Something tangy coats the inside of Lena's mouth, something both sharply metallic and disgustingly sweet, and her brain supplies her with dozens of murky possibilities for the taste, none of which are useful to explain her current predicament. She tries to keep her breathing even, refusing to panic when her next exhale comes back warm and humid on her face. Tentatively, she opens her eyes only to find that she can't see anything no matter which direction she looks in. The world is a shoddy brown and stops an inch away from her face ; a burlap sack. Something sharp digs in her back and the chair underneath her is particularly uncomfortable. She tries to wiggle her arms, to get a feel for her position because she's almost sure her shoulders aren't supposed to bend that far back. Ropes dig deep around her bound wrists. The room she's in must be small because when a cold voice makes itself known, it reverberates all around her.

"Good. You're awake."

Lena's heart skips a beat.

"Mother ?"

"Okay," Alex says, taking a deep breath. "Okay. We are all going to stay calm and work methodically. She has to be somewhere."

Kara does not want to stay calm, and Kara does not want to work methodically. She wants to move Heaven and Earth to find Lena.

She'll wreck the universe if she has to.

"She's not in her apartment. She's not in her office. There's no trace of break-in but Jess was found asleep at her desk with no recollection of what could have happened. Kara rounded the city, no heartbeat, no remain of scent," Alex lists off blankly, "the traffic cameras show no trace of any suspicious vehicle leaving L-Corp. It's like she vanished."

Alex is just about the only one who's remotely calm in their little group ; Kara suspects it's because of the hefty dose of painkillers she injected to herself while doctor Hoshi was fixing her leg earlier. Even Brainy is fretting, pacing the length of Lena's office back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, to a maddening point that makes Kara want to scream. Every time he passes in front of Nia, she tries to grasp for his hand but he swerves just enough to avoid her and she has to resume her own fidgeting, a rhythmless tapping against her thigh.

As for Taylor, they're sitting on the couch, head between their hands, hair gripped tight between their fingers. They're dressed in a peculiar almost absurd way, the top part of their outfit constituting of Kara's old suit and the bottom seemingly a pair of Alex's ancient, verging on decrepit, tactical pants. Their feet have been shoved in a pair of bulky red lace up boots Kara didn't know she still had. A banged up machete rests on the couch next to them for a reason Kara doesn't really want to investigate.

Distraught doesn't seem to be a strong enough term to describe them and the more time passes, the more they seem to shrink into the couch. Kara can't tell if they're about to burst into tears or into rage but to be completely fair with them, she could herself fall on any side of this at any time. There's a clock sickly ticking inside of her head and deep in her stomach, she gets the gripping sensation that they're running out of time.

"H. How...?" Lena sputters uncouthly. "You're supposed to be in jail." She breathes in deep through the mouth and out the nose, trying to keep her head clear and her ears trained on Lillian walking around the room. She moves quickly and Lena has to refrain from moving her head alongside her.

"Lena, Lena, Lena," her mother tuts. "The answer is too complicated for you to wrap your silly head around it."

There's something wrong with her voice, but Lena can't quite put her finger on it.

"What do you want from me ?"

"Not much," Lillian replies and Lena doesn't need to try hard to picture her devious smile. "Quite frankly you're just collateral damage."

She should be used to it at this point but somehow, she still isn't ; and every time Lillian drags her into her schemes, showing less love and consideration for her than she would for a stray dog, it still squeezes her heart, still hurts in a way it shouldn't.

"What did you do ?" she asks, trying to make her voice steeled and assured and failing, when it comes out as a wet sputter half echoing in the burlap sack.

"Nothing yet," Lillian replies, sounding almost careless. "At least not personally. But I do need to have a word with Supergirl and unfortunately for you, you're the straightest path to her."

"Couldn't you fucking text like a normal person ?" Lena mumbles under her breath.

The back of a hand collides with her cheek, hard enough to break skin. "Do not be impertinent."

Lena's head swims around for a good minute. She feels like her brain isn't bound to her body anymore, like it's floating farther and farther away from her with each breath she takes.

"Now, are you going to behave or do you plan on being an ill-mannered little girl the whole way through ?"

