carter grant, super sleuth

“Your latte, Miss Grant.” 

She tries not to twitch—or fidget or stare at Cat or make a face or smile too brightly or smile with teeth or be too tall or hunch too much or make eye contact for too long a period at a time or any of the other habits that Cat doesn’t like first thing in the morning—and holds out the coffee for her boss. Cat. Cat, her boss. Her boss, Miss Grant. 

Cat’s fingers don’t brush hers, she doesn’t make long, purposeful and meaningful eye contact full of longing. There is no sign that they spent most of the evening together—no sign from Cat that they kissed, no sign of anything that say said to one another, no sign of anything beyond boss and assistant.

“Lots of work to do, Kiera,” Cat drawls as she strides into her office. “Chop chop.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.” Kara snatches up her tablet from her desk and scurries in behind her.

“So.” Cat drops her bag on her desk and snatches off her sunglasses. Her hip pops out to the side and, for one long moment, Cat looks her over.

Kara stands very still and waits. She knows Cat well enough to know that the woman is examining her—she knows very well, too, what Cat will find.

Not rumpled. Clean. Clearly uninjured.

Cat’s face gives nothing away when she says, “Should I be expecting any tales of heroics from this morning?” but she doesn’t look at Kara and she drops down into her seat and rifles needlessly through her top drawer for a pen that isn’t there.

Kara steps forward and plucks it off her desk, holds it out.

“No. No heroics.”

“Then,” Cat purses her lips and frowns at the offering but, after a moment, she takes the pen, “I assume you had a good reason for sneaking out.”

“I left a note.”

“Mm, yes.” Cat narrows her eyes. “Called away. See you at work. K.” She doesn’t sound impressed.

“I’m…sorry?”

“Carter would have liked to see you before he was sent away.” Cat opens her laptop—she doesn’t notice when Kara’s shoulders droop but when she looks up, she sees it. “He understood,” she relents just a touch and Kara nods.

“It was early. I had to go.” She looks down to the floor. After last night, this should be easy but it isn’t—Cat had held her for hours, they had kissed, and now they’re standing in the office and everyone is milling around like normal but it’s not normal, everything has changed, everything is about to change. She steps closer to Cat’s desk and lowers her tablet. She doesn’t lift her eyes. “I wanted to say goodbye,” she says softly. “But you’d just fallen asleep. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Kiera.” Cat rolls her eyes. “I’m going to give you some advice.” She lifts her eyebrows like she’s waiting for Kara to say thank you or something and Kara tries not to smile when she nods. “If you ever leave me to wake up to just a note again when you told me, hmm, three times that you suspect you will die, you won’t get the chance to sleep in my bed again. Clear?”

Kara eases closer still, around the corner of the desk. She knows Cat is going for brisk and distant and a little mocking but… “I won’t,” she promises. “I’ll wake you next time.” The words sound hollow—she’s still not sure that there will be a next time but she wants one so she lets herself cling to it, cling to the promise as flimsy as it is, and she hopes.

“Good.” Cat slaps a hand out onto her desk calendar and drags it towards herself. She peers down at it over her glasses. “So what was so urgent that you had to whisk away in the middle of the night?”

“Actually, it was three-thirt—” She stops herself. “You don’t care and you said that for effect not accuracy.” Cat rolls her eyes. “Right. Important. Alex wanted to debrief me about what they found.”

“She couldn’t do that over the phone?”

“She wanted me to get some sun too,” Kara shrugs, and she is glad that Alex is looking out for her because she does feel a lot better—warm, strong, settled in her own skin as much as she can be today. She likes the way being fully charged makes her feel, even if having to lie under the lamps is the most boring thing in the world and makes her restless and fidgety.

“And what did she find out?”

Kara hesitates, which is a mistake because Cat hates hesitation and she looks up with sharp, narrowed eyes.

“Well?”

“Not much more than they had before.”

“And you so desperately needed to be debriefed because…?”

“Because my sister wanted to see me and talk to me. And because,” Kara holds out a small earpiece. “This is for you.”

“My BlueTooth?” Cat takes it, even as she sneers—it’s a look of confusion on Cat, and Kara shouldn’t find it endearing but she does.

“It’s been adjusted a bit. They made it into an ion disruptor. Theoretically, it should keep you from having your mind controlled.” Kara grins when Cat looks at it with far more interest, turns it over in her hands. “Also,” she says quickly, “Alex just wanted to check in with me, I guess.”

“Mm.” Cat clips her earpiece into place. “Yes, she cares for you very much.” She looks at Kara with an expression that is almost a frown but carries no anger. It is thoughtful and examining and very quickly hidden behind another, more real frown. “This had better do more than just theoretically protect my brain, Kiera. I’ll have you know it has been insured.”

Kara grins. “Yes, Miss Grant.” The humour—biting, quick as it is—is funny and very Cat and it gives Kara the courage to chance a quick touch, skim a perfect loose ringlet behind Cat’s ear. It’s almost too fast for Cat to feel, let alone see, so she doesn’t worry about any curious eyes that might have caught the gesture.

“Well.” Cat clears her throat and pulls her head away very slightly. “How will we know? If it works?”

Kara is about to tell her they’ll just have to wait and see—a statement that never goes down well with Cat—when the woman crumples backwards into her chair, cries out. She claps a hand over her other ear, the one without the earpiece, and cries out again, more of a whimper. With eyes squeezed shut, she doesn’t see Kara kneeling by her side until she grabs at her knee.

“Cat? Cat, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Lord, she thinks. If Lord did something to the ion disruptors she is going to body slam him into the Pacific.

Cat winces, pulls her hand away from her ear slowly and then drops it down in her lap when the pain, whatever it was, doesn’t return. “You said Non would attack at noon?” Cat asks, low and voice still tense with pain. Kara nods and Cat sighs. “I think you may have overestimated how interested your uncle was in keeping to schedule.”

“What do you mean?” Her whole self is focused on Cat—her face still isn’t free from pain and now and again Cat will reach up and touch the first two fingers of her left hand to the top of her cheek, that spot just in front of her ear and press—and Kara doesn’t quite understand the words.

Cat sighs again and reaches over to her, touches a hand to her chin and turns her head to the open office.

Kara blinks and then stands quickly. Everyone is still and quiet and blank and Kara can’t breathe. Because if, if Non has begun and if everyone is affected by Myriad then she failed, she was wrong and she’s doomed everyone and —“No,” she whispers. “No, no, it’s only nine—no.” Worst of all, all she can think about, all she can see is Astra. Astra—alone, in her pod, in the deep darkness with no escape is all she can see, and then it is her own face and the deep cold of space—and then there is a quiet crackle and she looks down to see her fingers jutting right through the shattered screen of her tablet.

“That’ll be coming out of your paychecks,” Cat says, coming to stand next to her in the doorway of her office.

Kara drops the broken device on her desk.

“So what now?”

“I—”

“Presumably,” Cat says, “once Scully found out that it was mind control, she was working on a way to counteract it? Since there clearly wasn’t a surplus of ion...disruptors.”

“Yeah. They were working on it.”

“And?”

“I don’t know. Alex was supposed to call me once she figured it out but I guess she can’t now. Because she’s probably been mind controlled because I stupidly insisted that he would play by the rules.” Kara closes her hands into harsh fists and she’s almost shaking with the need to punch a car or Lord’s train or Non’s face—she freezes when Cat’s fingers lock around her wrist.

