Author's Notes: I promised this on Christmas and here in the EST timezone, it is STILL CHRISTMAS! So I made it! Sorry to all my lovelies in different timezones that didn't get this on the day of... but at least it's still here? I worked on it all day and in the haze of presents and family craziness, a few typos may have slipped in... or not. I don't know.
Anyway, MERRY CHRISTMAS (to those who celebrate it)! I hope you all had a splendid day!
Now, here is my gift to you!
The sounds were different. The creaks and groans were no longer the same. Everything sounded raucous and strained and wrong.
And it was all so loud, too loud. She wanted it to stop.
She broached consciousness in a warm haze, meeting it with hesitance and then instant regret the moment the warmth turned to burning agony. She gasped loudly, the pain so intense that her throat seized, strangling the tortured cry that tried to escape.
"Kara!"
She knew that voice, rough and choked as it was. Alex. There was a palpable relief in the single word that Kara picked up on even through the fog of biting, burning, slicing torment.
"Kara?" Suddenly Alex's face, begrimed with dust and blood, came into view above her. Kara hadn't even realized she'd opened her eyes.
"What—" Kara croaked, unconsciously trying to shift her weight to get away from the pain.
"No, no! Shhh, lie still, Kara. Just lie still," Alex said, adding careful pressure to Kara's shoulder to halt her movements.
Kara whimpered in distress, then panted harshly for what felt like forever before she was able to fully speak. "What happened?" she asked, though the moment the question was out of her mouth, the memories began flashing white through her brain. The ticking, the lead box, diving at Alex.
The explosion.
"Alex?" she whispered, eyes wide.
Her sister seemed to understand what she was asking with the solitary, strained word because she gave her a weepy smile and said, "I'm okay… thanks to you." Then she frowned, expression turning angry. "And if you weren't hurt right now, I would slap you for it."
With her dazed brain still trying to catch up, Kara couldn't for the life of her quite process why Alex would be upset with her. At this point, after spending the past however long being Supergirl, helping people, tackling her sister to keep her out of harm's way had just been second nature. And more than that, they were sisters, they protected each other. She knew that Alex knew that, too. So, why—
The question came to a startling halt when something else flashed through her mind.
Green light, reaching out through a crack, making her shaky, making her nauseous.
Making her weak.
…And then she remembered — kryptonite.
The recollection answered so many questions, like why Alex was so upset and why she was in so much pain, but it also presented so many more. Who had left the bomb? How did they know where she lived? Why did they want her dead? They all flitted about her already muddled mind, confusing her all the more. None of it made sense.
"Kara?" Alex questioned and Kara blinked, realizing she'd fallen silent and it was worrying her sister.
"M'sorry," she murmured after a moment, though the apology wasn't for placing herself in the way of the danger to protect her sister, but for upsetting her. "Are you really okay?" She needed to know, needed to be sure.
Alex gave a somewhat unsteady nod. "I'm fine."
"You're using that tone," Kara accused hoarsely.
"What tone?"
"The same one you used when you punched Jesse Barker in the face for calling me a freak and broke your wrist, but you didn't want to admit you were hurt."
A momentary glimmer of satisfaction crossed Alex's face. "Jesse Barker was a punk."
Kara was about to point out that Alex was not denying her use of the tone and what that tone meant when a hot spike of pain shot up her back, distracting her from her interrogation. She tensed, closing her eyes and sucking in a sharp breath. When it ebbed back down to a burning roar, she returned her attention to Alex's concerned face and asked, "How bad?"
"You're going to be fine," Alex tried, stroking a hand gently over Kara's forehead and back into her hair. Kara immediately picked up on the waver beneath the strength in her sister's voice though and knew she was lying.
"Alex." She wanted the truth.
Alex deflated slightly, composure faltering. "It was a bomb, Kara. It blew up your apartment. We're trapped and you're bleeding." Too much. Her sister didn't say it, but Kara could still hear the unspoken words in the way Alex dropped the sentence and in the shaky little breaths she took in between words. She reached a trembling hand up toward her sister and held it there until Alex finally closed the distance and took it in her own.
