Into the Fray, Unflinching

by gldngrl7

Story 5 in the "Hanging On, Letting Go" series. Follows "Edging Toward Synchronicity". Please heed all Author's Notes/Tags! SYNOPSIS: Unconscious following his meltdown, Mon-El is trapped inside his own mind. Kara must take extreme measures to reach him before he slips out of her reach and is lost forever. But does he even want to return to her?

27. Chapter 27

Title: Into the Fray, Unflinching

Author: gldngr7

Rating: Explicit

Began: April 21, 2017

Chapters: ?

Feedback: Encouragement and constructive criticisms are always welcome. Flames are destroyed with my freeze breath.

Author's Notes:

Chapter 27/?

When his feet hit the floor of the DEO Mon-El discovers, to his surprise, that Alex and Superman have anticipated their arrival. True to her character, Alex has organized a welcome party that not only includes a handful of DEO agents with loaded weapons, but also a gurney and a medical team, including her own mother, Eliza Danvers. Superman awaits them as well, his hands on his hips, joined by both Winn and even Cisco Ramon.

"The gang's all here," Mon-El quips, hoping to put the armed guards at their ease.

"About time," Alex exhales, relieved. She guides Mon-El with his burden away from the portal. "Kara's knapsack came through half an hour ago."

"I stepped in right after it," Mon-El remarks, a confused expression on his face.

"There's a bit of a time lag." Superman steps forward to relieve Mon-El of his burden, transferring the comatose Kryptonian princess to the gurney. "I tried to tell her she was worrying for nothing."

Rolling her eyes, Alex quickly shifts her focus and examines the patient's protruding belly, just as she did back in the cave. "This can't be right," she announces, her eyes widening.

"What?" Mon-El demands. "What's wrong?"

"She isn't healing."

"The stasis meds are likely preventing it. We'll have to remove the device," Eliza Danvers asserts, her knitted forehead broadcasting that this outcome had not been part of the plan.

Alex brushes aside locks of Gata's long, blonde hair to examine the jewel attached to her chest. Static in the Phantom Zone, the jewel is now a blinking yellow. "We have to take them into surgery. How much time do you think we have left?" she asks Mon-El.

Quickly, he translates time in his head. "Phase yellow lasts for roughly a quarter of an hour, then turns solid red for a few more minutes before shutting down completely. In normal circumstances it takes a person of her size approximately one hour to metabolize the stasis chems and regain consciousness. I'm not sure how her pregnancy might hinder …or hasten…her recovery. Not to mention the yellow sun radiation."

"Leave that to me," Eliza reassures him. "Now show me how to remove this device."

Quickly, Mon-El heeds her request, gently deactivating the device from the small button at the tip, turning the gem dark. Tiny needles embedded in the sleeping woman's skin release and the stasis gem rolls off into his hand.

"Her wounds are already healing; we have to be quick," Alex breathes a sigh of relief and glances up at her mother with a nod. "It shouldn't be long now." The superficial stab wounds, left long ago by Seflan Mos, knit together right before their eyes.

When the last of the deeper wounds on Gata's belly seal tight, her skin appearing as though never damaged, Eliza reaches into the pocket of her white lab coat. She withdraws a shiny silver cuff, about an inch wide, with a blue gem in its center, and slips it onto the patient's wrist. "Let's get her to the surgical suite," Eliza commands the medical team, raising the gurney's side rail and unlocking its wheels.

The gem on the cuff glows blue when it touches Gata's skin, reminding Mon-El of the rainbow gem Kara had just used to secure his escape from the Phantom Zone. "Wait! Is that…more Kryptonite?" he calls after Dr. Danvers even as she's rolling the gurney away from them.

"Blue Kryptonite," Alex answers, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Noting the concern on Mon-El's face, Kara's cousin explains, "It renders Kryptonians temporarily powerless for as long as they're in contact with it."

"We got the primer from Kara while we were in the Phantom Zone. It's just that…I promised Trel that no harm would come to her. Making her vulnerable on purpose, just makes it harder to keep that promise. That's all."

