Chapter Text
“You can’t remember what they did to you. Your loneliness isn’t welcome here, you know, but you still walk the dream-lit village, looking for someone gentle enough. There must be an animal trapped under your shirt, you think, because little claws scratch against your chest and you throb there, but you’re afraid to look because looking means remembering.”
- Sara Eliza Johnson, from “Parable of the Unclean Spirit”
Having someone else in the base was odd. J’onn’s presence sits at the back of her head, an awareness she can’t quite shake. He walks from one end of the room to the other and she carefully tracks him, counting his footsteps and predicting where he’s going to turn next. It’s a bit distracting, if she’s being honest. Like—she has to explain how everything is organized, her plans, who she was targeting next, everything about her thought process.
J’onn had told her that he wasn’t signing on to be a sidekick, and she’s trying to respect that, trying to treat him as the partner she didn’t think she would ever have. She hadn’t planned on working with someone, let alone actually telling anybody about the list. The entire five years, it was a mission that belonged solely to her, responsibility whose weight she was resigned to bear alone.
But when she got back, she quickly realized that trying to accomplish anything completely alone would be, at minimum, idiotic. She would need help with alibis, with the tech work that was just slightly out of her range of skills. And what if she was badly hurt? She can’t fail the entire mission just because she gets injured. There must be someone there, to carry on if she falls. She doesn’t doubt her skills, not anymore, but she has a patchwork of scars to prove that, no matter how good you are, someone will always be better. There’s always going to be a stronger player, and to pretend otherwise is naive.
So: J’onn. She had been hesitant at first, perhaps a bit more resistant to treating him like an ally than she should have been, and a part of her was concerned that he would back out. That everything would blow up in her face all because she put her faith in the wrong person. Slowly and steadily, however, he proves her wrong. He has her back in the field, provides input when she strategizes, and even when he disagrees with how she’s going to do something, he supports her anyway.
It’s the little things, too, that help to win her over. Like, J’onn never touches her, not unless he broadcasts the intent loud and clear beforehand, and even then he’ll wait until she gives him permission. He finds out, about two weeks into their partnership, that she hadn’t eaten in four days, and he starts carrying around granola bars in his pocket, claiming that all this extra exercise is making him hungry, and offers her one at least once daily. (He even switches out the brands a few times until he finds out that she’ll actually eat without complaint.) When they spar, (he has skills, but he hasn’t seen actual combat in a while, and so is just a little rusty in some areas, a fact she works hard to rectify), and when she strips off her shirt, he does not stare at her scars.
It’s not that J’onn isn’t curious. When he has a question he will ask it, a change of pace from the usual cautious way everyone else in her life treats her.
For instance— “How do you know Russian?”
She looks up from the police file she’s buried herself in, on Plastino Chemicals’s COO, on the cut corners and the improperly disposed of waste, the lethal fertilizers that destroyed thousands of acres of crops. The dropped charges (purportedly because of lack of evidence, but everyone knows that the COO paid off the right people).
It takes Kara a second to readjust, rearrange her thoughts in a way that can actually process J’onn’s question. She frowns, spins around in her chair so she can face him. “Why?”
J’onn is leaning against the table holding her arrowheads, and she watches as the fabric of his shirt catches the tip of one and drags it out of its organized row. Her eye twitches, and without blinking J’onn straightens up and fixes the arrowhead.
“You speak Russian to yourself.”
She turns back to her file, and decides to not answer his question. “It helps me focus,” she says instead, and shifts the topic back to Plastino.
J’onn doesn’t push it, but he does switch tactics, and lets some of his stoicism fall to the side. He begins to tell her things about himself without being prompted, and she knows that a part of him is hoping she’ll start to do the same. He tells her about Afghanistan and his time in the military, and sometimes even little pieces of his childhood, his mother teaching him French, his father’s church.
(On one particular bad night, when the man they were targeting got away and she’s hunched over in the base, stitches from the knife graze she received stinging, anger burning low in her chest and the snake’s fangs sinking deep into her nerves, he’d pull out a photo from his wallet and showed her his children.
“This one is K’hym,” his finger hovered over the wrinkled photograph, edges rough and just a little bit worse for wear. “And she’s T’ania.”