“Anything you may happen to break will also come out of your paycheck, Kiera. Which will be difficult to explain for both of us.” Cat’s thumb strokes once, across the patch of skin on her wrist that suddenly feels like it’s made of exposed wires, all sparking. The sparking doesn’t stop but it doesn’t feel as disorienting, as distracting, as full-body-prickling, when Cat comes to stand in front of her and grips her wrist a little more tightly and looks at her right in the eyes. Her eyes demand focus. “Tell me what she told you about the properties of the weapon.”

“I—”

“Focus. You can do this, Kara.”

Kara nods once, firmly, and she closes her eyes and draws in a breath and calls up the memory of her meeting that morning with Alex. She sinks into it—heat on her arms, body, stripped down to shorts and a shirt to maximise exposure, the warmth of the yellow lamps, her sisters soothing voice all around her—and she lets her mouth fall open and repeats it word for word.

“Are the sun lamps on high enough Kara—can you feel that—how about that—I’m going to leave it at this level we want you to be on your A game today—facing Non how do you feel about that—I have faith in you Kara I always have—this isn’t your fault remember that this is Non’s fault, he is the one attacking these people—no matter what happens you are a hero and I love you—I’m going to turn these up a little how does that feel—ugh Lord is here he’s in the next room no don’t move you’re going to dislodge everything—I can’t believe Hank is letting him work with us I don’t care how smart that man thinks he is I’m never going to forgive him for what he did with Bizarro and those girls—we’ve been analysing the code all night—yes, Kara, I got some sleep don’t worry about me that’s my job—he found something and using Winn’s decryption key we think we understand the intent Lord can tell you the exact parts of the brain that are affected but essentially it shuts down sections of the brain to make people totally compliant and we’re thinking we can come up with a temporary cure adrenaline maybe or as high a dose of hope as we can administer—oh please you did grade ten science with the rest of us Kara you know that those are just chemicals produced in the body it’s the same with love it’s just a cocktail of chemicals—I’m not being cynical you’re just ridiculous why—”

“That’s enough, Kara,” Cat says gently and squeezes Kara’s wrist.

Kara blinks and ducks her eyes to the ground. She doesn’t do it often—she knows how odd it can be for her to mimic a voice and to have their words imprinted in her memory but it does have its uses. And she doesn’t mind so much when Cat is looking at her appraisingly, like she’s done something clever and fascinating. And not in her ‘I can use this’ way but in her, dare Kara think it, ‘Carter has done something wonderful’ kind of way, and it’s not the right time for this at all but Kara lets herself think for the tiniest moment how nice it was to be held, how nice it was to be close to Cat, how nice it was to be wanted by Cat, and she lets herself think how nice it might be to be someone who Cat considers special.

“Hope,” Cat says, staring at her. Through her. Kara can tell that she’s turning the words over in her head. “Can you repeat that? What Scully said about hope?”

 “Her name is Alex,” Kara corrects her, and hurries on because she’s still not used to being allowed to correct Cat Grant. “We can come up with a temporary cure adrenaline or as high a dose of hope as we can administer.”

“Hmm.”

“What are you—hold on,” Kara gasps, because her phone is ringing and none of her calls were answered by Alex or the DEO and she’s hoping, she’s hoping that Alex is somehow okay. “Alex?”

“‘Fraid not, Supergirl.”

“Max, what a surprise that you’re not one of the mindless drones.”

“Your sarcasm and distrust is noticed, believe me, but we have more important things to do right now.” He sounds distracted and, beneath that, perhaps the tiniest bit afraid. “Look, I just left the DEO—they assumed he would honour the deal,”

“Who did?”

“Everyone. Everyone at the DEO was affected. They’re letting the prisoners out, disrupting the barriers, arming themselves—”

“But you’re safe,” Kara growls, and Cat lifts her eyebrows.

“I was testing my comms. I know you don’t believe me, I understand, but I called to warn you. You need to shut down the DEO.”

Kara lifts a hand to her forehead and rubs. She hates it when Lord is right. “I’ll be there soon. Get to CatCo. Cat has her disruptor on too—for once, you can work together to come up with a way of fixing this.”

“And the DEO?”

“I’ll think of something.” She taps her ear to end the call and, knowing that no one in the office is paying the slightest bit of attention, she spins into her quick change. “Cat?”

“What do you need?”

“Stay here. Maxwell Lord is on his way. You two stay safe—I’ll need your brains and your input by the end of the day, I’m sure.” Cat nods. “General Lane is running drills in the desert. If you contact him,” Kara writes down how, “you can let him know what’s going on. And see if he can find anything out that can help us. How much of National City is affected, what he can see going on. And he should probably set up a quarantine.”

“And the President?” 

“Sure. Let her know too.” Kara spares a glance for her friends—they are just sitting there at their desks, and she has to hope for the time being that they’ll be safe. Her sister and the DEO aren’t, though, so that has to be her focus. One step at a time. That’s all she can do. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she promises, and Cat—already on line with the General—nods.

For being up against a whole team of agents trained in finding and taking down aliens, Kara thinks she’s doing pretty well holding her own. She fought her way—as gently as she could—to the control room and managed to shut everything down.

Well.

She might have broken some things but the human technology still isn’t as familiar as everything she had back on Krypton and red buttons mean something different here than they did there—it was safest, really, just to make sure no one could do any more damage. 

One alien tries to get out, her cage damaged. She looks a bit like a rhinoceros and has skin as thick as one and Kara’s hands hurt very faintly from the punches it took to convince her that escape really wasn’t worth it, not with Kara looking at her with burning eyes. She allows Kara to guide her back to her cage and the door closes and really, Kara thinks, she should really be getting paid for this.  

She heaves out an enormous breath and speeds into the control room again, hoping that the many screens will somehow switch from darkness to something that can help her, something like security footage or anything that helps her find Alex. The one agent she hasn’t run into.

Which, as time passes and Kara has literally had to stop every single agent and handcuff them to the railing, feels less and less like a fluke and more and more like some really horrible plan Non has in store for her.

It all becomes clear when she’s cuffing the most recent agent and her fingers slip and fumble with the lock. She drops a little more heavily onto his back with her knee when he tries to take advantage of her sudden weakness and he gasps, finally laying still.

She checks quickly to make sure that he’s not dead or broken.  

“Alex,” Kara says soothingly, lifting her hands in surrender, submission. She stands and turns, very slowly, to face her sister. “Lucky last, I hope?” she grins.

The safety clicks very purposefully to off and Kara pretends that she’s not afraid. There is only so much that she can do, however, and the green glow of kryptonite has a certain draw. Sick and dangerous but it demands to be acknowledged.

It’s hard to drag her eyes away but finally she looks up and into her sister’s eyes. They are as warm as ever, the same as ever. When Alex speaks, it’s her voice.

But it’s not her.

“Indigo told me what happened,” she says, conversational and quiet. She twitches the gun and Kara obeys the silent direction, stepping away from the railing of agents and away from the control panel. “I wasn’t sure I believed her. I thought maybe you had killed Astra. That, I could understand. You are stronger than we gave you credit for. And Astra,” Alex’s lips pull back in an unfamiliar sneer. “She has been weak for you since the moment she found you still alive.”

