#yet another 5x11 rewrite

[natalievoncatte]

There was a knock at Lena’s door, and it startled her awake. She was awake, but also wasn’t, sitting in a side chair beside her sofa with a glass of whisky still in her hand, loosely held by tired, nerveless fingers. It nearly fell from her palm when the sound jolted her from the twilight between fitful wakefulness and falling asleep sitting up. By her side was that goddamn picture, the glass still cracked. She grabbed it and forced it down so she didn’t have to see her grinning face, feel the ghost of a warm soft cheek lightly grazing hers.

The whisky made a fiery stab at her heart as she finished it and went to the door. She already knew who it was, the only person who’d dare disturb her at this hour, and who could get past her security.

Kara stood in the hall, clad in fluffy pajamas and disbelieved, tracks left by hot tears still cut into her soft rosy cheeks. There she was, the pretty little crying princess again.

It was an act. It was bullshit. The real her was hiding behind it, standing tall, appraising Lena’s faults with eyes that could burn mountains, the cold judgment of an extinct empire carved into her godlike, inhuman beauty. Lena made herself see that, refused to let her guard down.

“What, Kara?”

“Can I come in?”

Lena didn’t even answer. She began to close the door, only for her movement to be arrested by a single word.

“Please.”

Part of her made her stop. She seethed against it, hated it. She had carved icy knives of vengeance to carve it out herself. Alcohol had failed to drown it and the sharpest logic was dull against it. It was both too hard to crush and too soft to squeeze, this hateful thing that coiled around her heart and made her feel when she had sworn never to feel again.

Kara took a halting step forward. Lena threw out her palm and pressed it into her chests, stopping her.

She shouldn’t have done that. There was something heady and intoxicating in it. Kara froze in place, and Lena could feel her pulse along her collarbones. The pinnacle of alien might, strength so vast that nothing could stand as her equal, and she stopped from Lena’s lightest touch. That was power.

“What do you want?”

“Just to talk.”

“I’ve heard your apologies. Don’t waste my time unless you have some new material.”

Kara licked her lips. “Maybe.”

They couldn’t stay like this. Resting a hand on her chest had too many possibilities. Touching her had too many implications. It would be so easy to let the soft thing win and bring her hand up and hold her palm to that soft cheek and seek to balm those tears, make it better, care.

She let herself remember that Kara’s pain was a shoeld for Supergirl’s judging wrath and pulled back, but she didn’t close the door. Kara did as she slipped inside.

Thee was a heavy pause of silence, where Kara just breathed, soft and ragged.

“Why are you here?” said Lena.

“I needed to see you. I needed to know you’re safe.”

“Nightmares?”

“Worse,” said Kara. “It was so much worse.”

The agony in her voice shook Lena.

Forcing herself to composure, she poured another three fingers of single malt and flipped into her chair, extending neither drink nor invitation to Kara. The drink was a bad idea. It was dangerous. The smokey, hazy heat of it burned the soft bitter taste of regret from her teeth. Lena didn’t look at her.

“It was the imp.”

“Excuse me?”

“It calls itself Mxy. It says it’s from the fifth dimension but I have no idea if that’s true or not. All I know is that it has vast powers, even godlike. The last time it… it tried to force me to marry it.”

Lena knew what darkness in her birthed the hot rage in her gut, the possessive jealous fury that welled within her at those worse. This thing, how dare he.

She took a drink.

“It… he came to me tonight and said he wanted to make amends. He offered to let me change the past. I could fix whatever I wanted.”

“Hmm. Must have been a trick,” said Lena. “Let me guess, restoring Krypton had some ironic Twilight Zone twist.”

Kara blanched, blinking. “No, I… I didn’t even think of that. I asked him to help me fix us.”

There is no us, Lena began to say, but the words died on her tongue. She washed the taste away.

Something in her twisted, a cold shiver like a water dumped over her head. She knew Kara’s bullshit super senses would pick up on it and steeled herself.

Rubbing her arms, Kara paced.

“I tried telling you at different times, so you’d hear it from me and not Lex or someone else.”

