Chapter Text
Kara has met a few different versions of herself over her career as Supergirl, but never one quite so friendly as this latest one. She appeared in the sky over National City, along with two other superheroes, yesterday. Their arrival had been really helpful too, helping her wrap things up with a rogue [ENEMY]. They’d retired to the tower since then and the leader of the trio was currently debriefing with Alex. Kara was sitting down with her doppelganger now, comparing notes on the differences between their earths.
That was one of the most interesting things, right there. After Crisis the multiverse was supposed to have been ended, with Lex combining them all into one conglomerate in Earth Prime. Lodestar, the leader of the trio of superheroes, had mentioned that she wasn’t too surprised that some alternate universes managed to escape the Crisis, but she had seemed concerned by it.
That was another surprise with their visitors. Her doppelganger didn’t seem to be the center of their hero group. Lodestar was, or Taylor, as she introduced herself once they were in the privacy of The Tower. The tall woman with gorgeous dyed hair held herself with a confidence that Kara would struggle to match in her best moments as Supergirl. She had been quick to direct her team in the fight earlier today and had naturally stepped up as a spokesperson for their group.
“So it seems like Lodestar is the one in charge of your Superfriends, how did that happen?” She asks.
Her twin frowns, “Superfriends?”
“Well, yeah! We’re Supergirl, so it only makes sense for the people working with us to be the Superfriends.”
“Wait, you really let them saddle you with the name Supergirl?” Alternate Kara asks, bewildered.
“Um. Well I couldn’t exactly stop Miss Grant from branding me with the name.” Heat rushed to her cheeks, “It’s kinda hard to compete with the Queen of All Media, and your boss.”
“...Oh wow.” The woman gives her a pitying look, “You didn’t have anyone to help you when you started out, did you?”
“I-I had Winn! And Alex and the DEO fairly quickly after that…” How did this version of her have the ability to make her feel so embarrassed?
“The DEO? The same DEO that shot kryptonite at us just a few days after our official debut? Or did they not do that here?”
Kara cringes at the memory of the kryptonite projectiles, that had been so awkward, and painful, “They were just tranquillisers…” She answers quietly.
“And so what, after that you just decided to waltz into their headquarters and offer to work with them?”
“I didn’t exactly have a choice…” Kara mumbles.
Other Kara’s eyes widened, “You actually got hit by them?! Wait, of course you did, you didn’t have any training by then, did you? Oh Rao, what a mess. I am so sorry you had to go through that.”
They’re interrupted before she can respond, as the other part of the new trio of superheroes walks over to them, retracting her helmet to reveal a striking woman’s face, with familiar dark hair and green eyes.
Lena.
Kara feels like she’s been punched in the gut after a solar flare. It’s been months since Lena betrayed her at the Fortress. Months of agonising over how she could have done things differently, months of trying to find a way to fix things between them. Months since she’s seen Lena’s face without thinly veiled contempt written across it.
But here Lena is. Lena from another world where she still looks at Kara with concern and care. Lena wearing a suit of power armour with distinctly Kryptonian aspects to it.
So Lena is a superhero on their earth? Is that how she could have saved things with her Lena? Help her make a suit of armour and let her be a superhero with her? That’s so… dangerous. Humans are so fragile and it’s Lena. How could she put her in harm's way, like that?
Other Lena looks at Other Kara with raw care and concern written on her face, Kara’s heart aches just seeing it, “Everything okay, darling? I heard a raised voice…” Other Lena turns to look at her and frowns, bordering on a glare, really. That’s a look she’s sadly more used to in recent times.
“It’s fine, love,” Other Kara says, in Kryptonian, taking Other Lena’s hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it. The metal on Lena’s gauntlet smoothly retracts to allow Other Kara access to the skin. It also reveals a bracelet made of a type of metal Kara hasn’t seen in over a decade.
That’s a Kryptonian bonding bracelet. Kara’s eyes dart to Other Kara’s wrist frantically to check for a bracelet and sure enough, there’s another Kryptonian bonding bracelet there.
Other Kara and Other Lena are bonded. Bondmates.
