Author's Notes:

Feedback: Encouragement and constructive criticisms are always welcome. Flames are destroyed with my freeze breath.

And all I gave you is gone

Tumbled like it was stone

Thought we built a dynasty that heaven couldn't shake

Thought we built a dynasty like nothing ever made

Thought we built a dynasty forever couldn't break up

The scar I can't reverse

When the more it heals the worse it hurts

Gave you every piece of me, no wonder it's missing

Don't know how to be so close to someone so distant

-MIIA – "Dynasty"

Chapter 8/8

For three hours they went over the designs for the suit. Winn had seven designs in all, and together they were able to jettison some elements as impractical, too bold, or otherwise inappropriate, until the remaining ideas came together to create something both workable and aesthetic.

"I like the red," Mon-El approves.

"It offsets Kara's blue," Winn nods. "I thought that would look nice," he preens a bit.

"It reminds me of Daxam's red sky." His mind drifts back to last night's dream and the vividness of it; the red sun over his head, the plum boscage at his fingertips. The crunch of the dead copper-blossoms beneath his knees as his wife's blood poured through his fingers, his son's life ebbing away inside of her. Mon-El's heart races and his gorge rises. He covers his mouth with his hands, squeezing his eyes shut in a desperate bid to keep from vomiting.

"It does?" Winn inquires, blissfully unaware of the other's vexation. Mon-El plays off his nausea-induced stress as a yawn, which has Winn doing a double-take. "Am I keeping you awake?" he snarks. "Long night?" Off of a stern look from Mon-El's steel-turned eyes, Winn gulps and asks, "Too soon?" Then, nodding, he turns back to his computer and answers his own question. "Too soon. I hear you. So what do you think about the boots…?"

"They're a little too high," he shrugs with one shoulder. "I'm not a pirate."

"Kara's boots are high," Winn explains.

"She wears a skirt," he argues, "the aesthetic looks better."

"Especially with those legs," Winn blurts, before he can stop himself. He cringes, anticipating a challenge of some sort or at least another steel-blue stare, but instead he watches out of the corner of his eye as Mon-El's lips quirk up on one side.

"Especially with those legs," he echoes, his voice turning husky.

"Oh-kay," Winn drawls, wishing he could scrub the look of blissful recollection on his friend's face from his mind. "So, we'll cut the boots back to below the knee. I'll have them lined with Kevlar to be safe…maybe add some steel toes." With a look from Mon-El, Winn corrects, "Steel toes taken care of…check."

"I don't see a cape in any of these designs," Mon-El points out, hoping his voice doesn't sound like a pout.

"No cape," Winn answers succinctly. "You don't want a cape."

"Of course I want a cape!"

"Trust me, you don't. Kara's cape is for aerodynamics. It helps with drag, she takes care of the lift. You don't fly, so all you'll get is drag. Not having a cape could mean the difference between making a 15 story leap and an 18 story leap. Cape is just going to weigh you down." Winn's analysis is succinct and doesn't leave much room for arguing. He chuckles, "You learn to fly…I'll build you a cape. Deal?"

Mon-El sighs and rolls his eyes, unable to hide his disappointment. "Deal."

"Plus, this way all the ladies will get a better view of your ass." Winn's eyes widen, as Mon-El side-eyes him. "Did I say that out loud?" With a defensive shrug he spouts, "What? I promised I'd make you look good…so I'm playing to your strengths!"

It took another hour to nail down the incidentals of the red suit, deciding on a high collar of royal blue to match the Kevlar-lined boots, an asymmetrical hemline on the shirt, skin tight pants that show the dips and creases of his musculature and a yellow belt with a center medallion containing a glyph of Daxam's sun shooting red rays of light.

Taking measurements in the locker room was a singularly uncomfortable experience in which Winn joked about never expecting their relationship to get this close.

Ral was there the whole time laughing at Mon-El's discomfort.

Heading back to the CIC after Winn said he had all he needed for the time being, Mon-El overhears an agent commenting that Dr. Danvers had arrived unexpectedly a while ago. Hospitality on this planet demands that he stop by and pay his respects to her – but also he's always enjoyed talking to her in the past. She projects a motherly warmth for which Mon-El has secretly always yearned.

"You want to be charming," Ral reminds him, unnecessarily, "but not too charming. Remember…the last time you saw her you were only thinking about defiling her daughter. You weren't actually doing it."

Mon-El stops in his tracks and glares pointedly at Ral, who grins widely, before walking onward. "No one's defiling anyone," Mon-El says surreptitiously between clenched teeth.

