'Do you want to hear some advice?'
No.
'I'll give you some advice.'
She said no.
'Madness is a wonderful thing, Supergirl. Many people disregard it. Deem it for the lunatics. For the whackos. A shame really, because madness… It's the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away… forever. You, Supergirl, you just need to close the door.'
No no no no no.
'I'll help you with that.'
And he laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs.
Laughs until he loses air and it dissolves into cackles until there is no air and it is just breathless wheezes until he's bent over double, hands on his knees, shoulders still shaking silently with the hilarity of it all.
Until finally he stops.
And raises the bat again.
…. …. ..
Kara is fine.
She thinks she is anyway.
Maybe. Maybe? Maybe.
Maybe she's fine.
"Wow! Wow, Supergirl, would you look at that! Your superfriends did come back after all. Too little too late, though. Am I right?"
His words echo off the walls, until his statement is longer than it has to be, and his words always drag out like that when he talks, loud and syrupy, like he's preparing for a punchline.
He turns to her under the muted light of the moon, the yellow paleness throwing shadows across his stringy, pea-green hair and purple velveteen suit, and already a grin is spreading across his face.
Already, he is laughing.
She doesn't think anything is particularly funny about it.
Or is there?
Because she can feel the giggle that tears its way out of her throat, followed by more and more and more and can feel her shoulders shaking.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
So it must be funny.
His grin spreads further, practically splits his face in half, and he hands her the tiny revolver.
It's small for such a big personality.
He laughs and laughs and he hands her his gun and says, 'why don't you deliver the punchline this time, darling?'
Kara looks at him through emerald tinted vision, then looks at the gun, then thinks briefly, Supergirl doesn't kill, before the thought is beaten back by the hilarity of it all.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
She swallows nails around a chuckle that scrapes out of her throat, holds the revolver by it's hilt and turns back to their companions.
They're not laughing.
None of them are.
Three of them. On their knees. Stripped of their weapons, their helmets, their bulletproof vests.
Execution style.
Kara recognizes them, knows them even.
She knows Maggie, who cradles a clearly broken arm to her chest.
She knows Lucy, whose lip is already lifting with purplish bruises.
She knows Alex, her sister, the raccooned beginnings of blackness swelling up against her left eye.
She hasn't seen any of them for a long long time.
Days. Weeks. Months.
And they're all looking at her.
Worried. Scared. Concerned.
But not amused.
And they should be laughing because this is funny.
The blood is funny. The bruises are funny. The weight of the gun in her hands is funny funny funny.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
And Kara's smile hurts and her eyes water and she laughs and laughs because she can't stop and cocks the gun.
Supergirl doesn't kill.
Next to her, his cackles grow louder, as he eggs her on.
Three shots is all it will take.
Everything comes in threes.
HA HA HA.
Threes Threes Threes.
HA.
HA.
HA.
*BAM*
He falls.
He does.
Not her. Not them.
The Joker choking on crimson red in his throat is the funniest sound she's ever heard.
… …. ..
Her name is Kara.
She is home.
She is safe.
If she says it enough, it'll be true.
….
Kara's fine.
Maybe. Maybe? Maybe.
Over days, weeks, months she had picked up the jagged shards of herself that he'd scattered into the atmosphere and attempted to slot bits and pieces of herself back together, so things made more sense when she looked at the world. Like a kindergarten art project, the fissures of her sanity are cobbled together with paper tape and Elmer's glue, and some of her is still missing, still caught up in the wind, but overall she's fine.
She remembers now, with the memories of Then further and fewer in between, where she is most times when she wakes up now, without someone having to tell her.
She's filled out a bit more from all that weight she'd lost, her skin had regained most of its color, and it takes all of her focus, but His voice that whispers at her to kill everyone in the room and laugh and laugh and laugh about it, is swaddled in cotton, held down by threaded, fragile chains.
It's easier to evade the pull of whispers. Easier to ignore.
And Alex and Maggie and J'onn and sometimes Lucy or Jimmy don't have to take shifts sleeping on the pull out couch to make sure she didn't do something stupid.
So aside from the way her hands would burn or how she couldn't sleep at night or the scars, scars, scars that weigh on her like quicksand…
Not scars, art, Supergirl.
She's fine.
Fine because it's easier to lie about being mostly sane, than it is to admit that she's teetering on its very edge.