“Kara just had a very different start than I did and it surprised me. We’ll be fine. You should go see if you can track down the Lena from this universe, it’s a fun experience to compare your lives, really!”
Other Lena turns back to Other Kara as she kisses her hand and melts in a way that’s wholly unlike anything she’s seen from her Lena. Relaxing and letting her guard down with a smile for her… bondmate.
“If you’re sure.” Other Lena bends over to press a kiss to Other Kara’s cheek before squeezing her hand and walking away from them.
Kara’s thoughts whirl chaotically with thoughts of what could have been if she hadn’t messed everything up.
“You- Lena and you are- uh.” Kara stutters out helpfully as she stares down at the bracelet on Other Kara’s wrist.
“Bonded? Yeah! Taylor too.” Other Kara grins, raising her other wrist to show off a second bracelet, subtly different from the other. “Are you not with your Lena? It makes sense you wouldn’t have a Taylor, since she’s from another universe, but I thought you’d at least still be with Lena.”
She was bonded to both Lena and Taylor? After the previous world-shaking revelation concerning Lena, Kara successfully manages to ignore that newest bit of potentially life changing information, hastily burying that under lock and key deep in her head. The information about Lena was hard enough for her to process, she could wait to think about that other thing until later.
Much later. Years later. Maybe never later.
“B-bonded. Wow. And superheroes together too! That’s um, that’s really something. How did- um, how did that happen?” She looks down sadly, “Lena and I aren’t even on speaking terms and I just- I mean I tried so many different ways to change things with Mxy and none of them had anything like that happen. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! It’s fine. Great! Jus- It’s different.”
“Wow.” Other Kara looks at her with wonder, “So that’s what our rambling is like from this side of things? I guess I can see why Taylor and Lena say it’s so cute now…”
What.
Did her doppelganger just flirt with her? Oh Rao, is this why their Earth was sealed off?? She seemed so… so different! Okay maybe not as different as Overgirl from Earth X, but so different from her and even Red Daughter.
“I um. I think I need a minute. I’m just gonna- I’ll be back soon!” Kara stutters out and walks directly away from Other Kara who thinks she’s cute and is dating multiple women and never worked with the DEO and-
Kara forces herself to think about something else to break that line of thought. Anything else! Puppies! Cute fluffy puppies all sleeping in an adorable pile. Safe and adorable and cute.
Kara grabs onto the railing on the other side of the tower and immediately crumples it.
After her talk with Taylor, her head and emotions were feeling better. Back under control. Kara eventually makes her way back to where Other Kara (Andromeda) is sitting on a couch. She’s still wearing her super suit, the swirling galaxy of stars on the front such a difference from their house coat of arms on her own chest. A pang of loss shoots through her heart when she recognizes Rao front and center. It may be different from what she and Kal wear, but it’s still a clear link to their heritage. As she sits next to her on the couch she’s able to see where Andromeda does wear their crest, though. It’s much smaller and far less obvious. Embossed in the material of the suit on the sides of her shoulders is the symbol she and Kal are so well known for. There are so many differences between them. Even Overgirl, a villain, had a suit with more similarities to her than hers has to Andromeda’s.
“I’m sorry for overloading you.” Andromeda says as Kara sits down.
“No! No, it’s fine . I just needed a minute to adjust. Things are pretty different between our Earths…”
“Yeah, I’m starting to see that… Still, I’m sorry. I could have been more tactful.” Andromeda says, laying a hand on her shoulder for comfort.
That’s a new one, being comforted by herself. She can’t help smiling her appreciation to herself- Andromeda. They sit quietly like that for a few moments before a question comes to her mind that she can’t hold back from asking.
“So… You and Lena are bonded.” She starts slowly, “...How did that happen? I mean- not like how you got together but more… How did you tell her you were Supergirl- uh, Andromeda? Sorry.”
Andromeda just smiles at her slip up, “No problem. As for Lena, well, she’s always known. She made my first suit and helped me come up with my cape name.”
