The sound of water droplets hitting the tile filled the whole bathroom. Through the warm thick fog, the shadow of a moving body could be seen. Arms were supporting it against the tiled wall and the once bright blonde haired head was under the water.
She straightened her back and brought her palms over her face. Now fully placed under the pouring, she had her head tilted upwards and water covered her face. She sighed and reached for the sponge, put some soap on it, and began to clean herself. The dust that once was at the bottom of her legs got cleaned and in its trace bubbles were left, a move that soothed the Kryptonian female. While washing her hair with shampoo, her head was blank. She felt kind of relieved that in that bathroom, in that shower, she got to be only Kara. Not a member of the House of El, not someone that was to be wed to the King of another planet, not someone's soon-to-no-longer-be girlfriend. Just a girl, who felt like her entire world was collapsing over and around her.
Her soapy hands roamed all over her body, spreading the liquid so that she could clean herself up. She touched and felt the delicate surface of her skin around her hips, she squeezed it hard, partially in anger, but also in hurt. And at that moment the girl collapsed on the tiled floor of the shower in a thud. Her tears were hidden by the running water and dark blonde long locks of hair.
With her arms hugging her knees and her forehead in the place between them, she somehow felt at ease, protected. In that bathroom no one could hurt her, no one could lie to her, no one could hide important and life-changing papers and arrangements.
After almost half an hour that felt more like an eternity, the water turned from boiling hot to freezing cold. The Kryptonian slowly rose to her feet and shakingly made her way toward the exit of the shower.
Her legs and hands were shaking and she was taking short and frequent breaths. Her head was aching and the world before her was spinning. By the time she reached the door leading to the dressing room, the floor of the bathroom was painted with drops of water and soap. Supporting herself by the door, Kara took some long breaths and gripped the door handle, opening it.
She stepped carefully on the fluffy rug laid on the wooden floors and with an ambition, she didn't think she had in herself at that moment she went through the room in an instant reaching the wardrobe that had her nightclothes inside.
Kara, with shaking hands, took a nightgown and threw it over her damp hair and rummaged through other drawers in search of a pair of undergarments and socks. When she was stepping through her lingerie, the door leading to the room opened and a low gasp came from behind the door.
"Kara, are you-- Oh my Rao!" Jams' voice filled the pressing silence present in the room and after apologizing he closed the door on his way out. He didn't comment on how much he had seen of his girlfriend's skin, skin that he ached to caress and touch. He had never seen the blonde in a state similar to the one they were in.
The chocolate-skinned man seated himself on the messy bed placed in the middle of the bedroom. He looked awkwardly around himself and at the mattress. He wanted to get to the next step of their relationship, but he was sure that she didn't, yet. And his dark brown eyes continued to run over the surfaces of a room he wasn't that familiar with, as he would've wanted. He studied the big windows, covered in soft thin white curtains, and the city that sprawled behind the glass. The high buildings made of steel and glass in Argo City were something familiar to him and looking at them through the windows of his girlfriend's chambers was a relaxing feeling.
By the wall-high windows, was a grey table with dozens of holo crystals, pens and books spread out on. Right in front of it was towering a bookcase of the same colour. Books of various colours, sizes and genres were crammed and placed in weird positions, Jams knowing that they were for sure thrown in Kara's usual state of hurry while searching for something. In the last two bottom shelves, transparent boxes filled with holo crystals in colours varying from pale red to bright blue, meant to store more information than books had ever been able to.
The diamond-like shape of the room allowed Kara to have another window, facing the trees of the Municipal Park of Argo City. Through this one, sunlight was getting into, covering almost every surface of the Kryptonian woman's room. The bed, on which he was seated, laid in the proximity of that window and it was one of the first things that got to be sunbathed at that late hour in the day. The mattress was one of the biggest and softest ones he had ever seen and felt under his fingers and was covered in lilac and magenta bed sheets. At the head of the bed, stood a lined headboard that matched the neutral colour already present in the room. The walls were paler than the furniture inside the suite, almost white, with the exception being the one behind the bed, which was a dark grey, almost black.
The dark wall had a painting with the Rao System on it. With Boron being the first, a small brown planet, closest to the sun, followed by a slightly bigger Phalon of a yellow just like a sunflower. Thalon followed, bigger than Phalon, and was covered by a sapphire blue colour, that shew that the planet was indeed made only of water. Thalon, because of its proximity to Daxam and the so-called circle of life of the system, was the first planet in the system that had a population, but only inside the Polar Circles. Following was the infamous planet of a furious red with lines of gold, which were, in fact, ancient walls, created to divide the planet into kingdoms. Daxam, bigger than Thalon, but smaller than Krypton, was a world of whose population had the opportunity to experience four seasons, winter, spring, summer and autumn. The biggest planet in the system of an ice-like colour was next. Krypton stood out proudly surrounded by Daxam's two moons, Galatea and Lunae and its own, Wegthor, Koron, Xenon and Mithen. Krypton, just like the colour of its atmosphere, was a cold planet, with also four seasons. One with low temperatures and harsh snowfalls and winds, called just winter. The Kryptonian winters were the longest in the whole system, taking almost half of a cycle. The summer was the shortest, with somewhere close to two months of warmer weather and longer days, but not as long and beautiful as the Daxamian ones. The spring and autumn were indeed seasons of transition. The rebirth of vegetation started in late winter and ended at the end of summer, whereas the season of harvesting happened in late autumn, early winter. And at last, the farthest from the sun, was Haron of a bluish-white colour circled by its ice ring.