Kal thinks she's fine. Alex knows she's not, but pretends for her sake. And Kara will lie to herself, every day if she has too, because everyone has only just begun to treat her normally.
And fine will get her back to being Supergirl.
So she can't have everyone walking around thinking-
Thinking what? That you're crazy?
She looks through green-tinted vision at the cobbled stone where He tied her up, where He did horrible things, where He bled.
You're just like me now.
Where He bled and the room goes dark and he's behind her now, dipping his face into a half-shadow, little else visible other than the silhouette of a wicked, excited smile as laughter, dark and ugly, bubbles up like emesis in the back of his throat.
Kara closes her eyes tight, breathes in off-rhythm through her nose, as the laughter echoes.
A few breaths are too fast and her controlled ones are much too slow and with such a discrepancy between her breathing, she feels like she's going to pass out.
She doesn't even need oxygen as much as a regular human. So why does her head feel like it's spinning all wrong?
"Kara."
The blonde blinks. Swallows back the bile. And looks around.
He's gone. And so is the cobblestone.
Instead, it's just Maggie, rubbing her eyes as warm light bathes the townhouse kitchen, and still the breath is caught in her throat.
"Kara, you're drifting."
The detective says squinting at her under the pale amber hue and there's a question hidden in there somewhere, even when it isn't phrased as one. A lot of things the olive-skinned woman said often sounded like that, like she already knew the answer, steadfast and calm, always calm, but Kara hasn't drifted in weeks, almost three, and she has to be sure.
She turns back to where the cobblestone was.
Marble countertops.
Wood paneled floors.
The blinking red clock above the oven.
No cobblestone.
No cobblestone and according to the clock it's three fifteen.
Three fifteen.
Rao… She didn't even remember walking in here.
The pieces don't fit.
"Kara, you with me?"
Maggie says, closer now, to the side of her, because coming up behind her had long since been out of the question.
"Uh… yeah."
She hates the way her voice cracks.
She licks her lips and tries again.
"Yeah, I was just hungry."
Liar.
Maggie hums, the hum her mother used to make when she didn't believe her, and those dark, solemn eyes don't move away.
See, even she knows.
Ignore him. Ignore him...
It makes Kara's skin itch and to prove a point she forces her heavy legs, weighed down like anchors, to move toward the fridge.
The movement brings the blonde out from under the detective's watchful gaze and she pauses at the handle, toying with the idea of asking Maggie not to say anything to Alex. But she knows, before the words can even form themselves in her throat, how unfair the question is, how weak, and how she can't put her sister's wife, her friend, in that position.
It's too much to ask. Maggie had broken an arm because of her. The pins in her elbow are still there as proof.
The cold is creeping up again, trying to settle in the crevices of her joints, trying to make them ache.
And she wants to shake the feeling away, crack her knuckles, do something, anything, but if she does she knows Maggie would say something.
Knows Maggie will know she'd been lying.
"Hey."
The detective is still looking at her, same dubiousness in her eyes, and Kara knows she's about to be called out because she's been standing in front of the fridge for too long, and the door isn't even open yet and-
"Grab me a yogurt, I'm hungry too."
Maggie says instead, pulling out one of the barstools.
The detective isn't really hungry, that they both know, but the gesture is there and Kara lets out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and opens the refrigerator door.
She's fine.
No you're not.
And he laughs and laughs and laughs.
…. …
Kara runs.
Runs. Runs. Runs.
In the dark.
In the silent hour.
Just past three in the morning to a quarter after four.
Runs, runs, runs, until she's bent over double and heaving in air.
And she's not running to get away from her problems. She's not running away from Him.
She's not, despite what J'onn says.
She can make it around the perimeter of the city seven times in that time if she tries.
Before Him it had been thirteen.
Barry would probably laugh at her if he saw her now.
…. … …
Home. Condo, home, she's - dreaming, a dream, a flashback, a memory, and what the fuck is even the difference but she lost it, she lost . . . her mind, her memories, her puzzle fell apart again, until she's just here on the roof, she woke up and fell apart and came here, and He's sitting beside her, calculating and careful and happy again because of her and sometimes, more than she'd ever admit aloud, she disgusts herself so much she can't think.
Her name is… Her name is Kara.
She struggles for the familiar mantra and the concrete barrier is cold under her bare hands. Colder than it has any right to be. It was well into spring, but the cement is a frozen mass beneath her, like ice adhering to her skin, cramping her muscles, keeping her still.
