Warnings/Rating: Er, violence. Language. Hels being high and Kara being shot.
Kara wasn't expecting the bullet that felled her. She'd come into contact with kryptonite once, when she'd been locked up by Simon Tycho and experimented on by the government. It had been her introduction to Earth, and it had been one she would never forget. But the kryptonite was a fluke, really. It had been in the fuel that supplied her pod and, when Tycho had brought it into the same area as her, he'd learned that he could use the green fuel to control her, to hobble her. He'd done terrible things to her then, until a stupid mistake on his part allowed her to destroy the station and escape. But she she didn't know what the liquid was, and she had no idea that any of existed on the planet. She hadn't anticipated pain while she provided a distraction for Batman, and her only thought was that the bullet that sliced through her side and embedded itself deep in her gut shouldn't have made it past the skin. That was the last thought she had, because the pain she'd experienced on Tycho's station was nothing compared to this.
Kara fell.
In so many ways, Kara was just a sixteen-year old. She was out of her element, and she was afraid, and now she hurt. She didn't even wonder if Batman had succeeded, because she was still young enough to only be able to focus on the agony in her body. She cried, she wanted her mother, and she splashed into the river without enough force to overflow the bank.
Surfacing, unfortunately, was something Kara couldn't manage, not beyond spurts of gasped breath as the resettling river offered her that small reprieve. It was the false tide created by her fall that saved her. It washed her south, into Gotham proper, and it shoved her toward the edge of the riverbank. She was facedown, soaked blonde, her impenetrable suit not as impenetrable as it should have been, torn and jagged from the river's rocks. Her face was a scratch-blood mess, and her body couldn't do anything to heal itself in the face of the kryptonite lodged deep in her system. She couldn't move; she didn't even try.
While Kara was doing her impression of a flying white bat, Helena had been on the way to a little impromptu play date with Crane. It was long overdue in her opinion, but seeing Kara fall from the sky was just enough to distract her from one train of thought and promptly boot her into another. It wasn't fear that had her turning right towards the river instead of left towards Arkham in her purple Prius, but the thought that if Kara dropped her from that height, it might be even more enjoyable than punching that ridiculous smirk off Crane's face.
It was the height of magpie-itis, one shiny thing traded in for another shiny thing, only for Helena it was one person traded in for another. The fight they'd had on the journals the other day was completely and wholly forgotten, a street sign on the long highway of her joyride. It took her longer to find Kara than she expected, mostly because the river thought it could carry Kara away from her. Well, screw that. In a whine of the transmission and a shriek of the guard rail, Helena plowed right through it in her little hybrid. In the midst of slurping, sucking mud, she skidded to a pause about two feet away from Kara and promptly crowed her success at the river.
"I am awesome," she sing-sang as she hopped out of the smoking, gurgling car and marched over to Kara, who was still face down in the water. "I can't believe you didn't even look!" Hels said, hands on her hips. When that garnered no reaction either, she climbed down in the water, ended up losing a shoe in the mud, and gripped the other girl under her armpits to drag her a bit further up the shore and out of the water. "What are you eating in Sanctuary? Granite?" She groaned, only dimly noticing that her car was slowly being swallowed up by the same water that she was trying to save Kara from.
Kara didn't notice the car. The pain was something too overwhelming, too foreign to let her notice big things. She wanted to curl up and crawl on her mother's lap. She wanted her father. She wanted to die. She didn't want Helena, and she actually managed a groan, despite the pain, when the other girl pulled her up by her armpits. The short-lived groan was followed by a hiss of agony and a completely weak and useless attempt to guard her stomach. She could fight Helena's grip, and didn't it just figure her stupid superpowers decided not to work now? She didn't want to look weak in front of this girl. If there was anyone she didn't want to look weak in front of, it was this girl.
