Part 4: No Longer Alone
#
Kara had met Helena Wayne only once before that she could remember and that had been right in the middle of the Crisis. Kal had told her quite a bit about her, though, mostly because Kara had been unable to believe that someone like Bruce Wayne, the Batman, could possibly have a daughter, even he it was the Bruce Wayne of another world.
The way he told it Helena had taken up the mantle of the Huntress after her mother, the reformed criminal called Catwoman, had been killed. She had tracked down her murderer and then decided to stay in the vigilante lifestyle, taking the place her father had vacated due to his retirement. She was also a member of Earth-2's Justice Society and, as such, had done quite a bit of travel across dimensions in the course of the annual meetings between the JSA and the Justice League.
A broad smile was on Kara's lips for even this near-stranger she now faced managed to diminish the homesickness she felt in this strange place quite a bit.
"Supergirl?" Helena asked. It was so good to hear someone call her by her name, to meet someone who actually recognised her, that she almost missed the weariness in the Huntress' voice.
Dark eyes regarded the woman hovering in front of her, taking in her clothes. Normal street clothes, not the red and blue costume she remembered, except for the shirt. Partially hidden by the black coat she wore there was the famous S-symbol, slightly different than the one she remembered the Superman of her own world wearing, but still impossible not to recognise.
Helena was the daughter of the greatest detective who had ever lived and he had trained her almost from birth. Her memory was just short of photographic and she never forgot a face, even one she had seen but once in the midst of battle. Without a doubt this was Supergirl, Earth-1's version of one of her best friends, Powergirl.
Only it could not possibly be her.
"I don't blame you for being weary," Kara said when it became evident that the other woman would not stop staring at her anytime soon. "I am guessing you don't know how you happened to end up in this strange world, either, do you?"
She received a nod, at least, though Helena was still not saying anything.
"Appeared here right about a month ago?" Kara asked. "Right in the middle of the same crimson clouds that blanketed our worlds during the Crisis?"
Again a nod.
"This would go a lot better if you took part in the conversation, too, you know?"
Kara set down on the ground and took a step toward Helena, causing the other woman to take a step back. What was wrong with her? Kara's enhanced senses picked up the other woman's accelerated heartbeat, could read the slightest shift in her body language. Why was the Huntress afraid of her?
For a moment the other woman's face was frozen in indecision, then she seemed to make some kind of choice and her stance relaxed. Not completely, no, but she was not liable to spring into attack mode within the next second anymore. Or maybe she had just realised that hand-to-hand combat was not a viable option when faced with a fully-powered Kryptonian.
"I got here one month ago, yes," Helena said, weariness still in her voice. "Appeared right here in Gotham City, too. It took me a bit to figure out that this was not the world I had been in a moment before."
Kara had not stopped monitoring Helena's vital signs and so it was easy for her to tell that the other woman was ... well, not lying, but holding something back. And she was still extremely weary for some reason Kara still could not figure out.
"What say we go somewhere and talk this over?" Kara asked. "A dark alley isn't really the most amiable scenery."
#
The two woman went into a coffee shop, Helena having changed into civilian garb on the way. Kara saw no reason to change her own outfit. Most of what she wore would not attract any attention and the shirt, the only piece of her costume she had chosen to recreate so far, might warrant a curious look or two, but no more than that. The S-symbol was completely unknown here on this Earth.
"The last thing I remember," Kara told Helena, "is fighting the Anti- Monitor. You weren't part of the team that invaded the anti-matter universe, right?" Helena nodded. "Well, it was quite a battle. I ... I still don't know how it ended, really. I managed to destroy the machinery the Anti-Monitor was using to destroy our worlds, but he had beaten me. I ... I was convinced I was going to die and then ... next thing I know I'm here."
She looked up at Helena with a pleading look in her eyes, a month of not knowing the fate of her friends and family catching up with her and shattering the stoic face she had managed to retain so far.
"What happened after that?"
Helena frowned for a moment, but then shrugged. "Everything seemed to return to normal for a while. The five Earths were still partially interspaced, but the danger of them annihilating each other had passed. We were busy with damage control when Luthor and Brainiac assembled a huge army of villains to try and take over all five Earths at once. They actually managed to conquer three of them before we managed to retaliate.