Her name is Kara. And she is home.
It was always a fifty-fifty chance whens Kara went up on the roof like this, with her abilities constantly fluxing and waning as they struggled to normalize themselves to the enormity of what being around kryptonite for so long had done to them, because it's not really that cold out here. But the oversensitivity of her touch has decided to punch its way through, and what would be nothing in the Before crystallizes her nerves, made them brittle, and filled her head with numbing fog that clung and froze to the inside of her skull and lungs, making it harder to think and impossible to breathe.
And in the Before it would have mattered more.
Now it is a last ditch effort that only helps dissipate the mirage.
She is home.
The cold would help shake the ghostly hand that rests on her shoulder.
She is safe.
It would help disperse the aroma of his oily hair grease that infiltrates her nose.
He's not here. He's not.
She's in National City.
She's in National City with Alex and Maggie and J'onn and Lucy and Lena and He is dead.
Alex told her so.
Kara swallows around the nails in her throat and lets the cool, frigid air brush over her bare feet that hang off the edge of the building as she looks down at National City's finest milling around below.
They look like ants.
So care free.
She swallows again, surrendering herself to the cacophony of the city, letting herself be immersed in the moniety of voices outside her mind, rather than the one within.
Someone is complaining about their boss, another ranking NBA players, sharpshooting politics, some asking what's for dinner, people laughing, talking, shouting, and eventually it all fades into an incoherent jumble.
Across the city, framed aesthetically in the orange light of the setting sun, she can see her apartment building.
Kara hadn't been to her own apartment since what could only be prescribed as Before. '
She's technically not held prisoner here, not like she had been in the DEO, for the better part of a month when her powers had become too unreliable after they'd fluttered back to life away from under all of that kryptonite and Kara herself had become too unreliable because apparently her mind had ruptured...and she didn't even notice until it was spilling it's contents like a broken jello mold because she couldn't stop laughing, laughing, laughing, and losing herself to what He said.
What he still says.
Instead, when she'd gotten the all clear from the DEO, Maggie and Alex had retrofitted the spare bedroom of their condo with red sunlamps and said that, of course, she could stay as long as she wanted.
They say that because they don't trust you.
No.
They say that because the first week had been bad. As were the second and third and fourth because how can one possibly recover from something as terrible as what she went through?
And even that is ridiculous in itself. Because for intents and purposes He had been human and in the Before she was one of the most powerful beings on the planet.
And still Kate is dead. And still He'd had Kara for the better part of five months. And still the scars won't fade.
If Alex had her way, Kara would be chained to her sister's side, not because she didn't trust the blonde but because she's scared to lose her again.
And honestly… Kara's scared too. Because sometimes this doesn't feel real at all.
You should jump. That'll give em something to laugh about.
There are forty-six floors in Maggie and Alex's apartment building, including the lobby.
She counted.
It's not as tall as the Baker Hugh Skyscraper, the one that Sam had pushed her off of, and she didn't die then.
It would probably hurt a lot, but even with her powers on the flux with all of This, she won't die.
Probably.
And she's not going to find out.
Aww, why so serious, Supergirl?
He's not here. He's not.
Somewhere across the way someone flicks through television channels, some mice skirmish in an alley, and far below that the subway on 46th Avenue grinds to a halt, and between all of that Kara pauses and tilts her head slightly to the side.
"Hey, Lucy."
Kara says not to take her eyes off her apartment building, listening for a heartbeat as the younger Lane finishes stepping out onto the tarmac, the door to the rooftop entrance closing softly behind her.
"Hey, Kara. Enjoying the sunset?"
The blonde drags her eyes away from the orange orb to meet Lucy's halfway, she's dressed down from her usual Air Force Blues and isn't wearing her DEO tactical suit either, which means she just got off work or hadn't gone in at all.
And that didn't happen in her dreams.
"Enjoying the sunset."
Kara's echoes and if the brunette has anything to say about the way she practically dangles there, she doesn't say it aloud, but the blonde pulls herself back from the proverbial edge anyway, scoots back until she can sit cross-legged and the cold seeps up through her sweats instead.
Lucy seems more real than He does, and the blonde can actually feel her warmth when she comes to a stop, propping her elbows up on the edge of the concrete barrier Kara sits on.
And the pieces slot together more comfortably than before.
So real.