Kara swallows. Tries to inch a little closer to her sister. Alex moves her finger from ready to the trigger in response.

“Don’t. I can see what she sees, there is no point in trying to trick me.”

Kara grinds her teeth and takes a steadying breath.

“Where’s Hank?”

“The Martian?” Alex shrugs dismissively. “He has his weaknesses.”

Kara doesn’t know what that means—nothing good, obviously—but there are a hundred other things to focus on and the first one, the most important, is the fact that this is her sister and she knows that she is stronger than this.

“Alex, fight him,” Kara demands, furious now mostly at Non for doing this but a little at Alex, and herself maybe, because she can see her, Alex is right there and she’s not listening and Kara can’t make her. Alex laughs, right in her face, when she sees her eyes burn bright. “I know you can do it, Alex. Please.” 

Alex laughs. “I can hear her thoughts too. Get out of my head. Please, she’s my sister.” No matter what Alex is thinking, how hard she’s trying, it’s not enough. Kara knows it.

Alex empties the first bullet into Kara’s shoulder.

Kara stops the scream in her throat, mostly. A high whine escapes.

Alex’s eyes sting with tears.

“You should take it out. I’ve heard this mineral—what do your humans call it? Kryptonite? It does terrible things if you leave it in.”

Kara winces and slings her arm across her chest. With her uninjured arm, she digs her fingers into the wound and her breath comes out in sharp, quiet pants as her fingers literally push into her flesh. Once she pulls it out, she knows she’ll be fine. But until then, this is the worst pain she’s ever felt and the feeling of her own blood coating her fingers, her own flesh giving underneath her probing, makes her sick to her stomach.

It clatters to the ground.

Too close.

She kicks it away and feels her skin and muscle start to knit itself together once more.

“Who knew humans could be so resourceful? It bodes well for their future,” he says through Alex.

Kara ignores him. She has to stop Alex but she’s afraid that if she hits her, she’ll do more than just knock her unconscious. But if she can just…it would be a risk but if she could reach the Kryptonite emitters, she could make herself weaker and stop Alex without hurting her.

She inches toward the panel, keeping her eyes fixed on Alex and hoping that she—and Non—won’t be able to read her intentions.

Alex laughs.

“No. No, I don’t think so. We want this to be a fair fight, don’t we? Sister against sister.” Alex smiles and she shoots the panel and Kara breathes in, letting her Supergirl confidence overtake her. Because she’s about to do something incredibly stupid and reckless and she can’t let herself be worried about her sister.

Alex is a soldier. She killed Astra because she’s a soldier, she has lost people, agents, and worked hard and Kara isn’t about to invalidate everything Alex has worked so hard for by letting her kill her here and now.

“You want a fight, Non?” Kara spreads her arms wide and grins, thinking of how furious Alex is going to be with her when she’s back to her normal self. “Do you really think you can win?”

“Dear niece, you have your weakness glowing across your face bright as Rao’s light. There is nothing you would do to hurt this human.”

“What we do is more important than any one person I love,” she says, but she’s not saying it to Non. She’s saying it to the part of Alex she knows—hopes—is still in there.

She hopes she understands.

“Let’s see about that, shall we?”

Alex lifts her gun and Kara gulps. She can’t say she’s looking forward to the pain aspect of her admittedly very stupid plan. Fear flickers over her face very quickly and, Kara thinks, something shifts in Alex’s eyes. Not much, not enough, but something.

The barrel of the gun twitches.

Kara leaps for her and it’s a miracle—or maybe it was Alex—that the bullet only hits her shoulder. The sharp, sharp pain tears through her again and Rao it’s both luck and terrible that it lodges there against her bone. A blessing, sort of, because it means that she’s weakened enough that she’s not going to have to do this again.

“Sorry,” she says, and grabs the gun crushing it in her hand and tossing it to the side. “Sorry,” she says again and then she punches Alex as gently as she can in the temple, sending her eyes rolling back into her head. Kara catches her before she can fall and she eases her down, curls her hands around Alex’s face. She brushes careful fingers over the already bruising point and checks to see if her skull is broken or fractured but it seems to be whole still and she hopes that means Alex will be alright. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs and bends to kiss Alex’s forehead. That apology is just for her. Alex can’t hear it, but Kara needed to say it.

“That was unexpected, Kara Zor-El. I can see you are learning what it is to fight.” Non’s face is plastered over the DEO screens. “But Myriad grants me the minds of all your humans. Tell me, how many do you think you can really save?”

The screen cuts to black and Kara flops back to sit on the ground next to Alex. For the second time in fewer minutes than she would like, she is pulling a bullet from her shoulder and she tries not to cry, though the ache is spreading and it hurts and her fingers shake. When it is out, she flicks it far away and it hits the ground, sound ringing quietly in the far corner of the room, metallic and chilling.  She can hear it perfectly, of course.

What Non had said was very obviously a threat and she hauls herself to her feet. She doesn’t have time to be scared or tired. Not yet. She slaps a hand to her ear and answers the faint buzzing.

“Supergirl.”

“Non is at CatCo.”

Kara flinches at the still tender tug of her arm when she lifts Alex and she pushes the sensation away.

“Don’t engage him,” Kara commands. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

She drops Alex off at her apartment—there are a change of clothes and a stash of weapons she can take her pick from when she wakes and it might not be the safest place to be at the moment but it’ll have to do.

“Max.”

“I’m not at CatCo yet, not all of us have supersp—”

“Shut up. Do you have more of those ion blockers?”

“Two more. Where am I headed?”

“My apartment. I assume you know where that is?”

“Of course.”

“Of course. Alex is there. Get her an icepack too. I had to get…persuasive.” Kara hesitates. “Make sure she’s okay.”

“I will, Supergirl. You’ll have your biggest fan back in no time.”

As soon as she hands up, her phone rings again.

“Not to appear clingy,” Cat sniffs, and Kara easily detects the waver of unease in her voice, “but where the hell are you?”

Kara doesn’t answer. Instead, she pushes a little faster and dives through the open window of the office to land in a crouch in front of her.  

“Are you alright?” she asks softly.

“I’m fine. Bored. He’s been monologuing,” Cat says, with that sniff again, and her eyes are focused on her phone like Non isn’t standing in front of her, in the middle of her office. When Kara steps in front of her, Cat places a hand on her back and her fingers curl in the fabric of her cape. 

“One last chance to join me. Take your place at the forefront of the mission, Kara Zor-El. You would save your planet. You could rule your planet.”

“One last chance to surrender.”

He barks a short laugh and shakes his head. “There is no surrender. My work is just beginning. Soon, the human race will all be working together in harmony. Looking after this planet they pretend to love so much even as they dig into its core and drag out its guts fistful by bloody fistful. Parade it around,” he spits, “decorate their buildings, wrap it around their necks a tightening noose.” He spreads his hands to encompass the quietly working people. “They have peace now.”

“They have no choice.”

“Choice?” Non snaps. Kara takes a step back, in front of Cat—Non’s eyes flash with heat and menace. “What choice were they given on Krypton? Stop their greed or watch as their planet dies. And what did they choose?” he hisses. “Greed. Destruction. An end of Krypton, the jewel of Rao’s crown.”

“They were wrong. All of them.”

