now i am [karamel]

twenty-two

mon-el

Kara's head was resting on my shoulder and her arms were wrapped around my waist. We watched from the wooden bench we were sitting on in the park as the blue in the sky slowly turned into a fiery scarlet, a glowing orange, a muted purple, and finally a dark blue. Everything seemed so peaceful.

"You know we have to go home now, right?" I said as the air around us grew cooler.

Kara groaned, stood up, took my hand and pulled me up from the bench.

We were walking home, two black silhouettes with intertwined fingers, when Kara suddenly stopped in her tracks.

"Is everything okay?" I asked.

She didn't reply.

The world started playing in slow motion as Kara's eyes closed and she fell down, down, down towards the ground.

I landed on the balcony and burst into the DEO, carrying an unconscious Kara in my arms.

"Somebody, help!" I screamed to the agents bustling around. They all froze and hurried to Kara, prying her away from me, carrying her into the medbay with a stretcher, turning on yellow sun lamps.

"What happened?" Someone asked me.

"I— I don't know, we were walking and she just— collapsed—" I was having trouble breathing properly.

"We ran some tests on her and it seems since she's invulnerable on Earth, she won't be able to give birth. If we don't do something about this, the baby will die, the body will never exit her body, and eventually... she'll die as well," the agent informed me.

"Give... birth? So soon?"

"This baby is a brand new species, so nothing about its birth is going to be clear, including the period of time it takes before it's born," she said.

My vision blurred and I could hear every beat of my heart pounding in my ears. All I knew was that I couldn't lose Kara. Kara, my clarity, my rock, my hero in times of chaos. I had gone through losing her once, and that had already been one too many times.

And that's when I knew. That I couldn't live without her. That I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, however long that may be.

The agent continued explaining Kara's situation, but I was only vaguely aware of little snippets: "The bullet's affecting the baby", "we'll have to extract them both from her body", "you don't have to be there if you don't want to".

I felt myself shake my head-- I wanted to stay by her side no matter what. I wanted her to be able to wake up to my smile, the same way I wake up to hers every morning. I took her hand and braced myself to watch her get brutally cut open.