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Supergirl: The Elegy of Stars
Chapter 10: Crescendo
The battle was fast and furious, moving at speeds few eyes could comprehend.
If one had been close enough, able to survive the debris and ashes of the OVO base, they would have seen two figures fighting on land and in sky, alternating between battlefields in mere seconds.
One clad in red and blue with a sigil of death. The other in black and white bearing a glyph of hope. One with hair as long and bright as the sun and eyes the colour of cruel ice, the other with hair as dark as moonless night, and the eyes the colour of the earth she sought to defend.
They would have seen them fly. Leap. Punch. Kick. They would have seen them fly over things, fly around things, fly through things. They would have beheld the destruction Reign had wrought upon the base magnified tenfold.
They would have seen many things in this dance of angel and demon – of blows borne, parried, and avoided. Perhaps, had they the eyes of hawk or beast, they would have been able to behold what Kara Zor-El did. The truth dawning in this bloody ballet.
The truth that she was losing.
Badly.
Reign was her equal in speed, and her superior in strength. She knew, because every blow Reign landed pained her. Bruises covered her skin. Sweat soaked her hair, mingling with blood, ash, and snow.
She threw a punch. Reign simply grabbed her arm, and drove both of them into the ground. Snow flew upwards, and the ground itself cracked, louder even than Kara's cry, or the sound of a rib cracking in sync with the cold soil beneath it.
She had realized the truth that she was losing, and now, staring up at the monster above her, she understood why.
Reign was a creature born of magic. She was the worst of Krypton made manifest. And even without the sun having risen, the worldkiller's strength was so far beyond her own, she was naught but an ant spitting at a hurricane.
Kara, on the other hand, was weakening with every blow. She had been exposed to Earth's sun for thirteen months, then saturated with red solar energy for over ten years. She had been blasted by yellow solar energy back in the lab, but she was now realizing what she had long feared. Her chill in the hanger, the blood upon her hand, her unsteady flying, and the chill that had again touched her when she emerged in night's stygian air.
The solar energy she'd been exposed to had been intense – more so than even Earth's sun – but it had been brief. If her body was a solar cell, its source of power was a battery with steadily diminishing reserves.
Still stronger than anything in the base's arsenal. Still afforded some strength by the moonlight that saturated her (though Reign too, granted). But not enough to even the scales.
Not nearly enough as Reign struck her so hard that she momentarily lost consciousness.
She regained it in time to feel Reign grab her by her collar and lift her up to her leering face. A doll in the grip of an angry child.
"You are a relic of a lost world," Reign hissed. "A castaway of a vanished civilization."
She hit Kara again.
"A footnote in the annals of history."
She hit Kara again, as the young girl took in a breath.
"And the thing about history, Kara Zor-El…"
She hit Kara again, whose breath was still being held.
"Is that some things are meant to be forgotten."
She tried to hit Kara again, but this time, Kara grabbed Reign's fist. She let out a cry – not of pain, but of winter's chill itself, blasting Reign with winter's breath.
The breath she had taken when she had first re-emerged.
Reign staggered back, screaming as temperatures near absolute zero bombarded her. Not enough to actually harm the worldkiller. But enough to give her pause.
Enough for Kara to regain her bearings and plough into the worldkiller, sending them both through the air.
Through brick. Through iron. One building after another until both of them sprawled onto the concrete of a helipad, both of their bodies tearing through concrete.
Illuminated in the light of burning vehicles, of ash and snow waltzing to death's composition, the two rose to their feet. One of them unsteadily. The other?
"You know how this ends, Kara!"
Her eyes were clear with sunfire. Twin beams of red light suddenly shot through the air, emanating from Reign's eyes.
Moving at a speed that would have broken mortal muscles, Kara dodged, then suddenly shot forward. Her mind working faster even than Reign's burst of red light.
She saw Reign smirk. She saw her throw a punch at her incoming foe…
…and miss, as Kara altered her trajectory at the last second.
She stopped short behind Reign, and before the worldkiller could turn, she kicked her in the back of her head.
Hard.
Reign let out a primal scream and tried to retaliate. Punches through the air, none of them making contact.
Kara wove in and out. Hit Reign everywhere she could, whenever she could, as many times as she could. A black blur, barely visible in the gloom. Quick as a flash.
I have you.
Reign was her superior in strength and her equal in speed. But of the two, she had the heavier frame. As a girl of a mere sixteen years, Kara was thin and lithe. Barely fed at all for a decade, she hadn't put on muscle, nor grown as much as she should have.
Now, however, she was able to use that to her advantage. Her muscles had been saturated with solar energy, their density increased beyond measure, though not their size. And in that, she had an advantage.
If the hypothetical observer had not yet fled, they might have seen a crystalbird harassing a muad'gisan. One beast unable to draw blood, the other unable to grab their prey. The hypothetical observer might have beheld the scene play out as Reign's blows became less and less coordinated, her rage increasing with each attempt to swat the insect buzzing around her. The hypothetical observer might have thought that Kara was winning.
But the hypothetical observer would have been wrong. And as she avoided a flurry of punches, briefly gaining some distance from the increasingly agitated worldkiller, Kara realized the awful truth.
She could evade Reign, but no matter how many times she hit her, or how hard, she could do no harm. And every punch, every utilization of her superhuman abilities (even those as simple as flight) consumed more solar energy.
