"Please tell me you have a very good explanation for the gun on your kitchen floor before I start freaking out!"

All she could see was the tiny step backward Felicity took. The suspicion she looked at her with. It hurt. And how could she explain even if she wanted to! Her body still felt too fast and her mind too sluggish.

"Kara?" Felicity prompted. "You're freaking me out! I really don't want you think you're the bad guy but I'm starting to think it!"

"No!" She jerked into action, voice too loud for her own sensitive ears. With a wince, she quieted down. "No. I- I promise it's not what it looked like." She looked back at the gun. "See! It's destroyed. I… I found it on the street outside the CCPD took it so I could destroy it! They must have ditched it, or something."

Felicity didn't look convinced, but her eyes screamed that she wanted to be. Kara ushered her inside fully, and again, the small hesitation there sent a pang through her. With caution, Felicity finally entered, scurrying over to the remnants of the gun to examine it. Her fingers delicately sifted through the pieces.

Behind her, Kara watched from a distance, her back pressed against her kitchen counter. She'd forgotten to close the blinds and even the evening light falling into her apartment made her head throb.

"How… Kara, the chip is melted." Felicity held the melted remains of the gun's central computing chip up to the light.

She worried her lip between her teeth. This was so, so, so bad. "It was like that when I found it?" It sounded feeble even to her.

"You, are a terrible liar, and that's coming from me!" She put the chip down and looked through the rest of the wreckage with a closer eye. "You know I can hack the city's cameras to see if…" she trailed off, finger stilling in the rubble. "Barry said he chased the other speedster to the CCPD…"

Kara gulped.

Felicity rose slowly to her feet, part of the gun clenched tight in her fist which to used to gesture viciously with. "Dr. Wells said you'd been missing. Cisco told me you were helping look for the gun…" She whirled on her heel. "You're the other speedster!"

"What?!" Kara could hear how unnaturally high her voice came out and forced a nervous laugh to tr to hide it. "No! That's- That's ridiculous! I mean… no meta has the same powers! How could I have the same powers as Barry?" She froze as the last words tumbled out of her mouth in a rambled rush. She snapped her mouth shut with a click.

Felicity's eyes widened comically. "You know, too?"

"Uhh…" Oh, this was bad. "I uh- I overhead Cisco and Caitlin talking about it a few weeks ago?" Cisco and Caitlin would survive getting thrown under this large metaphorical bus, right? Probably?

"We are so having a talk about secret identities with Team Flash!"

Kara hurried to nod along.

"Don't think I forgot about you, missy!" Felicity dug her phone from her pocket and waved it in front of her. "If I check the security cameras, am I gonna find a suspicious blur from the CCPD to your apartment?"

If the floor could swallow her whole, that'd be great. Alex was going to kill her when- if-… she'd kill her. "How do you know it's me? Maybe it's just some… some wind or something? You know, I did hear it was supposed to be windy today. Dust storms and-…" The unimpressed look she got from that attempt shut up her rambling defense. She closed her eyes again, the stress starting to make her eyes and ears and mouth hurt. "Okay! Okay." She threw up her hands dramatically. "You got me. I'm a speedster too." Her voice danced on too high a decibel for her ears again, and the irritating click of clock hands just outside was starting to make her teeth feel weird.

Wait-

"Oh thank-" Felicity's dramatic sigh of relief changed to a yelp. The noise sent a pulse of pain behind her eyes. She snapped them open and barely saw the man from the museum standing in the doorway with a gun before red obscured her vision for a second. Pulsing pain flooded out with a wave of red heat and she nearly melted with relief.

"Oh my god!"

The man from the museum scrambled up from the floor, his eyes flicking between the still smoking hole in the door his head blocked just a moment prior, and Kara herself. "Well, aren't you something." His heart thudded too fast for her to believe his flippancy. And he had a gun and Felicity wasn't bullet proof and she couldn't let him hurt her.

She panicked. A step forward turned into a superpowered dash. Her body crashed into his, their limbs tangling together. A gun pressed to her temple. Something crunched and it sounded an awful lot like bone. She heard a click of a trigger.

Then the world exploded.

Gunpowder made her want to vomit. She hated when Alex came back reeking of it. And now it was in her mouth, her nose, laid thick across her tongue. She tried to retch. Nothing came up. Something warm touched her skin, and Kara became suddenly aware of the sticky sweat clinging to her, the warmth melding with it sending uncomfortable tingles down her spine. She scrambled away from it on her hands and knees, nearly tipping sideways on her way. Her ears rung like someone shoved a church bell in her brain. Gritting her teeth, she cracked an eye open, bracing for light.

Felicity kneeled across from her, shaking hands falling from where she'd raised them to help Kara. Her mouth moved. She wasn't sure when Felicity'd learned to speak whale, but she couldn't fathom how it was useful right now.