That’s not at all close to how things could have gone with her Lena. Lena wasn’t even in National City yet when she came out as Supergirl. Maybe that’s how things seem to have gone so differently and… well, for them. She’d tried so many different ways to tell Lena she was Supergirl, with Mxy’s help, but she’d never considered somehow starting her Supergirl career with Lena. It was such a drastic departure it never occurred to her.
Part of her feels jealous of Andromeda and her Lena. They looked so close and in love, how could she not be a little jealous of that? She’d do anything just to be back on speaking terms with her Lena. She… also wouldn’t mind being as close as Andromeda and her Lena are too. In a relationship. In love with each other.
Maybe even bonded.
She wishes she was brave enough to tell her Lena that she loves her. Even if she only recently realised it, in hindsight it was clear that she’d been in love with her for a long time. Years, now, and Lena really would make the perfect bondmate. She’d once said her ideal partner was her perfect game night partner, which was a gross simplification of how Kryptonian bonding works. A bondmate is a life partner. Someone who perfectly complements you in all aspects of life. Lena was the only person she could ever imagine as a perfect complement to her.
“Things are so different here…” She says softly, to Andromeda, “Lena didn’t even live in National City when I became Supergirl. She didn’t move here until a year later, so even when we became friends it was… so hard to tell her.”
“Oh, Kara , you didn’t let her last name stop you from trusting her, did you?”
“No! I mean, at first, maybe a little, but that was over so fast, like after our first lunch together. It was more like the normal amount you can’t trust a stranger with your identity, you know?”
“Good.” Andromeda reaches over to squeeze her hand briefly, “So what stopped you after that?”
Kara swallows heavily, “After that, I think it was mostly Alex and the DEO and all the other superfriends telling me it wasn’t safe.” She clenches her fist to stem the anger she feels at herself for not trusting her own instincts back then. “I wish I hadn’t let them stop me, back then.” She whispers, “Though if the other timelines that Mxy showed me were accurate then maybe it was for the best… Things went so much worse whenever I tried something different from how things went for real…”
“Okay, I’m not sure who Mxy is, but I think I get what you mean. So how did things go here?”
“Lex told her. Around three years into our friendship.” Kara swallows heavily, “When she shot him and he was bleeding out…”
Andromeda clapped a hand over her own mouth at that, which is fair. It’s hard to believe this was the best way for Lena to find out she was Supergirl. It still hardly made sense that there were always worse consequences whenever she tried a different time.
“Lena… didn’t take it well.” Kara cringed and hunched down, elbows resting on her knees, “She didn’t tell me she knew. She waited until I finally told her myself, and then she pretended that everything was fine while she used our friendship to work toward her plans to get back at me. She lashed out. At me, at the world. Tried to make her own version of Myriad called Non Nocere, to make everyone better people.” She pauses for a moment before adding, “She left me, trapped in a cage of Kryptonite, in the Fortress.” Her voice cracks at the memories of being trapped in a tiny enclosed space made out of the one thing that could kill her. Feeling knives shredding her body as the Kryptonite poisoned her blood, but didn’t kill her, not quite. Trapped and powerless, all alone. Just like in her pod in the phantom zone.
Andromeda’s warm arms wrap around her shoulders and pull her close as tears fall from her eyes. Thinking about it still hurts so much. Lena hit her in her worst childhood fears, just like she’d done to Lena. Pain like that doesn’t go away quickly.
She spends nearly half an hour crying into Andromeda’s arms. When she gets control of herself again she’s a bit surprised that no one else came to check on her, but she can hear that they’ve all moved to different rooms.
“Where did everyone go?” She asks out of habit, to be polite. Even with herself she’s still pretending to be human.
“I indicated that I had things handled and they decided to give us privacy. Honestly, I’m kind of surprised that Alex went along with it, but Kelly said something to her and she went along with the rest of them.” She huffs with a small smile, “Not without a death glare sent at me first, of course.”
“Heh. That’s Alex for you,” Kara says softly.
“I’m glad you two are so close here. Alex and I have drifted apart a bit after the initial friction of my debut and when she worked with the DEO.”