Lillian doesn't wait for her to reply and rips the sack from over her head, its sides catching painfully on her ears. Having adjusted to the relative darkness, the onslaught of light blinds her and for a moment, she sees nothing but bright spots dancing in front of her eyes and a black shimmering silhouette towering above her.

This isn't real. I can't be real. Taylor will not let it be real. They are also quite sure they started dissociating ten good minutes ago so at this point, who knows. Kara looks like she's either about to commit murder or suicide and they wouldn't hold either against her because Lena is missing. She's missing. How can she be missing ?

Their Mum getting abducted is routine at this point, but she's also usually easy to recover. Her kidnappers are always dumb, there's a heartbeat to follow, or the trail of an expensive perfume. This time there's nothing, and the world has never sounded more silent.

"There has to be something we can do," Alex sighs, sagging even more, if possible, against the desk she's leaning on.

"What ?" Kara snarks, "file a missing person report and wait for them to send us her body piece by piece ?"

It's the first time she's said anything since they all conveyed to Lena's office. Taylor wishes she had remained silent.

"She's alive," Nia says, ceasing for a short moment the terrible tapping against her thigh before resuming at an aggravating pace.

"You can't be sure of that," Kara mumbles and Taylor honest to Rao wants to get up and shake her senseless, maybe chuck her out the window ; she has no right being this defeated. If Supergirl isn't hopeful then who can be ?

"I haven't dreamed of the contrary, so I'm basing myself on her being alive. I could try to astral project to find her if I had a general idea of where she is but I don't and," Nia continues, in a frustrating fast paced speech, "right now I can't dream because this room's got mad bad vibes that are blocking my energy."

"Mad bad vibes ?" Alex repeats tentatively.

"Yeah bad vibes. Inferior energy. Abysmal vibrancy." A bit passes, Taylor blinks slowly and sees everyone do the same as they turn to look at Nia. Kara looks positively feral. "Y'all are really nervous and it's interfering with my dreamscape," Nia deadpans. "Also, something shady happened here."

"Nervous ?" Kara repeats. "Nervous ?! My," she stops, swallows. "My," she tries again. "Lena is missing !"

"And do you think I don't care ?" Nia replies, her voice even only through the power of the comforting hand Brainy lays on her shoulder. "I'm trying."

"Well try harder."

Taylor's head snaps up to look at Kara, astonished that she'd say that even considering the circumstances. Everybody however, is looking at them and the sudden realisation that they are the one who spoke sinks into them like ice cold glass shards. "I'm sorry," they whisper though this apology as never felt so shallow.

Nia exhales longly. "It's okay," she says. "It's okay. I'm gonna try again. But I'd like for everyone to take a deep breath with me first because I also want to find Lena and none of our attitudes are helping right now. I'm going to try again, just, just make me some space on the couch."

Fused as they are with the couch, Taylor doesn't really understand how they manage to move enough to make space but Nia still settles next to them, closes her eyes and tips backward in that scary way Taylor has never quite gotten used to.

For an unknown amount of time, nothing happens ; Taylor doesn't dare to look at the clock, doesn't want to quantify for how long they've been Lena-less. Then, Nia starts bleeding. Through her eyes.

Lena does something stupid then, and tries to headbutt the shadowy figure of her mother. She fails of course. The chair tips forward, her face connects with the floor and fuck, it hurts. Lillian lifts her to her feet with a single hand, slapping the chair hard on the floor once it's upright again. Since when is her mother so jacked ?

"Is prison so boring you started to do push ups ?" Lena asks spitefully, all sense of self-preservation having apparently flown out the inexistent window.

"You have no idea," Lillian croons, reaching out, almost tenderly, to wipe a trickle of blood and saliva on Lena's chin.

"Well you did send me to jail once so..."

"I have no desire to hurt you."

"Where have I ever heard that before ?" Lena asks under her breath. "Oh yeah," she continues, louder, "every other time you've put me in a shit situation." She doesn't bother avoiding the hand that connects with her face, and by some miraculous fit of strength, even manages to school her face enough to keep pain away from her features when Lillian's wedding ring catches on her jaw bone, tearing the skin here. "You know Supergirl will find me, right ? You can't be so far gone into your latest power trip that you forgot that she will find me and send your ass back to jail in several pieces ?"

