Chapter Text
Supergirl struggles against her restraints. She can't move. No matter how many times she tries, no matter how hard she tries to force it, she's held still. She's not strong enough. She's never strong enough.
"Supergirl," Alex says from next to her, gently, and she stills. "Save your strength. We'll get you out of this, okay?"
Supergirl looks to her left. Where she's locked to a wall with Nth metal, held totally still, Alex is simply handcuffed and chained to the floor, still wearing her DEO uniform. On any other day, she'd scoff at her captors for underestimating her sister – but today, with a knife wound in her leg, and with the bones of her left wrist shattered, it might be just enough to hold Alex in place. Just.
Supergirl stares into Alex's eyes, meeting her gaze.
"I'll get you out of this."
Then Lex Luthor walks in, and everything becomes hazy.
He rants to a camera. Rants to Supergirl. Talks about aliens, and Kryptonians, and the ruination of all human life on Earth. It blurs together, right up until he pulls out the kryptonite bullets. The sickly feeling burns Supergirl down to her bones, and she shudders in a breath.
"No. Don't do this, Lex," Alex tries, begging, as he loads rounds into his revolver. "Come on. Supergirl's a national hero. If you do this, you'll lose all support you ever might have had."
He scoffs, and raises the gun. "When I do this, my support will grow tenfold. People around the world will finally see how mortal their gods really are."
"I love you, Alex," Supergirl whispers, and closes her eyes.
"No!"
There's a surge of magnetism. A gunshot. Loud. Piercing. But no pain.
Supergirl opens her eyes.
The gun is facing in the wrong direction, angled to Supergirl's left like it was forced away. And Lex is just staring. What is he staring at?
It's too quiet, she suddenly realises.
She looks left.
No.
Everything blurs.
Rage. Pain. Screaming. Burning.
She watches a funeral pod start the long journey towards Sol; flies with it through the atmosphere. She stares at it, watching it curve with the Earth, as she hovers at the edge of the thin blue line.
Her lungs burn. She can't breathe. She can't breathe, she can't breathe, she can't breathe.
Supergirl falls.
Kara jerks awake.
Her sheets are slick with sweat, and she groans, rubbing her eyes and checking the clock, the only light in her room. 4:02am. Better than she usually manages.
There's a skittering through the apartment, and a dog leaps on to the bed, nuzzling Kara's neck worriedly. "Hey, Gertrude. Yeah, another nightmare. Don't worry about it, girl. You should go back to bed. At least one of us should sleep."
Gertrude whines, and Kara leans in to hug her.
"I know, girl. I miss her too."
_ _ _
Kara stumbles into CatCo, coffee clutched in one hand as she reads through an article on her phone. There are dark rings around her eyes, and her clothing is rumpled, but that's nothing new anymore. She barely registers the hubbub of activity around her, but when she does she frowns, looking up from her phone and towards the people crowding in James's office. She follows, joining them and finding Nia and Lena standing at the back of the room.
"Hey, did I miss something about a team meeting?"
Lena and Nia look at her, the usual look in their eyes. The look Kara hates. She tries to ignore it, focusing instead on the people in the room.
"Cadmus announced they were going to be doing a broadcast today," Nia says. "You didn't see the news?"
Kara frowns. "Since when does Cadmus announce their broadcasts in advance?"
"Maybe their viewing figures have gone down," Lena says, dryly.
As if on cue, the televisions in James's office flicker to life. Instead of the usual computerised face, there's a woman. A human woman, probably. It's not easy to tell with her face covered by a mask and a pair of goggles, but the hair at least looks human – an auburn bob.
"I guess Cadmus finally found a new frontwoman now Lillian's in hiding."
Lena snorts. "Well, after what Supergirl did to my brother, I can't imagine the job has been particularly in-demand."
"People of National City," the voice begins, distortion effects layered heavily. Kara doubts the DEO will be able to decipher anything from it, Cadmus has always been careful with these things. "For too long, you have lived beneath a being who has declared herself a demigod. An alien invader, who does what she pleases. For years, she claimed to be here peacefully, but six months ago, she murdered Lex Luthor."
The camera switches from the woman's mask to black-and-white CCTV footage. Kara gasps and squeezes her eyes shut, reaching out to grip Lena's hand. There's no sound, but she swears she can hear it again. She can feel it all again.
"This alien is a murderer. A cold-blooded killer who floats above National City and claims ownership of it. But this is not her city. This is a city of humans. And we intend to take it back. We Are Cadmus."
There's the usual cacophony of noise and images that accompanies the end of any Cadmus message, and the crowd starts to dissipate.
"Well," Lena begins, after a moment. "That seemed a remarkably pointless little video from them. The same as it ever was, really. Something something, aliens are the enemy, something something, expect us." She's being overly flippant, Kara knows. Compensating for seeing her brother's death again. She squeezes Kara's hand reassuringly then pulls away, flexing her fingers.
Kara winces guiltily. She probably almost broke Lena's hand. "Yeah. Nothing new there. I'll, uh. I need to take a minute, okay? I'll be back and ready to work in no time, I'm just…"
Lena nods reassuringly. "Of course, I understand. Whatever you need."
Kara steps back, out of the office, walking until she feels less like she's about to throw up. She and Lena both lost siblings that day. But Lex was a monster. A sexist, racist sycophant with a god complex, in Lena's own words. She might mourn the loss of the person he had once been, but she'd been mourning that loss for years.
Kara? Kara lost someone so much more than her sister.
