes. Everything was gray. It'd been gray for a long time, ever since she came to Earth.
And then, one spot of color entered her vision. Kara's ears focused in on the whisperings she heard from that one spot almost the entire city away. She could even see the person saying it.
Barbara Gordon sat outside the abandoned warehouse that led to the cave, hands clasped so tightly in front of her that she was bruising her skin. As many tears as Kara was shedding were pouring down her face, eyes closed, head down almost in prayer.
"Please, Kara...please don't die...I want you to come home, I want you to be right here next to me soon, I want to live my life with you and all of your messed up pasts that are too painful to talk about. I want to help you for the rest of my life even if you never get better. I want to laugh and argue and kiss you until our lips are sore. Kara, you...you're everything to me...you saved me...every day I doubted myself, every day I woke up and thought I couldn't do it anymore, you saved me. I...wish I could've done that for you...I miss your smile, I miss your laugh, I miss the way your ears perk up when you grin, I miss the way I can get lost in the blues of your eyes. Kara...I need you...I can't live without you...please come home to me…please..."
It all became clear in a heartbeat. All of the pieces lined up, and all of the doubt that pretended to be them melted away.
How long had it been since Kara forgot why she went out everyday and put on that fake smile and giggled in that idiotic, girlish way? How long had it been since she really thought about what she meant to the people around her?
People needed Supergirl. The world needed Supergirl. National City needed Supergirl. Kara needed Supergirl, and Barbara Gordon needed Kara. It was all so simple.
How long had it been since Kara could finally look at herself—honestly and openly—and say, "this is a life worth living?" Because if a life had that level of devotion and faith that could survive any hardship, then it was worth living.
Kara Zor-El stood.
Pain radiated throughout her body, and yet she strode forward with the confidence granted to her by the symbol emblazoned across her chest—the symbol of hope.
Hope. A simple, four letter word, but it had almost infinite power. It had the power make Kara want to live again.
"I was sent off of Krypton to escape the destruction left in your wake. I was granted extraordinary powers by the light of the yellow sun. I was trained by the greatest warriors on the planet in Themyscira. I was subjected to months of hellish torture and training at the hands of Darkseid and his Furies. No matter how many times the people around me run or fall or die, I'm always the one left standing. I am Supergirl, of Earth, and so long as I'm still standing, you won't hurt another soul on my planet!"
"A speech meant to invigorate yourself: a form of self-motivation in a futile effort to grasp at more power than you are capable of holding," Brainiac said, approaching her. "A truly human action, but ultimately, still futile. When you die, the others of your ilk will watch, and when they die, so does the planet Earth."
Kara charged up her heat vision. "Then I'll stake everything on this human spirit."
Kara let loose her blast—one stronger than any she'd ever let off in her life—and her vision went white.
xxxXXXxxx
Barbara kept praying. Praying to anyone who would listen. She wasn't really thinking about what she was saying. Every word that came out was just the first thing that she could think of in that moment of absolute panic. She needed Kara to come back to her. That was all Barbara thought about.
She heard an explosion above her. Barbara looked up and saw Brainiac's mothership explode into a million pieces, most falling harmlessly into the bay area. "Kara!" Barbara screamed, reaching her hand out to the blast in a desperate and useless attempt to save her. "No! Kara!" she kept calling her name as long as she could, before burying her face in her hands and falling to quiet whimpers. She didn't even hear anybody approach, but eventually, Barbara felt a hand on her shoulder. She jolted up, and immediately became lost in the blues of her eyes.
Kara was smiling; actually, genuinely smiling. "I'm here, Babs," she said softly, even weakly. Barbara looked down. Kara's stomach had been slashed up in the fighting, and her wrist looked mangled, not to mention the copious bruises and bumps that were all over her body. But she was smiling. "I'm here, and I'm never leaving you again."
"Kara…" Barbara's eyes started misting all over again, and she started hitting Kara's arm as she lowered to her knees. "You idiot! You had me worried sick! Do you have any idea how hard it is to just sit here and let you do the fighting?!"
"I know, Babs…" was all she said.
"And what the hell's been your problem lately?! You avoided me constantly for weeks and then I had to instigate the talk where you broke up with me?! You stupid idiot, I hate you! Why would you do that to me and then pull this crap where you could die to this stupid alien and make me sit here and worry to death?!"
"I'm sorry…" Kara lowered her arm and took Barbara's shaking hand into her own. "Listen...I want to tell you everything. I want to tell you about Krypton, and about Themyscira, and about Apokolips. I want you to know about it all. But first, I need to go...those fires aren't going to put themselves out and we need to clean up the drones."
"No, you're not going anywhere! You're bleeding out!" Barbara exclaimed.
