"Crash site is about fifteen miles at sea," Brainy says, not bothering with niceties as he falls into step with Alex and Kara. "We've got an incoming tidal wave moving at about forty point five miles per hours." With a swift motion, he displays his tablet's screen on the monitors. "We have nineteen minutes and twenty three seconds to evacuate the city."

"That's not enough," Kara whispers.

"Indeed," Brainy agrees, "but we do have to evacuate. The wave has an eighty one point five percent rate of absolute destruction."

"I can freeze it over."

"You can't. The kryptonite concentration in the bay spiked by three hundred percent. I suspect whatever this is was dragged in the wake of Taylor's ship."

"I can slow it down with dream energy," Nia says, popping up beside them, out of breath and disheveled. "God," she mumbles, "I need a bike. Or a portal watch." She bends over, hands on her knees and exhales erratically. "It would give you enough time to figure something out."

"This would require a tremendous amount of strength," Brainy points out, "and would be incredibly dangerous."

"I'm a hero," Nia fires back. "Heroes put themselves in danger."

"Wait," Kara cuts, trying very hard not to think about how L-Corp is the tallest building on the path of the wave and that's certainly where Lena is right now. "If I use my anti-kryptonite suit without the helmet will it still shield me ?"

"The shielding would be about sixty seven percent less effective."

"But it's still something, right ?"

"It's not enough Kara," Alex says. "You need to sit this one out. And Taylor does too, you need to call them."

"Rao. Taylor. We know about the kryptonite but they don't and..."

"If they're anything like you," Alex whispers hoarsely, realisation downing on her face, "they're bound to do something reckless."

"I'll stop the wave," Nia says, blue energy sparkling at the tip of her fingers, "you stop the kid."

Kara doesn't stick around long enough to hear the rest of the plan.

For the first time in weeks, Lena doesn't arise to the phantom sound of the gun she shot her brother with but to a shockwave that knocks her awake and off her chair. It takes her a second for her to get her bearing, to notice the way the quake resistant structure of the building sways under her feet, sending the remnants of last night's drink slopping out of her glass.

"What the fuck," she mumbles to herself as she scrambles up, leaning on her desk to keep her footing.

Jess barges in half a second later but her hurried words are swallowed by the deafening sound of the city's evacuation siren.

"What the fuck," Lena repeats, not fully awake yet, and not completely convinced that this isn't simply a nightmare. If it is, it's a welcome change in the routine of her dreams.

"There's an incoming tidal wave !" Jess yells over the alarm. "We've received orders to evacuate beyond the mountain range !"

"A tidal wave ?! Can't Supergirl do something about that ?!"

Jess glances down at her tablet. "This isn't mentioned in the evacuation order Miss Luthor !"

"Fuck. Evacuate the building Jess ! I'll see what I can do to help !"

"With all due respect Miss Luthor, you are not fit to fight a tsunami !"

Lena gives herself a quick once over. She's in yesterday's sweats, barefoot and she hasn't washed her hair in three days. "Evacuate the building !" she yells, her words booming in the room as the evacuation siren cuts and she's left with tinnitus and a vague nausea.

"Miss Luthor."

"It's an order Jess," Lena says firmly before she plunges her hand in her pocket to get her phone.

She hesitates for a moment as Jess hurries out the door, her finger hovering over the screen, then, refusing to let her pride get in the way of saving lives, she shoots a quick text to the one person she's still vaguely in touch with, Brainy. What's the plan ? How much time do we have ? How can I help ?

The no nonsense answer comes instantly. Fifteen minutes. Force field if you have that in your inventory.

Lena does not have a force field at the ready, though at this point, maybe she should, with the number of time she's found herself in life threatening situations ; but she has half-baked schematics, and a genius brain. And another text from Brainy. There's kryptonite.

Lena's heart briefly drops to the bottom of her stomach and in the time it takes her to push the fear away, a blue blur has already flown past her window.

Swimming is peaceful. Especially this early in the morning, when the pool just opened and the fast swimmer lane is still empty. Taylor cuts through the water with precision, exercising restraint so as to produce as little ripples as possible. They make one with the liquid, holding their breath for the entire length of the pool as they let the familiarity of these movements anchor them to the world.

When they were little, their Mum vowed that they would never be afraid of water like her, and so they took lessons, their mothers always watching carefully from the side until they could have made the olympic team if they wanted it. When their powers started developing, water was their saving grace. In it, they're weightless, with no fear of putting a foot through the ground ; underneath it, the world is quieter, less overwhelming, safer.