"Hmmm…I wonder if Dr. Danvers will see it that way…." Ral torments him. Admittedly, Mon-El has some concerns about seeing Dr. Danvers again, now that he's mated to her adoptive daughter.

His gut clenches with concern, but he stays his course. "Why do I keep you around?"

"Because I know things, Brother. Things you've forgotten and don't seem inclined to remember. It's right there," Ral says, needling him. "Right there under the surface. So close you can feel it bubbling up. Sometimes you think you hear the wails inside your head or see the flames in your mind's eye. And the smell of the blood, of charred skin and heads on fire like screaming candlesticks…."

"Stop," Mon-El begs. Suddenly finding himself breathless, his heart racing, he places his hand against the smooth concrete wall and tucks his face into his arm, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. Behind his eyelids, white and gray flash and flicker like the screaming, flickering bulbs of the intrusive cameras belonging to rabid reporters and paparazzi. "You have to stop."

"On the contrary, brother, I have to continue – if that's what it takes. Now that you've seen the truth, or at least part of it, you need to let the rest in. It's the only way to make you whole."

"Whole," he echoes. "I'm more whole here, now…with her…than I ever felt for even a single moment of my life back there."

"Good…that's good. There may come a time when you need to choose between hanging on to me and losing her, or letting go in order to have the life you want, and you'll do well to remember that. But that day, that loss, and everything that led up to it…the choices you made…will always be a specter over your head for as long as you refuse to give it its due. Let it in," Ral urges. "Feel it. Accept the pain of it, so that you can make it a part of who you are and move on. There's still work to be done and you can't keep it at a distance forever."

"I know," Mon-El breathes, seeing the truth of Ral's words for the first time.

"Sir, are you alright?" an astute DEO employee walking by stops to ask, noticing Mon-El's distress. He recognizes her as one of the medical practitioners often seen in the med-bay and her lab coat identifies her as such.

"I'm fine, thank you. Just..." his vision flashes white and gray again ad he rubs his eyes, "a bit of a headache."

"Would like an escort to the med-bay?" the woman asks.

Mon-El tosses Ral a glance and nods, "Actually, I was just on my way to see Dr. Danvers."

"I just saw her in the conference room, sir. With Agent Danvers and Supergirl."

"Supergirl's here?"

"Just flew in a few minutes ago," the agent informs him. "Do you need help?"

"No, I've got this." Mon-El straightens his spine, gives the woman a reassuring smile, and lies, "I'm feeling much better now, thanks."

The medic regards him suspiciously for a moment before nodding and walking away. Mon-El watches as she goes, waiting until she disappears around the corner before altering his course in the direction of the conference room.

"You're…not looking so good," Ral declares.

He doesn't feel so good either. It's not anything he can pinpoint or put a finger on, like a fever or a choking cough. It doesn't feel like the sickness created by the Medusa virus, but rather a profound foreboding that fills his chest and spreads down his spine like the tendrils of Velestrian Rot, a black vine that burrows deep, growing out of control until it breaks apart the very thing to which its attached. His fingers tingle and his eyes sting incessantly.

He doesn't mean to eavesdrop but his powers appear to be fritzing out. It occurs to him that he may be experiencing withdrawals from going more than twenty-four hours without siphoning electricity. Ral had claimed it was becoming an addiction. Perhaps he had been right—he usually is.

"Safety of others?" he overhears Kara ask, but doesn't know to whom she speaks. Is there something brewing out there? Perhaps Cadmus is up to some new tricks? Something for which he needs to prepare. "You want to put him back into a cell?"

Mon-El halts in his tracks just outside the conference room. This is interesting. Who is she talking about?

"Isolation," he hears Alex say, her tone one of pacifying rationalization. "For his own good."

"But in a cell," Kara repeats. "After everything we—after everything I—put him through when he first arrived. After Medusa? You want to put him back in a cell like he can't be trusted."

Mon-El's heart speeds up because it sounds like they could be talking about…him. Are they talking about him? Talking about putting him in a cell, like when he first arrived? After everything he's done, how hard he's worked to prove himself? To prove he can be trusted?

"Kara, he's on the verge of a full-blown psychotic break. It sounds like he's fighting it for the moment, but there's no predicting how long he has before his mind completely fractures and he can no longer tell the difference between the hallucination and reality. And if that break happens and he experiences another flashback like the one he had last night…Kara, I know it's painful, but locking him up really is the best for everyone. At least until we can find a way to purge him of the hallucination."

"They know about me," Ral says. "It was only a matter of time, of course. Especially with how close you two have been getting. You can't keep these things secret forever."

"Alex thinks they can take you away from me," Mom-El says, a dark rage rising inside of him, a fever building that spreads up his neck and face until he can feel it burning beneath his skin.

