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The pod constructed isn't large enough to fit more than a single adult Kryptonian. On the other hand, even in the cramped space, two children could easily slip in.
In other words, Kara and her cousin can be saved, but Krypton will die.
She’s not given much choice in the end.
Soon, she’s wearing the Kryptonian clothes she’s not supposed to wear until she graduates.
Soon, she's given one last kiss, and arms are wrapped around her and Kal-El. Apologies and tears of love pool around her, but it’s hard to focus on anything too specific until “Remember to protect your cousin” escapes her father’s lips. And that is that before the dome shuts and locks in place and they're engulfed in darkness in an instant.
At some point, she thinks she has been yelling. She's not sure. She can't hear very well. The whirr of the pod about to take off drowns out everything else. Her heart thuds, and the incoming headache matches its rhythm.
They hurtle out to space, and with that, Krypton is no longer a home, but a tragedy.
The realization dawns on Kara so suddenly that she isn't sure what to make of it.
The shuttle slides through distant galaxies in silence. Guided by its navigational system, it goes undisturbed, save for small bits of space debris that bounce off with small thuds on the base.
Kara slips in and out of unconsciousness. Sleep comes often, but peacefulness within them is scarce.
Her cousin, Kal-El, also doesn’t fuss much. He lies securely strapped with a red blanket pulled over. He doesn't call out for his parents. Not even once. Because he knew that there would be no answer. Maybe when his breathing slows and his head droops to the side, he dreams of Krypton, where none of this happened in the first place. Someplace in his mind, Kara isn’t feeding him morsels of food in a cramped shuttle, flitting its course to an unknown alien planet.
All along the route, the pod acts as a study shield against any space traffic. Whether it be large chunks of rock and other debris or even some unidentifiable objects, the motion detection would promptly activate to steer clear of its way.
The route is, however, not entirely avoidant of rogue asteroids. The shield isn't able to sustain much of the hits, and the navigation system sputters out. The pod spins and rotates unpredictably as it falls from the route and into the gravitational pull of the nearest planet.
The erratic movement shakes them awake when the invisible pull dips them downwards.
It disconnects from the steady course it was following before.
With a blink, their world is on fire.
She can't unbuckle the seat belt, but she holds his little hands inside of her own. She wants to murmur something comforting like, "Everything is going to be okay" or a brave phrase, firm and stable, like, "Yes, this sacrifice our family made won't go to waste."
But she can't seem to make any noise other than screams.
Kal's cries ring in her ear.
Kara braces herself for impact. She expects to crash into the ground hard, but they dissolve into another surface entirely. The burning has stopped at least. But she has another problem now.
Kara presses a button at the top and forces the pod to open. As soon as a crack of the outside world emerges, the water does too. It quickly fills the pod’s bottom, and Kara is thankfully quick on her feet to hastily unbuckle herself and next her cousin.
She has to act even quicker because every corner of her vision swims in shades of blue and grey.
Kara holds her breath to guide a hand over Kal’s little mouth and nose and drops them into the sea. She hasn’t swum much—yes, physical exercises were required in classes to lead up to the final trials, but she usually avoided the trouble entirely with flimsy excuses.
Now, the burning in her lungs is more than she can take. Maybe she should have tried harder. All she wants now is to stop the pain.
Kara flails her limbs, trying to find her way to break through the surface. The sea swallows her once more. Her vision starts to get spotty again. The air she struggled so hard to contain escapes her as she instead inhales the salty water.
It fills her body and grips her lungs like a balloon waiting to burst.
It’s strange. How everyone talks about how one’s life flashes before their eyes before death. Kara was dying, but nothing appeared—Only the black water swirling in front of her. Instead, her thoughts were consumed with not images, but the horrible reminder that no one else would cry for her.
Not her mother, father, or uncles and aunts and grandparents, or anyone.
Kal was crying. Before they sank into the dark depths of the sea. But not for her.
Suddenly, something activates within her—a surge of power rippling through her veins.
No, she can’t die yet. This sacrifice that her family risked for her will not go in vain.
By some miracle preserved by Rao, they break through the surface. Kara coughs, heaving herself over a wooden dock to catch her breath.
Arms, hands, legs, everything is intact. She checks over Kal as well, who gags out a little water. But that is all.
They’re okay. She’s okay.
The boiling sensation that coursed through her veins simmered down into a simple warmth beneath her skin.
“You thought of this, dad,” she murmurs in awe. “You programmed the pod to direct itself to the water. To keep us safe.”
Everything is quiet then, with only the sound of her brisk breath, until it is not.
A deafening high frequency resounds from the center of Kara's skull. Kal’s eyes widen, the telltale signs of a tantrum. He opens his mouth, and the spinning gets so much worse.
Kara raises her palms to her ears, but it doesn’t do much to muffle it.
The next few moments unfold in a blur.
She can see things, but she doesn’t quite understand why or what's happening. It's all a mess of shapes and colors.
Kara can hear the fear in their hearts and feel joy in their laughs.
Elsewhere, a man takes his final breath far too soon, and a baby girl is born to a couple who waited years in the following half a second.
She lies on the ground, feeling the agony pierce through like a faraway dream. Kara just can’t wake up from it this time.
And even though it hurts, her body is moving too quickly and far too fast to fail her now.
She doesn’t know what to do.
In a desperate escape from everything, she turns her heel into a shady alleyway. Kara catches sight of a man staring at her when she enters.
The man smiles, taking out a white stick with rising smoke and flashing a row of rotten teeth.
A stench of something warm, familiar, and terrible all at once surrounds him. It’s too much. The radiation that surrounds him causes the bile to rise within her.
Too much, it’s too much.
He puts a hand on her shoulder, the weight of it feels like a boulder upon it, and she quickly swats it away.
Then she blinks. Red pours out of him. All the sounds, visuals, and smells stacked up on one another, and they subdue into a loud buzz above everything unfolding in front of her.
She watches his chest heave as he doubles over himself and stares at the warped hand. Kara had caused it somehow. She can't seem to believe just how she managed it, though.
