As always, all credit for artwork goes to the original artist. The artist's Instagram is above, they have some incredible work.
Kara's POV
This place was entirely unfamiliar. My wrists wouldn't move more than an inch or two. My eyes had not yet been opened, I didn't yet need to let any of my captures know of my consciousness. They already had me trapped, they couldn't fill my mind with useless words just yet. Not that they tried.
It took time to finally crack my eyes open and survey my surroundings. A dark-haired woman sat curled up in a chair to my left, hair falling everywhere and stress evident on her face even as she slept. There was a certain familiarity to it. In another chair, closer to the door sat another dark-haired woman, this one in a blue and white suit. Nia. I remembered her. Outside the door stood three more, talking amongst themselves. They debated about letting me go and generally what to do with me, I may be hostile or dangerous. My family was safe I never wanted to hurt them. My family? Alex, my sister and everyone else who had ever been important to me. Where was Winn?
The squeak of trainers rounded a corner towards us and had me on edge.
"She's awake! Guys, she's finally awake!" There he was. The group of now four turned their attention towards me, J'onn stepping forward first.
"How are you feeling, Supergirl?" The professionalism was appreciated but not exactly necessary.
"I've been better."
"You were out for a few days." With what I remembered, I wasn't too surprised.
"Is everyone on the plane okay?" Brainy took this one, loving stats and all.
"I can safely say 100% of people onboard are alive and 93.32% physically unharmed. A little scarred maybe but that is all." The statistics were good, thankfully.
"All thanks to you, Kara." My sister finally spoke to me again. I wasn't expecting her to have forgiven me so soon.
"I'm just glad you weren't on it this time." Her head may have been bowed, but I saw the smile still. I remembered.
The two sleepy souls stirred at the talking. Dreamer had controlled herself from coming to hug me while the woman beside me was a little calmer. She softly smiled at me as all the worry drained from her beautiful features.
"Hi," she whispered.
"Hey," I said straight back. She seemed to have a mysterious effect on me.
"You're awake." Her lips drew into another smile whilst her tired eyes did their very best to stay open. She needed a few minutes, and possibly a coffee or two.
For a moment everything in front of me changed. An image long ago planted in my head finally appeared before me. A few of the people around me glowed the sickly, fluorescent green of Kryptonite as they edged towards me while the others stay perfectly still, unbreathing. The pain started to sear my mind; I didn't know what was real. Still my body braced itself, my breathing quickened and my eyelids clamped down.
"Kara?" Miss Luthor was kneeling at my side in seconds, that had been the pressure around my hand. I opened my eyes again to see her terrified, it wasn't real this time.
"Take off the cuffs," no one moved to help me, "please?" I hadn't intended for my voice to be so small. They only did as asked once the Director had kicked everyone out but the Luthor, she handed a key to the powerless woman and left. It was just me and Lena now.
I never intended to hurt anyone, but seeing how they all reacted I had anyway. Even the woman I'd once shared an apartment with kept her distance.
"What did you see?" Her eyes bore a hole in the side of my head, she just had to know for some reason. May as well just tell her.
"All of you dead, some mindless zombies injected with Kryptonite. It all just seemed more real with you there." She didn't appear to think after that, her hands just held mine, Why was she making this harder for me? I couldn't have that life anymore, nor did I want to stop her from doing what she was doing.
"That would never happen, I promise." She couldn't promise something like that.
"It has though. Not all of my scars came from battles I won, I've been kidnapped many times and some species use your mind against you." I need not go into any more detail.
"We're real, we wouldn't hurt you like that." The real villains believe not in the evil of their actions but in the ideal possibilities they could bring.
"I only know this is real because if it isn't I failed long ago." The woman with me thought for a few moments before sitting on the edge of the bed. Why did she not fear me?
"I bet all those mind traps never attempted to catch you as you fell from the sky." Where was she going with this?
"Not your brightest moment Miss Luthor but you are correct." Whatever she was planning on she seemed a little nervous.
