It's night time, finally. It's almost surprising in a way, with the way the day dragged and dragged and dragged until Kara wasn't sure she'd see the end of it, until she couldn't breathe but had to keep going because, well because she has a kid now. Taylor is asleep on the couch, on the other side of the city, Lena isn't ; and Kara is truly alone with her thoughts since her future child crashed in her future wife's apartment. At least she assumes Lena is her future wife and this isn't some insane evil scheme in which future Lillian harvested their eggs to produce a baby. With everything that has happened, this isn't out of the realm of possibilities.
It's quiet, or as quiet as it ever gets when one has superhearing and noise is always turned up to eleven, and so Kara, no matter how much she loathes self introspection, decides to do some thinking. Her heart is both heavy and light and it takes her a moment to understand why, to put a name on her emotions, to disentangle them until they're mostly clear and recognisable. She's feeling hopeful, and it's almost laughable because no matter how much she stands for it, hope isn't something she has experienced a lot lately. She's been feeling sad, crushed, depressed, anxious, scared, but not hopeful. But Taylor is sleeping only meters away from her and they're the living breathing embodiment that things do get better, that the rift between Lena and her isn't forever and most of all, that loving her won't bring an extinction level event upon them.
But she's feeling afraid too, and that little spark of darkness threatens to overpower the beacon that just lit up inside of her. Taylor is another name on her list, another person that she'll fear to lose, another loved one that she'll have to ask Rao to keep safe, and it's overwhelming. She can see it coming a mile away, the crushing feeling that will settle deep in her chest if she lets herself care for her child. It's too late of course, Kara knows that, she knows that she made her decision the moment she sat down on the roof next to Taylor. She's already let them in, and it's weighting down on her. But what choice does she has really when the arrival of the newest member of the House of El mirrors her own in so many ways, when everything they know is out of reach and they're lost and afraid, when they need help. Kara won't turn her back on her family, even if it means she can't breathe.
She's used to it anyway, the crushing feeling in her chest, the sudden spike of fear when she thinks she can't hear a familiar heartbeat anymore. She wonders if future her goes to therapy. Distantly, she's aware of the irony of this thought, since she herself is not willing to open the Pandora box of her trauma. It's nice though, to think that someday her life will be stable enough that she might be able to deal with everything in a healthier way, and not simply by punching things to clear her head. Punching things isn't always enough, especially when there's nothing to punch in the first place, when it's something that requires subtlety and patience. Patience isn't really Kara's thing. With twenty-four years in the Phantom Zone under her belt, she thinks she's been patient enough for several lifetimes.
There's rustling behind the curtain, soft whispers in Kryptonese, a language Kara rarely speaks anymore, then quiet footsteps, a window creaking open, a gush of fresh air ; Taylor is not as asleep as Kara thought they were. They make her think about her own Yeyu, how she doesn't really know her anymore, how they never quite managed to reconnect, and how much it hurts still to think about her. It must be like that for Taylor too, because Kara has their Yeyu's face but she isn't her, not really, not yet.
The city is louder with the window open and with her head so full, Kara doesn't think she'll manage to sleep now. Out of habit, her hand is already halfway to her phone, ready to shoot a text to Alex to see if she's awake, and trying not to think about how for a brief, too brief, time in her life, it used to be Lena she would call to the rescue. But the whispers stop, and before Kara can talk herself out of it, she's out of her bed and joins Taylor in the living room.
"Can't sleep ?" she asks, floating to sit on the windowsill next to them. She cringes at the mundanity of the question, her brain working double time to find something better to say.
Taylor doesn't answer, their eyes trailed instead on something small clutched in their hands. It's a watch, dark blue with a white and blue woven strap that's much too long for anyone's wrist but one person.
"That's Jeremiah's, right ?" Kara probs softly.