And as she evaded yet another of Reign's blows, as she floated above the helipad and watched the worldkiller laugh below, she realized that her foe understood that as well.
"This only ends one way, Kara Zor-El! You die, or you live."
"And everyone else?"
Reign made no answer as she shot upwards at supersonic speed, cracking the concrete beneath her feet, such was the force of her ascent. With a cry, Kara instinctively shielded her face…
…Which left her stomach exposed. As Reign hit it with the force and strength of a meteor.
Kara screamed as she felt a second rib break. Blood splattered out of her mouth in the split second before she was sent spinning through the air.
She steadied herself as best she could. Her head was pounding. Her chest was aching. Reign was coming up for a second hit…
Which despite her pain, she dodged. She grabbed Reign's cape, and threw the worldkiller across the base. Through air, through buildings, and finally, onto snow.
It wasn't enough. Reign was already getting to her feet. And as she cradled herself, as she coughed up yet more blood, she looked to the stars for answers.
She found none. But she did see the golden sphere.
The sphere that she had first thought was a star.
A sphere that was steadily descending. A giant spinning ball, almost. Like Loth-Ur's Hammer[1] come to Earth.
Or more like the sphere she had seen sixteen years ago. When she had left Krypton. That brief moment of golden light that had appeared before her pod as an entrance to the Phantom Zone was generated.
She had never given the sphere much thought. It had been too small, visible only for a second before her pod shot forward, delivering her to Earth – a world that had forced her to start thinking about other things very quickly, not least of all the larger, brighter sphere beating down on the world from over 92 million miles away.
But in this brief lull, she was able to behold it. Spinning. Circling. Cracks visible. And beyond the cracks?
A man in red, running. A sphere within a sphere. Kryptonoid.
She could not explain it. No more than what she could see between the cracks either. Glimpses. Like dreams half-remembered. But in them…
She saw herself, yet not.
She saw herself held in a man's arms as he screamed towards the heavens in light of her sacrifice.
She saw herself fighting a kryptonian on the surface of Earth's moon – the demon within having become a demon without.
She saw herself fighting within a human city – hitting her monstrous foe through a stone arch in triumph. A creature of pale skin and scarlet hair, as strong and cruel as Reign.
She saw herself wearing a skinsuit of the long-disbanded Explorers' Guild – staff in hands, fighting against a kryptonian wielding a sword on the surface of an alien world. Victorious, before delivering him to justice.
She saw herself flying through space, defeating a cursed intelligence of Krypton - one that had tormented her her entire life.
She saw herself fight a user of dark magic – human, but with a heart no less dark than Reign's.
She saw herself a champion to those who had suffered under a horrific regime, guided by the wisdom and resolve of a dark knight.
She saw herself dying upon the desert sands of a different continent, as the world itself died through the ravages of kryptoforming.
She saw all this, and more. She beheld Krypton's destruction, a hundred different ways. Sometimes by its core exploding. Sometimes by Rao expanding. Sometimes by the will of a great skull, sometimes by a comet, sometimes through means she could not comprehend. Variations that one could spend a lifetime searching for.
Variations that gave way to variations. Copies of copies. Flashes of time and space, entire universes formed as others began to crumble.
She beheld the variation of the flash. A reality, this reality, where Krypton had never been destroyed. A world where she had grown up to be the genius her gene-sires had always wanted, working alongside her cousin.
The genius she never had been, and never would be, as another variation played out. A copy of a copy of a copy. Herself copied, as one universe led to another, and in most ways, played out identically.
But not all. Still with variations.
A variation that she beheld. A child born physically identical to the Kara Zor-El of this universe, and another before it. A copy of a copy of a copy, and in so doing, degraded.
She beheld herself. A young girl, five cycles odd, placed into a pod by her gene-sires. Terrified by the world collapsing around her, terrified in the realization that the pod would only fit a single passenger, terrified by the possibility that despite all her failures and shortcomings, that her parents had truly loved her.
A child shot into the heavens away from a world on fire. A child who had passed through a sphere like this one.
Perhaps this very sphere.
And in that moment of realization?
"No," she whispered.
She'd seen it. A memory. A glimpse of the truth.
The glimpse of the truth Reign had hinted at for so long.
The truth her father had long suspected as he'd studied the history of the universe – her universe, forming from an older one. Branching off like one cell from another.
The truth she had beheld when she'd reactivated the pod, beholding her better self. The self of this universe.
A truth that, as the sphere continued to descend, she refused to face, as she looked down at Reign below, lest she gaze upon truth's manifestation. At the countless of versions of her that were not her, because she was not them, and never could be.
The copy of a copy. The one upon the desert sand, branching out to one universe, then another.
To the one not meant to be, at least, not upon this Earth. Not within this reality.
The man in red, he was the key. Somewhere, a universe away, he was running, and in so doing, creating and destroying alike.
From him, such sadness. Sadness that lingered in her breast, mixing with her own.
Part of her mind, the part not involved with emotion, wondered why Reign had not struck her when she was so distracted. Looking at Reign, staring up at the sphere in quiet awe, she realized why.
Beauty in revelation at the end of all things.
All things died.
"Do you see now, Kara?"
"No," the daughter of Alura In-Ze and Zor-El whispered.
"Will you not see it?"
"No," she said, clutching her head and shaking it. "No no no no no!"