Kara had swallowed hard, and very carefully does not think of the grave next to her father’s. Does not think of how pale his skin was, how small his hands. The rise and fall of his chest. “They’re beautiful, J’onn.”
He nodded, grief pooling across his face. “Yes, they were.”)
J’onn helps her remember why they’re doing this. To rectify her father’s mistakes, to punish the guilty, yes, but also to help those who have been hurt. To protect the innocent from any further pain.
“And,” J’onn had said, standing in her living room, hand outstretched to shake hers, right before he agreed to join her crusade. “You need someone to remind you of who you are, and not this thing you’re becoming.”
(She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she isn’t becoming anything. She already is.)
The job Cat got her at Catco is mind-numbing. It’s some stupid low level marketing position that really just consists of her answering emails and filling out paperwork. She gets her own office, shoved into the corner of the building that used to belong to some guy named Ed Flaherty, but she’s pretty certain that’s only because Cat was worried about her being around other people.
The socialization aspect of returning home was one of Cat’s sticking points. In all fairness, Kara was supposed to be pretending she was isolated on a deserted island for five years straight with no human interaction except with herself. She knows that Cat’s fears (that she’s going to have a freak out, that she won’t be able to interact normally with other people, that she’s going to hurt someone without meaning to) are justified, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less frustrating to deal with.
(For instance, right at the beginning, when Cat realized she had been ditching J’onn, she had dropped a pamphlet to a psychiatric hospital the next city over in front of her. Neither of them shouted, but their voices were tense enough that Carter stood hovering just in the other room, arms crossed over his chest. That vein in Cat’s head would not stop pulsing. Kara slipped up and called her Cat instead of Mom. By the next morning the pamphlet was gone. They still haven’t talked about it.)
She went to the Catco party two nights later in a slightly underhanded attempt to prove Cat wrong, wearing an old button down she’s fairly certain belonged to her father, and there she met Lena. Lena, who interested her immediately. Lena, who spoke with her hands and developed a little wrinkle right on the bridge of her nose whenever something excited her, whose eyes lit up and smiled like the sun. Lena, who looked her in the eye and asked no invasive questions, didn’t say what was the island like? or shouldn’t you be in therapy? or did you seriously wipe your ass with leaves for five years straight?
Lena, the sister of Luthorcorp CEO Lex Luthor.
And Lex Luthor, who’s on the list.
He’s the very last name, all the way in the back of the book. The ink is smeared slightly from water damage, the pages crinkly and yellowed, but she can still see the period her father had placed, thick and heavy right after his name. It feels final, absolute, and even before she started, even before she decided to begin with Hunt, she thought she should end with Luthor.
In the middle of the list, her father’s handwriting grows messy, slanted on the page, scratched out fast and frantic, like he needed to get it all down, like he was running out of time. By the time the list reaches Lex, the letters are shaped with care, with precision, Luthor’s most of all.
She knows, deeply and intrinsically, that he deserves to be there, perhaps more so than other names in the book, and yet no matter how hard she searches she can’t figure out why. Lex’s entire company is above-board, with even the lowest employee being paid far above minimum wage. He’s stolen no houses, engaged in no illicit arms or drug deals, no toxic waste scandals. The goods Luthorcorp ships in from Kasnia are regularly inspected, and have no reports of anything even being tucked away into the containers. Even his goddamn tax forms are stellar.
She knows she’s missing something. She knows that everyone on the list deserves to be punished. She just can’t figure out why him.
And then there’s Lena. She hadn’t realized who Lena was when they first spoke, nor did she put it together afterwards. It was only when Lena actually introduced herself that she realized who she was. Lena herself isn’t on the list, sure, but she would’ve been only nineteen or twenty when her father was writing it, and was hardly a public figure. And by now? Working at Luthorcorp alongside her brother?
What if she knows what Lex has done? What if she’s working with him? And, even if she’s not, even if she, somehow, knows absolutely nothing, how can she talk with her? How can she look her in the eye knowing full well her brother is going to join the myriad of blood on her hands? She had promised herself that she was going to keep her distance. That she wasn’t going to interact, let any initial interest fall to the wayside until they both eventually forgot about the other.