"Oh," Taylor sighs. "Yeah. Grandma gave it to me. We modified it to add a Super signal and then I added a time beacon myself. I should be able to fix it you know ? Certified genius. It runs in the family." The last word is almost inaudible, even to Kara. It's whispered, perhaps not meant to be uttered, and buried under the sound of a passing police car.
"Can I ask you a question ?" Taylor nods and Kara takes it as a sign to go on. "Does that mean we found him ? Jeremiah ? In the future ?"
"I," Taylor stammers. "It's."
"You can't tell me, can you ?" Kara sighs. "And anyway you'll wipe my memories before you go, right ?"
"Not really," Taylor replies with a tentative smile, their eyes shining in the way Lena's do when she's about to nerd out about something. "I'll have to remove my existence from your memory. It'll alter all the things you might have learned through me. It can be traumatic, go as far as causing memory gaps for the events that can't be filled in or explained by anything else than me being here. Some people literally lose their mind. That's why there are regulations. I was supposed to stay put and not say a thing until someone could come and pick me up but I, I..."
"You panicked," Kara finishes for them, her hand hovering over their's before she brings it back to her own side. "It's okay, it happens to the best of us."
"Except it's not," Taylor explains crookedly. "Time travel is very dangerous. Everything I do now directly affects the future. I'm lucky I'm still there. You've seen the way she looked at me. I could blink out of existence if she so much thinks about never having me. It could happen at anytime."
"It won't happen."
"You don't know that. You're not in her head. You can't control what she does."
"I'm not in her head," Kara admits, "but I know her." She speaks slowly, deliberately keeping her words in the present so she doesn't have to think about all the ways she doesn't know Lena anymore. "She could never hate you, could never hate anyone. She thinks she's tough and unbreakable and cold, but she's not. She's warm and soft and full of love and she'll come around. She'll help you get back to future her."
Taylor sniffles, and this time Kara allows herself to wrap her hand around her child's. "I can tell you one thing," they say. "In my time, you and her, you're very happy."
Highly conscious of the sleeping figure next to her, Alex tosses and turns and tosses again, her mind restless and her body thrumming with unspent energy. With a sigh, she entangles her legs from the covers and pads across the room to the kitchen, shivering when her bare feet make contact with the freezing cold floorboard. Quietly as can be, she pours herself a glass of water, then another, after she downs the first in a couple of seconds. The moon is cutting a silver line across the room and she thinks about Kara ; wondering if her sister needs help, if she's okay, if she's managed to fall asleep. Probably not.
She doesn't think it was the brightest of ideas to have Taylor move in to Kara's apartment ; but what can she do really, when she's seen the look in her sister's eyes, when she knows with no doubt that she could lay her life for this familiar stranger simply because sometime in the future, they will be family. Or might. Alex isn't entirely sure that this isn't some kind of trap, even if none of their fifth dimensional energy detector went off when the kid crashed in Lena's apartment. Kara has no shortage of enemies. This suspicion however, clashes with the look on Taylor's face when they saw Kara, the relief that washed over their features, the smile, a pull of lips that Alex had seen on nothing before but her own sister. And it would be hypocritical for her to fight Kara on this, because she knows that in similar circumstances, she would do the exact same thing, would take the lost kid under her wing, safety and precaution be damned. Hell, she did that before. When Ruby needed someone safe in her life, she jumped in with no second thought, even when she knew it would lead to nothing but emptiness and pain for herself.
With a sigh, she makes her way back to bed, avoiding the creaking plank at its foot and slipping under the covers and into Kelly's warmth.
"Can't sleep ?" her girlfriend mumbles, drawing her closer semi-consciously.
Alex sighs again, rubbing the heel of her hand on her face. "Didn't mean to wake you up."
"It's okay," Kelly whispers against her shoulder. "Want to talk about it ?"
"I'm worried about Kara," Alex admits softly, hesitating between coaxing Kelly back to sleep or unloading her heart a little.
Kelly hums lowly. "Is it classified," she asks, "or Lena related ?"
Alex laughs humourlessly. "Both."
"Sounds complicated."