He's screaming, she can tell, crying out in the alien language, but she can't do anything about it. She tries to reach over and somehow readjust the crippled hand, but he flinches away from her.
She knows he'll undoubtedly alert other aliens. She knows she can’t risk it.
She quickly flees from the scene into another shady street before anyone catches her.
But there was so much blood back there. Blood that she caused. Kara was even sure that there was some bone peeking out from his skin because of the way the hand was—oh, Rao, she was going to throw up.
Yeah, that’s right. She just needs to sit down for a little. Then she can get back on her feet again.
Kara just needs to do this one thing.
Then everything will be fine. Everything will be okay again if she can breathe normally.
But the air on this planet feels more strained. Not like Krypton. Her mind spins, trying to uncover why that could be.
She could breathe fine on Krypton. Before, everything polluted everything, she means. But here it was harder somehow.
Her heart thuds in her chest.
This wasn’t Krypton. But could the pollution have followed her? Maybe her and Kal’s one and only chance was contaminated now.
She crawls on the ground, shapes blurry and dark at first, but enough to make out where he needed to go.
A sound breaks through the anguished hum. It’s a voice.
Kara freezes, the words splintering into her mind. She considers throwing a punch or a kick at the alien. But her limbs just feel so heavy at that moment. Hands move around her, and she slumps under his own weight while she's unable to keepher balance.
The dizziness returns. She grips Kal closer to her chest but doesn’t attempt much else. Not like she can do much else, anyway. The hold around her feels nice. Steady.
She looks to the sky, and the wrong sun shines down on her.
And it’s kind of funny, she thinks hazily. After everything, this is what finally makes her cry.
The light fades from Kara.
She wakes up in stages. The migraine hits her before she can even open her eyes.
A crack through the door allows her to look out of the room and allows the noises to flow in. But the lights above don’t blind her as they should have, and the volume was lowered.
Machines rang constantly, a cacophony of sound that filled the bustling room with an undercurrent of anxious urgency. Aliens in matching blue uniforms moved in and out, barely glancing up from their paperwork as they handled the machine’s calls after another.
It doesn’t take long for footsteps to draw closer from the hallway.
“She say where she’s from?” one voice asks.
Another tuts. “She fainted when she was brought into the station. She’s been sleeping pretty deep for a few hours now, but–”
A woman dressed in blue rounded the corner. She keeps the door open for another, much older one to enter beside her before shutting it. Kara promptly shuts her eyelids and slows her breathing before anyone can notice she’s awake.
The voice of the blue woman continues. “–I’ve tried to look for any form of identification. Nada. I think she’s about fifteen. Maybe younger.” She sighs. “My best guess is that she’s an escapee from some kind of cult because of the clothes. Even that is a stretch, though.”
Their mouths flap. Open and shut. Back and forth. Nothing makes sense.
Kara peeks through hooded eyes anyway.
The other nods, understood. “Mmm. You said she had another unidentified child with her?”
“Probably a brother or a son because of the way she was protecting him. But no ID, no records, no guardian contact… not even any missing person reports that match their descriptions. We've got the Doe duo until we can open a case.”
The woman closest to Kara—the older one—nods again. “Well, I guess it's a waiting game now. Poor thing…must be scared out of her mind.”
The woman's hand lingers toward Kara's face.
It’s an attack; her mind surges.
Her body tenses, and Kara’s eyes fly open. Before she can fully realize what she's doing, she is dialing her fist back and punching the air. For a horrifying moment, she believes that disgusting crack of bone will come back.
That crack never comes.
Instead, the woman violently jerks her hand back. No blood rushes out of her.
They both stare at her, frozen in shock.
Woman in blue is the first to break it, hands out as if to say she isn’t a threat.
“Hey, calm down, it’s okay, sweetie. It’s alright…” The woman in blue gently speaks when she unfreezes.
Kara keeps shaking her head. She doesn’t understand. She tightens her jaw; she doesn’t understand anything that’s going on.
She wants to scream, ‘Where am I? Kal, do you know that my sole mission is to protect him? So where's Kal? Why is this all happening to me?’
Obviously, nobody comes to answer her racing thoughts.
Soft and careful, the older woman kneels in front of Kara. She says something long that’s like a big jumble of everything and nothing all at once.
Kara doesn’t respond, but she doesn’t run either.
The lady repeats herself.
Kara sighs. Her confused face won’t make it clear that she can’t understand. She then says, “I don’t know what’s happening here, but I don’t speak your language.”
The sharp and foreign Kryptonese gets their attention.
The lady bites her lip. She looks into Kara’s eyes like she's calculating the next move to make. Then she points at herself, mouthing a word. Lin. Oh, a name, she thinks. Then, she moves her finger to point back at Kara, raising an inquisitive eyebrow.
Kara lowers her knuckles, but her shoulders keep tense. Going out on a limb, she copies the gesture and says her own.
The lady smiles at that, nodding understandably before reaching in a coat pocket to write on a notepad. Their written script looks even stranger than the spoken.
She’s not done. Her pen moves below the writing, and Kara sees her creating much broader shapes. She turns the notepad for Kara to look at.
A loose drawing of a baby. Its signature dark curl is doodled.
“Kal.” She answers.
The lady points at the picture, smiles, and puts her palms together to rest her head on. Sleeping. Kal is sleeping somewhere.
Kara slowly nods.
The lady turns to face the woman in blue again, who stares between them with wide eyes. “I need emergency placement. Yeah. Best not to separate them, but have adults who can look after a baby. They’ll both need new identities for now. Birth estimate, temporary Social Security number. We’ll get the schooling later.”
She looks back to smile again. Kara may not understand their language, but the kindness is familiar, at least.
She’s reunited with Kal soon enough. He’s clean. He’s fed. And for the first time in a long time, Kara feels a sliver of hope. They've also put him in new clothes with a hood that makes his head look big and round. He looks satisfied enough.
She hopes to go through a similar clean-up soon.
Before long, the woman in blue shuffles Kara, Kal, and the lady all into a grounded aircar with wheels. The lady tries to make conversation, but the attempt dies out as it is one-sided.
