Hi Supergang!

Here's your weekend update, I hope you'll enjoy. It's obviously based on the "Girl Who Has Everything" episode, but I think you'll find it's quite different from the show (and a lot more enjoyable, if I do say so myself). No real spoilers since I'm diverging from canon so much. Have fun and give me your feedback!

Note: the Kryponese word zrhueiao means "lovely" in a specifically romantic/attraction way; I'm using it here as a term of endearment, like "my love." Kri-zhao means "bright love," a soulmate bond, which you may remember was the title of the first chap of this fic. I found (and slightly modified) these words from an online Kryptonese dictionary. Yep. I'm all in. :)

…...

I'd Carry a Plane for You

Chapter 13: Reality Bites

…...

Fuzzy shapes started to swim in and out of the peaceful blackness where Kara was drifting, warm and content. "Uhhhmm," she sighed softly, stretching sleepily as her arms reached out automatically across the empty space in the bed beside her. "Lexie...?"

"I'm here, Kara. I'm right here," Alex's sweet voice cooed assuringly, close by. Kara suddenly became aware of her body as she felt her hand being slipped into her girlfriend's. The gentle way Alex always rubbed her thumb over the back of Kara's hand was soothing and familiar. Everything else was fuzzy and confused.

"What happened..." Kara muttered woozily.

But instead of answering her, Alex called out, "Alura! She's awake!" That snapped Kara to attention, her eyes flying open as she sat bolt upright in bed. This wasn't her bed. This wasn't her apartment. And these definitely weren't her clothes. "Hey, hey, relax. It's all right, my sweet Kara, you're all right," Alex hummed, stroking her hair soothingly. "Does your head still hurt? You hit it awfully hard."

"My...my head?" Kara asked uncertainly, putting one hand to her head even though she felt no pain. "No, I...you hit your head, Alex, not me..." Kara's words died in her throat as she blinked and fully took in her girlfriend, sitting vigil protectively beside her in the bed. Alex...Alex didn't look like Alex. Her hair was longer than it had been since high school, tumbling over her shoulders and down her back in loose, dark waves. She was wearing a pure white dress, whiter than anything Kara had seen since...since she left Krypton. Kara's breathing became shallow as her mother walked into the room.

"Mom?" Kara's voice trembled with uncertainty as she looked at her mother standing in front of her. It was her mother...but it couldn't be her mother...but it was. She was wearing the same blue dress Kara remembered from her childhood, when her mother would sit beside her in bed to tell her a story or sing her a lullaby. The blonde girl could still remember how soft the fabric was.

But she also remembered seeing Krypton explode in front of her eyes as her pod streaked away; she remembered landing on Earth, meeting Alex, the last twelve years of her life. This couldn't be real. Kara jumped skittishly out of bed, grabbing Alex's hand and pulling the dark-haired girl behind her protectively. Clearly, they had both been captured and somehow trapped in this bizarre fantasy world. That's not your mother, she said to herself silently, even as her heart tugged painfully and begged her to take the few steps across the room and throw herself into her mom's arms. That's not your mother.

"Kara, what's wrong?" The woman who was not her mother asked, looking slightly confused as she reached out a hand to her daughter. "You needn't be afraid, my darling. You're home now, you're fine."

"Stay away from us!" Kara shouted in a panicky voice, backing up with her hand still holding Alex's protectively behind her.

"Kara!" Alex reprimanded her sharply, sounding shocked. "Have you lost your mind? Don't speak to your mother this way."

"It's all right, Alex, she's simply confused from the head trauma," Alura said calmly, crossing the room and reaching out to stroke Kara's hair. The blonde girl felt frozen, unable to move or think. "Everything's all right now, my dear one. You're home safe. Can you remember the accident?"

"No. What accident? It wasn't an accident. We were fighting Non...Alex, he must have done this to us somehow...we've got to get out of here!" Kara tried to lift off into the air, intent on taking Alex with her and flying anywhere safe until they figured this out. But she couldn't fly. Not even a little bit. She narrowed her eyes at the large glass window looking out over what wasn't Argo City, it wasn't Krypton, it wasn't real...but when she tried to blast through the glass with her laser vision, that didn't work either.

"Why aren't my powers working?" She yelled in frustration. "Whatever is doing this, it must be mimicking the effects of Krypton's sun..."

"Zrhueiao, we are on Krypton," Alex said gently, circling around to face Kara and holding her head with both hands. She looked scared, her dark eyes wide with a combination of love and worry.

"You've never called me that," Kara said, quietly now, in wary disbelief. "And you've never been to Krypton. It exploded twelve years before you were born, Alex. Don't you remember Earth? Don't you remember my pod crashing next to you when we were kids? We grew up in Midvale, you played soccer and ran track, I sang in the glee club...you have to remember, Alex!" Kara pleaded, gripping Alex's hands and pulling them gently off her face, squeezing their fingers tightly together.

"Alura?" Alex looked over at Kara's mother—no, that wasn't her mother!—with confused worry shining in her dark eyes.

"Hush, Alexah, you needn't fret so," Alura Zor-El shook her head with a reassuring smile. That's not her name, Kara thought but didn't say. It's Alexandra. "This confusion is simply the side-effect of the neural reparative serum the healers warned us was likely. It will soon fade. Kara, my beloved daughter, you must calm yourself," Alura turned her gaze to Kara's frightened blue eyes. "You must have had terrible hallucinations while your brain injury repaired itself. You've been unconscious for almost two days, sweet one. You saved a small child who had chased his ball across the rails of the hovertrain, do you remember that? The healers were here half the night. But you are well now, you are safe."

