She should have seen it coming, really. Not just because things have a tendency to go awry in her life, but because imputing a new code in her cyborg girlfriend with little preparation was bound to be a bad idea. But Kara was in pain, writhing under the effect of kryptonite and bound to mentally flog herself upon waking up, and Lena had to do something. She should have seen it coming ; she didn't. And now there's a hand wrapped around her throat and the person squeezing and looking back at her has Kara's eyes and Kara's face, but isn't Kara. Or is she ?
As the air flow to her lungs reduces, the shouting in the room becomes more and more muffled ; her vision blurs too, and in a way, it's almost peaceful. Thinking gets hard, she doesn't really know what's happening anymore, but she's dying, that much she's sure of, and she's grateful that at least Kara is the last thing she saw. Someone rams into Kara and for a second Lena can breathe again before the steel like grip adjusts around her throat once more.
Wait, she doesn't want to die, not at all.
If she can get out of this deadly grip, she can save Kara, she knows it.
Alex's fuzzy bloody face appears in her reduced sightline and she thinks she's the one trying to shake Kara. She hears her muffled frightened voice, and a plea, over and over again. "Kara. Kara please wake up. Kara." Something loud pops in her ears and Kara staggers back, rocking Lena with her. Black spots dance in front of her eyes and a weak cry escapes her mouth against her will. It's nothing but a strangled moan, but something flickers in Kara's blurry eyes, and the pressure around her throat drops for longer than a second. And then returns tenfold.
Something, that she this time identifies as a bullet hits Kara again and Lena is quite sure that this is it for her. Her lungs are burning, she can't breathe, can speak even less and her last pathetic attempt turns into an almost silent "K-A." Then nothing. Nothing but black. Surely she can't be dead if she can acknowledge that there's nothing at all and she hangs to that fact for long enough to hear two words. Two words that are not her own. "Help me."
All at once, her back collides painfully with the ground and air returns to her lung. She wishes it hadn't when immediately after, she's hit with the stench of metal and burnt flesh. As her senses return to her, her ears fill with deafening shouts and she almost throws up when it adds to the pain of being thrown to the floor. A rough hand touches her arm and she recoils, tripping on herself as she tries to crawl back. She needs to open her eyes, find Alex and get out of here. She forces her eyes open, blinking heavily when all she can see is blinding light and the vague shape of a tall figure towering over her. Her vision adjusts, and she finds Alex next to her. It's her hand on her arm, her armoured glove that is anchoring her to reality. She looks up, slowly, following a trail of something that is neither blood nor machine oil but a terrible mixture of both. Kara is standing in front of her, her right arm torn away and hanging limply in her left hand. She doesn't have time to get out of the way before she all but collapses on her, a small bloody smile dancing on her lips.
Everything hurts. Everything hurts horribly like she's decided to battle a giant, or maybe been in several accidents involving fret trains. It's not what's preventing her from moving though, but a deep sense of dread that clutches at her lungs and crushes her down on the bed she's lying on. Panic seizes her and she shoots upright, ignoring the way her bones and muscles seem to snap back into place. She can't breathe, the air around her thicker than impenetrable goo ; she's dying, having a heart attack, and "you're okay," a kind voice says close to her. "You are okay."
She opens her eyes to find Alex sitting next to her, her face blooming with bruises and the cut on her lips barely dried. Reality slams into her like a speeding truck, a phantom hand wrapping around her throat and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing until air ceases to exist. "Easy there," Alex says softly. "Breathe."
"Kara ?" Lena chokes out. "Where's Kara ?"
"She's sleeping next door. It's better to keep her under until we can figure out what to do." Her words are painstakingly slow, and they collide with Lena's need to fix this in an instant. "Doctor Veritas patched up her arm. I promise you she's as okay as she can be right now."
"So not okay at all," Lena croaks snappily.
