(This is only for those 18+ and all characters are 18+. As with all my stories its written for entertainment purposes and not meant to impinge on copyrighted characters or upset anyone.)
Chapter 6: Nightmares
The rooftop was still wet from the morning rain. Kara sat on the edge of the old clock tower, her bright boots splashed with dirty water after she’d gracefully landed right in the middle of a puddle. Gotham was different in daylight, less daunting.
“I know you’re there.” Kara said without turning. A figure shifted behind her. “I thought bats only came out in the dark in this city?”
Black and crimson cut against the skyline as Batwoman stepped out from the shadow of a gargoyle, boots silent on the stone. Her cowl hid most of her face, red hair spilled from beneath it. “Took you a minute to realise I was here. You’re getting sloppy.” She said evenly, giving nothing away.
Kara smiled faintly. “Hi to you too, Kate.”
“Don’t. Not in the suit.”
Kara raised her hands slightly in mock surrender. “Right. Sorry. Special superhero names only.”
There was a beat of silence. Cold wind tugged at both their capes. They had fought side by side before. Intergang in Burnside. A metahuman trafficking ring in Blüdhaven. Kate had even made an appearance in National City that one time the Mad Hatter decided to visit and had tried his special brand of mind control on Kara. They were… well, if not friends. Allies. But something was different today.
“You’ve been busy.” Batwoman said, stating the facts.
“I was tracking a thief. You probably heard all about it.”
“I hear a lot of things. Including who you were traveling with.”
Kara’s posture changed slightly. “Well… That’s just… It’s complicated.”
“It always is in Gotham. But at the same time, it’s really not all that complicated, is it Supergirl?.”
Kara stood up and stepped closer. “Look, I know Ivy and Harley aren’t exactly Justice League material. But we weren’t here to step on your toes. I’m here on a federal mandate.”
“Exactly.” The word landed flat and heavy between them. Batwoman moved close enough that the space between them felt charged. Even through her cowl, Kara could see her face change. “I don’t want government stooges operating in my city.”
Kara blinked. Inside she bristled at the insult. It attacked her self perception, stung worse than any of the blows she’d taken the night before. “Stooge? Ka- Batwoman that’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I’m not some pawn.”
“You were wearing a comms device and had to check in with them. Reporting to a handler. You brought Task Force X into Gotham.”
“That wasn’t my call.”
“But you did it anyway.”
“You know me.” Kara said more quietly. “You know I wouldn’t back something dirty.” Her mind flashed to the laptop Selina had shown her. The information that had been going straight to the President. Kate’s name was probably in it too.
Batwoman tilted her head slightly. “Yes, I do know you. So powerful, but always so incredibly naive. Or very good at coming across naive at least. Here you are, playing the good girl, yet coming into my city and targeting my friends.”
The wind picked up again, Kara folded her arms, feeling the chill.
“The President is consolidating power.” Batwoman continued. “Federal task forces. Expanded surveillance. Enhanced authority. You think any of that is about national security?”
“I follow the news, Kate.” Kara shot back, quietly. “I’m not naive.”
“Yet you do nothing. You help them. You don’t even know the worst of what they’re doing. Tell me, how big is the check they send you every month?”
Kara hesitated, another jab that struck under her invulnerable skin. “I’m not here for politics. I was here for Selina. And once I found her… I let her go anyway.” Batwoman’s expression didn’t change and Kara realised something. “She’s your friend. You’ve been working with her. You gave her those weapons to hurt me.”
Batwoman didn’t confirm it. She didn’t deny it. “Gotham handles its own. You’re not welcome here anymore space girl. Time to fly home.”
Kara let out a small, incredulous laugh. “You can’t seriously expect me to just fly away because you say so. This is still a free country.”
Batwoman’s head tilted again, the faintest crease forming between her brows. “Is it?”
Kara opened her mouth, then closed it. “Since when did you become such a cynic?”
“Since I started reading the briefings you don’t get to see. For someone with super sight and super hearing, you sure seem selective about what you see and hear.” Silence again.
Kara tried a different angle, softer this time. “We’ve fought together. You know I’m not your enemy and I know you’re not mine-”
“That remains to be seen. If you bring federal heat down on this city, if you start throwing your weight around…”
“I’m not going to-“ Kara started before she was cut off.
“If you do, when that happens Kara. Well… may the best woman win.”
“Now that’s just… hold on just a second.”
“I have contingencies.”
Kara’s eyes narrowed. “Contingencies.”