"Always the hero," Alex shook her head with a little huff of exasperation even as a smile curled the corner of her mouth. That expression, Kara knew well. She'd seen it on Alex's face a million times before. "There was no need to throw yourself in front of a train to impress me, you know. I'm already yours." As she spoke, Alex raised her left hand gently to Kara's, and Kara felt her own hand being pulled of its own accord toward Alex's as the rings they both wore clicked magnetically together, like interlocking puzzle pieces. She stared down at their hands in disbelief, her heart thudding painfully at the sight in front of her eyes that she wanted so much to be true. Her and Alex, wearing a matching set of Kryptonian engagement rings. The kind that were specially designated for a love match; that is to say, a marriage that was not arranged to combine powerful houses, but rather a connection between two hearts that could not be broken. Kri-zhao. Bright love, brighter than the sun—on Earth or on Krypton. That was what she and Alex were. Unable to look away from the sight in front of her, Kara tentatively put out her free hand and ran it over their rings.

"This isn't real, Lexie," the blonde girl whispered, her eyes filling up with bittersweet tears. "We're not supposed to be here..."

"Of course we are, zrhueiao," Alex hummed soothingly, pressing a soft kiss to her lips, then leaning her forehead against's Kara's with her eyes closed, the way they had been doing since they were thirteen. "Where else would we be?"

…...

Back at the DEO, the real Alex was on the verge of total panic. She had expected her girlfriend to arrive back at HQ before the humvee, even with the pit stop at their apartment factored in. But she wasn't there before them, and she still wasn't there twenty minutes later, and she wasn't answering her Supergirl bluetooth-earring phone. She always answered her Supergirl phone. J'onn promised to call James and Winn and Ms. Grant while Alex was in the med bay getting her head injury scanned by half a dozen different fancy machines; but half an hour later, when Alex was discharged from the med bay with strict instructions for the proper care of her concussion, Kara was still MIA. No one had seen or heard from her since she left McCarren Park almost an hour ago.

Naturally, Alex insisted on going after her girlfriend even with her recent head injury still fresh and fogging her mind slightly; and naturally, J'onn insisted on coming with her. Winn called again when they were on their way, anxious for an update, and when Alex explained that Kara was officially MIA in the aftermath of a major battle with Non and his troops, Winn and James and Lucy all showed up outside Kara and Alex's apartment, waiting anxiously for the DEO agents to arrive.

"Alex, thank God you're here, we're seriously worried," Winn gushed frantically, his hands clenched into useless fists at his sides. "I tried calling her cell again after we got here, and we could hear it ringing inside the apartment, but there was no answer. Do you have your keys?" The truth was, Alex was still spaced out from her concussion and had forgotten her keys (along with everything else) back at the DEO, grabbing only a gun that shot both bullets and kryptonite darts as she ran out of HQ.

"Yeah," She said stonily, kicking the door down with one swift movement, her gun never lowering. Winn made a mental note never to get on Alex's bad side.

"You civilians need to stay out here," Hank jerked his head gruffly to the hallway as the three CatCo employees made to follow Alex into the apartment. "This is classified government business."

"This is our best friend in trouble," James countered, his hand slipping into Lucy's, who squeezed it tight in support. "She'd do the same for any of us. In a heartbeat." J'onn opened his mouth to argue, but Alex cut him off.

"Sir, you don't know them like I do. They're family. There's no time for this, come on." Alex lead the small group into her apartment, gun at the ready, her eyes sweeping the perimeter of each area as they advanced through the entryway and dining area, to the kitchen.

"Oh, God," Alex whispered, the color draining from her face as her eyes fell on her girlfriend's body sprawled on the floor, a monstrous creature nested around her torso with long tentacles wrapped around her body and neck. The thing was pulsating, with smaller tentacles waving from the surface of its body like some kind of grotesque plant in bloom, clearly alive. Kara was alive too—she was still breathing—but other than the steady rise and fall of her chest, she was motionless on the ground. Alex felt her head throb as her vision became fuzzy, the combination of her fresh concussion and the terrifying sight in front of her causing her head to spin slightly. Winn was kneeling by Kara's head, trying to talk to her, to assure her that they were there and she'd be all right; but the blonde girl didn't so much as twitch in response. Alex began to feel dizzy, bright points of light spinning around her head like tiny stars. She could hear J'onn calling for a medical evac. She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, trying to clear her foggy thoughts. Stupid concussion.

"Alex, are you all right?" J'onn's hand was gripping her shoulder, pulling her sharply back to reality.

"I'm fine. We need to get her out of here," Alex shook him off, pulling several hi-tech gizmos out of J'onn's DEO go-bag, and scanning Kara and the creature. "It's some sort of parasite. It's gripping her torso with over 100 pounds of pressure. If she were human she'd be dead already."

"Maybe this...this thing wasn't made to attack humans," Lucy said grimly, looking from the frantic group to the girl lying motionless on the floor. "I hate to even think this, but...it could be a bioengineered, weaponized lifeform from my father's R&D henchmen. He's already tried to kill Kara once, and he proved he has no regard for alien life at every available opportunity."

"No," Alex shook her head, holstering her gun and rubbing her eyes roughly. "This thing wasn't made by human hands. I know who sent it." She knew she couldn't get her hands on Non for interrogation, but she did know someone else she had at her disposal, waiting back at the DEO.

When the helicopter arrived to evacuate Kara, the entire group clambered in around her stretcher, and J'onn didn't have the patience or the heart to kick them all out. When Kara woke up, she was going to need as many familiar faces around her as possible. When she woke up. Not if. Alex went straight into alpha mode, taking over the portable x-ray from one of the med techs and barking orders at the others as they lifted off the roof of their apartment building into the air. When she lost her train of thought for the third time in a row, stumbling over a word like someone just waking up from a dream, J'onn gently took the instruments out of her hands and pushed her down into one of the side-facing seats in the small craft, by Kara's head. There was a clear oxygen mask over the blonde girl's peacefully sleeping face.

