Chapter Text
Kara grins mischievously. “J’onn gave you some regen meds.”
The entire idea of “regen meds” or “regen drugs” came from “People Gonna Talk”, so thank JoyfulTemplar for that incredible idea
Kara drops in through her apartment window, quiet and light as a breath. She starts walking towards her bedroom, looking down at the form in her arms.
Alex stirs. “Your place?” She murmurs, blinking and frowning against the moonlight.
“Yeah.” Kara smiles.
I just really need everyone to see that image in their head, because that was (part of) the core image I started with in this fic: Kara holding a seriously injured (well, less seriously, in this case, but still fairly incapacitated) Alex in her arms, landing completely soundlessly in her apartment without even bothering to take her eyes off Alex’s face because she doesn’t actually need to, she’s just extremely careful, usually, and she knows that humans do things like orient themselves visually because they need to.
Kara looking down at the person who’s literally and canonically been “her hero”—and her heartbeat is thready and her body’s been torn up by bullets and Kara’s cataloguing the healing breaks in her bones and it’s awful, being the strong one suddenly, suddenly having this kind of power with someone who you look up to, it’s terrifying and lonely when your world turns upside-down, and you’re holding your anchor in your arms and she’s broken and exhausted-hurt and she feels so fragile, and Kara always knew this intellectually (from watching Alex, ironically)—but Kara has been terrified and lonely, and then Alex was there in the middle of it. On some level, in her mind, Alex is immune, because that’s just what she is.
Except, suddenly, she isn’t anymore. It should threaten to break Kara, and it does; it should make her scared beyond anything else, and she is. Because after everything Kara has lost, how can she survive losing this?
But Kara didn’t expect the absolute dead-even certainty that’s beating through her right along with the terror. Because Alex is her safety and her home and she’s not totally out of danger (she’ll never be out of danger, that little voice in Kara’s head has picked up on her fear like it picks up all the rest of her fears, picks them up and eats them and grows stronger, feeds on all her losses), but she’s not in critical danger anymore, and Kara’s going to make herself a shield for Alex now, like Alex did all those other times, because she can, she can do that now, and this is Alex, this is the person who gave her something—who gave her so many things, really—that she can’t ever really say thank you for, so many things that she can’t ever really repay, but Kara will give, and give, and give, until there’s nothing left.
But this feeling that’s filling her up is endless and deadly and she’d match an atom of it against any entity or army the universe could throw at them. It’s the pressure and the fury of nuclear fusion inside her head. There’s a star burning inside her from head to foot. Kara is so powerful, and she knows it, and she’s not just “little sister”, that’s never been the whole story, not even remotely, and it’s her turn now. She’ll stare Death in the face and tear stars apart and put planets back together and it doesn’t matter if that’s not supposed to be something she can do, because everything she does every single day was never something she was supposed to be able to do. Because the limits of her powers are one thing, but Alex is something else entirely.
And all that focus is carrying Alex through Kara’s apartment and laying her on the bed and she’s cracking jokes and smiling with Alex and every bit of her being is there with Alex but the moment Alex falls asleep—nothing scratches the surface of that stillness, and that stillness is glassy condensed rage, is so tightly packed and so hot and cold at the same time it’s taken on a perfect solid form.
That’s it. That’s the whole fic. Plus a couple orgasms.
There’s one of her suits in ashes, out on the wind and in the city waste management system but not far enough away, never far enough away—the blue of it turned purple-red with Alex’s blood. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get the color out of her head.
And now you won’t, either. Get the image out of your head, of Kara with pretty much the entire front of her suit glittering slickly, the dark stains that are the wrong shade, and the medics, they coaxed her to open her hands and loosen her arms until they could put Alex on a bed, and now her arms are empty but when Kara looks down, there’s streaks of Alex’s blood everywhere, on her hands where her sleeves end, on her skirt and her thighs and her knees where it ran down, and there’s solid stains where Alex was bleeding right onto Kara’s suit, and it’s awful, and far too much of her suit is just… this solid dark red color, and in the bluish half-light in the hallway outside the operating room, it looks purple-black, it looks like someone should be dead—and maybe Alex should be dead, the medics are saying it’s a miracle Kara made it back when she did, but that doesn’t mean anything to Kara. It feels like something’s been torn out of her, every time she looks down at herself it’s like she only sees half of herself, like there’s something missing, she loses the air in her lungs and she feels dizzy and nothing is real, none of this can be really real.
... And that’s why Kara incinerated that particular suit, because fuck if she’s ever wearing that one again! :P
(That is the actual, whole image at the core of the fic, btw. Is Kara looking at that bloodstained suit with her hands shaking and then literally incinerating it with her heat vision because Alex nearly died in her arms while Kara was wearing it.)
