It’s been six months.
They don’t talk about it. They don’t mention it.
She didn’t even have a picture to remember him by. She never knew you could regret even the smallest of details.
Until Alex helped. Alex, who understands. Who held her as she cried. Who took care of her in her grief.
She said nothing that day, a month after they put him under, at the DEO when she walked over to where Kara was sitting and placed a small piece of paper face down in front of her. She’s gone as quickly as she had come and Kara flips the paper over to find a DEO issued picture.
…Of him.
Her eyes fill with tears almost immediately. She’ll never be more grateful for her Earth family than in that moment.
Sitting there at the DEO reminders her of him. Everywhere she goes reminds her of him. She didn’t realise how integrated into her life he was until after he was gone. And then she found everywhere she went brought back memories, and with it, heartache.
It’s been six months, and she’s still not better.
It’s been a long day at CatCo and she’s tired. Mentally, physically, emotionally tired.
She closes the door to her apartment and immediately sits down next to the door, back against the wall, legs folded to her chest. She puts her head on her folded arms, taking deep breaths, frazzled thoughts about deadlines, responsibilities and her personal life jumping everywhere.
And that’s where Alex finds her hours later.
She quickly drops the bags of groceries she was carrying and shuts the door, sliding up next to her sister, putting a gentle comforting arm around her.
“I was fine,”
Kara lifts her tear stained face from her arms, looking at her sister, her lower lip trembling. Her hollow voice breaks Alex’s heart.
“I was fine until Eve mentioned his name.”
She lets out a wet sob and Alex pulls her head to to her shoulder.
“I know. I know it hurts,”
“She asked where he was and I couldn’t tell her! I promised him Alex, I promised he w- would come home, but he’s still out there and I- I can’t do anything to help him!”
Her breath hitches as she breaths through the tears and Alex takes a deep breath of her own.
“Kara, I can’t tell you it’s going to be okay. But what I can tell you is that we won’t stop looking for a way to fix him so he can come back.”
It’s quiet, Kara’s hitched breathing the only sound in the apartment.
A thought occurs to Alex and she smiles slightly.
“What would he say if he were here?”
There’s a pause before Kara replies, hollowly.
“He would say I need a drink,”. She snorts dryly.
“Good thing I brought wine,” Alex replies, hugging Kara tightly for a moment before letting go and getting up.
She walks to the abandoned grocery bags. Dumping them on the kitchen counter, she turns back to Kara smiling slightly, eyebrow raised.
“Dinner isn’t going to cook itself,”
Kara reaches inside her pocket, touching the lightly worn picture of him before getting up.
She walks into the DEO and sober faces greet her.
“They may have found way to cure Mon-El.“
A mix of feelings well up and she can’t get enough air and she feels like running away- Then it hits her and everything stops.
It’s been six months since she’s heard his name.
She looks at Alex, who knows this, she has to, and gives herself a moment to collect herself before swallowing, squeezing his picture tucked up her sleeve for safe-keeping.
She can’t break down. Not here. Not now.
The steps she takes are tentative but get firmer as she gets nearer to everyone. She stops next to Alex and there’s a pause as she examines Kara, expecting a reaction.
When Kara’s face doesn’t change she touches Winn’s shoulder.
“Tell her what they found,” Winn lets out a breath and begins.
“As you know, our original problem was how deeply the lead was embedded in Mon-El’s system. We didn’t have much time to analyze the issues before he went into critical condition, and that’s when they decided to put him in cryostasis,” Winn gestures with his hands at the DEO symbol on the the wall above them.
“And then they took it a step further and decided to send him into the phantom zone.” He finishes his sentence awkwardly, and when J’onn raises an eyebrow at him he quickly adds, “For Mon-El’s safety of course,”
Her brow furrows and she feels a hint of resentment flare up, but she shoves it down. She knows they’re right. If anyone knew about him, he could easily become a bargaining piece, a hostage or a target for anyone aiming to hurt her. They had to keep him safe.