"Hold her hand," J'onn instructed Alex gently, squeezing her shoulder. "You have a concussion, Alex. You're supposed to be on brain rest, no reading, no looking at screens, no complex math or science equations. I know you have a headache." He tapped his temple meaningfully, reminding her silently that he could see inside her mind, without announcing to all these civilians that he was a martian. "You can't be her doctor right now. Let us to do that. Just be her love." Alex nodded defeatedly, squeezing Kara's hand in both of her own as she tried to hold back the tears burning her eyes.

"We're here, bluebird. We got you, you're safe. Just hang on, baby...please just hang on, and we'll get you out of this, I promise. Do you hear me?" Alex held onto Kara's hand tight, rubbing her thumb lightly over her girlfriend's skin the way she always did, without even thinking about it. "Come on, bluebird...come back to us..."

…...

Back on fantasy-Krypton, the blonde girl's thoughts were rapidly becoming foggy and confused, even more so than Alex's (the real Alex, back on Earth in the DEO helicopter with her fresh concussion). Everything seemed just as it should be, but something wasn't right...she couldn't put her finger on it...but something felt wrong. Like a dream, but not a dream. Krypton was gone...but it wasn't gone. It was right here. Her parents were here, Alex was here. Everything was perfect...so why did she feel this way?

"You don't understand, Alex, you've been brainwashed or something," Kara shook her head frantically. "Maybe it just didn't work on me because I'm Supergirl..." Alex chuckled softly and cupped Kara's cheek in one hand, kissing her lightly.

"You're my Supergirl, for certain," the dark-haired girl smiled, stroking Kara's cheek with her thumb. "But you're not invincible, dummy. You have to be more careful...your brain is still repairing itself. You're just confused, love. You need to rest now and let the medicine work...you're not getting out of marrying me next week, we already paid the caterers," Alex smirked jokingly, her light, teasing manner expressing all the love and concern reflected in her dark, shining eyes. Kara swallowed the lump in her throat. Marrying Alex...in front of her parents, her family, in the Great Sun Temple of Argo City...she'd fantasized about this a hundred thousand times. But it wasn't real. Krypton was gone.

"No, this isn't real...we live on...on..." Kara struggled suddenly to remember the word. She had a picture in her mind of a blue and green planet, but the word was hovering just out of reach... "Earth!" She finished with a gasp.

"Dear one, Earth is thousands of light years away," her mother soothed her, sitting beside Alex at Kara's bedside and patting her leg reassuringly. "And why would I ever send you to that backwards planet?"

"Because...because..." Kara stuttered, unable to push her thoughts forward to their logical conclusion, blurriness drifting in and out of her sharp, clear memories. As she cast around wildly for the end of her thought, her eyes landed on a dent in the corner of the coffee table across the room. She started at it, dumbfounded. "That's where I fell and hit my head when I was chasing Aunt Astra," she whispered, crossing the room unsteadily and kneeling down beside the faded scuff in the old wood, running her fingers over it in disbelief.

"And even after you fell, you jumped right back up again," a new voice said from the doorway, full of warmth and affection. "Nothing can keep you down." Astra was smiling down at her niece, looking as pleased to see her as Alex and her mother had when she'd first opened her eyes. But seeing Astra's face kicked more of her real memories up to the front of her mind, and she sprang from the floor with a snarl, grabbing her aunt by both shoulders and shaking her hard.

"You did this to me!" She yelled, staring into the shocked expression on her aunt's face without any sympathy for the older woman. "You got some sort of message to Non to sabotage us just when we were getting the upper hand against Myriad! What did you do?!"

"Kara, sweetheart, calm yourself," her mother said again, putting a pacifying hand on Kara's back. "Non was banished to the Phantom Zone years ago. You know that."

"No! That's not right," Kara shook her head, looking desperately to Alex, the only real person there with her, the only one she could trust. "Lexie, baby, please, you have to remember! We were just fighting Non an hour ago! Back on...on..." her brain stalled, words and pictures slipping from her mind like leaves on a gently flowing river current. "Why can't I remember?!" She demanded, furious and terrified.

"All nightmares fade the longer we are awake, zrhueiao," Alex said gently, smoothing Kara's long hair back from her face with both hands. "I'm right here with you, Kara. I'll never let anything hurt you." Alex took Kara's hand and pressed it firmly over her own heart, so Kara could feel her girlfriend's warm, steady heartbeat. In the back of her mind, Kara had a memory of Alex's heartbeat feeling different...slower...her skin was supposed to feel cooler than Kara's...but she couldn't remember why.

"This isn't right, Lexie," Kara whispered, shaking her head weakly with tears welling up in her confused blue eyes.

"Kara?" A young voice pulled her attention to the doorway, where a little boy with black hair and blue eyes stood smiling up at her, holding out one of her old toy puzzles, the galaxy sphere.

"Kal-El?" Kara whispered, taking in her young cousin with pained confusion in her eyes. He held out the toy to her, covered in Kryptonese writing.

"Do you still remember how to open it?" He asked, holding the silver sphere up to her with an expectant smile. Kara took it wonderingly from his hands, and began turning it on its axis, pushing down on one panel after another between each turn, until a holographic projection of the Andromeda galaxy expanded into the room all around them. "Look, Kara, there's Krypton," little Kal-El pointed, cuddling up to her side and holding her arm with both his small hands. "Isn't it beautiful?"

"It's so beautiful..." Kara whispered, her eyes shining bright with unshed tears.

…...

When the medic helicopter arrived back at the DEO, J'onn allowed Alex to come into the isolation room with him and the med team, but gave her strict orders (very loudly, so everyone else in the room could hear) that he would kick her out if she so much as picked up a medical instrument. She was only there to be with Kara, not to treat her. The dark-haired girl was as frightened as she could ever remember being, and furious at not being able to help. She pulled a chair up by the head of the flat metal exam table where Kara was lying, enveloped in the creature's crushing grip. She watched the inner surface of the clear oxygen mask gently fog and then clear with every breath Kara took.