“What happened?” Lena said, trying to look more interested in her whisky than the answer.

It was purely an intellectual curiosity, she told herself.

“You died,” Kara said, blunt. “You died every time.”

“How?”

Every which way. Reign killed you five or six times. Mercy blew your brains out all over my chest. Lex… Lex could be creative. Poison, blades, fire once. He was fond of sadistic choices and clever tortures. Say, use red wavelengths to negate my powers and set up a sadistic challenge I could never pass, that sort of thing. It got so bad I stupidly wished I’d never met you.”

Her voice was ragged, breathing uneven. Fresh tears glittered on her cheeks and Lena felt herself lunge, start to stand. Kara’s pain called out to something in her, something beyond the physical or even the emotional. It was like something in Lena’s soul yearned to stop that terrible pain.

“The worst was when you drowned. Almost.”

Lena looked away, swirled her drink.

“Sounds like you kept trying.”

“I did. The timeline where we never met was one of the worst. I wasn’t there when your chopper crashed. Your mother… you tried to kill me and I couldn’t even fight back.”

“Is this where we segue into the ‘I would never hurt you’ lecture?”

“No. I did hurt you. I deserve your hate. If someone else did to you what I did, I’d snap their neck.”

Lena flinched. There was something cold in that admission, something brutal and beyond even Supergirl. Raw.

None of her rules matter for me.

A tiny voice in that darkness whispered to her: And if some poor bastard locked her in a Kryptonite cage the way you did, they’d be begging you for death. They’d know you’re a Luthor.

Lena shuddered.

“What do you do?”

“I kept trying. I thought… I felt… I had to keep trying.”

“Well, you gave up and came here eventually. You…”

Kara swallowed hard. “It thought it worked, finally. I picked the night I reached you from Corben. Remember that?”

“I remember,” Lena said, hesitant.

Kara Danvers believes in you.

“I told you when you asked me why I saved you. I took you home, made sure you were safe. Life went on. These… these timelines or whatever they were, Lena, they were real. I lived them. That one was, it was…”

“What?”

“A few days later after things calmed down we went to lunch. We were just chatting about something unimportant and you looked at me and our eyes met and it was like…”

Kara looked away from her, wrapping her arms around herself the way she did, not a smug Supergirl pose but a woman shielding her heart from the world that clawed at it.

“When I first arrived on Earth there was a night where my powers had just kicked in and I looked at the sky. I could see more than stars. There was an aurora that was invisible to humans. I could see invisible lines of energy crackling between the stars, the cosmic background radiation shimmering on the dark. Can you imagine that? I can see the remnants of the Big Bang when I stargaze.”

Lena’s had trembled, the dregs of her booze shaking in the bottom of the glass.

“It was like that,” said Kara. “I knew I’d never be the same. I was staring at you like a big goof and you just stopped talking and stared back. I blurted out ‘is this a date?’”

Lena clutched the glass so she wouldn’t drop it and forced the tears back with all her might, but she was weak. Always weak.

“I take it I said yes,” she managed to say, voice quivering.

“We got married three years later. Lori was born a year after that.”

“Kara,” Lena began.

“Then it happened.”

“Kara, shut up.”

“Kalibak killed you. My sister. My little girl. My everything.”

Lena hurled the glass and Kara snatched it from the air in a superhuman blur. Lena was already on her feet, stabbing an accusing finger.

“So what?” Lena demanded. “We’re star-crossed lovers, now? Is this your ploy to fix it? Make me realize how in love we are? It’s a sick joke, Kara.”

“I know I can’t fix it,” said Kara. “I don’t want to.”

Lena blinked, her rage momentarily cooled. “What?”

“I would rather live in a world where you hate me as long as you’re still in it.”

“Kara,” Lena said.

“We are star-crossed. I don’t know want I did to deserve this but I can’t fix it. There was never a right time to tell you. It was doomed from the start. I’m here to tell you to let me go, Lena.”

She blinked. “What?”

“I know about Non Nocere. I know what you’re trying to do. I’m here to ask you to stop. Please. Don’t do this. Don’t ruin you life over me.”