Kara opts to look out the window. She rests her chin on her palm. She can't seem much outside even if she squints. The yellow Rao had set, and the streets were washed over in shadows.
Some people wandered in the streets, even though they weren't sporting the same clothes as she had seen earlier. This time,
It’s all a strangely uncanny valley. They look like her, but they’re decidedly…not.
At least she can’t hear their every breath anymore.
She wonders why her inhuman strength is almost all but gone. She didn't feel any difference. No deep simmering beneath her, no desire to pull out that super strength…Nothing.
There is still a slight humming in her ear. But it is hard to differentiate between pure anxiety and actual powers. Surprisingly.
They park in front of a small house after a few minutes on the road. The lights are on the bottom floor, and a couple, a man and a woman, stand in the gap of the front door.
The couple gives Kara a fleeting smile before they turn their attention to the nice woman who brought them there.
She soon lies on a bed with Kal in the corner, already dozing off. Their voices seep through the floorboards, and Kara wants nothing more than to put her ear against it and understand it.
She can’t shake the memories of the morning out of her head.
Out of pure curiosity, she takes the bedpost and inflicts just enough force.
The iron bends to her will.
Week one.
Kara has time to adjust to their new home.
She’s learned a new word since arrival: Foster Care. It was a system humans created for people like her with no home to find some sanctuary until they can leave and find a more permanent place.
It’s a simple house. Two stories and housed with a variety of kids like her, all different ages.
Most of them appear to be younger than Kara, except one other girl, Car-Ol, who was supposed to be her roommate.
But as soon as she noticed that Kara didn’t understand a word she was saying, she instantly gave up on her and complained enough to get herself moved.
Even though Kara never said a single word to her, Car-Ol shot her nervous, narrow-eyed glances each time they ate downstairs at the table. Somehow, they always ended up seated parallel to each other, so Kara was always the direct target of her shifty stares.
Others were slightly better than Car-Ol.
They don’t allow her to lock the door, though she can keep it shut as long as she wants, and no one will interrupt unless it’s for food.
Kal carries around a little stuffed dog filled with the uncooked food she snagged from the kitchen. Rice, she thinks it’s called, if her memory serves her correctly.
Somehow, in that baby mind of his, Kal still remembers. “Krip-to,” he coos as he pats the plush’s head.
Kara smiles. “Yes, Krypto.” She nods.
It makes her wonder just how much he remembers. Does he remember their celebrations–their laughter and their joy when once upon a time were together as a family? Or was everything distorted by the pain?
He giggles and wags the dog around by the ear. “Krip-to!” he adamantly says in that sloppy Kryptonese accent of his.
She blinks. He’s a baby, Kara, she thinks. Obviously, he doesn't remember anything.
That was probably for the best.
Week two. The dates are checked off in her head.
“Kal,” Kara tries, after what seems like the millionth attempt, to get him to turn around. “Kal, please.” She feels her patience thinning.
Kara sits on the low bed that squeaks every once in a while when she shifts her weight. Kal is instead of the ground, stationed at a colorful table where he draws picture after picture.
She glances at the door. It's locked. With some hesitance, she pushes her hands back–almost like she's about to step off the bed normally, before the gravity flips and she's floating.
Yet another glorious gift bestowed upon Kara for Rao knows what reason. Though she suspects it has something to do with Kryptonian biology. The answer as to why it appears it doesn't affect Kal it lost to her.
He grunts when she flies over and remains scribbling with a green crayon. She peeks over his shoulder. Rao knows what he is drawing. And so intently at that. But all his attention remains on the random squiggles and shapes.
She sighs and tries to plaster on a fake smile for him. “Kaaal. Kal-El, don't you wanna see what your big cousin Kara drew you?” She pokes his chubby cheek with her finger. He swats away at it with a disgruntled yell.
She's almost ready to go off on a baby. Almost.
Kara doesn't understand. Kal used to listen to her all the time when they were back on Krypton. Sure, he fussed from time to time, but it was just how babies were.
It was even a joke within their family how easily she could get him to calm down and listen to her. That's why she was usually the designated babysitter.
But they weren't on Krypton, were they?
This wasn't a simple babysitting job she had to do for a few hours while the adults had a night out. It was just them now.
She looks down at her drawing, then back up at Kal, who doesn't have a care in the world, and crumples up the paper.
The ball lands in the far corner of the room by the bed. A sliver of the House of El emblem peeks out from it.
She moves back to the abandoned homework that she has to do to learn the aliens’ language.
Her alarm goes off on early Monday mornings. The start of Month Three.
She gets up.
She checks on Kal.
She brushes her hair.
She goes downstairs.
She eats at the table with Carol. No one talks.
She picks up her backpack.
It’s raining.
She tucks a red umbrella under her arm.
Carol leaves a gap between her and Kara at the stop.
The awkward silence is made up for by the rain. It helps cool her annoyance off.
The raindrops pelt the windows as Kara climbs on right behind Carol. The girl almost runs from Kara and dives right into a seat in the back, where she giggles and whispers something that’s surely about her.
Kara doesn’t use super-hearing. She tries to convince herself it’s because she doesn’t care enough and not because she doesn’t have any way to hide her tears.
The yellow bus is full, even though it shouldn’t be. From her understanding of the way school transportation worked, everyone was supposed to share it equally.
And yet, each row of seats was either taken by kids lounging on them with their feet up or using their backpacks to occupy them.
She steadily walks down the narrow lane. A boy with swoopy hair covering his eyes sprawls over the seat. He doesn’t notice her at first, but then raises an eyebrow in defense. Don’t get angry.
She quickly moves down the next row.
Another guy is nice enough to move his backpack a bit and let her perch on the seat.
She smiles.
He nods.
She holds her backpack close.
He looks out the window.
It rains harder and doesn't stop, even after the final bell rings and the entire bus process restarts until they reach the only semblance of a home she has.
Had Kal woken up from his nap yet?
A little over a year.