"I eat normal food in Sanctuary," Kara muttered, even as tears streamed down dirty cheeks that were an unhealthy, pallid green-pale. "I did look!" she argued, a little more forcefully, but that took all her strength, and she heaved uselessly, her stomach empty, and sobs following the horrible not-retching. "I want my mother," she whimpered in Kryptonian, H'El's translator starting to short out slowly.
Helena hadn't gotten a good look at her skin, but she did figure that Kara needed to heave up whatever she had in her belly and her lungs, if she'd inhaled any of the river water. That couldn't be good for anyone, Kryptonian or not. "I have no idea what you just said," she informed the other girl as she sat her down for a minute. "Earth languages, Kara. Can't help you if I don't know what you're saying."
Ignoring the fact that her car was slowly sinking into the river, she bent down again. "You're going to have to help me out a little here, 'kay?" 'Cause carrying around the dead weight of Kara was not on the list of fun things to do. Crouching down next to her, Helena started to pick her up again, only this time as soon as she got Kara roughly half the way up, she ducked her head under Kara's arm and pulled her up the rest of the way. "You're going to have to lean on me," she started and then she got her first really good look at the other girl's skin. She knew what it looked like when her Kara was around Kryptonite and this Kara didn't look much different. The question was, where was it that it was making her sick? "Do you know where it is?"
Earth languages? Why would she want to speak Earth languages? Kara didn't actually think in Earthspeak, and she didn't hear in Earthspeak. In her brain, it was all Kryptonian to her, and only the internal translator made the words come out in something the people here could understand. Luckily, her brain wasn't misfiring entirely yet, and the translator hadn't completely shorted out. "I want my mother," she repeated in pathetic, whining English, even as she did her best to toss her very heavy arm over Helena's shoulder. She hissed, she winced, but she managed to do a little bit of the work, even if she wanted to curl up and die somewhere. Just not in front of Helena.
"It?" Kara asked once the question caught up with her slowing mind. "I do not know what it you mean," she said, but her hand reflexively moved to cover the slow-bleeding wound in her abdomen, blood trickling down her leg and into the river below. "Why are you helping? You hate me." The translator hiccuped, caught, but the words might not have needed any translation at all.
"Don't we all?" Hels asked her, but her voice was void of sarcasm. Maybe after this she would contact this world's Selina. It wasn't quite like her mom, but there was still a similarity there, just like there was with this world's Bruce.
She had no idea about Kara's internal struggle about wanting to die, so long as it wasn't in front of her. It didn't stop her from making sure she did most of the work and as long as Kara was mostly up, it was a whole lot easier to slog their way away from the river. "It, the kryptonite." The way her hand went to her side, the slow trickle of blood that Helena had missed earlier -- Kara had been shot. "Is it -- is the bullet still in?" She asked, more in awe than genuine concern. Another time, without the toxin, she might have felt a lot more worry, but mostly she felt like her foot that was missing a shoe was cold. "I don't hate you," she said as they stepped through the wreckage she'd left of the guard rail. "I miss my Kara. I miss my Tim too and my Morgan. I miss my world, and," she huffed and gripped the other girl a little tighter, careful of that sluggishly bleeding wound. "This conversation is bringing me down. New subject."
Kara didn't know if other people wanted their mothers. Right then, she didn't really care, either. She wanted hers. This was like nothing she'd ever experienced, and it was like nothing she wanted to continue experiencing. She wanted to die, and she wanted it more than she wanted anything. Being exposed to kryptonite wasn't the same as having it inside her body, and she was pretty sure she was going to die, regardless, so why not do it now and get it over with?
The question about the bullet was so logical that Kara actually touched a hand to her back - well, as much as she could - feeling for some kind of exit wound. But there wasn't one, and she just gritted her teeth and nodded. She was dead weight by then, no powers, no ability and no way to do anything but be dragged along, listening to Helena speak. "Everyone misses people," she said through clenched teeth. "Everyone here misses people." She hadn't been here long, but she knew that much. It wasn't just Helena, and even with the pain it made her need to point it out. "Your loss is not worse. Is not better. Is the same." She couldn't manage a retort for the conversation bringing her down, because she didn't actually know what that meant. They were no closer to the ground than before.
