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natalievoncatte · 1 month ago

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Content Warning: This is a dark, angsty ficlet. There’s major character death. (They get better)

Kara gave the last of the trees a meaty shove and clapped her hands lightly, to shake off the dirt and tree bark that clung to her palms. She’d been called away from National City about twenty minutes ago to respond to a catastrophic landslide in Oregon that looked like a job for Supergirl. The villain trade had been a little light lately ever since the League went public, and she heard-

A thin crackle.

“Kara, get back to the Tower,” it was Alex, and her voice was strained, trembling. “Come back here right now. Directly here. Don’t stop anywhere and get here as fast as you can.”

Her feet had already left the ground by the time Alex had finished her message. Kara took off and ascended almost straight up, so that when she went hypersonic it didn’t harm anyone below.

“Alex?” she called, as she came in for a landing on the balcony. “What is it?”

Alex was inside with the others, wearing her costume but not her makeup or mask. She was deathly pale and her eyes were red rimmed and puffy from crying. Her voice hitched.

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Alex began.

Kara’s stomach dropped.

“Tell me what?”

Alex went still, as if the words would not leave her. Kara could see her straining with the effort, cords standing out on her throat.

“Tell me what?”

“I… I can’t do this…”

“Tell me what?” Kara demanded.

“Lena’s been shot.”

Kara stared at her. Her eyes went wide and she felt a cold rush through her body as if someone had opened a door behind her into a blizzard.

“Where is she?”

“Kara, try to stay calm, let me-“

“I want to see her now, Alex. Where is she?”

Alex swallowed.

“She’s, ah, gone, Kara.”

“Gone where?”

“They tried to resuscitate her, but there was too much damage to her heart.”

“Okay, so we need a transplant? Do we have a candidate? Or an artificial one? She probably has one in her lab.”

A manic frenzy began to overtake her, as though energy crackled down her limbs. What Alex was saying made no sense. Lena wouldn’t need to be resuscitated. She was fine. She had to be fine. Lena was fine. That was that. Kara would go wait for her in her hospital room by the bedside, and-

“She passed, Kara. She didn’t make it.”

Kara blinked.

“Didn’t… make it… passed… you mean she… wait… Alex what the fuck are you saying to me?”

Alex looked away, hugging herself.

“She died, Kara. Lena’s gone.”

She stood there for a shocked instant, paralyzed, some part of her mind shielding her from the full implication of what she just heard.

Then it slammed into her like a freight train. Like an earthquake. Like the shockwave from her exploding home world. Kara had been off saving some rich fuck’s house from fucking mud and Lena was dead. Lena was dead. Lena was-

Kara screamed.

The initial blast blew Alex off her feet and sent her sliding a good ten feet across the floor as she clapped her hands over her ears. Every window and every piece of glass in the Tower shattered at once and every one in the surrounding buildings cracked. All over the city, dogs began barking.

When Kara fell to her knees, the world around her was rimed with frost; her wail had been an arctic blast. Alex sat up, staring at the blood on her palms that had trickled from her ears. Some distant, emotionally controlled, Kryptonian part of her concluded that she’d probably just destroyed her sister’s eardrums.

Alex was trying to say something but the words didn’t reach her. Everything was far away, on the other side of a low whine in her ears and the sound of her own rushing blood in her veins. Red-sun fire boiled within her, setting her eyes alight and wreathing her in vapor as her tears turned to steam.

“Kara,” she finally heard Alex say, but it was too late.

She flew straight up, heedless of the rent she tore in the roof of the Tower as she took flight. She screamed again, a wail of primal torment and rage, and the world went silent.

Truly silent.

The one sound she always listened for above all others was not there. The steady drum beat was not there. Kara lashed out at herself, tearing at fistfuls of her hair.

An inescapable certainty seized her: Lena had died knowing Kara was not going to save her.

Another scream, followed by twin beams of infinite heat blasting skyward like a false sunrise, bathing the world below in crimson hues. Part of her wanted to sweep her gaze down and burn it all, just start smashing and tossing and punching and wreck everything she could lay her hands on.

Her family, her home, her culture, her foster father, her aunt, they were all taken from her. Kara gave and gave and gave and no matter how she martyred herself the world just kept taking.

They took her Lena.

Kara looked down. Rage burned furnace hot inside her chest, threatening to consume her. Why wasn’t someone protecting her? Why was this allowed to happen? Someone just shot her?

She would find who did it and she would end him. She’d tear him to shreds with her bare hands and she would know who was responsible for this and she would smash and burn her way to them and they would pay. She would make them pay.

And her Lena would still be gone.

Nothing Kara could do would bring her back. She was helpless. She crushed her head in her hands and screamed and screamed again; there were military aircraft and police helicopters approaching and she didn’t care.

It was as if some great hooked claws had rent her open, as if every single one of her old wounds had burst at once. Kara had died for this world twice over and this was how they repaid her?

It was worse than that.

In her miserable fucking cowardice Kara has never told her.

Lena would never know how much Kara loved her. She would never smile for Kara again, never crinkle around her eyes as she laughed or look so achingly beautiful as she became lost in some scientific problem or journal article. She had been Kara’s red sunrise and now the sun was set forever.

There was no bringing her back.

Wait.

Kara’s eyes flew open.

There was a way. Clark had confessed it to her, and warned her never to try it.

Fuck that.

Kara rocketed straight up, tearing through the atmosphere until the void clapped straight around her. She had to be free of all resistance, not because it would slow her, but because she would ignite the atmosphere. This might not even work. She might solar flare right in the middle of it and die.