But it lingers still, that niggling little sense of doubt, right there on the edges of her consciousness.
"How long have you been up here?"
Kara shrugs, making the movement for a clock that she knows isn't there.
And that isn't really a lie because she actually doesn't know.
Lucy nods in acknowledgment, looking somewhere past her to the golden sun melting across National City, and the blonde wonders briefly what she's looking for as they delve into a silence.
If it's something she can't find like her.
Kara turns back to her apartment complex, wonders if she focuses hard enough her supervision would kick in so she could look inside.
Would it look the same?
Probably.
Would it still look like home?
She wishes she knew the answer.
"I don't need a babysitter, you know."
Kara whispers.
It's hard to pin what specific emotion she puts behind those words, but she knows she has to apologize, because all Lucy is doing is being a friend.
But Lucy doesn't skip a beat.
"Well good, I don't need a babysitter either," the other woman snarks as she reaches behind her, pulling something out of the bag that Kara hadn't even seen. "Consider it dinner with a friend. You probably haven't eaten anything since you've been up here."
That isn't a wrong assumption.
Kara looks away from her apartment, down to one of two paper bags outstretched to her.
She didn't even smell it.
Enhanced senses or not.
She crinkles her brow, trying to force the scent of warm food that she can clearly see, but it doesn't come.
"It's a BLT sub from No'naan's."
Lucy offers, unaware of Kara's internal battle, and the blonde moves then, because she knows she has to, despite some desperate desire to simply remain where she was out of some vague sense of security.
The bag, at least, is warm in her hands.
"Thank you."
She whispers, unwrapping the sandwich from it's paper brown covering.
Lucy just smirks and shakes her head, freeing her own sandwich from the packaging.
"How much do I owe you?"
Kara asks in afterthought.
"You don't owe me anything, Kara." Lucy murmurs around a mouthful of sandwich. "You never do."
There's something melancholic there that the blonde chooses to ignore as she takes a bite and swallows a bit of sandwich around the lump in her throat.
Sometimes she doesn't know why they try so hard.
They sit there until the sun disappears.
….. … …
Kara snaps awake, swallowing a silent scream before it can pass her lips even as she heaves and gasps for air, the sound of his laughter still ringing in her ears.
Sweat drenches her, makes everything feel hot and sticky even as it begins to cool in the heat of the room, and Kara lifts her burning hands, curling into herself as she brushes blonde back from her forehead as if that would banish all those thoughts from her mind.
It doesn't work, though, because it isn't just thoughts, it isn't just a dream. It's memories that are haunting her, that are destroying her sleep and breaking her mind, and the thing about memories is that they never change.
She hates this. She hates the paranoia that's grown even deeper. She hates the cold sweats and the nightmares, waking and feeling like she could never sleep again. And she hates the feel of falling, to the cobblestone in her dreams or the bed she's laying on.
But she can't change it. And that's what she hates most of all.
What happened, happened. Events don't change after they've happened.
She's not used to that, being unable to change things. Change is who she is.
Change is who she has been since Krypton died.
And knowing she's alone doesn't stop Kara from checking, she closes her eyes and focuses because it's better to be sure than to be wrong.
Focuses until she can hear Alex's and Maggie's heartbeats, slow and steady, then listens more to make sure no one else is here because she doesn't have the same faith in herself she once had.
No one.
Just them.
She lowers her hand to drift over the lingering ache that had been so sharp in her nightmare, and can feel the scar from where He'd cut his smile into her.
There. Now you look just like me.
It isn't nearly as grotesque as it once was. No more crimson. No more ugly purple bruising. Just raised, white pebbleness of marred, but healed over skin that won't ever turn back to the way it was in the Before.
The sunlamps did their best, but against kryptonite they were no miracle workers.
And some days, like now, it still hurts. A phantom ache, that she knows truly isn't there.
My name is Kara. I am home. I am safe.
She listens to Alex and Maggie's heartbeats again.
They are too.
Her legs are like anchors when she swings them from the bed.
She's not getting anymore sleep now.
Might as well go for a run.
It doesn't feel as good as it normally does.
…
He had always been a Gotham problem.
Never a National City problem.
Never a national problem either.
Just local.
Just Gotham.
Half man. Half folk tale.
Born in the shadows. Thrived there.
And she'd only really ever heard of him through word of mouth.
Through Kate.