"I'm here bluebird. We're all here. Hank and the DEO, and your friends...we're all here with you, baby. You have to come back to us. We need you..." Alex's voice broke as hot tears ran down her cheeks, and she took Kara's hand in her own, holding it against her face so Kara could feel her skin. "We need you so much, Kara..."

"This doesn't make any sense," Dr. Schwartzman frowned as she looked from the high-tech portable brain scanner in her hand back up at Hank.

"What?" Alex asked, springing instantly to her feet despite the head rush that came along with it.

"She's unresponsive to outside stimuli, but her brain function is normal. It's like...it's like her brain has no idea that anything is wrong. Her body is behaving like it's in a dream state, but she's not dreaming. Her brain is awake. At least, according to these readouts." The doctor frowned as she stared down at the small screen in her hand. Alex looked out through the clear glass door, where Winn and James and Lucy were all staring in at them with the same frightened, helpless expression that Alex felt herself. Winn was pacing and holding his head in his hands, like he might explode with anxiety.

A few minutes later, a large titanium claw was wheeled in from a back room and centered above the creature holding Kara captive. Dr. Schwartzman held the controls, slowly lowering the claw until its metal arms were hooked around the creature; then it slowly began to raise up again, the enormous parasite still gripped in its metal claws. Kara went into a seizure, her body jerking as if she were being electrocuted, while her breathing became shallow and rapid. Her vitals began to flatline.

"She's crashing! Stop!" Alex screamed, gripping Kara's twitching hand even more tightly. The medics didn't need to be told twice, and quickly the claw was lowered again and removed from around the creature's body. Kara's stats immediately returned to normal.

"It's some sort of symbiotic defense mechanism," Alex shook her head defeatedly, looking from the doctors back to her boss. "If we try to pull that thing off by force...it'll kill her."

"We need some answers, fast," J'onn said gruffly, looking only at Alex. He might not be able to see inside Kara's Kryptonian mind, but the creature...whatever it was...he could sense its mind just fine. It was happy, content. It was feeding. Off what, exactly, J'onn didn't know; none of its disgusting tentacles were breaking through Kara's ironclad skin, it wasn't sucking her blood or eating her brain. But somehow, it was feeding, he knew that. He couldn't tell the medics or anyone else what he saw with his telepathy, which was infuriating, but he couldn't. Blowing his cover as Hank Henshaw wouldn't help Kara. So, he looked at Alex. Meaningfully.

"We want answers? I know who has them," Alex said stonily, standing up from Kara's bedside (another head rush, God damn this concussion was starting to piss her off), and gently laying her girlfriend's hand back down on the exam table before marching purposefully from the room. Hank followed her, leaving the medics to do their best work. He knew where Alex was headed, and he walked beside her in silence to the guarded door to Astra's cell. All it took was a nod from their young assistant director to make the guards stand aside and open the door. Once inside, Hank dialed in the code on the override panel to make the glass door to Astra's cell open as well. The Kryptonite levels were still keeping Astra's powers at bay; she was the same as any human prisoner now. Without a word, Alex sprinted into the glass cell and knocked Astra down on her back, pressing one knee hard against the woman's chest while her arm pressed down just as hard across Astra's throat.

"How do we get that thing off of Kara?!" The young agent snarled, her dark eyes flashing with protective fury. She was so furious, so terrified, so woozy from her concussion, she didn't fully process the look of complete shock (and even concern, perhaps?) on the older woman's face. Astra tried to speak, but Alex's arm was pushing so hard against her windpipe that only a gurgle came out. Alex let up slightly on the pressure, but not enough to allow the older woman to move.

"I do not know...what you speak of," Astra panted out when she was able to breathe again. "What has happened to Kara?"

"Don't play dumb with me, I will snap you in half like a twig," Alex growled through gritted teeth. She pressed her knee harder into Astra's breastbone, making the older woman gasp like she'd been sucker-punched.

"On my honor under the light of Rao...I do not know anything of this matter," Astra swore, her eyes wide with fear. But was it fear for herself, or fear for Kara? Did she actually care? "Please...Alex," the older woman said awkwardly, her mouth forming the strange human name for the first time. "Tell me what has happened to my niece. If I have sufficient information, I may be able to help her."

"You really think I'm that stupid? Why would you want to help Kara after you already tried to kill her twice? You think I'm letting you near her when she's unconscious and defenseless?" Alex was rapidly losing it, and J'onn stepped into the cell, seeing on Astra's face that she was legitimately suffocating under the young agent's death grip.

"Alex, that's enough!" J'onn barked at his top agent, grabbing her around her waist and physically picking her up off Astra and depositing her on her feet, putting himself between her and the prisoner. "She could have killed Kara before, but she didn't. She has no way of contacting her troops from inside this cell. She has no powers, she's completely defenseless. If she can tell us anything that might help Kara, we have to listen." J'onn stared her down unwaveringly. Alex ran her hand through her hair impatiently and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Fine. Talk. Tell us everything you know about this huge disgusting parasite that's wrapped around Kara's chest. It's green and it has these oozy pinkish tentacles waving around on its back. Four big green ones wrapping around her torso. One more wrapped around her throat. She's unresponsive to outside stimuli, but her brain activity is normal. It's like she's in some kind of lucid coma." Alex stared at the older woman expectantly. Astra's eyes grew wide and horrified, her expression far away.

"The black mercy," the Kryptonian general said quietly, almost more to herself than to Alex. "Non, what have you done?"

"Tell me how to get it off her, now," Alex demanded in her most authoritative, secret government agent voice. But then a brief wave of dizziness rolled over her, and she stumbled a little before J'onn caught her by the arm.

