The day had started just like any other. Waking up beside her wife, coffee together before heading to work, and then meeting for lunch. That was when everything had changed. During their lunch, Kara was called away on an emergency, what appeared to be a young child trapped beneath a pile of Nth Metal rods, but miraculously uninjured. As soon as she got there however, she knew something was off. There was no pile of rods, no child, only a seemingly empty and abandoned warehouse.
"Guys something isn't right here, I think this might be a..."
Everything happened so quickly that even Kara had no time to react as a metal chamber fell from the ceiling and trapped her inside, a red light glowing all around her. Yet another enemy of her mother who had been trapped on Fort Rozz - and miraculously stayed in hiding for more than 10 years after Kara became Supergirl - had designed a chamber capable of not only containing a Kryptonian, but of keeping them alive and fully awake in the process. The angry alien appeared in front of her and gave the usual "your mother ruined my life" speech before pressing a series of buttons on the chamber and shooting her off into space.
At first, Kara fought. She'd tried punching her way through her Nth Metal Coffin until her hands were bloodied and broken, she'd tried to use her comms but they were useless. Still, she tried daily to find a way back home, but it was useless. She didn't know how day from night, up from down, left from right. All she knew was that she was alone, and once again trapped in a tiny pod-like vessel, doomed to float through space for the rest of her life.
Kara did her best to rest when her body asked for it, which meant she spent much of her time sleeping, dreaming of being back home with those she loved, back in the arms of her beautiful wife. Truly, she tried to sleep as much as possible, because being awake was more tortuous than most of her nightmares. In her dreams, she could hug her family, make love to her wife, spend evenings on the couch cuddled up with Alex, Lena, and Kelly watching stupid movie-musicals. But awake, she was forced to face the fact that she could very well die in this pod, and no one would find her body.
Her only hope came from knowing that her family would never give up on her. Her WIFE would never give up on her. But although everyone in her circle was extremely intelligent and had saved her countless times, she couldn't help but feel like this time was different. This time could very well be the time that she was lost forever. It had been August when she'd left, August 23rd to be exact. The day after the anniversary of the day Kara and Lena got engaged. The day she was captured they had made plans to celebrate, Lena had made reservations at their favorite dinner place and had told Kara that she had amazing news to share. The thought of never seeing her wife again broke her inside, but gave her hope at the same time. She was thankful that she still had her phone in her boot, as well as the wireless power bank Brainy had designed for her so that her phone could go up to 6 days when attached to the power bank. Obviously it was useless in terms of getting help, but she could still look at her beautiful wife's face whenever she needed.
Knowing she needed to conserve the battery, Kara tried to keep her phone use at a minimum. But she wanted to record messages for everyone she loved, in case the unthinkable happened. Even if they found her lifeless body in the pod, they would be able to see that in her final moments, she loved them dearly. The messages to her friends were relatively short. Mostly saying the same thing but in different ways. I'm proud to have known you, you changed my life, I love you. Things like that. The ones she recorded for Alex and her family were much longer and harder to record. But the hardest of all was the one she needed to record for Lena, which was why she saved it for last. But the time finally came when she needed to say her goodbyes to Lena, and she knew that her phone only had a little charge left, which in itself told her that she had been in the pod for several days already.
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As time continued to pass, things become increasingly bleak for Kara. Her phone had long died and she spent most of her time in a dream-like state, neither fully awake nor fully asleep. She'd given up hope long ago of being rescued, accepting the fact that she would be trapped here for all eternity. Truthfully, she didn know how she was still alive at all, having gone without food or water for so long. Perhaps the red glow of whatever was built into the chamber simultaneously weakened her as well as kept her alive, but with time, she'd noticed that the light itself had grown dim, and the dimmer it got the weaker she became. She could feel her body getting weaker, forcing her to spend more and more time sleeping instead of awake.
Kara - who had once been the paragon of hope - found herself lacking hope in this moment. Without knowing how long she'd been gone, or where she was in the vast frontier of space, her loved ones had little hope of finding her. She accepted her fate and closed her eyes and prayed once more that Rao would be with her as she journeyed into the light and to protect those she loved. No sooner had her prayer ended did the chamber jerk and begin to move towards a large ship in the distance.
The Legion Ship.
Perhaps it was that she'd dreamed of this very moment many times during her imprisonment that caused Kara to shrug it off as too good to be true. But one minute she was closing her eyes, giving her mind and body over once more to sweet sleep, and then next she was opening them bathed in a warm yellow light, her wife standing by her side holding her hand and crying tears of joy over their reunion.