But then, when she had ducked into Nooch’s to buy one of their extra, extra large black coffees, she’d found Lena sitting at a table all by herself, eyes squeezed close and face tight, looking for all the world like everything was crumbling around her ears. The pain on Lena’s face had smacked her right in the chest, and she stood there for a moment, stuck between the table and the counter and the door.
It was the first time in a very long time that she wanted to reach out. That she felt like she could touch. The snake hissed in her head, and she asked Lena if she was okay before she could change her mind, feeling partially like a hypocrite because God, she hates it when people ask her that question.
They talked. They exchanged numbers, and during the trial, Lena texts her. She thinks about how to respond, if she should respond for a full day. She should probably ghost her. The mission comes first. The mission always comes first but (and this was the part she couldn’t quite get over), what if Lena wasn’t on the list because she actually doesn’t deserve to be there? What if she was innocent?
What if she was a victim?
She texted back, and when Lena messages her again three days later, she responds to that, too. And then a week after that she read a Catco article on the art of smalltalk and so she followed Rule Number Three, and asked her about her work, and then and then and then
They text now. Little snippets throughout the week.
It’s nicer than it probably should be.
Anyway, the Catco job. It works well for an alibi, especially once Kara figures out how to loop the security camera in the hallway, and to show Cat that she can, in fact, interact with other people. (“I’m not really sure sending emails counts as interaction,” Winn says, and Alex hushes him.) If Cat hadn’t given her the job, she probably would’ve found one herself. As it is, the work is ridiculously easy, and her work is usually finished by ten in the morning, at latest.
(It gives her time to work on her other job, the one that matters more.)
(She’s still careful, though. Making sure she’s not using Catco computers for anything, that there isn’t any way anything can be traced back to her, or worse, to Cat.)
Kara leans back in her chair, tapping a fast rhythm onto the shining plastic of the desk. Her computer, a huge, grayish chunky thing, boots up slowly, the loading symbol spinning itself in circles on her screen. She sighs and stands up, stretching out her arms, and walks a slow circle around the room, pausing to peer out the one window with a view of the alleyway behind the building. The computer chimes cheerfully, and right on cue, its fan clumsily boots up and begins blowing air onto the CPU.
Kara sits back down. Opens her inbox. Is immediately bored and closes it again. She sighs and drops her head onto the back of the chair and squeezes her eyes shut.
It’s moments like these that are the hardest. The mundanity of it always throws her, as if just two nights ago she wasn’t washing blood off her hands. As if she hasn’t crossed off twelve names in the span of three months. As if she’s something other than what she is. She sits in her office chair, waiting for an old computer to come to life, and gets that feeling she had back in the hospital again, that cotton room, witnessing her life telescoped down a sun visor, happening to someone else, someone not-her. She can’t tell whether she’s seeing everything behind a wall she built, or was built out of her, whether she is her bones or just watching them move. Whether she is the city or is outside of it.
She still isn’t certain if it was the right choice to come back. To waltz right back into Kara Zorel’s life like she never left, wear her face and her old clothes and smile pretty-like until everyone just accepts and moves on. Maybe she never should have called Cat on that fishermen’s boat. Maybe she should have just stayed dead, crossed off the names on the list hidden in a base where no one could find her, where it wasn’t Kara Zorel and the Hood but just the Hood. She’s a ghost, a shadow haunting someone else’s life, and everybody knows that the dead will always, always stay dead.
(Right before she killed him, Kovar had told her that the island was going to remain her prison forever.)
(She still finds it funny. Sitting on that life-raft, covered in her father’s blood and her own vomit, staring at the fast approaching shore and feeling like she was saved.)
She opens her eyes again, and clicks on her inbox.
Winn texts her two hours later, when all of her Catco work has been completed and she’s switched gears to reading through all of Dr. T.O. Morrow’s work.
(Employed by some government branch hidden behind too many firewalls to find the name of. Was fired for rogue and erratic behavior, and then moved to corporate, where he was hired by Daxam Inc. He was arrested on five separate occasions for illegal arms distribution, but Daxam Inc. got the charges dropped each time.)
(He is on the list.Thirteenth page, fourth name from the top. )
(She debates, briefly, calling Mike and asking what he knows, before deciding against it. She doesn’t want to stir the pot that just started to settle, and anyways, he’d always hated his mother’s company.)