A quake rocks the pool and Taylor find themself thrown out of it, the blue tiles cracking under them when they land hard on their back. It takes them a second to recover, the air knocked off their lungs less from the blow than from the surprise, but to a less trained eye, they're on their feet just as soon as they touched the ground. They take a second to make sure the lifeguard is okay, bringing the startled man to his feet while trying to decipher something from the shouts coming from the old talkie-walkie strapped to his faded board-shorts, then break into a run to the locker room. Whatever caused a tsunami in a pool can't be good, but Taylor isn't about to save the day in an ill-fitting bathing suit.

With their hair dripping in front of their eyes, they jump into Kara's clothes and rush to the roof, trying to get a better read on the situation. It occurs to them, as they run up the stairs, adrenaline coursing through them, that it might be more useful to call Kara, to rely on her and her team. But they want to be useful, they need to help, to do something that isn't just sitting around hopelessly waiting for someone to notice they're gone from the future ; so when they reach the edge of the roof and the city sirens start blaring just as they catch sight of a giant wave hurtling toward the coast line, they just jump.

Gravity catches onto them pretty quickly and the ground comes to them much too fast for them to fully understand what's happening. Rao must still be looking out for them because they land on their feet, crouching right in time to better absorb the shock. It's still not normal though, they should be soaring through the sky, not standing in a small crater in the middle of a chaotic street. Whatever time travel and kryptonite did to them, they can't fly anymore, and that's the literal opposite of a good thing.

A flash of blue passes above them and with the help of their enhanced vision, they manage to slow the blur down to the outline of Supergirl ; Supergirl in her anti-kryptonite suit. Whatever is happening, it just went from bad to worse, and Taylor's fears are confirmed when, before they can take a step out of the crater, Supergirl makes a sharp U-turn to instead land right in front of them.

"Whatever you're thinking of doing, don't," Supergirl says. "There's kryptonite and I don't want you to get hurt again."

Taylor considers arguing, but considering their recent encounter with the deadly substance, they know it's the farthest away from the right thing to do. At least the crash didn't damage their brain too much. "I'll help coordinate the evacuation," they say instead. "Just in case." Supergirl hesitates a beat too long and Taylor barely holds back a frustrated sigh. "I'm not a child. I know what I'm doing."

Taylor can see it on her face, the same concerned crinkle as their Yeyu, the realisation that she has to agree even if that's not what she wants. "Okay," Supergirl says. "But I don't want you anywhere near the shore. Or I'm kicking you back to the future myself."

And with a curt nod, almost a salute, they take off in opposite directions. Only when Kara is out of sight, does Taylor stop, hit by the sudden thought that unless the suit is different from what they remember it to be, Kara can't do anything against the wave either. With no time to think about it, they turn on their heels at full speed to run after her ; they are not about to be obliterated from existence because their mother decided to do something heroically stupid.

Kara lied, of course she did, she can't let anyone put themselves in danger if there's something she can do about it. At this point though she considers that it's not her fault anymore ; with the number of times she's said she wasn't going to do something reckless just to do something reckless, people just shouldn't believe her anymore, it would be easier for everyone.

Glass breaks, splattering her back when she flies too close to a building ; she accelerates anyway, Nia's laboured breathing as she struggles against the wave already reaching her ears. She thinks she hears shuffling on the ground too, the strange sound of someone running at a supernatural speed, but when she tries to glance back, she drops several feet, hit by a strong nausea. She catches herself before she hits the ground but she's wobbly, her flight unstable and her trajectory imprecise. Brainy was right, of course he was ; without the helmet, the suit can't compensate for what kryptonite does to her body.

She reaches Nia in more time than she should, finding her friend struggling against the water, her dream energy almost ineffective against the push of the wave. Dreamer is powerful, has grown stronger in the time Kara has known her, but she can only do so much, and she has only carved out a small portion of the water. Kara drops down next to her, stumbling to her feet after she fails to land properly. Bile coats the inside of her mouth, and the world around her is blurry and painful. When she tries to use her freeze breath, she chokes, and on the next time she inhales, there's more kryptonite than air in her lungs.

"You shouldn't be here !" Nia screams at her, grunting and struggling, her feet almost slipping out from under her.

"You need help !" Kara yells back. She tries her luck again at freeze breath, ignoring the blood that leaks from her nose and into her mouth. This time, she manages to freeze a significant portion of the water in front of her, but it doesn't do much to stop the wave, and soon, the ice she created cracks and explodes in her face. She shoots back, expects her back to meet the ground in a painful way but finds herself encompassed in weak muscled arms instead.

"You shouldn't be here," she grunts, trying to push away the panting green silhouette.

"You need help," Taylor fires back, trembling and almost choking on their words. Their face glows sickly, and Kara wishes she didn't have to chose between saving the city or her child. There has to be something she can do.

"I don't," Kara coughs. "I'm going to vaporise it."

"You're going to what ? Are you insane ?! It will kill you !"

Taylor is right, the idea is insane, "but it will save everyone else," Kara says with a shaky but resolute nod.