"Copies of copies of copies. Degradation as universes died. Leading towards you."
Kara didn't know what to think. There was truth in Reign's words, yet not. She could not ascribe her shortcomings to the nature of a universe's birth, but…
But most of those heroes in those visions had looked like Reign. Only one of them had looked like her, and she'd died on a world doomed to follow.
If anything, with their golden hair and blue eyes, most of them had looked like Reign.
Yet in themselves, a kindness rather than a cruelty. Loss repeated over and over.
Loss she had lived through herself. Loss she realized she could not let go of.
"Kara Zor-El, I give you this last chance. Bend the knee, take your place at my side and-"
"No!" Weeping, Kara Zor-El shot down towards the worldkiller. Moving so fast that a boom rippled through the air behind her.
She couldn't think right now. All she could do was fight.
She slammed into Reign with such force that a kryptonoid indentation was made in the ground.
Reign levitated upwards, manipulating her bio-electric (or gravitational) field just as both of them had this last ten minutes.
But slower than she had previously. Slow enough for Kara, fuelled by rage and despair alike, to grab Reign from behind, press her to the ground, and headlock her. To do the one thing that would save this world, along with her sanity, even if it be at the cost of her soul.
She'd broken Zeta-Rhee's nose. Now she would break Reign's neck.
"You're going to die right here!" Kara yelled.
Reign hissed in response. "You cannot win. There is no prison you can build that contain me. There is no one on this planet of equal power that can kill me!"
Kara, acting as she had seen members of the Warrior Caste do so, attempted to end Reign's life, even as the sphere continued to descend, shining light of revelation upon them both and-
She was elsewhere.
She was untethered.
The feeling was like when she had beheld General Zod, but unlike before, she was not within any body. She was simply herself. A formless ghost. A memory within a memory.
A memory able to behold events play out, as she saw Reign wrestle with a woman she didn't recognize – clad in a black skinsuit, bearing the sigil of a worldkiller. One holding her from behind in a headlock.
"You cannot win," hissed the one who bore the sigil. "There is no prison you can build that contain me. There is no one on this planet of equal power that can kill me."
Kara's ethereal eyes widened. The woman with golden hair bore the face of Reign, but the woman who had spoken carried her voice. And even then, there were other differences. The Reign she faced in the physical world wore a suit of red with a cape of blue, whereas for this woman, the colours were reversed. She wore, in point of fact, the colours Kara had once been destined to wear on Krypton. And upon her breast?
El mayarah. The Glyph of Hope.
This was wrong, Kara thought. Everything was upside down. The world was too big. And she was too small. The world was a stage, but she was naught but audience, watching every man, woman, and player – beyond their sound and fury. To them, nothing.
She saw the woman with the face of Reign tell a woman to stay back.
She saw a daxamite working with the one who bore Reign's face.
She beheld a dark-skinned kryptonoid male who, in this moment of unnatural clarity, she could tell was most certainly anything but. A wisdom and sorrow in his eyes she could only glimpse at.
She beheld the battle play out, but her attention was not focused upon it. For in this memory, Reign's memory, she saw the other figure within this Hadean place. A woman. One who wore a red, black, and gold skinsuit, One who bore the face of one Kara had last seen on the other side of a Dioclenius-class pod eleven cycles ago.
"Mum?" she whispered.
The woman could neither see nor hear her. Kara, however, could behold her perfectly. Could see every similarity, every difference. Just as Zod had differed in her vision of the desert, this woman differed here as well, no more so than in her eyes.
The gaze of one who had carried the burden of living.
The gaze of one who looked upon her daughter with love. A gaze that Kara would have given anything to see again.
And now?
"Mum?" Kara whispered again. "Mum, it's me."
The woman who bore her mother's face remained silent.
"Please, look at me."
She did, yet she did not. And following her mother's gaze, Kara realized why.
She was gazing at the woman with golden hair lying on the ground beside Reign and the human woman. She was looking at her daughter with the love and fear of one who had only briefly been reunited.
A moment that, in this memory, Kara would have given anything to share. To know, at the end of all things, that her mother had truly loved her.
So she looked at this woman, her mother, again. Reached out to her, desperate to feel her touch. An ethereal hand brushed against solid skin, and for a moment, Kara Zor-El felt something.
Alura In-Ze did not.
"Please…" Kara begged.
The universe was not so providing as-
The flash of memory had cost Kara her chance.
Zor-El's child screamed as Reign threw her to the ground with the force of worlds. She rose to her feet, standing above her prey, yet without the glee of a predator. Instead, in her eyes?
Confusion.
"My memories," the worldkiller whispered. "If you knew what happened…"
Kara did not wish to. She only wanted to see her mother again.
If only just for a moment.
But the golden sphere was still descending and-
Reign screamed as she was dragged into the poisoned earth by the spirits of Juru.
Torn apart.
Remains merged with magic.
Remains from a body sullied by kryptonian hand.
It should have ended then and there, but something miraculous happened.
The harun-el used by Kara Zor-El, the Kara she had fought on many an occasion and not this little runt she was wasting time on now, fused with those remains.
A black mist rose into the poisoned air. Slipped not only between worlds, but between entire realities, as a golden sphere tore through the multiverse.
One of countless spheres in countless realities as the music of discordant spheres played across universes.
The mist danced on the edge of the abyss. It slipped through every crack available to it. It slipped through the weakest point in reality, as in another time, in another place, a man in red struggled to save his universe.
