Only when the obscuring cover of his glasses fell away to smash on the floor under the man's staggered movements that she feels the assaulting wave of memories, not her own invading her mind. The longer she watched her attacker's face twist with prolonged pain, his grip on her throat loosened enough for her to drop, choking and coughing back to the floor.
"Kel-El." "You must protect him,"
"I promise." She vows in what would be her final moments with her parents as their planet crumbled around them.
The new world's sun was far too bright for her waking eyes until a towering shadow blocked it allowing her to look upward at the one who freed her.
At first, she hesitates, but then she notices the crest the man carries on his strangely tight-fitting clothing. She hardly dares to hope she isn't the only one in her family to escape until she gets a closer look at the looming man's eyes. "Kal?" he'd grown so much. But how. How was that possible unless….
"I go by Clark here." The cape-wearing one corrects.
That first stabbing rip of abandonment and so soon after she'd finally kept her promise to her now lost parents of finding her cousin in this strange world. "I can't look after you, but they can. They'll help you. Just like the Kents helped me." Kal says when she hesitates again under the two human's pitiable gazes when they come out to meet them.
His smile was so like his father's when he talked of his passions. Mostly when he talked of how amazing it was Lois has so many awards to her name given how poorly her grammar is at times when she was hot on her next story.
"No."
She sees flickers of surprise in those pained blue eyes as she suddenly tugs him closer then spins taking his place under the green beams attack. Sagging as she was in the effort to hold him up. Yet unlike when he was subjected to the deadly green all she feels is a sudden surge of strength flowing into her cells.
Not that she can wonder about this mismatched point for long. She can already hear it in his breathing. He was dying.
"No," she growls far surer this time as she hugs him closer even when he keeps attempting to attack her by clawing pathetically at her steadier arms as they both sag towards the ground the same time Tess scrambles for her fallen coat after the broken super had put herself into the beam's path in Kal's stead.
"Take the grass."
If it wasn't for Tess's puzzled expression at Alex's whispered suggestion, she would have sworn she'd imagined it as her fingers played in Kal's dark hair as she repositioned them on the hallway floor. Kal's upper body cradled against her lap as she toyed absently with his hair noticing that Tess's attack had robbed even those soft locks of their normal healthy shading as Kal struggled just to catch his next breath.
"What are you talking about?" Tess asks taking care to tighten her heavy coat back around herself as Clark sagged even more in the circle of Bizzaro's arms. "There isn't any grass here."
Alex waves off the glaring Luthor double staring harder at the nervous-looking copy of her sister. "You remember me telling you about that right? about when Kara took the grass after her fight with Red Daughter?" she asks earning a small nod from Bizzarro.
"Alex tells us when Alex gives." Bizarro says pointing towards one of the scaring injection markers left from her time as Max Lord's experiment. Max hurt her. Alex fixed her. Made her special. Like Supergirl.
"You injected her with Harun-el?" a disheveled Lena demands standing slightly unbalanced beside her black coat sporting double looking even more the frazzled collegegoer than ever before since Kara had first become sick.
"I thought maybe its healing properties could stabilize whatever it was Max had been using." Alex says in defense. "Or that a reaction between it and whatever was left of Kara's washed-out cells could trigger something that would help us stabilize our Kara."
"So, what you're saying is you treated her as nothing more than a test subject for your own selfish gain?" the green-hearted Lena questions in a growl.
"It wasn't like that." Alex defends.
"How so?" Tess snaps "You could have killed her."
"Or done even more damage than what Max had." Lena agrees. "Alex, how could you be so reckless?"
"You would have done the same thing if you knew Clark had moved her here in the first place." Alex says guilty tears stinging her eyes as she looks from one set of glaring jade-colored eyes to another. "I wasn't stupid alright but I also wasn't going to lose my sister not after everything…"
"Alex fix." Bizarro pleads, breaking into the elder Danvers sister's attempted defense with a begging tug against the standing Danver's pant leg. The only part of Alex she could easily reach at the moment. "Alex Fix." Fresh tears leaked from her blackened eyes as she looked from her towering human sister to the wheezing Clark huddled and gasping for breath in her arms and back again. "Fix." She begs.
"I can't." Alex sobs as she sinks to her knees Clark gives another harsh cough as the sickly green burning his veins glows brighter in his struggle to crawl away from Bizzarro's cradling hold. "I can't" she repeats. "but you can fix."
Bizarro shakes her head mournfully. "Us not know how."
Alex shakes her head, her expression far sure and more determined now as she lightly guides Bizzarro's shaking hands to press against Clark's heaving chest as the downed Man of Steel struggles to catch his breath yet again.
"He's dying."
"No." Bizarro growls "Kal, no die. Us no break promise."
"Then help him." Alex whispers, reaching out to rest a cupped hand against Bizarro's cracked cheek then rocking forwards to press a soft kiss against the broken skin of the copied woman's forehead with an encouraging "Take the grass" whispered against her skin.