"It is not the same," Helena snarled. "It's similar but not the same. It's not the same for anyone and saying that is, is just mean." Nevermind that she had just done the same to Kara. Logic came and went in spurts, but it mostly went and at the moment, Hels didn't care. "And this conversation is still bringing me down." If it kept up, she was going to drop Kara and leave her on her own.
And that might suck because then she would have no one to party with. Not that Kara was really in a position to party, but it was the principle of the thing. Just like that, her mood shifted and she was smiling. Hels leaned a little closer and sniffed her. If they were going to party -- "You need a shower." They probably needed to remove the bullet too, but that was going to be easy. "I'll take you back home, throw you in the bath, and then you can soak up some rays. Heal up. Be as good as new, okay? Then we can find Stephanie and take turns jumping off Wayne Towers. It'll be fun!"
"It is the same," Kara insisted. Even through the growing pain, and the way her skin was quickly turning a horrible and sickly green. "It is exactly the same. You are the one who is selfish and mean." Maybe it wasn't the time for this fight, but Kara felt like she was dying, and she didn't have even a little bit of patience for how center-stage Helena was being. She didn't comment about the conversation bringing her down, but she did try to roll her eyes. Helena wasn't the one who was dying, so Kara didn't think Helena had anything to say about a conversation bringing her down.
Tears streaming down her cheeks, Kara tried to made sense of Helena's insistence that she needed a shower. "I hurt," she whined. Oh, god, did she whine. If there was a prize for whining, Kara would have won it just then. If she'd had the strength to flail her arms and shove Helena away, she would have. Her breath was quick-pain sobs, and she screamed. It wasn't her sonic scream; she didn't have enough strength in her for that. But it was close. Painful and ear-splitting, it was a pained, agonized, frustrated shriek; a hurt Kryptonian's tantrum. She didn't know what to do about the kryptonite, about the bullet, about anything. She just wanted it to stop, and she didn't want to jump off a tower. And she was too caught up in her own pain to even remember that Helena was affected by a toxin. She shoved with absolutely no force, and she sobbed.
Hels wanted to retort about why she was selfish and mean and how much she did not want to have this conversation when Kara started screaming. Not any normal scream, not a sonic scream that her Kara could manage, but a whining, piteous, shriek right in her fucking ear. She did the only thing she could think of doing when the sound reverberated into her ear drums -- she clamped her hands over her ears, only it meant that she had to drop her arm from around Kara to do it.
Kara shoved at her anyway, so it was fine for her to take a few steps back and glare at the other, sickly pale girl. The toxin still rolling around in her veins made it impossible for her to care about Kara's pallor or her whining. And as soon as that god awful scream stopped, Helena was yelling. "Oh my god, what is wrong with you! You hurt, fine! I'm going to take you back and get that out of you, but not if you keep screaming! If you keep screaming, you can stay here! I don't need you!"
Kara's agonized scream when she was dropped was nearly sonic. The water in the river rippled, surged and overflowed the banks, and windows in buildings just beyond the body of water shattered, including those in the mud-sucked Prius. By the time Helena stepped back and glared, Kara's breath was coming hard and shock-fast. Her skin was fully green, and she was shivering, but there was still enough fight left in her to realize that Helena taking anything out of her would be bad; they needed a doctor, didn't they? She'd just begun to rein in her impressive temper to tell the other girl that much, intending to make an honest attempt at explaining just how absolutely horrible she felt. But then Helena said she didn't need her and something snapped. In that horrible, pain-agony moment, wracked with sobs and in so much pain that she was doubled over with it, she snapped.
"I do not need you EITHER!" Kara scream-wailed, throwing a hand out and sending Helena flying across the river with what little strength she had left. The shove wasn't enough to slam the other girl against anything with force, but it was enough to get Helena away.
