. (mote) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2014-01-14 16:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: dc comics, supergirl, superman |
Who: Kal and Kara
What: Hugs and Kal being a sweetheart
Where: A field in Smallville
When: Recently, after the destruction
Warnings/Rating: Teen angst?
The field was dead. The wheat hadn't been harvested, and what remained was trampled over brown, hard and scratchy as far as the eye could see. Smallville, where it seemed like there was nowhere and noone left in the world. No one, save for the blonde girl that sat in the middle of the endless field, jeans and a pink hoodie that was pulled over her blonde hair. Her knees were up against her chest, and she'd torn off the dead wheat in a circle around herself. The pieces were scattered, dirt turned over, and her head was bowed against her knees.
There were signs of where she'd been, and there were signs of what she'd been doing. Her clothes were riddled with bullet holes, though the skin beneath was smooth and unmarred. Even the hoodie that covered her blonde hair was more holes than fabric, but the girl was uninjured, and that made her angrier than almost anything else. It wasn't fair. Everyone died, but she never did, and she was so tired of being the one left behind. She hated it, just like she hated this place, this world, the people here. They did nothing but hurt each other, and they tried to hurt the people who helped them. Why bother helping people who just wanted to hurt you? It didn't make any sense, and she longed for home, where crime had been eradicated, and where these things didn't happen.
Everyone she'd ever known was dead. That's what it felt like most days. All her friends back home, they were all gone. And now, she realized, that her friends here could die too. Would die, because none of them were like her. All, the bullet holes that lined her clothing, they would kill her friends.
She'd only just realized that.
Kal had been looking for Kara, she wasn’t hard to find, and she wasn’t hard to follow. Tim had been in touch, he hadn’t heard from Jason but he wanted to speak to him as well. Just in case, and perhaps so they could all be on the same page. Just for the time being.
Kal worried about Kara, he worried about her all the time - he knew what this place could be like, what it could do, how easy it was to lose faith. But he didn’t want to do that, and he didn’t want that fate for Kara. Clark Kent was virtually alone - he didn’t have friends (aside from Bruce), and Kara was an important connection for him. He loved the planet, and he loved the people on it - he wanted Kara to see the beauty that he saw every day (even in Gotham City), and it injured him that he hadn’t been able to shield her from pain.
Damian Wayne had been a good kid, had always been a good kid, and he would be missed. And he would be mourned. But he hoped not like this - more pain and destruction would only bring even more pain and destruction.
As Kal touched his feet down next to Kara he sat close to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s time to come home, Kara,” he said softly in their native language as calmly as he ever spoke to anyone.
Kara didn't look up.
Once, when she'd been all alone, Kal had shown up and made feel even more alone. He didn't sound like her; his Kryptonian was nothing like Kryptonian at home. He didn't remember her, and the fact that he was older with her constantly reminded her that things were wrong. He had been just a baby; he was supposed to be fifteen years her junior, not ten years her senior. He'd reminded her that she was like her father's clones, an oddity that had circled a strange world for decades. And then she'd defeated him, and that was supposed to make her feel better, but it hadn't. Then, she'd found him here, and this place was even stranger than the last.
Things had changed since then, and she very much wanted to go back to that time when she hated everyone, including him, because hating everyone meant not losing things all over again.
"I don't have a home here," she said in Kryptonian, tears on her cheeks. She finally looked up then, and this world might have made her physically eighteen, but it was a devastated fifteen-year old that looked back at him. "I hate it here," she told him, much in the same way that a child hated their parents, without really meaning it, but feeling it keenly in the moment.
"Everyone dies, Kal." It was forlorn, and she buried her face against her knees once more.
Kal sighed and put his arm around her a bit tighter, “You do, Kara. You do have a home here. Your home is with me. With the people we care about. I know it’s terrible to feel loss like this, and I know its easy to lose faith when you experience loss like this. But this is when you have to hold fast to things you love, and the things that matter. People love you, Kara. They love you and they worry about you, and they want to see you succeed. And you are amazing in every way. I know how lonely it is to be - who and what we are. I know that so well.” And he did, and he hated to tell her that sometimes it was crushing loneliness, because most of the time it wasn’t. And having her in his life felt that much better to him, having something close to an understanding. Meant the world to him. Even though they were all hurting, and he was hurting for her, he was good at that part, he still wanted her to have some hope left.
