"...they're in this room and…"
Kara registers Brainy's words. And part of her also registers Sam's sudden appearance in front of her, her eyes red with anger and her body trembling with repressed strength. But all she can think about, all she can truly grasp, are the nightmares, and the blood on her hands. The last attack happened a few blocks away from her home. And she's privy to every development of their investigation, she'd know where to strike. What if, what if it's her ?
"You better have a fucking good explanation for this bullshit," Sam seethes inches from her face. "Why is my building on lockdown on orders from the DEO ?"
Kara blinks, Sam flickering in and out of existence as her brain loops again and again on her bloody hands.
Alex slips in between the two Kryptonians, a very stupid thing to do that is very much like her.
"We couldn't find you," she says, slowly marching Sam backwards with only the slight pressure of a hand on her chest.
"And that somehow warrant such a disproportionate reaction ?! My kid is in that building !"
"Exactly," Alex says, one hand still on Sam as the other rises slowly as a warning. It's only then that Kara notices the dozens of red dots shining on her former friend ; they're ready to take Sam down. She wants to intervene but each time she tries to open her mouth, her brain freezes. "I had to protect Ruby," Alex finishes.
"From what ?! I fell asleep at work ! She knows what to do when I get home late."
"Are you sure you just fell asleep Sam ?" Alex asks with a cold calm that Kara doesn't understand.
"What the fuck does that mean Alex ?"
"There was another attack. So I'll ask again, are you sure you were asleep ?"
Sam sags, all fight draining from her in the blink of an eye. She leans forward on Alex's hand and opens her mouth to say the worst thing she could possibly say : "I, I don't know. Alex, I don't know."
"You understand that we have to take precautions, right ?"
"Lena !" Sam interjects with renewed energy, "there are cameras in my office, right ?"
Kara's ghostly vision of her own bloody hands disappears from her sight quickly enough for her to catch all colour draining for Lena's face.
"I. No. Your office was empty before you came and it's not linked to our security system yet. And the whole building, I'm so sorry Sam but it's lead lined. No heat or radiation signature can be picked up from it."
"Why would your building be lead lined ?" Alex asks in confusion.
"Because my brother is crazy and thought Superman was after him," Lena snaps defensively. "He also installed a cloaking device on the manor and once tried to chip me in my sleep. He's a homicidal maniac, this kind of shit is common knowledge and…"
"I'll come quietly," Sam cuts in, raising her hands in surrender, "so you can run your tests. Do what you want with me, or what you need. But someone needs to watch over Ruby. That's all I ask."
"I promise you she'll be safe," Alex says softly, her voice bordering on heartbreak. "Kara and I will make sure of this. Are you ready to go ? Or do you want to call her first ?"
"No," Sam says firmly, "if I'm… If that thing is me, I don't want to be anywhere near her."
She straightens up, getting ready to go, and for the first time in a long long time, it strikes Kara how tall she is. She tries to match her height with the vigilante's, but she only saw blurry images of the killer, and the bulky armour they're wearing doesn't help. If only she could get a good look to make sure that it's not Sam, and that it's not her. She flexes her hands, wondering if she'd remember punching someone to death ; wondering also why her thoughts refuse to make it past her lips, why she can't ask to be locked up with Sam until they can be sure that it's neither of them and that everyone is safe.
"Alex," J'onn says, breaking character for a second at the sight of his daughter looking so so small next to their new prisoner, "give her one of the good blankets. Make sure she's comfortable."
Alex only nods, words eluding her as she leads her daughter's mother away. Their retreating figures vanishing down the corridor look almost unreal. Kelly takes a step forward, one hand slightly raised like she thinks she can stop them, and it pains Kara to do so, but she has to hold her back. The hand she puts on her shoulder weights a thousand tons.
"Brainy," Lena asks, cutting the heavy silence left by Sam's surrender, "you said you had two things to tell us."
"Right," Brainy says, clasping his hand in front of him and staring ahead in a stilled manner that can't mean anything good. "Well before Sam of House Vex decided to show up, I was going to inform you that we have a lot of missing data. Our satellites seem to have suffer through several undetected overloads in the past months and that radiation signature jumps around a lot. I can't assure you that it really links back to the woman you just arrested."
"Which could mean…?" Kara dares to ask, albeit tentatively.