There are often times when Kara wants to slam her head into a brick wall just to see what will happen. Just to see if her blood still runs red, or if she'll finally get the rest she needs just for five minutes. Or maybe, just maybe, it'll give her the easy way out, and all her guilt will fade away as she joins Krypton.
But she knows she can't do that. Everything crumbles around her.
When she hears the words, "...Callum will be adopted soon..." She just wants to say to hell with it for once.
It’s a new social worker. She smacks her lips much too much and constantly offers bad-tasting candy that feels wrong in her mouth. She refuses it each time the worker offers, but always has to pocket them eventually.
Right now, Kara feels around in her jacket; she’s sitting at around five of them. Gross.
"They live a little up north. Very nice and peaceful neighborhood, I must say. Their garden is just a beauty, and Callum will fit in nicely at–"
"–Kal." Kara finally looks up.
"Excuse me?"
"Kal, not ‘Kallum’. That's his, um, name. Kal."
The woman looks at her for an uncomfortable moment before she blinks, smacks her lips, and sighs in that exact order. "Right, of course."
Adoption was one of the first English words she had ever heard once she arrived. At first, she almost convinced herself that it was some god the aliens venerated. But she soon became aware of the process that all the kids in the foster home were supposed to go through.
At least, that’s what she thought. Until now.
"Not me?" she asks.
The woman almost looks sad. It’s more of the expression you give to a dog you're about to put down, because, hey, at least it won't suffer any longer now. "Kal. Not Kara," she finally says.
She reaches into her cardigan’s pocket and hands her a candy.
Kara’s at six now.
She’s too old. That's the reason they later spit out for the nice family not wanting to adopt both Kal and Kara.
They go through a whole process of sugarcoating the whole thing. Talking about how Kal will have a better life. Gushing over how much love this other family will give him.
That night, she's barely able to put Kal to sleep. It's almost as if he senses that something is wrong. But when she rocks him enough in her arms, his head finally slumps as she is able to let out a sigh of relief.
Kal can't go; he can't leave her. She envisions her future where Kal is gone from her side and decides to push it away before the pit in her stomach grows larger.
Kara is not a mother. She holds Kal’s sleeping body closer to hers. But as long as she's standing on two feet, she has to be.
That's why she can't lose him. Not like this–he’s so small still. He’s definitely grown larger and more pudgy since they first landed on this alien planet, but he's just a baby who's still figuring out how fragile he is. Kara is still figuring out just how fragile he is.
They can't do this to them. Not now, and not ever.
The itch to keep moving, to do something, anything, burns hot. Staying put feels like a betrayal of the promise to her family. She's lying here, lying on a sinking mattress, while allowing her mission to slip through her fingers. That is Kara's responsibility.
So she runs.
Or more accurately speaking, she flies.
A thing she discovered shortly after arriving on this planet was the emergence of new supernatural abilities. Slowly but surely, she’s gotten a handle on secretly testing out just how large the limits were.
Kara flies until she’s long past the sea of cars and cities altogether. She enters plains, and grazing animals turn their heads to the sky. She travels over Great Lakes.
Night and day, then back to night again.
This is the longest she has ever used her powers–and her body is starting to catch up to the realization. Below, she scouts for a safe place to land.
A little farm catches her eye.
Even if someone were to peer their head into the barn, nobody would see them behind the yellow grass. She forgot the name of it. The thing that horses and cows, and other livestock ate or slept in.
She uses a quarter of her strength to embed a hole in it. She places Kal inside and watches to see if he’d be able to get out. He rolls around but relents when sleepiness takes over.
It takes a while for her to join him. She still worries that someone will find them and chase them out with horrifying weapons. But her worries slip away when sleep eventually comes for her as well.
Heavy eyelids and legs buzzing from flying the night before. The sweet smell of grass is the first thing that hits her.
She doesn’t want to move just yet, so she slowly opens her eyes instead.
It's a beautiful summers morning bathed in golden light. It's not as pretty as the season is in Krypton. But it's nice nonetheless, in its own way.
No crying. No wailing. It takes an alarmingly long few minutes to realize that Kal’s missing.
She first looks around every nook and cranny in the strange, wide house she forgot the name of as several other frantic thoughts race through her head.
She scans the forest, and her mind immediately jumps straight to the first worst-case scenario: what if a beast took him?
When she finds no sign of her baby cousin on the first look over, the second thing that Kara’s mind goes to is, what if a person found him?
Earth animals were predictable. She researched them from the few books she could get her hands on in the Foster Home. They even had one that produced mimicry sounds–which Kal begged to play with every day–so she was practically an expert in their autonomy.
With animals, they killed or were killed. Kara either had hope that Kal was alright, or she didn't.
But with people, that was an entirely different story. She used to observe all kinds of people who came in and out of the foster homes. As much as they were interesting, they were unpredictable–even downright dangerous at times.
As much as they can cut, heal, and thrive, they could bleed, hurt, and die.
Even though Kara has powers bestowed by the yellow Rao, she wasn't sure if that mercy extended to Kal. In a sense, as much as Kal was a Kryptonian, here, he was as human as everyone else.
If anything, that's what scares her the most.
She hears a distant baby's cry, and she whips her head around.
There, in the distance, stands a figure holding what could only possibly be a baby. Kal. She can't believe she didn't check near the actual property.
Kara's heart almost flips as she flies full force towards them.
She descends from above, not caring if they can see that she can fly, not caring if they realize she is unlike their kind.
She seeks out Kal's face first to make sure that he's not hurt in any way. Thankfully, he's laughing in the lady's arms and looks up at Kara with an even brighter smile.
Safe, she breathes. He’s safe for now.
The woman gasps when she looks up and mutters a sentence with a foreign word she’s never heard before.
She has to find out what angel means later.
As soon as her feet touch the ground, she takes whatever dreamy haze the woman is in to her advantage to swipe Kal out of her hands.
She backs up, foot back, shoulders tense, arms firmly around her baby. She's ready to fight if she has to. She's ready to kill if she has to.
Her heart thuds loudly within her chest.
'Oh, please, Rao. Please don't make me kill if I have to.'