"Yeyu no !"

It's clear on their face that they didn't intend for the word to slip out, and their expression is seared into Kara's mind as she pushes them back as hard as she can, turns back towards the wave, and wills her body to last long enough against the poison for her heat vision to do the job. She doesn't stay conscious long enough to know if it works.

Lena hates flying. She also hates the Lexosuit with a burning passion. But when the news playing on her TV grant her with an aerial shot of Supergirl, bent in two and seemingly arguing with an equally trembling figure, she doesn't give herself time to second guess her decision before jumping out the window, barely completed shield bomb in her hand.

Her heart lurches to her throat and as she hurtles towards the ground, it occurs to her that she just did something incredibly stupid. The suit finishes forming in the nick of time, stopping her descent right before she can splatter on the concrete and she takes flight as best as she can, unused to the bulky armour that restricts her movements and her field of vision.

She shoots towards the shore, cursing under her breath when she notices two black DEO vans speeding towards the water against the flow of civilians trying to flee the impending disaster. The wave however, isn't as high as Lena thought it was ; by the time she reaches it, it even seems sizeably smaller than what she saw of it in the distance. And it recedes by the second, almost like it's disappearing into thin air. The source of this is Supergirl. Of course it is. Only Kara would do something as stupid as using her heat vision when she's weakened by kryptonite, when so much as thinking of doing so could kill her.

The Lexosuit makes Lena considerably faster, but she's not nearly as fast as she needs to be. She's not quick enough to prevent the kid from shakily running after Kara, not quick enough to get the luxury of saving the both of them. She snatches Dreamer and the younger kryptonian out of the way, struggling under their weight but thanking whatever god there is that the hero was clever enough to start running back to safety, throws the shield bomb praying, again, that it's enough, and watches helplessly as Kara disappears under the wave.

She doesn't even know if she screams, all sound muted by the force field that springs in between them. The water crashes against it, dark and frightening, and for a moment Lena feels smaller than she has ever felt before. The water leaks on the side of the shield but it covers a wide enough part of the shore that it loses its destructive force before it can start running into the city. Lena lands next to the DEO vans, thankful for the waterproof armour that leaves her dry in the two feet of water that spread as far as she can see.

The water laps against the force field, receding little by little, and Lena watches, hypnotised by the motion. It's almost soothing in a way, after the chaos ; or it would be, if she could catch sight of so much as one inch of Kara in the water. She registers agents fretting around her, the weight of Dreamer and the kid disappearing from her arms when they're guided towards stretcher. She hears the sound of someone retching, and a voice, insistent and annoying. "Where's Supergirl ? Lena, where is Supergirl ?" She raises a shaky arm, points to the ocean, tries to speak but can't ; the rest of her actions seems to be nothing more than a dream.

She leaps forward, flies over the force field, almost tripping when she miscalculates her trajectory and her boot gets caught on top of it, and plunges into the water. It's muddy, almost opaque from all the sand that was dragged along with the wave, and she can't feel it, but she imagines it to be cold. Her overhead light cuts a bright path in the darkness, specks of green dancing in it, and near the bottom of the sea, floating in the current, is Kara's armour clad body. Her eyes are closed, her mouth half open, and her skin glows a pale green that churns deep in Lena's stomach.

With a little help from her boosters, she swims to her, trying to ignore how the embedded AI doesn't pick up any sign of life from the body, how she might be too late, how she never told Kara she loved her. They emerge from the ocean in a burst, water spraying all around them and Lena hurries back to Alex's side too afraid to lose Kara to try to save her on her own.

"She's not breathing," she says hurriedly. "Move away, I'm going to zap her."

"You can't do that," Alex interjects, refusing to let go of her sister's hand now that it's within reach.

"Move away Alex," Lena spits, annoyed and afraid to the point of madness.

"Don't do that," Alex says again even as Lena's gauntlets are charging and almost ready to go.

"Alex, move," she says through gritted teeth.

"Salt water is conductive you fucking idiot ! You're gonna fry half the city !"

"I," Lena stammers, "I..." Alex is right, and she would kick herself for forgetting something so basic, but Kara isn't breathing, her heart isn't beating and there's no telling the kind of damage she's sustained ; she needs to something, and she needs to do it fast.

Alex's shoulder snaps out of its socket when Lena takes off with Kara but it doesn't register as something she should care about. She flies to the top of the nearest building, drops Kara there, and with a strength she didn't suspect she had, she punches her square in the chest while unloading her gauntlet. Kara's body seizes, and for a second, it's Lena who stops breathing. Then she coughs, gasps as water dribbles slowly out of her mouth until she rolls on her side, and promptly unloads flashy green puke on Lena's booted feet.

"You're welcome," Lena mumbles, shuffling her feet in what appears to be chunks of half digested pancakes.