"What has happened to you?" Astra asked, sounding more curious than concerned.

"Your husband," Alex spat back, pushing J'onn away indignantly as soon as the dizzy spell passed. She couldn't let herself be weak right now. Kara needed her. She had to be strong for Kara. "Now tell us everything you know."

…...

After only a few minutes of Astra's detailed explanation of the telepathic parasite and the perfect fantasy world it created for its victims, they finally understood what the creature was feeding off: her brainwaves. They had to bring Winn in once Astra began telling them how to save Kara, he was quite honestly a tech genius beyond anyone on staff at the DEO. And a good thing, too, because the telepathic virtual reality headgear that would allow another person to enter Kara's fantasy world needed to be assembled in hours, not days, if they were to have any chance of bringing her home. She had to reject the fantasy of her own free will; and the longer she stayed under, the more real it became, while her memories of the real world grew more and more distant.

"If this turns out to be a bunch of bullshit..." Alex warned Astra as Winn finished compiling his notes, and they all rose to leave Astra's cell, "If anything happens to Kara...I am coming back down here with my favorite Kryptonite sword."

"If anything happens to Kara...I will not stop you," Astra said quietly, her sharp blue eyes never wavering from Alex's dark, intensely ferocious glare. In the back of her mind, Alex knew in that moment that Astra was telling the truth. She could have killed Kara several times already, but she hadn't. And she never would.

Just four hours later in the tech lab, when Winn announced proudly that the device was ready, he looked around at all of them expectantly; but no one seemed nearly as impressed as he'd hoped. He was as focused on saving Kara as anyone, of course; but still, he had just pulled off a tech build so insanely advanced in such an insanely short time, even Maxwell Lord would be impressed. If he were here.

"All right, so how will this work? I'll still remember everything once I go into Kara's mind, right? I won't feel the effects of the black mercy?" Alex already had the digital visor in her hands and was hopping up onto the metal exam table beside her unconscious girlfriend.

"You must've hit your head even harder than I thought if you think I'm letting you go under an experimental consciousness-altering technology with a concussion," J'onn said in his gruff but fatherly tone, raising both eyebrows at his best and most beloved agent. "You won't be doing Kara any good if you go into a coma, Alex. Anything could happen. You might not come back."

"If I don't come back then I'll be with Kara," Alex answered back just as stonily, her tone commanding, not requesting. "I'm the only one who can bring her back, it has to be me. I've known her since the moment she took her first breath on this planet. We found each other across separate galaxies. There is no one on Earth who has a chance to reach her the way I can." Without waiting for a response, Alex laid down and put the headgear on, patiently waiting while Winn fiddled with the controls and adjusted the modulation one last time.

"Are we sure this will work?" James asked hesitantly, standing by Kara's head with Lucy beside him, holding the blonde girl's limp hand. They'd stayed by her side the entire time Winn and Alex were in the tech lab working on the headset.

"I don't know," Winn admitted, clicking the visor into place over Alex's eyes. "I guess we're about to find out."

"More doing, less talking," Alex commanded, still sounding authoritative even lying on her back with her eyes covered. "Either I come back with my girl, or I don't come back at all."

"Okay," Winn nodded, determination replacing the uncertainty in his voice. "As soon as I flip the switch, your consciousness will merge with Kara's. You'll see everything she's seeing. Once you get her to reject the fantasy, you should both wake up on your own." Nobody asked what would happen if Alex couldn't get Kara to reject the fantasy.

"Do it," Alex said quietly. Winn squeezed her hand in silent support. Then he flipped the switch.

…...

Moments later, Alex gasped and jumped up from the floor, looking around at the clean, angular room she was in, and the huge window looking out over a shining white city under the glow of a huge red sun. "Holy shit, I'm on Krypton," Alex murmured to herself. Her head still throbbed dizzily; she had been sort of hoping she wouldn't feel the effects of her head injury inside a fantasy, but oh well. There was no one in the room around her, but she could hear distant voices echoing down the hall, so she followed them. Even though she knew none of this was real, she still drew her gun and held it at the ready as she crept stealthily down the long corridor. Even if the bullets weren't real, the fantasy didn't know that, and if it came right down to it she would use any means necessary to get to Kara. When she finally came to the spacious, open living room where the voices were emanating from, she stopped short. There, seated on some weird, round Kryptonian couches, were Kara, her parents, little Kal-El...and another Alex. Was this who Kara wanted her to be? Kryptonian nobility in a fancy white dress?

"Kara?" Alex said uncertainly as she took a few tentative steps into the room, lowering her gun but not putting it away. Kara jumped up from her seat like it was on fire, holding onto fantasy-Alex's hand very tightly.

"Who...what are you? Are you a shapeshifter? What do you want with us?" Kara's blue eyes were wide with confusion and suspicion. She was wearing a flowing white dress, too, and her long blonde hair had been straightened. She looked beautiful...but she didn't look like herself.

"Kara, listen to me. You've been attacked by a creature called the black mercy. None of this is real," Alex said slowly and clearly, looking only at Kara. "Krypton is gone. You know that. I'm here to bring you home." Alex held out her hand.

"I am home," Kara replied a little too insistently, as if she were trying to convince herself as well as Alex. "And you're not Alex. You're...you're some kind of shapeshifter spy. I won't let you harm my family." Fantasy-Alex stood up protectively in front of Kara, holding the blonde girl's hand in both of her own.

"Leave us before I call for the house guards, shapeshifter," Fantasy-Alex said coolly. "Impersonating a Kryptonian citizen is an intergalactic offense. My mother-in-law will have you banished to the Phantom Zone for all eternity."

