COPYRIGHT: The following is a work of 'fan-fiction' and no copyright infringement is intended against those who own the rights to Supergirl and all related characters. All original Characters are the possession and copyright of The Rainbow Writers.
Please note that while we are big fans of the TV Show, we are not up on every nuanced bit of history and lore, so if we get something horribly wrong... we're sorry in advance.
TW/Suicide: In future chapters there will be discussion between characters of suicidal/self harm thoughts and the statistical rate of suicide. While there may be passing reference to past suicidal thoughts, there is no plot points in this fan-fiction to suicide, no character death but we wanted to be upfront so that no reader is caught unaware and have to endure undue mental heath pain. We urge anyone who is experiencing thoughts of self harm or suicide to please reach out to anyone in their life they trust or to a mental health hot-line.
Pairing: Supercorp, Alex & Maggie Set: Season Two Episode Six 'Changing', Branch from Canon from this point out.
Note: Hi, for any of our long time readers who happen to catch this- Hi. It's been quite a long time and as anyone can imagine we have our reasons for being silent but hopefully some good will come out the continued Pandemic as we've found motivation to create again. For those interested we have applied to cross post at Archive but are waiting for approval. This may not be the continuation of any of our historical stories, but we hope you give it a go and enjoy it none the less. Long live powerful women everywhere! The Rainbow Writers (Kath and Beth)
Broken
Episode Five: Counting Time
By: The Rainbow Writers
To Kara's dismay it was a few days before she managed to corner her sister without anyone else being around. The real truth was that her sister wasn't exactly not busy at the moment Kara had decided to stride into the older Danvers lab. Alex was leaned over a microscope, carefully cataloging one sample after another from a container of glass slides.
'But at least she's alone.' Kara thought to herself as she strode in and no one was likely to burst in unannounced to the lab that was situated in a part of the DEO you didn't head to unless it was on purpose.
"So I didn't get a catch up on how your conversation with Maggie went the other day?" Kara hopped up onto one of the benches next to where her sister was bent over her work on an adjusted specialized stool.
"Kara, it's been eleven days since I had that talk, don't you think if I haven't followed up with you by now, I didn't follow up with you for a reason?" The older sister leaned back away from what she was looking at to cross her arms over her chest.
"Knowing you... no, you just needed me to prod you about it." Kara smirked at her.
"I hate that you know me so well." Alex gave a small look at her sister and then shook her head. "You're right." She confirmed. "But only really because..." She paused and then let a real smile come to her lips. "I have a girlfriend now."
"What?" Kara's enthusiasm was immediate and she pushed down and moved to hug her sitting sister. "I am 10% mad you didn't tell me and 90% so excited for you." She rocked them back and forth in the embrace even if her sister wasn't doing much more then going along with the blonde's movement.
Eventually the sitting woman snaked out a hand and lightly patted the arms around her.
"Thank you for both of those things" She offered, her own voice a little 'brighter' than it was normally. "It's a change but I'm getting used to it." She went on honestly. "It doesn't help we've both been super busy since it happened but, that's a part of our lives so in some ways it's good."
"You're both super important law enforcement officers." Kara moved to hop back up on the counter. "Have you... slept with her again?" She asked in a shy voice.
"Twice actually and this time I stayed." Alex blushed ever so slightly, the most she ever did.
"I'm so jealous." Kara beamed at her. "You're like a little Hallmark movie the two of you. Tough street smart Detective meets even tougher Special Forces Agent and despite both of their hard exteriors love blossoms on the hard streets of National City."
"Kara, life is not a rom-com." The brunette at first gave her a hard groan. "And jealous? That's an odd word for you." She looked at her sister with a slightly crooked frown. "Am I supposed to take from that that you wish you were sleeping with someone too?"
"Doesn't ever adult wish that?" Kara tilted her head a little in question. "Isn't that what you're supposed to put as a goal?"
"There's no supposed to about it Kara." Alex shook her head. "It's about desire, want, need even but not because of some persons ideology about the 'normal' life." She looked at her sister unwavering. "Not everyone wants that kind of contact, and don't necessarily need it either."
"I know you're going to look at me weird but what does that feel like... physically?" Kara questioned with a slight purse of her lips to show the question was serious and not an attempt to get her sister to talk about her love life.
Alex briefly put her hand to her head before saying anything.
"You're really asking me that question aren't you?" She looked at her sister evenly.
"Of course I am, who else am I going to ask Alex?" Kara pleaded with her softly.
"Kara I can tell you what it feels like for me but I'm human not Kryptonian." She shook her head softly. "I don't even know if you have the same stimuli, the same system of endorphin and hormonal changes, I don't know if you have a system anything like that."
"If you're about to suggest I try to talk to Clark..." Kara narrowed her eyes slightly. "You know that's not an option."
"Maybe I was thinking more Mon-El, he seems to have found similar kinds of pleasure on this world, from what you told me about the copier room, maybe he'd be able to share with you what and how you might feel." Alex waited to hear her sister's reaction. It seemed that Kara was more than ready to train with Mon-El, even try to give him guidance on how to navigate the new world he found himself in but despite some early concern that Kara's objections to him had been fueled by a secret crush it was becoming more and more clear to Alex that her sister didn't feel any attraction to the Daxamite.
"You want me to talk to Mon-El about this? We both know the first thing he'll think is that I'm hitting on him and that is not happening." Kara gave an immediate hard head shake.
"Why are you asking this Kara?" Alex diverted a little from the Mon-El question as she narrowed her eyes a little to look at her sister. "Has something happened between you and Lena?"
"No." Kara drew out the word softly. "Just... I've been thinking a lot about what you said that night at my place and... well maybe some little things have happened that I find... confusing, in my response to them." She finally made the admission.
"First Kara, I'm sorry for some of the things I said that night, I didn't mean to confuse you or make you feel bad or wrong or anything, I just..." She stopped. "I wanted you to know as a human what I was seeing and given that the Lena part of this situation is human too, what she might be seeing."
"I don't want you to be sorry. I'm glad you told me what you told me." Kara shook her head softly to the idea. "Because in a lot of ways you were right."
"I was?" Alex sat up a little straighter. "How was I?"
"You reminded me that on Krypton we didn't have the same complexities about relationships between people, if two people felt a connection, then there simply was a connection." Kara began to try and explain herself.
"But that wasn't necessarily a physical one, a sexual one." She clarified.
"Exactly, sexuality didn't have as much importance there as it does here." Kara nodded her agreement.
"According to Mon-El it didn't have any, it was Daxam that was free with sex and with expressions of pleasure." Alex offered her source.
"Well he's wrong, they didn't have the corner market on either." Kara grimaced slightly. "But we also didn't have debaucherous parties that lasted for months on end where partners didn't even know each others names, or at least that's what the rumour mill said about Daxam. So even if part of it was true..." She raised an eyebrow at Alex. "On Krypton the connection was the important thing, not necessarily the expression. I mean you didn't skip work to stay in bed all day having sex."
Alex nodded with a smile.
"Maggie and I nearly did that last Monday." She offered keeping her smile even. She then took a breath and looked at Kara for a moment. "I can't tell you what it will feel like for you but I can tell you that for me..." She paused.
"Does it feel like the world is a snow globe and your in the middle of it and some unseen hand has shaken everything around you so it's suddenly magical and there is this knot in your stomach, like you're on a roller coaster?" Kara suddenly blurted out.