Her eyes didn't hurt any more. Dark. It was dark. She could see the night sky through the large windows of her apartment. And the man- there. Someone tied him up… to the fridge? Tied up meant not dead. Right?

A touch on her cheek startled her, spine tingling again, her eyes snapping to bring Felicity into focus. She'd moved closer again, one hand cupping each of Kara's cheeks, worried blue eyes staring into hers. She tried to say something again. Her lips moved.

Kara blinked. One hand moved from her cheek to instead hold a finger up in front of her eyes, moving back and forth across her vision and oh. She knew this one. Alex used to practice on her during breaks from school. She couldn't fail it, but Alex found it useful anyway. Felicity nodded like Alex used to, but she didn't write anything down.

It all hit at once. The hunger. The bone weary exhaustion she hadn't felt since she was a girl and tried staying up all night to work on her thesis for the Science Guild. The tears that always followed the too-much-ness of the world. She blinked sluggishly.

Felicity said something again. Her hands slipping into Kara's, tugging. Distantly, Kara recognized it as a call to rise. She stumbled to her feet and let Felicity guide her into the bedroom.

She didn't even remember hitting the pillow.

Warm sunlight bathed her skin, her face instinctively turning to face it. She felt kind of… gooey. Sunlight made everything better. She didn't want to get up. She snuggled further into the warmth on her left. The warmth's heartbeat sped up.

Heartbeat…?

Ooey gooey languidness dropped to her toes. She jerked upright. Face to face with a very, very red Felicity who was… sitting on the side of her bed. The warmth.

"Oh my Rao! I am so sorry!" Kara scrambled back, her brain taking just too long to realize both she and Felicity were, thankfully, still dressed in what they must've fallen asleep in.

Felicity jumped too. "No! Hey! You're awake and not dead and oh my god, you shouldn't be the one apologizing! I'm the one sitting here on your bed watching you sleep like some creeper!" Her hands fluttered uselessly in the air in emphasis.

"I- that's um… okay." She took a deep breath trying to organize her own rambling thoughts. "Why… are you here?"

The hands stilled. "You don't remember?"

"Remember…?" Something happened. Anxiety spooled tight in her gut.

Leaning forward, Felicity held up a finger between Kara's eyes. "Okay, okay, um… Follow my finger with your eyes, okay?" Her voice sounded tight, like barely reigned in panic. "You might've hit your head, I tried to catch you! But I-"

"I don't get concussion." Kara brushed the offending finger aside, eyes narrowed in thought. Hit her head? She literally couldn't hit her head hard enough to knock her out. She closed her eyes, forcing herself to try to remember last night.

Flashes of red and a scared man and a panicking Felicity. Of a blurred street and crunching metal in her fist and oh Rao she was going to be sick. A trashcan appeared in front of her like magic, a hand sliding onto the base of her skull to hold her hair. Not that it mattered. Painful dry heaves ripped her throat, her stomach without anything to give up but acid. Hunger settled in as the heaving faded and the initial nausea passed.

She pushed the trashcan aside. The hand holding it moved onto her back instead, rubbing gentle circles there. "The- the man," Kara said after a moment, "Snart. He's…?" She screwed her eyes up and focused hard on the slightly too fast to be relaxed breaths behind her. Rather than the… the silence in the rest of the apartment.

Felicity's sudden spike in heartrate didn't help. "He's uh…" she laughed nervously, "he might've escaped… I'm sorry! It was just you and me and him and you'd destroyed his gun but you were hurt and when he ran I let him!"

She nearly moaned with relief, missing the way Felicity's hands stopped the circles on her back. She hadn't killed a man last night. And… night. It was light out now. Her spine straightened. "I'm late for work! Dr. Wells is going to kill me!"

"I called him. Told him you were having girl issues." She cracked a hesitant smile. "Always works."

Kara breathed. Good… That was good. And Felicity was still here, wasn't she? She even covered for her. Held her hair while she tried to puke. Slowly, she let herself relax into Felicity, whose hand resumed the circles on her back. They sat like that for a blissful while. Kara let her eyes slide shut and enjoy the sun on her face and the warmth of Felicity behind her and the gooeyness settling into her limbs again.

Her stomach ruined it with a traitorous, Smaug level roar. Blood rushed to her cheeks, but Felicity only laughed. "Right. Food. I'm gonna order Chinese and you're gonna tell me everything. Deal?"

And, well, Kara would do evil, evil things for dumplings.

"Okay," Felicity paced back and forth in Kara's living room while Kara laid sprawled out on the couch surrounded by takeout boxes. She practically inhaled it the moment Felicity brought it back. Felicity, took her time, citing no desire to get sick. "Superspeed, superstrength, laser eyes," she took a big slurp of her noodles, "am I missing anything?"

"It's heat vision, not laser eyes. And also freeze breath and x-ray vision and flying and invulnerability."