"Just about anything," Brainy concludes with a grim smile.
Things get a bit blurry afterwards. Kara tries her best to stay present, awake, to not slip away, because, what if ? They're dismissed after that, J'onn suggests that they all go home and get some sleep. The ride back to their building is the longest of Kara's life. Cuddled in the back of Lena's town car, she tries her best not to crush her hand ; she concentrates on the feeling of her delicate fingers between her own and clings to the slipping knowledge that she was born on Krypton, and isn't the produce of illegal bio engineering. Lena has questions of her own, concerns looming in her eyes, but she doesn't voice any of them, and Kara is both infinitely grateful for the reprieve and frustrated that Lena can't somehow read and voice the thoughts that are locked away in her brain. She can't understand why she doesn't manage to speak her fears and it only adds more to the crushing weight on her shoulders.
"Do you want to be alone ?" Lena asks, "Or can we talk for a bit ? I'll make some tea, and I think there's leftover banana bread."
Lena's soft voice shatters her constricting bubble of anguish, and Kara realises with a start that they are parked in front of their building. She has no idea of how long it's been since the car's stopped.
"My head's a bit of a mess," she manages to croak along with what she wills to be a reassuring smile but falls probably more on the side of a grimace. "So I don't know if I can talk much, but I don't want to be alone right now."
"We can take a nap if you want," Lena offers, running the soft pad of her thumb across the back of Kara's hand. "Your place or mine ?"
"I." Kara thinks about her apartment, the blood that is no doubt still on her sheets, the terrible feeling of being watched, followed. "Yours please," she says, her voice barely over a whisper.
She wants to be stronger, for Lena, for Alex, for Sam even ; but in this moment, she can't and it should be frustrating, it should make her angry that it takes so little to bring her down, but Lena is standing in front of the car, helping her out, so warm, so open, so willing to be strong for her, that it doesn't really matter if it takes her some time to get her head straight.
They end up falling asleep on the couch, food and tea untouched, just the two of them drifting off into slumber even when Kara is trying so hard not to because right now, falling back asleep is the most terrifying thing that could happen to her.
/
She wakes up with a start, her heart pounding so fast she's sure it's about to give out and with Lena crouched over her trying to keep her hands from scratching her arm off again.
"Kara. Kara wake up ! It's okay, it's nothing, just a bad dream."
Kara wills herself to still under Lena's hands. It's hard, her body is screaming for her to move, to get up, to do something ; and there's this feeling, this feeling of being watched that makes her want to run for her life. But lit from behind, Lena looks like an apparition, a sign, a message from Rao that she'll be alright. Even if she doesn't feel alright at all.
Tentatively, Lena brings her hands on her face, cupping it tenderly. She's looking at her, and it feels like she's staring into her very soul.
"It was just a bad dream. You're okay Kara."
"I don't remember what I dreamed of," Kara whispers. She sinks into the feeling of Lena's hands on her face, letting them anchor her to the present. They are just a little bit cold, like they always are, and if Kara focuses hard enough, she can feel faint calluses, a scar, everything that makes Lena's hands hers.
"You started screaming," Lena says softly, "and flailing like you were fighting something, or someone. You got up and shoved me aside. But it's okay," Lena adds hastily, soothing her thumbs on Kara's cheeks, "I'm okay, I'm fine. But me falling off must have distracted you because you just dropped back on the couch and started screaming again."
Slowly, Lena moves to sit on the edge of the couch and in doing so, exposes her face to a different lighting. It's entirely bruised on the left side, the deep pink colour contrasting so heavily with her pale skin that it's impossible to miss. Kara's hand raises on its own accord and when it reaches Lena's face, the bruise is swelled, and hot to the touch.
"I hurt you," she whispers hoarsely, her eyes prickling with tears as she forces them open so she can engrave this image in her mind ; she hurt Lena.
"It's okay."
"It's not..."
"You weren't in control of yourself," Lena cuts. "You were asleep. It's not your fault."
Kara blinks, and with her eyes closed, she sees blood on her hands. When she opens them again, it's to see the bruise on Lena's face. Something starts bubbling in her chest, a storm of fear and frustration, a hurricane of nightmares and Sam and the DEO and Alex and the vigilante and the sweating and the pain and, "I'm scared," she says, even if it's the last thing she wants to admit.