Alex raised her eyebrows at her sister's words and instantly realized that her sister was indeed facing something within herself about Lena.
"Yeah kind of like that." She smiled softly. "For me the knot's usually a little lower." She tried to offer a little very personal insight.
"Lower?" Kara questioned and then saw the way that Alex kept staring at her. "Ohhhh lower..." She bit her lip hard as she realized what she meant.
"And not so much of a knot as a kind of ache... I refuse to use the word throb." Alex breathed in realizing she just indeed had said just that.
"You just did!" Kara couldn't help but tease but she also had to be honest that the insight gave her a lot more to go on.
"But it's not just that Kara." Alex was quick to follow up. "It kinda begins with the need to be near a certain someone, a need to meet up with them, to be in their circle, then it's more about needing to touch them... just a small physical point of contact that makes you feel... whole.. connected. Then you let yourself think about little things, the colour of their eyes, the softness of their hair..." She went on not actually looking at Kara now but obviously drawing from her own experiences. "For me, after all that comes the unhinged feeling and the desire." She stopped, blinked and took a breath realizing she had just shared what was possibly the most intimate parts of herself that she ever had.
"Kal once told me that he felt and thought more like a human than a Kryptonian because he'd been raised here his whole life, even if fundamentally he was different, even after he found the archives, he still felt more human." Kara offered up softly knowing that for Alex she had literally just witnessed one of the rare times her sister hadn't held back, even with her. "And I know I was 13 when I arrived but at the same time, that is so young... there was so much I never experienced on Krypton, that I never will." She added sadly. "But in replacement of that I get all the things that I get to experience here on Earth, that I would never get to experience if I was there." She admitted the trade off. "And I admit, I've watched television and movies, I've tried to figure out how humans exist with so many feelings rolling around inside of them all the time. Love, hate, boredom, humour..." She gave a soft smile. "And in the past I think... if I'm honest, when situations came up I tried to act how I thought I should, partly because of hiding who I was, but also because I didn't know how it was supposed to feel when a boy asked you out. Or when one tried to kiss you." She gave a soft smile remembering that night in the square with Adam. "I knew how it went in the movies, but I didn't know what it was like to be in the middle of it and now... if I compare what I felt then, to the things I'm starting to feel now... it's like two different experiences."
Alex gave a soft chuckle and a nod.
"Now that... that I understand." She offered. "I..."
Alex never got to finish as at the same time both of their coms broke into life, requesting them to come up to the main operations room to meet with J'onn.
"Duty calls." Kara smiled at her and hopped off the table heading towards the door.
-x-
"And then he just died?" Kara frowned hard at the blue skinned body on the table before them.
Alex looked as unhappy as Kara as she leaned over a computer to scan through reports and then looked up shaking her head.
"I don't understand." She admitted. "There's no trauma, no internal damage..." She stood up and came back to the corpse. "It's not the entry into the planet that killed him and it's not an impact death either. Ship malfunction doesn't seem to be the issue as the life support system was still operational when you pried the hatch off for us on scene." She summed up shaking her head. "When we were bringing him into the lab after extracting him from the crash site he just collapsed and his vitals crashed in a matter of seconds." She gave the fuller picture. "He had no vitals as soon as I'd hooked him up."
"Winn and the team are trying to download the information from his ship's on board computer." J'onn paced around the table as he always seemed to do in these situations, prowling as if he was looking for some scrap of information they hadn't yet seen. "From initial data it doesn't appear the the craft was in any distress, but the logs are in an unknown language which the team is also working on translating."
"It definitely doesn't help that he's an unknown species... to all of us." Alex breathed out the admission honestly. "I've found nothing listed in the records as having light blue skin with this kind of pink colouration under the arms, around the neck and thighs and across the stomach."
"I'll go check the hologram archives, maybe it can give me an idea of what he is or what might have happened." Kara made the offer. "I can also message my cousin, see if he's able to access his archive a the Fortress or I'll fly up there and check myself if necessary. I don't like the idea of any alien dying here if we can prevent it."
"That sounds like a good idea." It was J'onn who nodded at Kara. "I'll check in with you Alex after you've done more tests and you Kara if you come up with anything." He looked at them in turn. "I'll be on command if you need to reach me for anything before."
"I'll keep you in the loop." Kara looked at her sister and then left to head first to message her cousin before heading to the hologram room.
-x-
"Kara why do you look tired?" Alex asked the question of her sister as Supergirl walked into the DEO main area after flying in through the window ledge access. "If it's because you've spent literally the last three days searching for answer on our deceased friend, I'll be mad."
"I have but I tried to sleep a bit last night, I just couldn't get comfortable." Kara moved over trying to push off the fact that she felt heavy and a bit 'cloudy' if she was honest. "I was going to go under the yellow sun lamps for a few minutes if no one needs me right this minute to be honest."
"Kara no, wait." Alex called as her sister turned away to head off. "Come here." She instructed pointing to the spot in between the two of them as she closed the gap from her side.
"Okay." Kara stalled her footsteps and then moved back over to where her sister had indicated.
Alex stood up and moved to Kara's side reaching up to move long blonde hair away from the side of her face. With a hard frown the older Danver's pulled back and then moved to Kara's other side to repeat the motion.
"Kara..." Alex's tone had totally change. "Go to med bay one, now." She hurried back to the desk and picked up her phone where she had left it in her hurry to inspect her sister.
"Alex, I'm just a bit tired, some light will brighten me right up." Kara disagreed with her softly, seeing the way other DEO members were looking at her, even Winn had turned in his seat and was pressing up with a frown on his face.
"Now Kara." Alex almost snapped as she pointed down the nearby hallway.
-x-
"Our alien was a Filionian, which we have many of here on Earth according to the records." Alex began the 'status meeting' with the assembled DEO agents. The group included Kara, but instead of the blonde being an active agent she was actually laid down on a stretcher. There were several monitors reading her stats and a light blanket covered her body. "We didn't recognize his species because..." She turned round and changed the output display on one of her computers so that it was now on the main wall screen for everyone to view. "This is a normal Filionian skin sample." She went on pointing to the enlarged section of blue skin that was on show to them. "We thought the pink markings on his body were definitive but they are not, they are the result of tissue abrasion and degradation." She hit a button on the computer and a second image popped up on the main screen of the pink speckled blue skin of the crash victim. "Now..." A third time she hit a key and brought up along side the blue samples a flesh coloured one, this one also was speckled with the light pink colour. "This is from the back of your neck behind your ear Kara." She revealed apprehensively to both her sister and the group at the same time.
"So whatever this Filionian had, I caught it... like a cold." Kara tried to sum up, working to hide the shiver she felt go through her body despite everything they were trying to do to make her feel comfortable.
"It's a something." Alex nodded, knowing that all of them in the room knew it was probably the something that had killed the blue alien. "But it seems to be alien specific, none of the humans working with or around the Filionian, his ship or the site have anything like this." She turned to look at J'onn who was with them but Alex had given a full respiration mask when she'd gathered them together out of precaution.
"The lab is trying to see if we can even type it as virus, bacteria, fungi... or assorted alien things close to those." Winn added looking up from a tablet he had in his hand. "And the ship data log translation is taking a little bit longer then we hoped because our Filionian had some kind of encryption over the files."