Winn S (11:32): movie night at my place 2nite?
She closes out of one of Morrow’s papers on advanced bioengineering, and texts back a thumbs up. She pretends that there is no hissing in her head.
“Okay,” Winn rocks forward on the couch, hands on his knees, grinning excitedly. “Your choice. Mamma Mia, Avatar, or Twilight.”
Kara snags a handful of popcorn, and pulls her feet up on the couch so she can sit cross-legged. “What’s Twilight?”
He pauses, debates. “Okay, actually, on second thought, maybe you are so much better off not knowing. Mamma Mia it is.”
Kara snorts, and watches as Winn putters around his living room, ensuring his rather elaborate sound system is tuned perfectly.
Winn’s apartment is exactly as she expected it to be. Small, with action figures and paraphernalia lining almost every inch of shelving space and movie posters carefully framed to hang on the walls. His dishware collection consists of exactly two bowls, one plate, three forks and one knife.
(“No spoons?”
Winn’s face had gone red. “I steal the plastic ones from Catco’s break room.”)
A messy pile of mail on the kitchen island, an absolutely abhorrent amount of frozen pizza stuffed into his refrigerator, and Kara felt like she had stepped right back into his college dorm room.
There aren’t any photographs. She noticed it on her first time over here, wandering around his living room while he sat awkwardly on the couch, that in spite of all of his merchandise, all of his crusty pans and bad food, that he had nothing that was truly personal. A few keepsakes from college, maybe, but no photos, nothing that could scream I was here. I knew them. We meant something to each other.
She doesn’t bring it up.
It’s a good movie, Kara will admit, made especially better by Winn’s offkey singing and his insistence of acting alongside the characters. By the end, his voice is just a little worse for wear and the popcorn bowl is empty. He dangles over the arm of the couch and pokes her with his foot.
“Make some more?” He gives her his best puppy-dog eyes, and she snorts again.
“Fine, but only if you promise the next movie won’t be a musical.”
She snags the now-greasy bowl and stands up, walking the couple of feet into his kitchen. His microwave is absolutely filthy, and she’s about to point it out, or maybe just throw some bleach at his head, when Winn says, “So.”
It’s That tone of voice, the one people always use right before they start talking about a hard subject, one that they aren’t quite sure how to properly broach. She’s been hearing it almost constantly lately, from literally everyone (except maybe Lena), and hearing it now makes her mood drop to a subterranean level. She places the bowl down on his counter with slightly more force than necessary, hoping to maybe deter whatever conversation Winn is about to start.
It does not work.
“How have you been? You know. With—everything.” She’s not facing him, preferring instead to rummage through his cupboards to find a package of microwave popcorn, but she can just about see the look on his face, a bad attempt at casualness, complete with fidgety hands and too-tight shoulders.
“Fine,” she responds, and throws the package into the microwave.
She turns to face him, and when she meets his eye he immediately looks away. Something tight squirms in her gut, and she wants this conversation to be over with. She wants to go back to listening to his bad singing. She wants to just forget, just for an evening.
He snags a loose string on the armrest and tugs at it, gaze flickering from the ceiling to a poster on the wall and then to her. “Alex said that you haven’t unpacked anything.”
“I’ve just been busy.” Behind her, the microwave lets out a concerningly loud hum. She decides to try for humor, and schools her face into a semi-smirk. “And are you and Alex gossiping? Seriously?”
The joke falls flat. He tugs at the string with a renewed vengeance. “You know, if you wanted, I could come over and help. Unpack. If you want.”
The microwave beeps shrilly. She turns to face it, carefully opening the door and pulling out the bag. When she speaks, she’s careful to maintain that fake cheeriness, expression sculpted into nonchalance. “It’s fine, Winn. I’ll get around to it eventually.”
She dumps the slightly burnt popcorn into the bowl, and walks back to the couch, sitting down on the opposite end of him. She focuses on the TV, pushes a piece of popcorn into her mouth and ignores the taste of ash.
“It’s just—we’re all,” Winn pauses, and then lets go of his string. He inhales carefully, and places his hand gently on her knee. “I’m worried about you.”
