The snap

She doesn’t stay in Tokyo. 

She’s come to learn there’s such a thing as overstaying one’s welcome (she’s got Mexico to thank for that). 

Her stunt made national news. Speculation on the one the local press has taken to call “Ronin” is running wild, the authorities are on edge. One can only imagine how many politicians and police officers are on the Yakuza payroll. Not to mention the High Table, which has surely activated its network by now: a public execution like this of one of theirs can’t go unanswered. If Lena managed to find out her identity and track her down, then so can others. (She’s rather fond of her fingers and given the choice, would like to keep her head, thank you very much.)

This time’s different, though: this time, she’s worried. All these months, Alex’d foolishly thought she’d been so careful. Clearly not careful enough. She replays her past kills, wondering: when did she slip up, when did she make the one or many mistakes that left a trail leading straight to her? She fucked up, has become sloppy. And she needs to find out when it happened, what it was, if she wants any hope of fixing it. 

Surprisingly enough though, she does stay in Japan. (A breach of her own rules.)

She never sightsees in the locations she’s in, there’s no time, really. All she usually needs to know is her hotel’s location (ideally, as far as possible from the local Continental), the closest food and coffee place open 24/7, and her target’s whereabouts. But she’s on her way out, thrown off kilter by Lena’s sudden reappearance in her life. She didn’t sleep a wink the previous night, haunted by her words, the memory of the man begging for his life playing on repeat. 

Who the fuck does Lena think she is, rocking up like this to tell her off? She’ll do whatever she damn well pleases. And if that involves ridding this world of some of the worst bad guys out there, who continuously evade law enforcement – Akihiko had the blood of hundreds on his hands, for God’s sake – then so be it. After all, if she doesn’t, then who will? In the chaos the Snap left behind, Earth is without most of its superheroes and law enforcement has enough on its plate as it is. It’s left a vacuum organised crime’s been all too quick to exploit.

Her restless wandering in the capital leads her to Koishikawa Korakuen Garden.

There’s something with the light in this mesmerising décor (or perhaps it’s the heavy toll yesterday’s butchery has taken on her). She comes to a stop, transfixed by a lone figure executing familiar moves on the banks of a narrow canal in the distance. Alex takes a long breath, angles her face in the direction of the sun and tries to still her thoughts. She can feel the anger that’s been a constant companion ever since Vasquez’ murder, bristling below the surface. After a while, the person transitions into a slower, more meditative rhythm, graceful, precise. Her breathing slows. The park, the smell of fresh grass in the air, she closes her eyes and lets the lustrous sun warm her up.

She feels someone come to a stop next to her and tenses: so much for a moment of peace. 

They remain quiet. Still, silent or not, she doesn’t want company. She turns her head towards the intruder: it’s a man, about her age, with a pretty white dog. He looks fit, deceivingly slight. She left the Katana and her gun well hidden in an air vent in her room. A cursory look down: she can’t make out any weapon on his person. She should be able to take him. A furtive glance around: if this is a takedown, then they’re pros at camouflage. 

His eyes, too, are on the silhouette. He whispers something, followed by “Beautiful, no?” louder and in English.

It’s an odd way to strike up a conversation, and yet, at the same time, it’s also the most on point thing he could’ve said in that very moment, whether he’s referring to the person’s routine or the scene as a whole.

She fakes a relaxed stance, all senses still on high alert: “Yes, truly.”

The dog comes to smell and size her up. She offers her hand and once it’s met with approval, crouches down. She scratches him lightly behind the ears and uses the time to further scan for concealed weapons: nothing around the man’s thighs; nothing around his ankles either.

The stranger sticks around. And Alex finds she doesn’t mind his presence so much anymore. She couldn’t explain why exactly, but she’s convinced he doesn’t pose a threat. They talk about the dog: Jindo. She hasn’t made small talk in ages – beyond monosyllabic exchanges with tired cab drivers and bored hotel receptionists, that is. Thankfully, he seems just as content in the long stretches of silence. 

The figure ends its dance, picks up a water bottle and starts walking in their direction. Alex lifts a hand to shield her eyes from the sun: it’s a petite woman in black sports shorts and a sports bra. Jindo abandons her side to run to her. And this is how she meets Sun Bak: the dog’s owner and Mun’s – the guy – partner. Sun, the Korean kickboxer. 

Sun’s unsure of her at first, she can tell. Which makes two of them: everything about Sun screams tightly controlled power. But Mun’s trusting smile decides it for them. 