But the woman gently smiles and keeps looking at Kara like she's a precious stone. Or maybe she's sizing her up to eat her. Kara never really found out whether humans were capable of cannibalizing or not.
Kal keeps trying to wiggle out of her arms.
He slips through her hands, and Kara struggles not to apply too much of her strength to keep him in place.
He starts wailing and squirming, all the while Kara tries to keep him from falling.
The woman takes a step forward, and for a second, Kara thinks about flying away. It wouldn’t be a good idea, though, as Kal would tumble right out of her hands.
The woman comes closer again, and an itchy burning sensation appears around her eyes. But the woman simply keeps eye contact with her. Kal reaches for her.
Kara’s eyes remain wide and her body tense, ready to use her powers at any moment.
The woman simply places gentle hands on Kal and nods at Kara with a smile. Kal laughs and pulls the woman closer to him.
Kara’s arms are free for the first time in a while.
Her name is Martha, she soon discovers. The woman leads her into her home and lets her sit at a small table in the kitchen while she rocks and shushes Kal.
She’s good with him and talks a lot of “pie”.
It quickly becomes Kara’s new favorite Earth food after some hesitation.
While she eats, Martha explains that she stumbled out of bed when she heard a baby crawling around her porch steps.
Stupid. Kara was too deep in her sleep to realize he had escaped.
Kara tries to thank her, but she just brushes it off, saying that it was the least she could do.
And she keeps looking at Kara with this…this expression, like a new light has entered her eyes. Her hair is tied in a round bun with greying streaks. Her smile reveals lines around her cheeks.
It all makes Kara uncomfortable for some reason.
She’s not supposed to be here. Kara is not allowed to rely anymore on humans because, inevitably, they’ll all fail her in the end when they realize who…what she is.
The craziest thing about this entire situation was, though, that the woman had already seen her use her powers. It was obvious that they weren’t one of them, and yet, she kept looking at her like she had hung the stars themselves.
No, she just crashed right through them.
Her husband returns home soon after. Martha leads her out where he’s working next to a red machine. Jonathan, she learns his name when Martha tries to reason with him to let them stay.
Kara stands as still as a stone.
Jonathan looks at Kara with a face of remorse.
Miracle. Blessing. Angels. That word again, she silently beats herself up for not remembering what it meant again.
She hoped that it convinced him enough to let her stay at least for a little while. They could even let them go without a word, and she’d still be grateful.
They don’t argue or raise their voices with each other. Kara suspects that these people have too much respect for one another. It reminds her of her own parents.
They do, however, maintain eye contact while their stubbornness clashes.
She looks over at his red machine with unusual smoke rising from it. Earth technology doesn’t seem at all on par with Kryptonian technology, but she still recognizes the signs of broken machines when her father worked on his inventions.
Jonathan shakes his head at something Martha said and then attempts to push his machine down the path. It doesn’t budge. He forces himself to enter the conversation with Martha again.
Kara keeps staring at the tractor. Something pulsates in her veins, and she has the sudden impulse to reach over and grab it. So she does. She focuses on that feeling while the couple talks.
Kara takes a single arm and carries it over her head. She looks around her and decides to place it a little off the path just to keep it away for now. She can always help him move it later.
They both stare when she turns.
Jonathan nervously chuckles. He stares at Kara for a moment like he can’t believe his eyes before he looks back at Martha, his forehead creasing, and nods.
Living with the Kents is…nice.
Unlike the Foster Home, where several people were going in and out, constantly surrounding Kara like an annoying bug she can’t slap away, here in Smallville (with a capital S for small), it was nice. Simple.
Jonathan handles most of the farm work. Kara expects him to raise his eyebrows and banish her away, screaming things like, alien or monster when she first does it.
But he just hums and says something about this year’s harvest being dealt with sooner.
Martha does her own thing in her sewing corner.
She's seen Martha sew up all kinds of things. She's seen the things that the woman could do with a few fabrics and a thread. That's why she holds out hope that she can help Kara.
“Help,” she sheepishly says as she pushes open the door to Martha’s room, where she is sitting sewing up something. Undoubtedly another hole in Jona-thon’s pants.
Martha raises an eyebrow and looks over Kara. “What's wrong, sweetie? Are you hurt?”
Kara shakes her head, realizing that her request was much too vague. She bites her lip, searching for the correct word to use. Martha sits, patiently waiting for Kara to continue with a worrisome expression. A kind face like that doesn't deserve to be worried.
Kara holds out the blue Kryptonian suit that didn't quite fit anymore. She was not quite grown, but taller–less girlish than before. "Fix," she says, and she almost breaks out into a goofy smile upon finding the correct word. "Please," Kara also quickly remembers to add.
Martha gets to work. Kara attempts not to hover.
She falls asleep after some time, and when she wakes up, Martha is gone, replaced by a blue and red costume. She pulls off the blanket and walks over to the desk.
The House of El emblem stares back at her. Martha’s handiwork shifted a little from the drawing, warping the symbol into more of an ‘S’ shape. But hope it reads. That stays the same.
It’s perfect.
Martha eventually has to enroll her in school again.
She can’t say that she missed it. The teenagers still don’t know how to bathe properly, and bullies nitpick at every insecurity. It’s like they have a sixth sense for sniffing out words that’ll hurt the most.
Smallville High is definitely an upgrade from her last school, though.
There’s nicer people who don’t argue when they’re paired up with her or make fun of the way her Kryptonian accent slips out with some words.
They also have more classes that she’s actually interested in. She can’t take them yet because of some complications with the required ESL classes—but soon, Martha is hopeful that she’ll learn enough to get out of them.
When she gets home from school, the silence is the first thing she notices. She expects the clatter of dishes being washed and Jonathan’s Western to be playing at full volume on the box. But it’s Wednesday, she realizes, as she heads over to the fridge.
Wednesdays meant the Kents were out grocery shopping and would usually run a few hours late getting home. Kal was having a playdate, so that means she has the entire house to herself before then.
