The world around Kara is pleasantly dull. Soft. She feels both incredibly light, floating about idly, and amazingly heavy, sinking infinitely in the shapeless mass that encompasses her. She doesn't know where she is, but the voices periodically breaking through the fog are comforting. She's safe now. Wherever she is, she is safe.
She bobs in and out of sleep, body going with the flow of exhaustion, for an unknown amount of time. It could be days, minutes, she doesn't really care. The last face she saw before she closed her eyes was Alex's, and if she saw Alex, then there's no need to worry. Alex has brought her home once before, Kara trusts that she did it again.
There is of course the question of the sluggish ache in her bones, the gaps in her memory that a slow alarm bell at the back of her mind is not particularly eager to fill. She remembers intense pain, Lex Luthor, Lena sobbing and begging. But there are holes in this, damp and dark, that she fills with the amusing thought of a cartoon Alex kicking the big villain's ass. If she had any control over her face, it would make her snicker. She doesn't know much about what happened, gets the troubling feeling that it's much worse than she could ever imagine, but what she knows for sure is that her big sister took care of it, and it's enough for now.
All her illusions are shattered when Lena starts screaming.
At the terrifying sound of Lena's panic, full remembrance washes over Kara like a tsunami and she attempts to spring up to her rescue. Attempt, because she's trapped under some sort of cage, and her limbs are too weak to push through it. Attempt, because she gets little to no feedback from her prosthetic arm, her left side is completely unresponsive and only her right leg seems to be fully tethered to her body and when she jerks it up a strong hand grips her knee and slams it back on the bed.
Kara struggles, gasps for air, her lungs constricting and relaxing just as painfully against a sudden influx of oxygen that surprises her body so much she starts coughing and sputtering. Her heart hammers in her ribcage, her body spins endlessly in the void and she tries to grasp onto something, anything, to tether her long enough to regain her bearings and save Lena.
Words are spoken very close to her and that's what she decides to latch onto. Because she knows this voice, knows it in a good way, not like she knows Brainiac's flat and terrifying tone, not like Lex's sour inflections which are now etched into her brain too. No, this voice is warm and soft and safe, it's a balm on her aching mind, it's her sister's.
"I'm sorry Kara. I'm really sorry. I'm going to have to sedate you again. You're going to hurt yourself."
The world goes a little fuzzy again, and in the silence, Kara realises that Lena has stopped screaming a long time ago, and that the terrorised wail filling the room was all her own. Her heartbeat settles in her chest as artificial calm takes over her body. She opens her eyes, briefly, but the room she's in is much too bright after so much time spent in the dark and she closes them again before she can so much as catch a glimpse of Alex. She doesn't need to ask, not that she'd be able to anyway, for Alex to understand her and lay a hand on her one good leg, the only part of her body that doesn't hurt.
"It's okay. You're okay Kara." Her sister rubs a comforting thumb on her knee, the motion both soothing and grounding. "You're at the DEO. In the med bay. Lena is here too. We got you both. You're both safe. Focus on that for me ? You're in the med bay. With Lena. And you're safe. Both of you. You need to rest now. You're really hurt." Alex's voice catches in her throat, she marks a pause. Kara wishes she could hold her hand. "You're really hurt, so you need to rest."
Kara shakes her head, hoping that her sister will understand this too. It's not that she doesn't believe her, but she can't see Lena, can't hear her, can't check for herself that she's okay and just that thought is enough to send her heart skyrocketing again.
Alex sighs, loud enough that Kara hears her. "I'm going to move," she says. "Not far. I'm not leaving you. Just enough so we get Lena closer to you. It's not good for her to speak just yet, her voice is a little hurt."
This time, Kara nods, and shortly after, Alex's hand leaves her knee. She hears a strange squeaking sound, muted by her dampened hearing, and her bed rocks minutely. A different hand is now on her, patting at her prosthetic arm. The electrical impulses are weak, but she recognises the sensation right away ; Lena is trailing her fingers on her arm. Despite Alex's apparent instructions to rest her voice, she speaks, Kara thinks she might be saying her name, the two syllables a bit jagged around the edges ; and satisfied, she agrees to fall back asleep.