"The battle was brought to a halt right about the time we managed to turn the tide. The Spectre returned to tell us that the Anti-Monitor still lived. Apparently he had travelled back to the beginning of time, looking to change all of creation right from the start to make it so that there never was a multiverse to being with, only his own anti-matter universe."
Kara looked stunned, but listened intently.
"We gathered everyone together and followed him. It was tough and go for a while, but ... well, I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but suddenly we were all back on Earth."
"Your own Earth?" Kara asked.
Helena fell silent for a minute, sipping from her coffee.
"The Earth. There was but one left."
Kara gasped, her fingers crushing her coffee cup without her even noticing. Just one Earth left? The Anti-Monitor had succeeded in destroying even more lives despite everything she had done?
"W-which Earth?" she asked, almost afraid of the answer. Had her Earth survived? Was Kal still alive?
"It was ... well, somehow the five Earths had ... they had been merged into one. This one Earth comprised elements of all five that existed previously."
It was more than Kara could easily absorb. Five Earths had merged into some kind of amalgamation? What had changed? She knew that one on of the Earths, the one called Earth-X, the Nazis had won World War 2. Was this now also the case on this new Earth? What about the people that were duplicated across the various worlds, people like Kal?
"It was a complete mess," Helena said, looking into her half-empty coffee cup. "Only those of us who had been at the dawn of time when it happened remembered that there had ever been multiple Earths. All the people, they ... they didn't know. To them this was the way it had always been." She gave a shaky laugh, her own poker face now showing cracks as well. "What am I saying? That was the way things had always been. The universe had been changed from the very beginning forward. There had never been an Earth-1 or -2 or -X or whatever. Just this one planet. Just this one that ..."
Her voice trailed off and Kara could see a tear leaking from her eye.
"What is it, Helena?" she asked softly, gently taking one of the other woman's hands in her own. For a moment the other woman just stared at their joint hands, looking as if she was about to withdraw, but then seemingly resigned herself.
"It didn't have a place for us," she whispered. "My ... my father ... he never existed. The Earth-1 Batman became the Batman of this world. I never existed there."
Kara's heart went out to Helena, but there was still one thing she needed to know, no matter how cruel it was to throw her own worries on the table in the face of the other woman's pain.
"What about Kal? Superman?"
Helena looked up, wiping the single tear in her eye away with an almost angry gesture. She visibly gathered herself, choking back the sob that had been building in her throat.
"He was still there. He ... he had a place. It was my world's Superman who ... who was forgotten."
Kara closed her eyes, at the same time incredibly thankful and ashamed. Thank Rao Kal had survived. What about the other Superman, though? Kara had met him a couple of times and, even though his powers were weaker than that of her cousin, he had exuded an air of nobility, strength, and wisdom that her cousin had been unable to match. Just like Kal he had been the first hero of his world, but he had fought to keep it safe for nearly fifty years, had been the role model for several generations.
Now the world had forgotten him? Where was the fairness in that? She chided herself a moment later. By now she should know better than to expect life to be fair.
"The Anti-Monitor attacked again, though," Helena went on a moment later, her composure regained. "He transported all of Earth to the anti-matter universe and sent an army of shadow demons to wipe out all life. We rallied to fight him off, all of us, even those who had been forgotten."
She looked down and clenched her fists. "I don't know how this battle ended. I ... I was trying to save some children and a building collapsed on top of me. Dick ... the Robin of my world, he was there, trying to dig me out. Some of the shadows attacked us then. One of the Teen Titans tried to help us. Kole, I think her name was. But she couldn't fend them off. They swarmed upon us and ... that's pretty much it. Next thing I know we ... I was here."
"We?" Kara asked, having noticed Helena's slip-up.
"Dick," Helena said after a moment's hesitation. "He's here, too. We arrived together."
Kara had never met the Robin of Earth-2, either, except for that big get- together due to the Crisis. She remembered him as an older man, late fifties or so, grey streaks in his hair. He had appeared quite fit and competent, though.
Helena's slip-up caused her to confront her about the other matter.
"Why did you want to keep that from me? You're still looking at me as if you're not sure whether I'm friend or enemy."
The other woman hesitated, buying some seconds by draining her cup of coffee. Putting it aside she finally said, "you shouldn't be here."