"Shut up, you freakshow fantasy clone! I'm not impersonating you, you're impersonating me! Kara, it's me, it's Lexie. You have to know me, you have to remember," Alex begged, taking a step closer as she holstered her gun and held out a hand to her girlfriend beseechingly. "I know it hurts, but you have to remember. Krypton is gone. Your parents sent you to Earth to save you, your pod crashed behind my house in Midvale. Remember Midvale, Kara, remember our life...remember the first time you saw a bird, remember ice cream and potstickers, remember sneaking out in high school and flying together over the clouds; remember Ms. Grant, and Winn, and your friends...they're all waiting for you. They're holding your hand. You're lying on an exam table unconscious right now, baby. You're not really here, and neither am I. Because this isn't real. And that is not me," the dark-haired girl snarled as she threw a death-glare at the fantasy version of her, still clinging to her girlfriend's hand.

"Kara, I'm scared," the fantasy version of young Superman whimpered as he stood up on Kara's other side and clung to her arm with both hands.

"It's all right, Kal-El," Kara said quietly, still staring at Alex with an expression of deep uncertainty and conflict on her face. She took a step away from her fantasy-family, toward Alex...and for a moment the dark-haired girl felt her heart leap with joy and relief. Then a heavy metal object was gripped tightly in Kara's hand from the side table, cracking against the side of Alex's head with a shooting pain that ended in blackness.

…...

The moment Alex blacked out inside the fantasy, her body back on the lab table began to seize and twitch, her breathing shallow and her vitals slowly going downhill. Whatever was going on inside her head—or rather, whatever was happening to her inside Kara's head—Alex was clearly losing. Her blood pressure was dropping dangerously low, and her breath sounded labored and wheezy.

"Something's wrong. This is killing her. I'm pulling her out," Hank said, stepping forward and reaching for the shiny headset covering Alex's eyes and her dark hair.

"No, you can't!" Winn exclaimed, jumping up from his seat in alarm, while James stretched his arms protectively over Alex's twitching body.

"This is my agent. She is my responsibility," the DEO director barked at them, furious that he had to justify himself to these civilians.

"We know that, Director Henshaw," James said in a calming, but still deadly serious tone. "And we know Alex is more than just an agent to you. She's family. She's our family too...so is Kara."

"You think I don't know that?" J'onn yelled at James, losing his composure in a way he never had in battle. "I want them both back!"

"Then give her more time, sir. I'm begging you," James pleaded.

"She doesn't have time, Mr. Olsen. She's dying," J'onn said stonily.

"We all heard what she said, sir," Lucy said in a quieter voice, stepping up beside her boyfriend and holding one of Alex's twitching hands gently. "She wants to save Kara, at any cost. If you pull her out before she can do that...if she wakes up alone...she'll never be the same person again. You know that." J'onn gave a growl of frustration, pacing back and forth across the room in limbo.

"Kara would want us to have faith," Winn piped up, his voice the calmest of them all, somehow. "You know that's what she'd say, if she could. Have faith in Alex. Have faith in Kara to come back to us. They can do it, sir...the two of them, together, they can do just about anything." He gave a grim smile. J'onn huffed angrily and sat back down, arms across his chest.

…...

When Alex came to, she was on her knees in some kind of court room. It was round, with an impossibly high ceiling, and stadium-style seating that rose higher with each level, allowing the people at the back to see over the heads of the people in the front. Kara's mother stood at some sort of podium in the center. Alex tried to look around, but her head throbbed worse than ever, and when she tried to reach up to touch her temple, she found her hands bound in very thick, heavy handcuffs. She could still move them if she moved them together; and when she did touch the side of her head, it was bloody. That's not real blood. You're not really in handcuffs, she told herself firmly, looking around the room for Kara.

The blonde girl was seated between little Kal-El on one side, and fake-Alex on the other, right in the front row. All three of them were clad in garments of pure white with the sigil of the House of El pressed into the fabric. Kara was holding fake-Alex's hand. It should make Alex feel good, to know that she was part of Kara's perfect fantasy world; but it only made her more scared and angry. Scared that Kara thought she was sitting next to the person she trusted most in the universe, but she wasn't. Angry that Kara still needed to be told that that wasn't her. The furious terror helped clear Alex's aching head, and she stood up, two guards standing at attention on either side of her.

"For the crime of impersonating a member of the Kryptonian nobility and infiltrating the great House of El, this court finds the alien shapeshifter guilty of espionage, and imposes the maximum sentence," Alura Zor-El said calmly from her podium. "Lifetime banishment to the Phantom Zone." Alex looked desperately at Kara, taking a step forward; one of the guards grabbed her arm, but she just elbowed him hard in the stomach and he went down. Even in handcuffs and with a concussion, Alex was a badass.

"Kara, please, you have to remember. You have to remember what's real! If you don't come home, if you don't choose the real world, we'll both be trapped here until the black mercy kills us." The guard she'd knocked down was up again, and she was struggling against both of them just to stay on her feet, refusing to be dragged away. "That symbol on your chest, it isn't just your house sigil! On Earth it's a symbol of hope, of bravery, of Supergirl. You, Kara."

"Supergirl?" The blonde girl stood up uncertainly, looking at Alex differently now, with confusion in her eyes. The fake world around them began to rumble and shake, like an earthquake. Like the fantasy world in Kara's head was beginning to crumble. It was working.

"Yes! Remember that life, Kara! All the good you've done, all the lives you've saved. Remember all the people who love you, who need you back on Earth." The ground under them gave another frightening lurch, and little Superman grabbed onto Kara's arm in fear again. The creature was trying to use Kara's own subconscious guilt against her; Alex knew there was a part of Kara that had never forgiven herself for not being there for Clark when he was a baby, even though it was never her fault.

"She's trying to confuse you with lies, zrhueiao," Fake Alex said soothingly, holding Kara steady as the room continued to rumble and quake around them. "Krypton is our home." One of the guards punched Alex hard in the stomach and she fell to her knees again.

