Prompt: How much time did Astra get to spend with newborn!Vega before jettisoning her off into space?
Astra doesn't realize she's pregnant for over three months. She goes so long before realizing half because she didn't really register most of the beginning symptoms and because she has absolute faith that she can't get pregnant. The High Council had made sure of that when she was little more than a girl. She still remembers the pain of that procedure and she knows it did not have to hurt. Krypton was too advanced not to have pain-blocking drugs. Even as young as she was, Astra got the message they were sending loud and clear. She was different and always would be and different on Krypton was to be cut off at the root. There is bitterness that still lingers deep down at the fact that Alura was treated as the golden child just because she was born first, but most days she can put it out of her mind. There are days, though, especially right after seeing Kara that she just wishes…
Kryptonian pregnancy is slightly different, a little longer, some different symptoms, and different physical changes. They had learned about what a Kryptonian pregnancy would be like when they were little, if only for their own edification. The Codex would take care of all of that, they were assured. But even assured as they were Astra remembers the signs and when she does realize she's pregnant, she can't believe she missed them.
At first, it was just a feeling of something being off. In the days before the Codex, their teacher had told them that women used to joke that it was Rao telling them something, but they weren't quite able to hear. That had been easy enough to ignore a bad feeling as a general was almost an everyday thing. Next, there was her missed period, but that had always been irregular considering the stress she was under as a soldier. Then there was the increased appetite, but on a planet where she had a huge appetite to begin with because of her super powers, what was a little more? Then there were the dreams, all with her taking care of children that would swell her heart to bursting, the body psychologically preparing the mind before the woman even knew, the teachers had said. Astra had just thought it was another knife her mind had twisted into her back, nothing new about that either. But the one thing that had caught her attention, the one thing that her elders had told her had alerted even the most oblivious women to the fact that they were pregnant, was the day she reached back to rub at the small of her back and she felt a grouping of bones pressed against her skin that had not been there before. They slowly shifted in the body to accommodate the growing baby. Astra had frozen and felt them again just to be sure and then she had excused herself from the planning meeting she had been in with a flimsy excuse, but she didn't care.
When she gets back to her room she panics for a long, long time. She cannot be pregnant. It isn't possible. She cannot bring a child into this world, this primitive and slowly dying world. She will not make a child witness what she had to growing up. And then she thinks of her husband and panics harder. Non is not someone who ever needs to be a father. He is ruthless and heartless now. He was not always, but that is the man he is now after Fort Rozz. He would only treat a child as the continuation of his ruling legacy, and that is no way for a child to grow up. She's not even sure that she should be trusted with a child after her stay in Fort Rozz. Astra looks at herself in the small mirror she has hanging in her tiny quarters and she sees the look of determination come onto her face. And then she starts to plan.
Astra assigns herself a delicate recon mission that only she can handle given her military assignment history. She had been an intelligence agent once upon a time, and that's the only reason her head council agrees easily to let her go without much fuss. She will keep in contact via video uplink every day and she will make sure that her power base is not shifted for her return, and she will return with a vengeance when this is all over.
She leaves Fort Rozz, accomplishes her mission to plot all important military and politcal strongholds of the humans in a few months, and then settles down to wait out the rest of her pregnancy, feeding those left at Fort Rozz the information she has slowly. She watches herself grow bigger and bigger in an apartment that is not her home and she worries. She will have to do this all alone, give birth to a baby on a foreign planet with no doctors to take care of the child while she lies exhausted on the bed. But she is a soldier and so she will manage. She still fears that something will go wrong, though, worrying until the wee hours of the night.
When her baby comes, Astra rides out the labor silently, listening to her body for cues on when she is supposed to push and hoping that she is managing to do one thing in her life right. The baby finally slips from her onto the bed and Astra uses what's left of her strength to pick the baby up and draw them into her arms. She looks down to see that her baby is a girl and she cries and cries. A little girl just like Kara. She cries more in relief as well as agony. Her little one cannot be brought back, but she has a daughter now, not a replacement or consolation, but something precious nonetheless. The little girl cries too and she has a good set of lungs on her, for which Astra is glad.
When she wakes the next morning, the sun pouring down on her and the baby, Astra feels that she is completely healed and she blesses the yellow sun for its powers. She hasn't been on this planet long, a year and a few months, but it has brought her much, including, she has no doubt, the baby in her arms. She cleans them both up and dresses the baby in an outfit that she had made in her spare time just waiting and waiting for her baby to be born, takes one look around her apartment, and then opens the window and flies off.
The pod she stole away months ago is waiting exactly where she left it when she lands in the woods miles and miles and miles from Fort Rozz. She places her little girl into it and kisses her gently. She programs the trajectory into the navigation system, to circle the earth a few times before landing somewhere even farther away from Fort Rozz than she is now and shuts the door.
"I hope you can forgive, darling one. But you must grow up elsewhere and I will keep fighting to make sure that there is a planet for you to grow up on."
The pod levitates as she finishes speaking and then it flies off, quick as a blink. Astra watches the place where it disappeared into the sky for a long, long time before she flies off herself, telling herself that it was all for the best, even if she doesn't quite believe it.