Kara sits down behind her and starts peeling the old bandage off. "Nothing, just… It’s kinda familiar, isn’t it? You coming home with a black eye or messed-up knuckles ‘cause some jerk tried to mess with me at school.”
There is an ancient meta (and gen, not at all shippy) post from the dawn of the Supergirl (TV 2015) fandom (that I don’t know if it even exists anymore, everybody’s since hella blocked each other over Kalex wank or S/C wank) speculating about whether or not Alex would get into fights at school when other people would pick on Kara, because, even if Kara didn’t fight back—if someone punched her, they’d probably hurt themselves, and that would also out her as an alien. This is a direct result of that post.
There’s a particularly strong image of Clark that I remember from that post, with Jonathan Kent, where Jonathan chases away a bunch of bullies picking on Clark for reading nerdy things—and when they leave, Clark lets go of his grip on the fencepost he grabbed onto when they started making fun of him, and there’s a literal handprint in it. That’s the kind of strength Kara has. That’s the kind of care Kara exercises. Even with people who hurt her. And that’s what this fic was about—because in the beginning, before the show moved to the CW, that’s what the show was about, was Kara finally being able to take her place in the world and claim her identity and her heritage, and use her abilities—Kryptonian or otherwise—to their fullest extent, and it always stuck with me, the idea of—in its most concise form, role reversal. Alex was the protector, and she protected Kara. But in a way, Kara becoming Supergirl disrupted all of those neat tidy roles Kara and Alex were supposed to play in each others’ lives. And then there’s that moment where the two are reversed, and Kara is the protector, and she’s keeping Alex’s demons from her, and she’s helping Alex put her life back together, and to me, that’s it, that’s them, is this back-and-forth, and part of Kara taking her place in the world is standing beside Alex rather than in front of or behind her. They also snuggle on the couch and talk about their day-to-day frustrations and probably send each other memes.
And it’s really funny to me, because—Kara is basically a deity. She’s not, not really—but she’s comparable, sometimes, and Alex, lol, Alex loved and took care of this godling when she was hurt and alone, and wow, Alex, wow are you in over your head with this one, because she picked you. Part of Alex’s insecurity with Kara has come from the fact that, apart from outliving her, Kara will realize one day that she doesn’t need Alex, and that Alex isn’t as awesome as she thinks she is now. But like. Kara picked Alex, and she will keep picking her. It has literally nothing to do with how powerful she is relative to Kara, or what she can offer Kara. Kara just loves her.
And, in the vein of Kara getting to use her abilities to their fullest extent—if someone who was so important to her sense of safety and belonging and everything she’s become on this planet was threatened or seriously injured, with how deep that gratitude (for lack of a better word) and that bond between them runs… Like, how much murder would Kara accomplish if something happened to Alex?
—And for Alex, what does it feel like, to be loved by all that power, to be the focus of all of that, especially after years of getting used to thinking of Kara as someone who occupies a particular role in your life, even if you know she could be (she is) more than that.
(Like, I love the Castor&Pollux imagery for them, because in a platonic sense, that is 100% their dynamic. But in a romantic-shippy setting, it’s this. It’s desperate and voracious and devours all the labels they try to put on it and it’s kind of apocalyptic.)
“I thought we grew out of that.” The supposed to hovers over the statement.
Ah, the good old days. We were so innocent. So subtextual. So much more trusting that readers would pick up fucking nuance. (I’m not bitter or anything.)
Kara snorts. “J’onn begs to differ.”
I hear that line exactly in Melissa’s voice. Every time. JSYK.
She leans in and presses a kiss to the skin next to it, so, so gently.
Time seems to stop again when she hears Alex's heartbeat stutter and speed; the hold in her breath.
HAHA I LOVE TROPES.
(I’m okay. I’m totally fine. I’m not at all emotionally compromised.)
Alex stiffens. “It’s my job, Kara.”
Oh, Rao. She can already see this is going to end badly.
“I know.” She swallows. “I guess… I just didn’t get how scared you were. For me. Before.”
This time, Alex reaches back and captures her hand. “Well—don’t be.” Alex says, obviously fumbling for words. “It’s not your job to be scared.”
We’re getting deep into the role-reversal now, lol. And, lol, Alex is fantastic at letting herself be taken care of.
Also, Kara is actually incredible at talking to people and navigating complicated emotional interactions. She is definitely not the “punch first, ask questions later” one, especially if we’re just comparing her and Alex.