“Why couldn’t you just save me and leave?” Lena demanded. “That’s what everyone else gets. A quick rescue and a wave and a wink and you’re gone. Why did you have to drag yourself through my life and wreck everything?”

“I tried that.”

Lena screamed, bellowed at the top of her lungs.

“So what? So fucking what, Kara?”

Kara just stood there.

“I don’t know. I just… I just had to see… all I want is for you to be safe.”

Lena turned away from her.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry,” Kara choked out, behind her. “I did go back to Krypton one time. I told him I wanted to stay and die with my world, that it was the only way.”

“Let me guess, you did that and…”

“Car accident.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Lena cried. “You have to be kidding me.”

“He made me watch. Not just you, everyone else that died because there was no Supergirl. I… I think I’m in Hell.”

Lena blinked. She turned slowly. A memory came flooding back to her from another time, a closed casket in a small Irish church with Lionel Luthor lurking, waiting for her with an entourage. She’d asked the priest in her precious child voice, am I in Hell, Father?

A sob forced itself out of her. She let herself look at Kara, standing there bedraggled and teary eyed in rumpled Hello Kitty pajamas and felt sick, like she’d swallowed a belly full of rancid oil. All she could see was the hurting, and she wondered if that was it, if this pain was the source of the unbreakable quantum entanglement that had dragged this alien being across a gulf of stars to fuck up her life.

Or save it.

“Kara,” Lena whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I dragged you into my life.”

“I’m not,” Kara whispered. “It was a gift, every minute of it. I wouldn’t trade a single moment for anything. Even the ones that didn’t happen.”

“What the hell do we do?” said Lena.

“I leave. I keep saving you. You find someone else, live your life, be happy. I do everything I can to keep you in this world and watch you grow old. That’s it. I should go.”

Kara turned and Lena screamed, balling her fists.

“Don’t you fucking dare leave this penthouse, Kara Danvers.”

Kara froze.

“I went back.”

“Went back to what?” said Kara.

“I went back to let you out of the Kryptonite cage. I couldn’t stop thinking of you lying on that cold floor in pain so I had to go back, but you weren’t there. I… I… I don’t know what I’m doing. I want to stop this but I just keep going and I don’t know what to fucking do anymore. I’m so lost.”

Kara’s shoulders slumped.

“I would take it back if I could.”

Kara turned back to her.

“You don’t have to.”

Lena backed away, unable to look at her. Kara crossed the gap in seconds and tenderly rested her hands on Lena’s arms.

“I’m sorry. I mean it. I am truly sorry from the depths of my soul. I would fix this if I could.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” said Lena. “It makes my soul hurt, and I don’t believe in souls.”

Lena pulled her in, clinging to her as if she might disappear. Kara was tentative, testing with every movement.

God, they had a daughter. A child! Lena could imagine, almost see… what had she done?

“It’s going to be okay,” Kara said. “I think this is what I was supposed to learn.”

“What?”

“To own my mistakes, and if I don’t want you to be a villain, I shouldn’t treat you like one.”

“I’m so tired.”

“I should go home and let you rest. This is a lot, I know, and it’s late. I…”

Kara trailed off, and Lena looked up at her. Their eyes met, and Lena… knew.

“Will you come back?” said Lena.

“Always.”

[templedragon]

Supergirl 5x19 Immortal Kombat

When #BoycottSupergirl trended after the compulsory heterosexuality of 5x11, episode 5x18 was being filmed. The show had the opportunity to rewrite this episode, and episode 20. To think that this is the best parts of two episodes combined after rewrites is tiresome. The show will never get better with the current show runners. I joined in 4B because of the momentum with Supercorp as screen chemistry that strong is rare. I binged all four seasons before watching season five in real time. The patterns I’ve noticed are: The first few episodes are good, and the last few episodes are good, and there is this huge chasm of stagnation inbetween Priority of development is given to new characters over existing ones Priority is given to men over women Tokenism (the Trans episode was timed for the GLAAD awards rather than International Women’s Day) Surface treatment and hand waving of important plot and character moments Seasonal themes and episode plots are met by writing out of character

Add to that the choice to spend money on Kara’s wardrobe rather than the CGI this season, focusing on plot rather than character, lying about the season’s focus, and we have the mess that is season five. I thought season two was the worst, but this surpasses it. It’s no wonder the audience has left in droves and the demo dropped. They tried to kill Supercorp and it killed the show in the process.