Alex doesn't answer, but her grim expression says it all. Instead, she lifts a cardboard cup of water to Lena's lips and lets the liquid slowly trickle down. Swallowing is painful, and the cold water burns all the way down her bruised throat.
"I need to see her," she says once she's mostly sure her body can handle speaking.
"I'm not sure that's a good idea. You've been through a deeply traumatising event and you need to rest."
"I need to see her," Lena says again, her words infuriatingly failing at conveying her urgency.
"I..." Alex glances at the thick door separating them from her sister. The glint in her eyes tells Lena she too knows she should be on the other side with Kara.
"Please."
"Okay," Alex relents, "but you're taking a wheelchair."
Lena doesn't bother with replying, instead throwing the covers back and swinging out of bed in a staccato of movements. She almost face-plants on the ground, Alex dexterous hands thankfully catching her before she can hurt herself further. She lets herself be wheeled out of the room like a rag-doll of abrasive paper and barbed wire. There's a certain hesitancy in Alex's gait as she pushes her slowly after having spend a good minute tucking her under a blanket of the most depressing grey. There aren't many cracks in her tough exterior, but it still is her indestructible sister lying drugged and tied in the room they enter.
Kara's bed is flanked by four heavily armed DEO agents who at first hide her from view. From where Lena is sitting, they look even more threatening than usual, and she can't repress a shudder when her eyes ghost over the glowing canons of their kryptonite guns. Alex's gloved hand squeezes her shoulder reassuringly but the weight, though brief, doesn't help with the sterile and menacing atmosphere of the room. Her breath itches inside her burning throat but she does her best to hold it before expelling it slowly until its rhythm is mostly normal. Alex wheels her to the left side of the bed but as they pass by the foot of it, Lena gets a glimpse of the dip in the sheets where Kara's right arm used to be. The arm that she tore away from herself to save her. It makes her feel sick deep in the pit of her stomach, and she knows she needs time. Time to process her girlfriend being a cyborg. Time to understand how part of her is an evil robot. Time to devise a way of saving her. But she doesn't know how much time she has exactly, and her insides clench on themselves as cold fear washes over her. She's a literal genius, used to dealing with scientific conundrums and otherworldly technology ; but she's always been ill equipped when it comes to personal matters and here, these two sides of her are colliding and anxiety is oozing from all her pores.
They finally come to a stop next to the bed and Alex wordlessly waves her soldiers away. With a bit of struggle and contortions, Lena leans in to grab Kara's hand. It's cold in a way that she's unused to, her girlfriend usually running a few degrees higher than regular people. Kara looks surprisingly peaceful, if only a bit green, but there are new gashes on her face that don't seem like they will be healing anytime soon. She's still clad in her black suit, the cape spread out under her, and the dark material contrasts heavily with her pale and soft looking skin. Lena's fingers brushes against it, taking in the alienness of the rough fabric. It seems almost glued to Kara, and she can feel her relaxed muscles under it.
Alex rounds the bed to sit on the other side. With no hand to hold onto she struggles for a moment with what to do with hers until she simply lays it on her sister half torn shoulder. She does so carefully, softly, and Lena wonders if Kara would even be able to feel the touch if she were awake. Probably not. Silence stretches on for a while. It's not really uncomfortable, maybe just a bit heavy, and not really silent as it's filled with the clicking and beeping of various machines. At least Kara is breathing on her own this time.
"I can fix this," Lena says eventually though this short sentence doesn't even begin to broach the swirling mess of thoughts in her head ; it's just the first one she managed to grab.
"I know you can," Alex answers, her voice somehow sounding like a shrug even when she doesn't move at all.
"I've been working on a prosthetic for a while. I could adapt it for Kara, she'd get her arm back. It wouldn't..." Lena interrupts herself, feeling the urge to wave around non-descriptively but not wanting to jolt Kara. "It wouldn't fix everything but..."