"I know that, Helena. Neither should you. We should both be at home and ..."
"I don't mean it that way," Helena interrupted her. For a long moment she seemed to wrestle with herself, then reached a decision. "You shouldn't be here because you are dead."
Kara paled. "What?"
"You said the last thing you remember was fighting the Anti-Monitor. You said you thought he had killed you, that you were dying."
"Yes, but obviously I was wrong because I woke up here and ..."
"He did kill you. I ... I saw your body. Superman brought it back from the anti-matter universe. I was at your funeral."
For a full minute Kara said nothing, simply stared at Helena, somehow hoping that the words she had just heard were an incredibly tasteless joke. Only they were not. She could see it in Helena's eyes even as her senses told her of the other woman's even pulse and breathing. It was true then, or as true as Helena knew it to be.
Kara slumped in her seat, every bit of strength seeping out of her body. How could this be? She distinctly remembered the battle and then waking up here. How could she have died? Left a body behind? Yes, she had powers far beyond most other beings, be they from Earth or not, but returning from the dead was not one of them. How was this possible?
It certainly explained Helena's weariness, the rational part of her mind told her through the maelstrom of emotions.
"You think I'm a fake?" she finally asked Helena. "Some kind of ... I don't know, clone? Maybe something the Anti-Monitor cooked up?"
"I am not sure what to think. I'm trapped on a strange world that shouldn't even exist, seeing as all parallel worlds were either destroyed or merged into one, and I find a woman whose funeral I attended. What would you think?"
She nodded, too emotionally drained from everything she had just heard to do much more than that. Put like that she could hardly blame Helena for being a bit suspicious.
She had died. Rao, Kal had brought back her body. How this must have hurt him. And what about the others? How many of the people she knew were still there in this strange merged world Helena told her about? What about those people who no longer had a place in that world? People like Helena and the Earth-2 Superman? What would happen to them now?
"For what it's worth," Helena said after the two of them were silent for a long time, "I think you are who you say you are. I just don't know how it's possible."
Kara managed a small smile.
"Welcome to the club, Helena."
TO BE CONTINUED
#
Kara had met Helena Wayne only once before that she could remember and that had been right in the middle of the Crisis. Kal had told her quite a bit about her, though, mostly because Kara had been unable to believe that someone like Bruce Wayne, the Batman, could possibly have a daughter, even he it was the Bruce Wayne of another world.
The way he told it Helena had taken up the mantle of the Huntress after her mother, the reformed criminal called Catwoman, had been killed. She had tracked down her murderer and then decided to stay in the vigilante lifestyle, taking the place her father had vacated due to his retirement. She was also a member of Earth-2's Justice Society and, as such, had done quite a bit of travel across dimensions in the course of the annual meetings between the JSA and the Justice League.
A broad smile was on Kara's lips for even this near-stranger she now faced managed to diminish the homesickness she felt in this strange place quite a bit.
"Supergirl?" Helena asked. It was so good to hear someone call her by her name, to meet someone who actually recognised her, that she almost missed the weariness in the Huntress' voice.
Dark eyes regarded the woman hovering in front of her, taking in her clothes. Normal street clothes, not the red and blue costume she remembered, except for the shirt. Partially hidden by the black coat she wore there was the famous S-symbol, slightly different than the one she remembered the Superman of her own world wearing, but still impossible not to recognise.
Helena was the daughter of the greatest detective who had ever lived and he had trained her almost from birth. Her memory was just short of photographic and she never forgot a face, even one she had seen but once in the midst of battle. Without a doubt this was Supergirl, Earth-1's version of one of her best friends, Powergirl.
Only it could not possibly be her.
"I don't blame you for being weary," Kara said when it became evident that the other woman would not stop staring at her anytime soon. "I am guessing you don't know how you happened to end up in this strange world, either, do you?"
She received a nod, at least, though Helena was still not saying anything.
"Appeared here right about a month ago?" Kara asked. "Right in the middle of the same crimson clouds that blanketed our worlds during the Crisis?"
Again a nod.
"This would go a lot better if you took part in the conversation, too, you know?"