Then Kate was dead. And he had her. And he is very, very real
And the funniest part is that he never wanted anything from her.
He didn't want powers like Max Lord. Genetic research like Cadmus. Or have any particular disdain for aliens like Ben Lockwood.
Everything thing He did was because he thought it was good sport.
Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with.
Some men just want to watch the world burn.
….
The world burns and sometimes Kara's hands burn.
Sometimes the pins and needles that vice against her grip give way to invisible flames that twist and characolize and eat away at her skin and the blonde looks down, expecting fire, expecting inferno, but there is none.
Just hands.
And still they burn.
Burn baby burn
It will have been four months, two weeks, and six days, give or take a few hours, since Then, at the end of the week.
The exact amount of time she'd spent with Him.
The exact amount of time she'd given herself to get over this mess.
And still they burn.
It's karma.
Karma. Karma. Karma.
The cathartic aftermath of holding the smoking gun.
Alex tells her it's called peripheral neuropathy.
That basically, her nerves had hit their hayflick of a limit and now they feel what they want her to feel, even if the sensation isn't truly there.
Another side effect of excessive, prolonged exposure to radiation from her dead, dead planet.
Pieces of her dead, dead planet, that everyone seemed to have.
Kara had learned a lot of what living with kryptonite could do to her.
The souvenirs are written on her skin.
My gift to you.
This isn't better. This is worse. She is worse.
Almost as bad as she'd been in the beginning. And she's been working so hard, so why is she not better?
Kara flexes and contracts her knuckles, willing herself to sink into the mattress and immerse herself back into Alex's oral dissertation on the Charlie Brown cinematic universe and the merits of Rerun as a character.
"-I mean he's really only a replacement character because the other ones got too old. And I think that's a horrible excuse, I mean it's been going on since the sixties and-"
Her older sister rambles and Kara can see the shadow of her hands moving in the air with enthusiasm, even when they both lie on their backs facing away from each other.
It reminds her of Midvale.
Of the early, early days after they stopped hating each other and could stare up into the pebbly ceiling and talk about nothing for hours and hours. Even then, Alex had been the definition of a super fan when it came to Charlie Brown.
The pebbly ceiling is gone now.
And after Alex had gone off the college, the talks like these had become further and fewer in between, reserved for bad days.
Like when Clark had beat her up. Or when Alex had almost died. Or when Alura did. Then Mon-el. Jeremiah. Sam.
Now.
And she's pretty sure they've had this easy conversation before, but the comfortable nostalgia of it almost makes Kara feel normal.
Makes her feel safe.
"The fifties."
Kara feels herself say, retracting her enhanced vision until she can focus away from the blinking city lights outside the window and back to the fuzziness of Alex's Barenaked Lady socks.
"What?"
Alex asks and the shadows of her hands slow down.
"Is it not the fifties?"
The question comes out thick as she finishes, because she knows she made a mistake.
She knows the answer to this question.
And Alex knows she knows the answer to this question.
Because they'd been talking about the movies not the comics.
"The sixties."
Alex reaffirms, after a brief pause, and Kara hears the tone shift, not much, but it's there, and she needs to say something before it changes completely.
"Right, the sixties," Kara murmurs, injecting some enthusiasm into her voice. "I guess I'm just a little distracted. Sore from the run today."
It's not a complete lie.
She could never lie to Alex.
She did run today. Granted it was at three am. When the entire city was asleep.
So she is sore.
But Alex doesn't take the bait.
"Were you sore in the kitchen the other night with Maggie?"
And that had been days ago, but of course Maggie had said something. Why wouldn't she have?
"Yeah."
She echoes distantly, knowing before she even says it that Alex will recognize the lie.
She always does.
And Kara can't lie to Alex.
So she self-corrects and gives her a version of the truth.
"No. Just distracted."
Alex says nothing for a moment
Then…
"I can see the crinkle and I'm not even looking at you."
Alex isn't accusatory. She never is. Just soft and reassuring and calm.
Everything Kara wished she could be.
Instead, her eyes burn with salt and her throat becomes clogged by the lump in her throat and she has to force her hands not to tremble because Alex would feel that and she would know something was wrong, instead of just assuming.
And Supergirl wouldn't be like this. Supergirl wouldn't be so weak.
My name is Kara.
And she digs in her mind for something calming.
Of Midvale and it's soft, suburban feel.
Of Krypton before it had been reduced to splinters, confetti spread into space.