Wasn’t that supposed to be my job?
Winn awkwardly coughs in the silence then continues.
“Since he’s been gone we’ve been conducting tests on how to remove the lead from his system, but since he’s not exactly here we’re kind of limited.
But what we have found is that the lead has entered his bloodstream, that’s part of the reason we put him in cryostasis.”
Alex folds her arms. “Hurry it up, Winn,”
He spins around in his chair and faces them.
“Okay, so we have an idea to use Nitric Acid to dissolve the lead, but it depends completely on how fast he self-heals. If he heals too fast the acid won’t work, if he heals too slowly…he’ll die. And it won’t be pretty.”
Kara’s brow furrows.
At her look, he quickly continues.
“However, if he heals like you, Kara, then the acid we inject will dissolve the lead in his bloodstream, and he’ll regenerate as it travels the cardiovascular system. Hypothetically.”
J’onn’s brow furrows now too.
Winn shrugs at him.
“Well we can’t exactly test anything since he’s not here. And even if he was, the only way to know if it works is to just do it.”
It’s quiet as everyone considers what he’s saying.
“I say we do it,”
Kara snaps her head up to look at her sister. Alex meets her gaze calmly.
“We have no other option at this point. Winn-” She sighs in resignation. “-is right.”
Kara keeps eye contact for a few more moments and her expression is impossible to read.
“Fine, we’ll do it.”
They’re right. She knows they’re right, and there is no other choice but to try.
J’onn nods.
“We’ll start prepping immediately. Mr. Schott, contact Medical and brief them. Agent Danvers, you and I will brief the others. Dismissed.”
He and Alex walk away through the doors. Winn gets up to leave too, but not before gently squeezing her arm and throwing her a sympathetic look.
He’s coming home.
It’s Deja vu for her, being here. Being back in the place where she saw him leave, where she saw him for the last time.
She squirms where she stands. It just feels wrong.
Boots make noise on the concrete behind her and she can sense Alex’s presence behind her.
“J’onn says the ship will be here soon,”
Kara offers a slight nod.
“How are you doing?” Alex’s voice is softer.
“Fine,” Her voice breaks. But she won’t, no, she refuses to break down.
It’s Alex’s turn to nod now.
As she opens her mouth to say something, Kara hears a faint rumbling in the distance. She looks to the sky and she can see it. She can see the object that is the ship entering the atmosphere, a brilliant trail of heat streaming from behind.
She glances around to see everyone else’s reactions but no one is looking.
Alex is frowning at her.
“What? Do you see something?”
“The ship is almost here,” she says quietly.
She alone watches the decent for a few more minutes and then the area springs to life, people rushing back and forth, and she knows they too can see it now.
A countdown starts, an automated voice ringing from the speakers, and she reaches for the picture in her left sleeve. She won’t need it in a few minutes.
The ship lands, a cloud of smoke and a rush of air and it’s grounded.
A swarm of people hurry to the ship, but she stands still.
Then they pull out the cryotank and she moves.
The agents move out of her way as she runs up to the tank, and gazes inside.
He still looks so beautiful, just the way she left him. She can’t stop looking and unconsciously she’s squeezing the picture tucked away in her sleeve.
The range of emotions she’s feeling and battling she’s sure are written all over her face.
She takes a deep breath. He’s here, and he’s going to be okay (at least that’s what she tells herself).
She turns to the agents, waiting on her.
“Let’s get him inside.”
He’s on the table and prepped.
The wires hooked up to him look so unnatural to Kara. He looks like he’s sleeping, and part of her still expects him to just wake up and be fine.
J’onn, Alex, Winn and DEO agents walk through the doors, pulling her out of her thoughts.
An agent is checking a syringe while the others check vitals. The one with the syringe turns around after a moment, waiting for the go-head.
J’onn nods at the agent, and before she can blink, he’s found a vein on his arm and the acid is dispensed.
Her heart is pounding in her ears and the room is so silent you could hear a pin drop. Only the quiet beeping of the monitors disturbs the quiet.