She tugs her legs up to her chest, and lets his hand fall onto the couch. “Don’t be. I’m fine.” Her voice comes out curter than she intends, and she knows that he doesn’t believe her, not for a second.
“Kara—I mean it’s just, with the kidnapping, and then that stupid trial. You don’t have to be—you can—”
She cuts off his stuttering with a scowl. “You were kidnapped, too.”
Winn huffs, and he’s frowning now, frustration bleeding onto his face. They’re verging dangerously close to Fight Territory, and tension bubbles in her throat. Flick flick flick and—
“I wasn’t alone on an island for five years.”
“Winn,” she snaps and glowers at him. “I said I’m fine.” Flick flick flick and it drags its tongue up and up and up
It’s like his face snaps in half, raw and scared, and he leans forward, hands partially outstretched. “You keep saying that, but you’re not. It’s like—” he drags a hand through his hair, exhales heavily. “—It’s like you want to pretend like it never even happened, but Kara—”
“Stop.” I AM
Her mouth is all twisted up, jaw tight, and she’s gripping the armrest so tightly her knuckles are white. She doesn’t want to hurt him, but she knows from experience that whenever they fight she always ends up saying things she doesn’t mean, and he had always forgiven her. Always came crawling back and thinking back on it makes her want to scream because he deserved so much better than her. COMING He deserves so much better, so much more than she will ever be able to give him.
She isn’t worth his forgiveness. She is entitled to nothing but her scars and the blood on her hands. AND THERE IS Winn sits there staring at her, with his big eyes and his love, and anger burns inside her chest, wrapping itself around her throat and squeezing until she can’t breathe, can’t scream, can’t even cry. NOTHING
If he knew what she had done, what she is doing, he would never forgive her. She’d be ripping open the same wound his father gave him, scratching at the sutures until she can add his pain to her collection of suffering, to her mosaic of anguish. YOU CAN DO She’s nothing more than a liar, a ghost masquerading as a human, a pile of bones all trussed up pretty-like with strings. ABOUT IT
“I think I’m going to go.” She stands again, snagging her jacket and yanking it on overtop of her sweater. He shoots to his feet, chasing after her.
“Wait, wait, Kara—” He snags her wrist right as her hand makes contact with the doorknob. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed.” His skin is warm and calloused and a bright hot spark shoots up her arm.
And there he goes again. Always forgiving her. Always treating her far more gently than she deserves.
“It’s fine, Winn.” She forces herself to look at him, eyes meeting his and holding his gaze shakily for a beat. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, and she walks out.
Winn S (9:34): can we talk about 2nite? pls? im rlly sry if i made u uncmfrtble
Winn S (10:46): i shouldn’t have pushed you. i’m sorry
Winn S (11:28): Just text me back to let me know you got home safe, okay? I’m sorry. I’ll see you at work tomorrow. Please text me back.
(She crosses Dr. T. O. Morrow of her list at around two in the morning, and spends the entire rest of the night in the base, firing arrow after arrow until her targets are ripped to shreds and she can no longer feel her fingers.)
“What’s wrong?”
Kara frowns, and hunches further over her whetstone. “Nothing.”
J’onn huffs, and crosses his arms over his chest. The base is dimly lit today, with only a few side lamps turned on, plunging the rest of the room into darkness. A steady drip drip drip of water echoes throughout the factory, the air cool and damp. She makes a mental note to find a dehumidifier. Or several.
“You’ve been in a bad mood for days now,” J’onn says. He watches her carefully, and she schools her face into neutrality. She looks up and meets his eye.
“I’m fine.”
J’onn snorts. “Nice try. Now tell me what’s wrong.”
Kara sets the arrow head down with a slam, and then precisely aligns it with the other forty-seven she sharpened in the last hour. She drags a hand through her hair, pushing it out of her face. She debates just simply telling J’onn no, but, as if he can read her thoughts, his arms tighten across his chest and she knows that he isn’t going to let this one slide.
“Winn and I had a—disagreement.” J’onn waits, gaze focused on her face, and she resists the urge to squirm in her chair. The silence drags on, and right when it hits awkward, she gives in. “He thinks I pretend like none of it ever happened.”