"For now, I don't care if this is just some kind of alien flu, Kara you are not leaving this med bay." Alex outlined to her sister first. "And J'onn I don't want you in here with her, okay?"
"Agreed." The older martian nodded and headed towards the door. "We will find a way to make you well again." He looked at Kara to say the thoughtful words before he headed out knowing he was no use to his young charge if he too was afflicted by their mystery illness.
-x-
"Alex, yelling at me isn't making this happen any quicker!" Winn finally snapped at the older agent as he pushed away his keyboard. "We started deciphering the last entries first, it works on a rolling matrix, you have no idea how much CPU I need to even do the..."
"Supergirl is sick... my sister is sick and I can't do anything to help her." Alex growled at him. "I don't care about CPU's, data or any of it, I want answers." She slammed her hand on the work surface beside him.
"You don't think I do? Last time I went in there she didn't even know who I was." Winn snapped back at her, even if he had jumped up off his seat when she'd slammed the table. "The last three log entries are incoherent, that alien was flying around half dead for at least three days..." He stopped suddenly and looked at Alex. "Luthor decryption protocol... there are rumours and I do mean rumours that Lex developed a program to almost instantly decipher all alien languages and technological coding. Please let me bring Lena in."
"Bring Lena in?" Alex could barely handle her visceral reaction to the idea. "What would that do to help anyone, accept her, finding out about all this?" She panned her hand up around the area.
"It might just get us all the rest of the log files and some idea of what happened to the Filionian in order to figure out what we can do to help Kara." He tried to refocus her. "If he mentions being exposed to something, it gives us a start, if say he names what's wrong with him, it gives us a start." He found himself almost begging her. "Maybe L-Corp has some fancy nano tech they've been working on that she can pump into Kara to keep her alive longer so we can find a cure for this plague."
Alex obviously thought for a long moment and then shook her head.
"It's not my call." She breathed out. "We have to ask J'onn."
-x-
J'onn never liked situations in which the DEO seemed to have lost control, and right now with Supergirl prone in a med bay and an unknown alien disease with a body count ravaging her body it seemed that control was something in very short supply. The request by his second to have a 'private' meeting with Agent Schott in tow had instantly raised his hackles, not that his telepathic abilities didn't give him insight into the two humans. But with the high levels of anxiety, fear and emotional concern that swirled through their thoughts it was hard for him to pinpoint exactly what they wanted to talk about without using his powers in a way that violated their personal mindscape and he tried to do that only in the most desperate of situations.
"I'm hoping that one of you has some kind of idea how we can move forward towards a solution?" He waited until the door to the large meeting room hissed closed behind Winn before he turned near the table and spoke, wanting to get all the cards on the table quickly so that a decision could be made. The amount of tension in Alex's forehead told him whatever they were about to speak about wasn't going to be something he was going to 'like'.
"Well actually.." It was Winn that began, taking a step towards his 'boss' but Alex silenced him by steeping forward past him, even holding her arm out to her side to physically stop the other man from going any further.
"J'onn.. you're not going to like anything I'm about to tell you but..." She paused the tension flowing right through her face, shoulders and spine now that she was actually addressing the issues that had brought them here. "But I can't just start off with a plan when that plan needs some, explanation." She moved her hands to rest on the very slim jut of her hips, traditionally a very defensive pose for the brunette. She took a breath and quickly passed her tongue over her lips, obviously trying to decided how to start this. "Lena Luthor knows about Kara's secret."
The Martian's face immediately went into a stoic lock as the words filtered into his advanced brain. The only real tell that the information had not been what he had been expecting was when his right hand went to settle on his hip, his fingers tensing against the thick tactical belt he wore.
"Lena Luthor knows that Kara is Supergirl?" J'onn repeated the fact to make sure that he was hearing what he thought he was and watched both of them nod on automatic. "How did Miss. Luthor discover that Kara was Supergirl?" He asked the next important question almost dreading the answer he was sure he already could guess at.
"The usual way?" It was Winn who offered the information with a slight wince.
This made J'onn give him a stern look before he reached up and rubbed the full of his forehead between his first finger and thumb.
"How long?" He asked for the time frame.
"A few weeks." Alex took over again. "But though it sounds like the thing you're going hate, it's not." She looked a little uneasy, a look that just wasn't 'Alex'.
"I am going to extrapolate from you and from Winn's near dance in place..." He lowered his hand and motioned to the other man who was indeed nervously dancing in place. "That you both believe that Lena Luthor can offer some kind of assistance to our current problem."
"More Winn than me." Alex confirmed with a nod.
"Hey, don't hang me out to dry!" Winn glared at her sideways. "Okay look boss, the truth is the encryption program on the flight logs from our dead Alien's ship are too complex for the DEO to decipher in a relative amount of time to Kara's getting sicker and..." He didn't fill in the last horrible stage anticipated from her illness. "What you need to understand is that on the web, well the darker web, places that I use on a day to day basis in order to gleam very useful intelligence that has helped us on more than one occasion, there are rumours that Lex Luthor developed a Alien decryption program that just might be able to crack open these files in minutes rather than hours."
"So you are proposing opening all this up to the other Luthor child, on a rumour of a program that possibly exists?" J'onn's eyes narrowed more as he focused on Winn.
"As a skeleton of an outline, yes." Winn frowned hard. "But..." He stepped forward. "So many of the other rumours around Lex has been ultimately verified, the forums were rife with suggestions about the last three weapons he used against Superman." He tried to offer some evidence to help his case. "And an Alien encryption program is exactly the type of thing a nefarious villain would develop in order to help his plans for world domination all things considered. Now we know Lex is behind bars but we also know after the last attack that Lena has been cataloging and dismantling her brother's work, so if there is a program she would know about it and it's not the kind of thing you'd just... erase." He made a motion with his hand hoping to help the argument.
J'onn patiently listen to Winn speak, though about mid way, he shifted his stance just a slight amount, which in turn told Alex that the Martian had already made his decision.
"No." The older man said the world simply and quickly. "You came to me for permission to bring Lena in and I am denying that request." He summed up in a longer version of his initial point.
"With respect Sir..." Alex did a small shuffle step forward. "What if we didn't approach it quite as directly as Winn is proposing?" She saw the alien tilted his head slightly meaning she had his attention. "Lena Luthor likes Kara, she's her friend. Maybe if we just tell her that Kara is suffering she might offer us something that would help." She voiced her idea, though in all honesty it was an idea that was literally forming as she was speaking. "If we mention that decryption is a problem there is a chance that she will want to help, if only to help Kara. Maybe not even needing to come here."
J'onn's dark eyes appraised her for a moment, narrowing slightly as he then tilted his head a little.
"Winn would you please give Alex and I a moment." He made the request and wasn't at all surprised when Winn just nodded and headed out of the room immediately, that retreat underlined to him just how dire the situation was in its own way. "Alex, are you seriously suggesting to me that Lena's relationship with Kara is so important that she will simply offer up a program of that importance just to 'help'? We both know that any number of agencies would pay extraordinary amounts for a program that could do that, it would revolutionize humanities place in understanding other alien races."
"I don't know if that's exactly what I am suggesting, I just know that no matter how much I hate the idea, I just don't know if I can turn away from something that might get us a better chance in this. Right now I can't even give you a guess on how long Kara has, I don't know anything about this 'thing' other than right now Kara is alive more because she's somehow stabilized herself more than anything I've done, can do." There was an edge of desperation to the agent's tone.