“For threats.”
“You think I’m a threat?”
“I think you’re very powerful.” Batwoman corrected. “And power without accountability is dangerous. It can become a threat.”
“That goes both ways.”
“Sure it does. The difference is, if someone sticks a radioactive red rock under my face I’ll get sick. If they do it to you, you’ll trash half a city block before anyone realises what’s happened.”
There was something in her tone now, something deliberate. Kara studied her. The utility belt. The reinforced gauntlets. The subtle modifications to the suit that hadn’t been there last time they’d fought together.
“It doesn’t need to come to that.” Kara said quietly.
Batwoman didn’t smile. “You’ve always had vulnerabilities. I’ve just never needed to exploit them.” The words were calm. Controlled. Unmistakable.
A chill slid down Kara’s spine that had nothing to do with the wind as her mind wandered to a familiar green glow. “You’re threatening me.”
“No. I’m setting boundaries.”
Kara took a step forward, tone pushing back. “You can’t stop me if I come back and we’re on opposite sides.”
Batwoman’s chin lifted slightly. Defiantly. Kara could hear her heartbeat, perfectly steady. “You don’t want to test that theory.”
They stood there, inches from escalation. Then Batwoman’s voice lowered, not hostile now, but almost… disappointed. “Goodbye, Kara.”
She fired a grappling hook and swung away. Kara watched her go and decided this was as good a time as any to start the flight home. She wiped a single tear from her eye and leapt up into the sky.
A couple of weeks later, Kara stood in the doorway of Andrea Rojas’s office in a soft pink dress that hugged tightly to her body, displaying her curves. She was pissed. “This isn’t a lifestyle piece, Andrea.” Kara insisted, closed laptop clutched to her chest. “This isn’t some frivolous piece that gets buried down the website. This is holding power accountable.”
Andrea Rojas didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to. “It’s speculation, Kara. We don’t publish speculation. Not without documents. Not without proof.”
“This administration… it’s… it’s so corrupt, can’t you see that?” Kara shot back, almost grunting in frustration.
Andrea’s lips curved faintly. “Every administration is corrupt, one way or another. But what you’ve got here is a glorified blog post. It’s so scattershot. If you want to release it on your SubStack and get a few likes on Blue Sky go for it. But Catco is a global media company and you’ve got no solid proof. We’re not publishing that based on he said, she said.”
Kara exhaled sharply through her nose, the words stung. She hated when Andrea did that, calmly slicing her arguments apart whilst sounding perfectly reasonable. She held Andrea’s gaze a beat too long, then gave a tight nod. “Fine.” She turned on her heel and strode out before she said something she wouldn’t be allowed to print.
Since Gotham, Kara had taken the experience to heart and tried to do some good as a journalist. But it had been a frustrating time. “Kara!” Jess, the receptionist, popped up from behind the front desk, clearly waiting for her. “There’s someone here to see you.”
Kara slowed and sighed, putting a couple of fingers to the bridge of her nose. “Can’t you tell them to just email me? It’s not a good time, Jess.”
Jess’s eyes widened slightly, then flicked past Kara’s shoulder. “Oh. I think you’ll want to see him.”
Kara followed her gaze and felt her stomach drop. Mark stood near the elevators, hands casually in his coat pockets, scanning framed covers on the wall. Clean-cut in his pressed suit. Government nondescript. Several heads in the bullpen had already been turned.
“Very dishy, right?” Jess whispered, eying him up.
“Uh huh.” Kara nodded, heat already rising up inside her. “Excuse me.” She crossed the floor in long strides, putting out her hand to shake his, before hissing at him through gritted teeth in a whisper. “What are you doing here?”
Mark smiled like he was an old friend showing up for a surprise brunch. “Good to see you too.”
“You can’t be here.”
“You haven’t been responding.”
“Ok, but you can’t just show up here.”
A few desks away, someone pretended, very badly, not to listen. Then Andrea’s office door clicked open and Kara’s boss stepped out of her room and approached with curiosity. “Kara, are we introducing your friend?”
Kara’s brain moved fast. “Uh… yes. Sorry Andrea.” She noticed her own tone and forced some brightness into her voice. “This is Mark. We, um… We know each other from college.”
Mark’s expression didn’t flicker, but there was the faintest pause before he offered a polite hand. “Long time ago.”