In the hours that follow, Kara becomes much more aware of her current predicament. She manages to open her eyes a few times, always briefly, and can't turn her head so all that it does is allow her to identify the ceiling of the med bay. Part of her face is covered by a metallic contraption that, as far as she can see when she glances to her toes, extends all the way down on her left side, pinning her body down in various places. In the short moments between two doses of painkillers, she can tell there is little left untouched in her body.
At first, she wonders why she isn't under sunlamps but this becomes evident when her hearing clears out enough for it to extend to the pumps hooked to her body, delivering a hefty dosage of medication. Her forehead is often clammy, and she thinks she might have caught an illness of some sort on top of everything else. She remembers chemicals coursing in her veins ; Lex must have poisoned her.
Her mind is still too fuzzy to really focus on that, but it's not exactly a blessing. She gets flashes, influxes of pain and memories, especially when doctors come prob and poke at her. She feels unclean and unsafe, but much like she's back in Lex's lab, she can't do much about it but wait it out, and hope she survives.
In her rare moments of reprieve, when she's not either asleep or drowning in anxiety and self-hatred, she gleans whatever information she can from the conversations happening around her. Alex's is the voice she hears most often, sometimes accompanied by Lena's scratchy tone, and occasionally by Sam and Kelly who seem to be here at Alex's side on a steady rotation. Brainy comes in a couple of times, mostly to deliver short and dreadful status reports, and Nia is always with him, asking soft questions that Doctor Veritas is sometimes here to answer clinically.
Kara learns this way that it's been two weeks since Lex unleashed her on National City, and that they found her and Lena in Mount Norquay in Canada, some 1689 miles from here. She learns the entire city was on lockdown for ten days after she attempted to burn down the alien borough and part of the business district to "clean the world of filth" ; words that she remembers falling from her mouth all too well.
She learns that no matter how pitiful Lena's attempts were, she did save her life by patching her up in the cave but that the doctors still had to rebreak everything to set her bones fully straight, including her nose.
She learns that Brainy wreaked havoc on L-Corp's servers to get access to Lex's files and that Alex methodically explored all of his old hideouts, refusing to sleep for more than two hours at a time, and only when she would fully crash from exhaustion.
All of this she expected to some extent. She knew Lex must have held them far enough that they'd be difficult to find, knew she was in bad shape and knew her sister wouldn't give up on her. What she wasn't expecting, what really knocks her on her already bruised ass, is hearing Brainy address her sister as "Director Danvers."
"Director Danvers ? We have the president on the phone for you."
These words are said with the formality Brainy often shows when he's too deep into his Agent Dox role to remember Alex basically sees him as a brother. Kara doesn't open her eyes, couldn't see him if she did, but she can picture him with no trouble, standing a couple of feet away from her sister, arms crossed behind his back, shoulders stiff, eyes fixated on her forehead.
Alex sighs. Kara can hear her clothes rustling on the chair when she gets up. "What more does she want ?"
This is intriguing, and Kara perks up at her sister's annoyed tone. Alex has been a presidential groupie since Marsdin's election, sometimes going as far as comparing her to Wonder Woman. Something bad must have happened to make that change.
"I can tell her you are indisposed," Brainy offers blankly.
"No. No." Alex sighs again, she must be pressing her palms to her eyes now. "Patch her through to my office, I'll deal with her." She squeezes Kara's shoulder before she leaves, the left one, and softly, to avoid hurting her. "I'll be back in a minute," she promises.
Kara has about a thousand questions that needs answering but thankfully Lena opens the way, voice still rough and low. "Director Danvers ?"
Kelly is the one left in the room which is a good thing for Kara as she's not one to lie or coddle, something she reaffirms as soon as she opens her mouth by avoiding the disgusting euphemism "while you were away."
"Some things have changed," she says, "while Lex had you. Alex leaked to the press that Lex is on the loose so that everyone could take necessary precaution and J'onn took the fall for her. He's in the holding cells right now and she's been promoted in his place."
"And Marsdin-" Lena coughs, clears her throat then continues, "Marsdin agreed to this ? J'onn has always been perfectly loyal to her and the DEO."
"The world needs a scapegoat for Lex's escape and the country can't handle losing both Supergirl and the president in one go."
