Chapter 5
It had taken thirteen days.
Her mother’s blueprints had been complicated, the messy scrawl scattered and incoherent even at it’s best. (Lena had never been praised for her handwriting skills. “Unlike your mother, I simply don’t have the time to print out each letter” she would always say.) Lexa and Kara had to spend hours deciphering the older Luthor’s writing alone, and she was sure they had still gotten most of it wrong. Lexa also found herself improvising more than anything- not having her usual access to the L Corp tech that she needed. She’d even had to create completely new tools herself- with her aunt’s help of course, who apparently “didn’t trust a teenager with a soldering iron”.
The pressure on her had been intense- Lexa’s memory fading faster than they had thought it would. She could remember most things- but the details that escaped her were becoming more and more relevant. What her house looked like- where she went to school, anything she hadn’t needed to remember since everything disappeared. The only memories she could hold on to were the ones in front of her- her mother, her aunt, Lena- getting back to them. She needed to finish the machine before she forgot how to make it, which meant long days in the DEO lab and even longer nights. Lexa worked herself to the bone, and in thirteen days-
She’d finally done it.
It was late, and Lexa found herself working on the machine by herself. She sat on the floor, tools and screws scattered around her as she fiddled with it. Her aunt sat a few feet away from her at one of the white lab tables, pen in hand and expression full of concentration. The end of the week’s DEO reports surrounding her. In this timeline, she had still managed to become the director. It was a comfort to Lexa, to see her aunt filing reports and keeping the place running as she usually did. Her mother had left only an hour before then, having been called out to some civilian fire across town that only Supergirl could handle. (Lexa almost asked to go with her, only to sadly remember that this dimension knew nothing about Illuria or even Lexa Danvers.) She had kissed the top of her daughter’s head and changed into her suit, leaving with the promise of returning with dinner (thank Rao they still had Lexa’s favorite potsticker place in this dimension).
She had improvised on the machine this time more than the others- fixing the DEO portal machine around her mother’s time reactor, rather than trying to fit the reactor into the machine’s circuit board. It was tricky, and she’d basically had to rebuild the entirety of the portal- but, if there was one thing Lena had taught her it was that science was just one guess after another until you could get something to stick. Lexa just hoped this was the time it would stick.
Spoiler alert- it was.
She stood up, her back aching from hunching over the machine all day. She eyed the machine’s main switch, as if maybe glaring at it enough will make it work the way she wanted. She had tried this before- her previous attempts throughout the week proving to be fruitless. Her first portal swirled dark red, her second fryed the peach she tossed into it to bits, her third refused to turn on at all- and she didn’t even want to think about her fourth. At this rate, she could have to go through a hundred portals before she would get home- and she didn’t have that kind of time. She hesitantly reached toward the switch, making the last move to flip it on before she could change her mind.
The machine hummed to life, clunking and whirring until a faint light appeared. Just like a normal portal, the blue and white rays began swirling- opening, hopefully, into another timeline. She inspected it- it looked like a regular portal, no discernable features that made it different from the DEO portals she had seen before. She tried to remember any details she could about her mother’s portal. Lena had only had it for a short amount of time, but she could have sworn she’d caught a glimpse of it before the Legion had hauled it off. Her memories of it were hazy, not clear enough to get any reliable information from. So- she would just have to hope that she had done it this time.
She turned to the peaches spread atop the lab table, briefly glancing at her aunt. Alex had paid her no mind, her head deep in paperwork and completely unaware of the live portal not even ten feet away from her. Her hand closing around a peach, Lexa carefully picked it up and started towards the portal. This was their tester- sending the peach through the portal rather than risking losing one of their own arms.
She dipped the peach into the portal, swirling blue swelling around only half of the pink fruit. So far- nothing. She pulled the peach back towards her, and- nothing. In her hand she held the same peach, seemingly unharmed by it’s journey. She tossed it into the air, watching it carefully as it soared and fell back into her hand. She turned it over, inspecting it for any possible bruising or discoloration. Nothing. Finally, she held the peach up to her mouth, biting into it.
Tasted like a regular, run-of-the-mill peach.
Lexa let her eyes wander from the fruit in her hand to the portal, doing this a few times as the gears in her mind turned. Had she done it? She raised her hand carefully, and in a snap decision, thrust it through the portal. Do first, be sorry about what you did later.
It didn’t hurt- there were no tingling feelings or objects in her way. Just her hand, held out into the air-when she pulled it back, it had no differences. She thought for a moment, trying to rule out any dangers that could possibly come from entering the portal. Then, after taking a deep breath- she stuck her head through.