My name is Kara. I am home. I am safe.
Kara flexes her hands into the sheets and sputters for something that's almost the truth so she won't be a liar in addition to a killer, but the words won't come.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Alex continues, softer still.
Everyone thinks that she needs to talk about it all, that it would be—what was the word Eliza used?—cathartic. Her adoptive mother often makes not-so-subtle hints about her always being there if she needs her, and once even tells her straight out that anyone would be glad to listen, especially Alex or J'onn.
The thought of confiding in anyone petrifies her.
She doesn't want to talk about what happened.
She doesn't want to put those details out into the atmosphere.
She doesn't want them, especially Alex, to know what He did to her.
The details are already staining her dreams. They're already being whispered into her ear.
And what could Kara possibly say to Alex that wouldn't hurt her sister more.
How in the last two weeks, it is more than just the time with Maggie where she lost time and drifted and had been so sure she'd never left.
How He still continues to whisper in her ear and tells her to do things, though she suspects Alex already knows about that.
How she's sad.
Sad that she saw Kate die, but missed her funeral by months.
Sad that she can barely smile, much less laugh without having everyone looking at her sideways, ready to restrain her, in case it's a manic smile and His laughter.
Sad that He won't go away, even when she was the one that crossed her own line in the sand, and shot Him three times at point blank range.
How she's scared.
How sometimes she wishes they just left her there.
"Hey… Hey, what's wrong?"
Yeah, what's wrong, Supergirl?
Alex is sitting up now, cross-legged on the bed looking down on her, and when her sister changed positions, Kara doesn't know.
Just like Kara doesn't know when she started shaking so hard.
Tell her. Tell her our little secrets.
She shakes her head and her chest feels tight and the bed is impossibly hard beneath her and the walls smell like wet concrete and dried crimson when they didn't before.
"It's okay, you can tell me."
And Kara can barely hear her over His sharp and sudden laughter.
"I… I-I I don't know Alex." she whispers and her voice cracks. "I-I… I don't... It's just too loud."
That's not a lie.
Liar.
That's not a lie as she struggles to hold in her tears.
"Too loud?"
Alex echoes, quieter and softer still like she always did when the blonde became overstimulated, so she's almost confused when Kara jerks her hands up to grip the sides of her head instead of covering her ears.
"In my head," she clarifies. "I can't think with hi- I can't think."
She almost admits it. Almost.
And the half retraction is more than enough because the wheels in Alex have already turned and made the connection.
"Kara..."
She starts.
"I don't want to talk about it."
Kara whispers.
That's unfair to Alex.
She knows it is.
But she doesn't want it.
"Kara…"
Her heart's beating too fast.
Almost through her chest.
And she wonders if her sister can feel it.
"Please, Alex, I don't want to talk about it."
Kara says again fast and insistently, and she must sound so pathetic, but if she thinks about this anymore she's going to cry and she doesn't want to cry. Not in front of Alex.
"Can we just talk about something else, please."
She watches Alex bite her lip, concern plastered everywhere Kara can see, as she debates the merits of letting this clusterfuck of a conversation go.
"Please, Alex. It'll help."
...
It doesn't.
…
Kara avoids Alex for the rest of the night.
Most of the day after too.
She finds herself on a different roof.
Catco's roof.
The job she'd left behind in the Before is hers, Lena tells her, whenever she's ready, whenever she wants.
But want was a word that kept getting cut smaller and smaller:
Freedom, autonomy, to be a superhero, to save the world, to be a renowned journalist, to have a home, to get eight hours of sleep. To be a hero, to save the city, just once, a cell phone, a bed, to have a published article, to get one hour of sleep. To eat potstickers for breakfast, to read the morning paper, to save herself, to have a minute, just one, to close her eyes.
What does she want?
To feel awake when her eyes are open.
To take a deep breath, so fully and completely, and have it mean something.
To be Supergirl again.
And even that is slipping away.
….
Sand like sugar streaks out beneath the stars of this distant world.
Shines gently under the light of this distant moon.
It's smooth and silky and kicks up clouds of powdered dust when her feet land into their strongholds, works its way into every god forsaken crevice in her shoes, then pushes off again.
She's running.
And she's gone too far.
She's way past city limits. Past the countryside. Far into the desert and if she keeps going she'll end up in Nevada.