Alex sits down to bask in the morning’s glow. Sun and Mun follow suit, leaving enough space between them for her not to feel crowded in on. They don’t ask about the blooming bruises on her face or the bandages around the fresh cut on her left hand. Alex doesn’t ask where Sun goes to, when she spaces out for extended periods of time. There’s something in her stance, something in her eyes, that speaks to her: a kindred battered soul. It’s as if Sun can sense her angst, somehow. Alex, in turn, can feel a deep-seated sadness in her. (Grief maybe. Over the loss of someone – someone close. That goddamn Snap, probably.) She doesn’t know how else to describe it other than: mutual recognition.

When noon comes around, they offer to show her the best Ramen in town. She should refuse of course and get going. Her stomach chooses that moment to make itself heard, loudly, leaving her with little choice but to accept. (Again: bending the rules.)

Sun and Mun are on a vacation in Japan and reaching the end of their stay in Tokyo. In the small and dimly lit shop, Mun tells her with eager eyes of the temples of Koyasan, up in the mountains of Wakayama: their next stop. Alex lies about being on a year long trip through Asia, remaining vague as to her itinerary. Jindo buries his face in her lap and she absentmindedly pets him with the hand that’s not busy wolfing down fragrant noodles. (Fuck this is good.) She resigns herself to calling it a day after seconds and tea, oddly reluctant, and gets up. Instead of a goodbye though, Mun suggests she accompany them on the next leg of their journey: it so happens that they booked everything for three, before Sun’s trainer had to back out of the trip at the last minute, due to illness. 

The invite is baffling. Genuine, she believes, but still: truly and utterly baffling.

She’s got a process: she never hangs around after a kill. She should leave Japan, the sooner the better. (And fuck, when had that happened? When had this turned into such a big deal that it warranted processes, methods and modus operandi?) She’s got a plan, too: after Tokyo, she’s supposed to hit Madripoor for the second time in so many months. 

There’s reassurance in having a plan. She should stick to it. (She doesn’t.)

Inexplicably: she accepts.

Mun is a cop. That may become a problem.

(Now, here’s a sentence she never thought she’d find herself saying. Everything’s become so fucked up.)

But for now, she’s enjoying the couple’s company. They’re quiet, easy going. She doesn’t point out Sun’s decidedly odd moments and they don’t remark on how light she’s travelling. They leave her a lot of space. It just works. 

For the first time since she stepped foot in Japan, she lets her guard down. (Not fully, never fully, no, just so.)

The two make a cute team. They met when still young, at a martial arts tournament at which Sun bested him. (Now that she’s been around them longer, Alex is about 70% certain she could take Mun, cautious when it comes to Sun and 100% sure taking both on would be suicide – good thing fighting them is the furthest thing from her mind.) Mun regales her with how they found their way back to each other again as adults, ignoring Sun’s fond eye rolling throughout – and if Alex may say so, it is quite the story. She gets the sense Mun may genuinely believe in soulmates. They enjoy inside jokes, like Mun lovingly calling her “Miss Bak” and Sun calling him “detective” with just as much tenderness. And she suspects their play-sparring is more often than not just an excuse to touch and steal kisses from each other in rare displays of affection. They just fit somehow, moving together in a way that looks effortless. 

It wakes a forgotten longing in her. 

She realises she hasn’t thought of Maggie and those – their – blissful months together (maybe bliss is overselling it, what with how intense everything was, but exhilarating for sure), in ages. (She doesn’t know whether that’s something to be sad or relieved about.) Maggie, her first true love. Maggie, with whom she may not have had the exact same thing as what Sun and Mun have, but it – no, they – sure came close.

They take the train. Spots featuring blurry images of a hooded figure clad all in black play on repeat, the police calling for eye witnesses and tips on the Ronin’s identity or whereabouts. Ronin, the name is both too sinister and too poetic, she doesn’t like it one bit. It does bring home the sobering fact that what she’s been doing the past two years has reached such proportions that it now warrants a moniker.

She wonders what her travelling companions would think, if they knew what she’s been up to. For even though Sun was once in jail and then on the run from the law (that too, is quite the story), they always circle back to the fact that she was being framed and ultimately innocent. What would they do, if they knew of the blood on Alex’s hands? Mun would no doubt try to arrest her. Sun… Sun is trickier to figure out. There’s greyness there, she thinks, more than one angle, more than one point of view; an understanding that there’re no absolutes, just choices.

Sun breaks into song on the train, to a familiar tune only she can hear. “And so I wake in the morning and I step outside. And I take a deep breath and I get real high. And I scream from the top of my lungs, what’s going on?”

