Supercorp One Shots

Embers

        By: NatalieTheCat and SWLandssuperartist

When the pad of her finger reached the ice, pain lanced up her arm and stabbed into her chest, as if a knife had flensed along the bones and buried itself in her heart. Kara pressed her hand to the burning cold anyway, letting the Kryptonite sting her. It was the only thing that felt real.

She was caged in a poison hell and Lena had put her here, but the pain of the viridian agony carving through her flesh was nothing beside the pain of seeing Lena in so much pain as she turned on Kara.

I killed my brother for you! Don't you understand what you've done?

Kara sagged, her instinct to stay as far from the poison on every side of her yielding to exhaustion. She collapsed in the center of her prison, landing hard. Something popped in her shoulder from the impact, her body now as vulnerable as any human's. Heer head thumped hard on the surface and she saw stars, her teeth clicking.

All she could think was that she was so sorry, that if she could have just one chance to take it all back, to do it right, she'd do it. She would accept any burden, strike any bargain, pay any price. If she kept her eyes open she saw the poison, and if she closed them, agony on her best friend's face.

Lena had been so hard at first, but as she vented her fury on Kara, she had changed, her voice cracking, tears cutting hot on her cheeks as weeks of pain broke loose, like the sudden rage of a long coming storm.

As the green glow around her soaked into her flesh and bathed her in the horror of immanent mortality, the only thing she could feel was sorry. The only thing colder than the biting, consuming ice was the bitter truth, a truth she had fought so hard and so long that when she finally let go of it, she almost felt free inside the cage.

She'd find a way, she resolved. She would survive. She would make... no, she would help Lena see. She was Supergirl. She could do anything.

By the time she heard boots on the ice, Kara's skin was rimed with frost and she'd gone still, barely breathing, lacking even the strength to recoil from the pain. There was a din of shouting, crashing of metal against ice, and emerald crystal crashed in around her.

It was then that Kara finally, at the absolute limit of her strength, passed out.

The return came to her in flashes. J'onn's soothing baritone voice urging her to hang on as Alex, frantic, worked around her. The trip came in flashes and brief moments of wakeful agony. She accepted the harsh artificial heat of the sun lamps in morose silence, only opening her eyes when she felt the painful return of sensation to her fingers.

"It's a good thing you left the doors to the Fortress open," Alex said, brushing loose hair from Kara's eyes. "It would have been a shame to have to blast our way in. If we could blast our way in."

Kara rolled on her side, facing away.

"Lena sent a distress signal," said Alex. "That's how we found you. She told us where you were."

She sent them to find me. She didn't... she didn't want me to die, she still...

Kara tried to speak, to ask where Lena went, what Alex knew, but all her body would allow her to do was hack out a cough and hitch a sob, a full body shiver wracking her body as she hugged herself.

"We're not sure where she is, just that she hasn't returned to National City. I've already been to L-Corp while you were out. Her assistant didn't tell us anything useful, and her lab has been cleaned out. I think she meant to leave for good."

Kara sobbed again, hugging herself.

"This is my fault," Kara choked out, feebly trying to shrug off Alex's comforting hand. "I drove her to this."