Kara set down on the ground and took a step toward Helena, causing the other woman to take a step back. What was wrong with her? Kara's enhanced senses picked up the other woman's accelerated heartbeat, could read the slightest shift in her body language. Why was the Huntress afraid of her?
For a moment the other woman's face was frozen in indecision, then she seemed to make some kind of choice and her stance relaxed. Not completely, no, but she was not liable to spring into attack mode within the next second anymore. Or maybe she had just realised that hand-to-hand combat was not a viable option when faced with a fully-powered Kryptonian.
"I got here one month ago, yes," Helena said, weariness still in her voice. "Appeared right here in Gotham City, too. It took me a bit to figure out that this was not the world I had been in a moment before."
Kara had not stopped monitoring Helena's vital signs and so it was easy for her to tell that the other woman was ... well, not lying, but holding something back. And she was still extremely weary for some reason Kara still could not figure out.
"What say we go somewhere and talk this over?" Kara asked. "A dark alley isn't really the most amiable scenery."
#
The two woman went into a coffee shop, Helena having changed into civilian garb on the way. Kara saw no reason to change her own outfit. Most of what she wore would not attract any attention and the shirt, the only piece of her costume she had chosen to recreate so far, might warrant a curious look or two, but no more than that. The S-symbol was completely unknown here on this Earth.
"The last thing I remember," Kara told Helena, "is fighting the Anti- Monitor. You weren't part of the team that invaded the anti-matter universe, right?" Helena nodded. "Well, it was quite a battle. I ... I still don't know how it ended, really. I managed to destroy the machinery the Anti-Monitor was using to destroy our worlds, but he had beaten me. I ... I was convinced I was going to die and then ... next thing I know I'm here."
She looked up at Helena with a pleading look in her eyes, a month of not knowing the fate of her friends and family catching up with her and shattering the stoic face she had managed to retain so far.
"What happened after that?"
Helena frowned for a moment, but then shrugged. "Everything seemed to return to normal for a while. The five Earths were still partially interspaced, but the danger of them annihilating each other had passed. We were busy with damage control when Luthor and Brainiac assembled a huge army of villains to try and take over all five Earths at once. They actually managed to conquer three of them before we managed to retaliate.
"The battle was brought to a halt right about the time we managed to turn the tide. The Spectre returned to tell us that the Anti-Monitor still lived. Apparently he had travelled back to the beginning of time, looking to change all of creation right from the start to make it so that there never was a multiverse to being with, only his own anti-matter universe."
Kara looked stunned, but listened intently.
"We gathered everyone together and followed him. It was tough and go for a while, but ... well, I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but suddenly we were all back on Earth."
"Your own Earth?" Kara asked.
Helena fell silent for a minute, sipping from her coffee.
"The Earth. There was but one left."
Kara gasped, her fingers crushing her coffee cup without her even noticing. Just one Earth left? The Anti-Monitor had succeeded in destroying even more lives despite everything she had done?
"W-which Earth?" she asked, almost afraid of the answer. Had her Earth survived? Was Kal still alive?
"It was ... well, somehow the five Earths had ... they had been merged into one. This one Earth comprised elements of all five that existed previously."
It was more than Kara could easily absorb. Five Earths had merged into some kind of amalgamation? What had changed? She knew that one on of the Earths, the one called Earth-X, the Nazis had won World War 2. Was this now also the case on this new Earth? What about the people that were duplicated across the various worlds, people like Kal?
"It was a complete mess," Helena said, looking into her half-empty coffee cup. "Only those of us who had been at the dawn of time when it happened remembered that there had ever been multiple Earths. All the people, they ... they didn't know. To them this was the way it had always been." She gave a shaky laugh, her own poker face now showing cracks as well. "What am I saying? That was the way things had always been. The universe had been changed from the very beginning forward. There had never been an Earth-1 or -2 or -X or whatever. Just this one planet. Just this one that ..."
Her voice trailed off and Kara could see a tear leaking from her eye.
"What is it, Helena?" she asked softly, gently taking one of the other woman's hands in her own. For a moment the other woman just stared at their joint hands, looking as if she was about to withdraw, but then seemingly resigned herself.
"It didn't have a place for us," she whispered. "My ... my father ... he never existed. The Earth-1 Batman became the Batman of this world. I never existed there."