"B-but-"
"No buts!" Barbara snapped, hand latching onto Kara's wrist so tight that she was afraid she'd hurt the Kryptonian. She wheeled toward the warehouse, with Kara forced to stumble after her awkwardly thanks to their connected hands. "You're coming inside so I can close that wound and splint that wrist, and if Dick complains about it I'm going to punch him in the-"
"Alright, alright, I give," Kara said. She fell into step beside Barbara's chair, and shifted so their fingers interlocked.
It ended up taking several hours to patch Kara up. Once she ensured that her girlfriend wouldn't bleed out, Barbara had to run a lot of tests to make sure there wasn't serious internal damage, or extraterrestrial diseases, or residual Brainiac-stuff anywhere in her system. Almost as soon as Kara got off her feet and into their lounge chair to rest, she became placid and lightheaded from the blood loss and fatigue. She'd asked Barbara to put on the last movie they watched while she waited, saying that she wanted to see if what Barbara had said about it was right. Barbara put it on at a low volume that only the Kryptonian would be able to hear, but she could tell Kara wasn't paying attention.
She felt her tired eyes on her as she worked, using a tiny Kryptonite needle enclosed in a lead case to suture the wounds on her stomach. Kara's eyes were drooping as if under anaesthetic; clearly exhausted. "If you're tired, go to sleep."
"What if you're not here when I wake up?" Kara asked, getting a raised eyebrow in response. "It feels like this day has been a weird fever dream and I'm still hiding under that tree."
"That's because you've been in a depressed funk for the past month."
"...The past seven years, actually," Kara said, sobering up quickly. "..."
Barbara took her good hand. "...You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. Not until you're ready."
"I'll never be ready," Kara shook her head. "...It started on Krypton...it was more advanced than Earth is, even now, and I was going to grow up to become a model for Kryptonian fashion…"
Kara went over her whole life story as Barbara worked. She explained her daily life on Krypton, and then the fear and helplessness she felt when Brainiac first attacked the city of Kandor. She told how her parents jettisoned her to Earth in a desperate bid to preserve Kryptonian life and to protect their daughter. She told of her arrival to Earth decades later due to getting stuck in the Phantom Zone on the way there, and the distrust she felt towards everything and everyone, which was only barely tempered during her several months of training on Themyscira. She described her kidnapping at the hands of the tyrannical Darkseid and her months of torture and mind-wiping and brutal training under him and his Furies which molded her into a living weapon. She told of how she almost killed Superman, and only just regained her sanity long enough for him to subdue her and escape Apokolips. She told of her first few months on Earth after that, where she would wake up every day and hate herself with just as much loathing and contempt as she had for both Darkseid and Brainiac, mind permanently scarred from her trauma, perpetually convinced of her own worthlessness when she wasn't acting as a butcher. She told of the first time she put on the Supergirl uniform and how surreal it felt, and of the first time she tried smiling as she saved people and how much of a difference it made. She told of the first time a little girl ran up to her after being saved and thanking her and how it was the first time she could remember feeling warm inside after that first Brainiac attack. There was almost a three year gap between those two events, in Kara's biological time, anyway. She told of her friends in Metropolis, and of her job in National City. And then she told of the last few months, of her time with Barbara.
"...What I said before, Babs...it wasn't true. You weren't a distraction, and you never kept me from more important things, because...you were the most important thing in my life. From minute one, as soon as you moved here, all I could think about was how much I wanted to spend time with you…being with you was the first time in a long time that I was actually happy. Every day I would wake up and ask myself if it was still worth it to go on, and every time I would look at you, I'd always come to the same answer...you said that I saved you, Barbara, but that's only half-true. It was always you that saved me."
In response, Barbara once again took Kara's hand. "We saved each other," she said, leaning forward. Kara reciprocated, and the couple kissed for the first time in weeks. When Kara pulled away, she had rosy cheeks.
"I love you, Babs."
Barbara smiled and the two sat there, touching heads. "I love you too, sunshine. And I always will."
Author's Note:
Hey all! So, this is something I whipped up in about a week and a half a few weeks ago, and I've been sitting on it for a while for a few reasons. First, I wanted to let it stew a bit and make sure I was happy with it, and besides a few instances where I would've used a thesaurus on a more serious project, I am happy with it. Second, I have something special for this, partly due to its short length.
Over on my Sight Avery YouTube, a video will be going up a little over two hours after I upload this, where I read through the entirety of this fic and explain little things and what my thought process was for making the decisions that I did, and general behind-the-scenes of the writing process. If I continue making videos and you're reading this like two years from now, it'll be like the 33rd one, so just go to my oldest videos and scroll up until you find it. It's the one with the shitty thumbnail that's just text, because I'm too lazy to think of something more creative lol
The video is unscripted, and I consider myself best expressed through writing rather than speech, but I did my best, and I hope those who are interested enjoy it. It is a very long video, though, so feel free to watch it in chunks.
Other than that, thank you all for reading, be sure to leave a review to tell me what you thought, and I'll see you guys next time. Until the end, my friends.