"We used to have a saying on Mars..." J'onn let his voice drop to a softer tone as he whispered the words in his native language knowing that Alex wouldn't immediately understand. "Those who cannot be pushed to their knees by words or deeds, find themselves there when their child is sick." He gave the loose translation though he knew the poetry of the words were lost by doing so but the message was clear. He took a long moment, looking at across the main room of the DEO beyond the windows that separated them in the meeting room. "Everything we have built here, all of the secrets and security to protect us, enable us to do our jobs... it has a purpose, but is its purpose more important that helping your sister." He turned to look at Alex. "All I can come back to is that Kara told this... Luthor, despite every reason not too and I know that while your sister often lets her heart lead her more then her head, her heart has saved us on more than one occasion." He took another breath. "You really believe our hands are tied, we at this moment can't control what is happening to her?"
"I don't believe it, I know it." Alex replied. "It's just a reality that at the rate we are going, it's not going to take hours to make sense of any information that we have but days. And I know that even if that does tell us something, we have to do something with that information and like I said I don't know if Kara even has hours."
"You're on point for this." J'onn finally relented as his face fell into a hard scowl as he turned to her. "Keep her as far as arms length as you can but we will deal with any fall out from Miss. Luthor being involved after we save Supergirl."
Alex balled her hand into a fist and held it up to her chest for a moment.
"Thank you." She all but whispered.
"Don't thank me yet, we still have a lot to do even if this program does exist." J'onn moved over and put his hand on her shoulder. "So get moving, let's not waste a moment."
-x-
Less than fifteen minutes later, Alex and Winn were standing in the personal lobby for the penthouse office of L-Corp's CEO, the one and only Lena Luthor. They had been cleared through security mostly due to Alex's intense stares and constant pointing to her government credentials, but once they had reached the desk of the CEO's personal assistant, Alex seemed finally to have met her match. Despite being offered the chance to take a seat while Jess sent Lena an inter office message, indicating that the CEO was on an important international teleconference call, neither of the two agents were sitting and instead were hovering closer to her desk. Winn had, in his defense, at first went to move towards the plush chairs there for the purpose but when Alex had stayed in her place, tall and at attention he had felt the silent pressure for him to stay in his.
Surprisingly it took just moments, and then it wasn't Jess that moved but the doors to Lena's office opened and the CEO stood there looking at the two of them before motioning inside with her head.
"Make sure we're not disturbed Jess." She said clearly slipping into the office in front of them and moving towards her desk. "Agent Danvers... Winn.." Lena used the only title she knew for the young man standing in her office. "What can I do for you?" It was obvious she was being very 'professional' in every thing she said and did, but there was a hidden tension in the brunette's body.
"We're sorry to just show up so suddenly, and I can assure you we wouldn't unless it was of the utmost necessity but... we needed to confirm a few rumours with you first before we discuss our reasons for being here any further." Alex's voice was just as tight and professional as Lena's had been, while Winn just looked uncomfortable beside her.
"Have I done something to warrant the FBI's attention?" Lena frowned for a moment. "And Mr Winn, I didn't know you worked there also?"
"I need to know if the rumours circulating the tech world are true that your brother developed a..." Alex pointed at Winn knowing she didn't have the right jargon.
"Universal Alien Encryption - Decryption Protocol." Winn filled in with a squeak in his voice.
"I prefer to think of it as the second incantation of the enigma machine..." Lena began her reply as she looked between Winn and Alex a slim proud smile pulling at her features. "But no, Lex didn't make it, or own it. It is mine." She made the point purposefully.
"Lena, I don't have time to play games about who wrote the code, I don't care who wrote it I just need to know if it can encrypt a rotating multi-gyra... what the hell is it?" She looked at Winn again for the first time showing how frayed she was to the other brunette. The outburst making Lena sober immediately.
"A rotation multi-gyrex adaptational matrix." Winn filled in again. "With rotation under less than a hundred nano seconds." He grimaced as he revealed the important part of the equation.
Green eyes went from Alex to look at Winn.
"I have machines in my lab that could crack a code like that." She narrowed her eyes ever so slightly turning again to look a Alex. "Why are you here and not Kara?" She made the point particularly to the older Danvers.
"Because..." Alex seemed to stall for a minute not having planned on Lena working out quite so fast this angle of what was going on. "She's sick Lena. A space craft crashed a few days ago, the alien on board was carrying something... we haven't figured out what yet, but it doesn't affect humans, however it does effect Kryptonians." She breathed out the words with the desperation she felt. "We're trying to decode the crafts logs to see if they give us any idea what is wrong with her."
"And what did this alien have to say for himself?" Lena folded her arms across her chest trying hard not to focus on the idea that Kara was sick just yet.
"Whatever he was carrying, it killed him as soon as we got him out of the crashed ship." It was Winn's whose voice came out small and even he had to admit a little scared.
This time it was impossible for Lena to hide the eye widening and the quick intake of breath that was her reaction to Winn's words.
"Why wouldn't you start with that?" Lena turned to look at Alex, almost with a look of betrayal in her green eyes. "I can access the program we need remotely." She moved around to pull a laptop out of the top drawer of her desk. "Take me to her." She demanded now that she had what she knew she needed.
"Lena, I can't get into all of this with you but we don't work for the FBI." Alex's mouth was a thin tense line across her face. "I can take you to her, but you have to be blindfolded in the van and you have to sign papers that you will not divulge anything you see while you are there, and you will be closely confined to only certain areas for security. Do you agree to all of this?"
"I don't care if I have to be put in a body bag and smuggled in, take me to Kara now!" Lena snapped.
"She agrees, let's go." Winn nervously jumped and started to head to the door to open it for the two ladies.
-x-
The very first thing Lena did when the heavy hood over her head was pulled back was move the lap top under her arm and slam it on to the table top next to the terminal in the main area that she had been directed too. What Lena didn't know was that it was Winn's personal terminal, and he thought he had set it up to isolate what she could access to just the necessary craft logs. Her fingers flew over keys, passing through screen after screen in literal seconds before the main boards all lit up with something that looked a little like a full screen of shifting foreign data, numbers, symbols and shapes tumbling around as if in some kind of spin cycle. In the very top corner of the screen a little white box with L-Corp in black letters left no one free of the idea that Lena had just literally high jacked into their entire system and was now running her own program through it.
She didn't bother to turn to look at the rather agape faces that stared into her back as without much trouble she continued to punch keys. The numbers, pictures and symbols suddenly moving out of their jumble and lining up in neat rows, all of them turning green, as a timer in the bottom right of the screen began some kind of time keeping program and letter by letter, word by word the English trasnlation started to appear on the screens.
"Let that run and the logs will be readable directly from the screen." She turned just her head to look at Winn. "Find me if any of the symbols turn red." She continued to him before looking at Alex beside him. "Now take me to Kara."
"How did you..." Winn was already looking down at everything, including the L-Corp symbol at the top knowing he was going to get an earful from J'onn who had put him in charge of creating a 'safe' environment for Lena to work in that she wouldn't be able to access the rest of the DEO from.
"We need to talk about security and data management when this is all over." She looked back at Winn for a moment. "I'll give you some hints about making this..." She put her had up to the wall of information. "Less of a sieve."