Kara squeezes her eyes shut, trying to keep her tears from falling. She's gotten very good at crying silently, doesn't think Lena noticed half the times she cried while they were in the cave ; but silent tears will be useless if they turn and look at her. She wishes Lena would ask the other questions. How much damage ? How many people lost everything they had ? How many died ? These are the things she really wants to know ; how many lives were ruined beyond her own because she couldn't keep Lex out of her head.
"People have to know it wasn't Kara's fault."
"People believe what they want to believe," Kelly sighs, "and right now, people are scared. Lex is still missing, people think Kara is helping him, and those who don't are still afraid of her. Alex did what she could, but she's been all over the place lately..."
"She did what she could," Lena croaks, "Lex is just particularly good at what it does."
An angry tear slides down Kara's cheek despite her best efforts. She's really ruined everything. She wants to scream, let out some of her destructive rage and punch something, find Lex herself and tear him apart ; but she's still sick, still pinned to her fucking bed, still useless. Lena notices, Kara must not have been as quiet as she thought, and she reaches out to put her hand on her arm, applying enough pressure that her fucked up limb can feel it. She wishes she could withdraw from her touch, but her leadened body remains immobile.
"I need to make a statement to the press," Lena says, "can that be arranged ?"
"That's not a good idea," Kelly says softly. "I think it's best not to draw too much attention to yourself right now."
Kara wholeheartedly agrees with that, not that she will, or can, voice it aloud.
"Right," Lena mumbles bitterly, "I'm a Luthor. No one wants to hear from me."
The alien community, J'onn's reputation, the people's trust in Supergirl, Lena's hard work, herself ; the list of things Kara's shattered during her stint of madness is decidedly endless. It's almost laughable, how easy it was to ruin everything, but Kara doesn't really want to laugh right now.
The infection clears out. Kara is taken off her medication and the metallic arch holding her body together is removed so her bones can finish mending under artificial sunlight. Doctor Veritas offers to keep her on a light dose of anxiolytics but she refuses silently. She supposes she can speak now, but she fears that if she opens her mouth she'll start screaming and never stop, or worse, that the next words she'll speak won't even be her own, even if Brainy checked her twice for any trace of the nanobots Lex used to take control of her.
Nanobots. It's laughable ; just ridiculously easy how he could just inject her with them, make her body his, and no one noticed until it was too late. She didn't know they were here in the first place, has been assured since then that they've been removed, but can feel their absence crawling under her skin. When she sleeps, short anxious naps that inevitably end in guttural screams that wake Lena up too and startle whoever is in the room with them at the time, she often dreams of swarms of microscopic bots tearing out of her through her stomach to consume the world around her. Still, she refuses all medication. It makes her head fuzzy, and she has had enough of her mind being taken away from her.
Lena enters the room with hurried steps. Like she promised in a quiet rough voice when she left, she was gone for barely three minutes, just a quick trip to the lab to retrieve a tool that no one managed to identify for her through her confused description. Lena doesn't need medication or mind control to be disoriented these days. She wakes up screaming arguably more often than Kara does, unaware of where she is, begging for food and water in a way that would be unsettling enough for everyone without Kara joining in on the chorus of yells every time. She's tried to stop herself, but her body reacts viscerally to Lena's pleas and she just- she needs her to shut the fuck up.
Lena mumbles something as she sits back on the stool set next to Kara's bed, clears her throat, and repeats what she presumably just said, wiggling a small screwdriver in her hand. "Found it."
It looks like a regular screwdriver to Kara, but she's not about to question Lena's need for familiarity right now, not when the reason she's not throwing a fit right this moment is because Krypto is sleeping on her legs and she doesn't want to disturb him.
Her skin has been peeled back from her arm to expose the metal underneath which in turn has been pried open to reveal cleanly arranged wires and a couple of charred circuits. She's happy that Lena's request for her to remain as still as possible prevents her from moving her head enough to look at her shoulder ; Alex took one look at it and turned green, and according to everyone who got to examine the wound and the scars left behind, Lex tried to cut her arm off with an icepick. Not a metaphor.
Lena resumes the steady stream of her narration, explaining everything she's doing and Kara tunes out her words, focusing instead on the rough rise and fall of her voice. She doesn't sound like herself just yet, her tone coarse and lower than usual, and it will be worse once she's done speaking, but Kara still enjoys listening to her. It's easier to tune out the rest when she has something to focus on. It makes this particular moment eerily normal, and if it weren't for just about everything else, this could be a regular day, Lena tinkering, Kara resting, Krypto sleeping. But it's not. They're not home, they're locked in the DEO, this is not mindless fun, but necessary repairs. Kara almost died and Lena is traumatised and normal little things that should bring her comfort have become sources of inexhaustible anger.