"Let her believe what she likes, brother. She can't take me away. No one has the power to do that."

Mon-El tunes back in, listening for what comes next, waiting to hear Kara's voice of reason…and hope. He knows, without a doubt, that she believes in him. Trusts him. She just asked him to move into her loft with her so that she can help him deal with the nightmares and now, the flashbacks; there's no way she going to give up on him so quickly and so easily. She always fights for the ones she loves.

"Okay," Kara's voice agrees. "We'll play this your way. We'll lock him up."

For the second time in his life, Mon-El's entire world crumbles around him. She didn't even fight for him, didn't come to his defense. He had been so certain that she would, so certain that everything they'd shared had meant as much to her as it means to him.

They'd talked about sharing a life, about having a family, and here she is bartering all of that away because he's…too damaged. She'll take everything away from him if he allows this. If he doesn't do something, doesn't move or take a stand, she'll take away everything he's earned and worked so hard for. His job, his friends; she'll take away Valor.

A righteous rage mixes and swirls with the heartbreak he feels inside. He won't be locked up. Not again. Not after what his father did.

"Now you're feeling it," Ral exclaims. "Let it come, Brother."

Mon-El shakes him off, ignoring the gnat that whispers in his ear, focusing only on the red that closes in around his vision, locking down his sight until it focuses like a laser beam, focuses on her. Her head whips around to see him standing in the door, and her eyes widen with surprise, her eyebrows crinkling as though already preparing to tell him lies.

"Remember when I said not to worry about the time and the place?" Ral asks. "That I would take care of it? This seems like as good a place as any other."

Mon-El grits his teeth and steels his resolve.

"Mon-El," Kara exclaims, frightfully. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough," he grinds out.

"Mon-El, you're not—" she tries.

"Don't," he says, raising his voice and his hand. "Just don't."

"Looks like some people just don't get the same consideration others do," Ral needles in a practically blasé manner, sounding for all the world like he's stoking Mon-El's anger to a fine rage.

Mon-El turns on Ral, pointing a finger. "You…shut the hell up for once!"

Kara's heart constricts, her throat closing as Mon-El reveals to her for the first time the depths of his psychosis. "Mon-El," she cries, covering her mouth with her hands.

Dr. Danvers exchanges a look with Alex before slowly rising from her chair and inching away from him. Alex's eyes harden and she reaches for her belt.

"Man's got a point, though," Mon-El shouts, his adrenaline surging unlike anything he's ever felt before. The taste of it in the back of his throat is like battery acid. Looking at her, at this woman he fell in love with and by whom he is betrayed, he can feel the walls inside of him splintering, bursting apart like a cage outgrown by its captive. "How long did you get, Kara?" he wonders.

She sees him changing, breaking right in front of her and it's everything she didn't know she feared. His handsome face transforms into a monstrosity a red anger, his lips turning an alarming shade of…gray? "I don't understand," she shakes her head, expressing her own confusion, rather than answering his query.

"How long did your precious adoptive family give you to grieve all that you had lost? Did you a get a whole three months like you've given me? Is this the extent of your generosity? Did they threaten to lock you away because you were too broken to be fixed?"

"Mon-El, we're trying to—"

"If you say 'help', Kara, so help me Rao." Mon-El blinks furiously, his eyes watering, unable to clear the angry red of his vision. "I see my dead brother," he confesses. "I talk to him when I need to work things out, or sometimes when I just need a friend. I'm not going to be told that's wrong by a woman who keeps a virtual construct shrine to her dead mother."

Kara gasps and swallows the acrid acid taste in her mouth that rises in the face of his vitriol…and his truth. "It's not the same," she insists, though her tone lacks conviction.

"Oh, I know," he shouts, his voice grating on her heart like sandpaper. "The difference is I know that Ral is dead…in my heart. It happened right before my eyes. I'm not still holding on to hope. You know what I'm also not doing?" he asks. "I'm not going back to that cell."

"It's okay," she promises. "I just need you to calm down."

"I don't get to be angry now? Of course," he scoffs, "The woman I love betrays me and you still expect me to be your little lap dog. Doing whatever you tell me, being whatever you want me to be."

He doesn't know what he's saying, where all these words are coming from. They spill from his mouth like a vomit of long buried but now unrestrained bitterness. Just this morning, he made love to her as if she were his world and he thought she felt the same. But now, looking at her feels like she's just another jailer, holding the keys to his shackles.

Tears streak down her face as her heart breaks. She came here seeking help for him and never intended to betray him, but he would never see it that way, not in this state. She wipes the tears from her face, looking up to see four agents approaching him from behind.