As she slips into an empty supply room and opens a window, pulling open her shirt to reveal the crest beneath, she feels it again. She lost her whole world.
_ _ _
Bank robbers. Why are there still bank robbers in National City? She rips off the door of their escape van, grabbing the driver and smacking his face against it before turning to throw it at a man carrying bags of money. He drops to the floor with a thud, and the third attacker starts shooting at her. The bullets ricochet away, and she super-speeds forwards, knocking his gun aside and lifting him up. She opens the back of the escape van, placing him inside with a pair of handcuffs and closing the door after him. "You've got ten minutes to cuff yourself. If you don't, then when I come back in there I'm going to hit you."
Then she's hit in the back.
She goes flying, the wind knocked out of her, and scrapes across the floor. She staggers to her feet, turning to face whatever just attacked her…and sees an entire Cadmus hit squad advancing. One of them even has a Child of Liberty mask. Ugh. So last year. Their weapons have a sickly green glow to them. Right. So this is what they meant when they said they intended to take it back. Great. She rolls her shoulders, cracking her neck and squaring up.
There's an electronic whine and the leader's rifle lights up brighter, launching a pulse of green energy at her that blasts her backwards again.
Then she's on the move. She launches herself into the air, using heat vision to try and hit one of the guards in their stupid jackboots, then superspeeds forwards to knock the second to the ground. She's hit in the side by another blast but powers through it, grabbing the weapon and turning it to one side before headbutting the enforcer in his stupid Liberty mask. Then she spins, using a cape trick to grab the weapon of the last one and yank him forwards, punching him in his stupid throat.
She hates Cadmus. They're stupid.
A gun goes off. Kara's faced with pain, searing through her leg. She gasps and clutches it, dropping to one knee. She's bleeding. Is that…there's green in the wound, and she looks up to see her attacker.
There she is. The woman from the broadcast. Her mask is firmly in place, and she holds a pistol in one hand and a kryptonite sword in the other. Kara's eyes widen and she lifts off, flying to take cover as the woman starts shooting again.
Bullets thud against the escape van and she winces as she feels the kryptonite in the air, weakening her just by being near it. And the chunk in her leg isn't helping matters.
There's a break in the shooting, and Kara rushes around the corner, swinging for a wide punch.
The soldier blocks it.
That's impossible.
Her arm is raised, holding Kara's fist back like it's a mild inconvenience. Like she saw it coming.
Kara tries to use her x-ray vision despite the kryptonite in the air. The mask is lead-lined, protecting her attacker's identity. But that's not what interests her. There. Her left arm's been replaced from the elbow downwards; made mechanical. Like Jeremiah. Like Cyborg Superman.
Cadmus has a new supersoldier.
The kryptonite sword sings through the air and Kara ducks with as much super-speed as she can manage, jabbing the woman in the stomach. She's weakened from the kryptonite, but it's still enough to make her attacker drop the sword and stagger backwards.
There's a growl, manipulated by the mask's filter, and the woman swings her left arm forwards, punching Kara in the face and knocking her to the floor. A kick follows it up, And, oh, rao, that's a metal leg too. Kara's sent flying backwards into the van, denting it. She hears the robber loudly complaining inside the van, but she doesn't have time to worry about that right now when the agent draws a kryptonite knife from a sheath, spinning it in her fingers in a way that brushes at the edges of Kara's memories. She's seen that move before, somewhere.
Then she doesn't have time to reflect, and they're fighting.
Kara blocks, turning the blade away from herself like she was taught to. And the woman responds, countering Kara's counters at every turn. Kara punches, but she ducks as if it was predictable. The woman goes for a grapple, but Kara knows how to break out of it and lifts them off the ground, flying a few feet up then throwing the woman back to earth and smashing back down after her. And the woman responds by dodging the punch to the ground, rolling out of the way a moment before impact and slashing across Kara's arm, drawing blood. Attack, counter, counter-counter, riposte.
It's all a little too familiar.
They both stagger to their feet. Kara doesn't know about her rival, but she's exhausted. She raises her fists.
The Cadmus agent flips her knife, pointing the tip towards Kara. Probably not that exhausted, then.
She charges, and Kara grabs her blade arm, feeling her proximity to kryptonite sapping her strength. They both go down, the woman pinning her to the ground and moving her mechanical arm to grip the blade, trying to drive it down into Kara's chest.
Kara struggles, gripping her arm and trying to find anything she can grab to force the agent away. One hand claws at the woman's mask and pushes, trying to force her away, before Kara's boots finally find the ground. Right. She can still fly.
She kicks off from the floor, spinning them both in midair over and over again until the Cadmus agent loses her grip. As she spins, there's the clack of her phone slipping from her boot and cracking against the floor, followed by the kryptonite blade bouncing off the asphalt. Then, as a last ditch effort, Kara brings both legs up and kicks the woman in the chest, knocking her into the side of the van hard enough to dent it again.
There's a few moments of silence, as Kara comes to land on the floor, feet crunching against broken glass.
A mask dangles limply from her hand.
And in front of her, an impossible woman looks up. Forces auburn hair out of her eyes and rubs the back of her hand over her nose, smearing blood across her face.
"Alex…" Kara says, with impossible softness. With disbelief.
Former Director Alexandra Danvers, deceased, falters. The rage in her eyes dims.
"How the fuck do you know my name?"
There's an electronic whine, and Kara's slammed forwards, into the van. Then there's only darkness.