“Alura—”

“My mother among them. Alura was wrong. Is that what you need to hear, Non?” Kara asks. “Fine. My mother was wrong, maybe the worst of all of them. She knew what was going to happen and she lied to them all.” She sees Non swallow hard—he does not soften at all but he manages a small nod and his eyes return to their normal colour. “But just because they were wrong doesn’t mean that this is right. This isn’t the right way to do this, Non. It wasn’t right back home,” Kara falters for a moment because home feels foreign in her mouth. “Not back home, and not here.”

“People need to be controlled. If they will not make the right decision for themselves, I will see to it that they are set down the path of salvation.”

“Oh spare us your misguided nobility,” Cat mutters and Kara hisses.

Non hardens. “I have more work to do. Myriad will be functional worldwide soon enough.” She steps forward. “I won’t let you stop me, Kara Zor-El. I had hoped you would join me. Honour your aunts vision.”

“Honour her?” Cat’s hand presses hard against her back but Kara is so angry she barely notices. “You dare speak to me about honouring her memory when you abandoned her to the darkness?" 

“Sacrifices must be made.”

Kara thinks she might be shaking. “Astra was on the wrong side of this war. As you are. I will stop you, Non, and in the end I hope that it will haunt you for the rest of your days that you abandoned the woman you swore to uphold in all things.”

“As it will haunt you that it is your own family who struck her down,” Non returns.

Kara doesn’t deny it. Instead, she takes another step toward him. “I will stop you.”

“I doubt that. You care about these humans too much.” He nods to Winn, who stands. “Prove me wrong, if you’d like.”

//

Three jump.

She catches two of them in time.

//

She drops them neatly back into their office. James returns to his desk. Winn stands and smiles.

“In case you think you might like to come after me now,” he says, Non says, but it’s Winn’s smiling face and Kara hates. “I have one last gift for you. You protected the mother. She was my first choice. After all, it would be balanced then. Your heart taken, as mine was. But you kept her safe.”

Kara stares at her best friend and hopes he’s not about to say what she thinks he is.

“Tell me, Kara Zor-El, where is the boy?”

Cat grips at her cape and Kara turns to her, blood rushing in her ears.

“Where did he go?” she croaks out.

“His father’s.” She’s already calling his number.

No one picks up.

“Try Carter’s phone.” Kara whips out her own phone, pressing her speed dial one. “Come on, come on, pick up. Come on, Alex.”

 “Kara,” Alex answers, her name half a sob. “Kara, I am so sorry—”

 “Later. I need you to find Carter for me Alex, right now. I put a tracker in his watch, can you find him?” It’s pure talent mixed with years of practice that means that Alex can understand what she’s saying, even though the words are coming out faster than normal. “The app on your phone, I synced them,” 

“I know, I’ve got it.” Kara hears her swallow. “I, two trackers. One in CatCo—that’s Cat. The other…”

“Tell me.”

“He,” Alex swallows again. “He’s at his school.”

“Okay,” Kara says. “Thanks,” she says. Her lips feel numb. If Non hurts him—all those children—she can’t imagine, she can’t think, she can’t fathom it all those children

“Kara?”

“He’s at school,” Kara tells Cat, and she shakes herself out of her own mind and out of the grip Cat has on her cape. “I’ll bring him back safe, Cat. I promise.”

The ground crumples beneath her when she pushes up into the sky, faster than ever before.

//

He’s standing in the middle of a sea of students—the auditorium is full to the brim of these small, blinking, still bodies and it’s so wrong Kara wants to retch. Children fidget and scratch and itch and chatter and smile and sing and honestly, mostly they do anything but stand still, and this is wrong, it’s so wrong every bit of her is screaming out to find Non and make him pay for turning her children into these...these drones.

But she doesn’t let it show on her face, and she doesn’t leave.

She picks her way slowly, carefully, through them and they don’t stop her or really even look at her but don’t pay attention to her either and she’s terrified that she’ll step on them, hurt them, and she very gently urges them apart so she can move through them.

Right to the middle, where she can hear that heartbeat. She one she knows—the one she loves.

“Hey Carter,” she says when she reaches him. She’s never been so happy to see his untidy curls, his narrow face. “Are you okay?”

“Overpopulation is a huge issue on this planet,” Carter says in his teen voice, cracking oddly amidst the solemnity of the moment.

Kara hates it. Hates that Non has taken her people—their faces, their bodies, their voices—to work against her. It hurts.

And Carter… 

She loves him deep in the hollows of her, around her beating heart, in the crooks of elbows that never held him as a baby, in her mouth that works to form his name, in the gaps of her fingers where his fingers fit—she loves him and this hurts.

“How many of these children will die from one bomb, do you think?” Carter sighs, glances around. “They’re all so…fragile.”

Kara reaches out a hand and Carter takes a step back.

“Chemicals are very unstable and you have a smart boy here. He knew exactly what ingredients he needed. And very little urging.”

“Carter,” Kara says firmly. It hadn’t worked with Alex but she can’t just not try. “Carter, look at me. You know who I am. You know me. You know all these people.” Carter just stares. He’s never been good at connecting with people, Kara remembers, and fear feels like slipping, like losing control, looks like two hundred children skeletons, sounds like the rush of blood in two hundred little bodies. She blinks, clenches her jaw, and focuses on Carter. Just Carter. “It’s me,” she says. “Supergirl.” She adopts her heroic pose and Carter blinks. It’s not working and Kara is running out of time and options and hope.

All she wants is for him to be safe and she's scared that when time runs out, she’s going to pick him.

“Carter,” she tries, just one last time she tells herself, though she doesn’t know quite what else she could try. “Look at me, buddy,” she urges, and she softens her pose and kneels until her face is level with his. “Look at me. Come on, buddy, come back to me. You know me.” She tilts her head. “Carter?”

Was there… She swears she sees some sign of recognition. Hopes ignites in her chest—she swears she saw Alex too, look at her just like that, just before she had purposefully shot her shoulder. Instead of her heart. Kara lets herself relax further because Carter doesn’t know this harder version of her, he knows Kara and Supergirl-Kara. She tugs her cape to cover the S on her chest and Carter stares at her, the tiniest crinkle dipping between his eyebrows.

“Remember, Carter, when it was just the two of us? I brought you pizza and sat on that couch that everyone hates.” He frowns. “You destroyed me at Wii Sports, I almost had you at archery though,” he frowns harder and she keeps going, fighting to keep her words slow and steady. “We sat in the beanbag in your room and stared at the ceiling and I told you about my sister, my family, and you told me about Thanksgiving with your dad. Do you remember that, Carter?” 

She thinks, maybe, that he nods.

“You were all alone and so brave, wanting to keep it to yourself. You didn’t want to hurt your mom, I know. I know that Carter. I get it. But I’m here and you don’t have to be alone or scared or brave because I can be brave for you, okay buddy?” She smiles at him and nods. “It’s me, Carter. It’s Kara.”

Carter stares and then, as Kara holds her breath, his body tightens and fear rushes in.

“K-Kara?”

“Hey, I’ve got you,” she says, reaches out and wraps a hand around the bottle in his hand, keeping it still. Grips his shoulder with the other when he starts to shake. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

“It’s,” his eyes dart from her to the bottle in his hand and they are wide with fear. She can smell it, his fear, sudden and thick and acrid and she never wants him to feel like that again. “It’s a chemical bomb. It’ll go off if, if I shake it.”