It was evening- the sun having already set and the sky a dark blue. The same time that it was in the timeline Lexa had come from. As she stepped through the portal with the rest of her body, she was hit with a feeling of nostalgia. Her converse landed on the sidewalk- and when she looked around she began to recognize where she was. The familiar street signs, the familiar shops- 1st avenue and Jefferson street. She looked to her left to confirm, her eyes scanning over the pizza shop that was all too familiar to the Luthor-Danvers household. The same shop her mother had taken her to every Friday after school when she was younger.
She ran to it’s door, to the multicolored plastic bins that stood just outside it. She hastily opened the latch of the first one she came to- a yellow bin filled with “The National City Weekly”. Her eyes scanned over it- October 18, 2019.
She was home.
She scrambled around for more- memories flooding her brain like a tsunami. She took in everything she could, each new detail becoming even more confirming and reassuring. For weeks she had felt her mind slowly wandering- forgetting where she had come from more and more with each passing day. In this dimension, she felt the details coming back to her- as if she were a faulty computer that had just needed to be rebooted. Everything around her only assured her that her home wasn’t lost- that she didn’t have to be lost.
Her feet hit the ground running before she could even comprehend where she was going- newspaper dropped to the ground and quickly forgotten.
She ran to the park- shoes slapping against the pavement as she went. She found that the city was mostly empty- probably due to the time- and the only faces she met were those of random onlookers. They paid no mind to her, and she didn’t stop to mind them either. She didn’t stop until she found it- the large expanse of green in the city’s center. The National City Park was easily navigable, and she found the spot almost immediately. A small area full of statues and trees.
It was gone.
The hideous statue, depicting her mother and that horrid daxamite- was gone. Replaced with the small stone fountain that she had known to be there her entire life.
She had done it. Her eyes welled up with tears- the past thirteen days had been torture, not knowing if she would ever be able to get back to her timeline. If she could stop her world from disappearing, or even herself from fading from existence. She’d lost her friends, her family- her mom. And now… she could have it all back. This was her fighting chance, her golden opportunity to get her life back.
“Lexa!”
Lexa’s head whipped around at the call of her name, shouted at her abruptly with no warning. A figure was running toward her at surprising speed, and she let out a sigh of relief at the familiar sight of her aunt bounding towards her.
Her look was panicked, and Lexa immediately felt guilty for running through the portal the way she did- without any word to the older woman about what she was doing. Knowing her aunt, she probably had given the older woman a heart attack, or a minor stroke at best.
“Alexandra Danvers!” the red-haired woman huffed out at her, having finally reached the teenager. Lexa readied herself for a scolding, a lecture over how irresponsible she was for heading through an unknown portal- but, to her surprise, her aunt only pulled her in by her shoulders. Lexa relaxed immediately, returning her aunt’s embrace. “Don’t you ever do that again- god, you almost gave me a heart attack! Running through an untested portal like that- what were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry,” Lexa answered lamely, her voice smaller than she’d meant it to be. Her heart was pounding in her ears, adrenaline rushing through her from the events that had unfolded before her. It was definitely not the first time her aunt had given her this speech- and she had never liked hearing it.
“It’s okay,” her aunt sighed, smiling at her sadly, “just- don’t make it a habit, huh? I have a feeling that in your timeline I have a lot more gray hairs…” Lexa giggled, smiling back at her aunt and shrugging- she was right. There was no trouble in the world that she and her cousins hadn’t gotten themselves into. Alex took a step back and took in her surroundings, the tall trees of the park and the statue that her niece had been facing before she’d found her. “Son of a bitch,” she chuckled, noticing the absence of her sister’s statue- erected many years ago after she and Mon-El had become National City’s super hero duo, “you did it, didn’t you?”
Lexa beamed, taking the chance to impress her aunt while she could. It wasn’t that Alex wasn’t a proud aunt in her own timeline- but, it was harder to impress a woman who watched you grow. Having a niece engineered by two geniuses could only impress her for so long- not to mention her own MIT bound son and Clark’s son Jon on his way to being the next superman. Her aunt ran a team of genetically enhanced teenagers, so Lexa didn’t blame her for being hard to impress.
“I have a chance, Alex,” she smiled, overjoyed at the results of the well worked on portal. “If I do this right… I’m saved.”
Alex smiled back at her, squeezing with the hand on her shoulder.
“As excited as I am for you to parent trap your mothers and save us all- your mom would kill both of us if you don’t say goodbye.” Lexa nodded, taking one last look around before heading back with her aunt.
“Not to mention you left a random portal in the middle of downtown.”