"There's no harm in telling you I suppose. I could use a second opinion."
"Sure. You can tell me anything you want. I'll just swing by Pam tomorrow and sign an NDA. I'm getting the hang of those."
"Fuck NDAs," Alex groans pressing closer to Kelly and hoping that maybe if she melts into her, all of her problems will disappear.
"If you say so," Kelly chuckles. "I'm not the boss of an underground organisation. So, what's happening ?"
"Kara's got a kid," Alex says, cutting right to the chase. "Well Kara and Lena have a kid. A kid who's accidentally visiting from the future."
"That sounds messy," Kelly says, straightening up and turning the lights on to Alex's great regret. "How are they holding up ?"
"Well Lena wants no part of it, and Kara is, Kara is..."
"Ridiculously invested already ?" Kelly offers gently.
"Yeah," Alex sighs. "That. And she was so confused by all of that, lost even, but five minutes with the kid and now they're living at her apartment and she's promised to help them no matter what. I'm afraid she thinks this is some sort of magical fix that's going to make everything better between her and Lena."
"If they have a child together in the future, then it means things did get better," Kelly points out softly. "Maybe it's not that bad to give Kara a little hope, she needs it."
"Except that's not exactly how it works," Alex explains dismally. "Time travel is a fucking mess and Taylor's presence has probably already screwed up the future. Now that they're here, if Kara so much has breathes at the wrong time, Lena could choose to never forgive her or one of them could die or..."
"I understand that I don't understand everything completely," Kelly cuts ever so gently, "but what's the likelihood of a catastrophic chain reaction, really."
"The last time Kara time travelled she ended up with, a brainwashed by Lex Luthor, and ultimately, comatose clone, so the possibility of things blowing up to our heads is very very high."
"Breathe," Kelly says, putting her hand in the middle of her chest. Alex takes a sharp breath, realising as she does so that her heart is beating erratically and her lungs are constricting from lack of air. "Breathe. You're catastrophising."
"I. Okay," Alex concedes. "But what am I supposed to do ?"
"For now ? Nothing." Kelly exhales. She lets her words resonate for a moment and Alex almost cuts her in frustration. "You need time to properly assess the situation," Kelly adds. "Sleep. You, we, can save the world in the morning."
Alex wants to protest but deep down, she knows Kelly is right. Sleep doesn't come easily, but she focuses on Kelly's hand on her chest, how it makes her feel warm and protected, and against all odds, she dozes off anyway.
Lena can't sleep. It's not surprising really, she hasn't slept well since she killed her brother ; but tonight is somehow even worse. It's hard to breathe, and her heart constricts painfully in her chest as she tosses and turns on her office's couch. She used to be able to text Kara when that was the case, and sometimes Kara would call her instead of simply messaging her back and they would talk until the early hours of the morning, until it was easier to breathe and being alive wasn't so painful. She's been lulled to sleep by the lilt of Kara's voice countless times only to wake up well rested and with a single red heart emoji in their text thread. They never had a sleepover though, somehow they both knew it would have been much too close to the boundary they were trying not to cross. She doesn't know if she's grateful or not for the fact that she never experienced the sweet embrace of Kara's arms at night.
There are no curtains in her office, and the moonlight is annoying, basking everything is silvery shadows that have her think her furniture is alive and ready to attack her. Her jacket hanging by the door is a menacing figure, the flowers on her desk are venomous and intent on killing her, her desk is a shifting beast ready to pounce ; her hair is a hand around her neck eager to strangle her. She sits up, bringing her knees to her chest, and curls up into a ball, hoping against reason that the blanket around her shoulders will protect her from the dark. For a fleeting moment, she wishes she could will away the monster of pride and hurt that sits heavy on her chest and that she could call someone, that she could call Kara, to get her through the night. It makes her angry, almost irrationally so, and out of options, she gets up and marches to her desk. If she can't sleep, the least she can do is figure out time travel and send one of her problems back to the future. She doesn't give herself enough time to acknowledge how thinking about her own child as a problem makes her sick to the stomach.