"Have you ever been shown something so imperfect?" Those things made her anything but, love is strength, it was loss that wasn't.
"Miss Luthor," I'd received a rather pointed look for my distraction, "I've never been shown anything like it." The way she gazed into my eyes with a titled head and small smile held more power over me than the tricksters ever had. Something so simple actually had me feeling safe for a few seconds. I didn't have to leave right away. For just a brief moment it was as if the long war I'd fought hadn't occurred until reality had to bring it back a little while later of course. She'd pulled her eyes away from mine and it was back to the real world.
We just talked for a little while, well mainly her. She'd pulled the chair closer to the bed, and I'd been givensome more casual clothes. She told me older stories of the group, I vaguely remembered a few. There were a few pictures on her phone too. Lena had many pictures of the pets, unsurprisingly. After some time had passed the others had trickled back in too, telling me more stories of our collective past together. I'd had a good life with them overall. Someone had ordered food too, pizza was truly one of the most delicious foods over a multitude of galaxies. It was a nice evening, something just felt too good about it. No matter how much I tried to ignore it I was always looking out for the next thing to go wrong. Until it did of course.
An alien attack had been reported so all the agents in the room had been called out, I volunteered too. Sure, a few of them tried to stop me but there was nothing they could really do. I took point, clearing the area as much as possible and clearing space for the agents. Something felt wrong, so I kept my distance, letting them all do their jobs. I spotted what was wrong before anyone else.
At the centre building of the area the ceiling and walls were lead-lined. As much as I had tried to warn everyone they just didn't have the time to react. Flooding out of the building was armed soldiers, all rather uniform. I'd flown down as quickly as I possibly could, I only managed to catch one bullet because it tore directly through my hand. Whoever these soldiers were they were prepared to kill me too. Seeing no other choice I'd rescued the DEO agents and placed them close enough to their transport that they could get away. They'd stopped their protest when they truly realised what they were fighting. There were a few I ignored in favour of taking down armed assailants though. A small cluster had managed to make their way through a fraction of the group with myself helping to defend their path. When they reached a frail old woman in the centre clutching her purse, the fighting seemed to stop. Everyone dropped, the woman falling forwards slightly too, thankfully being caught by the Director. Majority of them woke up soon after, dazed but otherwise unharmed. The old woman was not so lucky. She stay unconscious so I was asked to fly her and my sister back to the med bay to help her.
Touching down as carefully as inhumanely possible there was already a gurney ready to meet us. Everyone who had been in the med bay was sent home, except for a very insistent Lena Luthor. All the personnel working had been so preoccupied, including myself that it was the L-Corp CEO who had first noticed my bloodied hand. As much as she'd attempted to convince me to get some help I'd dealt with worse so she'd left it. One or two of the zombie soldiers had also been brought in for questioning. Each one of the soldiers had been of a race similar looking to humans, like myself. One of them had changed, however. The cuffs had slipped off their wrists before they phased through the floor. No one knew the extent of the damage they'd done, time and resources couldn't exactly spare an inch by inch check of the compound that very second. Whoever the kingpin was, they were thorough I had to admit. When that very mindless slave had been found she could only utter a simple phrase before her heartbeat came to a halt.
"Leviathan is coming." What on Earth was Leviathan?
None of the others could tell us, not a single one of them remembered a thing. There was something incredibly shady going on here, and it only got worse.
When a moment could finally be spared the Director had used it to do a storage check that did not yield comforting results. The lead/kryptonite dispersal device was missing. Upon further inspection the suit Lena had made to protect me from such as incident had also been damaged. It wasn't outwardly obvious but I could tell she was panicking. Winn and Brainy had offered to help her fix it and although she accepted their help, their input was another issue. She was worried for a good reason, however. The analytic trio had only just begun working when I felt the change, moments later the alarm blared. There was nothing I could do. For the second time in as many days I felt my legs collapsing beneath me. This reality caused me just as much pain as my training.