“So don’t shake it,” she suggests, grinning, and he tries to smile back, tries to roll his eyes.

“Good idea, Supergirl.” He gulps. Glances at the bottle. “It might go off by itself. The chemicals,” his breath shudders out. “They’re, um, not stable.”

“Okay. How long do we have?” she asks, calm, and smoothly shifts him behind her so that his hand is wrapped around her waist and the bottle close to her chest. He drops his head onto her back.

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.” Kara holds their hands very steady and then reaches back for him. She lifts them carefully up over the crowd and out the doors, out into the grassed courtyard. “Okay, Carter, I need you to take your hand away,” she says, hearing the mixture start to sizzle and pop menacingly inside the plastic and he rips his hand away and she jumps straight upwards, curling her body and cape around the bomb.

She doesn’t get that far away—the blast is strong enough to send her right back down and all the breath in her lungs is knocked out of her when she lands, a crater forming beneath her. Her ears are ringing—she presses her hands hard against them.

“—bleeding!”

She catches the tail end of Carter’s sentence and uncurls herself slowly.

“What?”

“You’re bleeding,” he repeats, frantically. “Kara, your ears!”

“I’ll be fine,” she promises, and stands slowly, taking inventory. There is a large stain on the front of her suit and she freezes it with a breath and scrapes it off before it can do any damage. Some tears, in her sleeve where she was shot. Her ears are still ringing faintly and when she touches them, the tips of her fingers come away red. She steps towards him and does her best not to stumble. “Sorry about the smell and the chemicals but we gotta go. Your mom is worried.”

“Mom,” Carter gasps, and he jumps into her arms.

While they’re flying back to CatCo, she hears the explosions. Judging from the way Carter gasps and grips onto her more tightly, he hears them too. She feels him twist a little and when his fingers scrabble at her neck, she knows that he sees them.  

“What’s going on?” he whispers.

Kara almost doesn’t answer. She wraps her arms the tiniest bit more tightly around him—so he can feel the rush that came over her, the need to protect him—and her voice shakes only a little when she says, “Nothing good. But I’ve got you, okay?” He nods into her shoulder. “I’ve got you.”

CatCo looms ahead of them and, there in the window, there is a pale Cat Grant. Pacing.

She flings open the balcony door when she spots them and she pales further when she sees Carter held softly in her arms, doesn’t let up until Carter is sitting on the couch and repeating to her, “I’m fine, mom, I promise, I’m fine, I’m okay.”

Cat presses a shaking kiss to his head and nods, smoothes her hands down his cheeks.

“You got him a disruptor?” Max asks. He’s lounging in Cat’s throne—her desk chair—and Kara glares at him. There’s something in front of him, a box, and it’s lined with lead and it gleams silver white and she feels something sick and fearful settle around her shoulders.

“What’s that?"

“Did you give him the last disruptor?” Max asks again instead of replying and Kara narrows her eyes.

“No. What’s in the box?”

“I need to check him out,” Max says, dodging the question again, and Kara steps between Cat and Carter and Max. “I need to, Supergirl. This could be a trick.”

“It’s not a trick,” Carter says quietly. “I’m not, I’m not a trick.”

“I know,” Kara says, and she reaches back so he can hold her hand.

“Well maybe I should check you out instead, Supergirl.”

She shoots Lord the filthiest look she can muster. “Save the lines for after we save the world. Or not at all, preferably.”

“I actually mean because you’re bleeding.”

Kara hears Cat’s head whip around at the words, and her standing, and she comes around to stare at Kara and yank her head down to look at the blood that trickles from her ears.

“What the hell happened?”

“There was, well, you’ve heard all the explosions that have gone off across the city.” Cat nods, face drawn. Kara knows it has to be killing her, not being able to do anything, not being able to calm down the people—no one cares, no one is listening, and there is nothing she can do. Kara shrugs. “Carter makes a pretty decent bomb. Good chemistry grades, bud?”

He shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Nice.”

“You were that close to it?”

“I kind of,” Kara mimes a hug, “wrapped myself around it. There wasn’t time for anything else.” Cat is staring at her, and Max has come around from behind the desk to prod at her and she glares at him until he backs up. “I made the only decision that made sense that the time, Cat, and there’s no going back. Carter is fine, he’s not hurt, and none of the kids are, and”

“I was going to say thank you,” Cat says softly, interrupting the tirade, and the hero’s shoulders slump a little.  

“Oh.” She nods. “Okay. He’s alright, that’s what matters right now.”

“And you?” Max asks, and he finally grabs her chin to look into her eyes, shines something at her. Disgust roils in her stomach and she grabs his wrist, pulls his hand away from her.  

“Touch me again, Lord, and I will do as I promised and break your hand.”

“Say no more,” he surrenders, pulling his hand away. He straightens his cuffs and rolls his head on his neck. “Just trying to help. We need our hero in tip top condition for this fight, I think.”

He’s right, but she still doesn’t want his hands on her.

“I may not have to fight at all,” she says quietly. “Not if we can get the people out from under Non’s control.”

Max shakes his head. “Impossible.”

“It’s not. Carter is fine.” Carter glances up very quickly and then looks down again, ducking his head. Cat squeezes his shoulder gently. “If we can free the people,”

“There is no proof that this,” Max snaps, pointing at Carter, “isn’t a trick. You what? Saw it in his eyes?” he scoffs. “That’s nice. That’s sweet. We can trust that he’s not under mind control because you saw it in his eyes.”

“Yes, actually. That’s right.” Kara folds her arms over her chest and lifts her chin. “I trust Carter.”

“I don’t care who you trust, Supergirl. I work with proof. And data. I don’t base all my decisions on gut instincts and you shouldn’t either. It will lead you astray and the rest of us to disaster.”

“Well all I hear right now is you shooting down Supergirl’s ideas, Max. So help us think of a reason why this worked and how we replicate it. Unless you have a better idea?”

Max lays his hand flat on the box—the box that makes Kara uneasy just looking at it crisp and neat and shining there—and he nods.

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

//

“A bomb,” Kara says when Max is gone. She sinks onto the seat, out on the balcony where Carter can’t hear them. Cat sits with her. “So many people will die, Cat.” She looks out over the city—her city, she has begun tentatively to think, to hope—and wants to cry. “I can’t do it. I won’t.”

“Then don’t. You got through to Carter. I know my son, and I know this isn’t a trick. Carter recognised you—we need to find a way of replicating that. If we can free the city from Non’s control, he will have nothing.”

“Except super strength, super speed, laser eyes, freeze breath, homicidal tendencies, and a huge grudge against me and the people I care for.”

“Yes, well, those you can deal with,” Cat tells her matter of factly and Kara laughs.

“This is insane.”

“We have to try.”

“I’ll have Max keep the bomb on standby. I won’t lose everyone, not again,” Kara tells her and Cat nods.

“Fine. But we do this our way first. The right way.”

Kara nods firmly. She clamps her hands tight onto her knees. “Do we just…take Carter with us?”

“I’m not letting him out of my sight. This time,” Cat tells her with a little smile, “I suppose I won’t taunt our enemy. Carter and I will do our best to stay out of the fight.” Kara nods.

