Linger On (Your Pale Blue Eyes)

Warmth. 

A breath tickles the nape of Kara’s neck. Soft-edged nails rake curiously down the length of her bare back, tracing along her spine, her muscles. A district scent of pine overwhelms her senses, enveloping her. There is a warm body pressed against her own, clinging to her like she’s a raft in treacherous waters. 

Kara knows it is Lena. Kara also knows that this is a dream, one that she has had many times before. Waking up in her bed, a duvet draped over her body and the body of the woman beside her. 

The soft morning sunlight bleeds through the curtained windows, the post-sex smell still lingers in the air, serving as a reminder of the night before. 

Legs entangled, hands intertwined, unkempt hair splayed across the pillow. Lena moves her hand from Kara’s back, ghosting over her ribs before settling on her toned stomach and drawing small soothing circles on her skin. Kara smiles softly, shuts her eyes and lets Lena’s touch consume her. 

Usually Kara would scold herself for having such a dream, splash her face with ice-cold water, try to forget, convince herself it didn’t happen. But now, she relishes it, chooses to ignore the shame that claws at her insides. 

She was always plagued with guilt when she would wake, panting and flustered and wet, a vague memory of piercing blue eyes staring hungrily into her own still fresh in her head. Naked. Skin against skin. Vulnerable yet unafraid. 

When Kara is with Lena, the weight of her responsibilities as Supergirl falls away, and for just a moment she’s allowed to be human. 

“Darling,” Lena husks, nudging her nose behind Kara’s ear. “We can’t stay here forever.” 

Unable to bear not seeing Lena’s face for a second longer, she turns around, the duvet rustling with her sluggish movements. They’re now inches apart, so close that their noses are nearly touching. Kara wants to lean in, fill the space between them with a desperate, passionate kiss. But then Lena is reaching up, slowly, cautiously. She brushes her thumb against Kara’s cheekbone, frowning. 

“Oh, baby. Why are you crying?” Her voice is barely above a whisper, soft and concerned and it makes Kara's heart flutter. 

She wants to speak, tell Lena how sorry she is and beg her forgiveness, but with the way her throat tightens up, burning with anguish, she doesn’t trust her voice. Instead, she lets her eyelids flutter shut, tilts her head into Lena’s gentle touch as a sob escapes her lips. 

Lena doesn’t miss a beat, immediately delving her fingers into locks of blonde hair and pulling the kryptonian into the crook of her neck. Kara's body tremors, her chest moving at uneven intervals as she struggles to catch her breath. 

“Breathe, darling,” Lena murmurs, pressing a kiss to the top of Kara’s head. “I’ve got you.”

Kara melts into Lena’s embrace, lets her hands find the other woman’s torso and pulls her close, holds on with such tenacity like she’s terrified that if she eases her grip for even a second, Lena will be gone, just like that, and Kara will wake up cold and alone and afraid. 

Lena is humming a song, one that Kara recognizes but can’t place, yet it calms her down all the same. Kara sighs into Lena’s neck and Lena places another kiss on Kara's head. “I’m right here,” she says. “You’re safe.” 

Kara frowns, pulls away while keeping her hands secured on Lena’s waist. She looks the other woman in the eyes, searching, hoping she’ll find something to convince herself that this is real, that it’s really Lena here and not a pathetic figment of her imagination. 

Disappointment coils in her stomach, because the woman in front of her is looking at her with so much love, the way that Lena never would, reminding her, cruelly, that this is not Lena. 

Kara wakes with a gasp. Eyes wide. Chest heaving. Adrenaline coursing through her veins. Through blurry vision she glances around the room, panicked eyes darting from one area to another. 

The room she’s in is comparable to a prison cell. Cold metal cuffs press harshly into the now fragile skin of her wrists, ankles, bounding her to the bed on which she lies. It’s not soft like her bed back at her apartment. It’s flat and stiff. The pillow under her head is no different, sad and deflated, nothing but a pathetic slab of cotton encased in a thin, scratchy cloth. 

Above her, red-sun light panels hum lowly, doing nothing to alleviate her throbbing headache. Her mouth is dry, her throat is sore, her lips are cracked and bleeding. 