My breath no longer belonged to me. I may have been conditioned to withstand larger amounts, but this was everywhere, there was no escape here. The suit would take too long to repair, I could hear the far-off voices arguing about it. The only option seemed to be my pod. I hadn't been irradiated yet, I could make the trip out of the atmosphere while they used the same technology from before to clear the air. I just wanted the pain to stop. Whatever they did didn't matter to me anymore.
The pod had its own air filtration system, they only needed to seal me in. There was no need to fly me off too. They didn't know this. As I slowly became aware of my surroundings again I had tried to tell them and they didn't listen, my mumbles weren't particularly coherent. Throughout all of this someone had connected a communication system to my ship. The entire time I was trapped in there I could hear them working and trying to help me. That didn't make the experience any less torturous. I'd already spent years of my life in that thing and now I was trapped once again. I had to be careful too, if I spent too much time in the pod there's the chance the cryogenic sleep could activate again. Being as weak as I was I relied on the humans to bring me back. The worst part was hearing everything they were doing on the ground. I was trapped while they faced their own difficulties. It was like losing them all over again.
Their voices had come over with increasing levels of static as the distance between us grew. It was when I'd confirmed I was fully conscious again that everything bad had seemed to start. Someone wanted me to have to listen. I had no choice but to listen. Each of them had been distinguishable from another. I'd done my best to change my flight path to take me back but someone had locked the controls hoping to keep me safe. As my strength grew I threw another fist towards the console, I couldn't let them all die. Cracks grew for nought, a hidden button started to glow, however. Door realise. If I pressed it I needed a way to reenter the breathable atmosphere fast enough that I wouldn't suffocate. If I managed to do that I needed to find a way to not die from kryptonite poisoning, easy stuff really. Now if I survived through that I had to save everyone at least before I died myself. Not the best plan but a plan nonetheless. The future needed them, not me. I wasn't there when they needed me before, this time had to be different. The different times I had seen throughout my 'travels' had all been decimated without good people there to help. Both the past and the future had been damaged.
There had been an attempted solution that needed more firepower than just me originally. I was a part of the 7 paragons, tasked with single-handedly saving the world and we'd failed. At the end of it only sacrificing part of my mind had given us a chance to redo it all. The book of destiny may have been an honour to hold at the time but the cost wasn't quite worth it. I remembered losing everything, everyone. When I had successfully used it, was when The Monitor had chosen only me. Oliver continued to hold up his deal with the big guy, in case I failed but that was a necessity.
Every part of my just wanted to find the strength to go down there and help them but all I would do is die in the process. There had to be a reason for me to be out of the picture. All I could try was calling through the radio and hoping desperately that they would accept me as a bargaining chip. There was a larger game at play that I was not meant to be a part of.
"Leviathan! You got me out of the way for a reason, would you rather not have my help?" There was a humoured voice on the other end of this call.
"Ah, Supergirl, my daughter admires you. I would really rather not kill you." It was the old woman all along. The DEO needed to work on their security.
"There is no need to kill me when you could simply have me in exchange for the humans."
"Tempting," my job was to protect this planet, and that is what I would do.
"The atmosphere will be clear in less than an hour, either accept my bargain or be hunted."
"Your belief in your abilities is admirable, unfounded and childish but admirable nonetheless. You have yourself a deal." There was one set of muffled disagreement, all but one of the group had been imprisoned, apparently. Why not all? I'd been given no time to question it as the pod began its descent back to the Earth, how I was supposed to survive the kryptonite was beyond me, but one thing at a time.
Author's Note:
So it's been a hot sec since an update. I promise I am always writing it's just difficult sometimes to motivate for the correct project. The Christmas hiatus is upon us and that leaves a whole host of creative thoughts swirling. I'll try not to take so long with the next part but I promise the real plot is laying before us. Please stick around and happy holidays to you all.
~ Sophie