They stare over at him for a few more minutes.

“I couldn’t do this without you, Cat,” Kara admits quietly. “Your unwavering faith…your guidance…”

“These are things you can tell me after you’ve saved the world, Supergirl,” Cat says, and she tucks a strand of hair behind Kara’s ear. Kara leans into her hand. “And you’re right. I do have faith in you. I know you can save them. You got through to Carter—you got through to me, even as hard as I tried to keep you out,” she says with a huff of a laugh. “I have faith in you, and the world does too. This,” she taps a nail against Kara’s chest, against the crest. “This means something special, but it would mean nothing on someone who doesn’t deserve to wear it. It’s you that they have faith in, not the S.”

Kara feels something surge inside her and she follows her instincts, pushing out of her seat to pull Cat up to her feet. She cups Cat’s chin and murmurs, just breathes the words really, “Khap zhao rrip,” before she kisses her.

It’s a short kiss, and mostly free of the buzzing sensation that starts under her skin when she touches Cat or kisses her. It feels grounding and reassuring and Kara tilts her head and kisses Cat more fully, more firmly, and Cat tugs her closer with two fingers caught in the front of her suit.

“Come on, Supergirl,” Cat says, pulling away. “Let’s go save the world.”

On the edge of town, there is a small, somewhat derelict, mostly abandoned broadcasting studio. Inside the small, somewhat derelict, mostly abandoned broadcasting studio are one superhero, one government agent, the CEO of an international media conglomerate, her son, a genius villain who pretends he’s not really a villain, a disguised Martian, and,

“Eliza?”

“Mom?”

“I thought we could use all the scientists we could get our hands on,” Hank rumbles as an explanation. There’s the small matter of the fact that he loves these girls, his girls, he thinks of them more than he maybe should, and they love and need this slender clever woman now, this woman who asks him about enzymes and metabolic reactions and barely hesitated when he shifted his form.

“Hello, girls.” Eliza Danvers sets down her bag. She props her hands on her hips and looks over her daughters with a careful eye—Alex is too thin, like always, chin and cheeks, elbows and hips too sharp. And she looks tired. Kara’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes and her arms folded across her chest is never a good sign, nor are the very faint hints of blood she can make out on her youngest daughter. 

“Are you okay? How are you not affected?” Alex begins to ask, when Hank catches her eye and drops a slow wink and she sighs. “Okay. Hi.” She hugs her mother instead of asking another question and then it’s Kara’s turn for a hug. 

“Agent Scully,” Cat says, looking up. “Some help? You government types have to be good for something and there’s a small matter of some heavy lifting.”

“Miss Grant.”

She carries a box that’s annoyingly heavy for its small size for the smaller, blonde woman and when she’s done, Alex touches a finger to her ear piece. It’s disconcerting to know that if it’s taken off she’ll be under the control of Non again and she’s touched it more times than she cares to admit, making sure it’s firmly in place. She hides the gesture, runs a hand through her hair. It’s sweat-soaked and sticking uncomfortably to the back of her neck and she shoots Kara a relieved smile when her sister blows a very gentle, cool breeze in her direction. “Thanks. A bit stuffy in here. It’s small. And old. Not what I expected when you told us about it.”

“Well, I was just starting out,” Cat says, shooting her an unimpressed look, and she sits herself down in front of a panel of dials and switches.

“What exactly is the plan here?” Eliza asks, coming over to stand with them.

“Well Kara,” Alex begins, and Eliza’s eyes widen and dart over to Cat and Max.

“Don’t mind me, Dr Danvers. I know all about sweet Kara. I’ve been arrested, locked up, released, manhandled, press ganged into saving her life, sworn into secrecy, and dismissed again.” He looks up from the equipment he’s fiddling with and grins.

Alex reaches for her gun.

“We need him. Remember, Alex?” Kara steps between them.

Alex drums her fingers over the grip of her gun, strokes it, and lets her hand drop away.

“We won’t need him forever,” Cat tells her with a sly smile and Alex nods.

“That’s true.”

“Charming.”

“Bite me, Lord.”

“I’m afraid I like my women a little more amiable and a little less intelligent.”

“That was almost a compliment.”

“I’ve been known to give them out once in a while. Help me with this?”

Alex scowls, but she does.

//

“Remember when you told me all we needed was faith and hope?” Kara says, smiles to Cat when she’s prepping in front of the camera. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind. Not that they’re bad to have, but I was hoping for,”

“Guns,” Alex grunts, fixing Kara’s microphone. “I was hoping for guns.”

Kara nods.

“Who needs guns when you have dramatic irony?” Cat fiddles with Kara’s curls for a moment more. She’s camera perfect, of course, but Cat needs to do it. Needs to touch her, for just a moment more. “Adds a little something to the story.”

Kara beams at her, eyes crinkling. “Will you write it?”

Cat blinks.

“My story,” Kara repeats. “Will you write it?”

Cat hears what she isn’t saying—will you remember me? Will you make sure others remember me? When this ends, I won’t be here to tell it, will you do that for me? Or maybe, Cat tells herself, trying for a dash of optimism, that isn’t what she’s trying to say at all.

Cat smoothes a curl again and pretends that her fingertips skimming over Kara’s cheek is an accident. She manages a smile.

“Exclusive content on all things Supergirl is my job, Kiera,” she chides, and she clicks her fingers at Alex. “She’s ready. Let’s go.”

//

“People of National City. This is Supergirl and I hope you can hear me.”

“It’s too early to celebrate a victory, I guess,” Kara says. She’d felt so good—they had won and everyone was back to normal and she and her family and her symbol had saved the day. And now, now everything was on the edge of ruin again. “Job isn’t over until it’s over, right?” She smiles over at Max—a forced smile, since she still pretty much despises him, but she keeps it in place so no one else can see what sits behind the fear. “Tell me when you find them. I have a cover to maintain.”

She doesn’t. Not really. Not now that Cat knows.

Max knows this but he nods and Kara kind of hates the understanding in his eyes. He waits until she’s a few paces away before saying, “Finding them is going to be the easy part. Defeating them with only you? That’s our problem.”

Kara turns and shrugs, grins, a big shrug and a big grin that are supposed to be all confidence. “Here I thought you’d learned by now, Max. I can handle anything. I’m Supergirl.”

“I’m actually not trying to be an ass for once. I know that you can handle anything—I’m worried, Kara,” he says quietly. For that, she’s grateful. Vasquez is always listening, even when she’s pretending that she’s not, and Kara gets the impression that this isn’t going to be an easy conversation to hear. Not if Max is looking at her with far too much understanding, actual legitimate concern, and not a small amount of fear. She jerks her head to the side and he walks with her, to the round table where they pretend to look at the figures again. “You have no backup, your martian man was injured bringing the good doctor—”

“J’onn is hurt?”

“Concentrate, Supergirl. You need to know what you’re facing so you can be prepared. The DEOs resources are depleted and even if they weren’t, no human can go out there with you,” he tells her, frustrated, “because if they get to close to the source their heads would explode. If you go out there and fight, you might win, yeah.” He braces himself against the edge of the table and Kara closes her eyes. “Chances are, this is a suicide mission.”

“I’ll never stop trying,” she says quietly. “I will stop them.”

“Good. I really like being alive.”