She froze. "You can fly? How- How did you win the superpower jackpot? Barry has his one thing. His metas have their one thing! How…?"

"I'm…" Kara adjusted her glasses nervously, propping her elbows up face Felicity better. "I'm an alien. The sun it gives me-"

"You're an alien!"

Kara pushed herself up off the couch in a burst of superspeed to catch Felicity's dropped chopsticks before they could hit the ground. She offered them back with a sheepish smile and another quick adjustment of her glasses. It was terrifying, but freeing at the same time to finally let herself be seen. Really seen. Before, she had Alex when hiding it became too much. Here? She had no one. So as much as the kinda felt like throwing up again while Felicity stared at her in shocked silence, this time it might've been equal parts terror and excitement.

"Oh. My. God. But you look- nevermind. I'm not about to be alien racist." Oh. Oh she wasn't running away at all. She was trying. Kara's nervous smile turned just a bit wet. Felicity's eyes widened in alarm. "I didn't mean-"

"No, no!" Kara shook her head. "You're fine!" She reached out to hold Felicity's arms to ground her, and maybe herself, through the panic. "I know it's… a lot."

"A lot?" Her voice stretched into a higher register. "Finding out metahumans exist was 'a lot' this is- this changes everything!" The woman practically vibrated and for a second, Kara worried it might be with rage. "Okay, okay. Calm down Felicity," she hissed to herself under her breath. "Not like your whole perception of life just got shattered…" When she looked up again, it wasn't anger or fear, but excitement in her eyes. "You guys are totally more advanced than we are, aren't you?"

"Krypton, my planet, was far beyond Earth's current technology, yes. Physical keyboards…" Kara shuddered. Highschool typing classes sucked. Great for learning to control her newfound strength, but the teacher hated her after the third broken keyboard and Kara couldn't get over how slow they were. Waiting for each key to press and spring back up took forever. "Your physical keyboards are the worst."

"Was…?"

She took a breath to steel herself. "Krypton is gone." It hurt to say, even now. "It exploded when I was thirteen. My parents they- they sent me away. To Earth. I was supposed to protect my cousin…" She smiled weakly. "Most aliens who come here are refugees, I think. That's why we have to hide… you humans already want to kick other humans out of your countries. If they knew about us, where would we go?"

"Oh, Kara." Felicity set her container of takeout aside and pulled her into a hug. "I am so, so sorry. I can't even imagine… You don't have to justify anything, okay?"

Kara let herself melt into the hug, the assurance that someone knew and they weren't going away any time soon. Felicity was with her and she wasn't alone again. She shoved her glasses up on her face to wipe at the tears bubbling in the corners of her eyes making everything all blurry. Her chest rumbled a blubbering, self-deprecating laugh. "I got here too late and he was already grown and I failed but it was fine and I was managing for years and then eleven months ago I woke up here and he doesn't even exist and Alex doesn't know me and I lost it all again!" Anger rose up fresh and consuming and raw. She'd thrown herself into work, hadn't let herself think about it longer than a minute. No one asked. She didn't tell. But she couldn't bury it any longer. She'd lost her world. Twice. And it hurt. And she was angry.

Felicity's arms squeezed as tight as she could despite her humanity, like she could squeeze the pain away. "Screw the universe," she said suddenly. "I swear it just has it out for good people like you and Barry and Oliver. I mean, I'm no superhero, but if I find out that on top of crazy metas and aliens and apparently magic, that the universe is somehow sentient? I'm gonna want in on that fight." Her own anger and hurt and spite bled into her voice, like she sucked it right out of Kara and absorbed it into herself.

She got a laugh from her. Just one small snot filled snort. Then a wet chuckle. Then a full, exhausted, laugh. Some of the anger dissipated with another shoulder to help bear it, and just this once, she let someone else help bear it. But without the anger, nothing remained to hold back her tears, and the laughs dissolved into more sobs.

Kara cried. Felicity never let her go.

Felicity licked triple chocolate ice cream from her spoon and leaned back on the couch. "Do aliens have ice cream?"

Kara, still raw from… everything, stabbed her spoon into her pint of cookies and cream with more force than necessary. But it helped. Processing it. And the ice cream. "Mhm. You know how Earth has strawberry ice-cream?" She looked sideways to catch Felicity's nod, bumping her with her shoulder. "We had twellian ice cream."

"Twellian?" Felicity echoed, testing the word on her lips. It wasn't quite right, the intonation just off, and she put too much of the sound in the front of her mouth, but she tried. Kara beamed.

"Uhuh. It's sort of like… an orange mixed with a plum, I guess? It fizzed in your mouth when you took a bite, like a coke that's been left open for a while. It was my favorite kind of ice cream as a kid." She took another rbig scoop to shove in her mouth. Cookies and cream was good too. "Not every planet had it though. I know the Martians didn't. And ours was all plant based."