"She won't," Lillian replies simply, deeply absorbed in the dirt beneath her fingernails. "Not until I want her too anyway."

"She can hear me. She'll be here any minute now."

"She won't," Lillian says, briefly looking up from her hand before resuming her inspection. "I've suppressed your heartbeat." Under the single naked light bulb that illuminates the room, Lena would swear her mother coruscates in time with her words.

"You what ?"

"I've suppressed your heartbeat," Lillian repeats. "Do I have to say everything twice ? I thought you were supposed to be a genius. Supergirl won't find you until I want her to. She needs to answer for her crimes, and her penitence starts with your disappearance."

"Fuck," Alex mumbles. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

Kara agrees wholeheartedly with this statement.

Nia's entire face is covered in blood now. It seeps out from her eyes, her nose, her parted lips, even her ears. Taylor tried shaking her awake about five different times, but to no avail. They're about to go for it a sixth time and Kara is distantly aware that she should stop them, Nia is bound to have brain damage at this point, but she's rooted in place, scared and useless, every single cell in her body tuned into Lena's missing heartbeat.

"Don't," Brainy says, stepping in before Taylor's hands can close around Nia's shoulders. "Let me."

His own hands are gentle when they come to frame her face and he rests his forehead against hers. Kara feels a pang of longing, yearning to be cradled this way.

"Nia, my love," Brainy murmurs. "It's time to wake up."

There's a beat, a suspended second that stretches on and on and on before Nia gasps, her eyes flying open and a single word tumbles past her bloodied lips. "Water."

Taylor springs to their feet, trips on the carpet and makes a beeline for the door. "I'll get you some."

"No." Nia coughs, sputters a flake of dried blood. "She's somewhere with water. Lots of it. And rusts. Metal. I'm sorry. That's all I saw. I was kicked out of my dream."

"You were out for a long time," Alex points out softly, producing a handkerchief from her pocket and crouching to dab at the blood on her face before Brainy takes over with mechanical but tender motions.

"There was nothing to see," Nia whispers. "Nothing at all. I was in there for ten seconds at most and then there was, there was nothing."

"Are you okay ?" Kara finds it in herself to ask.

Nia shrugs, winces. "Yeah. I mean, all things considered."

"We should try the docks," Alex decides, slapping her thighs resolutely before staggering up, leaning on her good leg.

"I flew over them three times. She's not there."

"Water, rust, metal," Alex lists off with too much rationality for Kara not to be annoyed by it. "Lead could prevent you from hearing her."

"Or magic," Taylor points out offhandedly. "What ?" they add when everybody zeroes in on them like they just suggested the Earth is flat. "Lead isn't particularly known for causing people to bleed through their eyes. Especially not remotely."

"Magic..." Kara whispers. She doesn't ever recall wanting someone to be wrong so bad. If Taylor is right then they are, as Alex would put it so nicely, fucked.

Something rings wrong with Lillian's words. Not just the fact that what she's saying does not make sense, because unless her mother somehow knows about the kiss, Lena doesn't see what "crime" Kara would have to answer for ; but her very voice sounds distorted, like it's not really coming out of her mouth.

"You see," her mother blabbers on, "Supergirl acts and acts but never stops to think about the damages she does. Never considers the lines she oversteps, the lives she breaks. It's time someone put her in her place, it's time she pays."

Lena shakes her head, feels dizzy at the mere motion and wonders how much time as passed since her last meal. Maybe Lillian banged her head a little too hard when she brought her here. She doesn't even remember how that happened, can't put together the pieces of her mother showing up to her office, or really anything that happened after Kara left.

"Everybody praises her," Lillian goes on, her voice syrupy and sickening. "They build her monuments, adore her like a false decadent god. But she has hurt so many people. So many people Lena. Even you. She's hurt you too, hasn't she ?"

Lena ignores the comment, instead looks around for clues and finds nothing ; the room is barren except for the chair she's tied too. Her vision swims around from the simple effort of seeing and there it is again, this damn taste coating her tongue, a metallic sweetness that makes her want to throw up. Maybe she already threw up while she was unconscious. She considers asking, but Lillian is still talking.