“I know,” he answered a bit somberly. “But not always like this, but it does always hurt, but Kara you have to trust me when I tell you that there is so much more to their lives than just death and pain. I promise you, I wouldn’t want to protect this world if it wasn’t full of things worth protecting and saving, and loving. Sometimes its hard to see through all of the pain, but we have to. We have an obligation to, because of who we are and what we can do. We can feel all of these things that you’re feeling, but we have to feel them differently.”
She leaned into him heavily, and it would have knocked someone else - someone from Earth - across the field. But not him, and she exhaled a hard breath at not needing to be careful about that, at least. Like every teenager, there was a part of her that was all I. She was hurting, and she couldn't see past that hurt. "I don't want a home here. I want to go back to Krypton. I want to go back home," and it was whiney, and it was hurt, and she knew she had other friends here, other people who cared. But it wasn't the same, and just then it felt like nothing would ever be the same. Damian had convinced her to move to Gotham. Damian had convinced her to go to school. Damian had made her stop hiding beneath the ocean. "Damian understood. His mother genetically enhanced him and created him to be something. His mother and his grandfather did terrible things, but he thought he could be more than what he was made to be. He understood." And that was the selfish crux of it. She felt so much more alone now than she had in months, and she didn't think she could bear it.
And she was lonely; there was no denying that. She looked at him, a sniffle and a swipe of the back of her hand across her red nose. "The bad things are going to kill them all anyway. They're weak, and they're fragile, and they're small. It's only a matter of time, Kal." And from where she stood, that was the truth. They were like tiny ants fighting a big, terrible world. And she didn't want to care, because she didn't want it to hurt when she lost them. And they would lose them, all of them, she was sure of it.
“Kara, we can’t go back home,” he responded softly, even though she knew that. “We have to try and make a home here. I know a little something about that, and I’m always going to be here to help.” He listened, and he understood that sometimes it was best to let her talk, let her get it out. He probably wouldn’t leave her with her feeling worlds better about life and better about everything. It was going to take time, and she was going to have to feel these things and work through them in a healthier manner than destroying cities. He knew that, and he wanted to help her do that.
“He is always going to be important to you, Kara. He is always going to be someone you cared about. And focus on the impact he had, and what he taught you, and how he understood you. I haven’t found anyone who understands me - Kara. You were so lucky to have that, just remember how important that was. And how he wanted to be something more, and you can do something more. Maybe they’re weak, and maybe they’re fragile - but they’re strong in spirit. And they fight because its the right thing to do. And we’re strong in spirit and we’re strong in strength, and its our job to help them when we can. We can’t save everyone - it wouldn’t be fair of us to think we can. But we can help our friends fight their battles. We have to learn and grow, and they have so much to teach us. To teach you. Damian already taught you so much, and there is more to learn. I promise.”
She knew they couldn't go home. Of course she knew. She'd given up her only chance at that when she'd killed H'El, and now there was nothing but this place. "I never knew anyone who died," she said honestly. At home, on Krypton, no one died. Lives were hundreds of years long and, at fifteen, she'd never even known anyone who was old enough to think about passing. "At home, father was removed from the council, but they didn't do anything to him. Uncle Jor, he didn't like what father had done, but there wasn't any punishment. Nothing bad happened." She punched the dead wheat beside her, and the ground trembled for miles and miles, making the winter trees shake and uproot in the distance. "No one ever said things like this could happen. No one." Until the day when her father had murdered her mother in front of her, there had been nothing bad; she wasn't prepared for it. And she wasn't prepared for just how much of her life had been a lie.
When he talked about Damian, her eyes welled with tears. "He shouldn't be dead!" she insisted. "He was a good fighter. He was the best, and he shouldn't be dead. He shouldn't be. He just shouldn't be." And then she was crying, shaking shoulders and lost youth and so much anger. She'd finally started to control it a little, that anger, but it was all back now. She screamed, the sound sonic sharp and shattering windows and eardrums, and she shoved away and curled up on the wheat and just sobbed it out. Damian hadn't liked her how she'd liked him, but that didn't matter. Right then, everything just hurt.