It takes Lena the entire day, rain battering the sole window of the med bay, to fix her arm. She implants a new kinetic battery, and a back up one, and redoes all the sentient wiring, her crooked voice soothing Kara through the pain of the nerves in her shoulder reacquainting themselves with the electricity running through the arm. Kara wasn't expecting it to be particularly quick and she doesn't mind it. In fact, she'd rather Lena take as much time as she needs, and then some. If she could not fix her arm at all, that would be even better. Because the sooner Kara's arm is fixed, the sooner her body is up and running, the sooner she has to move on, and shoulder the weight of the world again. She doesn't know if she can. It took her so long to reach a point where she was semi-okay with everything, with being a murderous undead cyborg, with the blood staining her hands, and now she has to start again from the bottom. Lower than the bottom even, because somehow this nightmare scenario happened twice, and now she has to dig herself out of a grave someone is constantly trying to close over her.
Just like Kara thought it would, time passes by differently once her body's been patched up and her soul shoved back where it's supposed to be. It seems to speed up, galloping towards the fateful "what now ?" moment.
What now, indeed. Do they go after Lex, and hope nobody dies but maybe him ? Does Supergirl go out to do damage control, and hopes no one else tries to take her down ? Do they stay huddled inside, weak and afraid ? They don't have that many options, but compared to the options Kara had for the past couple of weeks, the possibilities appear limitless.
What's strange is that everybody else seems to be waiting for her to make a decision. When Brainy comes in to report to Alex, her sister always turns to her. When Alex asks Lena if she wants to go home, her girlfriend turns to her. When Kelly asks Sam a question, her friend turns to her and later, when Ruby comes in with homework, Kara is the one whose help she requires.
What's going on doesn't really hit Kara until she goes down to visit J'onn, alone, and realises that between the time she couldn't speak and the time she didn't want to speak, she's entered a prolonged bout of deliberate mutism that she doesn't know how to get out of.
J'onn has been put in one of the bigger cells. Someone, Alex probably, has brought him books and a comfy blanket, and when Kara unlocks the door, she notices the power dampeners aren't even on ; he could phase out of the room at any time, but doesn't. She sits with him on the concrete slab that acts as a bed, a bench, and Kara supposes, a table if they were to settle on the floor. It's not particularly comfortable, but J'onn doesn't complain. She hands him a packet of Chocos, punched out of the vending machine, and shrugs when he kindly asks her how she's doing.
"It's okay," he says, "Alex told me you weren't in a chatty mood."
He opens the packet with a strange content smile, offers it to Kara who shakes her head again, then takes one and starts munching on it with intense focus. She should have brought him milk to go with it.
"Thank you for the biscuits," he says after a while, when he's eaten two and carefully folded the packet to keep the others from going bad.
Kara nods, and it's clear in J'onn's attitude that he doesn't mind her silence. No tension radiates of him, he seems at peace with himself, and with her. He smiles again, a curious fatherly smile, and he studies her, gaze inquisitive but somehow also light and reassuring. Kara doesn't feel like he's trying to peel back the layers of her soul and it's a really nice change.
"I know it might be hard to understand," he says, "but I hope you will, if you let me explain it to you." He marks a short pause, waits for Kara to nod then continues. "I've been thinking about stepping down for a while. Before the government got its nose in our business, and before Brainiac." He pauses again to let this sink into Kara. "I'm old," he laughs, "and tired. And I've been training Alex to take over for years. I've always known she would be perfect for the job."
That, Kara can agree with. Alex is good at her job ; focused and dedicated. She wonders if J'onn took the time to tell her that, told her he was proud of her even after she failed to bring back Kara unscathed. Knowing him, he probably did.
"She disagreed with this plan," J'onn continues slowly, his voice soft as he exposes something that isn't exactly a surprising piece of information, "but someone had to take the fall, and that someone couldn't be her. She's got so much ahead of her. Me ? I've already lived longer than my due, I can handle a nap in a jail cell."