"I take that personally." Winn held his hand up to his throat like a slapped southern lady would.
"Winn deal, we have bigger problems." Alex moved towards the main hallway to the left. "Come with me." She knew Lena would only start stating her demand to see Kara with more urgency and less tact if she was denied. "I have to warn you, she's... not the Kara you're expecting." She felt her words stall as they both reached the hallway and she began to lead Lena through the bland looking concrete hallways.
"Not the Kara I'm..." Lena frowned even harder. "Just how long has she been sick?"
"She started to show signs of the rash 72 hours ago." Alex filled in stiffly. "It was the first sign that it was even a contagion."
With no warning Lena literally grabbed Alex's arm and yanked her to a stop, green eyes blazing as she stared at the operative.
"72 hours?" She all but screamed the words at the other brunette. "You waited 72 hours, doing nothing and then came to me?"
"In here now!" Alex snapped as she shook her arm once, and then literally tore it back out of Lena's grip as she moved sideways through a random door into what turned out to be an empty room. "This is not L-Corp, you do not stalk around here insulting people and screaming like a child, do you understand me?"
"Do you seriously think I give a damn about upsetting people and causing a scene right now?" Lena bit back. "Trust me I don't run L-Corp like this, until someone does something really stupid."
"You can't help it can you! Even if you have no idea what we've done in the last 72 hours, how hard we've been working on this, I have every available resource and I few that shouldn't be on this." Alex threw this at her.
"And yet the one you knew might have the answer or at least the tech to help find the answer found out 72 hours in." Lena shook her head not giving Alex an inch. "You know how special Kara is, not just to the world, but to me." She growled. "Does my name scare you that much that you couldn't get over yourself enough to let me do what I can to save her?"
Being attacked so directly, well it wasn't something Alex was used to facing down, usually she was the one barking accusations with truth behind them at other people for their screw ups and here in the face of this there was only one thing she could do.
"You're right." Alex's words showed how all of the anger and the bravado had seeped out of her at the accusation, the justified accusation. Not that Alex had known then that Lena had this state of the art decryption program, but considering her relationship with Kara shouldn't she have at least shot off a text? "You're right, I was wrong."
Lena pulled in a breath at Alex's words and demeanor and then slowly exhaled.
"So let's just make things right and get Kara well."
"It's bad Lena. We can't get a genome on it, we can't even figure out what the hell it is but it's killing her." Alex didn't know why, why with Lena Luthor of all people, she hadn't even been able to have more than a taunt conversation with Maggie about it, but right in this moment she was falling apart against her own will to stay together.
Surprising her Lena stepped forward so she was close to the other woman, not reaching out to touch her, just coming close.
"Let me read all you've done, see the results and do what I can, only then will we decide if it's killing her, okay and if it is... we'll stop it." Lena's tone was solid and confident.
"Okay." Alex nodded. "But you need to see her first, then we'll wade into the data." She seemed to take a breath and pushed off towards the door again knowing Lena wouldn't miss a step falling in behind her.
It was only another two corridors before they were in front of the glass walled medical bay that Kara was isolated in, and the DEO agent held the door open after using her key-card, to let Lena go inside.
"I'll get the data you need." Alex didn't step inside just gave herself something to do as she let the door come to a hiss closed behind her leaving Lena alone with Kara in the med bay.
Lena wanted to rush forward to the blonde's bedside, to see, touch her best friend. A feeling of tightness filled her chest at just the reality of what surrounded her, but she didn't, she walked slowly, carefully into the room. First checking the many screens and readouts on the machines around her before coming to the side of the bed, her eyes panning over the blonde who lay remarkably still, her hair gathered up and cleared from her neck and shoulders, the lighten patterning on her skin exposed and much worse than it had even been.
"Kara." Lena could hear the ever so slight shake in her own voice as she lifted her hand but then suddenly held it shy of touching the prone woman. "You didn't text me back so I thought you were mad at me for making fun of that silly ferret video you sent me." She began with an introduction of more than one word, more because it seemed like the blonde was unconscious and therefore probably unresponsive.
Even though no words came from the blonde, and her blue eyes didn't open as Lena had been hoping for, what did immediately happen was a hand came clumsily out from under the light blanket and fingers stretched as if looking for something.
Lena instantly moved to interlace her fingers with the blonde's, bringing them both to rest lightly on Kara's stomach, the brunette squeezing as tight as she could to try and translate the returned feeling of need.
"Listen to me Kara." Lena pulled in a breath and leaned a little over Supergirl to be close to her ear. "I've never had anyone that cared for me, just because they did, just because they wanted to, apart from my mother, my actual mother." The brunette closed her eyes momentarily as she fought to keep her usual level of control and reserve. "She filled my world with light and love and every good thing for four years and then I lost her." Lena stopped and tried to swallow the lump in her throat. "I let her die, I let her be taken away from me because I couldn't do anything, I didn't try and save her, call someone... I..." She stopped again, tears welling in her eyes as she fought against every desperate emotion that was flooding her body. "I won't lose you like that." She vowed, blinking tears onto her cheek. "I will fight and I will do everything I can to make you well." She frowned against the literal wall of emotion threatening to overwhelm her, the dozen voices in her head screaming at her for being weak, for forming a bond, in turn letting herself be hurt, afraid and sad. "I can't lose you Kara." She closed her eyes completely and let her tears drip onto the blonde's cheek.
It wasn't immediate to her words, or even the wash of tears falling from Lena onto her cheek that seemed to prompt it but in the same way that Lena had pressed intention into the hold of their hands there came a firm deliberate press back from Kara's hand. Trying it seemed to underline to Lena that she wasn't giving up, she couldn't give up, she didn't know how too. It seemed to want to comfort and protect Lena all at the same time, even though it was just a long slow squeeze.
Lena pulled in a quick breath at the motion and without thinking she lifted Kara's hand to her lips and placed a light kiss on it, squeezing it again as she lowered back to rest on a flat stomach.
"I'm going to be right here with you, working on this. Stay with me okay." She put her other hand over the top of Kara's to make a hand sandwich as it were. "Just fight like only you can."
-x-
"Okay... you've looked at it all... anything?" Alex leaned on the table next to where Lena was almost drowned in readout papers, tablets with certain documents on them, and even the newly clarified transcripts of their alien pilot's last horrible days. It having become clear he hadn't landed on earth when he'd realized he was 'sick' and that in time his craft had simply fallen out of orbit without him to correct it.
Lena looked up at Alex for a moment, picking up seemingly random papers, but it soon became clear that the younger brunette was looking at something.
"Parasite." She offered the word as she pushed up and laid out at least half a dozen papers on the table top for Alex to look at, taking a green highlighter from the pen collection she moved and highlighted dozens of seemingly separate things. "Here, here and here..." She pointed to the first groupings of number. "These are the aliens earliest stats we could draw from the ships data, and look at these..." She moved another sheet to be more central pointing her finger at the highlighted numbers that happened to be the same as the first examples. "These are Kara's stats from 72 hours ago when you started monitoring her." She selected another sheet to point out numbers and then referring back to Kara's data. The same numbers stared back at both brunette's. "What if it's a parasite that exists in the host, taking over that host body system to literally create the most optimum environment that it can to exist in?"