Something slams him in the back, followed in quick succession by three more blows, one in the back of the head that brings him to his knees. Before he can gain his bearings his wrists are gathered in front of him and a pair of Nth metal cuffs are placed on them.

A thought flashes through Mon-El's mind, that this is not how he planned to obtain Nth metal cuffs today. He scoffs angrily at the irony, but the thought only serves to inflame his rage, reminding him that just this morning, despite the specter of death that hung over his head, his whole world was shaping up quite nicely.

"Alex, what did you do?" he hears Kara ask her sister.

"I pressed my panic button," she replies.

"Please," Kara begs the agents who are dragging Mon-El to his feet. "Please don't hurt him." She steps forward toward Mon-El, but Alex grabs her arm to stop her.

The agents' mistake is pausing before attempting to place Nth shackles on his ankles. He throws them off with ease, watching as Kara's and Alex's widen in surprise as two of the agent fly through the glass windows. Despite the verbal confrontation and his clear distress, neither of them expected him to get violent. But clearly they had underestimated his psychosis.

Crashing through the glass, the agents fly over the balcony and forcing Kara to speed to their rescue, leaving Mon-El alone with Alex and Dr. Danvers. Hyperaware of her need to protect her mother, Alex draws her weapon and points it at Mon-El, but anticipating her move he speeds to her and tears the gun from her hand, crushing it in his fist.

He considers throwing the chunk of metal at one of the remaining agents, but before he can decide, he's grabbed from behind in a chokehold by an arm with which he is intimately familiar and the world is whizzing past until he and Kara are in the open atrium of the DEO's top floor. "I don't want to hurt you," she shouts, begs.

"You already have," he chokes, her strength crushing down on his larynx. His red vision grays around the edges, until his father appears before him and everything goes red-hot again. "No!" he screams.

"You'll do as I say," his father declares, his own steel-gray eyes staring coldly back at him with a sneer on his full lips. "And never forget that you are…utterly…replaceable. Did you honestly think that you were only one?"

Ignoring the pressure at his neck, Mon-El wrenches himself free. "I'll kill you for what you did to me. I will never give you what you want."

When he shakes Kara off, she's thrown back several feet, knocking her into the light table, both smashing it to smithereens and shocking the hell out of her at the same time as thousands of volts of electricity pass through her.

"You will," his father insists, a smile of victory spreading slowly across his face. "And until you do…I think I'll keep our dear Morgon here as collateral. Whether or not he's returned to you in one piece, depends entirely upon the speed with which you comply."

Ral drops to his knees in front of Mon-El, broken and bloodied, one eye swollen shut. "Leave this place, Brother," he whispers. 'The first chance you get…run. Forget about me…he will never let you be free."

"What have you done?" Mon-El shouts, focusing his rage on his father.

"Just a promise…with more to come." Waving his hand with a careless, carefree gesture, he commands, "Take him away."

The scene in his mind shifts again like a red swipe across his vision and Daxam is crumbling around him once more. Ral is sprawled at his feet, his wrists and legs in chains as the room shakes and trembles. His legs are broken, meticulously broken with great care, so as to increase initial pain and long-term suffering, but that isn't what draws his attention this time.

Like the chains, it is a detail he hadn't seen before—his mind hadn't let him see—the swaths of dried blood caked on Ral's cheeks, stemming from the empty sockets where his eyes once were.

"No, no, no…what he did he do?" Mon-El cries reaching down to touch his brother's face. "What did he do?"

"Extracted a price," Ral answers, as the smell of smoke and the sound of screams filter through the air. "A price that no longer matters, it seems."

"He only did this because of me," Mon-El cries. "Because I wouldn't give him what he wanted."

"Not your fault," Ral reaches out blindly and grabs Mon-El's collar, pulling him closer. "Every drop of blood taken from me is a price well paid if it means this venal House finally dies with him. Know that I regret none of it, so long as that is the outcome." A loud boom fills the air causing the ground to shake beneath them and Ral chuckles, despite his obvious pain. "The gods of Val-Or side with you this day. With both of us."

"How can you say that?"

"Because this is your chance to get away from this place. The prison doors are open."

"What about you?"

"You have to leave me, I'll only slow us both down. You can still escape. He took my eyes, brother," Ral winces, blood gurgling up to his teeth, his injuries far worse than they initially appeared. "I'll never see my beloved Melis again – unless it's in the afterlife. A place I'll be seeing sooner rather than later, if the gods are good to me once more."

"I won't let you die here," Mon-El insists.

"You will," Ral cough, blood and spittle spewing from his mouth. "And you will make me one last promise."