"But it would be a good start," Alex finishes for her. "I think it'll help to not have a murderous piece of junk attached to her body." She stops and hesitates for a while, her words resting on the edge of her mouth in a way that has Lena think that she won't like what she has to say. Her next words however are as gentle as the others, and Lena understands why Kara loves her sister so much. "For the rest, I'd like for Brainy to help you. Kara trusts you and so do I, but he's a twelfth level intellect and we need all the help we can. Kara needs all the help she can."
"If he's as smart as you say he is, I need his help anyway," Lena admits with no bitterness. "This is bigger than me and I can't do it on my own."
"Oh I have no doubt that you could to it on your own," Alex says with a genuine smile. "But you need support and back up and Brainy is the only one who can keep up with you."
Alex's seemingly unwavering trust in her sparks hope and warmth in Lena. She failed at her first attempt, but Alex doesn't blame her, trusts her still, and so maybe Lena does have it in her to save Kara.
"Part of Kara's code downloaded to your tablet when she, crashed, I guess ?" Alex winces at the technical term she has to use to describe her sister. It's controlled, gone as soon as it appears, but it's the proof that though she appears calm and collected, what's happening to Kara is eating her, affecting her as much as it's wrenching Lena. "He's been working on it to get a head start."
"Okay," Lena whispers, pondering for a moment if she should reach out to provide comfort. After a second, she does, pushing on her legs to lift herself from the wheelchair so she can move her hand from Kara's to Alex's. She squeezes lightly and throws in a smile that she hopes is genuine and not a grimace at the weird posture she's putting her body in right now. "What happens after ?" she asks when she's back on her seat. "To Kara ?" she adds though the precision isn't really needed.
Alex sighs. "She's going to need us, a lot. And we can't give up on her. You weren't there when she first landed on Earth, but she does that thing where she retreats on herself and doesn't ask for help. She's going to need us."
"That's not what I was asking."
"Do you intend to bail on her ?" Alex asks quite sharply, her hand contracting around Kara's shoulder.
"No I..."
"Because I know it's a lot for a new relationship," Alex adds in a calmer, though a bit forced, way. "But she really cares about you and if you want to leave just fucking do it now."
"I'm not going anywhere," Lena says with a frown. "I care about her too. I really like your sister, and I'm not leaving."
"Good," Alex says firmly, her features relaxing almost imperceptibly.
"What I meant to ask was what the DEO was going to do with her ?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing ?"
"She didn't do anything wrong. It wasn't her, and I'm not going to let anyone punish her for that."
Lena feels a weight lifting off her chest. Kara's road to recovery will be long and hard, but at least she'll walk it free. She feels silly for thinking even for a moment that Alex would let anything like that happen to her sister when she barely tolerates the armed presence in the room. "Good," she says, echoing Alex's previous word with a stiff nod.
"Some of this I don't even understand," Lena groans as she slams her tablet down on the lab table. She closes her eyes for a second, trying her best to fight the pounding beginning of a headache. Even in the dark, lines of code dance in front of her. She feels nauseous, out of sorts, and generally useless.
Brainy is pacing a couple of feet away his fingers touching in a triangle as he mutters under his breath. "I know this, I know this, I know this." Lena would very much like for him to figure it out because most of Kara's coding is too alien for her to understand. No wonder why she fried when Lena tried to overwrite it with primitive Earth language. It's an advanced form of binary code mixed here and there with letters that seemed to have been jammed in as an after thought ; she wonders if this could be the source of Kara's glitches.
Brainy's pacing accelerates and Lena switches to going through his own files. Most of them are strictly restricted to DEO agents and she only glances at them in passing suddenly very, and slightly irrationally, afraid that they'll find a legal way to behead her if she stumbles on any kind of secret. She swipes to another file, this one an array of numbers and letters so complex she wouldn't be surprised if Brainy had downloaded it directly from his brain to the tablet. She barely glosses over it, her eyes skimming halfway through before she decides to just close it and take a break.
Something catches her eyes just before the screen goes black.