J’onn nods his head, contemplating his answer. (Another reason she likes him. He doesn’t half-ass any of his advice.) He uncrosses his arms and places his hands on the table, leaning on it until the legs creak menacingly. “Have you considered telling him the truth? About what you’ve been doing?”
Kara’s laugh bursts from her lips unexpectedly, bubbling in her mouth and then falling rancid onto the concrete floor. “Absolutely not.”
J’onn raises an eyebrow. “Why not?”
“Because his father is a serial killer,” she says flatly. J’onn blinks, startled, and straightens up. “The Toyman,” she continues. “Winn Schott Senior. He killed six people when we were eleven with a bomb in a stuffed bear.”
Kara watches as he processes the new information, the gears turning in his head. “And you’re concerned that if you tell him what you’ve been doing—”
“He’ll just see me as just like his father.”
“And should he?” J’onn slides his hands into his pockets, mouth set into a thin line, head tilted slightly to the side. “See you as his father?”
She clenches her jaw so tightly her teeth ache. MONSTER MONSTER MONSTER “Schott killed innocent people.” She glares pointedly at J’onn. “Every person that we go after deserves their fate.”
“They deserve it, sure. But what about you, Kara? Are you doing this because you want justice or because you just want an excuse?”
Feral anger burns in her chest, and she can’t tell if it’s because J’onn is wrong or if he is right. She isn’t a good person. God, she’s barely a person at all.
“I’m doing this because nobody else will. Because there’s a group of people who see nothing wrong with stepping on the throats of others to get their way.” She takes a step towards him, and jabs him in the chest with her pointer finger. “I’m doing this because I’m so fucking sick of innocent people being hurt.”
She glares up at him, and he smiles down at her. “And what about that would Winn not understand?”
She goes back to sharpening her arrowheads.
Lena L (1:35): I’m still trying to decide how to format my data. I’m stuck between using ADF software (Amsterdam Density Functional) or VASP software (Vienna Ab initio Simulation Package).
Kara Z (2:58): What’s the difference between them?
“My mother is coming for dinner tonight,” Cat says primly the next morning over breakfast. She’s seated at the kitchen island across from Kara, while Alex leans against the counter and Carter bustles to and from the room, trying to gather all of his school supplies before he has to leave. Alex drops her piece of toast at the exact moment Carter tips his head back and groans. Cat shoots them a hard look. “Everyone is expected to be here.”
“Mom, please,” Carter begs and Kara laughs quietly into her coffee mug. “I’ll do anything. I’ll clean the bathroom for three weeks straight. I’ll write in cursive!”
Cat sips her tea, her posture composed of steel. “No deal.”
Alex beams cheerfully and picks up her toast again. “I’m on call tonight, so I won’t be able to make it.” She shoots a brilliant smile at Carter, who sticks his tongue out in response.
“I called the hospital and got your shift changed to Tuesday.”
Carter laughs loud and bright, and ducks when Alex throws a napkin at his head.
“So she hasn’t changed at all?” Kara asks, and sets down her mug on the island, leaning forward on her elbows, contributing to the conversation for the first time all morning. “At all?”
“She’s so much worse,” Alex grumbles.
“She’s fine,” Cat interrupts and glares at her. “And her entire reason for visiting was to see you, Kara. So I expect you to be on your best behavior.”
She grins again, a bit looser this time. “I think I’d rather go back to the island.”
Cat glowers, and sets her teacup down with just a bit more force than necessary. “It’s going to be fine.”
It is not fine. Cat spends the entire day stressing over what to make for dinner, how the apartment looks, what napkins they are going to use. She makes her assistant cry in her office, and then forces Jim from Accounting to move because his red hair is too ‘distracting.’
(Winn recounts all of this to Kara in her office over his lunch break, sitting on her desk and munching on a sandwich with literally nothing on it but a single, week-old slice of deli turkey.)
(They haven’t talked about the fight. She doesn’t think they’re going to.)
By the time Katherine arrives at five, bustling into the apartment with hardly more than a knock, Cat has stressed herself into near-oblivion. Alex is wearing a nice blouse, Carter a button-down and a tie. Kara is wearing her father’s jacket, and she doesn’t quite care enough to change.