There is a door to her right, voices echo from the other side, growing closer with each passing second. Incapacitated, Kara can do nothing but wait, watching the door like a hawk. Finally, the handle turns, the door creaks open, and inside steps none other than Lillian Luthor. 

Kara’s eyes widen, her heart pounding in her chest as the woman who was supposed to be locked away stands at the side of her bed. Lillian towers over her, eyes glistening with a kind of sadistic satisfaction. She tilts her head, frowns mockingly, brings a hand to Kara’s head and gently moves a piece of hair out of her face. 

“You must be very tired,” Lillian says. “You were out for quite some time, we thought we almost lost you.”

The muscles in Kara’s jaw tighten as she tries to keep her composure. She wants to scream, break out of her bounds and lunge at the monster before her and kill . But she’s far too exhausted, far too weak to do anything but sit there and wait for her fate to be decided by a murderer. 

“It’s a miracle you were able to pull through,” Lillian says before stepping aside, motioning toward the doorway to someone outside of Kara’s view. 

Kara listens to the sounds of footsteps growing nearer and can see a shadow on the ground getting closer in her peripheral vision. Finally, a man enters a room, a pair of glasses resting on the bridge of his nose, wrinkles in his forehead, under his eyes. 

Kara recognizes the man, but she can’t place where from. Her memory is a blur, the cogs in her brain aren’t turning quite as well as they once did. They must’ve pumped her full of drugs, sedatives, nasty things to keep her weak and under their control. 

As the man steps forwards, placing himself at Lillian's side, something sparks in Kara’s memory and suddenly it all comes crashing down on her. The man, old and frail, yet sharp as a tack and highly skilled in his practice, is the same man who cut her open not too long ago. 

Kara’s breath catches in her throat, because now she remembers. The cold metal table, the blinding lights above, the masked man with his barbaric tools hovering over her like a bad omen, inflicting pain upon her crippled body, pain she’s never felt before in her life, pain she didn’t even know existed. 

Kara wills herself to lift her head, just a little, just enough to see the grisly sight that was now her. There is metal where her arm once was, seared to her skin at the shoulder, leaving ugly burns that warp and mutilate her once impenetrable flesh. 

“An unforeseen consequence of my son's Kryptonite gun. It was only meant to weaken you momentarily, but my men were careless, and in turn, your injuries were so extreme that amputation was the only viable option.” Lillian winces dramatically, eyeing Kara’s mechanical enhancement. “What you’re looking at is a cybernetic prosthetic, made entirely of manganium intertron, the strongest metal in the galaxy. Superman won’t even be able to put a scratch in it. This will be a setback, of course, but it might just be exactly what we need to mold into you the perfect weapon.”

Kara doesn’t register Lillian’s words, because she’s too immersed in her own terror to process anything else, and as she feels tears welling up against her waterline, spilling over almost immediately, it becomes clear to her just how defeated she is, and she can’t help the pit that forms in her stomach, the spine-severing feeling of hopelessness that the DEO is coming at all. 

Lillian only watches as Kara sobs, a furrow between her brows as National City’s Symbol of Hope crumbles before her. 

“Girl of Steel?” Lillian sighs, clicks her tongue. “What a joke.”

Kara is dragged into the room like a rag doll, two men on either side of her, holding her by the arms, their rough fingers pressing harshly into her skin. She grunts as she is thrown to the cold, grimy floor. 

Her body aches. She can’t move, so trying to run isn’t an option. Even if it was, she doesn’t have her usual strength due to the red-sun lamps that seem to be around every corner. 

She looks around her, trying to find anything that might be helpful; an exit, a weapon, an ally. She finds nothing except for a clunky metal machine in the center of the room, a chair built into it. She doesn’t know what it is, but she can tell immediately that it is meant for her. Her stomach twists. 

Heels click against the tile. Kara looks up. Lillian stands over her, a pitiful look on her face. Kara grits her teeth, lifts her chin and glares at the woman— but her strength is merely an illusion, and with the way her body is trembling, she knows it’s only a matter of time before Lillian discovers that.

“Whatever you’re planning, you won’t get away with it,” Kara snarls. “You’re a monster.”

Lillian smiles, narrows her eyes. “You’re afraid.”