Andrea’s eyes moved between them. Mark was, at minimum, five years older than Kara. Maybe more. She smiled anyway. “How lovely. We always encourage alumni loyalty here at CatCo.” There was something assessing in her gaze, a private calculation. Kara could practically see the headline forming in Andrea’s mind. Not old college buddies. Something else.
“Just catching up.” Kara added quickly. “We’ll use a meeting room. Won’t take long, Mark wasn’t staying.”
“Of course.” Andrea replied smoothly, already filing away her assumptions and moving onto the next thing.
Kara grabbed Mark’s sleeve and steered him toward the nearest glass-walled conference room. The moment the door shut, her smile vanished as she pulled down the blinds, her voice now low and angry. “What the hell are you thinking? You do not come to my office.”
Mark didn’t look particularly rattled. He set a small, rectangular lead box on the table between them. “Like I said, you weren’t answering and, may I remind you, we’re still paying you for your time.”
Kara snapped back, this had really gotten under her skin. “Blame your communicators. Are they made of glass? They break every time I go out with them in.”
“Strange, they’re designed to withstand atmospheric reentry. You sure you’re not doing it on purpose?”
She folded her bare arms, ignored him and brought things back to the subject at hand. “I said never here.” This was one of the reasons she’d tried to keep her civilian identity a secret from him.
He regarded her for a moment. Not amused or annoyed. Just measuring. “You’ve been avoiding check-ins. That makes my superiors nervous.” A beat. Silence. He nudged the box toward her. “Peace offering.”
Kara stared at it. Lead. She couldn’t see through it. Her chest tightened for half a second as her mind flashed up what it could be. “What’s in it?”
Mark arched a brow. “You tell me.”
She exhaled, lifted the lid. She would never admit it, but she felt a brief sense of relief when she saw what was inside. Her mind had briefly thought there was a flash of something green waiting for her. Instead, fabric. Blue and red. A new suit with some sleeker lines.
“Your costume in Gotham sustained damage,” Mark replied. “Agent Che reported back that the.. ah… chest insignia was compromised.” He watched her reaction closely. “You said you never crossed paths with Selina Kyle, correct?”
Kara met his eyes evenly, thinking back to Selina tearing her t-shirt open with her claws. “I… Yes, she was gone.”
Another tense beat.
He smiled faintly. “Well, if that’s what happened. We still need a proper debrief. But one for the future, not now.”
The air in the room felt thinner. More silence. This dynamic was getting strained.
Finally, Mark broke the tension. “Anyway, this isn’t a social call. I have some business for you.” Kara shut the box. “Three metahumans. Young. Untrained. Calling themselves the Terrible Trio.”
She smirked despite herself. “Original.”
“They destroyed a government research facility in Hub City two nights ago.”
Hub City. Not exactly the jewel of the East Coast.
“Casualties?” Kara asked.
“None. The structural damage was extensive. Very costly.”
“And what was the facility researching?”
Mark’s gaze didn’t shift. “Advanced containment systems.”
“That’s pretty vague, Mark.”
“It’s classified.”
She stared at him. “So… Are they’re strong?”
“One enhanced strength. One with some kind of electricity based powers. One telepath. Honestly, you won’t struggle with them. Their powers haven’t matured yet, it’s a bunch of twenty year olds lashing out. The only danger would be if they got the drop on you.”
“Yet they ‘destroyed’ this facility.”
“Well, yes.” Mark nodded. “They hurt a lot of good people.” A small silence settled between them.
“You want me to bring them in.” Kara said.
“Yes.”
“Fine. I’ll track them down. But after work.”
“Fine.” Mark now glanced at the glass walls, at the silhouettes moving around them. “You… like this?”
“My job?”
“The normalcy. Honestly, having gotten to know you a little… I don’t get it.” She didn’t answer. He shrugged and left the lead box on the table. “We’ll upgrade your comms.”
“And you’ll stay away from my office.”
“Sure, we’ll send the new comms to your apartment.” That sent a shiver down Kara’s spine, she hadn’t told him where she lived.
He paused at the door, hand on the handle. Then he was gone. Through the glass, Kara saw Andrea watch from across the bullpen, thoughtful and faintly amused as Mark walked by. She noticed Jess follow him with her eyes sparked up all the way to the elevator. She also heard a couple of crass comments from the bullpen questioning what she had been up to in the meeting room with him.
Sighing Kara stood very still staring down at the folded symbol in the box. At least she could retire the t-shirt and cheap skirt look, though as she pulled the costume free from the box she noticed the new red skirt was much shorter than anything she’d worn previously.