Maybe if she did she’d be with Lena. Maybe Rao would actually do something for her for once and she’d find herself in sunlit fields under a red sky with her Lena there for her.

Anything had to be better than this.

Kara flew. She put every iota of force she could muster into her flight, curving around the Earth. Within moments she was making complete orbits every few seconds.

It’s working, she thought. The red shift.

At this speed, all suns were red. The sky was an endless chaos of red pinpricks.

Faster.

Kara didn’t know how she flew. Not even her precious Lena had been able to crack that question, and she’s tried. Kara had never attempted to find her top speed, never tried to find out how fast she could go.

She could go faster.

Beneath her, Earth was frozen. When she used her super-speed, her mind sped up with it, and everything slowed to a crawl.

She was close now, she could feel it. She just had to go faster.

Faster.

FASTER

And she did.

The stars were gone. The Earth was gone. There was only endless black and-

Void. Nothingness. It had no color, nothing to actually see, just a limitless nothing.

Almost. There was one thing in the darkness, in the endless Outside.

“Clark?”

He was there with her in the void, just there, cape and spitcurl and all. Clark. Kal-El. Kara’s final mission from her people and the greatest of her many failures. Her cousin.

“What happened?” he said.

“It’s Lena,” Kara blurted.

He looked at her with big sad eyes. “Do you mean Lex’s sister?”

Kara blinked. “Who the hell else would I mean, Clark?”

“Oh,” he said. “When I got here you two hadn’t met yet, I suppose. You’re friends with her?”

Kara looked at him.

“Where are we?”

“The other side of the speed of light. This is what happens when you go superluminal without a warp drive or a hypergate.”

Kara flinched back.

“From your perspective you haven’t left yet,” said Kara. But how did…”

Her eyes went wide. Of course. She didn’t realize it at first because she had outrun the concept of movement itself.

She was still moving.

All she had to do was…

Stop.

Kara’s stomach did a backflip and she vomited into the vacuum, turning in space so she didn’t have to watch orbs of her own puke falling into the atmosphere.

She dove, straight down into the sky, chased by everlasting sunrise.

It only took a glance, and Kara saw a red streak headed north for Oregon, away from National City. She was watching herself fly away.

It worked.

It worked!

She slowed. She stopped. She listened. She found it.

Lena had left the Foundation and was walking downtown, probably to her new favorite coffee spot, just another woman in the crowd. Since she’s turned over control of the company to Sam and focused her working days on her philanthropy, she’d become softer, more casual, more, as she put it, west coast. She was just strolling down the street in a hoodie and scrolling her phone on her way to her inevitable end.

Kara steeled herself.

I’m Supergirl. I can do anything.

She swept low over the downtown crowd and landed in front of Lena.

She was so beautiful, so soft. So confused. She stared at Kara.

“I thought you were going to Oregon and we were getting dinner later?”

“Come with me now. Please. Please, Lee. I’m begging you.”

There was a brief, heavy pause. Kara swallowed hard. Lena looked at her for the barest moment, then allowed herself to be scooped up into Kara’s arms and flown gently, so very carefully, to the Tower.

When she landed, Kara gingerly set Lena on her feet and took a short step back. Alex came running into the room.

“Kara?”

“What?” said a voice in her ear. Her own voice, on her comms, entangled somehow because she was in both places at once.

Alex drew her weapon and aimed it at Kara’s head, gently taking Lena’s arm and pulling her back, then poked her ear.

“Kara you’ve got a doppleganger here. I’m not sure if she’s extra-dimensional or a shapeshifter.”

Kara sighed when she felt the rush behind her, the gust of air and the heavy landing of boot heels on the balcony.

“Don’t move,” Kara told Kara.

“I won’t,” she told herself.

“Who are you and what are you do-“

Kara turned and looked at herself. She’d experienced this too many times before. Shapeshifters, a clone, an evil version of herself from a broken timeline.

This was different in some inexplicable way, and the pain came.

They both screamed, not so loud this time, and suddenly Kara was actually in two places at once, looking at herself looking at herself in an infinite loop and then…

One.

Kara was staring at Lena and Alex, standing where her past self had been standing a few moments earlier. She shook her head and… Lena.

Lena!

Kara rushed to her, gathering her up in a fierce hug, nuzzling her nose into her hair to take in her scent.

“You’re alive!” Kara exulted.

“You’re covered in mud,” Lena protested, pushing her back.

Kara let her.

Lena looked at Kara, then at Alex.

“Wait,” she said, soft eyes searching. “How did I get here, exactly?”

“How did you get here?” said Alex. “I don’t remember you coming in. I thought I was calling Kara back. I had to tell her something. It was…” her brows furrowed.

Kara swallowed, hard.

Wait. Why had she come back? She’s dealt with the landslide but she… just went hypersonic to get here? Why?

It didn’t matter. She was gripped by conviction. She just knew, somehow, that she had to do this.

“Lena, I’m sorry about the mud. Listen, since you’re here, I wanted to ask you… want to hang out tonight? At my place?”

“S-sure,” Lena said, blinking.

“What’s wrong?” said Alex.

“I don’t know,” said Lena. “I felt this odd sensation for a moment and then it was… almost like deja vu, but then…” she trailed off. “I need to get back to my office.”

“I’ll change and walk you back,” said Kara.

“Right. I’ll wait in the rec room.”

Lena turned and walked slowly out of the room, muttering to herself.

Alex stared at her.

“What was that about?”

“I’m telling her tonight.”

“Telling her what?”

“That I’m in love with her.”

Alex looked at her flatly.

“Well,” she said, “it’s about fucking time.”