“Funnily enough, I’m not doing this for you,” she snaps, and he grins, spreads his hands in surrender. Kara seeks out the silhouette of her sister in the far room and she swallows hard. “Max?”

“Yeah?”

“Do me a favour?”

He looks solemn when he nods. “Anything.”

Kara sighs. She droops enough that her hands fall from where they’re crossed over her chest and she has to look away, lips pulling to the side for a moment in sadness, indecision. Finally, she says, “Don’t tell Alex my odds. Okay?”

“If she asks—and she is going to ask because she loves you—what exactly do you want me to do?”

Kara’s eyes turn cold. “Lie. You’re good at that.”

//

Her friends—her best friends, her good friends—gather in James’s office to thank her for saving them and it’s easy to smile at them. She doesn’t have to fake the wide, wide smile at all and she sighs and tugs them into a tight hug.

“Oh. Can’t breathe, can’t breathe,” Winn gasps, and James claps her a little forcefully on the shoulder, and they all laugh when Kara lets them go.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m just so,” she shakes her head. I’m going to miss you. “I”m so glad you’re both okay. And I know I don’t say this enough, or ever really and that’s so not fair because you both do so much for me and for everyone but,” she looks over their kind, open faces and the smile she gives them then is smaller but so warm it can’t be described as anything other than golden. For Winn, it’s a smile for her first day, a smile for every day that followed, every moment of kindness, every laugh, every piece of advice, for believing her, for the reveal that could have changed everything but didn’t, at least not into something bad but into something that proved she was right to trust him, right to love him the way she does, the smile is for every instance that he stood up with her and helped her, for the way they came back together after the kiss and the mess that followed, for the way they had settled finally and fully into friendship. For James, it’s a smile for a man who knows her cousin, for someone who can make her laugh, who could make her stomach flutter, a smile for learning and believing, a smile for shared secrets and warmth and kindness.

When she feels the smile begin to falter, she tugs them into the hug again and sighs. “Thank you. Both of you. That’s what I wanted to say.”

“For what?” Winn laughs. “You’re the one who just saved, like, everyone from the, the super mind control ray.”

“Yeah.” James nods. “Seriously. Thank you for that.”

“And for, uh, for the other thing where,”

James pats Winn’s shoulder. “I think he means, thank you for saving us. For catching us.”

Kara nods. Thinks about the flowers she placed on Kelly’s desk. “Of course. I just,” she shakes her head. “I just wanted you both to know that your friendship is one of the best parts of my life and,” she nods, firmly, “I appreciate it. More than you will ever know.”

“Kara,” James says quietly. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, because this is sounding weirdly really important. And heavy.” Winn cuts a look over at James. “Heavy, right?”

James nods. “Heavy. You saved the day,” he says, and reaches out a hand to Kara’s shoulder, squeezes. “It’s okay.”

“Yeah.” Kara reaches up to her glasses. Gives them both her best smile. “I just,” she shrugs. “I wanted to make sure you both knew.”

“We know.” Winn nods, lifts his arms. Kara laughs and moves in for another hug. “We know, Kara.”

James wraps them both in his arms and there, in her friends’ arms, Kara says silent goodbyes.

//

She tells Cat the truth. She can’t not tell her—Cat’s eyes meet hers and she nods out to the balcony and she just looks at Kara and the words come out.

“So what are you going to do?” Cat asks her, calm voice at odds with the way her hands grip tight, tight onto the railing.

Kara makes her way over to lean there with her. She dips her head. “I’m going to fight. I meant what I said. I won’t lose another world.” She touches her hand to Cat’s and, when her hand loosens and comes to grip tight around Kara’s hand, she knows that Cat understands. She tugs Cat to face her. Reaches up with her free hand and skims her fingers over Cat’s cheek. “Tell Carter, tell him…”

“Tell him yourself,” Cat snarls, knowing that Kara is about to make some dumb heroic speech. Kara smiles—Cat curses her in her mind, because that smile is soft and sad and she’s not ready to say goodbye to this golden girl yet.

“Okay,” Kara agrees. Because that’s what Cat needs from her. “Cat?”

“What?”

“Don’t be mad with me.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Okay.” Kara presses a little closer. Her chest against Cat’s chest, Cat’s hip digging into the soft of Kara’s stomach. She presses her hand a little more firmly against Cat’s cheek and the woman leans into it, just a little. “Cat,” she whispers. “It has been an honour working for you. Getting to be around you every day…”

“Don’t give me this speech, Kara, I don’t want to hear it.” Cat reaches up. Tangles her hands in that cape—tugs until she’s sure that Kara can feel the pressure of it. Come back, she wants to demand.   Wants to tell her you’ve changed me, wants to say something lighter, perhaps, remind her of the meeting they have tomorrow. Kara’s nose skims up her cheek and all Cat says is, “Please.”

The pain in her head is getting to be unbearable. She knows Kara has to leave.

“This is what I was sent here to do,” Kara tells her very gently. Then, “Tell Carter I love him,” she says, because she must. Because she actually might not get a chance to say it and Carter deserves for someone to tell him. Because she wants to say it and dammit she thinks she deserves to—she wants to.

Cat closes her eyes, shake her head a little. “Kara,” she murmurs. Then, “I will.”

When she opens her eyes again some minutes later, Kara is gone.

//

“Hey buddy.”

She finds him. Of course she does. She has x-ray vision and can hear for miles and she wants to find him.

He has his hands pressed to his ears and she hates the pain that washes over his face.

“I love you, Carter.” He leans against her and she does what she’s seen Cat do a hundred times when he comes to the office, sweeps his hair off his forehead and kisses the top of his head. She takes a moment to memorise the feeling of his small, boney little shoulders digging into her and the weight of him and the colour of his eyes.

And, when he says, “What are you going to do?” she memorises his voice and lets herself dream for a moment about how it might change, how deep it might get, what he might look like when he’s all grown up.

“I’m going to stop them,” she tells him quietly, and he nods. “Look after your mom for me. And let your mom look after you. She loves you.” He nods again. “And if Katherine keeps being insufferable, tell her to stuff it.”

Carter swallows. “What if I don’t want you to leave?” His fingers curl hesitantly in her sleeve and she thinks of the message she got only minutes ago and he must read her answer in her face because he lets her go and pulls his hands into his lap. “I… I love you too, you know,” he says stiffly, and he glances at her face a few times but always his gaze is pulled back down to his hands. “Kara?”

“Yeah?”

“Since you’re Supergirl and Kara, can I interview your sister for my essay?”

Kara beams at him and pulls him into a hug. “Carter, yes, absolutely you should do that. She’s like, totally the coolest person, and I know she’d be really happy to do that for you.” Her face scrunches up a little. “She might be a bit vague with her job description, since the organisation she works for doesn’t really exist, but she’s my hero and she’s smart and amazing and the best person in the world and you really should interview her.”

Carter nods. “Okay.”

Her phone buzzes again.

“I have to go.”

“Yeah.”

“Want to walk me to the balcony?” she suggests, and Carter doesn’t look at her when he swipes at his eyes with the sleeves of his cardigan.

Cat curls her hands over his shoulders and tugs him back into her when they stand on the balcony together. If her fingers dig into his shoulders when Kara disappears from sight, well, he just leans back a little harder into her and neither of them talk about it.