She doesn't figure out time travel during the night, ends up instead falling asleep at her desk and when Jess finds her there in the early morning, she simply wraps the blanket around her shoulders and cancels all her meetings for the day.
Hovering in the limbo between sleep and consciousness, Taylor keeps their eyes closed, wishing with not much hope that they could open them to their room at Crucible, Max curled at their side and with a bright day of training and learning ahead of them. It's foolish though, and they know it, because they can smell their Yeyu's warm scent, and Kara Danvers' painfully familiar heart is beating next to them. She stayed up all night comforting them when Taylor's done nothing but bring more chaos into her life. She's asleep on an armchair now, snoring delicately and with her legs sprawled out in front of her. With a yawn, Taylor stretches awake and rounds the coffee table to cover her with a thick knitted blanket. It's bright red, soft to the touch, and Taylor has known it their whole life ; they used to take naps in it when they were little. Kara shudder at the added weight but doesn't wake up, and Taylor sets to figuring out breakfast.
The appliances are antic compared to what Taylor remembers from Earth and to what they've used for three years at Crucible but they're not their Mum's child for nothing and after a bit of tinkering, they at least figure out how to turn the stove on. There's a kettle shoved deep in the highest cupboard next to a red pack of tea that Taylor knows with certainty isn't for Kara. The sight makes them a little sad but it's perfect for them anyway, they drink the same brand as their Mum's, imported here at great cost.
The tea does its job warming them and by the time the pancake batter is sizzling in the pan, Kara starts stirring. She yawns and stretches, hovering slightly above the chair before floating to her feet. "Oh," she says when she notices Taylor in the kitchen. "You didn't have to make breakfast." She looks soft, and young in a way that pulls at tendrils of memories in Taylor's brain. She yawns again, rubs her hands on her eyes and smiles sleepily. She's so like their Yeyu, yet not enough.
"I don't mind," Taylor says, flipping a perfectly round pancake. "I wanted to do something nice for you. Coffee's ready, but your milk is out of date so it might taste weird." For a second, they curse themself for knowing how she takes her coffee, but Kara only beams and takes a sip with no mention of the taste, and maybe it's okay.
"Do you have any plans for the day ?" Kara asks, setting her mug down on the table and float-hopping on one of the stools. "Something you'd like to do in particular ? I called in sick from work last night so I'm free if you want me to show you around or if you want to swing by the DEO and find a solution to get out of here as fast as possible. I'm good either way."
Taylor hesitates, studying Kara for a moment. The crinkle between her eyebrows disappear quickly under scrutiny, but it's enough for Taylor to know there's an option she favours. "I was thinking of going to the aquarium if you'd like to come," Taylor offers. "To unwind, do something nice before I tackle the big problem head on."
Kara frowns. "The aquarium ?" she repeats. "Sure, why not. I mean, it's under construction and there are zero fishes inside but I'm sure if I drop by as Supergirl and ask nicely, they'll let you in."
"The aquarium doesn't exist yet ?"
"It doesn't," Kara says slowly. "I'm sorry. Is it an important place to you ?"
Taylor's heart drops to the bottom of their stomach. Distantly, the smell of burnt pancakes registers in their brain but they pay it no mind. They hate everything about this situation, everything is out of place, like someone took sly pleasure in moving their furniture two inches to the left and they're doomed to keep bumping into things that look right but aren't. "It's my favourite place in National City," they whisper. "It's quiet, safe. And fishes are kind of my thing. I have a degree in marine biology."
"You do ? That's really cool," Kara says with a proud smile on her face. "You're so smart. And young. What are you, twenty ?"
"Twenty-one," Taylor grumbles, trying to tame down the swirls of feelings that accompany their future mother both being proud of them and not knowing them at all. "I may have supersped through my master thesis," they add sheepishly, feeling compelled to truthfulness under the searching eyes of Kara Danvers.