“I know this probably isn’t even the first time something like this has happened,” Kara says,
—Stepping in here to say, hahahahaha, can you imagine Kara wondering how many times Alex has almost died, while Alex lets her change her bandages and looks awkward about it?
Honestly, there’s a lot of room for “Oh my god, thank god you’re alive” sex even in the more strictly-platonic version of this bond.
“But can I just be glad you’re here for a minute?”
Alex strokes her hair. Says quietly, “Sure.” There’s a note of uncertainty in her voice, and something else that Kara can’t quite place. It makes her chest hurt.
Lol. HEY ALEX, HOW DOES IT FEEL??? (She was super used to being the one concerned about Kara, and now Kara’s all concerned about her—what do?)
But also—I have a lot of feelings about Alex being taken care of, having someone be concerned about her, after being the one who’s taken care of—not just Kara, but everyone else around her, because you better believe she was aware that she was supporting Eliza as well—for so long.
Basically, Give Alex Danvers A Hug 2k5Ever.
They fall into a kind of silence after that. Kara pulls her hand back and lays it over one of the bandages, the one that’s almost on Alex’s side. Slowly, she traces her fingertips around the edges, dusting idly over Alex’s skin, feeling her muscles slacken, that uncertainty dropping away, that guardedness. Goes into kind of a trance, between Alex’s heartbeat and the warmth radiating against her fingertips.
Something fierce surges in Kara’s chest, the details whirling in her head—Alex shirtless (vulnerable), Alex wounded (vulnerable), and that one wound, the one core hurt that she wears scattered all over her body. Two dozen little (or not so little) testaments to the hurt that lives in her skin. The one that they can’t see; that Alex doesn’t let anyone touch.
There’s one of her suits in ashes, out on the wind and in the city waste management system but not far enough away, never far enough away—the blue of it turned purple-red with Alex’s blood. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get the color out of her head.
Before she can think, she’s leaning in to place a kiss where her fingers were just tracing. The same mistake, all over again.
Alex will absolutely let Kara touch her—whatever discomfort she has with the idea of being “taken care of”, and specific kinds of actions, and expressions of concern and emotion… They take care of each other. They’ve taken care of each other for years at this point. They have their own language by now, and it’s one of touch, and food, and once Alex gets over the idea of being shirtless around Kara—she’s a field agent, lol, she can take off her clothes for medical stuff or exercise or sparring, and Kara is finally officially part of that, now, so she can work around the “OMG PRETTY GIRL” useless gay thing—both of them are too worried about other things to be embarrassed. Also, I don’t think Kara is actually a “prude”, in any sense of the term. Being vulnerable or exposed? Difficult. Potentially being seen as alien? Definitely difficult. Drawing unwanted attention, either via clothing or her body or however she does it? She’s definitely scared of that.
But this is none of those things.
So: Alex relaxes —> Alex likes/wants Kara to be there, though she’s not sure what to do with the whole “I care about you, dumbass” vibe —> Seeing Alex vulnerable makes Kara’s protectiveness increase exponentially, vaguely like a hyperbolic curve —> Oh, haha, you thought you were ever going to forget how it felt (and looked, and smelled, and nearly tasted) to almost lose Alex forever? Think again. —> Clearly, kissing is the best form of ascertaining someone’s corporeal reality —> It goes from “Please still be alive” to “I need to be inside you and make you come to be absolutely sure you’re still alive”
Or something like that.
She meant the first one to be a chaste kiss; this next one, though, she doesn’t.
Kara can feel her heartbeat, high in her head, beating dizzily. Like if she can soothe that hurt, old but never healed, that won’t happen again. If she can just convince Alex—
But this is her job. Both of their jobs. Their choice. So terribly fragile. She puts her mouth on Alex’s fragile skin, fragile and mortal and knife-edged precious like she could evaporate in the next two heartbeats.
This is such a hard trope to execute on properly—the “omg you almost died and now I have to face all of these feelings that I’m having for you” trope. You have to set the stakes right, and the reactions have to be just right, and proportional to the potential loss.
Also, this transition from emotion to sex was a bear to write. Looking back, I’m extremely happy with it.
Kisses—yes. Pressed to bruised knuckles and palms and cheekbones, a wordless approach to something that seemed incomprehensibly vast at the time, awkward failed attempts at coyness; unwieldy significance. The words, when they came, were too painful. A single kiss to a split lower lip.
Oops, Kara kissed Alex when they were teenagers and Kara didn’t know any better. They hella pretended it never happened.