"She's perfectly safe. She'll wear the Kryptonite for as long as it takes to render the necessary medical treatment to her unborn child and regain consciousness."

"We don't want her waking from stasis with superpowers. We've made that mistake before, if memory serves," Alex refers to Mon-El's own emergence from pod stasis. In his confusion and disorientation, he'd had a tense and physical confrontation with Supergirl and multiple DEO agents before escaping into the night of a world that was utterly strange to him. At the time, when he opened his eyes, all he saw was that his guard, though beautiful, wore a Kryptonian sigil for the House of El. The last person he'd seen wearing that sigil had been murdered on his planet, just before he'd stolen the dead man's pod. In the moment, he'd had no reason to believe he'd awoken in safety.

"It can be quite terrifying," he agrees. "It's probably for the best."

"We thought so, too," Alex concurs. "It's been nearly two weeks since I returned from the Phantom Zone—"

"Two weeks?!" Mon-El's interjects, eyes widen.

"It was enough time to plan. Enough time to get the Projector to the DEO, so that Gata could be taken straight to the Infirmary to have her medical needs addressed."

"I thought…I thought you were going to take the baby out," Mon-El asks, confused.

"We will…if we must," Eliza announces, carefully. "With the help of the blue Kryptonite, we'll be able to do a sonogram and assess what's going on inside first."

"But the yellow sun…"

"We don't know how many, if any, RADs filter through the mother's skin, or if the baby, being half Daxamite, will even have the same biological reaction to the radiation. Simply put, we're in uncharted waters. For all we know…that baby is slowly bleeding to death inside its mother's womb, unable to access or even metabolize life-giving radiation. A few simple tests should give us more to work with. If we find that an emergency caesarean is the safest course of action, that's what we'll do." Mon-El nods, perhaps seeing some of the wisdom in her decision.

"I'll be with her the whole time," Alex reassures him. "Stay here and wait for Trel and Kara. The last thing we need is for him to panic when he comes through the portal and can't find her. Which should be any minute now."

Mon-El watches Alex rush away and turns back to the still open swirl of the space-time portal. "He was just behind me," his brows knit in confusion. "I could practically feel him breathing down my neck."

"The portal doesn't work in real time…our time…whatever," Kal-El tries to explain. "According to Jor-El's avatar, the Projector takes longer to reconstitute biological material, which is why it took so long for you to arrive after the knapsack? It was smart of Kara to send it through first."

"I think she just wanted you to know we were friendlies."

"Incredibly smart," he reiterates, with a pointed glance at the armed guards.

Before Mon-El can open his mouth to agree or simply praise the intelligence of his mate, Trel spills from the swirling, bending vortex as though pushed through it from the other side. Tripping over his own feet, he lands indelicately on his stomach with a groan, splayed out on the slick, cold floor.

Before Mon-El can extend a hand of assistance, Trel scrambles to his feet, immediately on his guard. Taking in the sight of the man wearing the sigil of El on his chest and armed soldiers dressed all in black, his eyes flick back and forth frantically.

"You're safe," Mon-El assures him. "They're friends. They just need to be sure you are as well." Pointing at Superman, Mon-El introduces him. "This is Kara's cousin, Kal-El. He's Gata's ancestor, too. He won't hurt you."

Kal's gaze bounces back and forth between the two Daxamites, as though his head sat on a swivel.

"Right! Let me see if I have this…turns out, your paternal great grandmother was from the House of Ur. She and Gata were cousins. Close as sisters, apparently. So…you're family." Mon-El nods as he finishes his explanation, as though proud for correctly remembering his El family history.

"That's not all who's family," Kal replies. "Of course…we knew Prince Trel was your ancestor, but I wasn't expecting you to look quite so…."

"Oh, that!" Mon-El brightens, his face breaking into a grin. "I'm HIS clone," he points to Trel, identical but for the damaged face. "What a relief, am I right? I mean…it doesn't fix all the horrible things King Vir did to me, but I do feel like a weight has been lifted!"

"My wife?" the new arrival interrupts.