"Turning it into a self perpetuating breeding ground until it can jump to the next host." Alex nodded that she understood the concept and could see the evidence reflected in the numbers. "But how do we get rid of it?"
"We make Kara's body uninhabitable." Lena looked at the other scientist. "It obviously leaves the host when it is used up and can't support it anymore, you found no trace of matter that wasn't Filionian in any of your tests, what if that is because it leaves, enters some sort of dormant form, particulates, spores... something and then waits for a new host." She expanded on her theory. "If we make Kara's body imperfect, give it the idea it needs to move on to forward itself, we can capture it, by ensuring we do what we need to do to Kara in a confined unit and possi-vacuming it. There are no records that you or I have access to that would suggest that this 'thing' is a problem on Krypton, so logically we can assume it's only 'making do' with what Kara has, if we change that and make Kara uninhabitable then the evidence suggests it will leave."
"We don't have much evidence of anything, but this is the best theory we have." Alex nodded her agreement dropping pages back into their piles.
-x-
It wasn't like Winn expected that when they finally cracked the code for the alien ships log that there would just be an answer in among the other useless data. It wasn't that he hadn't hoped one of the Filionian's voice logs wouldn't have just said 'I caught Saturn Flu today', and from there they would be able to work out what they needed to do to fix Kara but he had also known it was an unlikely scenario. Of course the data from the logs had given them a lot, and from that he knew that with Lena's expertise and fresh eyes they now had a theory and an idea of what they needed to do. The only problem now was how did you make a perfect beings body uninhabitable to a parasite whose needs you didn't even understand?
For that reason he didn't beat himself up about the fact he was stress eating. He had finally abandoned his station, collating medical data from the logs, to head to the cafeteria and grab himself a couple of his favourite candy bars to deal with the stress. He was half way through one as he purposefully looped through to pass Kara's med bay, wanting to at least make a visible check of his friend as he went by. What he hadn't been expecting was that standing next to the bed was Lena, the brunette looking small and if Winn dared observe frightened with one arm pulled tight around her own stomach as she looked down at Kara.
Taking a soft breath he reached to his belt and used his key card to enter the room, secure in the fact the parasite couldn't hurt either of them, and moved up to the other side of the bed to look at the prone Supergirl with a frown of his own.
"How's she doing? Any change?" He asked in a soft voice, almost not wanting to disturb the sleeping Kryptonian, even though he logically knew she wasn't sleeping per say.
Lena didn't look across towards Winn, her eyes on Kara as she spoke.
"Her temperature is higher, just a degree, but it's a solid change." The brunette's tone was oddly neutral, almost as if this was what she was used to, being 'solid' even if inside she was in a million pieces. "All her brain scans are... I can't say normal but I can't say completely off the charts either. It's like she's just existing, being." She offered. "No stimuli responses, no signs of consciousness but she's breathing on her own, her heart is functioning... her sympathetic nervous system seems to be... perfect." A hollow laugh slipped from the beautiful lips. "Of course it is, she's Supergirl, she is perfect."
The strangeness of the sad sound made Winn turn to look at Lena and reaching into his back pocket he pulled the other bar he had out and held it out to her.
"I'm stress eating, want to join in? Kara always says food makes things better." His voice was sad, after all he knew what Lena was summing up. Supergirl seemed to be in some sort of suspended animation, except little by little her systems were being overworked and showing the signs of breaking down, like her temperature rising. The increase slow but steady, and despite her 'super powers' there would be a temperature that was just too high even for the Kryptonian.
Finally green eyes shifted from Kara to look first at the bar that was being offered and then to Winn himself, who made no effect to hide how it shook him to see the green pools glazed with un-shed tears.
"No." Still Lena's tone was perfect. "Thank you." She added with a short shake of her head. "I need to change her perfect status, I need her to... not be her." Green eyes rolled back a little into her head. "I'm not a doctor, I have this brain that right now..."
"Lena..." Winn moved to drop the bar on the machine closet to Supergirl's head, almost hoping in some crazy way the proximity of chocolate would wake her up. His eyes stayed on the other brunette who was clearly in distress however. "Your brain is the only reason we were able to crack open those logs faster then I even thought was possible without using up all the servers in the Northern Hemisphere. Your brain is the only one that figured out this was a parasite and you're the one that came up with even the theory of what we need to do to help her." His look softened. "Kara wouldn't want you being so hard on yourself, you're doing everything you can and that is all Kara ever wants from any of us."
"But I'm not am I?" Lena maintained the look. "I'm stood here, paralyzed. Not knowing what to do, which in turn makes me do… nothing." The breath she pushed out of her lungs now was hard and fast as she turned fully away from them both and literally stalked to the wall farthest away to self isolate herself from them. "And you know the irony in all this? Here I am fumbling and failing as I try to save Kara, when for so long, my brother, the evil one, managed to focus through everything. He never rested, never questioned, when something failed he just moved onto something more complex, more deadly, his focus solid, his confidence unwavering, he just wanted to kill a Super." Again she huffed out a breath. "I'm not only failing Kara right now, I'm failing at being a Luthor, I'm being made weak and I'm..." The brunette stopped and turned from the wall to looking straight at Winn, her green eyes clear again. "Stay here."
-x-
"You're suggesting we dose her with Kryptonite?" Alex gripped her hands around the edge of the table as the words the brunette said cleared in her mind.
"You don't know this but my brother spent literally years with his obsession on ending Superman, the journals I've read, the videos I've watched, the research papers I've examined. The reason he focused on Kryptonite when he found it was because it was the only thing that made a Super normal, breakable, beatable." She stressed. "This parasite is obviously thriving in the perfect habitat that is a Super, its being able to adjust its environment, its host, with precision and accuracy. It's the reason that it could never chose a human host, we simply couldn't exist in the environment it needs, the heat, the lack of blood oxygenation, the imbalance of cells. We wouldn't live long enough for it to multiply. But Kara...it can change her, manipulate her to be what it needs because she can exist at extremes." She picked up a handful of the stat sheets to underline her point. "Kryptonite changes that, it changes everything, it chemically alters Super's." She looked at Alex. "We could try I suppose with red sun lights but.. they weaken, remove the Super human aspects, not her makeup, not her cells."
Through her entire run down Alex had just stood there, her hands still gripped around the edge of the table as she listened to the theory and despite her immediate desire to scream 'STOP' as Lena ran down Lex's evil intentions and then summed up how perfect her sister was to host this abomination of a creature, she kept her mouth clenched shut. The problem was it was her emotional side that wanted to melt down, her scientific side was listening to Lena in rapt attention as everything the Luthor before her was saying not only made sense but actually seemed like an answer. A horrible, hard to swallow answer but still an answer none the less.
"I need to get in touch with Superman, he took our entire supply of Kryptonite and hid it somewhere that it wouldn't, couldn't hurt him or Kara ever again." Alex didn't even realize the secret she let slip out simply because right now Lena was offering her the only lifeline to get her sister back. "It's a long story but he refused to work with the DEO unless we agreed to this condition."
Lena looked away from the older Danvers sibling to the papers covering the table, only because she didn't want the other woman to see the slight war that was going on in her heart and head at that moment.
"I might have a simpler, quicker way." She turned and looked at Alex finally squaring her shoulders.
"Sorry? You have Kryptonite?" Alex's voice was sharp as she began to move around the table closer to where Lena had stationed herself. "In this city? What... just in your secret lab?"
