Chapter Text
“And I’d do anything to save this,” Kara pleads, finishing her speech.
“You can leave the same way you came in, Supergirl ,” Lena spits, and she winces. The deliberate use of her alias roils around in her gut. Bile is in the back of her throat despite not really being someone who can throw up, the last time having been during her throes of Argo Fever, but she nods, almost imperceptibly.
“If you’re ever in trouble, use the watch,” Kara says, standing rigidly on the balcony, shaking hands hidden behind her back. “I will always come when you call.”
She flies home, the sting of Lena’s rightful anger grasping at her heart and squeezing. Once inside, she finds the alien scotch she bought from M’gann and pours three fingers, not even bothering to grab the water Lena said would make it taste better.
“Trust me, it’s the perfect palate cleanser,” Lena promised, pressing the bottle of expensive water into Kara’s hand with a grin.
Now the memory just hurts, leaving a deep ache in Kara’s chest.
She pours another three fingers, despite the alcohol already hitting her and making her feel floaty, and she downs that too, whipping her head back to take the alcohol in one swift drink. Slamming the glass to the table, she doesn’t even wince when the glass shatters from using too much force. She grits her teeth instead, and pushes the glass into the trash with one large sweep of her arm. It clings in the can, loud and obtrusive. She just glares at the can, grabs the bottle, and stomps into the living room, debating on whether or not she should call Alex, ultimately deciding against it. (Instead, she cradles the bottle and drinks, drinks, drinks.)
—
“Legions of people have been wondering where Supergirl is,” Alex says through the door. It had only been a week since the final time Kara had seen Lena, and all she had done was drink, sleep, repeat. Kara lolls her head to face the door.
She tries to speak, she thinks, but she isn’t sure if anything other than drunken mumbles comes out of her mouth. She hums and lets her head fall back on the couch. Distantly, she thinks she hears her door unlocking, but doesn’t bother doing anything other than begin dozing off.
“Oh Kara.” Alex’s now clear voice startles Kara awake, eyes still hazy from the alcohol. “Okay, up you go, let’s get you in the shower.”
Kara grumbles but complies with the hands tugging her up, leaning heavily on her sister to stumble to the bathroom. She sits in the shower, with her clothes on, and turns the water on cold. Vaguely she can feel the cold, but it does nothing to make her cold.
“‘Lex?”
“Yeah, Kar?”
“I think Lena hates me.” (It’s the first time she’s said the words out loud, and it does nothing but to break her. She collapses into herself, sobbing loud, wishing she were anywhere but National City.)
—
Kara sometimes regrets becoming Supergirl.
Perhaps she should word that statement better. She doesn’t regret becoming Supergirl. She’s proud of the lives she has saved, she’s proud of becoming a symbol of hope, the Paragon of Hope even, but she misses the simplicity of life pre-Supergirl.
She misses the simplicity of running errands as Ms. Grant’s assistant, she misses sisters nights where she would pout at Alex and they’d watch The Wizard of Oz or listen to the Wicked soundtrack, she misses when her only memory of Luthors was basking in the red sun the day that Lex turned the sky red (and if anyone to were ask, no, she isn’t grateful to Lex for bringing her Rao one more time but to be truthful to herself that was the best day she had had in years) .
She misses.
And maybe that should have been her first sign that something was wrong, to both her and everyone around her, but, to be fair to everyone, they were mostly focusing on Lena. Lena, who turned on her brother twice for them. Lena, who deserved nothing but the truth but got nothing but lies in return.
She’s on the roof of CatCo, the building empty of everyone but security guards who don’t know she’s there, and she watches as the sun begins to rise. She can feel the bite of the cold against her cheek, but doesn’t actually feel the chill. It makes her wonder if that right there is why she will never be human enough for this world.
What are humans but feelings and sensations? What are humans if not the experiences they attract?
Once, she had asked Alex that. It was before they really became sisters, before Kenny Li, before… Well, she had tried to ask. Alex had brushed her off with a “Does it matter? You aren’t a human, anyways.”
(At the time, it had hurt. But in retrospect, wasn’t Alex correct? She’d never understand human emotions, she can only dress up her Kryptonian emotions as human ones.