Cracks in the fabric of the multiverse. Entire new realities born from one man's pain. For indeed, what child would not defy reality itself if not to save their mother?
What child would refuse to leave a memory if it meant being able to see their mother one last time?
Like her, replication. New universes born from the fabric of those older. Variations one could spend eternity searching for.
Copies of copies of copies, ever expanding.
She even saw a variant of herself, in battle with the golden-haired bitch, as she battled her in a city on a country's east coast rather than its west. But who was the variant of whom?
Did it even matter now, as her remains began to coalesce? As the madness of multiverses tore at her mind? Would have torn it apart if not for the magic remained within her?
New universes formed, but the cracks remained. In one universe, a crack opened above Krypton as the planet died. As it almost always did.
In a different universe, above a different world, one that always attracted the best and worst of Creation, the same crack opened. Two vagabonds from different realities, yet deposited in the same location, albeit eleven years apart.
Castaways.
One deposited under the light of sun. Another beneath the light of moon.
Deposited upon the winter snow in the depths of night, it took many an hour for Reign to understand what had happened. In her world, sunlight had given her power, here, the moon burnt her. Her naked form, newly rebirthed, writhed beneath its light, and she realized that she was vibrating at a different frequency from the life around her. She was on Earth, but not her Earth – not the Earth in which she had been incubated in the mind and body of Samantha Arias.
She realized she had been defeated. That she had survived by the strangest twist of fate that could have been afforded to her – one perfect moment in all of spacetime that her base form had taken advantage of. In the end, not even the Girl of Steel had been able to kill her.
Yet her face felt different. Her hair was golden. She realized, as she looked into a puddle of water not yet frozen beneath the Siberian taiga, that she bore the face of Kara Zor-El.
The kryptonian had not only defeated her in the Dark Valley, she and the harun-el she had carried had contaminated her. Not content with force-feeding her liquid from the Fountain of Weakness and leaving her to wraiths lest she sully her own hands with blood, she had marooned her in this alien reality.
And the sphere was gone.
Reign screamed. Screamed with enough power and rage to shake the world itself. A world that knew no shortage of grief, and was just as bloody as the one she had hailed from. A world that knew not the touch of alien life, and true to fashion, had torn itself apart.
Memories and knowledge assaulted her as she continued to scream. This world's history. This Krypton's history. Memories imparted to her through the golden sphere she had passed through, that would have torn apart the minds of lesser beings. And, lying upon the snow in this new virgin body, her mind tethered on oblivion's edge.
But the scream had ended, as had her despair. If she was here, rather than there, well, what of it, she wondered? She could feel her magic course within her – magic that the waters of the Fountain of Weakness had once removed, and had she stayed in her reality, in Juru, that might have remained true. But in this place?
New world, new magic, new abilities, she realized, as soil levitated above her palm. A universe where the laws of physics differed just enough that magic, ever physics' opponent, differed as well.
She could feel the light of a full moon give her a fraction of the strength Earth's sun would. Unlike the world she had once trod upon, it would take a kryptonian months to adapt to this atmosphere, to be able to withstand the golden solar energy and in turn convert it into their own. Had she arrived with the risen sun, she might have begun to burn, but even so, such was her pre-existing strength and magical might, the effects of the moon's harsh light was already being negated.
Her sisters were gone, but she was still a worldkiller, and her mission remained – to cleanse the world of sin, and build a new one atop of it. This Earth, her Earth…right now, it was a distinction without a difference.
She could feel her body being rejuvenated by the magics that had born her. The night air chilled her body, as her soul writhed. She walked across the white sand of Earth, and in so doing, remembered.
She remembered things that were not from her own mind. She had passed through the ringer of eternity, and she had learned.
She saw the truth of this universe. Of Krypton. So many little differences, but among them was the history of the Children of Juru.
Her people.
Slaughtered at the hands of Jo-Mon.
In the present, as Reign's memories played out in her mind, as swords and spears watered the sands of Urrika, Kara let out a cry as the inescapable truth of genocide became manifest.
In this reality, Krypton had never been destroyed, and if anyone had asked the woman with golden hair as she trudged along the snow, she would have expressed the burning need to fly across the galaxy and slaughter Jo-Mon's successors to the last. But not even her strength could accomplish that – light might grant her strength, but she could not fly faster than it, let alone to a world 2000 light-years away. Not to mention that, as Rao still shone, she would have been stripped of her non-magical abilities the moment she entered its heliosphere.
But what of it, she wondered? Earth would be rebuilt first, under an entirely different sun. It would take more lifetimes than she could count, perhaps long enough for Sol to turn as red and giant as Rao, but eventually, Krypton would be reborn upon this world. And after that, finally, this universe's Krypton would know the pain Jo-Mon had inflicted upon her people.
Or at least, copies of them. Everything felt…different here. Like a story translated into a different language, then translated back, with so much lost in translation.
She could have started her crusade then and there, and yet, she heard a whisper. Like held breath, yearning to be released. A vibration in the fabric of reality itself. It was a child's plea for help, and for one moment, a moment as long as the turning of a sphere, perhaps a holdover of the mind she had once resided next to as a mother loved her daughter, Reign hesitated.
Hesitation had cost her in the past, but something was out of place in this reality besides herself. And sensing the different vibrations, different from this world, as well as her own, Reign realized the truth.