"Why do you think they're trying so hard to silence me? It's because they're afraid of what I have to say!" Alex yelled desperately, pushing through the pain and jumping to her feet again, punching the guards with her cuffed fists and jabbing any part of them she could reach with her knees and elbows. "Kara, please, I can't choose this for you...you have to choose it for yourself," Alex sobbed, unashamed as tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks. "You have to remember, bluebird...please!"

"Bluebird..." Kara murmured, her eyes locked on Alex. She was paying no attention to fake-Alex and young Kal-El who were both tugging on her arms, begging her not to listen.

"Yes! Remember our life, Kara, remember that day. The day you saw your first bird at the beach after school. I put my arms around you and called you my bluebird...you remember that, Kara. You know what's real!" Alex had to keep fighting the guards with every breath; and when she finally got past them, Kara's father was there, holding Alex tight around her upper arms and trying to push her back again. Alex just stared at Kara, her dark eyes pleading and full of tears.

"...This isn't real," Kara whispered, looking from her little cousin to her fantasy-Alex, her eyes traveling over their faces. "You're not Alex," the blonde girl shook her head, her blue eyes scared and confused and regretful as she backed away. Kara tried to take a step toward the real Alex, but then her mother stepped out from behind the podium to stop her.

"Kara, no! We were happy before she came. We can be happy again," her mother begged, squeezing both of Kara's hands in her own.

"I'm so sorry," Kara whispered, a tear sliding down her cheek. "I can't stay here. This isn't real." Her mother was crying, too, and pulled her into a tight hug. Even though she knew it was a fantasy, Kara hugged her back.

"We will never let you leave," the creature said flatly, using Alura's voice. Her eyes had gone pure black. Kara cried out and pulled herself out of her fake mother's arms.

"Lexie!" the blonde girl screamed, reaching out for Alex as her mother held her back, and two more guards pushed Alex away from her.

"Take my hand!" Alex screamed back, reaching out her fingers as far as she could. They weren't close enough. The ground beneath them gave another rumbling lurch, and Alex used the opportunity to knock out one of the guards, crawling on her hands and knees across the broken ground toward Kara.

"Lexie, please, I'm sorry," Kara sobbed, still reaching for Alex with all her strength. But she wasn't Supergirl here. Alex fell flat on her stomach as the ground continued to lurch under them, but she still reached toward Kara as hard as she could, fingers outstretched in desperation, like a drowning victim reaching for a rescue float.

"I got you...I got you..." Alex cried, their fingers so close now...so close...then the room went blindingly bright white, and all the rumbling and the screaming and the fighting faded away. Alex took in a deep gasp of air, pushing the visor off her head and jumping from the metal table like she'd just been zapped with a cattle prod.

"Hey, hey, Alex, it's okay. Take it easy," J'onn said gently, his martian heart pounding with relief at the sight of Alex's sharp eyes staring into his. He'd been so afraid he would never get to look into Alex's eyes again. The dark-haired girl looked wildly around the room, panting...and her eyes fell on Kara, still unconscious on the table beside her with the creature wrapped snugly around her.

"...You pulled me out?" She whispered, looking up at her boss like she was going to rip his throat out with her bare hands. "Why did you pull me out? She was about to choose us, she was about to come home! Why did you do that?!" The exhausted young agent was becoming hysterical, fighting J'onn's strong grip on her the same way she'd been fighting the fantasy guards inside Kara's head a moment ago.

"Alex. Alex!" J'onn yelled to get her attention back.

"What?!" She screamed, her whole body shaking.

"I didn't pull you out!" J'onn shook his head.

"You didn't...then how am I..." Alex trailed off, her fury deflating with confusion and wary disbelief as she looked over at Kara. After a few silent moments, the creature's long tentacles began to withdraw from around her body, and it crawled off her onto the floor, where it withered up into a grey, motionless corpse within moments.

"That is one messed up daffodil," Winn muttered in disgust, staring at it. But Alex was staring at Kara, who was blinking her blue eyes, pushing off her oxygen mask and struggling to sit up on her metal exam table.

"It's all right, Kara, it's over," Lucy soothed the frightened blonde girl, taking her hand as she was the closest one to Kara's side at that moment. Kara looked around the room in a daze, her blue eyes bright with tears that did not fall. When she saw Alex, she started to cry, and Alex scrambled around the table to get to her, their arms wrapping tight around each other in an instant.

"Lexie, I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry," Kara wept, her whole body shaking.

"Shh, it's okay Kar, it's okay, it wasn't you, it wasn't your fault..." Alex murmured soothingly into Kara's hair, tears of joy shining on her cheeks. The rest of them just looked around at each other and shared quiet sighs of relief. "I got you, my bluebird...and I'm never letting go." When Kara finally raised her tearstained face from the comfort and safety of Alex's neck, she looked around the room, at the faces of the people she loved, all looking back at her with affection and relief glowing in their faces. They all looked exhausted. How long had she been like this?

"Thank you guys for being here...thank you so much," The blonde girl sniffed, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. Winn grabbed a box of kleenex from beside the computer console and handed her one.

"Are you kidding? Where else would we be?" Winn asked good-naturedly, giving her an affectionate punch on the shoulder. Kara's body gave an involuntary shudder of unease at his words; it reminded her of fake-Alex, in her fantasy, saying the same thing. For a brief moment, Kara felt scared that she no longer knew what was real.

"Geez, sorry I punched you, girl of steel," Winn said, half-joking as he saw her shudder, thinking it was from his punch rather than his words. "Did that actually hurt?"

"No, stupid. You just...reminded me of something from my fantasy...at least, I think it was a fantasy...this is real now, right? This is really real?" Kara looked around the group anxiously. They were all as familiar to her as her own face in the mirror...but so had everyone in her dream world.