"Already on her way to the infirmary," Mon-El answers, modulating his tone to sound as confident and reassuring as possible. "And you should be there as well. You're not healing as quickly as Gata did, but a little time under the yellow sun lamp should help speed that along."

"Healed?" Trel asks, his eyes opening wide. "Truly?"

"She was still under the influence of the stasis chems, so she hasn't regained consciousness, but her wounds healed in a matter of moments," Kal-El confirms. "Now they're running some tests on the baby to see how it's faring."

"I must be with her."

"I hear you," Mon-El nods. "But you don't want the first time she sees you in a hundred and thirty-five cycles for your face to look like…that…do you? No offense, but it's kind of an ugly mug."

"You need medical assistance," Kal agrees, pointing at Trel's torn face. "We should get someone to look at that," Kal agrees. "Mon-El, why don't you escort him to the infirmary and get him under a lamp. I'll wait for Kara and debrief her when she arrives.

"I think I can handle that." Turning to Trel, he urges their guest to follow him.

Mon-El, acutely aware of Trel's concern for his wife, detours first to the observation room of the surgical suite where Trel can catch a brief glimpse of his slumbering wife. Glancing up and seeing their guest looming above them, Alex greets him with a nod behind surgical scrubs. Preparing to perform a 3D ultrasound on the patient, Eliza Danvers pulls back the blue surgical drapes to expose Gata's pristine belly, causing Trel to gasp.

"I would not have believed it," he shakes his head. "Had I not seen it with my own eyes." For a moment, he leans his forehead against the glass of the observation window and breathes a deep sigh of relief, his entire body shuddering its release.

Over the intercom, Alex explains the procedure they are about to perform, including the use of blue Kryptonite to suppress her metabolism and healing factor until she awakens, and the situation can be explained to her.

Everything happens in a whirl after that. Mon-El ushers Trel from the observation room. Eyes identically the size of half-dollars, Caitlin, Winn and Cisco meet them at the door to the infirmary and after brief introductions, they usher Trel to the nearest medical bay, chattering in unison about the excitement of learning the truth of Mon-El's genetic origin.

Seemingly unconcerned by the trio's collective nerdgasm, Trel's thoughts remain on his wife and her condition. "Are you certain she'll be all right?"

While expertly connecting electrical leads to Trel's temples, as well as his upper chest and the inside of his elbows, Caitlin parrots the go-to caveat for all doctors. "Every procedure carries some risk."

"But she's Kryptonian…." Winn interjects, in an effort to calm him.

"So…I like her odds," Cisco finishes with a shrug of his shoulders.

"And she's in the best possible hands," Mon-El adds.

Before turning the device on, Caitlin dons a pair of latex gloves and carefully removes the crude stitches in his cheek before debriding the ages-old wound of its collected dirt and detritus. Once finished, Mon-El pulls a stool next to the bed to sit beside him.

The team discovers in a matter of mere minutes that, unlike Mon-El, Trel's body doesn't siphon electricity to heal. Instead, his body only utilizes the yellow sun radiation, at about one quarter the rate that Kara's body absorbs it.

"Must be the time Mon-El spent trapped in the Well of Stars," Winn theorizes.

"Just as we suspected," Caitlin nods. "It apparently changed his body on a fully molecular level. Fascinating."

"Allowing him to convert electricity to energy," Cisco confirms.

"Not to mention…fly," Winn adds.

Huddled together in a cluster, the three scientists continue their theorizing as the wounds of their newest Daxamite guest slowly begin to knit back together. Unlike Kara's wounds, which heal almost as fast as they occur, Trel's wounds appear to visually heal in a process similar to that of a human, only with more rapidity. The jagged tear on Trel's face slowly knits back together from his cheek to his lips, forming a thick scab that causes the man's face to itch monstrously.

Tempted to scratch, he distracts himself by peppering Mon-El with questions about the Fall of Daxam and the unfortunate destruction of their shared homeworld. Before he can get the full story though, the scab on his face thins out as the skin of his cheek grows tighter and tighter.