Kara inhales sharply. She says nothing as her eyes bore into Lillian’s. 

“Put her in the chair,” Lillian says to the men at Kara’s side. “Let’s get this started, shall we?”

The men are silent as they pull her across the room, their grip on her arms unrelenting. Her heart races when they hoist her up into the chair, bound her by the wrists to the armrests with thick leather straps. 

“What is this?” she asks, her tone bitter.

“Electroconvulsive therapy. It damages the limbic system in your brain— affects long-term memory,” Lillian answers proudly. “It’s the perfect tool, really. By the end of the day, you’ll be a clean slate.”

Kara’s throat tightens. “It’s brainwashing .”

Lillian rolls her eyes. “If that’s the term you want to use, then fine.” She crosses her arms behind her back. “Now, enough talk. Let’s begin.”

Kara struggles against the bonds binding her limbs to the chair, but there’s little she can do. Lillian sends a look to one of her goons— a short, pudgy man with circular glasses and slicked-back hair. He nods and walks over to the machine's control panel, where there are rows of buttons and switches and Kara can only imagine what they do.

He messes with the panel for a bit before turning to Kara. “Sit back,” he says, his voice rough and unkind. 

Kara only glares at him. 

He waits a moment, then pulls his lips into a thin line, disappointment apparent in his expression. He is silent as he glances at Lillian, communicating to her without words. 

Lillian sighs, motions to the two men behind her. “Boys, hold her down, will you?”

Without hesitation, the men obey. They walk over to Kara and tightly grip her shoulders, forcing her against the back of the chair. She cries out in pain as one of the men sinks his fingers a little too hard into the tender skin of her left shoulder as he manhandles her into place. 

Fighting is useless, she realizes, as she is overpowered by just two measly men, and she finds herself relaxing into their hold. When she is settled into the chair, their hands do not move from their spot on her shoulders, even though she shows no resistance at this point. 

The man with the glasses quietly thanks them and returns to his previous task at the control panel. Kara hears the click of a few buttons before her ears are plagued by an awful mechanical screech. 

Two metal arm-like contraptions begin to move from the sides of the machine and lower to Kara’s face. It is only then that she begins to squirm against the hands holding her down, a crippling fear brewing in her stomach, setting off some instinctive urge to run. 

But all she can do is watch she the arms get closer, noticing the two metal plates at the ends of them with electrical probes built in. At the sight of them, it becomes clear that whatever they’re about to do to her is going to hurt. Bad. 

She gasps as one plate connects with the side of her face, completely covering her left eye, the other plate following shortly after, pressing harshly into the right side of her head. It feels like her skull is about to break under the pressure and, for a moment, she wonders if that’s what she wants.

As she begins to spiral into a panic, she thinks of Alex, of how far they’ve come. She remembers the days when Alex hated her, when Alex only saw Kara as a parasite that had latched onto her family and infiltrated their home, when Kara was just an alien and nothing more. She remembers the screaming and yelling and pathetic bickering, Eliza’s voice always in the background of their arguments, trying to mediate things and failing every time. 

The machine next to her whirs, and the man operating it presses a few buttons, turns a dial, and sets the machine to the highest setting. He glances at Kara, frowns almost sympathetically, then pulls down a lever and unleashes hell on Kara’s brain. 

There is a loud electrical crack before white-hot pain overcomes the Kryptonian. The muscles in her face convulse and, for only a moment, she stops breathing. Then—

She screams. It’s raw and painful and it reverberates against the lead lined walls of the room, piercing the eardrums of the men around her.  

She clenches her jaw, trying to suppress another scream. Her teeth feel like they’re about to break, shatter into a million tiny pieces and cut up the inside of her mouth until she’s choking on her own blood. 

The pain intensifies and her eyes roll back until there’s only white. Another guttural scream. The veins in her neck are protruding, becoming more and more discernible with each grating cry she lets out. 

She wants it to stop. She would do anything to make it stop. 

She grips the arm rest, squeezing, clawing her nails into the leather. There is a crack. The left-hand armrest breaks, wooden shards fall quietly to the floor. 