She makes her way upstairs and shrugs off her red backpack as the door to her room shuts behind her. She could technically change; jeans, a shirt, and a red flannel on top were alright until she had to spend eight hours in the outfit. She ultimately decides to quickly finish up her homework and then get comfortable.
A few minutes pass, and only a few things reach her ears from the desk: the shuffle of chickens clucking below, cows grazing, and the whisper of wind kissing the long grass between their farm and the mill’s panels. She still has to focus carefully to pinpoint stuff or keep from getting overwhelmed. But it’s manageable. Homework was both a way to fit in and to train it.
ESL homework was still the worst either way.
Even though she was advancing on to the next class, and eventually going to switch over to normal classes, teachers still insisted on giving out useless work. Today’s about culture.
She frowns, looking down at the paper describing the assignment. There were two choices: either write a four-paragraph essay or draw a detailed picture showcasing the culture and then present it to the front of the class. Neither sounded fun.
She technically could opt out of it, maybe convince the teacher for an alternate assignment. She avoided enough suspicion from teachers when Martha invented a story of a distant country they adopted her from.
This assignment could be a risk, though. It would be best to trash it entirely; take the F and walk out without being discovered as an alien. Kara leans back in her chair as she thinks harder about it. But that would upset Martha, who always pushed Kara to the best of her abilities.
She scowls. She can’t focus if she’s conflicted.
Her eyes shift over to the closet instead. Nobody was going to be back for another twenty minutes…
Her foot slides into the boots seamlessly. The cape falls behind her back like a waterfall. It takes a while for her to straighten the skirt from its wrinkles.
Back on Krypton, putting this on would mean that she was entering the first step into adulthood.
On Krypton, this would mean a big family gathering of all her favourite foods and compliments flooding around her.
But she wasn’t on Krypton, was she?
Still, as she stares at the mirror, she can’t help but feel that this is what she’s supposed to look like.
However, something is missing to complete the ensemble. From a shoebox in the corner, she takes out the headband she hadn’t worn since the shuttle crash. It wraps around her head like the missing piece of a greater image.
She smiles.
The moment is cut short by a scream.
It pangs in her head in a way that hasn’t happened since the time she landed on Earth. She’s gotten better at controlling the super-hearing, but something about this voice specifically reaches out to her above all.
That gets Kara’s attention.
She bursts through the ceiling in a blink, allowing the cry to guide her.
It doesn’t take long before the cry isn’t needed anymore.
A grey smog engulfs the surrounding area, shrouding the sky in a toxic cloud. A crowd of people surrounded the source of it all, and she had to squint to see what exactly it was.
A large house. Bursting with reds. Wood burning and panels falling.
The flame spreads to two other houses in a great eruption; however, the biggest was billowing through the roof of the one in front of her.
People stand. Clenching their jaws. Staring at the ruins. Holding their families close. Crying. Wailing. Speaking into their phones at all sorts of volumes.
But no one actually does anything.
With a shaky breath, she knows what to do. Kara enters the building.
Inside, the burnt ceiling sags under its own weight, revealing a nest of burnt wires above. It looks like something she could only witness behind the glass of a television screen.
But what really triggers her is the smell—burnt plastic and burnt rubber—everything swarming in a muddle of chaos. The toxicity of smoke is multitudes stronger than she could ever imagine, and it clings to every part of her body.
Flames won’t kill her, but they prick at her skin as they turn pink.
The same voice aches in her mind once more. Help! She hears it shout in between coughs.
It’s a game of hot and cold. Mostly hot. But it’s obvious that she’s closer to the source— a man somewhere on the second story.
Someone help me!
The stairs are blocked by singed wood and broken furniture. She could easily break through the wall, and the flames wouldn’t even hurt her. But her hearing is out of whack because of the chaos inside and out of the house. It would be dangerous to break through the floors and accidentally hit someone since she’s virtually blind to their location.
"Please, my wife," he coughs, "my wife…and my kid—oh my god, my son is still in there."
She turns and dives into the uncontrollable heat again. In the time when she was outside, the house had deteriorated even more from the interior.
The hallway is a furnace. It’s so hot to the point that it even starts making her sick. Especially with all the black smoke crowding the way.
Kara jumps when something topples, slamming to the floor. A picture frame of the family. Together. Facial expressions melting off in a gooey, colorful mess.
She keeps moving.
As she walks, she pushes out energy from between her lips. It hurts her teeth, but it gets the job done. A layer of frost subdues the flames enough that she can navigate to a door at the end of the hallway.
The front door won’t budge with her usual amount of restrained strength. She clenches the knob, channeling strength into it. But it only pops out of the door.
There’s crying inside. And screaming. Lots of screaming
It’s hot. Kara sweats.
No time.
With much more power, punches through the hardwood. She bursts through the smoke like a blade—clearing the path toward a woman crouched over a small child covered in smoke. The little boy is under her, and her clothes are black and beaten from being a shield.
They’re scared of her at first. But there’s no time to be scared of a chance for hope. Kara holds out her hand, and the woman comes to the same realization she has. So she takes it in a heartbeat, her son attached to her hip.
The ceiling above them heaves, and chunks of wood fall from the sky. Kara crashes through the window of the room, and, making sure that the shards don’t touch them, flies them outside.
“My god…” The woman’s light eyes reflect the red flames when she looks back at what once was her home.
Kara knows that feeling all too well.
There's still the spiraling flames to deal with. If Kara doesn't act fast, then they will continue to spread across the entire neighborhood. Leaving only burnt remnants of people's homes. She won't allow that.
Swallowing a deep breath of cold night air, she breathes it out on the houses.
The orange and reds are replaced by a cool blue as the sound of crackling freezes. There are gasps below and crying. But everyone is safe, she is sure of it.
She touches ground again, and in an instant, she’s surrounded. There’s a lot of crying. Many handshakes and thank yous and other choked-out words.
Most of all, one question remained on their lips. Who was she?
Kara couldn’t find the right answer. A bright light flashed in her face.
Then, like a trigger, more flashes of cameras and clicks of phones begin.
She suddenly feels too small in her bright blue and red costume.
She disappears in a blink.