Kara looks at Andromeda in surprise. Alex and her not being close? It’s practically unthinkable. Andromeda smiles back at her, sadly.
“She stuck with the DEO for a while after my debut, and they were actively trying to take us into custody for the first year or so. It was… bad. They knew my secret identity, so I had to move in with Lena and Taylor in a safehouse. I lost my job at Catco because I couldn’t go to work without them trying to arrest me on trumped up charges. Alex and I couldn’t have a conversation without her telling me to turn myself in.” Andromeda sighs sadly, then pulls herself up, “But things worked out okay in the end. I ended up working at L-Corp with Lena, and got back to our science roots there. The DEO ended up getting taken over by Cadmus, which was the last straw for Alex to leave. It took awhile, but we managed to work things out! Plus! Living with Lena and Taylor was probably partly responsible for us getting together. I think it was worth it.”
“Well at least you know now. That gives you a goal. Something to shoot for. I may not know your Lena, but from what I know of my Lena, I can’t imagine that it’s out of the question. We’ve always had… chemistry, y’know?”
“...Yeah.” Looking back, chemistry is a good way to describe what she and Lena had together. Their interactions were always so smooth and effortless. Always just a little bit more than friendly. But… “I’m not sure if we still have that after everything, though…”
Andromeda bumps her shoulder against Kara’s, “Hey, if I can get two girlfriends then I’m sure I can help you get one girlfriend.”
Kara squeaks and her eyes go wide, “He- help?! No. No no no no. I do not need help with this. That is a capital B-A-D, BAD idea.”
“Oh come on! We’ve got this!”
“Nope! There is no ‘we’ here, this is something I have to figure out on my own.”
“But I’m you! Helping you is still doing it on your own! Come on Kara, we can do this! Lena won’t know what hit her.”
“Look, I really appreciate you wanting to help, but things are just too messy between us, right now. I can’t risk messing things up more.”
Andromeda gives her a long, sad look, “Okay… I’m sorry for pushing, I just want to see you two as happy as I am with Taylor and Lena. I’ll leave your love life alone, just try to remember that you and Lena can work. I’m living proof of it!” She smiles brightly for a moment before putting on their thinking face, “Although… we did send my Lena to go find your Lena… I can’t be sure what she’ll do.”
Kara’s eyes go wide as she exclaims, “What?! Oh no, we have to stop her! There’s no telling what could happen!” She starts to get up to fly toward Lena, but Andromeda catches her forearm, stopping her firmly.
“Wait! If there’s anyone that can get through to your Lena, don’t you think it would be herself?”
Kara pauses at that. Could that work? She’s tried everything to talk to Lena, to no effect. Her friends had tried talking to Lena as well, but no one was able to get through to her. Could her doppelganger do it?
Maybe.
She said she’d do anything to get Lena back…
“...Okay. But you have to message her to let her know what she’s getting into! Lena is- everything is just so delicate right now.”
Andromeda smiles sadly as a holographic visor appears in front of her then winces, “Ah, bit too late on that. Tracking says she’s been in an L-cor— er, Luthor Corp, lab for the past hour.”
Kara throws her head back and groans.
“At least she hasn’t gotten kicked out? So they’re probably talking still! Or maybe working on a project together. Either way, I think it’s a good sign! Just give her time. Lena will work her magic on your Lena in no time.”
Okay. She just had to be patient and things would work out. She’s the paragon of hope, she can hold onto hope for things to go well with their respective Lenas. She just has to be patient.
She was never very good at being patient.
“So what was your start like?” Kara asks after several minutes of waiting im patiently, desperately hoping to distract herself from the waiting.
“Well, as far as I can tell Taylor is one of the big differences, if not the biggest.”
“You said she’s from another earth, right?”
“Yup! Taylor arrived on our earth about half a year before I saved Alex’s plane. Oh, is that what got you to come out too?”
“Yeah! I was on a date with this guy and then I heard a news station talking about Alex’s flight having engine trouble. I had to do something.”
“Okay, that’s the same then. So Taylor showed up about half a year before that on Lena’s doorstep.”
“Hah, sounds like Barry.” Kara smiles fondly.