Knowing from personal experience that healing under the radiation lamp can trigger a powerful thirst in him, he offers Trel a bottle of water. The offer is gratefully accepted, as though Trel had longed for it, but been afraid to ask.

"It's barbaric, isn't it?" Trel asks distractedly, after draining the bottle of its clear, cool contents. "This primitive childbirth business…."

Mon-El shrugs, admitting he knows little about the intricacies of childbirth. "It does seem like the birthing matrices were less…messy."

After an eternity of of watching over one's sleeping wife, it can be easy to forget how it was before it all went awry so long ago now – before betrayal did its best to rob them of their future. But when trapped in the Aether, or the Phantom Zone as he'd eventually come to know it, he had two choices in the end. To give up the memories of the long-ago lost life – or to cling to those memories with all the strength he could muster. To draw strength from the hope that resided in Gata for as long as the stasis gem remained active.

"She loved it," he confesses, wistfully. "Uncomfortable at times, especially as her balance shifted and moving about became more difficult, or when sleep began to come in fits and starts. But feeling our child grow and move inside of her…she said she wouldn't trade it for anything. Began to question why both our peoples would ever willingly give up such an intense emotional experience."

"We became too wrapped up in our mutual rivalry," Mon-El theorizes. "It became more important to be better than the other through genetic manipulation. That's why."

"Gata believed that it must have been a man's idea to take reproduction out of the hands of the women. That deep down all men are jealous of a woman's ability to grow life inside of them, and so our peoples used science as a way to rob them of it entirely."

"That makes sense, too."

"In a way…it also makes sense that we must now be forced to continue our respective races in the old way – a single torn people, reunited after generations apart. We must save our two cultures, by bringing them together. Rao's punishments can also be his blessings, if one is wise enough to see it. In truth…it's what Gata and I wanted all along for our peoples. Just…maybe…not in this dramatic and desperate fashion."

Mon-El's brow crinkles with concern, his lips pursing tightly. He opens his mouth to speak but thinks better of it before uttering a careless word.

"What is it?" Trel insists, recognizing the familiar expressions as though looking into mirror at his own recent past. "Is there something about Gata's condition you haven't told me?"

"No" Mon-El rushes to reply, putting him at ease. He shakes his head. "It's nothing like that."

"What then?"

Looking surreptitiously about, Mon-El clocks the position of other people in the room. Caitlin rushes about on the far side of the room to calibrate equipment she'll need to take readings. A few yards away, Winn and Cisco gab about clones and the cloning process, and what they can learn from having access to both an original and his offshoot. Mon-El turns back to Trel and lowers his voice, wishing to remain unheard by all but the man seated before him.

"Kara and I…well…we thought we might be pregnant. In the beginning. A slip up with birth control," he shrugs sheepishly. "My fault."

"But you weren't," Trel infers, before Mon-El can continue.

He shakes his head. "And now she's afraid that it can't happen. That perhaps we're too genetically different."

"Ridiculous," Trel answers. "You can set those fears to rest."

"It's just that…"

"What?"

"There were rumors…after your so-called deaths. The story ciculated that Gata had a…a Kryptonian lover and that Krypton conspired to sneak its own pureblood onto the Daxam throne by pulling the wool over your eyes."

Trel sighs deeply, his head dropping back onto the mattress. "I should be surprised, I suppose, but I'm not. After everything the Trinitarians did to me…to my wife, it makes sense that they would invent a fiction that puts Kallas Max into the role of hero, saving all of Daxam from some dastardly Kryptonian plot."

"So…I hate to ask…but there's no way that—"

"There's no possible way, Mon-El," Trel interrupts, circumventing Mon-El's question. "Every bit of that story had to have been a lie, especially the part about Gata carrying anyone's child but mine." Trel examines Mon-El's face. "But I can see that you're uncertain."

"Chalk it up to ages of being fed propaganda."

"Gata is the most transparent woman you could ever meet," Trel chuckles, unhindered by the nearly almost healed scab on his cheek. "I learned to read her within the first few moments of meeting her. She has this crinkle between her eyes…"

"Kara has it too," Mon-El nods, a grin splitting his face.

"Then you know of what I speak."