When Kara finally reaches the farm again, she cringes before sliding back into her bedroom.
Jonathan was going to need a new roof.
When the Kents come home, it’s hard to come up with a good explanation as to why there’s a glaring hole in her bedroom ceiling. But it’s fairly easy to receive forgiveness and a promise to make up for it with chores.
For now, she’ll just have to sleep with a tarp overhead.
She believes that she’s going to get away with it. They’re all lounging around the television, and Kal plays with his coloring supplies under her feet. Kara is about to excuse herself to finish up her homework. Martha smiles, and Jonathan nods a good night.
A blurry image of her appears in the box.
“Mystery Super-Girl Appears in Metropolis!”
Everyone’s face snaps to Kara.
“I’m sorry,” she says before they have the chance to say anything.
Martha ushered Kal up to put him down in his room. Jonathan waits at the round dinner table for Martha to pull out a chair beside her husband.
“We know,” Jonathan responds, seated across from her. “And we ain't mad at you.”
Kara hangs her head in shame, knuckles flat on her lap. “I’m still sorry.”
It’s Martha’s turn to speak now. “Honey, um, we're,” she glances back at Jonathan for support. “We’re just…worried. I want to understand everything that happened so we can figure things out. Together.”
Kara nods. Her stomach churns despite this.
“Martha, I beg, let me—“
“Ma, hun,” she interjects. “Everyone who lives and eats under my roof can call me ma.”
“Not for long.”
“What?”
“I know I’ve made a mistake. I-I accept the punishment. But please give me a chance to gather everything so I can leave—“
Martha worldlessly gapes at her. “Kara, honey, where did you even get that idea?” She shakes her head. “The TV said that you saved those people. Is that true?”
Kara doesn’t say anything but nods.
“When you and your cousin popped into our world, quite literally sent from the skies, our wish was granted. Two angels were delivered to us that day. I don’t see why you have to be punished for using powers that were gifted to you to help others. If anything, you should be rewarded. You know what, I’ve been meaning to make that apple pie you really like. Do you want that?” She’s hurrying to the kitchen with that determined look on her face before Kara can respond.
After Kara’s done explaining everything over warm pie, something wet lands in her hands.
She cries until there’s no more tragedies left to cry over. The fight took a lot out of her. She’s warm, and she’s tire,d and she just wants to let her head thud on a pillow.
Pa sees that she’s barely keeping her eyes open and picks her up in his arms. She doesn’t have it in her to argue that she can get up the stairs just fine.
Kara gets herself comfortable under the sheets. Ma’s hands push the blanket around under her neck. She then moves under to start from her feet up, gingerly tucking her body.
The mattress shifts weight as Ma sits down next to her. She leans forward and presses her lips to Kara’s forehead. The sweetness of her breath washes over her.
Kara can’t imagine smelling good like her. She hasn’t taken a shower since the fight. She’s sure she’s filthy and dirty, and the smell of sweat lingers around her.
None of that seems to matter to Ma. She strokes her blonde hair so carefully, and the touch makes Kara want to cry all over again.
“Thank you, Ma,” she whispers into the darkness as Ma pulls away. Kara turns to the next figure. “Thank you, Pa.”
Thank you for making it feel like home again.
Being Supergirl can’t be described as any word short of it being pretty fucking super.
Years pass. Kara grows stronger, taller, and able to take on foes as tall as skyscrapers. Wherever she turns her head, there is always someone calling for Supergirl, the red and blue symbol of hope.
As she ages, the people around her do as well.
Pa’s temple wiggles at the slightest emotion. Ma’s back cracks when she hunches over the oven.
They both hesitate less to ask Kara to handle some more heavy-duty work.
Pa would usually put up a fight about carrying the hay. Now, he slightly shakes his head and chuckles when Kara effortlessly lifts it with a single hand over her head.
But Kal is the one who goes through the biggest change. He becomes taller, the chubbiness in his cheeks replaced by a lean stature, and his hair flops like a mess of curls. At some point, some kind of irritation developed in his eyes, and he had to get glasses. They frame his face in a way that makes him look like an entirely different person. But Kara knows it’s still Kal.
Good ol’ Kal-El the Kryptonian farmer boy. He’s turning eighteen soon, and Ma always has to remind him not to slouch and lift his head high so others can see how beautiful her boy is.
This would be followed by an embarrassed, Ma! From him and how not to see those kinds of things in front of Lana.
He’s never angry, though. Not really.
Despite all the changes, Kara always finds herself returning to the Kent farm.
Mostly for the family…sometimes for assisting with farm work… especially for Ma’s famous apple pie.
“Remember to carry out those tools for Pa later,” she says in hurried Kryptonese, and she turns to the sink. Even hunched over the dishes, she sees the way Kal freezes in her peripheral vision.
She looks back at him in confusion. “What's wrong?”
Kal blinks. “Say that thing again,” he asks in English.
She repeats herself. He scrunches his nose. “I forgot what that word means, Kara,” he says, apologetically.
She can't help but feel her heart drop.
In that single moment, she feels every single one of her failures topple over her.
So, like from when he was a baby, she starts teaching him Kryptonese again.
It starts off slow, first introducing him to the idea of learning, which he immediately accepts, to Kara's delight. Then they begin with basic vocabulary, script writing, and sentence structures she learned in grade school.
Kal is surprisingly fast at picking up all the words.
They slip into a routine.
Tuesdays were the days he and she set aside for lessons.
For the first five consecutive days, Kal was always on time for each and every one of them. The first time he breaks it is when she gives Kent's household phone a ring to ask Martha to send a message to Kal that she was going to be late.
Ma informs her that Kal joined an after-school club.
Kara hesitantly brushes it off.
Next Tuesday rolls around. Kal is off on a trip with Pa for new farm tools. Kal hates going along shopping for farm tools.
Bless the man’s heart, but Pa loves taking his sweet time going back and forth between getting a new trowel or wheelbarrow.
It's also the second time Kara nervously rules it a coincidence. And stupidly allows hope for next Tuesday.