That certainly explained why the sounds were different and wrong. With the pain and the confusion, she hadn't quite realized the extent of the damage to her loft. It was… well, extensive.
From what she could see, the ceiling had collapsed and most of her building's roof (at least the portion above her apartment) was now a jumbled mess of debris all across her living room and kitchen. Thank God she lived on the top floor. She didn't even want to think what could have happened if there had been people living above her.
Everything was a smoking, sparking upheaval of collapsed beams, shredded furniture, shattered glass, and crumbled brick. The hardwood floors were scorched, all the windows were blown out, her beautiful airy curtains were black and smoldering. She honestly had no idea how they both had survived.
What made it worse was that most of the destruction seemed to be firmly located between them and the door. From what Kara could see from where she was lying on the floor, there was no clear (or even mildly-hindered) way through.
Still, they were alive and that was what mattered.
Turning her gaze back upward to Alex, Kara squeezed her sister's hand and gave a weak smile. "We'll be alright," she whispered. "We'll get through this together."
That small bit of pressure and her soft words seemed to be Alex's undoing because the tears that had been on the precipice of falling ever since Kara had regained consciousness (and likely even before) began to escape down her sister's cheeks, leaving clean trails through the grime. "It was a kryptonite bomb, Kara. The-the shrapnel." She shook her head, sucking in more shaky, hiccuped breaths. "You aren't healing and I-I-I can't stop it. I've been trying, but it's not… it's not working."
Kara winced when Alex added more pressure to the particularly agonizing spot on her lower torso that her sister had been, Kara realized, pressing down on the whole time. Trying to keep pressure. "So Kryptonians being able to bleed out is a thing," Kara mused lightly through the pain. She hadn't really known (or really considered) it before. "The interesting tidbits you learn when everything goes to hell…"
"This is not a joke!" Alex snapped. "The kryptonite ripped right through you here and God knows how much more you've been impaled with, how much more is floating around inside y—"
"Impaled? That's a bit dramatic, wouldn't you say?"
"Kara, your back is…"
"What?"
"Torn up." Alex shook her head again and Kara could see she was struggling to keep a firm hold on her distress. "It's bad."
That certainly explained why she felt so… shitty, Kara thought. She generally wasn't one to cuss, not even when thinking, but there really was no other word to describe it.
Losing her powers and breaking her arm had been horrendous, but there was just something about kryptonite that made everything so very much worse. Her broken arm had been a localized pain that had gradually radiated outward. Kryptonite both weakened her and set her every nerve ablaze. Combine that with being blown up and, apparently, skewered by God only knew how many poisonous, radioactive space rocks…
"So, not the best situation," Kara offered, "but we've been in worse?"
The fear-induced anger slipped free of Alex's face and she snorted slightly, rolling her eyes. "When?" she breathed.
"Ummmmm…" Kara thought hard for a few seconds trying to remember a situation. "How about the time Lexie Grey died on Grey's Anatomy?"
Alex frowned. "She's a fictional character, Kara…"
"Yes, true, but if you remember, we were so distraught we didn't sleep for something like two days and were so out of it we ended up eating that super out-of-date ice cream from the back of my freezer?"
There was a pause and then Alex gave a contemplative nod. "I knew those weren't chocolate chips."
"Right. And you in the hospital with food poisoning? Way worse than this. I thought I'd killed you."
"That was a pretty rough time," Alex conceded.
"Or," Kara continued, "or how about the time I helped you sneak out so you could go on that date with Nathan East?" She was beginning to find it harder to speak, it was taking so much more effort, but she didn't want to stop. Talking helped distract both of them. "Not only did I… did I help you do something that your dad had explicitly told you n-not to do, but I used my powers to do it. And when he caught us…"
"I don't think I'd ever seen the veins on his forehead and neck pop out so far before. His face was so red," Alex laughed softly, "I was pretty sure in that moment that he was either going to kill us both with his bare hands or have an aneurysm and die right there."