But also, I really love how central touch is to their relationship—either cuddling on the couch, or hugging after a dangerous fight, and so on—because it’s not casual for Kara? It (again, canonically) took a long-ass time to get comfortable with her strength and get control of that, and it absolutely says something to me that her and Alex are so comfortable with physical contact and use that to communicate, especially when Alex was so much a part of that same transition.
“Kara—James.” So Alex—thinking of others, even when she’s bleeding out, even wounded, even… this. Burning under Kara’s hands.
“This is ours.”
I am, in fact, a huge fan of James, and his and Kara’s S1 relationship, and I am tired of hearing certain parts of the Supergirl fandom shit-talk him because he’s "getting in the way" of their ship, or claim that shipping Kara/Alex means you hate Kara/James. There's such a thing as multishipping. I just tend to focus on femslash, for... hopefully obvious reasons.
This exchange is in no way Kara writing James off summarily (or me writing James off summarily, for that matter). It’s just an acknowledgement that this is happening, right now, at that moment, that these are extreme circumstances and there are other latent feelings involved, this is the kind of bond Kara and Alex have, and just like Kara and James share certain things that Kara doesn’t share with Alex, the same is true the other way round. Will it complicate things/would it complicate things if I ever continued the story? Yep. But it doesn’t mean that those existing connections just… don’t exist. It just means that her and Alex need to have this moment, that it’s important for them, whatever the consequences end up being. They’ve been dancing around this for years, and now this event has happened and they’re being pulled into this kind of collision. (Also, I don’t think that Kara and James are dating at this point in the timeline, they just like each other.)
Also, I tend to headcanon Kara as one of those people who literally loves everyone, because that’s how she chose to handle all the loss she’s been through, is put her heart out there and give all of it, to everyone she interacts with, to what she believes in, to being Supergirl—And this is just part of that.
Also also—James didn’t almost just die, in this fic. IMO, one of them almost dying has really never been “their thing”, and that’s actually fine? It would feel like an incorrect use of that particular trope if it did happen.
Because that’s not where the stakes in their relationship are—James isn’t a combatant. (And I refuse to acknowledge the Guardian plot, because it basically said “The only way to be a hero is to wear a kinky leather suit and modulate your voice and punch things”, and that is the literal opposite of everything James’ character embodies on Supergirl: That being a thoughtful and good human being is a continual work in progress, that it’s not boring, that there are so many nuances of agreement and disagreement that two good people committed to the same thing can have, and it’s a struggle in ways that Mayo-Roll’s storyline can’t even touch on, because Mayo started his arc out, very purposefully, as an affront to everything Kara claimed to stand for, and “redeeming” a raging misogynist—and that assumes that he’s actually being redeemed, because Mayo’s arc was, essentially, crafted to make Kara look stuffy and uptight and annoying, and then tear Kara down until she admitted “maybe he’s okay too” and let him fuck her—is so, so different. There’s literally no comparison).
Kara and James have these lovely and important ethical conversations (at least they do in Season 1), about ideals and what it means to be a hero, and in many ways he is Kara’s connection to Kal (again—in Season 1), and one of Kara’s primary ways to process her connection to Krypton, and what it means to be a Kryptonian on Earth, what are the expectations placed on her, how to handle them, and to learn about what being a superhero means, in the greater context of the role that superheroes play in this society. He is incredibly important to Kara’s development as a hero, because while she’s the one who has to figure out what all these facts mean for her, and then decide and act, not only is he the person who knows the most about that life, he’s also trying to figure out what it means to “be his own man”, to step out of Superman’s shadow—just like Kara. And y’all, that’s one hell of a parallel.
And in return, James gets to do his own processing, and beyond that, gets to understand that being Kryptonian isn’t the same as “being Superman”, which imo would be enormously helpful to him as he’s trying to figure out “who he is”, because he’s always comparing himself to Clark. And because as valuable as his faith in and admiration of Kara is at times, he can kind of put her on the same pedestal he puts Clark (“saving people is what they’re born to do”—Quite literally, no. The only reason they’re there at all was to save them, and to save a remnant of Kryptonian society).
That’s not to say that that means they can’t like each other and date, lol, but it does mean that, say, her anger and jealousy (like in “Falling”) are sometimes jarring for him, because to him, those are “human” and imperfect emotions.
There’s a larger meta-narrative about women and anger here, as well, but that doesn’t make him a dick, imo, it just means that’s an area in which their relationship challenges him and makes him think—if it was a deal-breaker for him, then I’d probably think it made him a dick, because he couldn’t get over himself or think critically about his own reactions. But that’s not the kind of dude he is, and if it was ever brought to his attention, hell yeah he’d wrestle with it and struggle with it and he’d talk to her and if necessary, he’d modify his view of things. And vice versa with Kara.