Hub City holds the dubious distinction of being one of the most dismal cities in America. It’s hero, if you can call him that, The Question, seemed like a good representation of the place. A faceless weirdo in a rank overcoat.
The place had a dismal scent, the chemical smell of its river, to go with its dank aesthetics. Kara noticed both as she drifted down between the abandoned warehouses alongside the river. The skyline looked tired here. Factories that had been gutted years ago. Now wind pushed through broken windows.
But, to be honest, Kara had barely registered any of it. Her head was miles away, thinking about a variety of different things. The files Selina had shown her, Batwoman’s threats, her night with Ivy and Harley, Andrea’s dismissal of her story, the lack of boundaries Mark was showing and, though she wished she could ignore it, the gossip her super hearing had spent the afternoon picking up in her office.
Why did people have to be so mean?
She tried to focus on the mission at hand. But the more Kara thought about the way Mark had described this mission, the more it bothered her.
Three metahumans. A destroyed federal research facility. Unstable. Potentially dangerous. Very little other context. It was clean. Too clean, in a world that was getting greyer all the time.
Her boots touched down lightly on the roof of an old textile warehouse. The structure creaked lightly under her weight. Inside, she could hear three raised heartbeats. They were nervous.
Kara frowned slightly. These weren’t soldiers, they weren’t trained, they were young. She pushed the thought away.
Mark’s briefing replayed again in her mind. The Terrible Trio. What a stupid name.
Kara took a deep breath, picked her spot and stepped forward. The roof gave way under a controlled burst of her strength, metal and dust collapsing inward as she dropped through. She landed in the middle of the warehouse floor, red boots cracking the concrete.
Her short skirt, flared up around her and she had to push it down quickly to stop her from flashing everyone in the room.
Three figures stood across the room. Kara rose slowly, brushing dirt from her shoulder. Two men and one girl. She kept her tone calm, flashed a smile. “Okay. Nobody panic. This doesn’t need to escalate from here.”
The big one stepped forward immediately, protectively. His shoulders broad enough to block half the light from the windows.
The other guy crouched slightly, sparks dancing between his fingers. Electricity. Right. Kara had tangled enough with Livewire over the years to know how dangerous that could be, even to her invulnerable body.
The girl stayed still. She looked… terrified.
Kara felt a small pinch of discomfort in her chest. “You three are wanted for the destruction of a federal research facility. I’ve heard all about you, the Terrible Trio. Cute name.”
The girl spoke quietly. “The Terrible Trio? Is that what they’re calling us?”
Before Kara could properly process what that meant, the large one shook his head and immediately moved towards her. “We’re not just gonna give up. We didn’t do anything!”
Kara exhaled quietly through her nose. They always said that. Mark’s voice echoed in her head again. Dangerous. Young. But dangerous. “I’m sorry. But you don’t have a -” The electricity hit her before she finished the sentence. A bolt of lightning tore across the warehouse and slammed into Kara’s chest. Her suit seemed to glow for a split second before the energy grounded harmlessly through her boots and into the floor. She didn’t even blink.
“Huh.” She smiled. She guessed that the suit had been modified a little.
The guy with the electric powers just stared at her. “Oh shit.”
One step from Kara and she was already across the room. She caught his wrist before he could fire again and twisted it just enough to disrupt his balance. His breath left his lungs in a startled gasp as she drove him down into the concrete. The floor cracked.
One down.
The big one roared and charged. The impact hit her like a truck, slamming them both sideways into a support pillar hard enough to fracture it.
Kara slid half a step across the floor. The guy swung a desperate right hook that could probably punch through a car door. Kara caught it in one hand. His expression collapsed into disbelief. “I really wish you hadn’t done that.” She said softly.
Kara pivoted and used his own momentum to flip him over her shoulder. He hit the floor hard enough to shatter concrete and stayed there.
Two down.
Kara exhaled, thirty seconds in and she’d taken down two of them. Not bad.
She turned and the girl was still standing where she had been. Thin and pale. Wearing an oversized hoodie. She was shaking. Kara hesitated. This didn’t feel like the briefing, they were scared, not much of a threat at all.
Kara lowered her voice slightly. “Listen. Just stand down. I don’t want to hurt you.”
The girl’s eyes were locked onto her and something strange flickered across her expression. Kara heard her whisper. “I-I don’t believe you…”
Then the screaming started.
Not out loud but inside Kara’s head. A psychic shockwave hit her like a bomb.