Katherine, as always, looks like she just stepped out of Catco’s very own pages. A sleek black dress, with perfectly manicured nails, carefully styled hair, and heels tall enough to stab a man with. She scans the foyer with a look of disapproval, but when her gaze lands on Kara, fidgeting towards the back, hands in her pockets, it vanishes in a second.
Katherine smiles (tight and carefully formed in order to prevent wrinkles), and walks right past Cat. She snags Kara’s wrist and yanks her hand out of her pocket, lacing their fingers together. “Kara, my dear. I’m so glad you’re okay.” She tugs her into a hug, arms tight and constraining, and Kara resists the urge to knee her in the stomach.
Behind Katherine’s back, Alex rolls her eyes. Cat’s face is flat, carefully composed, and Kara sighs. Whatever. This night might as well happen. She steps back, detaching Katherine’s spider-like arms, and provides her best Polite Smile. “It’s nice to see you again, Katherine.”
“Come, let’s eat.” Katherine spins on her heel and walks straight into the dining room. “I want to hear everything.”
Kara had figured that Katherine was going to pepper her with questions about the five years all night. She’d known it was going to be annoying and invasive, and she half debated texting J’onn to ask him to provide her an out, before throwing out the idea. It was just Katherine, self-centered and irritating, but not harmful. Not at all.
“There was a storm?” Katherine asks about five minutes into dinner, arms folded primly on her lap. She’s seated at the head of the table, Kara on her right and Cat all the way on the other end, and hasn’t touched her meal, the chicken roast with vegetables that Cat spent three hours working on. Her eyes rove over the group, lips twitching in disgust as Carter shoves as much chicken into his mouth as he possibly can, only pausing to take a breath when Alex kicks him under the table. Cat white-knuckles her glass of wine (the second so far) and glares at her mother, who of course doesn’t flinch.
Kara stabs a stalk of broccoli onto her fork, chews slowly. “Mm-hmm.”
“And the boat went down?” Katherine eyes her, and Kara watches cheerfully as annoyance slowly creeps onto her face at her delayed responses.
Kara switches over to the chicken, tries a bite. She meets Katherine’s eye as she swallows as slowly as possible. Across the table, Alex laughs quietly into her plate. “Yup.”
“And you’re the only one that made it to the life-raft?”
(Her father shooting the crewmember, the one who’s name she never learned. Her father raising the gun to his head.
The sound of the gunshot. The smell of the blood.
That goddamn rage.)
“Mother,” Cat warns. She hasn’t touched the meal either, but her wine glass is empty now, her mouth set into a thin line. “I don’t think—”
Kara drags her teeth along her fork, relishing in the awful squeaking noise it makes, and interrupts Cat. “Clearly.”
So maybe she’s still in a bad mood from the Near Fight with Winn. Maybe she’s tired of people walking on eggshells, of holding their hands in front of her mouth like she’s going to stop breathing. Of looking at her like she’s going to disappear. Katherine’s mouth goes tight, and Carter stops eating, mouth greasy, eyes flickering between the two of them. The table is deathly silent, broken only by the sound of the mantel clock the other room over ticking.
Katherine looks away first, and Kara hides her smirk in her glass of water.
“You mustn't show fear,” Anatoly had told her, razor in hand. He drags it along her scalp, and they both watch as her hair falls to the ground. “You must not blink, or else they will rip you to shreds.”
There are no women in the Bratva. Anatoly tells her that, once upon a time, his name was Anastasia.
“If they realize who you are, they will kill you.” His hand slips, and the razor knicks her head. They both watch as she bleeds.
Katherine lasts for ten minutes before she asks another question. “Where did you sleep?”
Kara exhales heavily, and reaches for more vegetables. “On the ground.”
Her cell on the Amazo reeked of rats, of mold, of blood. Her own stitches leaking pus onto the wet ground. Ivo, pressing his hands against the bars. Ivo saying, “Well aren’t you just beautiful.”
She knows she shouldn’t have assumed. She’s spent all the time she’s been back avoiding half-questions, leading statements, concerned glances. Left the boxes in the corner of her room because she couldn’t throw them out. Stands in the doorway of Nooch’s and talks with Lena about quantum mechanics because she can’t bring herself to talk about anything else. Ignores J’onn’s frownful stare, Cat’s pestering, and Alex’s too-tight jaw.