In her hast to turn the device back on, Lena drops it, and her hands chase after it as it tumbles to the floor. She catches it at the last second, her index and thumb straining to support its weight. On the way up, the momentum almost causes it to crash in her face, and if she wasn't frustrated before, she certainly is now.
The screen flickers to life, and there it is, the same sequence of letters that she found in Kara's code. "I have something," she mumbles. "I have something," she says louder when her half audible whisper fails to catch Brainy's attention. "Brainy ! What's this ?"
Brainy almost slams in the tablet when Lena thrusts it in his course. In a quite impressive fit, he leans at the last moment and bends backward to walk under her arm. "I calculated there was a 89.3 % chance you would interrupt me this way and came prepared," he said, turning around to grab the tablet out of her hand.
"What's this ?"
"The log from one of our satellite hack," Brainy says absentmindedly, dropping the tablet back in Lena's hands. "I don't see how this is relevant at the moment."
"This," Lena says, bitting back her anger as she shoves the device back in his face, "is in Kara's code."
"Oh," Brainy whispers. "Oh."
"Oh ?" Lena repeats, raising an eyebrow in frustration.
"Oh no, I know this." He stops for a second, turning the tablet sideway and bringing it closer to his face. "It's coluan," he says to Lena like it's supposed to mean something.
"Alright. Well can you do something with it ?"
"I can," Brainy whispers, his blue face contorting in a sad smile. "But I apologise for suppressing the memory ; I have an interesting number of evil ancestors."
"I'm gonna need to sit down," Alex mutters with her face between her hands.
"But you are already sitting down Agent Danvers," Brainy says in confusion. He himself is standing ramrod straight in a way that can only be described as painful. His face indeed, is contorted in discomfort, but with the way his cheeks are flushed, Lena isn't sure it has much to do with his posture.
"Figure of speech Brainy," Nia stage whispers behind him. She lays a soft hand on his elbow, but he doesn't seem to notice.
Back in her wheelchair on doctor's orders, Lena wheels herself closer to Alex so she can contort herself to put a hand on her forearm. Alex doesn't really seem to notice, but Lena doesn't mind, she needs the comfort too.
"So you're telling me," Alex says after a moment, "that a synthetic life form, who might be an estranged member of your family, hacked my sister, but it's not just a bad thing ? That's what you're saying, right ?"
"That is an accurate summary yes."
"And that's a good thing because… ?" Alex asks, failing to keep the bite out of her voice.
"It means I can reprogram her."
"And a bad thing because… ? I mean apart from the obvious fact that someone seems to have tinkered with my sister when she was a child."
"The interferences are probably due to increased proximity ; and, " Brainy marks a pause during which he looks around with the tiniest sign of hesitancy. "And my family members are not known for their great delicacy. I've been having strange recurring headaches. I should have investigated them sooner, and for that, I apologise Agent Danvers. Let me know if I can do anything to help."
"It's not your fault," Alex says through gritted teeth. "Just fix Kara. We're going to need her if we have to punch someone back into space."
Alex shoots up her chair, trips, then storms out.
"Agent Danvers," Brainy calls out after her. "Alex !"
Alex whirls around inches from the door, her hand already extended to slap it out of her way. "Just save my sister. Please."
The door slams behind her, and without her in it, the room suddenly seems too empty yet too small. A beat pass, then another during which they all hold their breath out of an unspoken common accord. Brainy is the first to break the silence. "I fucked up," he says, deflating on himself.
"No you didn't," Nia reassures gently, her voice soft and compassionate.
"I have let everyone down," Brainy goes on. "The correct Earth idiom in this case is indeed 'I fucked up'."
"Well what can I do to help ?" Nia pleads. "Do you want to talk about it ? Can I do anything for you ?"
"Pizza," he says, snapping his head up. "Apple and olives please."
He exits the room in a couple of quick determined strides. The door doesn't make any sound when it closes behind him.