She was not the only castaway in this world. Something, or rather someone, had come through as well. And that…that bore investigation. On her Earth, she'd had sisters. And some part of her, buried deep within, perhaps tainted by the mind of the woman who'd thought herself human, did not want to be alone.
She followed the voice, making her way to the perimeter of a Russian military base in Siberia. A naked woman upon the snow, much to the delight of the soldiers.
Worms, all of them. She let them fondle her. She let them put her in prison garb, their rudimentary technology able to confirm that she was anything but human. She let them take her to the sixth level of their base.
Through her x-ray vision, she could already behold the whole layout. With her magic, she could interface with the base's security system. She could gauge their stash of red solar grenades (the only thing that could give her pause, as kryptonite was non-existent on this world), and most importantly, she could see and hear the child within the base's depths.
Kryptonian, she realized. One stripped of her powers, but with the means to regain them.
She was weeping. A lost child. She was crying as the children of this world would weep once she began her crusade, and yet, with every sniff, Reign felt compelled to investigate further.
She remembered a human woman. She remembered a human child. She remembered emotions that were not hers. Enough to keep her at bay in the knowledge that a kryptonian was on this world – an heir to the order Jo-Mon had created, and therefore, her enemy.
A different Krypton. A different coven. But similar enough that one coven's crusade became hers.
"Day. Night. Light. Dark. Sol. Rao. Human. Kryptonian."
She could hear the girl speaking.
"Third sign. Third sign of madness. Third sign…third sign was…"
In the present, Kara realized what the third sign of madness was.
This.
"Put the subject in the cell opposite.
"Opposite the alien? Is that a good idea, keeping them so close?"
"Orders from up top. Besides, we're in the maximum security wing. Safest place for the bitch to be."
She could hear the worms talking.
"How long has the alien even been in there?"
"Ten years. Eleven, soon."
Some of the last words they would ever utter.
She let them lead her into the cell opposite the girl's. Unlike the kryptonian's, there wasn't any red solar radiation, for her physiology was different enough that they only knew her as non-human. Not that it would have stopped her. It would take Rao itself to fully suppress her powers. Powers that she was regaining by the moment – some the same, some different, as just as the physics of sunlight, magic worked differently here.
"Bloody hell. Hey, is it true that she's identical to a human?"
Fools. She was glad to be rid of their company. But of the company opposite her? The one she beheld through her x-ray vision? The frail child whose face was stained with tears – an orphan of a world that no longer existed?
"Hello?" Reign asked.
In the moment, Kara's eyes were still stained with tears.
In the memory, Reign asked the girl her name.
"Kara," whispered the girl.
"Kara," Reign whispered, her lips curling. "Kara…I know that name…"
Her first instinct was to kill the girl then and there. Kara. Kara Zor-El. The universe apparently had a sense of humour, because of course Kara Zor-El, or some variant of the bitch-daughter of Krypton, would end up on this Earth.
The Kara Zor-El she had fought had been her inferior, yet she had ultimately prevailed through a combination of allies and luck. Peering into the cell opposite her, Reign could tell that this weedy specimen was even further removed from her level of power.
Younger. Frailer. Black haired, brown eyed, sickly pale, and completely alone. Like Reign, out of place. Her heartbeat softer, for it had been wounded much deeper.
It was a heart Reign knew she could end in less than one of her own beats. Despite her defeat in Juru, she realized that she could avenge her honour against a Kara Zor-El, if not the Kara Zor-El.
She could do what she should have done on that night in National City, and in a fraction of the time.
And yet, she hesitated.
"Kara…" Reign whispered. "A nice name."
She would stay her hand for now. The sins of the parents were passed to the children, but this frail thing was completely separated from them. Just this once, she would engage in the quality of mercy.
Just this once, Reign would listen.
And in time, perhaps the child would listen in turn.
"You did not listen to me, Kara."
Kara was barely listening. Her knees were upon the snow, her eyes stained with tears, her mind slow to comprehend what she had seen. What had always been in front of her.
"You could have stood at my side. You could have helped me build a new Krypton in this squalor. And yet, you have fought me from the moment you beheld the stars. You're a bird who cannot fly who instead of fixing her wings, chose to side with those who built the cage."
Kara looked up at Reign. Beheld the cruelty in those eyes. Whatever mercy she had once extended long since vanished.
"Look at you," Reign snarled. "Pathetic."
Kara let out a sob. Whispered, "I just want to go home."
"Home?" Reign sneered. "Your home was destroyed long ago. Your home is amidst the stars of this world, where another you, a better you, is leading the life you might have lived." She looked at the sphere above, returned to this place, hovering there like a second sun, and not the one whose light had yet to appear on the eastern horizon. "Even if your home still existed, you could never find it. Even if you could pass through the sphere, you would be a mad woman searching for a single grain of sand upon the beach." Reign looked back at her. "But it matters not. The sea washes everything away, and you are naught but flotsam and jetsam. Washed up on the shores of this world, still crying for mummy and daddy."
"And what are you, Reign?"
The words came out with more courage than Kara believed she had. Words that Reign quickly responded to.
"I'm the ocean."
The ocean summoned a storm as it made ready to end the castaway's life.