He put his hand over hers after she hit the ground, it was firm and would have been seriously harmful had she been human, but in this moment he was trying to still her. “Kara,” he said seriously. “We can’t do this. I know we want to scream and cry and hit something - but this planet and the people on it are fragile. I have ways I can help you, you have to trust me. Unfortunately we can’t react the way we want to all the time. More people will get hurt. This land can’t recover the way we can. And the people rely on this land to be healthy. We can’t hurt this planet because we have to make our home here, as hard as it is, as wrong as it feels, we have to try.”
He thought about taking her to Sanctuary, or the Fortress of Solitude, outer space, anywhere she could get some of this out, he knew how hard it was. How angry and alone he was capable of feeling here - a feeling he’d felt his whole life and now he wasn’t sure he had words for his cousin that would help. He rarely had his own words. He knew how he felt, and he had to keep telling himself that the people here were worth saving. But he’d taught himself, after a lifetime here, how to see beauty everywhere. And hope beyond measure. Kal had that, and he desperately wanted Kara to be able to see what he saw.
When she screamed he used his body and did the best to shield the trajectory of the sound, he held her tightly and rested his cheek on her head. “No, he shouldn’t be,” he agreed. It was easy to agree with that, of course no child should be dead. No child should have to suffer or endure. No family should be suffering with what Bruce’s family was dealing with. His own cousin was falling apart before his eyes and all he wanted was to make it all stop. “I’m sorry that this happened, Kara. But we can get through it, I promise it won’t always hurt so badly.”
She wanted to punch the ground until she was too tired to punch anything anymore, but his hand stopped her. And, anyway, it was pointless; she never tired, and she never needed sleep, and she never needed food. She didn't do any of the things that made people here normal, and she felt it so sharply in that moment. She could go back to hiding in Sanctuary, where she could be a normal girl without powers, but she was alone there, and she wasn't good at being alone; she'd never been the kind to sit in her room and read or watch holoprograms. And she wondered, in a moment of pure selfishness, why she couldn't be normal. Why did she have to come here, to this place, just to be an alien freak, as Damian used to call her? And worse, why did she have to lose more people? "Why didn't I just die when everyone else did?" she asked, when he stopped talking, after all the agreements that Damian shouldn't be dead, and after all the explanations about protecting the fragile earth and the fragile people that lived there. "Why, Kal?"
She knew he didn't have an answer, but she was still mentally young enough that she wanted her mother or father, just like she had when she'd been dying from the Kryptonite. She wanted someone bigger, someone older, someone with answers. But her parents weren't here; he was. And she didn't see beauty. Right then, she just saw a world that was so, so empty with Damian gone from it. She threw herself at him without warning, and the hug would have floored a normal person, sent them miles and likely busted everything inside them. Her arms went around his neck, and she was shaking sobs against his shoulder. She clung, like the child she'd been before being shoved into a pod and sent into orbit. And maybe the tears were for more than Damian. Maybe they were for what Damian's loss represented. Out of everyone here, everyone in this place, only he'd known the secrets and bad things about her life; she wasn't sure she would find anyone who understood like that again.
She sniffled against his shoulder. "Can we go home? To Sanctuary?" She could sleep there, at least. She couldn't sleep here, but she could sleep there. She could forget everything for a little while. She wanted to forget everything for a little while. She didn't stop to think that he might be adversely affected by the lack of sunlight. He'd been raised with the yellow sun, and she didn't stop to think that he might not be able to live without it anymore, not easily. She wasn't thinking clearly. Really, she wasn't thinking at all.
He held on tightly to her, and let her cry, and he stroked her hair and rubbed her back. Everything he remembered his own parents had done for him when he’d been upset. Or hurting. He wasn’t sure if he was helping, but he was trying to be comforting and in the moment he found himself slightly comforted as well. He didn’t want to lose Kara, and he didn’t want to manipulate her into feeling something she didn’t feel for this planet or its inhabitants. But he wanted to see her thrive, like he knew she was capable of.
He nodded, “We can go to Sanctuary,” he responded easily. It wasn’t the easiest place for him to be - but he’d do what he could. And he’d do what was necessary to be there for her.