It’s completely out of the blue. Alex throws Mun a worried look, but if anything, he seems amused, undisturbed by other passengers’ stares. He winks at her and follows suit, swaying in sync. She shakes her head. The sight is so baffling, she lets a surprised smile escape. And if someone were to claim that come the chorus, Alex herself joins in, she’d deny it (but may privately concede there’s some truth to it). 

“And I say hey-ey-ey, hey-ey-ey. I said: hey, what’s going on?” (The song is, after all, quite catchy.)

Mount Koya is different shades of green. This colossal slice of nature with a seemingly endless number of trails to lose oneself on. The temperature drops the higher they go, the crisp air a pleasant revelation. 

They stay at one of the many temples, their Shukubo a wooden structure oozing character. The small airy room, the thin mattress, the silence are bliss for the hermit she’s become. She gorges herself on homemade sesame tofu, to the delight of the monks running the place: the delicacy gives the concept of umami a whole new meaning. She finds she doesn’t mind waking up at the break of dawn for prayer, but tires rather quickly of the chanting and rituals she doesn’t comprehend. So she bypasses them and goes on long morning walks instead. She makes sure to visit Okunoin cemetery once a day, usually alone – well, that’s not true: Jindo tags along. But mostly, she just sleeps a lot and soaks in the communal baths, until she’s so drowsy she can barely keep her eyes open.

It should feel more unsettling: staying in a graveyard, meandering among thousands of graves covered in dense colourful moss. Yet it doesn’t. More importantly, it should feel upsetting to be here without Kara. Japan featured among the top three destinations they wished to visit together. Kara’d be disappointed to hear… (Anyway.) And yet, it doesn’t. 

Sun offers to teach her her routine – the one she was going through the morning they met. She starts looking forward to these sessions: moving in tandem with her, the sunlight’s weak rays shimmering through the canopy, the stone cold and smooth under her bare feet; and focusing on her movements and rhythm to the exclusion of everything else. In exchange, Alex shows her Shinkendo moves she picked up along the way. If she’s surprised an American would know anything about Japanese swordsmanship, Sun doesn’t voice it. (Sun herself’s no stranger to niche tastes, if her predilection for Mexican cinema of all things, is anything to go by.) 

It’s after one of those sessions that Alex lets Sun convince her to try out meditation. She follows Sun’s directions: gets into position, back straight, shoulders loose, tries to clear her head, but falters. That single minded focus, that narrowing the world down to one objective, one person, she knows it, knows it all too well.

Sun must sense her disquiet, for she speaks up, ever calm: “You are struggling?”

She hesitates before going for the truth: “I don’t know… that I want that: letting everything fall away but one focal point…” (one target). She shouldn’t be surprised, it didn’t work with J’onn either. 

Sun’s silent for a long while. “I felt so much rage towards my brother. For putting me in jail. For painting me to the whole world as a criminal, while he played the victim.” A pause, “For killing our father.”

(Criminal. Another word she doesn’t like. Another word that’s now too close for comfort.)

Sun’s eyes remain shut. Alex wonders what she’s supposed to do or say in the ensuing silence. She eventually continues: “Revenge was the only thing on my mind. I wanted him to own up to his actions. But also, really: I wanted to cause him the same pain he had caused me and our family. I wanted to hurt him.” A beat. Her chest rises and falls with each breath, in a soothing rhythm at odds with their topic of conversation. “I finally confronted him one evening. It felt inevitable, a necessity: if I didn’t go after him, he’d come after me. And also, if I didn’t do this, then I didn’t know how else to move forward. I chased him in the street. I didn’t have a plan, just this urge. I didn’t want to hurt: I wanted to kill him. I don’t remember everything of that night, but this I do, vividly: I truly wanted to kill.” 

She believes her: the intent, how lethal she could be. She doesn’t, for a second, doubt Sun has the ability to take a life. In fact, she sensed that the minute she saw her. She can easily picture the scene: Tokyo, the alley, only this time it’s Sun, chasing a faceless man. 

But being able to take a life is not the same as having what it takes. “You didn’t” she guesses. 

Sun shakes her head in confirmation. “Killing him would have been…”

She’s not particularly keen on where this is going. Here we go: wrong…

Sun opens her eyes and looks straight at her with a frown: “Easy” she corrects, as if Alex spoke out loud. Their eyes remain locked for a beat. “So easy.”

Oh… Ok…? Sun usually chooses her words carefully, the chances she misspoke are slim. Meaning she meant to use the word “easy”.

And that’s it. Sun must consider their conversation over, for she falls silent. What exactly is she supposed to take from this? She goes back to her own breathing, trying to release the tension in her limbs, one by one. 