Jams knew how important that wall was for a girl like Kara. As a member of an esteemed house meant that you got to see these planets, which were drawn on the wall, in person and experience them. Daxam was nothing new for his lover. He has heard stories of their long and warm days, their gardens and orchards, full of fruits from all over the galaxy, and other, and flowers of various colours that you might have never heard the name of.
The door of the dressing room opened and a white-skinned, blonde female stepped silently on the tiled floor towards the couch near the bookcase. She took her dark blue dressing gown, put it on, made a couple more walks around the room and in the end she hugged her slender body while sitting in front of the table.
With her eyes focused on the screen and keyboard in front of her, she didn't notice the man, who was once seated on her purple bed, take a place behind her and hug her.
She froze.
He noticed.
He took his arms off from around her, gave her a long, somehow hurt look, while she was still staring at the screen before her. An article half-written and a photo of a young king with grey-blue eyes next to it.
Only after long minutes after he sat in the chair he dragged closest to her, did Kara face him. Big blue eyes, just like comets stared into deep brown, just like chocolate.
She loved him, that was certain, but what she had found out hours ago, in a room, under the safe roof she was now, changed their whole dynamic, their harmony. It changed her view of him.
He wanted to marry her.
Such a hopeful word: wanted. He wanted a life by her side. He wanted to share a bed for his entire life with her. He wanted children with her.
But they couldn't.
She wanted that too. So much. She dreamed of it. She dreamed of his eyes in the sunlight of the morning. She dreamed of their first time. She dreamed of their wedding, their vows exchanged, the cries, their wedding bracelets and children. She dreamed of a house, warm, calm, full of the smell of him.
But she couldn't have that.
She might be no princess. She might not be the future queen of her world. But she would be of another. She would marry, exchange wedding bracelets, vows, maybe cry and have children.
But those dreams she once had, they would not have him in them when they become reality. His warm skin, his eyes so deep, which would turn to a reddish-brown while in certain sunlight... they would not get to mess up with her own.
The call of her name broke the silence between them. "What's wrong?" was what followed. He knew her, that was certain. They knew their moods. They knew what to do when either of them was down.
But the look on his face showed that he had no idea what was happening behind the Thalonian oceans filled with chunks of ice in her eyes.
"Nothing..." she mumbled and broke their eye contact. She touched her face, meaning to wipe out a tear that had slid down her cheek. "Nothing is wrong." She moved in her chair, facing the blue screen before her once more.
She felt his eyes drift to her hand, spread on the surface near the keyboard, ready to write down an objective opinion of what her betrothed's coronation was like. Betrothed. She felt her stomach twist.
"Kara, something is going on. Talk to me." his pleading tone echoed like a gong inside her head. "You know that it might get easier if you talk to someone about it."
"I did. It didn't." And then she rose from her chair and started to pace around the room. He just followed her movements and gestures. Her trembling hands and bottom lip. She looked into the light at least five times, before looking at him once for a second. It felt like he got hit by an aircraft. His whole body trembled when he saw the tears in her eyes.
Karal looked at Jams long before the words left her lips.
"I think we need to take a break."
He looked puzzled. A break. Her words echoed in the diamond-shaped room, in his head, in his consciousness and unconsciousness. It felt like a hard slap in the face.
You look like you're going to fall apart right in front of me and you tell me to get away from you. His eyes tried to find hers. See if what she had said was true. But every time they got close to meeting, hers fixed on another spot on the walls.
"Kara, you can't possibly say that. You're not okay. Let's talk this through." he tried to reason, but the woman in front of him was stubborn and if she had something on her mind, she would get it.
"You once told me that... You would accept whatever I choose to do in this." she made a gesture between them. "I need you to give me some time. I need some things to figure out. I can't get married this young..." She felt the lie sting on her tongue after it left her mouth.
"Married? Kara, what is going on? I didn't propose marriage."
She looked at him from her place in the middle of the room. Hair, now drier than before but still wet, was on her pale face and flushed cheeks. Her long pause, paired with the painful look in her ocean blue eyes, gave him the answer he didn't need.
She knew.
Her sight moved to the vanity beside the bathroom's door. They both could see the white gold ring shining in the soft lights of the city.
"You did," her voice was almost a whisper and if they were outside, the answer would probably be lost in the passing wind. "And you want it, but I cannot give it to you... now."
He looked puzzled at her. "Why not?"
"I just can't." She shrugged and hugged herself even more. "I need to figure myself first and a marriage will not help me do that."
"We can find ourselves in each other." his eyes sparkled and she would've kissed him multiple times, but she couldn't. She needed all of this... she needed her future marriage to look real for the man before her.
She needs to break the heart of the man she loved, so she might at least try and enter an arranged marriage at least half of herself. With her conscience closer to peace than while still having a connection to Jams. She would not doom Krypton for her sake.
"You know that. Kara, you can't just break a long term relationship like this."
"I don't love you anymore." Liar. Their eyes met. She felt how his whole world shook and break in pieces.
"What?" was his only response. "Kara?"
The woman only gagged and started to walk backwards, towards her desk, screen still on in her back. Turquoise light painting the hurt look on his face.
And she didn't know how she did it.
But she gave the coldest look to the man she loves and went back to her task.
She felt him give her another long look and silently he rose from her bed and walked out the door.
Suddenly the air felt colder, the world felt bigger and Kara Zor-El felt alone in her room made of steel.