Her balance shattered instantly as invisible pressure tore through her mind and Kara staggered back a step, then another. Images exploded behind her eyes. Bright lights. Metal restraints. Screaming. Needles. Voices shouting numbers and observations. Pain. So much pain. And none of it was hers.
Kara gasped as the memories kept coming whilst across the room the girl’s nose began to bleed, dark red spilling over her lip as she pushed harder.
The pressure inside Kara’s skull felt like someone was trying to split it open.
Somewhere on the floor one of the guys groaned. “Run.”
The girl hesitated for half a second. Kara couldn’t see it. She was bent slightly forward now, trying to force the foreign memories out of her head.
By the time the psychic pressure abruptly vanished, the warehouse had gone quiet again.
Kara straightened slowly, breathing hard. Two unconscious metahumans lay on the floor. She rubbed her temples, wincing. “Ow.”
Afterwards - after her debriefing with Mark and after she got over the unsettled feeling around the mission - she didn’t really think about the strange girl again.
Then, a week later, the nightmares began.
It was dark.
She tried to move her arms, but they were bound tightly. The shackles around her wrists cut into her and every time she winced in pain, every time she glanced at them she had to quickly turn her head away.
The green light was blinding.
She was on her knees, arms raised and bound tightly. Her body was shaking, cold, so cold. Her head sagged. She usually barely felt the cold, but now it was all she knew. In front of her, the rags of her costume lay on the ground.
A sickly green glow covered her naked body. Her muscles felt on fire, her skin on burnt from the kryptonite’s terrible effects. She heard Batwoman, looking down at her from the ceiling. “I told you I had contingencies. And even you would admit, you’ve been a bad girl, Kara.”
A man stood in front of her. She couldn’t quite see his face in the darkness, through her blurry eyes. He was holding a pair of glasses. Her glasses. “Did you really think we were all that stupid.” The dark man laughed, his face twisting into reflections of people she seemed to recognised. “Kara. Supergirl. Whatever. It doesn’t matter, you’re ours now.”
She gasped, her body wracked with a pain that she had rarely experienced. She felt her hips grabbed and pulled back, her ass in the air. She grunted something, cried out as she felt a harsh slap against her ass.
“You’re nothing now. Powerless. No one cares and no one will look for you.” The dark man mocked her, his voice changing - for a moment he sounded like Adrian Vale, then Agent Che.
Suddenly he had a chain in his hand, a chain with a huge rock of kryptonite attached to it. The person behind her, whoever it was, they were now exploring her. Their fingers intruding between Kara’s legs, feeling her pussy spread open. She felt herself cry out in pain as the kryptonite was pressed against her body, rolled down her chest and pressed against her breast.
She heard herself whimper.
She turned, saw Andrea Rojas sat watching, wearing her Supergirl costume, taking notes on an oversized pad. “This is a huge story. Just huge.”
Behind her she felt something else, someone's cock hard against her. The chain of kryptonite fell around her neck, utterly dismantling whatever hope she had left. She felt the cock forced into her tight pussy. “No… please… no…”
It was too big. He was too rough with her. It was too much.
“No… s-stopppppp…” She had tears in her eyes now. She heard what sounded like a crowd cheering. She looked and could see cameras pushed into her face.
“Come on Bluebird, ya love it don’tcha? Stop pretendin’.” Harley Quinn’s recognisable voice filled her ears.
She glanced to her side in a panic, trying to see the Gotham siren behind her. To her surprise the kryptonite chains around her wrists had turned into vines.
Andrea spoke, pushing the camera into Kara’s face. “Front page material.”
The crowd cheered again. She heard a low chant of: “Supergirl the Superslut!”
Catwoman’s voice purred from the darkness. “She should be more discerning with her choice of friends.” Batwoman and Poison Ivy nodded knowingly next to Selina in response.
Her limbs felt numb, the kryptonite had drained every ounce of her strength. She let out a little moan, tried to bite down on her lip, but couldn’t stop an even longer one escaping her lips.
The dark man finally stepped out of the shadows. His face twisting and changing until it was Mark standing in front of her. “This is your new life Kara. This is what we have waiting for you.” He tossed a handful of coins on the floor in front of her, as he pulled out his cock. Hard and throbbing in his hand…
“No… no…” “NOOOO!!” Kara woke up choking on a scream.
Her eyes snapped open to darkness. Her hands went to her chest.
For a moment she didn’t know where she was, then she recognised the sound of the ceiling fan slowly rotated above her.