"Kara! Kara, darling can you hear me?"
"Lena?"
"KARA! Alex! She's awake!"
Lena fell forward onto the sun bed and kissed he wifes lips.
"How....How did you find m-me?"
"Lena and I have been searching for you in the Legion ship ever since we figured out that you'd been sent to space...DId you really believe that we wouldn't?" questioned Alex, a hint of pain in her voice.
"I...I hoped you would."
"How long was I gone?"
There was a pregnant pause as Lena and Alex shared a look, obviously debating what to say.
"How long?"
"Kara," offered Alex, "what matters is we found you and you are safe and..."
"HOW LONG!"
Lena sat on the bed beside her wife and tenderly held her hand.
"1 year 11 months, 3 weeks, 6 days, 18 hours and 27 minutes and 12 seconds."
Kara looked at her wife with a pained stare. Trying to process the fact that she'd been gone almost exactly two years.
"I tried so hard to get back to you! To all of you. I just couldn't and I..."
"It's ok, Kara," comforted Alex. "None of us thought for one moment that you left on purpose, or that you wouldn't do everything you could to get home. To us."
"Kara...there's...there's something you should know."
"Lena, do you really think this is the best time to tell her?"
"I have to Alex. She deserves to know."
"Tell me what? What's wrong?"
"Mama!"
Kara's eyes grew 10 sizes as she watched a blonde haired little boy toddle over to Lena and beg to be picked up. He couldn't have been any older than 2. His blue green eyes lit up as soon as he was lifted into Lena's arms.
"Kara, I want you to meet Elliot August Zor-el Luthor-Danvers."
"Lena is...is he..."
"He's your son Kara, our son."
"Hey kIddo," offered Alex. "How about we go get some ice cream!"
The little boy all but lept from Lena's arms and into Alex's, and was taken from the room leaving Lena and Kara alone to talk.
"I know what you must be thinking, Kara, and I don't blame you. But I swear to you that I never..."
"No! Rao, Lena I didn't think that at all, Lena. And even if you had been with someone, I wouldn't hold it against you. It's been 2 years!"
"Kara it could be two decades and I would willingly choose celibacy if I could never be with you again! But he is your son. Our son. Remember the news that I told you I had to share? I was planning to tell you that night that the in vitro worked! With Alura's help I was able to create a genesis type chamber on earth and merge our DNAs and then have the embryo implanted into my uterus. We'd tried for so long to have a child, and with Alura's help we made it a reality! It was meant to be a surprise, I had little Super baby shirts made and everything...but then you..."
"I am so sorry, Lena. I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you...for Elliot. Had I known, I would have never..."
"You had no way of knowing, nor did you have any way to prevent yourself from being captured. The only one to blame is the alien who tricked you and he has long been dealt with."
Kara knew better than to play the blame game with Lena, and on some level she knew she was right. It did nothing to assuage the guilt of not being there for her wife during her pregnancy and missing not only the birth but the first year and a half of her son's life.
"I...I hope you like his name...I...I tried to honor our families. Elliot for El, and then Luthor-Danvers for our surnames. I had picked out August because it was always our favorite month. Our first date, our first kiss, our engagement AND our wedding."
"Don't forget the first time you screamed my name," laughed Kara trying to lighten the mood. "I'm pretty proud of THAT particular anniversary."
"Kara!"
"I love you Lena. Your strength never ceases to amaze me!" Kara paused, wrestling in her mind with her next words. "Does he know? That I'm his..."
"That you're his other mommy? Of course he does, Kara! We have shown him pictures and told him stories about you his entire life! You just look a little different now, is all. Do you...Do you want to meet him? Officially I mean."
"I want to hold him so badly it hurts, Lena."
As if right on cue, Alex walked in carrying little Elliot, a much-too-large ice cream cone in both of his hands.
"Kara, Elliot has something for you."
" 'ere doh mommy," said the little one, his tiny new-to-talking voice making Kara's heart swoon as Alex placed him in Kara's lap.
Doing her best not to break down and cry, Kara took the ice cream from her son and thanked him. Elliot made a mess all over himself and Kara as he ate before crawling up close to Kara and falling asleep on her chest. Kara was sticky and cold, not to mention emotionally and physically exhausted. But the feeling and the sight of HER son asleep on her chest gave her more joy and strength than the yellow sun of Earth ever could. She handed her unfinished ice cream off to her sister before wrapping her arms around the boy and humming a kryptonian lullaby into his ear, lulling herself in the first peaceful sleep she'd had in a very long time.