He chuckles, though it's not really funny. Kara wants to tell him exactly that. That it's not funny, that there's no reason to laugh at all ; but whatever words she can think of saying stay lodged firmly in her throat. She's so angry. And so scared.
"President Marsdin didn't give the order to take you down. If she had, I promise you I would have thought twice about agreeing to take the blame for her. She was bypassed by the army. General Lane to be exact. Not our biggest fan."
Kara shudders. Lucy's dad has never been her biggest fan it's true, even before he knew she was an alien ; but the idea of someone so closely acquainted to her ready to kill her on sight rests on her heavier than Lex's hatred. Lex, she can understand, he hates her on the very basis of her origins. But Samuel Lane ? Someone she had dinner with and with whom she plotted birthday presents and holidays ? It doesn't feel right.
"So I had a long chat with President Marsdin," J'onn says after taking a long sip out of a metal canteen, "and we decided it would be better for her to stay in power for now. The country needs someone like her, a buffer between fear, hatred, and peaceful aliens. Once the dust has settled, I will stand trial and be acquitted."
A question must flicker in Kara's eyes because J'onn elaborates immediately, his voice dropping conspiratorially, a bit like he's trying to make her laugh. "The president is an alien. We really are everywhere."
Kara wishes she would find this funny. She doesn't ; it just makes her want to scream. And maybe that's exactly she's going to do. Maybe she's just going to scream, and scream, and scream, until she fucking chokes and dies.
J'onn doesn't give her the opportunity. "I know I can't understand what you went through," he says, "not really, not fully. None of us can. And I know that in comparison what I did here might not seem like enough to you, but I had to maintain the status quo to buy us time to find you, and I don't regret it."
"You're right," Kara croaks, "you don't understand. Do you know why you don't understand J'onn ? Why Alex doesn't understand ? Why Lena doesn't understand ?"
"Maybe you can tell me," J'onn offers gently.
For a long moment, the fact that she's the one who spoke appears so ludicrous to Kara that she doesn't say anything more. Part of her is intensely relieved that it's her own voice that came out of her mouth, the other is all too happy to finally have an outlet for her anger.
"Because you're not like me J'onn," she says, voice low and full of rage. "You've never been like me and you never will. I'm a robot. A fucking robot J'onn." She rises from her seat in one fluid deadly motion, darts to the other side of the cell to face him, body tense and ready to attack. "I was built for violence and death and it doesn't matter that this is not who I am because- because-" She pauses, inhales deeply. "Because anyone with too much time on their hands can- Get. Into. My. Fucking. Head," she seethes, punctuating each words with a harsh slap to her forehead, "AND TURN ME INTO A KILLER."
J'onn doesn't try to interrupt her ; only stares at her with an acute sadness.
"You don't know what it's like ! None of you ever will !" Kara shouts, whirling around to face the door a millisecond before it opens and Alex and Lena come running in. "My body is a killing machine and I'm terrified ! I'm terrified all the time ! That I'll wake up one morning with your blood on my hands, that I'll have killed you and the parts of me that are made to do so will have enjoyed it..."
She slams her fist on the reinforced glass panel and it shatters, sharp translucent shards raining down on her sister. "That's what you don't understand ! I will kill you, AND I WILL ENJOY IT !"
Alex takes a step back and Kara laughs, sinking to her knees. The glass cuts through her sweatpants, but not her skin. "I will enjoy it," she repeats in a whisper. "You should shut me down. Just fucking shut me down Alex."
"I'm not going to do that," her sister says softly, kneeling in the broken glass before her. "I'm not giving up on you. I'm never going to give up on you."
"Well you should. I don't deserve your kindness. And I don't want it."
Alex inhales sharply, her breathing too loud in the sudden quietness of the room. Behind her, Lena is almost not breathing at all.
"I know you're scared. I know things are not okay right now but we're going to work together to make it okay. I promise. We're going to make it okay."
"No. No no no no," Kara mumbles repeatedly, "no Alex. No. You don't get it. I'm not- I'm not scared."
Scared doesn't even begin to cover it. Scared is tiny and ridiculous compared with the magnitude of the storm in her chest. Scared is laughable, scared can be coddled and tamed, scared is nothing. Kara isn't scared, Kara is terrified, and she lets it know by releasing a scream that has been building up for decades.