Summary: Kendra Saunders dreams of flying on her own. But the thing is, it has to be her choice.
Notes: I'd initially named this one 'Deconstruction' largely because I was deconstructing the idea of Kendra and Carter being soulmates. Just because they're reincarnating together doesn't actually mean they're soulmates. And, honestly, they never actually seem well suited to each other. But this story wound up being largely about Kendra discovering herself despite the trauma of her past lives and so when I was ready to post it - finally - I realized the name needed to change too.
Also, I realize that it was easier storytelling wise - and when it came to conservation of actors - for the tv shows to just reuse the actors for Kendra and Carter for flashbacks to previous lives. But I really like the idea of the two of them looking different in every life so that's what I went for here.
Reconstruction
Kendra is eight the first time she dreams of flying.
She's alone in the dream, soaring through the clouds on the wings of a hawk, laughing for the joy of it. She wakes up crying, happy tears and yet sad because… the dream is over and when she's awake she has no wings.
Though scattered at first, the dreams become a regular thing after that. Not just flying, but walking – running – through lives that aren't Kendra's but feel like hers. She looks in the mirror in those dreams sometimes and sees faces that look nothing like her own.
Every one of them is her.
Their names aren't Kendra. They're called things like Kristina, Sakura, Lin, Ashley, Chay-ara… the list could go on and on. Their faces seem to be every race and ethnicity under the sun. And every one of them is her.
By the time she's nine, Kendra feels like she carries the weight of multitudes within her, lifetimes of joy and sorrow bursting within her chest, and her parents marvel at her maturity.
Her teachers, though… they nag and worry at her. For all Kendra's good grades, she stands aloof from the other girls. She doesn't join in their gossiping and experimentation with makeup or giggling over the boys in their grade. But as long as Kendra's parents aren't worried, its fine.
"I love you," he says, in so many languages in so many lives.
Sometimes she says it back. She isn't always sure she means it the way he does.
Kendra is ten when she begins to dream of him as well. His names are as numerous as hers, his faces as varied. But she always knows its him. No matter how changed he may seem from one life to the next, she always recognizes him on sight.
It's like something out of a fairy tale at first. An Egyptian Prince and his beloved Priestess, forever reincarnating, searching each other out… soulmates is the word one of Kendra's friends use when she describes her dreams as a story she wants to write. Romantic, too.
Something about that seems odd, though, and Kendra buys several journals, trying to piece together the bits of her former lives that she remembers so far.
He's in love with her. She loves him back… or at least, she thinks she loves him back. Maybe not the way he means it, though.
There are lives when she feels safe with him. They kiss and its wonderful. There are lives when nothing makes her feel safe and she kisses him so he won't know anything is wrong. She always feels as if she has to be strong for him, which is strange because… he always treats her as weak, fragile.
She's not fragile, though. The memories where he treats her like glass are the ones Kendra hates the most. She remembers pushing down on her fury and frustration and the desire to scream at him for coddling her…
She remembers being smothered by his love for her. Those memories are awful too, in their own way. Casual things he did because they were lovers and it was his right. The inherent possessiveness, the expectation she react the socially expected way even though social norms seemed to change with every life even when they didn't find themselves in radically different cultures from one incarnation to the next.
Kendra was a warrior, a priestess of Horus, a demi-goddess with wings and lifetimes of wisdom. But in every life the Prince treated her as a lesser.
For every kindness he gave her, there was an expectation to be met. Kendra didn't understand why she put up with that life after life. The moments of friendship, the moments where he treated her as a person and equal, were not enough to hold her there when he treated her as a prize.
But then she began to remember another man. Vandal Savage. A man every bit as brutal as his melodramatic assumed name implied.
"Beloved," he calls her.
She suspects he doesn't understand the meaning of the word.
The prince is the better option, Kendra comes to realize. Her dreams are all nightmares by now, the good drowned out by the constant frisson of terror. She retreats into herself at school, but Kendra can't explain to anyone what's wrong.
She gets asked to the homecoming dance by the cutest guy in her year at school, but the idea of going on a date with him is too much for her anxiety to take. She says 'no' and then hides in the bathroom, shaking from the force of her relief that he accepted her rejection so easily. There are two men at war over her in her nightmares already. She doesn't need a third in real life.
She can never stay in one place for too long. Savage can sense her and the Prince. They're usually safe through childhood, but not always and Kendra's worst nightmares are of being so young that her memories of her past lives have barely started to manifest when Vandal Savage finds her.
Luck has it that she's an army brat in this life. Her parents moved around a lot. A year here, three years there… Kendra doesn't mind like her parents thought she might. And after graduation, Kendra takes off on her own. She doesn't have a passport, so she gets one, and then puts up a map of the North American continent and throws a dart at it. That takes her to Quebec for a year before the next dart takes her to New Mexico. Dart number three… well, it actually lands on Keystone, not Central City. But Central City had the more affordable apartments, so…
Central City is where she goes, twenty-two and still dreaming of her wings.
She leaps from tall buildings, from towers, from cliffs… her wings always catch her and she's never afraid. In her dreams, anyway.
Kendra's twelve when she falls from the top of the jungle gym at school and her arm snaps. There are no wings. It's not the first time she's doubted the veracity of her dreams.
It's just the time that hurt the most.
She's struggling with her confidence when Cisco shows up in her life. He has a bright smile and means well. He really shouldn't be asking out a barista at work, but he's young and impulsive. Kendra likes that about him. And she can't help but find it flattering that he likes her so much.
There's a word she's found recently that she'd never heard before. It's new and it tastes weird on her tongue when she says it to herself. She's afraid of what it means for her and for her past lives. She's afraid that it means there's something wrong about her, perhaps something she lost over the many lifetimes or something she never had. She's afraid it means she'll never fly because if it was her love for the Prince that gave her wings...
But this is who and what she is in this life and Kendra doesn't want to deny any part of herself. So when Cisco's friend has to run off, Kendra gathers up her courage and takes her break a bit early, intercepting Cisco before he can leave. This is a leap of faith, one Kendra desperately needed.
"Do you know what aromantic means?" she asked Cisco, cutting off his attempted apology.
"Uh, I think so? It means someone who doesn't experience romantic attraction, or at least not often or much or… it's a spectrum?" He seemed a bit confused and flustered. But also… not surprised by what Kendra had to say next.
"I'm aromantic. And not interested in dating. But if you're okay with being friends… I could use a good friend." Kendra worries, usually, with men that if she offers friendship that they'll relationship zone her. Treat her like her friendship is only worth something if it leads to something 'more'.
It's happened enough times. But something about Cisco tells Kendra he's worth the risk.
Cisco beamed in relief. "Can never have too many friends." He held out his free hand and shook hers. "I really am sorry I put you on the spot like that. It won't happen again," he promises. Kendra believes him.
She believes him again a few weeks later when he and his friend rescue her from Vandal Savage. "We can help you."
For the first time in so many lives, Kendra truly believes she has allies who can help her find the strength to stand up to Vandal Savage.
But it's not just him Kendra needs to stand up to. There's also the Prince.
He shoves her off the building and of course her wings don't come. She understands it later, but it's the same reason why her wings didn't show at twelve.
It's about choice.
It's about her choice.
Kendra is laughing and crying as her wings take shape, halting her fall and arcing her back up into the night air. It's terrifying and exhilarating and the culmination of years of dreaming for this moment. And there's a revelation in that moment as an epiphany strikes her far harder than the ground would have if she hadn't caught herself.
In this life, she intends to do more than merely fly.
Kendra Saunders intends to soar.