Kara's heart went out to Helena, but there was still one thing she needed to know, no matter how cruel it was to throw her own worries on the table in the face of the other woman's pain.
"What about Kal? Superman?"
Helena looked up, wiping the single tear in her eye away with an almost angry gesture. She visibly gathered herself, choking back the sob that had been building in her throat.
"He was still there. He ... he had a place. It was my world's Superman who ... who was forgotten."
Kara closed her eyes, at the same time incredibly thankful and ashamed. Thank Rao Kal had survived. What about the other Superman, though? Kara had met him a couple of times and, even though his powers were weaker than that of her cousin, he had exuded an air of nobility, strength, and wisdom that her cousin had been unable to match. Just like Kal he had been the first hero of his world, but he had fought to keep it safe for nearly fifty years, had been the role model for several generations.
Now the world had forgotten him? Where was the fairness in that? She chided herself a moment later. By now she should know better than to expect life to be fair.
"The Anti-Monitor attacked again, though," Helena went on a moment later, her composure regained. "He transported all of Earth to the anti-matter universe and sent an army of shadow demons to wipe out all life. We rallied to fight him off, all of us, even those who had been forgotten."
She looked down and clenched her fists. "I don't know how this battle ended. I ... I was trying to save some children and a building collapsed on top of me. Dick ... the Robin of my world, he was there, trying to dig me out. Some of the shadows attacked us then. One of the Teen Titans tried to help us. Kole, I think her name was. But she couldn't fend them off. They swarmed upon us and ... that's pretty much it. Next thing I know we ... I was here."
"We?" Kara asked, having noticed Helena's slip-up.
"Dick," Helena said after a moment's hesitation. "He's here, too. We arrived together."
Kara had never met the Robin of Earth-2, either, except for that big get- together due to the Crisis. She remembered him as an older man, late fifties or so, grey streaks in his hair. He had appeared quite fit and competent, though.
Helena's slip-up caused her to confront her about the other matter.
"Why did you want to keep that from me? You're still looking at me as if you're not sure whether I'm friend or enemy."
The other woman hesitated, buying some seconds by draining her cup of coffee. Putting it aside she finally said, "you shouldn't be here."
"I know that, Helena. Neither should you. We should both be at home and ..."
"I don't mean it that way," Helena interrupted her. For a long moment she seemed to wrestle with herself, then reached a decision. "You shouldn't be here because you are dead."
Kara paled. "What?"
"You said the last thing you remember was fighting the Anti-Monitor. You said you thought he had killed you, that you were dying."
"Yes, but obviously I was wrong because I woke up here and ..."
"He did kill you. I ... I saw your body. Superman brought it back from the anti-matter universe. I was at your funeral."
For a full minute Kara said nothing, simply stared at Helena, somehow hoping that the words she had just heard were an incredibly tasteless joke. Only they were not. She could see it in Helena's eyes even as her senses told her of the other woman's even pulse and breathing. It was true then, or as true as Helena knew it to be.
Kara slumped in her seat, every bit of strength seeping out of her body. How could this be? She distinctly remembered the battle and then waking up here. How could she have died? Left a body behind? Yes, she had powers far beyond most other beings, be they from Earth or not, but returning from the dead was not one of them. How was this possible?
It certainly explained Helena's weariness, the rational part of her mind told her through the maelstrom of emotions.
"You think I'm a fake?" she finally asked Helena. "Some kind of ... I don't know, clone? Maybe something the Anti-Monitor cooked up?"
"I am not sure what to think. I'm trapped on a strange world that shouldn't even exist, seeing as all parallel worlds were either destroyed or merged into one, and I find a woman whose funeral I attended. What would you think?"
She nodded, too emotionally drained from everything she had just heard to do much more than that. Put like that she could hardly blame Helena for being a bit suspicious.
She had died. Rao, Kal had brought back her body. How this must have hurt him. And what about the others? How many of the people she knew were still there in this strange merged world Helena told her about? What about those people who no longer had a place in that world? People like Helena and the Earth-2 Superman? What would happen to them now?
"For what it's worth," Helena said after the two of them were silent for a long time, "I think you are who you say you are. I just don't know how it's possible."
Kara managed a small smile.
"Welcome to the club, Helena."
TO BE CONTINUED