So it turns out that Brainy could have saved the day without Lex. He could have called The Legion from the future to get information about Leviathan, tweaked the immortality code, found the secret Leviathan base and stuffed them in a bottle on his own. Back in 5x10 I thought Lady Brainy had shown him a vision of her world being torn apart by Leviathan which is why he was dedicated to using Lex to stop that happening and distancing himself from his friends. But it turns out that Brainy just did it because she said so without any evidence. This is the plot convenience of making Lex relevant and paralleling experiences between him and Lena by working with Lex thinking it’s for the greater good but it turning out to be wrong path.

The additional Leviathan members hinted at in 5A show up and they are all Earth and Kryptonite element benders. There is a big boss they all answer to that is yet to turn up. Lex is (presumably) repeating his 4B antics by using alien life force to power his anti-Argo cannon because he really hates Superman. Apparently 4 billion people on Earth Prime want to escape reality because they miss loved ones. Absolutely none of the other Earth Prime heroes volunteer to help out, even though their call signal is at the Tower and M’gann came from another planet.

Alex’s latest where the heck did that come from is being a vigilante with Mission Impossible ninja skills. So much for wanting a desk job so she could be a parent. Do they remember her being a qualified medical doctor? Wouldn’t healing people’s bodies be a nice compliment to Kelly healing people’s minds? What happened to Kelly being traumatised over losing her previous girlfriend to combat suddenly (seducing) championing a normal human to be in dangerous situations without back up? Why did Kara scream like a banshee seeing Alex’s new suit when her big message this episode was about protecting those she loves? Isn’t J’onn equally concerned about her freelancing when he’s supposed to be protecting her too in a fatherly way rather than developing nanotechnology costume skills? Why did Alex go for a hood and 1980s eyeshadow rather than image inducer tech to completely disguise who she is?

It’s lovely to see M’gann still here, but in a season where the focus has been on nostalgia rather on progress due to the 100th milestone, once again her relevance is questionable. What has M’gann done that’s 1) mattered and 2) couldn’t have been done by someone else? She came in record speed with a hydrogen bomb to stop the sun eater a few episodes ago, and I’m expected to believe that Lex predicted that rather than having a hydrogen bomb at the DEO so he could be the hero? J’onn can apparently send telepathic insults to draw Leviathan out, so the fruitless searching for seismic activity was a waste of everyone’s time. M’gann so far has brought up the romance parallels that were canon in 5A and haphazardly applied in 5B. She says J’onn is a gossip about personal lives, gives Nia romantic advice about Brainy, and gets a passionate kiss. Remember those in 5A, when Nia told Brainy not to hold back, when Alex told Kelly that she felt like home? Three instances of people overcoming major issues (planetary distance, fear of hurting people, and fear of being hurt) and the titular character gets… a handshake.

William gets kidnapped, tries to appeal to Eve being a nice person and gets shot in the chest. This scene reminded me of the first time Lena and Mon-El met in season two, and how useless the male was in any situation. Kara’s first instinct here was to send William to a normal hospital via an ambulance, when previously Kara flew Lena plain-clothed to the DEO for Alex to heal her. She could have taken him to the Tower as J’onn appears to be able to do anything the plot requires (heal the wound, wipe his memory, job done). Somehow the guy doesn’t go into shock when Supergirl heat visions his wound closed (that includes his lungs). He says Kara told him being kidnapped means you’re on the right path. This episode tries to convince you that Kara is about protecting people, yet is happy for Alex to be a vigilante and drops pearls of wisdom about kidnapping to her work colleagues… I have no idea why William is this open with Supergirl when she’s never asked for his help doing anything. He’s also fixated on Kara and ignorant of Kelly as he’s concerned about Kara’s wellbeing when kidnapped but not Kelly’s even though the latter is who he’s been investigating Lex and Leviathan with. Come to think about it, I don’t know why he’s in National City if he came to investigate Lex, as Metropolis is his domain. At any rate, it’s Lena who escorts him and Eve away from danger rather than Supergirl worrying about him.