It took a second for the shock of being thrown across the river to wear off. Her Kara had thrown her plenty of times, but never away, never like this Kara had just done. And once the shock was gone, all the anger flooded in. The last time she'd been that pissed was when Silky Cernak had tried to frame her mother and she'd left him unconscious on the steps of GCPD.
Pushing herself off the wall at her back, she started stalking her way back towards Kara. She could have just jumped in the river and swam across, but then she'd stink just like Kara did. The walk on the other hand, allowed her anger to crystallize and burn, but before she could get back to where she'd left the other girl, there was a car. Windows rolled down, nice but not too nice, and the keys were in the ignition, a lucky rabbits foot dangling from it. Helena just needed to borrow it, since her Prius wasn't getting out of the river. A few minutes later, she drove up to where she'd left Kara, all beaming smiles again because car. Half a tank of gas, more than enough to get them somewhere that Kara could get a shower. And where she could shower. She pulled as close as she could without hitting the other woman and got out, the car idling at the curb.
Kara's last bit of energy went into that shove, and she barely managed to lift her head when the car approached and idled. Maybe she managed to groan when she realized Helena had opened the car door, but the sound was lost in the pounding in her head, the sounds of Gotham quickly becoming too overwhelming. The sluggish blood that dripped from her abdomen didn't abate, and she couldn't feel her legs. Normally, Kara couldn't sleep when she wasn't in Sanctuary. She hated that. She hated that in order to feel normal, she had to live beneath the water. She'd tried to sleep outside of Sanctuary's safe walls, but it never worked. It was just like the food out here, which made her sick, her body rejecting it instantly as something unnecessary. But she thought she might be able to sleep now, if Helena just left her alone.
"Go away," Kara managed weakly in Kryptonian. She didn't trust Helena's beaming smile. She wanted Jason or Damian or Sam. She wanted Kal. She wanted her mother.
Helena still couldn't understand the gibberish coming out of Kara, but it didn't bother her. "You are pitiful right now, I hope you know that." She could have threatened her, yelled at her some more, but what was the point? It was only good when someone fought back.
Opening up the rear passenger door, Helena grabbed her under her armpits again and half-pulled, half-shoved Kara into the backseat. "Don't shove me again. It's rude and I'm only trying to make sure you have a good time." When she had Kara (mostly) in, she pushed the other girl's legs forward and bent them so she could shut the door without her leaving her feet hanging out. "Success!" She cried, fists pumping into the air as she jogged around the car and got into the driver's seat. "We should totally do bumper cars later, in real bumper cars. After you're not so green," she told her, grinning again as she threw the car into drive and jammed down on the gas so that the tires squealed as they sped away.
"I do not want to die around you," Kara whined, because she knew she was pitiful, but she thought she was allowed to be just then. And who could have a good time when they were dying? Because she was sure she was dying. This had to be dying. It burned.
With every jostled movement, the bullet slid deeper into Kara's abdomen, something only the AI at Sanctuary or a surgeon would be able to remove. By the time Helena shoved her into the backseat, the decidedly green-tint blonde was barely conscious. She made sounds that weren't quite words, whimpers and groans, and then she gave up when that Success! pierced the air. She curled in on herself, and she stopped fighting. It was probably a good thing that she'd lost consciousness entirely by the time Helena was talking about bumper cars and speeding away like there was actually somewhere worth going, because she would have thrown herself out of the car otherwise. Helena, she'd decided, was a terrible nurse.
"You're not going to die!" Helena cried cheerfully from the front seat. Kara couldn't die. Not her Kara, not this Kara, not any Kara. That was the whole awesome thing about being a Kryptonian -- they were impossible to kill. Of course, her Kal had died in the war against Darkseid, but Helena was definitely not thinking about that right now because that really would bring her down. Way down.
And with Kara groaning and whimpering in the back seat, Hels fiddled with the knobs on the radio until 'Thrift Shop' came blaring out of the speakers. They'd be back at her apartment in no time. Hels would get her cleaned up and then they'd find Steph and party. All in a day's work.