As peaceful as the place may be, her nights resist Koyasan’s magic. She’s plagued by bad dreams. She dreams of Kara, trapped in a place she imagines similar to the phantom zone. She remembers when Kara’d whisper, terrified, about her ordeal there, her first years on Earth (knows, too, that the nightmares never really went away). Sensory memories that haunted and woke her up at night. She dreams of Ruby, dreams of a little girl without a face and without a family. She thinks of her friend in highschool, whose father, a pastor, would preach about sins, thirst and cleansing of the soul over dinner, whenever she’d stay for a sleepover. She wakes up night after night in a cold sweat, her heart racing. 

She tries to summon the righteous anger that fueled the first months of her crusade – anything but this feeling of being unmoored – but it eludes her. It’s as if the fight’s left her. She kind of hates Lena a little bit for that. She used to have something. As fucked up as it may have been, it was hers. She nurtured it and in return, it kept her going. Without it, she feels… lost. 

To add insult to injury, Lena’s name actually comes up in conversation. She’s literally on the other side of the world, in one of Japan’s most remote locations, talking to people who are essentially strangers. And Lena freaking Luthor comes up. It turns out L-Corp bought Bak Enterprises, back when the latter was still reeling from the scandal surrounding Sun’s brother’s many crimes. Exonerated from all charges against her, Sun declined Lena’s offer to return as the renamed and rebranded company’s figurehead – Lena no doubt wishing to keep a low profile in the wake of Ghosn’s downfall in Japan. The sale allowed Sun to put it all behind her. Lena’s since turned Bak Enterprises around to become one of East Asia’s financial giants. And true to her word, L-Corp has been supporting Sun’s community projects ever since, providing legal aid to women detainees and helping along their reintegration into society. 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that these two headstrong women would reach an understanding: both suffered the devastating loss of a mother too soon, both have a sibling in jail, both fight a male dominated world. The similarities end there, though.

Sun has another musical episode (is there a more apt description?). They’re standing outside under the watchful eye of majestic trees. Sun shared a few reverent memories of her mother, before they started in on her routine. They break after a rewarding session, when Sun extends her arms and belts out: “Maybe I just wanna fly, wanna live, I don’t want to die. Maybe I just wanna breathe. Maybe I just don’t believe. Maybe you’re the same as me. We see things they’ll never see. You and I are gonna live forever.”

Talk about a blast from the past, she hasn’t heard this song in forever. She looks on, while Sun wraps it up, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings. “Lately, did you ever feel the pain, in the morning rain, as it soaks you to the bone?”

They’re having dinner one night. Mun’s in the middle of a story about their stay in Paris – they’ve certainly travelled a lot, with friends all over the world and several cities they seem to consider home – when Sun breaks down. She gets quiet, next tears start rolling down her cheeks. Alex stops, chopsticks halfway to her mouth. And then, Sun dissolves into sobs. It’s so hard for Alex to wrap her mind around: Sun’s usually so stoic, so composed. Sure, she has the odd out of character moment, but a complete meltdown like this is something else. She thinks she hears her say something oddly resembling Kara’s name – was it Kala or Kana? – before she buries her face in Mun’s shoulder. 

She wishes she could help, but is truly at a loss as to where to start. Plus, Mun seems to have it covered. She makes to retreat to her room, when he catches her eye. He looks like… She gets the sense that if he could, he’d be motioning for her to bring it in. Which… She’d rather leave them to their embrace. But Sun is in such obvious distress, her muffled cries shaking her entire frame. And Mun’s asking, so… She shuffles closer, unsure as to how to fit and eventually drapes herself over them. It’s an odd angle, too intimate a moment for Alex to feel completely comfortable. She closes her eyes and squeezes, hard, trying to pour into the gesture the words she’s unable to say. And for a second there, it doesn’t feel like just the three of them. No, she gets the passing overwhelming feeling of… multitudes.

On a whim, she hides her katana there, in one of the many graves, deep in the verdant forest, Jindo as her only witness. And with it, she lays the fire that has been raging inside her to rest. 

She feels something lift. 

If there’s one thing Alex’s learnt the hard way, it’s that all good things must come to an end: the time for Sun and Mun to head home rolls around. She could linger, of course, but staying behind and facing this silence on her own is unappealing. Sun extends an open invitation for her to see their newly inaugurated kickboxing school in Seoul. Alex promises she will, one day, and realises in alarm she genuinely means it.

The prospect of farewells and continuing on her own is one she doesn’t look forward to (Jindo’s mournful licks to her hands and face don’t help).

She packs her bag with the feeling that something’s missing. Something important. For a fleeting second, she’s tempted to dig up her katana. 

She doesn’t.