"No wonder they'd want to come to Earth." She seemed to realize what she said a moment too late, and hurried on to make it sound better. "Not that I'm like, making light of why they're here! But a life without ice cream?" She shuddered dramatically. "Do you think they have alien only icecream parlors here?"

That was… "I don't know. I've never really," Kara adjusted her glasses, forehead crinkling, "I never really tried to find the alien community in my National City. I recognized some around? But I haven't really seen any here…"

"Okay, one," Felicity pointed her spoon of triple chocolate at her, "don't think I didn't hear the whole alternate universe thing you've been alluding to. I'm so helping you look into that. And two! We are going to find you an alien ice cream shop." Felicity paused to consider her. "Or a bar."

"I don't really-" oh that was the same look Alex always used to say 'shut up before I make you and accept it'. And she selfishly did want to go… "Thank you. I'd really like that."

"Consider it a date!" Felicity froze. "Not like that! I mean like- uh-" Oh, so that's how Kara looked when she panicked. Alex was right… it was kind of cute. Mortifying being on the other end of the word vomit, but cute from this side. "You know! A date like the time not like a 'date' date. Hah… hah…"

"Consider it a date," Kara said with a teasing wink and a still weak smile, her elbow nudging Felicity playfully.

Her shoulder slumped, panicked tension finding release. They ratcheted back up far too soon when her phone chimed and she looked down to check it.

"Duty calls?" Kara guessed. She looked down at her own phone filled with unanswered texts from Barry, Iris, and Caitlin. She set it aside.

Felicity climbed to her feet, phone clenched tight in her hand. "I'm so sorry, Kara. I was supposed to catch the train home yesterday but they said they could down the fort so I stayed but now-"

"They need you." How were all of her friends superheroes? Her very human friends. Meanwhile, the very bullet proof one sat inside working on scientific advances Krypton made centuries ago.

Well, the basic portal theory at least. Even Krypton hadn't successfully built a gateway to another, parallel universe. If her hypothesis was correct, that's what it would take to get home. It was selfish… an advance in technology Earth wasn't ready for, built entirely for her own benefit. But it wasn't her fault all of the scientific advances to help humanity had been discovered by Krypton centuries ago! Discovered, and nearly impossible to implement given the country's current energy grid. Unless, of course, she turned her research focus to metas… and the effects of yellow sun on various alien physiologies… Krypton didn't have research on either of those. It was more biology than physics… she wished she had access to the fortress to go back and listen to her father's recorded lectures.

She shook herself back to the present. "Well, if the Arrow is admitting he needs you, you gotta go."

"How did you- superhearing."

Kara grinned.

"You-!" Felicity pointed her spoon full of ice cream at her threateningly. "We are so talking about this later!"

It felt… normal, hanging out like this, not hiding anything. Not pretending. Nothing could knock her smile off. "Go! Shoo! You've got heroing to do!"

Thawne sat behind his desk, in his office, watching security footage of his Flash train. So how was it, that a speedster that was not his, existed in this city without his knowledge? He steepled his fingers before him. He had hypothesized that this time, Barry's story would be different. Afterall, his own addition, while calculated to make the least extraneous differences, would still result in some small changes. And yet, the scope of the changes being made spoke to another force at play. This other speedster.

It was lucky, really, Barry still perceived someone else saving the security guard as a personal failing. Thawne knew his history, knew how crucial this moment was to his formation as a hero, his desire to get faster. All of it nearly ruined.

This other speedster was a threat. The very thought of allowing another weapon to counter speedsters, similar to Cisco's weapon, was an uneasy one. How easily it could turn against him. He would need to reveal himself one day, he did not want a newly emboldened and weaponized Cisco making that day harder than it needed to be. Still, if the other speedster came out for the gold gun… perhaps another weapon would do the trick.

Phone in hand, he paused over Ms. Danvers' contact. She could plant the seeds for the need for another weapon. Perhaps even build it herself, the work in her lab was promising, what he recognized of it at least.

He reserved himself. How convenient of Ms. Danvers story to cross paths with his own in the immediate aftermath of the particle accelerator explosion. To end up beside Barry Allen in his hero infancy. How odd for her to disappear now. He'd received Ms. Smoak's text of course, informing him of Ms. Danvers'… problem. It didn't raise his hopes. The Arrow's team picked up on things far faster than Team Flash. If she alone had Ms. Danvers' ear…

She held more secrets than he assumed initially. It wouldn't do to run her off before he could peel her back, layer by layer, to uncover the potential she oh so carefully restrained. Someone was changing the course of history beyond his control. He needed it controlled. He needed Kara Danvers.

He rolled down to the time vault. "Gideon, progress on deciphering Ms. Danvers' notes."

"I have identified the structural basis of a language. Translation at six percent."

"Excellent."