Torn, a scream of heartbroken rage wells up within him, pushing its way through his clenched teeth. His brother-in-bond is dying and there's nothing he can do for him, but fulfill a final wish. "What is it?" he asks.

"Find a way," Ral coughs again. "After this place is gone and that old despot is dead…find a way to restore what was great about Daxam."

"What was great…? I don't understand."

Another boom rocks the building, chunks of the ceiling falling around them both. "There's no time," Ral rasps ever more weakly around horribly split lips. "You have to go now, before you're buried with me. You'll find a way," Ral says, and Mon-El knows he isn't talking about escaping.

Mon-El backs away towards the cell's only exit, reluctant to leave the only man he's ever called friend – called family. The only person who's only truly loved him for him.

Sensing his bond-brother's reluctance, Ral's voice softens, "I'm already a memory, brother. Go before it's too late."

Just as he reaches the doorway, he looks back just in to time to see a chunk of the stone ceiling fall and strike Ral in the head, caving in a large portion of his skull.

It is a killing blow, he knows, instantly sparing his brother from a slow agonizing death from internal bleeding. It is a death for which to thank the gods, but instead he feels only rage for stealing the life of the only good thing he ever had in his life. The only thing that was ever his.

Mon-El hands fist tightly as his anger and grief wells up within him and then overflows. "Noooooo!" he screams.

Mon-El isn't with them anymore, if he ever had been in the last few horrible minutes. He's somewhere deep inside his own fractured mind, remembering traumatic events of long ago as if they were happening for the first time – like cutting away healthy flesh to find a bloody, festering wound beneath. Regaining her feet, struggling to overcome the effects electricity has on her, Kara manages to shake off her disorientation and move towards him just as two things happen at once.

"Nooooooo!" he screams, blind eyes focused on something she can't see while his hands fist together hard enough to stress the bone.

And then the room explodes.

"Get down, get down!" Kara screams, as agents dive for cover under and behind any available protective surface. Red beams of light shoot around the cavernous room cutting through everything they touch like a soldering iron. His sudden onset heat vision is made all the more uncontrollable by the fact that his feet are hovering several inches from the ground.

He mumbles incoherently for the most part, only the occasional phrase making sense inside the chaos he creates. "Where is he!?" he demands. "Where has he gone?" His ravings continue as Kara ushers people to safety, her first priority getting them out of the line of his unintentional fire. When the last of the agents is removed to safety she considers her options as she observes his delirious raving. "Looking for this—"

Taking flight, Kara shoots toward him, striking him at mid-level and pulling him down to the ground, both of them sliding across the floor until they're buried in a wall. The beams of red-hot heat shoot into the ceiling, which crumbles around them. She can barely restrain him as he thrashes beneath her and she doesn't know what she's supposed to do, but she has to end this before someone gets seriously injured.

It tears her heart out, the inhuman sounds he makes, as if he's reached down into the deepest parts of himself and found his most excruciating pain, bringing it to the surface and using his own voice as its release valve. Where is he now, she wonders? Marinating in some hellish mind palace with no way out but death?

Kara covers his vision beams with her hands, absorbing them and keeping them doing any more damage.

"He's out of control, Kara!" she hears Alex shouting.

She knows her sister is right. He's out of control and out of his mind and there's only one thing she can do. Balling her hand in a fist, she rears back and slams it in his jaw, once and then a second time, both times his head rolling right back like a ball-ended punching bag that always comes back for more.

"Yes," he seethes, his voice filled with hatred. "Kill me," he shouts, lost in a delusion she can't understand. "Kill me now, if you can! Your last—"

His next words are drowned out when he turns his head, his laser beams striking the glass walls to the outdoor balcony, causing them to shatter and explode. Thousands of tiny glass missiles spray the atrium like a glittering rain of deadly diamonds.

"Mon-El," she sobs, her face wet with tears. "Please?" Kara begs, but she doesn't know what she's begging for, maybe praying for, other than for it to end. Like an answer to her heartfelt but unarticulated prayer, his heat vision sputters out as he lay beneath her, as if he's gained some measure of control.

She punches him again, blood splattering from his noise and upper lip, which is when she realizes he hasn't gained control of his heat vision, but has simply expended the reserves of yellow sun radiation in his cells—solar flaring—which makes him utterly vulnerable.

His eyes widen as his mind flares to lucidity to find Kara hovering over him, her fist coming down towards his face with alarming force. In the instant that her fist makes contact, and pain explodes in his head, he's certain that death awaits him.

His last thought as darkness closes in around him is that this morning he awoke a hero, and somewhere along the line, without knowing where he mis-stepped, he became a villain.

The End

(To be continued)