They’re going to ruin her, she realizes. They’re going to put her through this torturous process again, and again, and again, until her brain is mush and her spirit is broken. They’re going to take everything that makes her her and replace it with something else. Something evil. Something vile. Something that will make atonement an impossible task, and there’s not a thing she can do about it. 

As another jolt of pain passes through her, she thinks of Lena. Rao, she still remembers the first time they met. She was so skeptical of the woman, so reluctant to believe that someone with the last name Luthor could be the same person who made her heart flutter with a single glance. 

Even with Kara’s lack of trust for the woman, she had decided that day that Lena Luthor was the most beautiful thing she had ever laid her eyes upon. Everything about her— the way she walked and talked and carried herself, the way her shoulders were always back, her chin always held high, the way she spoke, her voice so powerful that she could command an army. 

And her eyes. Rao, her eyes . One green, one blue; something Kara had noticed almost immediately. 

Another scream rips through her. She begins to lose feeling in her fingers, toes. 

She doesn’t want to forget. She won’t. She won’t let them take anything else from her. Her memories are hers— Lena is hers . 

Finally, it stops. The machine's rumble dies down until it’s only humming lowly, but the metal plates on her head don’t retract. Kara’s body convulses, the remnants of an electrical current still passing through her. Through half-lidded eyes she sees a blurry figure of a man at her side, shining a small flashlight directly into her pupils. 

“She’s conscious,” the man says, sighing a breath of relief. “I’m taking her out.” 

“No,” a voice cuts in. Lillian . “Wipe her again.”

There’s a beat of silence before the man speaks. “Ma’am, it could kill her. She’s already suffered tremendous levels of brain trauma. I highly suggest that—”

“Did I ask for your suggestion? Wipe. Her. Again .”

The man nods sheepishly, returns his hands to the machine, and turns the notch again. He gives Lillian one last look of confirmation before pulling the lever. 

Kara’s eyes roll back, her muscles tense, and tears stream down her face as she endures the pain once more. 

She’s bawling now, unable to hold back the sounds of agony spilling from her lips. She wants to go home— she can’t remember what home looks like. 

Words are being spoken, being repeated in a rhythmic manner. Again, and again, and again. She can’t focus on them though, she can’t focus on anything but the pain. 

A memory flashes in her head— an image. Ghastly blue eyes. Or were they green? 

Another scream. More tears. Kara cries out, pleading for mercy. 

There is a shout, desperate in its tone, before finally, the machine powers down and the metal plates are removed from her face. 

A hand grabs her jaw, holding up her head. The man in front of her is inches from her face, staring into her eyes, looking for signs of life. His breath hitches and he pulls away, turns to Lillian. 

“She’s alive,” he breathes. Then, much louder, and much angrier, “That could’ve gone very wrong. She was seconds away from dying.”

Lillian shrugs, her heels clicking against the hard floor as she walks over to Kara. 

Lillian leans forward, a small leather journal in her hand as she begins to read off a set of trigger words. “Reign.” 

Kara’s body jolts. 

“Lament.” 

She feels a throb in her head, pounding against her skull. 

“Red.”

She groans as the pressure intensifies.

“Fortress.”

She throws her head back, clenches her jaw and bites back a scream. 

“Liberty.”

Her fingers dig into her palms, nearly breaking skin. 

“Beacon.”

Her lip trembles and she feels bile rise in her throat, burning hot. 

“Twenty-two.”

A scream rips from her throat, her eyes glowing red momentarily before dying down. 

“Argo.”

She’s tired. She doesn’t want to fight it anymore. 

“Rao.”

Her muscles tense, then relax. Her head drops forward, blonde hair covering her face. 

“Judas.”

She stills. A string of saliva falls from her mouth. Her mind is blank. Empty. 

Lillian heels click against the tile as she steps forward. She grabs Kara by the hair and lifts her head, forcing the Kryptonian to meet her eyes. “Breaking you was far easier than I had imagined.” She smiles. “Many will call you a devil, a monster, a usurper— but they will be wrong. Your conditioning is almost complete, and when it is, you'll be our greatest weapon, and you will save us all.”

Kara is silent as Lillian strokes her wet cheeks with her thumb and sighs. 

“Don’t cry,” Lillian whispers, and Kara finds herself leaning into the gentle touch. “Soldiers don’t cry.”