"No, it's not like that." Lena shook her head. "I have a machine, from my brother's things that I know was powered by Kryptonite. It's not just in my lab or just waiting to be used, I disassembled it and the remaining power source, what little there was of it after my brother had over tested it, I secured away. It's hardly anything but from what I've heard, could just be enough." She looked at Alex finally. "It's in an underground storage unit about twenty miles into the desert."
"What do you need to get into the facility? We can leave right now." Alex made the immediate decision that Lena Luthor was not leaving her sight until this Kryptonite source was secured.
"I just need me, bio-metric locks." Lena confirmed. "We shouldn't waste any time, we still need to figure out how exactly we're going to administer it."
-x-
The entire time Alex had spent speeding them out of the cold city proper had been spent in silence. The only sound was the occasional huff from Lena out towards the window, or Alex's fingers drumming on the steering wheel when they were stuck at a traffic light for a moment.
"Okay, I'm trying to not jump to conclusions but why, when Kara told you she was Supergirl, did you not mention this Kryptonite, the only thing on earth you know can really hurt her? Or wait, did you tell Kara and she just didn't tell me?" Alex couldn't yet decide where to push her anger towards, in fact she didn't know if she was going to be more angry that Lena had just not told Kara, or that her sister hadn't told her.
"I didn't tell Kara." Lena cleared up immediately. "But I was going to, soon." She glanced at the other woman. "I stored it where I stored it because I didn't want it in a city with a Super, and that was before I had even met Kara." She paused for a moment. "But I admit I did keep it rather than turn it over to the Government when I found it because I toyed with ideas about turning the machine it came from into something more useful for those who protect us."
Alex's fingers tapped on the steering wheel again for a long minute.
"Kara trusts you." She finally settled on the words that she knew weren't loaded with anger or hinted at the hatred that existed between the lines between them in their official capacities as a part of the Government and a Luthor. She tried to do as she thought Kara would and peel it all back to its most basic parts to find somewhere to start from.
"I know and believe me, just like you I don't understand why, but she does and that's changing things for me in ways I couldn't even begin to describe but..." She looked at the other woman again choosing once more to offer her some insight to herself. "But as scientists we both understand that to make an antivenom you have to start with the very venom you're trying to combat." She offered up the example. "That's the reason I even kept it, to have a base, something to work on overcoming."
"So you actual kept it so that you can try and make an anti-Kryptonite, something that could be used to stop Kryptonite from hurting Kara?" Alex turned a little to cast a questioning eye towards Lena.
For the first time since getting in the car Lena let her emotions slip from something other than cold, hard bitch, and that shift was to clear excitement. The way Alex remembered seeing one or other of her parents look over some new idea, theory or possibility that came to them while trying to figure out a problem in their research.
"And think what if we could do better than just an antidote to Kryptonite poisoning, what if we could nullify its affects completely? Or put that essence into a physical shield a Super could carry or even into the fabric of their suits? We could give Kara total immunity to Kryptonite." Green eyes flashed with brilliance. "She wouldn't have to ever fear it being used against her again."
"Winn made a body armor type thing once, that could adsorb Kryptonite energy and protect the wearer but it was a little too weak physically, compared to a Super or the enemies trying to kill them. It lasted awhile in the fight but it took too much damage and then it was useless." Alex made the admittance to Lena with a sightly wicked smile. "He's upset with how easily you took over his whole computer system, but it's a good job he's used to being shown up by amazing women with Kara and I around him all the time."
"Was that humour Alex Danvers?" Lena gave her a little sideways look.
"I am known for being quite funny thank you." Alex sat a little taller in her seat and then seemed to take a breath. "I'm going to ask you a really unfair question but..." She took another breath and stared out the windshield at the looming desert for a moment. "What are your intentions with my sister?"
"My intentions?" Lena questioned the word and then remembered just who it was coming from and in turn why it was being asked. With a breath out of her own Lena actually turned to look at Alex, even though the other woman kept her focus elsewhere. "I don't have one, no agenda, no driving ambition or anything like that. I've never been in a place like this in my life Alex. I'm living with Kara in my life on literally a visit to visit basis. She terrifies me, I terrify me when it comes to what I feel, what I'm letting myself feel..." She shook her head. "I'm sorry if that's not a good enough answer."
"Actually that's a better answer then I thought I'd get so I'll take it." Alex finally pulled one hand off the wheel and pulled it through her greasy hair realizing it had literally been days since she'd showered. "Kara is... she's not like us, and not just because she's not human, not because of the obvious." She let a hard breath rattle through her and she suddenly felt as dry as the dessert around them. "She's Kara." She summed up badly but looked sideways when she heard a noise of agreement from Lena as if somehow on some level the woman in her passenger seat knew what she meant even if she wasn't really saying it. "So what I hope we can both see eye to eye on, what we can both agree on is even if we can't get over ourselves, we get over it for Kara, because she's the most important thing in any of this. And I know we all like to protect ourselves but... we're not Kara, we protect Kara first."
"Visit by visit." Lena underline what she had said before. "Kara determines what we are, what she wants." The brunette offered back nodding softly. "I don't want to clash with you Alex, there is so much about you that I already admire and I barely even know you." She continued. "But for now, Kara can be our connecting point, the one who balances us with the other." She agreed to the idea. "That's why I'm leading you to the Kryptonite, and giving it to you alone to use only as you want."
"I believe your idea can work, if we can make her sick enough that the parasite thinks she's a risk, it'll jump for a new host like you said... survival, it's an intrinsic mechanism that all species have in one way or another. Some have used a 1000 years of breeding to refine it, some a 1000 years to have it erased for the idea of a greater good." The Agent outlined what her intentions were. "And in the case of us humans, we've just honed it to keep our own asses individually out of trouble when we can." She gave a hard laugh. "I feel like it's my fault, I let her near the Filionian body without thinking there could be a risk to her, I let myself do what everyone else does and believe that Supers are invincible when I know they're not. They're not Gods, they're just a little different then us but they can still die. There is a whole dead planet of them to prove that point."
"We don't know how or when Kara got infected, the parasite could use spore propagation and that would have been in the ship and the air around it when it was opened, there were no active parasitic enzymes or trace on the very first test you conducted." Lena offered an at least scientific based placation.
"Still, I have to be better, protect her, I have to think three steps ahead of the threats." Alex really didn't even realize she was openly chiding herself in front of Lena in a way she wouldn't do in front of anyone really, if asked later she would blame it on lack of sleep and too many energy drinks.
"In the future, if you need to, call me, the instant something comes up that you don't figure out or you feel the need to just work through with someone. I know I'm a Luthor, I know every instinct inside you tells you not to. But I'm a scientist, just like you and I want to help. I will always want to help Kara."
"You're not a Luthor." Alex looked at her and shook her head softly. "You're Lena, that's the part Kara keeps trying to get me to realize. If you were a Luthor you would have cultivated that parasite and sent it to her in a letter bomb. You're not a Luthor or you wouldn't be using parts of a Luthor machine to save her."
"Thank you for that." Lena drew in a more even breath. "You ready for this?" She asked the succinct question, turning to look out of the window again.
"We'll be on your territory soon." Alex nodded softly. "I'd go to hell if it meant a chance at saving her."