"Do you want to talk about it ?"
"No. But I think I have to."
For a second, Kara thinks that Lena is going to retract, to offer her an out, but she doesn't, and Kara doesn't know how she feels about it. She viscerally both wants to talk and remain silent, and so when Lena pushes her to speak, she's both relieved and desperately annoyed.
"I think so too," Lena says with a slight tremor in her voice. "I think it's important that we're both on the same page when it comes to what's in our heads right now."
"I'm scared," Kara admits again, freezing her gaze over Lena's shoulder so she doesn't have to really look at her.
"It's okay," Lena says with a somehow both sad and hopeful smile. "I am too. But I feel better when I'm with you, and I want to be that person for you too. Whatever is bothering you, you can tell me, and I'll do my best to carry it with you."
Kara opens her mouth once, twice, thrice, before she can form a comprehensible sentence ; and when she does, it feels like she's ripping the words out of her chest. "What if it's me ?" she whispers, the question the hardest thing that she's ever had to say, harder even than lying about how her parents died. "What if it's me Lena ? What if I'm the, The Blur, or whatever you want to call them ? Things have been happening to me. Things that are not normal for me. I've been having nightmares that I can't remember. And there was blood on my hands. And, and the attack on the Maaldorian's neighbourhood, it had to come from someone who knows what's happening. I wasn't a random thing. What if it's me ? What if I'm, what if I'm a Worldkiller ?"
Her heart is trying to break out of her chest and she's sweating again. She's not supposed to sweat. In front of her, Lena goes a little blurry and her head hurts so so much like something is pounding inside of her skull, trying to get out. What if it's her ? What if she's the Worldkiller ?
"I'm going to be honest with you," Lena says, her voice unsure and her heart beating almost as hard as Kara's. "I thought so too."
The world stops spinning, the universe working overtime to suck all the air out of Kara's lungs.
"For about half a second today," Lena continues, "because I was scared. Because you showed up on my doorstep covered in blood and because Brainy was telling us The Blur was in the room. And then Sam showed up, and I realised that it was impossible, and that I was wrong. I remembered what she said. You were born on Krypton Kara, you remember it, you remember your parents."
"It could all be fabricated," Kara cuts, the memory of her mother helping her into her pod flickering before her eyes.
"I don't think it is," Lena says softly. "I've lost my Mum too, and the love we feel for the ones who left us is not something that can be made up."
Kara thinks of her mother then, of falling back asleep in her parents' bed on rest days and baking in the morning. She thinks of her father too, of long nights in his lab and his boasting about her accomplishments. She can almost feel their hands around hers, Rao's warmth on her skin as they walked in the park. Her mother's smooth hair, her father's stubble ; it's all real, and yet…
"But you said it yourself…"
"I was scared," Lena says firmly. "We do and think terrible things when we're scared. I let the DEO lock up my best friend because I'm scared." Her last words dissolve in a whisper, and when Kara turns her eyes to her, Lena averts her gaze, dropping her head down. "The Blur rescued me you know, and I let them lock Sam up anyway."
"It wasn't your call to make." Hesitantly, Kara reaches out until she can frame Lena's face with her hands. A tear rolls down until it crashes against her finger, pushing on it as it looks for a way around. "I could have done something too. I could have asked to be locked with her and I didn't."
"I'd have nothing left if you'd done that," Lena whispers, her voice almost inaudible in her shame. "No Sam. No you. I know it's selfish, but I'd have been all alone, and I don't want that."
"Is that why…?"
"Don't think about me for a second," Lena cuts, "think about Krypton, about your parents. What do you feel ?"
Kara doesn't answer, she can't. A storm of feeling is raging inside of her and, hit from all sides by the warmth of her parents' love and the deep coldness of loss, she can't sort through it. This isn't something she's invented, these are things she's experienced, felt ; the death of her parents, of an entire planet, a civilisation burning out, the love of a family that now only exists in her memories. Something stronger cuts through it all, a hand on her chest, the warmth of a different kind of love, and Lena's voice. "What you remember can't be anything but real. You're a real person Kara."
"And Sam ?" Kara asks slowly, her words stumbling on Lena's as she tries to process what she said ; Kara is a real person, but Sam is too.
Lena's answer is unequivocal. "I'll save her."