"Instead he just," Kara had to take a breath, "he just said 'I'm disappointed in you both' and pointed to the stairs. The guilt — God. Worst thing ever." She tried to laugh, but the moment she did, fire bloomed up her stomach and spine, robbing her of breath. Her muscles seized at the pain and darkness began to creep into her vision.
"Oh God, Kara," Alex all but whimpered.
Kara waited for what felt like an eternity for the shrieking in her nerve endings to die back down to the constant slicing ache before she was able to speak again. "M'okay, Alex. I just— I just can't laugh."
"You shouldn't even be speaking," Alex said, anger born of helplessness rising again. "You shouldn't even be here! This is taking too long. They're taking too long."
Kara could hear the sirens outside, but she wasn't sure they'd actually reached the building yet.
"I can't just sit here anymore. I have to get you help."
Kara frowned slightly. "The fire department is almost here," she pointed out.
"Even so, they won't be fast enough. I need— I need—" Alex's eyes were off of Kara and were now frantically darting about the demolished loft. "My phone! I need it. Where— The kitchen counter, next to the fridge!" She looked back down at Kara. "I need to go get it."
"Alex…"
"Unless yours is somewhere closer?" she questioned hopefully.
Kara glanced toward the destruction. "Miiiiiine… was on the table… which is currently being crushed beneath that support beam." She gestured weakly toward it. "What is getting a phone going to do anyway? Who do you know besides me who would be quicker than the firemen?" She paused a beat, squinting an eye at her sister. "You're not going to call Superman, are you?"
Alex gave her a deadpanned look. "Kryptonite bomb, Kara. Even without him being caught in the blast, it's still all over the place. He'd be as weak as the rest of us."
"Ah. Right."
"I'm just— I'm gonna go get my phone."
"Alex, it's not safe," Kara protested.
Alex squeezed Kara's hand gently. "Kara, for once, let someone else be the hero, okay? I'm going to go get you help."
Fear swelled in Kara's chest and brought tears to her eyes, but she nodded anyway. "Okay," she whispered.
Alex smiled and kissed Kara's knuckles. "I love you. I'll be right back."
Kara tried to smile back, but it came out more of an exhausted grimace. "Love you."
After taking Kara's hand and pressing it to the abdomen wound with the firm instruction of, "Keep pressure here," Alex carefully lifted Kara's head and transferred it from where it had been resting on her thigh to a slightly-charred couch pillow that had gotten thrown free in the blast. She pressed a second kiss to Kara's forehead and climbed stiffly to her feet. "I'll be quick."
"Don't be quick. Be safe."
Alex smiled and moved cautiously toward the destruction, leaving Kara behind to hold her breath.
With each shift in the debris, each squeal of straining metal, each screeching-crunch of breaking glass, Kara felt herself tense. She wondered briefly if this was what Alex felt every time she flew out the door as Supergirl, this twisting worry in her gut.
"It's not that bad," Alex called back to her. "I think… I think I can get to it." She was crawling underneath a huge slab of brick and sheetrock and all Kara could see of her was her red and green striped socks.
"It's okay if you can't," Kara rasped back. She just didn't want her sister feeling guilty about something she had no control over, in case she couldn't reach the phone.
"I can." The reply was firm and determined. Kara knew Alex wasn't going to give up. She both loved and sometimes feared that trait in her sister.
She continued to wait.
As she lied there quietly, Kara noticed that she was starting to feel… cold and it made her frown. It was a particularly peculiar sensation for someone who never really felt it before, at least not in the way that humans did, and to feel it slowly spreading throughout her body was both bizarre and alarming. She knew it wasn't a good sign. She still didn't understand what Alex planned to do with her phone, but whatever it was, she did hope she found it sooner rather than later.
RRRRRumble— THUD!
Something heavy crashed brutally into the hardwood floor, causing a cacophony of angry screeching steel and grinding stone.