Like I said, I really love their relationship; I just don’t spend a lot of time on m/f ships. I might for these two, if fandom was less of a dumpster fire, but for now, I’ll continue shipping them in my little rowboat in my own damn way, with all the rest of my rarepairs.
pure need.
I drop this into all my fics and I hate it, lol, I need to not use it as much.
Alex’s hands are steady on Kara’s sides, guiding, as Kara moves off her and settles on her side, facing Alex; Kara lifts one knee, spreading herself wider, canted towards Alex. She watches Alex watching her as she slides one hand down between her legs. Alex doesn’t move to touch her, not yet; like she can tell how hesitant Kara is about her strength, how close to losing control—how scared of losing control, as much as she needs to.
This element of the smut was the direct result of reading a couple Supercat fics where Kara struggles to control her strength, and while I know that particular concern not everyone’s thing, some of the fics were rather amusing, and…
Yeah. It definitely translated to Kara and Alex.
“Kara,” Alex’s voice is warm, gentle; Kara forces her eyes open and Alex is still looking at her, tender and intent. “Can I touch your arm?”
Imo, the inclusion of Kara’s insecurities around her control of her strength works in this fic specifically because there is such a pre-existing familiarity and intimacy with them, and the sense of patience and warmth that Alex (or Chyler) can just radiate at Kara (or Melissa; I’m honestly not sure which it is). Alex isn’t in a rush to get to “the good stuff”, because they're already there, and there’s so much love and trust between them it turns me into a pile of mush.
And it’s because of their shared history. It’s because Alex has watched Kara struggle and helped Kara struggle with adjusting to having powers. Alex knows, before sex even enters the equation, where Kara’s comfort with her body falls. It’s… a lot. I'm not typically a fan of "pastel vanilla" things--if you read a lot of my older stuff, there's a lot of people having very rough sex, and biting, and handcuffs, and just... not this. But for whatever reason, the sense of presence, of stillness, of intimacy and safety with these two is as rewarding to dig into as Bo and Tamsin not-talking about their feelings but still banging the hell out of each other, with vaguely mythical undertones. Same with Buffy and Faith. Lexa and Octavia... There's still a vaguely similar power dynamic, lol.
I’m of the opinion that Kara actually wouldn’t have an issue with hurting people during sex on accident—Clark doesn’t, and the comics have been happy to handwave that as “Clark subconsciously moderates his powers”, which is just a fancy way of saying, Your body knows how hard to push a button or twist a doorknob or hug a person because it’s calibrated itself over time to its environment. Alex, being one of the few people in Kara’s life who saw her go through that period of adjustment, is well aware of how shy that’s made her at times, though, and she knows that this is intense, and potentially overwhelming.
And so--Alex knows exactly what her girl is feeling (as much as anyone can). Kara’s body language is like a second language to her. They can communicate so much with literally just a single word and a touch on the arm. Alex has had the pressure of having to take care of Kara lifted off her, and she still wants to take care of her and knows how to take care of her, because she’s always (or at least for a very long time now) wanted to. That permission just came with a bunch of other things that didn’t fit them, or wound up isolating Alex from everyone else, or not getting the kind of care and attention that Alex needs (which is why I like Alex/Kara/Maggie, because LET’S SMOTHER ALEX WITH ALL THE AFFECTION AND CARE).
Just to point out a couple details, lol: Alex touching a neutral-ish spot because she knows it’ll anchor Kara a little bit, and also, she really does want to touch Kara; she just knows how careful they have to be. Even if she doesn’t think Kara would hurt her (and in this scene, I don’t think she’s actually scared of that), moving too fast is a great way to spook Kara, and that would be worse.
Also also, one of the things that really felt like it needed to be brought full-circle narratively with them (and hasn’t been, in canon, and probably never will be) is the fact that if Alex was in a position where she was “taking care of” or “responsible for” Kara, and it was made such a big deal of in S1, that for me, character development wise and thematically the answer isn’t “separate the two of them” (at least not completely), it’s, “Make it so that Kara doesn’t depend on Alex, and make it so that Alex isn’t “responsible for” Kara and she’s not isolated or locked into a “protector” role”. Basically, “make it so that they take care of each other”. Make it so that they have a choice.
And because for S1 Kara, it’s not about “going it alone”, it’s about choosing your people and keeping them close, because those people are your strength, and you’re not going to be able to be everything that you can be without them.
Even without that, Alex is the reason why (canonically, even, if you care about that) Kara ever came to care about Earth or view it as home in the first place. Of all the people in the world who she’d feel that sense of wanting to give back to, Alex would be at the top of that list. Hands-down.