(A couple days after she got back from the island, Carter walked in on her changing. He’d frozen, eyes resting on her scars, scared and startled, and right when he opened his mouth to ask she’d cut him off. Kept him from pushing. Kept him out.)
She’d brought another speared broccoli into her mouth, and rested her arm on the table, half hunched over her plate and trying not to focus on the names in the list.
And Katherine reached over and dropped her hand on her forearm, pressing down through the layers of fabric, through the leather and left-over cologne, and squeezed—
hanging by her wrists in the bowels of the Amazo, everything burning, everything swimming
bleeding so heavily vision twisting in circles shaking and scared
too tired to beg to cry but astra won’t let her sleep won’t let her rest won’t let her out
please god please just let it end please
“Everytime you hold a bow,” Astra hissed, peeling at her skin, melting and bleeding, “I want you to think of her.”
as if she wouldn’t do that already
as if she can’t sleep because all she sees is shado’s brains painting the leaves
“I want you to burn.”
She jerks back hard, yanking her arm out of Katherine’s grip and standing up so fast her chair tips over with a bang—
kneeling on the ground and Ivo holding a gun to her head, wind roaring and she can feel the storm starting to roll in
can feel the weight of the sky, and he’s telling her to choose, saying
“You or her.”
saying
“Your choice.”
saying
“Everybody on this island got here somehow, and everybody on this island will have to leave.”
“Kara?” Alex is half standing up from her chair, eyes wide, and it’s only then that Kara realizes her chest is heaving, breath coming and going so fast it’s like she’s hardly breathing at all.
The chandelier overhead gleams so brightly her head spins, Astra standing behind her, her arm bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. All of it red, all of it shining, and the smell of the meal wafts towards her, seeping into her lungs.
She’s on the Amazo and she’s on the island and she’s standing in the dining room, everyone watching her, everyone holding their—
—breath.
“Sorry.” Her voice is ragged. Her hands won’t stop shaking. “Have to use the bathroom.”
She stumbles from the room, through the hallway, dragging her palms along the wall to keep her balance.
saying
I am coming and there is nothing you can do about it.
The bathroom door slams behind her, and she’s plunged into a world of slippery tile, of hand soap and toilet paper and she stares at her reflection in the mirror, and it’s not her, not her in the mirror, not her pressing her hands to her eyes and crumbling to her knees, not her not her not her—
She needs to—
God, she can’t—
Her phone buzzes, and she jumps out of her skin. On instinct, she yanks it out of her pocket, shaking so hard she nearly drops it, vision blurring, and—
Lena L (7:22): ADF is a program that utilizes density functional theory, a computational quantum mechanic modeling method. It is based on the Hohenburg-Kohn theorem that asserts that the density of any system determines the ground-state properties of the system. VASP, on the other hand, uses Vanderbilt pseudopotentials, which allow for calculations to be performed with the lowest possible cutoff energy for the plane wave basis set.
Kara inhales, and the bathroom steadies around her. The panic seeps out of her system, slow and shaky. The Amazo is at the bottom of the ocean. Ivo is long dead. She is squatting in her step-mother’s bathroom, and she is alive. She is alive.
There is a tentative knock at the door. “Kara?” Alex calls quietly.
She stands up, flushes the toilet for added effect, and runs her hands under the sink’s water. She takes a moment, squeezing the edge of the counter and forcing herself to look into her own eyes.
She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive. She needs to go back to dinner.
She opens the door to Alex’s worried face. Alex steps back, startled, and then immediately scans her up and down, like she’s searching for injuries.
“Are you okay?” Alex asks.
Kara smiles. “Fine!” Her voice comes out easy and cheerful. “Really thought I wasn’t going to make it for a second there.”
Alex doesn’t laugh, and takes a hesitant half-step towards her. “Are you sure?”
Her smile tightens around the edges, and she forces it up further. Try harder. Be better. “I’m okay, Alex. Really.”
The rest of the dinner passes easily. Cat drinks an entire bottle of wine by herself. Katherine doesn’t ask anymore questions, and Alex doesn’t take her eyes off of Kara for the entire rest of the night.
Kara Z (8:13): What’s a plane wave basis set?
Lena L is typing…