"She's hurt my Master too. Hurt Her so deeply."

Wait, what ?

"But it's you I'm concerned about. You are in love with a monster and you are going to give her a child, a family. How can you bear to do that ?"

Lena's brain is working triple time to make sense of this. It doesn't track. There is absolutely no way Lillian would know about Taylor. She feels like her brain is shrinking on itself and she has to fight against it, push against her own boundaries so she can keep herself in working order and get the hell out of here. This is the only thought that she can really grasp, the one thing that rises above the mud that swallows her brain ; she needs to get out of here, no matter what it takes.

She looks down at her feet, trying to calculate the strength it would take her to get up with the added weight of the chair, trying to gauge if she'd be strong enough to take her mother out with it. She doesn't see her feet however, but a thick layer of mud. There was no mud a minute ago. She's sure of it. Mostly sure of it. What the fuck is happening ?

"See, it's a shame that you love her, shame that you have to suffer because of it. It would be so much easier for you if you didn't. Even if what ultimately matters is that she loves you, and your death will break her."

Lena can't hold back a gasp. Lillian wouldn't, would she ?

"I'm your daughter, that has to mean something ! You told me you loved me !"

Lillian shrugs in a very uncharacteristic manner. "A technicality," she says, not sounding like herself at all.

Lena pushes on her legs, once, twice, fails miserably at getting the chair from underneath her. It's like her legs are locked, like her feet have been superglued to the ground. She tries again, times her effort with the sudden and welcome distraction of something thumping hard on the ceiling ; disturbingly, she perceives the hairline cracks on her bones when she breaks through whatever is holding her back. Lillian flickers before her eyes, raises her head to look up and for a short second, looks like someone else entirely.

"You're not my mother, are you ?" Lena breathes out before she launches herself at whoever that is. She doesn't collide with her though, but with an invisible barrier that rattles everything in her body.

"Clever girl," not Lillian says, "clever clever girl."

Kara lets herself drop on a particularly rusty container and Taylor follows suit, the metal creaking hard under both their weights. They've x-rayed every container on the docks thrice, every banged up ship and every warehouse in a ten miles radius ; Lena is nowhere to be found. Kara smacks her lips against each other, wets them with her tongue and without really meaning too, Taylor mirrors the gesture. There's a weird taste coating the inside of their mouth, something sweet and metallic that's bordering on nauseating.

Wait.

They've been submitted to magic at Crucible, it was part of the training. Magic 101 when your powers were dependent on magic and resisting magic 101 when your powers could be tempered with by magic. This weren't their favourite lessons. Sure, it was fun to witness some of their classmates perform magical fits that would have left Harry Potter jealous but when it was turned against them, it always left them in such a state that they could never remember how they got back to their room. They would often awake in bed hours later, Max curled into an armchair next to them, a metallic sweetness coating the inside of their mouth.

"She's in this one," they whisper in awe.

Kara raises her head, briefly averting her eyes from the silhouettes of Alex, Nia and Brainy attempting to climb the towering pile of metal to join them. "Uh ?"

"She's in this one," Taylor says again with urgency.

Kara shakes her head, returns to her observation. "She's not. It's empty, like all of the others."

"Don't you feel anything weird ? A sweet taste that makes you went to puke ?"

"To be honest I've felt like I was either about to throw up, pass out or die since she disappeared so no, not really."

"It's magic," Taylor presses on. "I'm 99% sure she's being concealed by some kind of ward. If only I knew which one..."

Kara turns to stare at them, blinks before her face morphs into a peculiar -what do I have to lose ?- expression. She slams her hand hard next to her and the metal creaks and deforms when she uses the momentum to haul herself to her feet. "Okay," she says, "what do we do ?"

"Bust it open."

"That's all ?" Kara asks very slowly, these two words dragging out of her mouth like she's afraid of asking the question.

"I had classmates so powerful they could create entire protective bubbles with one drop of blood, and not necessarily their own. Unless you have a magician friend you're hiding from me, our only advantage here is brute strength."

"I can do brute strength," Kara replies, and before she's done talking, she's ripped half the top of the container.

Which is empty.