"He's not very good with stress," Nia says, shooting an apologetic look Lena's way. "And his relatives… Well he doesn't have the best of relationship with the one he knows."
"I can relate to that," Lena mumbles. She tries to accompany her statement with a smile, but her face seems frozen and even the thought of getting her muscles to work hurts.
"Well," Nia says, putting her hand on her hips in a power pose that screams unease. "I'm going to order pizza. Do you want anything ?"
"I don't think I can stomach anything. But thank you."
"I'll get you tomato soup. Just in case. It always works for me." After slapping her hands on her thighs to punctuate her words, Nia starts towards the door. She falters a little, hesitates, then turns back to Lena. "It's going to be alright," she says gently. "I can sense it."
There's tomato sauce on Brainy's cheek and Lena finds the contrast with his blue skin intensely distracting. It's absolutely not what she should be focusing on right now, but it still is a recurring thing at the forefront of her mind. The thought circles back every few minutes, usually right before she acknowledges she's exhausted and pushes the fatigue away. Reasonably she knows she should take a break, take a painkiller and sleep for a couple of hours ; but Kara's life is at stake and so she ignores the pounding in her head and the ache in her throat and she keeps going.
Earlier, she scarfed down her soup, grateful in the end that Nia ignored her and got her food. It burnt her throat but settled her stomach and her grogginess, and fuelled her for a few more hours. They're closed to cracking it. At least that's what Brainy says, he's the one who's really working on the code, Lena herself is busy with finding a way to put it in her girlfriend without frying her. She's scared. Scared she'll fuck up and kill Kara. Scared shit'll go sideway and Kara will be alive but altered. Scared she'll turn her girlfriend into an empty shell. But she's managed to mostly tame her fear and it's bundled in a corner of her brain, like a cold beast, asleep for now, but with a terrible destructive power.
The lab they're in is adjacent to the room where Kara is. It's a bit unnerving, but mostly reassuring for Lena to know that she's still there, alive, and just a couple of steps away, separated from her only by a thick wall and unconsciousness. Apart from Nia, who pops in a couple of times with food and tea, nobody comes to see them. Alex has regained her spot at Kara's side, and as far as Lena knows, she hasn't moved. And she understands ; if her brain weren't of a better use here, she'd be glued to Kara's side too. In a way though, she's grateful for all the work she has to do, because if given any down time, she's sure she'd implode from the mess of the past hours. Taking the time to process everything would be a better idea, sure, but she isn't sure she has it in her to do so. For everything she's learned at school all the things she's been taught there and everything she's learned by herself from hours upon hours spent in her lab, she's never learned how to deal with a situation like this one. She isn't sure this is what Kara had in mind when she said they had to build their own relationship framework either. This isn't part of any rule from anything, and it's frightening beyond measure.
Lena's eyes trail to the tomato spot on Brainy's face and she snaps back into work. With deft fingers, she runs another simulation, tweaks another bit of code, and hits another wall. She needs a more powerful input, something that can match and compete with Kara's motherboard. She needs an alien computer.
"Brainy ?" she asks tentatively after mulling over her conclusion for a second. "Brainy ?" she asks again when he doesn't acknowledge her. Brainy nods almost imperceptibly and Lena takes it as a sign to go on. "Do you have alien technology somewhere in the DEO ? Like something advanced enough that it could match with Kara ?"
"We do," Brainy says with a firm nod, "but we don't. Not advanced enough. Not coluan." Lena's guts churn with disappointment. "Well we do have something," Brainy adds with a frown, "but it would be extremely dangerous. So no, we don't."
"Well what is it ? Maybe we can workshop it."
"Me," Brainy says curtly before diverting his attention back to his work.
"You...?"
"Yes, me. I can link myself to Kara and input the new code. Well theoretically. I have never tried anything like that before and there is a 41.1% chance of irreversible trauma."
"The odds are still in our favour," Lena says against her fear.