-x-
"This was your idea Lena..." Alex stood with the small group of in the know DEO people near the newly installed station at the door to the med bay, looking in to where her sister looked small and so vulnerable laid out on the metal table still hooked up to all the necessary monitors. But the one difference was a new IV machine that held a small glass inverted jar filled with a bright green substance, though none of them could see it now as it was safely cocooned in a thick lead outer skin to shield Kara from its effects until they began the attempt to free her. From that a normal looking IV tube ran down and then was twirled in three loose loops around Kara's right forearm before the tube continued down towards the floor and a second lead encased empty clear jar. The entire system was self contained and controlled by the machine that the tube flowed through near the top of the line not quite at the starting bottle. "You should be the one to push the button to start it all."
"I'm ready with the capture systems, depending on what form our parasite takes." Winn was on another twin display at the other side of the doors.
"It's going to work, you wouldn't hurt even this much if it wasn't to save her." Alex saw the hesitation in the genius brunette and she leaned in to whisper the words of encouragement, giving Lena's forearm a soft squeeze through the DEO white lab coat she had borrowed to work in hours before.
All and all after returning with the sample, it had taken the two of them working non stop for twelve more hours before they'd created something dangerous enough to trick the parasite but hopefully not toxic enough to simply kill Kara in her weakened state.
Still unsure even with Alex's encouragement, Lena final pressed the button to begin the treatment, closing her eyes as the lock on the bag slipped free.
The brunette had known the reaction would be quick, Kryptonite being almost instantly active in its effects on those vulnerable to it. She wasn't ready for the body wide flinch, stretch and cry that came from Kara as the toxic mixture moved down into the tube and then swirled in the line around her arm, the exposure effect hitting her immediately when the green substance was close to her. Her hands balled up into fists, her back flexed as she grimaced tightly and then almost when it seemed their careful theory was failing, a firework type of pop sounded and the interior of the pod was filled with dark particles, released from the blonde's skin in a literal puff of grey specks.
Lena could hear beside him Winn instantly engaging the filtering, cleaning and collecting apparatus they had fitted to the pod, the sound of whirling mechanics for a moment louder than anything else before in just moments the air was clear again and a machine off in the corner now held an enormous glass vial filled with the moving, swirling grey cloud the specks had condensed into.
Lena instantly hit the button sending the Kryptonite down the rest of the line, to reseal the green concoction in the glass vial on the floor and Alex hurried to the pod opening, hitting the release button as fast as she could.
"Transport team, get her to the sun room, now.!" She barked as several people hurried forward to move the gurney Kara was on. Lena just closed her eyes letting out the breath that she had taken in the first time she had hit the button. A part of her almost not believing they had done it.
-x-
The hour that everyone had agreed to leave Kara just in the room without distraction or stimuli passed agonizingly slowly for the small group of friends eager to know how Supergirl was doing. The in room stats machine had very quickly shown that all of Kara's stats were reverting to normal range, which in turn had given everyone the encouragement that what had been attempted had actually worked. Slowly her temperature was returning to normal, and other levels manipulated by the parasite were rising or lowering back to base line.
Now though that hour was over and it was Lena who moved closer to Alex and in a quiet voice said.
"You should go in, be the first to see her." The woman's tone was soft and surprisingly compassionate.
"No, I think it should be you." Alex's warm brown eyes turned to look at her and shook her head. "You're her Doctor, the one who saved her." She gave Lena a soft smile and tilted her head towards the door. "I'll go second."
"Alex please, she's your sister, I know how much you love her." Lena shook her head.
"We're on my turf, do as I say." Alex teased her with a stuffier voice though her smile was still in place. "Because I'm not sure how long I can keep convincing my boss you need to be here."
Lena turned to actually smile at the older Danver's sister and mouthed the words 'Thank you' before pressing forward, passing through the door into the brightly lit room where Kara was.
"Kara." The simple word slipped out of Lena's mouth the instant she looked at the blonde laid out on the bed, as much of her skin exposed to the specialized lights as could be without a lack of decency. The brunette crossed quickly this time to the bed side. "Kara?" She repeated just to see if the blonde could respond.
"Lena?" There was a soft curiosity in Kara's voice, after all she'd come too in spurts now on and off for a little while. The familiarity of the sun lamp room at the DEO giving her the security of knowing even if she couldn't remember how she'd obviously burnt herself out, she was somewhere safe and giving into the nagging desire to just fall back into oblivion didn't mean she was in danger. But that within that 'security' was Lena's voice suddenly, well that didn't make much sense at all. "Lena... are you okay? Are you hurt?" Almost stupidly Kara tried to sit up and turn all at once and she was barely part ways up before her muscles screamed at her for moving and her head went dizzy from the sudden change.
"Kara no, no I'm fine." Lena put her hand lightly onto the blonde's chest and gave her another tactile point to focus on. "I just wanted to see you, before I leave." She explained herself a little. "I need you to rest, to do what you need to do to get better here." She went on. "You're safe at the DEO, and it's going to be okay." She moved her other hand to brush lightly at strands of hair touching Kara's face. "I just needed to see you." She repeated her initial phrase, hoping could do this without crying.
"Lena, what's wrong... something is wrong... your heart is racing." Kara's hand came up, this time with more co-ordination and care before she pressed it over the one Lena had on her body, pressing that one into her skin as if somehow she could read all the details she needed just from the contact.
"You've been sick Kara, a parasite you picked up from the crash site you investigated." Lena offered some kind of an explanation. "Alex, Winn... everyone has been working to get you better." She kept shoring herself up inside, trying to will her internal reactions to still, though knowing she could do no such thing. "And you are better, well you will be in a while."
"But they needed the big brain to solve the problem?" Kara made the guess, now massaging her fingers in between Lena's still pressed against her sternum. "They can't afford your fee."
"This was a gift, remember sometimes a sample of your work gets a better response than anything else you try." Lena made the subtle reference to the dessert tray they had shared not so long ago.
"I wish you could stay." Kara's voice got softer as it became clear she was fighting to stay awake, even Alex had warned Lena the one hour thing was just a gauge to see that it was working not an expectation that Kara would be better. "I need a pillow."
"I know and I'm sorry." Lena said the somewhat unfamiliar words. "But I don't belong here Kara, and I will be there whenever you're well enough to be home."
"Make Alex give you her key." In her half conscious state Kara confused what Lena had meant and took it literally, as if Lena would be there at her apartment when she finally dragged herself home out of the lights.
"Okay." Lena couldn't bring herself to argue the point, she just wanted Kara to rest. "See you soon Miss. Sunshine." She squeezed Kara's hand as tight as she dared.
"See you soon." Kara squeezed hers back and it was probably the lack of the usual innate strength in it that pushed the tears trying to push out of Lena's eyes out onto her cheeks. That or the words she whispered next. "I love you."
Lena literally locked her jaw to stop it from trembling and quickly wiped her other hand across her cheeks as she stood there for a moment, Kara giving in to the pull of rest easily after she had had the moment to confirm the brunette was safe and unharmed.
Pulling in a breath the brunette made a slight move to just walk away but found she couldn't. Instead she just leaned in and pressed her lips to the back of Kara's hand as she freed her own from it, and laid her cheek against the warm skin for a moment.
"Be well my darling Kara." She whispered before pulling fully back and heading quickly to the door.
To Be Continued in Episode Six...