They stand there silently observing for a long while, waiting.
And nothing changes.
The agents are looking uncomfortably up at J’onn, who is looking at her, waiting for her reaction.
His vitals haven’t changed and his heartbeat is normal. It hasn’t killed him. She knows it hasn’t worked But they hadn’t done any previous tests, so he could still wake up, right?
She’s crumpling the picture in her palm now, still staring at him, willing him to just open his eyes, to just wake up.
The second Alex’s arms encircle her she breaks.
As she buries herself in Alex’s shoulder sobbing, she can hear the orders being given for him to be put under observation for the remainder of the day and prepared to go back into the cryotank, back into the ship, back to the phantom zone. Away from her.
I couldn’t keep my promise.
Back to the airstrip. Back to the ship. It’s like a horrible nightmare, a dream gone wrong.
They waited all day, hoping for some kind of change in his state only to be met by nothing. Hope, she realizes, is a crippling thing.
She watches next to Alex as they unload him from the transport. Again. She’s numb and she doesn’t know if the feeling will go away.
They wheel him up to the ship, then stop. As they prepare to place the cryotank lid in place she makes a decision and runs up to them. They stop, moving away.
He’s going to be alone up there. He’s going to be alone in the vastness of space and there is absolutely nothing she can do about it.
She doesn’t know how long Kryptonians and Daxamites live in comparison to humans, but it hits her that he will be up there for a lifetime. More than a lifetime.
She won’t be there when he wakes up, because he won’t wake up.
She grabs his motionless hand and squeezes tight.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.
They have to put him in stasis and she has to let go. She doesn’t, drinking in every second she can before he’s gone. Alex calls her name and she squeezes his hand one last time, stroking his hair before stepping away. He’s immediately enveloped by agents and she backs away, tears carving shining trails on her cheeks.
The agents are balancing the lid preparing to put it in place when they stop, and their demeanor’s change.
She turns around to the shouts for medical personnel and sees him in between the agents, sitting up, awake, his bare back facing her.
Her eyes well up with tears.
She runs over at full speed, almost knocking over agents as she throws her arms around a stunned Mon-El. She grips him too tightly for any human burying herself in the warmth of his skin as her tears glide down his bare skin.
After moment his arms wrap around her too, lifting her up on the gurney, onto his lap and squeezing her tight.
He’s here, he’s alive. He’s in her arms. Her tears turn to laughter through the sobs.
“Mon-El?” The words are familiar yet foreign on her tongue as she pulls back and looks at him.
He reaches up and wipes a tear from her cheek with his thumb, the caress making her tremble.
“I missed you.”
He looks at her in a way she only ever was told about, tenderly and full of love. She knows she’s looking at him the same way.
She doesn’t think before placing a hand on his cheek and leaning in, softly kissing him.
When they part, he looks down and intertwines his fingers with hers, squeezing her hand the same way she had to his.
They fail to notice the restless DEO agents, a few looking uncomfortable. Alex sighs and starts barking orders, shooing Kara off Mon-El “so the agents can do their job.”
Kara immediately flushes and reluctantly jumps down but stays close, never letting go of Mon-El’s hand. She only has eyes for him. A surge of emotion wells up in her chest as he turns around to give her a bemused smile as the scientist poke and prod at him. Well nothing has changed there.
She reaches a hand up to wipe the remaining tears away, glancing at their intertwined hands.
I was there.
You weren’t alone
I kept my promise,
And I’ll never let you go
Loving can hurt, loving can hurt sometimes
But it’s the only thing that I know
When it gets hard, you know it can get hard sometimes
It is the only thing that makes us feel alive
We keep this love in a photograph
We made these memories for ourselves
Where our eyes are never closing
Hearts are never broken
And time’s forever frozen still
So you can keep me
Inside the pocket of your ripped jeans
Holding me closer ‘til our eyes meet
And I won’t ever let you go
Wait for me to come home
PHOTOGRAPH - ED SHEERAN