//

“Carter Grant called me to be your, and I quote,” Hank grumbles, looking down at his phone, “sidekick so you don’t get hurt.” He folds his arms. “Want to tell me how he got my personal cell number?”

Kara smiles. “I don’t know. He’s good at that stuff. He probably cloned my phone.”

“He also wants an interview with one of my agents. An Agent Danvers. When this is all over.”

“Huh.”

His face smoothes a little and he smiles. “He’s a good kid.”

“I know. The best.”

“He’s worried about you.”

Kara swallows. “I know. I didn’t want to worry him but,” she closes her eyes. “I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”

“Kara,”

“No, J’onn. We both know what I’m up against. And I will save the earth,” she promises, and he nods back to her. There is no other option left to them. “I just don’t know if I’ll make it out alive. I didn’t, I didn’t get to say the things that needed to be said when I left Krypton and I wanted to be sure that I said them now. Just in case.”

“You can’t give up, Kara.”

“I’m not,” she says, and the smile she gives him is a little sad, a little hopeful, and ultimately peaceful. “This is right. This is what I was meant to do. My mother didn’t send me two thousand light years to fall in love, to have children, to have that kind of a life. She sent me here to protect Kal El and now, now I’m going to use my powers to protect the earth and all the people who live on it and if I die achieving that, I’m at peace with that.”

His frown isn’t disapproval, just deepened with another loss he thought he wouldn’t have to face just yet and she grips his arms, presses a kiss to his forehead.

“I’m coming with you,” he says, grabbing her before she can move away. “Don’t tell me not to. This is my world too.”

Kara nods. “Let’s go.”

“You’re not going to say goodbye to Alex?”

Kara finds her easily—she hasn’t really let herself lose track of where her sister is, through all of this. She stares at her sister, standing easily amongst her agents, listens to the firm words, the familiar cadence of her voice.

“No,” she says softly. “I don’t think I’ll be able to leave if I start.”

“Alright.” Hank stands. “Let’s go then, Supergirl. We’ve got a world to save.”

“Supergirl,” Alex greets, though every move, every sound, makes the pain in her head sharper until it feels like her eyes are about to burst. “I’m so angry with you,” she says, and she knows that Kara smiles at that. “What’s going on?” 

“We defeated Non and Indigo. J’onn ripped Indigo in half.”

“And Non?”

“I burned his eyes out of his head,” Kara growls and Alex laughs and then groans and then laughs again.

“Good girl.”

“That’s not why I called, Alex.” Kara’s sigh crackles through the headset. “We can’t stop Myriad and we can’t power the ship. I’m going to fly Fort Rozz into space myself.”

“No—Kara, no, that’s not an option. There’ll be no atmosphere, no gravity. You won’t be able to get back.”

There’s an awful, long moment of silence and then Kara sighs. “I didn’t call for you to talk me out of it, Alex. I just called to say goodbye.”

“Kara, no.”

“I was sent to protect Earth and that is what I’m going to do,” she says, and Alex thinks of the way Kara’s eyes had firmed and her hands pressed flat against her knees and she had looked at Alex’s cast around her broken arm—Kara, so small and young—and she had taken the glasses out of Jeremiah’s hands and never taken them off, not for years, not even in the shower. She thinks of the way she had stood for hours, very still and silent, in the corner of the room when they found out about Jeremiah’s death. She thinks of Kara walking slowly to and from school everything single day. She thinks about careful hands and determined eyes learning how to handle a pencil, how to use a computer, about the journals full of every conversation her ears picked up and how the letters slowly started to look more like an alphabet. She thinks about little hands curled in a lap when disaster after disaster showed on their television and about eyes that had told an entire story, about a new family that was the only world she knew anymore and how she would do anything to protect it.

She thinks about the night of the plane crash, of Kara clinging to the wing of the plane and looking at her and she bites back a sob.

“Alex, will you promise me something? Promise me that when you find Jeremiah, you tell him that I never stopped wearing his glasses. He needs to know that you and Eliza gave me a great life, one I never thought I’d be able to find outside of Krypton. He needs to know that everything good I did,” Kara swallows and Alex tries not to cry but this is her baby sister, and the pain is building behind her eyes. “Everything good I did came from you being my sister.”

“Kara, you taught me—“

“And I need you to promise me that you will have a good life, Alex, and you will be happy and find more people to love and you will do all the things you’ve wanted to do but couldn’t because you had me as a sister, to protect, to hide, to look after.”

“Kara,”

“Promise me.”

“I can’t,” she cries, and her head throbs.

“Alex, promise me, there isn’t much time.”

“You would use the end of the human race to win an argument with me,” Alex says. And all she really wants to tell Kara is that she owes her mother nothing, she owes her cousin nothing, she owes this world nothing. All she wants to say is, stay.

Be my sister.

Be alive.

But this is Kara, and she is going to save the world.

So Alex chokes back her words and she says, “I promise.”

The line crackles for a moment and then Kara, sounding very young and very determined, says, “I have to go now.”

“List—I love you, Kara.”

“I love you.”

All her muscles strain to lift the structure. A  million tonnes—that’s what General Lane had said. And where the weight of the condensed award star had been warm and almost encouraged her to lift it, Fort Rozz fought her every inch of the way. Ungainly and—if it were possible and Kara doesn’t know if it is but it is alien tech so perhaps it is—purposefully malignant, the weight of it bears down on her. Kara can feel her heart lodged high in her throat. All around her is that hum and the groan of metal and air, rushing past her, and she wants to push faster because everyone she loves will die if she can’t. But the prison is barely holding together as it is and she’s afraid if any pieces fall, they’ll continue the sound wave attack. Or the impact will cause a massive earthquake. That’s what happened in the Avengers and Kara is not ready for that.

 Her arms her shaking—one hand slips, slick with sweat, and she hears her fingers tear a chunk out of the hull of the prison and she scrabbles to hold it all together.

Just a little further.

She can feel the air thinning around her—the thinner the atmosphere, the harder it gets to push which is bad but, on the other hand, she knows she’s getting closer.

She doesn’t know whether she’ll get there in time. Four minutes may have already passed—she wouldn’t be surprised, each second holding Fort Rozz feels like an eternity, but she hopes it’s not all over yet, hopes that they’re okay.

Kara strains her ears in vain. She’s far too high to hear anyone. But she can’t help trying.

“Rao,” she mutters when the air is in scraps around her. “Please let them be okay.”

The pressure of the atmosphere crackles around her and then…it’s gone.

She can’t feel the weight of the prison anymore. Fort Rozz, a million tonnes of alien metal, just floats out of her hands. Weightless in space.

She can’t make herself move so she’s glad when one of the arms of the prison strikes her and sends her whirling, turning her. For a short while, she is stuck looking down at the earth. It’s beautiful, Kara thinks as she drifts. She decides that of all the ways there exists to die, saving the people she loves and the world she has come to see as home…it is not a bad way.

Kara lets her arms fan out by her sides and she closes her eyes. It’s cold. She can feel it, nipping at her.

She spins slowly in place and smiles, eyes fluttering when the heat of the sun touches her face.  “Rao,” she whispers, or maybe she just thinks it—her body prickles, she doesn’t know whether it’s too much pressure or whether there isn’t enough and her body is trying to unravel all at once. “Keep them safe.”