Her chest is heaving, her legs ache, her eyes burn from the salt that infiltrates them, but still it is all muscle memory and this pain she can manage, so still she moves.
She had to keep going, had to keep pushing.
The moment she stopped, it was over. All of it.
Happy Anniversary
He whispers, doesn't scream, soft and syrupy, like they were friends.
Four months, two weeks, six days and Kara flinches. Hard. Feet stuttering, skidding, and she almost stops as his syrupy voice opens the floodgates, slicing through the ragged threads in her mind, cutting deep.
And this isn't right.
He doesn't talk when she runs.
He never does.
Do you want to hear something funny, Supergirl?
He's not supposed too, and she wants to stop, to tell him to stop, but the importance of putting one foot in front of the other was embedded deeper still.
Spots dance across her vision as the world unfurled around her in a kaleidoscope of white-silver-blue, and Kara can't tell if it's because she's going faster or if her mind's splitting narrower, and still he talks like it's nothing at all.
I once met someone who tried to fight at first. You would've been proud to see her so strong!
Stop.
She squints her eyes, balls her shaking hands into fists and searches for her mantra.
'Oh stop, you won't get away with this. My friends are on their way. My sister… blah blah blah' Tears for a non-hero she barely even knew and faith in people who could never even dream of the power she weld. Imagine that."
He mocks.
And shut up shut up shut up.
She digs her fingernails into her palms, biting crescent moons into the skin, and her name is Kara, but the floor is harder underneath her footsteps, the ground is no longer sand.
But time ticks by. Tick tock tick tock. She gives in like all the others.
And kinda like the kid who peeks at his Christmas presents, I must admit, it's sadly anticlimactic.
The world spins faster, transforming everything into a sickening blur of color that refuses to stabilize and she can smell his hair grease and his breath and one step after another.
One more step.
And her name is Kara but she can't think.
"Because stripped away from all the laser vision and superstrength, she had nothing. Nothing to threaten me with. Nothing to do with all her strength. She was just a little girl in a playsuit, crying for mommy and daddy! Sounds familiar?"
Her legs falter, and her right foot catches on the back of her heel, and the world veers sharply off axis.
Kara throws out an arm to stabilize herself, palm flat against cobblestone wall and it pushes right through, and she doesn't feel the fall as much as the sand that covers her palms when she's on the ground.
It's cold.
Everything is.
"It sounds familiar because it's you, Supergirl."
The familiar roiling pain of heat vision blossoms between her eyes and she curls into the sand as she grabs the sides of her head, wanting to slam it against the cobblestone as hard as she can until everything, everything, everything is gone and empty.
"Stop!"
She roars, and he ignores her, and she forces herself to bring the heat back in.
Forces herself not to scorch the sky, melt the ground, burn an enemy she cannot see.
But it feels so real.
So terribly real.
If it weren't for how weak you are, we'd almost be the same.
"We could never be the same."
You're a killer.
"You were a monster."
I'm not the only monster.
"It was self-defense."
We're both smart enough to know that it wasn't.
"You were going to kill them."
No, you were. I gave you the gun, remember?
I gave you the gun and you shot me. Three times. Point blank. And four months, two weeks, and six days dead, it means nothing, does it? Because that didn't save you, they couldn't save you, and you can't save you.
"I… I… I…"
Kara can't say anything. Her eyes burn and her throat hurts and the nausea swirls in the turmoil and she doesn't know what to say.
And when her heat vision finally flickers off, forced back by the last thread of yarn that struggles to hold everything together, Kara sees the soles of his leather purple shoes and the beginnings of his purple velveteen suit beside her on the sand.
It'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic...Ah what the heck, I'll laugh anyway!
He laughs. Dark and ugly. Like emesis bubbling up from his throat. Vomit that keeps on flowing.
Come on! Laugh Supergirl! A little laughter never hurt nobody!
He laughs until he loses air and it dissolves into cackles until there is no air and it is just breathless wheezes until he's bent over double, hands on his knees, shoulders still shaking silently with the hilarity of it all.
And she doesn't want to but it builds and builds and builds until it bubbles from her throat like champagne, dribbling down her vocal cords and making the scars on her face ache.
It hurts.
It hurts and she can't breathe.
Good girl.
She laughs and laughs and laughs and cries.
… …. ...
When Kara looks up again the sun is out.
High in the sky.
And she is alone.
…. …. …
Kara blinks and she's not in the desert anymore.