The castaway made effort to defy the ocean, but it was effort that was for naught. Blood spilt. Muscles were torn. From the moment their battle had begun, Kara had been outmatched. But if that hypothetical observer had still deigned it safe to observe this clash, they would have noticed that the castaway was drowning, and was not even trying to swim.
Every blow Reign landed from without was nothing compared to the pain within. The pain that came from the knowledge of being alone. Of being the castaway. Of being the echo, drowned out by a voice she could never even hear.
In one world, she had fought and died against Zod. In this one, she had risen to the heights meant for her from the moment she had climbed out of that pod.
Who was she compared to them? To any of them?
Pain. Nothing else but it.
Pain she had felt her entire life, from the moment she'd exited the genesis pod on Krypton. Pain amplified for close to eleven years, after thirteen months of happiness, and now?
Now, as Kara was sent hurtling into the snow, she just wanted it to end.
She wanted to close her eyes, and never have to dream again.
Reign was strangely quiet. Perhaps she could sense that Kara's heart had been broken by something other than raw strength. Perhaps, as she landed in the snow, she'd grown bored of her. Kara was naught but a moon compared to Reign's sun, and yet, she was still as close as anyone on Earth could come to her.
She knew by refusing to fight, she was dooming everyone on this world to Reign's version of justice.
She didn't care anymore.
Reign picked up Kara by the scruff of her skinsuit and stared at her in cruelty's silence. Looking for any last gasp of defiance. It was cruelty that turned to disappointment as no words escaped Kara's lips.
"Pathetic," Reign whispered.
Kara couldn't disagree. Such was sorrow's weight, not even flight could allow her to escape agony's gravity.
She saw Reign's eyes glow with the light of hellfire itself. Light she shielded herself to as she finally closed her eyes, and waited for it all to end.
It didn't. Instead, she heard a single gunshot.
She felt herself be dropped to the ground. Opening her eyes in shock, she looked at Reign, who in turn looked aghast that someone had dared shoot at her at all, no matter the futility of it. Following Reign's gaze, she saw…
Oh no.
It was Mikhail. Wearing a trench coat and carrying a rifle.
A rifle whose barrel was smoking, as he'd just pulled the trigger on the most powerful being on the planet. And given the rate of his heartbeat, Kara guessed he was aware of the futility in what he'd done. He'd accomplished nothing beyond granting this alien girl a few more seconds of life.
Reign, once aghast, now smirked, as she found her new plaything. Moving faster than any bullet he could fire, worldkiller dashed towards him, using one hand to cleave the rifle in two, the other to grab his neck. Ready to squeeze and-
"No!"
Reign held her doll in place, as she looked at Kara.
"Please," Kara begged. "Please, don't hurt him."
Mikhail couldn't even speak. Reign however, looked at Kara with the amusement of a wolf beholding the bleating of a lamb.
"Are you begging me, Kara Zor-El?"
Whatever pride the gene-scion of House El had left evaporated as she nodded.
"Say it."
"I'm begging you," she whispered.
"You fight me, you defy me, and now you beg?"
"Yes."
"Why?" Reign whispered.
"Because I've nothing left." Through tear-stained eyes, Kara looked at Reign. "Please. Whatever happened before, whatever Jo-Mon did, or people like him did, please, don't do this. Please."
Something twitched in Reign's forehead, though not to the extent that Mikhail's neck was. Kara feared that by the time she was able to sway Reign to the quality of mercy (and there was no guarantee of that), Mikhail would be dead.
But she had to try. Because all her strength, all her speed…none of it mattered anymore. She had failed to take Reign's life. But maybe she could save one.
"These people," the worldkiller said in a low voice, barely able to constrain herself, "imprisoned you. They wounded you, they defiled you, they made you a shadow of what you could be."
"They did."
"And after all that, you forgive them?"
"Yes," Kara said.
"Why?!"
"Because…" She took a breath. "Because I'm not you."
It hadn't been meant as an insult, though she could tell Reign had interpreted it as such. In truth, it had been the first words that had left her lips. But explaining the truth in what time was left to her would take too long. She could not explain how the horrors of what had been inflicted upon her had been kept at bay by better memories. How the weight of human cruelty had been balanced by human kindness. How, at the end of all things, after seeing what Reign had done…
She couldn't do it. She wasn't Reign, she wasn't Zod, she wasn't even Jo-Mon. Hate was exhausting. All this death, all this destruction…she wanted none of it. No matter the darkness of her dreams, she knew that despite her weakness, her frailties…she couldn't have done any of this. She'd be happy to turn her back on all of it if she could return to being with one who loved her. A father, a mother, a pet, be it from this world or another.
"You're a fool, Kara Zaryanova," Reign said.
"Maybe." She got to her feet, and looked at Mikhail. "Soldier Boy? I forgive you."
His lips moved, as if trying to say her name.
"I forgive you," she repeated, as the wind began to pick up. "Mikhail? I forgive you!" She looked at Reign. Whispered, "and I'm begging you."
Reign's eye twitched. She looked at Kara. Looked at the man she was holding, her grip loosening ever so slightly.
Kara had failed to harm Reign at all. But she could tell that, in her own way, not dissimilar from herself, Reign was wounded.
Perhaps in the end, all wanted to go home. Perhaps in a universe unseen by all, a variation would have played out where solace could have been found.
But not this one, for despite Kara's pleas, Reign gave no answer.
The wind, however, did, as Reign's grip began to re-tighten.
The breath of the world, released in trepidation.