Empty. Empty. Empty. Completely empty.

Except it doesn't seem to stop Kara at all. She drops inside and starts patting the air around her, evidently having won the competition of who was going to lose it first today. Taylor drops in beside her almost falling over at the gripping stench of magic. Kara is enraptured, bewitched almost, and she whispers, "you were right. She's in here. I can feel her."

"It's empt-," Taylor begins to say but then they hear it, two syllables, barely over a whisper.

"Kara."

And the world positively explodes around them.

They find themselves blown thirty feet into the air in a perfect parabola and when they begin their downward course they catch a glimpse of scrap metal in the centre of which Lena is pining someone down with a chair and Kara is throwing up on the side of the container pile. They spare a thought for their uncanny capacity to end up in terrible situation before they hit another towering pile of storing units and crash all the way down, busting metal panel after metal panel until they hit the concrete, a foot away from the murky water of the port.

They're up and running again in less than a second, jumping from container to container and grabbing Alex and Nia, who grabs Brainy by the sleeve, on their way up so they can all join the fight.

The sight that welcomes them is, interesting to say the least. Kara is attempting to get Lena's attention while Lena is attempting to crush Taylor's grandmother, the evil one not the other, under her weight while proffering an incredible string of swears in a great variety of languages.

For a moment, they're winning. Taylor can smell the lovely scent of victory and then of course, the world tips sideway again and it's replaced by another powerful wave of sweet metal that knocks theirs and Kara's legs from under them.

Lillian, but it's not Lillian, is it ? grabs Lena by the face, muffling her, and hauls herself to her feet before jumping into the void and taking flight.

Definitely not Lillian then.

Kara is up quicker than the rest of them, launches herself after them and after a second of hesitation, invisible to anyone else but clear as day to Taylor, she slams against the witch, grabs her by the waist, flips this weird entanglement of bodies and frees Lena so that when they all tumble on yet another pile of containers, she's away from the frazzled and angry sorceress.

It takes five good seconds for the smoke of the impact to dissipate and for Taylor to find them again and by then, Alex has started climbing down the pile to get to the other and the situation has been reversed again.

The witch now stands between Lena and Kara, touching neither of them but still holding them both under her spell, their feet hovering a good foot other the drop.

"Lillian !" Kara pleads. "Lillian ! Please, I'll do anything. Anything. Just don't drop her."

"Lillian ?" the witch scoffs. "They should call you Superthick."

"You're not...?"

The witch sighs, them smiles, her grin widening and widening until her face splits in two and she seems to both melt and grow taller at the same time, slowly morphing from Lillian to a grey skinned woman with hair darker than the night and eyes that settle on multiple colours at once.

"I'm not Lillian. No. My name is Selena and Superdumb, it is past time you answer for your crimes."

Taylor is still much too far when Lena starts thrashing, her face slowly but surely turning a violent purple. Panic seises their heart and grinds their brain to a halt and for the life of them, they can't calculate the shortest trajectory to Lena.

"Jump," someone says behind them. "Jump I'll push you."

Taylor refuses to avert their eyes from their mothers. "What ?"

"I'll push you," the voice repeats, Nia's. "With a dream blast. Jump Taylor. Jump. None of us are strong enough."

It's a dumb plan. Not even a fully fledged one, just the outline of a dumb plan. Still, Taylor jumps and as they're propelled forward by dream energy, they spare a second to pray that this dumb idea is not the end of everything.

"Not my mother you bitch !" they yell uncouthly right before their fist makes contact with Selena's face.

The momentum carries them both to the edge of the container as Selena struggles to regain the upper hand. Behind them, Taylor hears Kara touch down on the metal plane ; before them, Lena tumbles into the void.

They don't stop to think, don't even consider how if propelling themself on a dream beam was a dumb idea, this is simply beyond stupid ; they just jump after her.

For a moment they fall ungracefully, like a boulder, and then the reality of the situation catches up with them and they force their disarrayed limbs into an acceptable plunging form to dive after their mum.

They catch up with her ten feet before the unforgiving ground.

Rotate one feet away from it, hoping to shield her as best they can.

Reverse their course one inch from the concrete, rocketing up the sky, flying.