Both Kara and Lena are quick to forgive Eve of her previous Earth 38 life. Remember in 5x10 Lena did an Internet search to catch up with Earth Prime and it was all about her working with Supergirl? Did it not occur to her to research Eve? Why haven’t we seen Kara looking up the differences between Earths, for all the assumptions she’s making about people’s past?

Acrata’s finally been called into service by Leviathan, for all of five minutes before the power of friendship and the protection that comes with it took over. Kara also remembers she has powers (heat vision, sonic clap, super hearing, hope speeches, Lena’s love).

The show is still putting Kara and Lena through oddly specific parallels, to the detriment of continuity and growth. In 5x01 to 5x10 when Kara thought she had Lena’s forgiveness, she tried to romantically pursue her. Here, Lena does the same, whether it’s reaching for her hand to hurry her from the bus (they really, really missed the opportunity for “I flew here on a bus”), to her smile when they accidentally make eye contact, or her jealousy at hearing Kara say an unfamiliar man’s name with concern before Eve is mentioned, to her instinctual cover for Supergirl when William goes to phone Kara, for her making a reference to Kasnia (you know, flirt on a plane for hours), to offering a hand for a shake to take down Lex again. I love the speed at which Lena can built an anti-Kryptonite suit, when Non-Nocere took so long. I also love the speed at which Lena could get Kara into Obsidian North for the Unity Festival and duplicate Supergirl to talk to everyone when really she was talking about Lena. I love that Kara should have been able to hear Lena defending her to Andrea in the real world, because Alex and Kelly could hear each other in a previous episode. If you thought Lena protected ‘human’ Kara before the identity reveal, somehow she throws herself into danger to protect Kryptonian Kara even more. She didn’t leave Kara’s side once this episode.

No matter how the writer’s try to frame stuff with inconsistent writing, it always sounds romantic between Kara and Lena. This episode Kara tries to make it sound like keeping her identity secret was an isolated mistake and not one that involved Lena’s biggest issue (betrayal) and using a romantic relationship to break into private property in season three. It wasn’t the secret that was the issue, but sustaining the friendship that is the issue. There are key apologies still missing for Kara’s redemption arc, no matter how much they make it seem like Lena overreacted.  It’s uncomfortable to watch Lena as an abuse survivor semi-joke that Kara can yell at her as she deserves it. The Kara that believes in hope, help and compassion for all would never have let her choose Lex without reminding her that she killed him so he wasn’t a threat to the world. She wouldn’t let her best friend internalise abuse by asking for it from people that claim to care. But this isn’t Kara, this is an arbitrary parallel experience to 5x08 where Lena mentioned everything Kara did wrong. If the show believed in organic growth, Kara would remember 5x01 where she admitted to being selfish to keep the identity secret because she was afraid to lose her. Kara would also remember the 100th episode where in every reality Lena knew she came around eventually to help save the day. This reality is no different. They also paralleled Nia shutting Brainy out thinking it was hindering her with Kara shutting Lena out thinking it wouldn’t go well.

Until there are new show runners, this show will fail to reach its amazing potential. However, if you want to watch a show with a female lead and majority female cast with diverse body shapes and skin colours, where everyone’s unique ability is utilised and every character has drive rather than waiting to be involved, where lgbtqia+ representation exists without it being questioned, where the titular character gets the most agency and the other characters offer parallel experiences in a way that’s true to character, organic relationship development and sympathy for everyone’s motivation, well-paced seasonal plot and overarching plot for the entire show, the lead romance being integral to saving the day, where the show runners openly own what they have done and draw fanart themselves – watch She-Ra and the Princesses of Power on Netflix. We all love buff blonde women that get superpowers because they are from another planet, and their misunderstood girlfriends.