When it happened, it happened quickly. So fast that Kara couldn't tell what happened first. Whether it was when Mikhail opened his trenchcoat and detonated the dozen or so solar grenades he'd stashed under it…or when Reign broke his neck.
Kara screamed. Reign staggered under the bombardment of red solar radiation. In so doing, she gave Kara the means to dash forward and hold Mikhail in her arms.
"Please," she begged. "Please, no."
Her prayers had never been answered in this world. Perhaps, unlike her adoptive mother, she'd never really prayed. But the mercy of gods had long been lacking, and it had never applied to her, or the young man she now held in her arms.
It wasn't love. It couldn't have been, this was not Hur-Om and Fra-Jo, there was no opera tapestry waiting to be composed. In many ways, Mikhail had been a ghost. A reminder of the brother she'd never known, of the cousin she'd known barely.
She saw the broken bones in his neck via x-ray vision. How, through enhanced hearing, she saw his unbeating heart.
One man. Worth no more and no less than anyone else here. Part of evil's apparatus, and like so many soldiers, he'd stood by and done nothing. Few historians would call him a hero.
But in his moments, he had been kind. And in a place bereft of it…that had been enough.
"I'm sorry," Kara whispered. "I'm so, so sorry…"
She remembered the Prayer for the Dead, but it escaped her tongue. With Sergei, she had been given no chance to mourn. With Mikhail, she had not known him long enough to speak of remembering him in every dawn, before joining him in the sky in Rao's light. In this universe of gods and monsters, Kara doubted there was anything beyond this world, or any other, and if so, who was she to guide this soldier's soul to whatever hereafter there may be?
So with words dying upon her lips, tears and snow mixing in death's ballet, she nevertheless used them to gently kiss Mikhail on the forehead.
Reign laughed, before hissing, "you're pathetic. All the sins of these people, and yet you still care for them."
Kara remained silent. She looked up at Reign and realized that the red solar energy was still affecting her. Her movement sluggish. Her words strained.
"Well, fear not. When I start cleansing this world, I'll give you plenty of bodies to weep over."
Kara rose to her feet. Her fists shaking.
"Would you like to try begging again, Kara?"
Her entire body shaking.
"Perhaps I'll start with your mother," Reign hissed. "Perhaps when I reach down her throat, and pull out her still beating heart, I'll tell her what I did to her wayward pet and-"
"No," Kara whispered, as snow began to swirl around her.
"What?"
"I said no."
Reign, who in that moment was weaker than she'd been from the moment she'd entered this world, even weaker when the soldiers had drawn blood back in the base, laughed once more.
"Repeat it, Kara Zor-El. Just one more time."
"No."
"Have you anything else to say?"
"No."
"One last chance, Kara, since you enjoy being a jester. Ask me again, or I-"
"I said no!"
Reign staggered back, as two red beams emanated from Kara Zor-El's eyes.
Staggered, but began to advance towards her, the beams accomplishing little.
Even now, despite the effects of the red solar grenades, she was too strong. Kara knew that in mere seconds, Reign would be able to reach her and do to her what she'd done to Mikhail.
Part of her wanted to give up. To collapse back into the snow and wait for it to end.
But the other part? The part reasserting itself? The part that had always been there? The part that echoed her father's words?
Get knocked down, get right back up.
That part pushed her forward. The colour of her eyes turned orange, as the heat-vision's temperature increased.
Reign still advanced, though more slowly. However long it would take, she would still reach her foe, and do to her what she'd done to Mikhail.
What she would do to Natalya, if she was indeed still alive.
What she would do to everyone on this planet.
What she would do if Kara did not stop this madness now.
So she did what she could.
She thought of a yellow sun and a blue sky. She thought of birds and beasts alike. She thought of a world she had come to love. Of good, simple people who had taken her in, who had loved her as their own, and she, in turn, had loved.
She thought of people like them. Young, old, and everything in-between. Everything good and warm, about to be snuffed out by the monster before her. Life grown beneath a yellow sun, threatened by the daughter of a red one.
So as tears continued to escape her eyes, Kara, her body mimicking the fusion of a star, opened her eyes all the wider, her vision turning gold.
Her temperature was increasing. Her entire body began to glow with golden light.
Her hair turned that same colour – the colour of the sphere through which she had seen those like her.
Her skinsuit turning a shade of red, such was the heat coming from beneath. The glyph upon her chest turning a warmer, brighter glow.
El mayarah. The Glyph of Hope.
Golden.
Above her heart.
Reign was still advancing. Growled that Kara could not stop her.
Kara, letting out a cry, opened her eyes the wider to prove the worldkiller wrong.
Two beams of golden light drove Reign back.
Reign hissed something as her suit began to melt. As her skin began to burn, a wicked smell upon the air. As Kara shook, and the ground beneath her began to crack. As snow began to melt and turn into water.
Tears of the world, mixing with her own.
A world that would not be served by tears, as her vision turned white, as the temperature of her gaze increased even further.
She could no longer see Reign. Nothing but a shadow now. A cruel spectre of a lost age. Of a lost world.
A world that, despite its flaws, as many as Earth's, she too had loved.
A world of beauty, of art, of culture.
A world that had given birth to Zor-El and Alura In-Ze. Those who had birthed her. Raised her. Those who, she knew in her heart of hearts, had loved her. Who had sent her away rather than save themselves.