"ALEX!" Kara screamed as she surged upward …and immediately regretted it. Her damaged nerves screamed at the movement and she cried out, unable to help herself. Her vision exploded with light and swirling shadows and she was sure that she was going to pass out. She collapsed back onto the pillow and panted harshly.
"I'm okay, I'm okay!"
Relief flooded Kara, dulling the worst bite of the pain. "What—" She stopped short when the word came out as nothing more than a tense whisper. She closed her eyes and breathed in and out, in and out, in and out until she felt her tightness in her throat and chest loosen some. She tried again. "What happened?" This time her voice carried.
"Nothing! Pushed something a little too far. It collapsed. No big deal," Alex called over the mountain of debris. "Almost there!"
No big deal? Kara wanted to smack her.
"Hold on— I think… Ha!"
"What?" Kara asked, lifting her head slightly to see if she could spot her sister. "What?!"
Alex suddenly popped into view through a small opening in the rubble, a big grin on her face. She held up the phone for Kara to see. "Got it! I'm going to call for help and we'll have you out of there in just a—" Her joyful announcement was swallowed by a thunderous cracking sound and then all of a sudden she disappeared from sight in a cloud of dust and shattering, clamorous collapse.
The floor had given out.
"ALEX!" Kara cried. "ALEX!"
She waited for a reply, but this time, however, there was none.
"No, no," she whimpered. She had to get to her. She had to get to her.
Gritting her teeth and sucking in a steeling breath, Kara executed an agonizing roll over onto her stomach and reached forward with her arms to start to drag herself in the direction of where her sister had fallen through the floor. How, precisely, she was going to get through the wreckage and to her, she hadn't quite figured out, but decided she would cross that bridge when she got to it.
Just as she was about to make her first move toward Alex, she noticed something that had her pause for a beat — the blood. Her hand, the one Alex had had her using to keep pressure on her abdomen was completely covered in it, crimson and warm. Even with all the people she had helped, she couldn't recall ever seeing that much blood before and to know it was her own? It made her woozy with both nausea and fear.
The fear for her sister, however, was far more consuming and compelled her into action. Kara began dragging herself inch by excruciating inch across the remains of her once-beautiful apartment. Each time she pulled herself forward, it felt as if she were being torn in two and her vision dimmed with the pain. She would not give up though, not a chance. She had to get to Alex.
It felt like forever, and it quite possibly could have been for all she knew, before she reached the little… "tunnel" beneath the slab of brick and sheetrock Alex had used to access the kitchen. She did not stop. She pulled herself in, over the glass and rubble, trying her very best not to knock anything free that might collapse on top of her.
The blackness around the outside of her vision was growing more prominent and her head was beginning to swim. She was running out of time, she knew that, but she refused, refused, to give in yet.
She… would not… succumb… yet.
She made it into the kitchen and paused just a moment to raggedly pant through the agony before she spied the gaping maw in the floor. "Alex," she wheezed. "God, Alex, please…" Please be okay. Please be okay.
She twisted herself slightly to the right and made move to drag herself closer, but suddenly she felt something tear and the slicing fire in her torso and back flared so hot that she couldn't breathe. Her vision went white, then dark, and her ears rang loud with the brutality of the pain.
She couldn't… no, she was so close…
Alex.
Kara's head swirled, sight fading in and out, and she suddenly felt almost completely out of touch with everything — her body, the pain, her mind. Everything now was just a haze.
She lay there, blood pooling around her, no more than two feet from the hole that had swallowed her sister, and could do nothing.
The cold was all around now. This was it.
This… was…
Vaguely, somewhere in the back of her mind, she registered the sound of twisting metal and thunderous crashing.
She managed to move her head ever so slightly toward the noise and just before the darkness swallowed her completely, she thought, perhaps, she saw a pair of red eyes.
A/N's: TBC again! Apparently brain is demanding a 3rd chapter in order to wrap it instead of just doing it in 2. I do hope you'll forgive me!