Kara had walked home from CatCo.
Yes, it was nearly three miles between her apartment and work, but she’d needed to feel human. She started with slow breaths, taken in while weaving in and out of passers-by in the thinning evening crowds. She could smell the coffee and the bakeries, but none of them appealed to her. Her feet moved slowly along the sidewalk and she allowed herself to be jostled by those around her. Shoulders bumping into shoulders and quick apologies. Kara became one of them and none of them knew any different; that among them walked a Kryptonian who only desired to be one of them.
Maybe, just maybe, Kara thinks, if she were human none of this would be happening. Maybe if she were human, life would be normal. No arch-nemesis, no secret superhero jobs, no aliases, no lies, no life-threatening situations on a weekly basis. She could just be Kara Danvers. Reporter for CatCo Worldwide Media. If she were human she would be normal. With normal relationships and normal interactions. She would have a support system, outside of work and her sister, that understood her, where her deepest secrets didn’t involve being the sole survivor of a destroyed planet.
She wouldn’t be alone if she were human because she would be one of them.
Kara finally arrives at her building, already missing the distraction of the outside world. Her thoughts weigh heavily on her mind as she rounds the corner on the last flight of stairs and she dreads the looming solitude of the loft. If she were human she wouldn’t have to come home to a dark and lonely apartment. If she were human she’d be having game night with James and Winn. No super powers. No vigilantes. Regular people leading normal lives. Together.
Her keys, like always, are lost at the bottom of her bag. Humans don’t have x-ray vision, humans lose things, humans trip up the stairs. Kara struggles, gets the keys loose, and looks up.
If she were human, Mon-El wouldn’t be standing in front of her door. But he is. And she’s not human.
“So, are you ok?”
The question is obviously forced as the pair enters the apartment. Kara doesn’t look behind to see if he’s followed her in, setting her keys and purse onto the counter. The sound of the door closing is evidence that he has. Humans move slowly, she thinks as she makes her way through the kitchen, entirely conscious of every movement.
“I remember kissing you.”
Kara fidgets with her blazer then reaches up and adjusts her glasses, because humans can’t see well. And so badly, more than ever, she wishes to be one of them. To go to an eye doctor and have a prescription, to be anywhere but here.
Mon-El had been someone she could relate to. His arrival meant that she now had someone who understood what it was like to carry the weight of an entire planet on their shoulders. She had someone to confide in, someone to whom to pass on her highly specified knowledge. How to be human! How to fit in, how to live on Earth, and how to be a hero.
The kiss, however, had been a warning that she hadn’t heeded. Kara had hoped it would be different, different than Adam, and Winn, and James. So she had gone on with life, like humans do, trying to be happy, trying to make it all work, all while ignoring the obvious crush Mon-El was nurturing.
She ignored it until everything came crashing down and no matter how hard Kara tried to be human, she couldn’t fake it any longer. Alex now relied heavily on Maggie. James had Winn. Cat left. And Mon-El wanted something she couldn’t give him. Something she didn’t want to give him.
Now here he was, trying to ask for it, when Kara so clearly didn’t have it.
She sits slowly on the chair, because humans take their time. Deep breath, hands clutched in her lap.
“…like comets.”
Her father had always compared her eyes to comets. After all, it was his area of expertise: inter-solar cometary nuclei. Radia was his favorite, he said, because the brilliant blue shine of its tail was the perfect match to his daughter’s eyes. Every two years Radia passed close enough to Krypton to brighten the night skies for 12 minutes. It moves slower than the others, her father would say as he held Kara in his arms, watching together the passing comet. It moves slower so that we can see how beautiful it is. Humans move slower. Humans are beautiful.
Kara’s eyes, lost in the memory, shift back to Mon-El’s.
“…It was ok that I was going to die because I had gotten to kiss you.”
Reality floods over Kara as his words reach her ears.
She’s not human. She’s not ever going to be human. She removes her glasses, one hand coming up to her forehead, as though this will ease the pain of the situation. She won’t ever see Radia pass through Krypton’s atmosphere again or be surrounded by her loving parents. She won’t lead a normal human life because that’s not reality. Reality is Mon-El, in front of her, confessing how he feels.
Kara doesn’t know what to say and the awkwardness is tangible.
“Comets.”
The childhood memories flash through her mind, “…Mon-El…”
She wants it to end. The seclusion of her apartment, which minutes earlier had been daunting, is now all of a sudden the only thing she wants: to be alone. Because she’s not human. She’s not one of them.
Mon-El stumbles through more excuses. She can’t make eye contact with him or listen to more reasons why they’ll just be partners from now on, as though things will be ‘normal’ after having this conversation. Whatever ‘normal’ is. Because to Kara, being normal is being human. And quite suddenly, she knows for certain that she is not human.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, partner.”
“…uh huh…”
At last Kara finds herself alone in the apartment, unable to move from her position on the stool. Her mind is racing, from Mon-El’s confession to her ruined friendship with James and Winn, to Alex spending more and more time with Maggie and less and less with Kara.
Humans have friends. Humans have family. Kara had tried so hard the past 13 years to have both and to be both, but deep down she knows she isn’t Kara Danvers. She isn’t Supergirl. She’s Kara Zor-El.
And Kara Zor-El needs a friend, just one friend, even if it’s only one in all of National City.
Her only friend in National City.
Kara stands quickly from the stool, because she isn’t human and humans move slowly.
A Super and a Luthor.
Working together.
Who would’ve thought.