She thought of them all. She wept, until she wept no more, until her tears became vapour upon midnight's air.
But the monster was still there. Burning, buckling, but not yet beaten.
Her skin was burning. Her cape, once the same colour as the snow, caught aflame – a flash of white and red before incinerating. Her skinsuit was being pushed to her limit, along with the body it had been designed to protect. She thought of her parents. Her uncle. Her cousin, who she had once held in her arms, and loved.
She thought of what he would think now. If he could behold the monster before her…and the monster she feared she could become.
The temptations that Reign had spoken of.
Her light began to falter. Her heart refused to mend. Yet in this moment, the words Zor-El had spoken to his brother, recalled on the edge of an abyss, echoed in her mind.
Let it go.
Words spoken on the eve of a planet's doom, as she sought to avert this one's.
Words that guided her in a way Zor-El could never have foreseen. How, opening her eyes even wider, the beams of light emanating from her eyes turned the same colour as a blue star.
Not the colour of Reign's cold cruelty, but the colour of the brightest, warmest objects in the universe. The progenitors of life itself, for what was life but stardust?
Every pain, every wound, let free in this moment. Every joy she remembered, every life that deserved to be lived on the world Reign would snuff out. Every moment of kindness that had kept her light in the dark. Every kindness that every person in every universe deserved to know.
Light mixed with sound, as she recalled her father's words. Words spoken to a brother, passed on to a daughter. Words spoken with different intent, and now, with different impact, for how often did echo differ from the voice?
Just let it go.
And so she did.
Her eyes widened. The ground cracked with the weight of a broken heart at the core of a living star. Snow and ash vanished in grief's inferno, yet it too drowned by her cry of rage. Mikhail's body became one with the world itself, as a second sun was born upon it. Carried off in light, even if it was not Rao's.
The monster before her was little more than a spirit now, and yet, she kept pushing. Kept her eyes aflame.
Kept the light of two worlds in her eyes. Two worlds under two suns in binary dance.
Every ounce of power let free. Every touch of star, be it from the light of the moon, or even the stars beyond.
Everything, from everywhere, all at once.
All converging upon this moment. A moment that had but one answer as the worldkiller still endured.
"No."
Supernova, as in a flash of golden light, the last of her energy was expended. As Reign faded from her sight, and Kara Zaryanova, once known as Kara Zor-El, fell upon the burning ground.
Mortal. Frail. Drained.
A star that had burnt out, perhaps never to be rekindled.
Yet for now?
Victorious.
How long did she lie there?
Long enough for the heat and light to fade. Black hair, black suit, brown eyes, her cape gone.
Her glyph still glowing golden, before finally fading to silver glass.
She lay there, as the vapour turned to liquid. As the tears of the world rained down upon her.
As she no longer wept, but began to laugh.
Bruised. Bloody. But unbroken. Unbowed.
"I did it," she whispered.
She could feel the light of the moon upon her. Already recharging her. She lay there, content in doing so until the light of dawn, and birds' first song. She would wait, she would leave, and at last find her way home.
"I actually did it," she laughed. She looked at the stars, wondering if Rao was still there. If this world's Krypton orbited the star she had once known.
"Stronger together," she whispered. "Or sometimes, stronger alone."
It was a joke no-one would hear. With two ribs still broken (at least), it hurt to laugh. Drained of solar energy, she had no protection against her pain, no resilience against winter's touch.
But as the rain continued, as she lay there upon the barren surface, as older, deeper pain began to fade, she knew that, at long last, she had won.
Except she hadn't won at all.
It happened slowly, as the wind began to pick up. As snow, earth, and ash were carried upon the breeze, blowing away from her.
She sat up, feeling the chill. Watched the snow dance above, as if mocking her, until it and the ash moved away and-
No.
Moved to the figure nearby.
"No," she whispered, scrambling to her feet.
The figure with golden hair and burnt flesh, red and raw. Her suit of blood and cape of blue gone thanks to Kara's solar barrage. Her pale skin charred black in numerous areas.
Naked, as she had first come into this world. But not for long as the ash danced around her.
"No," Kara pleaded.
No prayer was answered as Reign, on the edge of defeat, but already walking away from the abyss, knelt down as her magic wove wonders. As the ash, the remains of the living formed a black-grey skinsuit around her frame, and upon it, the skull of a worldkiller. The suit she had worn in Kara's vision of Reign's memory, remade.
Reign, defeated there, yet already recovering here.
She stood up straight, triumphant, wearing the armour of death itself. Her skin already healing. Her eyes afire with flame hotter and crueller than any star, looking down at the tiny moonchild in her wake.
Reign. Worldkiller.
Immortal.
Invincible.
"As I told you before, Kara Zor-El," she whispered, "if you thought this story had a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention."
Kara had no time to react, as Reign ploughed into her with the strength of an entire world.
A world older than Earth. Mightier. Crueller.
Her world.
Reign's world.
Krypton.
Footnotes
[1]: Loth-Ur's Hammer was the name of a comet in the Rao system that passed by Krypton every three ragnars. It would skim the surface of Krypton's atmosphere, appearing like a golden ball of light. Across Krypton's history, many had come to see the comet as a sign of good fortune or ill omen. At the time of the planet's destruction, the comet was not due to return for another 134 cycles. Sometimes, doom is crafted by mortal hands, not by the hammer and forge.