Kara laughs, her eyes briefly crinkling. "I do that all the time," she says. "Alex finds it really annoying but it's not cheating if you have the natural ability to do it."
"Oh I agree," Taylor chuckles. "But yeah, Alex doesn't."
They clench their jaw hard when they realise they've done it again, talking like they really know anyone of them. None of these people are those they know yet but they keep slipping and it's only a matter of time before what they say causes a terrible chain reaction.
"Would you like to go for a walk ?" Kara asks gently, gifted already at getting them out of their head. "We could go to the waterfront. It's not an aquarium, but there's water, and you could tell me all about fishes."
"I think I'm gonna go for a swim instead. If you don't mind," Taylor says, draining the rest of their tea and getting up without waiting for a reply. "Is the pool on Cordova Street already there ?"
"Yeah it is," Kara replies, jumping to her feet. "Right next to L-Corp. You can borrow anything from my clothes."
"Thanks. Is the airlink a thing ?"
"The air what ?"
"I'll take the bus," Taylor grumbles, disappearing through the partition and ruffling through Kara's clothes before swiftly making their way to the door.
"Wait," Kara stops them. "How do I get in touch with you ?"
"Just call," Taylor replies curtly before sighing softly. "I know your voice, I'll hear you."
"Okay," Kara says, disappointment seeping into her tone though her face remains gentle and open.
Taylor stops on the threshold, inhaling and exhaling deeply. "I'm sorry," they say. "I just need a moment for myself."
"I get it," Kara replies with a small smile. "I do. I'm here if you need anything."
"I get it," Kara sighs. "I do, really. It can't be easy for them, being here. And I know it's different from what I went through, but it was hard for me too at the beginning, and I want to help. They're my family."
Alex frowns, opens her mouth, "Kara," she whispers.
But Kara knows that whatever her sister is about to say, she won't like it, and so she keeps going, distantly aware that her thoughts are just turning into word vomit. "They're my kid. And I never thought I'd ever have something like that, a child of my own. And, and things have been so bad Alex, so hard but Taylor being here it's like a signal that things are going to be okay. That what's happening now isn't forever and that some twenty years into the future I'm okay and Lena is okay, and, and we're okay together. It means there's hope for us somewhere..."
"You know Taylor isn't a magical solution to your problems, right ?" Alex interjects softly. "For one they're a living breathing being ; and time travel is a shady thing. The future isn't set in time, a lot of things can change as a result of them being here. You need to be careful."
"I know that," Kara replies, her voice edgy with frustration.
"Are you sure you do ?" Alex probs gently in the way she does when she knows her sister needs a little push. It could almost make Kara angry, but she knows Alex is right.
"I do know," she mumbles. "But the way I screwed up with Lena ? It really hurts, and a lot of times, I don't see a way of making it better. So if there is even the tiniest flicker of hope, then I have to hold on to it. I know the conditional existence of my future child doesn't absolve me, that I still need to work to win Lena back, but it's hope, and I really need that."
"Okay," Alex says, opening her arms and motioning for Kara to step inside of her embrace. "I was just making sure you knew what you were doing."
"Oh I have no idea what I'm doing," Kara admits, melting into the warm hug like Alex's arms have world saving capabilities.
"I'll help," Alex promises. "I have your back, always."
"Thank you."
"Ask Taylor to bring that watch around please. I'm sure I can figure something out."
"Since when are you an expert on time travel ?" Kara teases.
"Since I slept with Sara Lance."
"Rao ! Gross !" Kara yelps, jumping out of the hug with the most offended glare she can summon.
Alex shrugs, turning around to pick up her tablet. "You asked."
Kara's got a retort on the tip of her tongue when the telltale sound of something piercing through the atmosphere at full speed reaches her ears. She barely has the time to grab Alex when the room is shook by a quake and Brainy's voice comes through her sister's comms. "Director Danvers ? We have a situation."