"You tell me if this is real," Alex murmured in her ear, taking her face in one hand and kissing her. Kara pulled the dark-haired girl into her lap, floating them both several feet above the lab table as the sensations of joy and flying twined together inside her, just like the first time she and Alex had kissed; she'd levitated them all the way up to the ceiling that night without even noticing.

"Thank you..." Kara whispered as they pulled apart, floating gently back down to the ground.

"You don't have to thank me for kissing you, dummy," Alex grinned, seeming a little punch-drunk on the combination of relief, the fogginess of her concussion, and the sweetness of Kara's lips.

"No, I mean thank you for saving me," Kara shook her head, beaming shyly. "For being my Supergirl."

"Always," Alex smiled. Then she nestled her head down against Kara's shoulder and yawned softly. "Can we go home now, Chief? My head hurts."

"Oh my God, Lexie! I completely forgot! The fight, the rally, you got hurt! I was supposed to bring you your cozy pajamas..."

"Yeah, well, you tried," Alex grinned sleepily, snuggling more deeply into Kara's lap with her head against Kara's neck. "It's not your fault you were waylaid by an intergalactic telepathic succubus."

"Go home. Rest. Ibuprofen. No reading, no TV," Hank reminded her, clapping her on the shoulder.

"Thanks Chief," Kara beamed, hopping off the table with Alex still held snugly in her arms.

"Kara! I can walk," Alex protested, blushing slightly at Kara began to walk with her towards the door.

"I know you can. I just don't want to let go of you," Kara said simply with a smile.

"Oh." Alex wrapped both arms tight around Kara's neck, burying her face in her girlfriend's sweet-smelling blonde hair. "Okay."

…...

Once they were home and cuddled up in bed with a huge mountain of snacks (that were all for Kara; Alex was queasy from her headache and Kara didn't have the heart to be strict with her right now), Alex began tentatively testing the waters to see if she could talk to Kara about the things she'd seen inside her girlfriend's fantasy world.

"So...I saw Krypton today," the dark-haired girl said casually, with one hand wrapped possessively around the blonde superhero's hip under the covers.

"Yeah..." Kara replied in a flat sort of voice, feeling a strange mix of confusion and loss and shame from her recent trip inside her own subconscious.

"Is it okay if we talk about it?" Alex asked gently, rubbing her thumb soothingly over Kara's skin under the sheets.

"Yeah," Kara said again, shoving an entire candy bar in her mouth in one bite.

"I'm glad I was there, you know. Not the real me, I mean—I'm glad I was part of your perfect fantasy," Alex said gently, propping herself up on one elbow and looking down at her girlfriend's guarded expression with a soft smile.

"I could never have a perfect fantasy if you weren't there," Kara shook her head, a small smile cracking through the somber expression on her face. "But it didn't mean...I don't want you to change, Lex. If that's what you're asking. I think it was just the only way for my brain to bring you into my memories of Krypton, if you looked the part. I was dressed different there, too."

"I know, I know. That's not what I was asking," Alex shook her head, a small smile curling the corner of her lip. Kara melted. That smile. She could stare at it forever. "The other me...when she was threatening me and telling me to get out...she said...she called your mom her mother-in-law. Were we...were we married in your fantasy?" Alex's pale face blushed bright pink. Kara smiled shyly back.

"Almost. We were engaged. I think the wedding was close, though, because you—the other you, I mean—told me we'd already paid the caterers." They smiled at each other quietly for a moment, their hands playing absently with each other's hair.

"We've never talked about it," Alex pointed out after a silence that felt much longer than it was.

"I know," Kara nodded. "I mean, it's too soon for that talk, isn't it? We've only been together for, what, six months?"

"Technically, yeah," Alex agreed, sliding her fingers through Kara's hair and brushing lightly against the skin at the back of her neck. She knew Kara loved that. "But really...we've been together half our lives. We're nothing like a regular couple that's been together six months."

"We're nothing like a regular couple, period," Kara smirked, soaking up the pure tactile pleasure of Alex's fingers in her hair, brushing her skin.

"And I know you want to marry me because I saw it in your mind...and if you'd gone down the rabbit hole into my perfect fantasy world...you would've seen the same thing."

"I would?"

"Of course you would, you big dummy," Alex beamed, laughing a little at the shy look of surprise on her girlfriend's face. "You're my Kri-zhao...and I'm yours."

"I'm definitely awake right now, right? You're really you? This is really happening?" Kara asked, half joking, half cautious, because being trapped inside a perfect dream world does tend to mess with one's sense of reality for a little while.

"Well...when we tell our parents we're getting married, my mom is going to immediately cry and ask about her future grandchildren, and your foster dad is going to try to save us from that awkward conversation with alcohol," Alex smiled fondly. "And they're for sure going to want to throw us an engagement party in Midvale to show us off to all their friends, like they tried to do at Christmas." Kara laughed, and then somehow, she was crying.

"Lexie...my brave girl, my zrhueiao...will you marry me and make my fantasy world real?" Kara smiled through her tears.

"My fantasy is already real. I'm going to spend the rest of my life making yours real, too," Alex grinned goofily back at her, kissing her for all she was worth.

"So that's a yes?" Kara asked breathlessly when they broke apart.

"Yes, that's a yes," Alex laughed, kissing her again. "Should we go get some champagne to celebrate?"

"You can't have champagne, you big dummy. You have a concussion!" Kara scolded, stroking her fingers lovingly through Alex's hair and gently rubbing the side of her head. "I'm supposed to be taking care of you tonight, making sure you're on brain rest."

"You want me on brain rest?" Alex teased, leaning back against the pillows. "Okay. You got me. I'm flat on my back, my brain's not going anywhere. How are you gonna keep me here?" Her dark eyes flashed teasingly, and Kara laughed, peeling off her pajamas before she began to attack Alex's. She was going to make very, very sure that her girlfriend...no, her fiancee...took her bedrest very seriously. Doctor's orders.