The third and final time it happens, it is undoubtedly, and definitely, not a coincidence.
She changes quickly when she arrives at the Kents’ farm. She made sure to get there before any after-school classes or other sporadic tool shopping could interrupt them.
Kara grabs a mug and pours herself a nice cup of coffee. Her fingertips warm against the ceramic as she takes a seat at the dining room table just as Kal enters through the front door.
“Oh, hey! Is it Tuesday already?” He looks around for Ma’s calendar to confirm.
Suspicious.
Kara’s eyebrows raise, but she still smiles at his comment. Because he actually remembered their plans.
Maybe she was being petty.
Maybe she was being insecure and dumb and looking for an excuse to pick a fight–
“Callum!” Someone calls. The door slams open and a boy around Kal's age tries to catch his breath as a flood of words jumble out of his mouth. “Alright, so I finally found a ride to that open mic thingy you wanted to go to. Still don't know why you wanted to go so bad to be honest, not really your thing, but–but…” he trails off when he realizes she is there.
“Pete, uh, hey. This is…my cousin. Kara.”
Pete stands there for a moment like he’s connecting a name with a face. Then he nods, lips in a fine line, and awkwardly waves hello.
Kal looks back nervously at Kara, pink in the ears, and then back at his friend. “Maybe some other time, Pete.”
When he leaves, Kara blinks at Kal. “They call you Callum,” she says.
Kal shrugs. “It just kind of caught on at school. I guess it was easier for them to pronounce.”
“Kal is much shorter than Callum.”
“I guess. Whatever’s easier for them, though.”
“No.” Kara shakes her head. “Your name’s Kal. Let them know next time.”
He looks like he's about to say something else in response, but shuts his mouth. “Fine,” he simply agrees.
“Did you guys plan this?”
“No!” he says too quickly. “I mean—I mean, kinda. Yeah. I didn’t think we’d be doing lessons today. You didn’t say—“
Kara stands. The heat of frustration rises alongside. “I thought we agreed every Tuesday. What did you think this was?”
“I thought maybe you’d be too tired after patrol. Or maybe you’d forget. I was kind of…”
“You were hoping I’d forget?” She shakes her head at the silent response that says nothing and everything at the same time. “So all this time you were avoiding me.”
Kal can’t meet her eyes. “I didn’t want to mess up again, okay? Whenever I try to actually speak Kryptonese, you cut me off to either try to correct every little detail in my grammar or words. You even poke fun at my accent sometimes.” He sighs. “Every time I speak, it–it’s like I’m confirming your worst fears.”
“And what is it, that you don’t care enough?” she finds herself blurting out.
“That I’m going to be the one who’ll forget Krypton first.”
The shame prickles along her skin. She takes a deep breath, and it’s getting harder to breathe freely.
What hurts the most is that Kal is right. “I'm trying to do what's best for you. You have to learn or else–”
“Well, you’re not my mother, Kara,” he spits out and sinks its venom in Kara's heart.
Kal’s shoulders are tense, eyes to the ground, but fists balled tightly. “My mom…my Kryptonian mom is gone,” he continues. “I won’t learn Kryptonese as naturally as I should have. I know that. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Kara needs air.
Or maybe the lack of it.
Before she knows it, she's circling the moon at top speed before she loses track.
Her heart feels heavy.
It feels like Kara failed Kal with the most important part of being a Kryptonian. He was never going to hear another word of Kryptonian from anyone but Kara's tongue again. And Kara has failed in teaching him.
He became too used to the English language of this world, and now, he grew disdainful of their culture because they didn't do enough to help him remember.
He hates Kara now.
Yet, she knew this was nobody's fault but hers.
Because, at some point, English did become easier. Ma and Pa spoke it, most of the country spoke it, and it made it easier to blend in. Kal had to learn to switch eventually.
But it hurt. It hurt so bad.
Kal has made friends based on a language that should feel foreign on his lips. He should feel more Kryptonian than human.
He should, but he doesn't.
It's not very fair of her, though.
How did she know whether or not he felt this way?
She never bothered to ask how he felt about living with the fact that he has no real recollection of what the stolen life was supposed to be.
Kara never asked if he felt just as lonely as she was. She just ran away.
Guilt hits hard.
She comes back to the Kent farm after one last loop around the moon, where Kal sits out in the front.
He looks up at her, and she can’t decipher his expression. If he isn't angry at her, he should be. Even Kara was angry at herself.
But he waited for her to come back on the front steps.
There’s a beat where they look at each other in silence. She takes a step forward and slowly sits down next to him. They sit in silence as the remorse eats away at her.
Silently, she wraps her arms around him and pulls him closer. But she does it gently, like he’s still that fragile version she landed on this planet with.
“I'm sorry,” she whispers after finally gaining confidence.
He hugs tighter. “Me too.”
A comfortable silence settles between them.
Kal opens his mouth to start an apology, “I didn't mean to say those things–”
“Shh.”
“But I–”
“It’s alright, stupid. Just shut up for a second.” There's no real bite behind it. Kal tightens his hold on her.
They don't say any more than that. The mutual understanding and the unspoken words hang between them.
“Tell me a story,” he eventually says in Kryptonese. “Tell me a story about Krypton, please.”
And she does.
Like a lullaby that she used to recite all those times when he fussed. Like all those moments when he would wander in Kara's room after a nightmare and slip under her sheets. Or when he asked just out of pure curiosity after she came home from school.
Each memory of their distant home escapes her tongue like it occurred yesterday.
Kal smiles like he's seeing Krypton for the first time in years. “Is it possible to miss something you never really knew?” he asks.
“For a place like that? I’m sure.”
Their lessons start up soon after. And this time around, Kara puts strength into being more patient. For both their sakes.
Maybe Kal would like to follow in her footsteps eventually–that is, if he gains similar powers–or maybe he won’t, preferring to stay in Smallville and grow as a farmer.
The thought of him branching off to a fancy city job brings a smile to her face.
Kara doesn’t know what the future holds or wants out of it. But there is a definite; she doesn’t need him growing up too quickly.
No, not like her.
Never.