She blinks and she's in someone's studio apartment.
Her feet are bare and she can feel the remnants of sand in between her toes as they balance on the barstool and the edges of her vision still wobble as she looks around and realizes that she's in the middle of someone's living room.
She looks around again and realizes this is her living room.
Or a replica.
This...this room, this furniture, those books, weren't real. They couldn't possibly be real. They were just painted onto the walls.
It was as if she was looking into a doll house; the furniture, the wall paper, the the rug on her floor, it all looked fake – make believe – and even though Kara knows on a deeper level that these were all her things, that this was pretty much exactly how she left it all those months ago, it still looked foreign.
As alien as she was.
"Kara, we were worried sick about you. You can't just disappear on us like that."
Someone that sounds like Alex murmurs, hollow and thick and underwater, coming up from somewhere beyond the void, but Kara doesn't turn toward it.
The wet chill of damp cobblestone that seeps through her clothes and the cloying blood thick in her mouth feels more real than anything else around her and she'd fallen for that trap before.
This is fake. It was all fake. And somehow it's real.
And any second this mirage will dissipate.
And maybe it won't.
"Her phone's dead. That's why she wasn't answering."
Another familiar voice says and Kara ignores the logistical shuffle as she stares and stares at the blanket thrown over the back of the couch that isn't hers and never had a piece of fabric that looked more like a chunk of molded plastic.
The image of it won't fade.
The pieces aren't fitting right and it refuses to fuzz over like it's supposed too.
Refuses to fade back into cobblestone.
She digs her nails into her palms, makes little reddened crescent moons in her skin to wake herself up so more, to get away from this fantasy, and still it won't fade.
"Alex… I think she's…"
A Maggie that's not Maggie whispers off to the side.
"I know…"
And Alex-but-not-Alex's face drifts into her vision, blocking the couch and its plastic blanket from view, but she isn't plastic and doesn't look as fake as everything around her and that doesn't fit the puzzle either.
She brings her fists up to her temples and closes her eyes and ducks her mind back underwater to hide from it.
This isn't right.
This doesn't fit at all.
"Kara."
Alex's voice, muted and careful and reassuring, sweeps over her like a lifeguard throwing out his buoy and still she can't reach out for it.
"Kara, listen to me."
Her sister drums her fingers against the plastic countertop, something that she did when they were kids, and she can't remember if the fake version of her sister ever did that or not.
"Listen to me. You're not there, okay? You're not, you just have to focus."
Kara wants to believe her. She wants to open her eyes and see her sister's face in front of her, a blanket of reassurance that it's going to be okay, that this will pass.
But she's scared.
Scared for when the inevitable happens and she opens her eyes and it's all gone again.
"The pieces don't fit, Alex."
Kara swallows and she should stop. Stop talking to an empty room. Stop talking to ghosts.
"One step, okay? One step at a time."
Alex reassures and Kara can swear she hears his laugh bouncing around in the darkness.
"It isn't funny."
She whispers and can feel herself shaking and the pain from digging into her palms so hard is distant and how can this feel real and not real at the same time.
Kara wants to press her head into the table and disappear.
"It isn't funny," Maybe-Alex agrees. "I want you to focus on me. Okay? On my heartbeat. On Maggie's."
She listens.
Because why not.
She has time to listen before he comes back.
And ghosts don't have heartbeats anyway.
"Just focus, okay?"
And she does.
She drags up her mantra and she holds her broken puzzle pieces in her hands and focuses.
My name is Kara.
I am home.
I am safe.
And eventually she hears it.
The steady thumping.
It's there.
They're there.
Which meant this was real.
The tension rushes from her like a faucet with the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"Do you hear it?"
Alex asks cautiously.
Kara listens to the ba-thump ba-thump, latches on to it, and nods.
And with the affirmation, she feels Alex relax too.
… …
"I don't think I'm fine."
Kara whispers later, after she's finished picking up the pieces of her sanity.
She's on the couch now, her couch, that's real now not plastic, sandwiched between Alex and Maggie halfway through A Boy Named Charlie Brown.
"It's okay to not be fine."
Maggie murmurs.
"I don't think I can be Supergirl, either."
She thinks aloud.
"That's okay too, Kar. I just want you to focus on being Kara for now."
She doesn't have the heart to tell them that she doesn't really know who she's supposed to be anymore.
...
Ha.
Ha.
Ha.