"Not by much. Not by enough."
"But it's all that we have," Lena pushes because it's the only thing keeping the panic at bay. They have to act, to keep moving until Kara is safe or there's nothing else they can do. "So if the code is ready, I think we should do it. Unless you have another solution, because I don't have one."
"I do not have another solution," Brainy admits barely over a whisper. "And the code is ready. It has been for 37 minutes. I am sorry. I am unused to being overwhelmed."
"It's okay."
"Is it ?" Brainy asks, his voice filled with a slight confusion that has Lena wonder if it really is only rhetorical. Brainy is smart, more so than anyone that Lena has ever met, and it says a lot with her own IQ and alien science prodigy girlfriend, but he's ill adapted to everything else in a way that reminds her so much of herself that her heart aches in companionship.
Somehow, in the few hours since Lena last saw her, Kara's face has gotten hollower, her sunken flesh highlighting cheekbones that are now disturbing instead of enticing. Her face is pale, ghostly, and Lena hopes with all her might that Kara won't open her eyes to reveal nothingness. There are no guards in the room anymore and Lena almost questions this decision until Sam enters the room. The gash and bruises on her friend's face are all healed and she's clad in slightly ill fitting tactical gear. She comes stand behind Alex, arms clasped behind her back in a power pose that doesn't do much to hide her discomfort.
Brainy frets over Kara for a moment and when he stops hiding her from view, she is sporting a flimsy white barrette on her forehead. "This," he says, "shall allow me to enter her mind. It is primitive in design, but it will work."
Alex only nods, her throat probably as tight as Lena's though not entirely for the same reasons.
"Agent Danvers ?" Brainy continues, "I am sorry but I need verbal confirmation that I can proceed."
Alex shakes her head from side to side then steels herself, straightening up to her full height. "You can go on Agent Dox," she says with a firm unwavering voice.
The whole process is severely anticlimactic. Brainy brings two fingers to the side of his head, presumably entering Kara's mind, and then nothing else happens for the longest time. The silence and wait are unnerving, and after only minutes, Lena starts fidgeting with her bracelet, counting the links over and over to the point that the metal is no longer cold around her wrist, but hot, and slightly sticky with sweat.
"I have found it," Brainy suddenly says, causing everyone in the room to jump to attention.
"You're in ?" Alex asks nervously.
"I have been in Kara's mind for several minutes," Brainy says like his lack of update isn't a problem. "It is quite untidy."
"Untidy ?" Sam repeats, voicing everybody's question.
"Ones mind takes the form of ones safe place," Brainy explains in a monotonous voice. "In Kara's case, it is her apartment, and it looks like it has been wrecked by a fire and a hurricane simultaneously. Finding what I was looking for was quite arduous. And she has not been helping."
"Kara is there with you ?!" Lena blurts, speaking for the first time since she entered the room.
"Of course she is. Where else would she be ? I'm holding her in a choke hold has we speak. Inputting the new code with my toes requires some effort hence the slight delay. Oh."
"Oh ?" Alex parrots. "What do you mean 'oh' ?!"
"I will get back to you on this as soon as possible."
Brainy is barely done speaking that Kara starts thrashing on the bed.
There's a split second during which Lena's brain grinds to a halt and she can't think of anything to do. It's enough for Sam to spring into action and all but smack Kara back on the bed, immobilising her with two strong hands on her shoulders. Brainy topples forward, landing on all four at the foot of the bed. He scrambles to get back up, his movements almost robotic in their staccato, and when he finally manages to get back on his feet, with a little help of Lena's haphazardly grabbed hand, the utmost terror shines in his eyes. "He is coming," he says in a rough almost inaudible voice. "The collector is upon us."
Behind him, Kara springs up, her forehead colliding with Sam's in a thunder like sound. Sam shoots backward into the wall in which she sinks a couple of inches. "What have I done ?" Kara whispers in fright. "Rao what have I done ?"