"I do."

"More to the point, Gata doesn't have a heart for deception. Despite the powergrabbing machinations of her House, she's always been a bastion of truth. Not merely because she believes deeply in honesty, but also because she hasn't a treacherous bone in her body. I suppose it's what drew us to one another. Both of us had grown up surrounded by deceptions and obfuscations, prevaricating and politicking – we needed one person we could trust when our backs were against the wall – a partner. We found that in one another." After a beat, the nostalgic expression slides from Trel's face, his silver eyes darkening like the sky before a storm rolls in. "Except that I failed her."

"You didn't," Mon-El replies simply, recognizing the very tendency for self-flagelation in his own personality and refusing to indulge it in Trel. "You kept her alive and more importantly, you kept the faith – in conditions I cannot even imagine. And I've only recently returned from a visit in my own personal hell. In no time at all, you'll be holding your child in your arms, Gata will awaken and you'll be a family. Reminds me of a saying they have on this planet."

"Which is?"

"'Better late than never'," Mon-El quotes.

"I suppose one can't argue that logic," Trel agrees with a tentative smile. The scab on his face has reverted to an angry, dark pink line, raised slightly higher than the skin around it. "Better late than never," he echoes. "And after that?"

"We'll figure it out. Let's not worry about that yet. There will be plenty of time later to worry about what comes next. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Trel nods, an invisible weight lifting from his spirit. His eyes droop wearily, drifting closed. "Plenty of time for worry later…."

"Seems like you've had to carry a lot of worry for an eternity already. Maybe you should let us carry it for awhile." Mon-El glances up to see Alex, dressed head to toe in surgical blues, standing in the doorway.

As if the room was filled suddenly with an electrical charge, Trel's head snaps in her direction, his face growing visibly pale, "Al-Ex?"

"Is…something wrong?" Mon-El asks, his heart rising to his throat.

"We visualized your wife's womb with the ultrasound. The fetus appears well, and the umbilical vein repaired itself along with the rest of Gata's wounds. So…either the fetus was miraculously lucky and wasn't injured by the attack, or Gata's healing abilities were extended to the baby. We're not certain which."

"Thank Rao!" Trel praises.

"However," Alex added, her voice shaking slightly, "while examining her, we discovered that her cervix is already seven centimeters dilated. It's likely that she was in latent labor for hours before she was attacked. At any rate, the baby's head is engaged and fully effaced and the fetal monitor shows contractions occurring at fifteen-minute intervals. We hope that with the blue Kryptonite cuff on she should be able to safely deliver the child without surgical intervention. Her vital signs are stabilizing so she should be regaining consciousness any minute now." Addressing Trel directly, she grins, "If you've recovered enough, you can be with her when she wakes up."

He understands nothing of what Al-Ex tells him, except that he will now be allowed to see her. Trel scrambles to his feet, divests himself of the electrical leads attaching him to the monitoring equipment faster than he can comprehend. Hardly aware that he's left his new allies behind in a burst of generated breeze, he's standing, flabbergasted, beside Gata's bed for nearly a minute, before Al-Ex comes sprinting into the room, Mon-El following closely behind.

"What just happened?" Trel marvels.

"You can move much faster on this planet than you're accustomed to," Mon-El chuckles. "It can be a little difficult to modulate at first, especially when your adrenaline spikes."

"And this is…normal?"

"You'll need some training to learn to control your powers. Both of you will," Alex explains. "But for now, be gentle with her, because the Kryptonite makes her as vulnerable as she was on Daxam."

A look of horror crosses his face. "Will I…will I be a danger to our child?"

"We'll get you something delicate to practice with," Alex suggests.

Mon-El's eyes light up with inspiration. "Maybe Winn can rig up something that will warn him when his strength is reaching dangerous levels."

"That's a good Idea, why don't you go talk to him about it?" Leaning forward, she lowers her voice to speak to him privately. "It's probably best if we keep the number of people in the room to a minimum when she regains consciousness. I imagine she'll be disoriented enough, without having her husband and his look-alike staring down at her."