All of her vital years were spent on Krypton. She is a Kryptonian. She is haughty like most Kryptonians, she thinks in Kryptonian, she is smart and stubborn and not human.) But she loves humans. She loves them with everything she is, Kryptonian and otherwise. So she returns to work on a Monday, an inconsequential Monday, but she doesn’t stay for the flashing cameras or the clamoring reporters with microphones, she just waves and smiles and waves again before shooting off into the sky, but before she is out of range of hearing a human’s voice she hears “I don’t think Supergirl is okay.”
—
She heads back to her apartment, because what else is she supposed to do? She can’t call Alex, and she can’t call Kelly, because she really doesn’t want it to get back to Alex (and Kelly tells Alex everything because “that’s what a healthy relationship looks like” according to the therapist, and, well, she can’t say that’s not true because any relationship she’s tried has started without them knowing something about each other and they’ve all gone to shit), and she can’t call James because he still doesn’t trust Lena.
So she dials a number she hasn’t dialed in nearly two years, since giving up on the other person answering because they never did. And she isn’t sure she could handle another rejection, not so close to Lena sending her away, but she has to try, she has to because right now she’s not sure she could handle not trying.
“Kiera,” Cat’s voice rings clear, and maybe she answered because Kara called, but maybe she answered because of the time between calls and, well, people always say they regret not picking up the phone in these situations, but she answered, she actually answered, and she has to avoid sobbing, but Cat’s voice is in her ear for the first time in nearly three years (excluding the voicemail Kara recorded so she could listen to it over and over but dear Rao she missed Cat). “A surprise to hear from you.”
“Ms. Grant,” she chokes out, finally, after a beat of silence. “I-”
“Spit it out, Kera, I don’t have all day,” Cat snipes, but there’s no malice in her tone.
“I fucked up,” she blurts out, and almost laughs at the silence of Cat’s processing.
“Did Kara Danvers just swear at me?”
Kara snorts, but settles quickly. “I hid something from Lena, and I hurt her.”
“You hid that you’re Supergirl, didn’t you?” Cat’s snark settles Kara. “And please, that little parlor trick you used barely worked for five minutes. Of course I know.”
Kara chuckles wetly, ache in her chest slowly dissolving. “She thinks I don’t trust her.”
“Because you didn’t share your secret identity with her?” Cat asks, and Kara can almost see the quirked eyebrow.
“Yes. Among other things.” And Kara breaks, breaks like she’s never been able to before, spilling everything, everything, everything. Everything about Lex telling Lena before she could, about asking James to search for Kryptonite, about lying to Lena, about calling her a villain. Everything.
“Did you apologize?”
“Of course I did,” Kara scoffs, almost offended that Cat would have to ask.
“That’s all you can do,” Cat answers. “Yes, you made mistakes, and yes it would have been nice for Lena to hear it from you, but you also don’t owe your identity to anyone. It’s like if you were to be upset if Lena Luthor was outed to you, not because she is gay but because she didn’t tell you herself.”
“She didn’t actually tell me,” Kara says. “Maxwell Lord did.”
“And were you angry at Lena?”
“No. I did threaten Lord, though.”
“Never change, Kara Danvers.” Cat laughs loudly, but then sombers. “I apologize, Kara. I should never have tried to force you to come out to me as Supergirl or an alien. That was wrong of me. I fear that made you wary of coming out to anyone after that.”
Kara clears her throat. “Thank you, Ms. Grant.”
(Kara doesn’t say that Cat is the only one who had ever apologized for outing her, not even Kal apologizing for telling James.)
“Kiera, please. Call me Cat.”
—
Even though Kara feels better after her talk with Cat, she still feels heavy, heavy, heavy. Guilty. Ashamed.
Tired.
—
She wanders to her cupboards, cursing when she opens them to see just one bottle of alien tequila. She notes to buy herself some more next time she’s at Al’s. She’s about to take a swig of the alcohol but pauses, looking around at her surroundings. It’s littered with empty alcohol containers, both alien and human from when she solar flared, takeout boxes overflowing in the trash can, and the pervasive smell of food rotting.
With a shrug, she swallows mouthfuls of the tequila, grimacing at the burn yet somehow relishing in it. She finishes the bottle in just a few minutes, staring wistfully at the pictures adorning her walls and shelves.