“Barry?” Andromeda asks.
“Yeah! Back before Lena had moved here Barry showed up, looking for help getting back to his Earth. He runs really fast and he accidentally ended up on our earth when he was testing some devices to help him run even faster.” Kara pauses to take a big breath before continuing her hasty explanation, “Anyway, we did a little team up here and then I threw him hard enough for him to go fast enough to get back to his earth! One of his teammates ended up figuring out how to travel between earths after that and since then we’ve had a sort of annual teamup thing going on. Though after Crisis his earth and ours got merged together.”
Andromeda blinked slowly in confusion for a moment before pouting, “Awwww, you mean we missed out on annual interdimensional superhero teamups thanks to this whole sealed earth thing? Ugh, that sucks!”
“Well, at least that means you didn’t have to deal with another version of you crashing your friend’s wedding to kidnap you and steal your heart!” Kara grins.
“Wow. Okay, that is something.” Andromeda clears her head with a shake, “We’re getting off track.”
“Right! So Taylor arrived on your earth on Lena’s doorstep, you said?”
“Well, her private lab, but you know how it is with Lena, her lab is her real home.” Andromeda smirks with a wink.
Wow. Her doppelganger winks on their earth. Weird.
Kara belatedly nods her understanding. She knows from long talks into the late hours that Lena feels most at home in her lab. That she’s missed it so much during her time as CEO. Kara had asked why she took the CEO position if she didn’t want it and Lena had just said that she couldn’t trust anyone else with her family company. Anyone else would just continue her family’s xenophobic hate and need to destroy.
“So Taylor comes from an Earth where superheroes are much more common. There were thousands, maybe millions.” Andromeda continues.
Kara’s eyes go wide. Millions of superheroes? And if that earth is anything like hers that means there were even more supervillains.
“And as we know, where there are heroes there are villains. It wasn’t a good world. If half of what Taylor has told me is true then it was terrible, really.” Andromeda shakes her head sadly, muttering quietly, “And I don’t even think she’s told me the worst of it,” She then continues in a more level tone, “So she shows up, saviour of her world, unconscious in Lena’s lab and a few months later with Lena’s help she’s back on her feet and she and Lena move to National City for her to debut as Lodestar.”
“Hold on, ‘saviour of her world’?”
“Oh yeah! Our Taylor saved her world from an apocalypse worse than anything we’ve ever seen here.”
“...Worse than the Anti-Monitor?”
“Who?”
“Super powerful ancient being who set loose a wave of anti matter that basically destroyed the entire multiverse.”
“Okay, maybe not quite that bad. Wow, you guys have had it pretty rough here, huh?”
“...Yeah.” Kara says morosely.
“Okay, back to happy thoughts! So Taylor had been out as Lodestar for a little over three months when Alex’s plane happened. Unfortunately, as strong as she is, saving a plane isn’t quite inside her powerset. She was there though, doing whatever she could to help. She guided me through the whole thing and helped me deal with the press and keep my identity hidden. She and Lena offered to help me with a costume and training and everything! Then when Alex tried to forbid me from being a superhero… well I turned to the two people who were supportive.”
So Alex was just as overprotective then. The difference seemed to be that Kara had another option for help.
“So you didn’t tell Winn and get his help with your suit?”
“Wha- No! No way was I gonna tell Winn when I had both an experienced hero and Alex talk to me about keeping my identity hidden. Plus he had this awkward crush on me and I just know that would make things worse. No, I called up Taylor and agreed to meet with her and Lena. Taylor had years of experience in her world’s cape scene as a hero and was happy to help me with training that I desperately needed. Rao, I can’t even imagine if I’d gone out without her training. Er, no offense.”
“None taken. I definitely needed training too. Alex ended up being the one who helped me most with that. Rao, I made so many mistakes in those early days.” Kara chuckles lightly.
“So yeah, Taylor trained me and Lena set me up with a suit and gadgets. The image inducer was a huge relief to have. I’m so glad they convinced me not to go with Kal’s method.”
“Hey! The glasses work!” Kara cries indignantly.