"Right! Of course," he nods as her reasoning sinks in. "I'll go talk to Winn and Cisco and see what they can come up with."

With a last glance at Trel, Mon-El backs out of the room, colliding with a recently returned Kara in the process. His eyes light up at the sight of her, sending a rush of warmth to the pit of her stomach. Gratefully, she accepts his exuberant embrace when he wraps his arms around her and pulls her close. "Took you long enough," he sighs into the curve of her neck.

"Kal explained that the time lag that can happen when multiple people come through the wormhole together. I'm sorry it took so long. What did I miss?"

"I'll explain on the way to the lab."

He gives her the full update on the way to see Winn and Cisco. In relief, Kara drops her head onto his shoulder when he tells her that it appears that Gata and her baby are both going to be okay. And that the baby is coming sooner, rather than later.

"So…now we have to figure out a way to test Trel's strength and train him how to modulate it so that he can hold his own child." Winn and Cisco's combined ears perk up, sensing that their skills are needed.

"I can build a miniaturized version of the sensors built into the equipment used to measure your abilities," Cisco announces.

"And I can install them into one of those scary life-like baby dolls they use in parenting classes."

"Will that work?" Mon-El asks, having no real frame of reference for the concept of the scary babies to which Winn refers.

Winn grins, his eyes glinting with mischief. "I can make it scream bloody murder when he holds it too tight."

"And coo when he applies just the right amount of pressure," Caitlin adds, pinning Winn with the glare like that of an overburdened older sister. "I'll calculate the acceptable pounds per square inch for cradling a newborn."

Project clearly well in hand, Kara and Mon-El stand in the center of the lab for a few moments as the trio of geniuses bustle about, focusing on their task with such intensity that it isn't long before Kara is certain that invisibility is now one of her powers. "Maybe we should…." She points at the exit.

"I can see that we're only getting in the way here," Mon-El announces, his voice raised slightly, offering the collective geniuses the opportunity to contradict his assertion, but mostly expecting that no one would bother.

True to his expectation, the trio mumble their agreements in unison, barely acknowledging Kara and Mon-El's existence, let alone their impending exuent.

Out in the corridor, Mon-El spins on his heel, first in one direction and then the opposite. "Where do we…what do we do…now?" he wonders, feeling adrift for the first time since returning from the Phantom Zone.

Kara shrugs, reluctance clinging from her spirit. "I don't want to leave until I know everything's okay…."

"But?"

"But I should probably put in an appearance as Supergirl. Something public, so National City's worst and dimmest know that the salad days are over."

"I'll come with," Mon-El encourages. "There must be a cat in a tree that needs saving somewhere. Besides, once you feel the wind in your hair, you'll need me to drag you back to the DEO."

"You're probably right," she pouts, balling one hand into a fist and playfully punching him in the arm.

Only a handful of minutes later, a short in the electrical wiring of old office highrise sets the dingy, polyblend carpeting ablaze. The fire immolates so quickly and with such fury the forty-two employees on the 19th floor are intractably cut off from the escape stairwell.

It's just their extraordinary luck that Supergirl and her mysterious companion, Valor, are recently returned from the Phantom Zone, after a longer than planned absence.

Nothing in all the worlds is like awakening from stasis chems.

There's no gentle fluttering of eyelids, or long tunnel of darkness with an ever-growing pinprick of light at its end. There's no slow climb to consciousness, where one periodically slips back into the darkness, the mind protecting itself from the harshness of the waking world. No…easing into it, as it were.

It's like falling from the tallest peak, except instead of splattering against the hard ground beneath, the user is impaled on their own wakefulness. Eyes blinded, gut-wrenched, and ears deafened by the sound of her own heartbeat – racing as though chased ruthlessly by the darkness into the light. A strong gasp for breath by air-starved lungs feels like a garat stepping on her chest and she claws at her breastbone hoping to remove the pressure.

Blinding lights greet her newly opened eyes and a flurry of activity stirs around her, a chaos of voices too sharp to comprehend in all the quickening. Something is placed over her face, sending cool air pushing into her mouth and nostrils.

"She's waking!"