"...there's nothing. Just a crater..."

"...doesn't seem to have had too much of an impact on the ocean..."

"...kryptonite's starting to clear out on it's own, it should be viable again by tomorrow at most..."

"...thank you for saving her..."

"...hasn't woken up yet..."

"...serious injuries..."

Taylor drifts in and out of consciousness, trying to hold on to the voices around them. They feel fuzzy, warm, like they've never known pain at all.

"You don't have to stay."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Why ?" That's Alex, Taylor is almost sure that this is Alex.

"What do you mean why ?" And that's Lena ; Taylor knows it with absolute certainty.

"You say you want nothing to do with us yet you're always here. You show up in the nick of time, gift us life saving technology, wait for Kara to be awake and then you just disappear again. I want to know why."

Lena sighs, and in this short exhale, Taylor hears many more words. "Isn't it obvious ?"

"But...?"

"Are you really going to make me say it ?"

"No. No I suppose you don't have to say anything."

"I'm just not ready. I'm hurt. I don't get what's so hard to understand with that. I can't breathe when I'm around her and I can't breathe when I'm not with her ; I need time Alex."

"I get it."

There's a pause after that, and Taylor considers signalling that they're awake, but Alex resumes talking.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry about your brother."

"I'm not. It had to be done. He's a xenophobic megalomaniac and nobody would have been safe with him still around."

"You did it for her though, didn't you ? I get it. Sort of. Kara is a the kind of person you'd kill for with no second thoughts."

"Oh I assure you I have plenty of second thoughts." Lena sneers, there's a pause again and Taylor starts feeling extremely uncomfortable. Or as uncomfortable as they can be with their emotions dulled down by a hefty dose of painkillers. "I did do it for her. And that's the worse. Because even after all the lying, the betrayal, even after I've made a fool of myself time and time again, I still love her, and there's nothing I wouldn't do for her. I hate this, but I don't hate her, I can't."

"You get it then, why she didn't tell you ?"

"Because she knew I'd go unhinge and she wanted to keep me clueless and to herself ?"

"You're not unhinged, you're hurt, you said it yourself. I just. She's hurt too, you know ? Kara doesn't get to tell her secret to many people. They just know, or someone else tells them, and it rarely ends well. And well I'm to blame too. My Mum and I, we were the first one to tell her she couldn't tell it to anyone. It's buried deep inside of her, the false knowledge that her identity will do nothing but hurt people. That's what she wanted to protect you from."

"I don't care."

"Don't you ?"

Taylor doesn't have to open their eyes to know Lena's resolve is cracking in front of Alex's "big sister voice." And Taylor, Taylor is cracking too, because this is overall a shit situation, one that they can't fix and where everybody is hurting. A soft hand cards through their hair, and they lean into it, not bothering with fighting back tears.

"You're okay," Alex says gently. "You're okay kid."

Taylor isn't quite sure of that.

Alex stays for another ten minutes to run checks, but now that Taylor is awake, the conversation with Lena seems to be over, and when she's done, she exits the room with no more soft reassurance or advice. As predicted, Lena herself doesn't go. She stays unmoving, sitting ramrod straight between the two beds, her eyes glancing from one kryptonian to the other with mechanic precision. She's deep in thoughts, her features twisted in the way they often are when she's trying to say something important.

"That was incredibly reckless," she finally says, her words coming out strangled and tensed, "running after Kara like that."

"Learned it from the best," Taylor mumbles, ready for this conversation to be over before it has really started. They do not need to be begrudgingly mothered by Lena Kieran Luthor.

Lena sighs, and it's achingly familiar. "I do care," she says after a long minute. "I just..."

"I know you do," Taylor concedes. "You wouldn't be there otherwise. It's her you need to tell that."

They nod towards Kara's unconscious body and Lena follows the movement, turning her head to look at her. Her face softens imperceptibly, then hardens again just as quickly. "I don't know how to do that," she whispers.

"Just try."

They sit in silence for a few more instant, Taylor sipping cold water from a paper cup and Lena hugging an empty mug to her chest.

"Jess, my secretary, found me a new place to live. There's a guest room."

Taylor waits. They want Lena to ask a real question, to mean it when she offers what she's about to offer.

"You can come and live with me," she says tentatively. "Until we find a way to get you home."

"Do you even know what my name is ?" Taylor asks with more bite than they intend to.

"I..."

"It's Taylor."

"Okay," Lena whispers. "Do you want to come live with me, Taylor ?"

They look at Kara, slightly less bruised and battered than she was when Lena dragged her out of the water, but still asleep, with no way of knowing when she'll wake up.

"Okay," they agree softly. "Until she wakes up. Then maybe we can talk and see."

A small hopeful smile takes residence on Lena's face and when they look at her, Taylor tries not to see their Mum.