Rao, she misses Lena. Lena Lena Lena. Her love. Even if she was too much of a coward to tell her. One more thing for Lena to hate about her, Kara thinks.
Lena, who she sees when the billionaire is visiting Andrea. Lena, who Kara sees traces of in all of her friends. Lena, who has forgiven everyone for the deception except for her. Not that Kara blames her, Rao, no. In fact, if she were Lena, she’s not sure she would have even extended her forgiveness as much as Lena has.
But she can’t deny that it hurts. Oh, how it hurts.
She’s drunk now, glaring at the empty tequila bottle, angry that it dared to be empty. She lets herself collapse in the middle of the living room, staring at the lights above her, head dizzy. There’s a knock, a beat of silence, and then another knock. After another beat of silence, she hears the lock click and panics. She assumes it’s Alex, because the only people she gave a key to were Alex and Lena. And, well, Lena doesn’t want to see her. But she panics because Alex doesn’t know she’s been drinking.
But she can’t get up, the thought of standing makes her stomach roil, so she just rolls to her back.
“‘m fine, ‘Lex,” Kara says, but she’s not sure if Alex hears her.
“Oh dear Lord, Kiera,” Cat responds, nose crinkled in disgust, the disgust only growing when Kara’s only response is to sit up and crawl to the trash can to vomit.
“Why does everyone leave, Alex?” Kara whines, still not noticing that it’s Cat, Alex, and Kelly in her apartment and not just Alex. “Mon-El left, Cat left, even my mother and father left, no one sticks around.”
“Sweetheart, that’s-”
“Kal didn’t love me enough to keep me, Jeremiah is dead because of me, all I ever do is ruin things,” Kara sobs, curling up on herself. “Why am I never enough?”
(And Alex has to look away, not wanting Kelly to see her tear up, but so so angry at Superman, and hurting for her sister in a way that’s unfixable.)
—
Kara falls asleep on the floor after emptying her stomach for a second time, neither Alex nor Cat moving her.
“Why are we leaving her there?” Kelly asks, stepping back slightly.
“She’s heavy,” Alex answers. “Because of her Kryptonian physiology. It takes three DEO agents to lift her, and, well, we only have one here.”
Kelly nods, almost imperceptibly, watching Kara’s stomach rise and fall with every breath.
“I’m worried about her,” she says, watching Alex’s face carefully. Kara is one of two weak spots Alex harbors, and she’s honestly a little worried that Alex is going to deny anything’s wrong with Kara, but she has to make the observation, because the therapist in her won’t let it go.
“Yeah, I am too,” Alex answers, face full of concern. “She wasn’t even like this when Mon-El left. Or Black Mercy.”
“Black Mercy?” Cat asks, ever the journalist, and Alex shoots a glance at her.
“No publishing,” she warns first, before launching into an explanation. “It’s a parasite that infects someone and gives them what they want the most while leeching them of their life. Kara dreamt of Krypton.
“She fought it off but lost everything again,” Alex continues, kneeling next to Kara and wiping some remnants of vomit off her lips with a wet paper towel. “That was the day my boss filled in as Kara. And then everything was wrong when she came back.”
Cat’s eyes widen, almost imperceptibly, remembering that day with nausea.
—
When Kara begins waking only a few hours later, she’s no longer drunk. She grimaces as she remembers throwing up in front of Cat, crying, throwing up again, and then finally passing out. No hangover, thankfully, because her Kryptonian physiology doesn’t let her get hangovers, but there is a bad taste in her mouth and she’s still hurting. She focuses, though, and hears Alex and Kelly asleep on her bed, and Cat is slumped on her couch, not quite in deep sleep yet but dozing. Kara carefully looks around the room, face full of regret and sadness.
—
Supergirl disappears on a random Tuesday morning, with only a note letting her sister know that she’ll be back eventually, and to not worry about her, and a letter for the public letting them know she’s struggling with her mental health, and to be their own heroes. In it, she describes her own passive suicidal ideation, and how it isn’t healthy for her to be out anymore. How getting help isn’t shameful, and how she’ll be okay.
It doesn’t stop said sister from worrying about her, and it doesn’t stop the public from mourning her, grieving for a woman not dead.
Because Supergirl may disappear on a random Tuesday, but so does Alex Danvers’ little sister, and the person National City trusted the most.