She was in her apartment. In her bed. Kara dragged in a sharp breath that rattled through her chest. The sheets were soaked. Her shirt clung to her skin like she’d been dropped in water. Completely soaked through. Sweat plastered her hair to her temples and neck. The blanket was twisted around her legs, half on the floor.
Her hand ran over her body, confused, she never sweat like this. Then she went between her legs. Soaked too, but that wasn’t sweat.
“J-Jesus Kara.” She chided herself in a whisper, voice shaking.
She’d been turned on by the nightmare.
She pushed herself upright slowly, her whole body trembled. The clock on her nightstand glowed softly in the dark. 4:07 AM. She didn’t need super hearing to hear her heart hammering against her chest as she stared at the clock for a long minute.
Third night in a row and the dreams were only getting worse.
They were so real that they didn’t feel like dreams at all. More like memories, only they weren’t hers. She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes until little stars sparked behind them.
Too vivid. Too real. Too visceral.
Kara swung her legs off the bed. Even that small movement made her feel unsteady, but the effort of hovering was too much in the moment. She walked on shaky legs, peeling off her soaked shirt and briefs, dumping them in her laundry basket.
She switched on the bathroom light and cringed as she saw herself in the mirror. Her hair was so damp and lifeless. And her hands were still shaking.
All that power and right now she was standing in her own bathroom at four in the morning staring at herself in the mirror, trying to stop her fingers from trembling.
She walked into the kitchen, pulling on a robe, the tile floor cool under her bare feet. She opened the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water, twisting the cap off with more force than necessary, sending water spilling all over the floor. “Shit.”
Her hands were still shaking.
Kara leaned against the counter and took a long drink. It helped a little. Her mind was still replaying fragments of the nightmare.
This one had been the worst one so far. Two nights ago, she had flashed back to Alcatraz. For the first time since she had escaped there, the events of that day had played through her mind near perfectly. Adrian Vale outsmarting her and having his way with her.
A shiver went down her spine at the thought.
Then last night, she had been back in Utah, back with the two Kryptonians. Only it had played out differently. This dream hadn’t even gotten sexual, they had just beaten the tar out of her. Beaten her in a way that had left her feeling so weak and helpless.
She had woken up expecting her body to be bruised and broken, but she was fine.
Physically at least.
Kara squeezed her eyes shut again. “Come on Kara, get your stuff together.” She muttered quietly to the empty apartment. Her voice sounded rough.
The bottle crinkled slightly in her grip. A wild thought came into her mind and she floated to the front door, checking it. Locked. She moved to her balcony. Long broken, but she could still lock it - just about - that didn’t seem to have been played with. She needed to get the landlord out to look at it.
A thought crept into her head that he might use that as an excuse to add another $100 to her rent. She sighed.
On the counter sat a small orange prescription bottle. She’d gotten it months ago after a particularly brutal week of late-night rescues and early CatCo mornings. Alex had practically forced her to take it. “Just in case you ever need help sleeping." Alex had said.
Sleeping pills. Of course they barely worked on Kryptonians. Her metabolism burned through drugs before they had time to do anything useful. They were probably more of a placebo than anything. Still every little helped.
For a moment, she wondered if someone was targeting her. The girl from Hub City didn’t cross her mind though and she quickly pushed the intrusive thought out of her mind. Her hands were still shaking.
Later that morning, CatCo’s conference room was full. Andrea Rojas stood at the head of the long table with a tablet in her hand, scrolling through figures while the rest of the editorial team listened. “Engagement on the international desk has dipped six percent this quarter. Which means we either adjust our strategy or we accept the decline.”
Kara sat halfway down the table with a notebook open in front of her trying to focus.
Trying.
But the pounding in her skull wouldn’t leave her alone. She hadn’t been able to get back to sleep - her mind far too busy - and the headache, or migraine, or whatever it was had started on her way to CatCo that morning.
Kara never got headaches.
Andrea continued. “And the problem, as I see it, is that speculation pieces don’t move the numbers anymore. Readers want verification. No evidence, no story.”
Kara’s pen hovered over the paper, she’d written the word ‘evidence’ four times. Her mind had begun to drift.
….
“I never expected the Girl of Steel to just walk in.”
…..
Concrete floors.
Salt air.
The smell of the bay.
The Governor’s office.
…..
Her breath caught. She was back in Alcatraz.
“Wasn’t your Pulitzer off the back of your interview with Supergirl?”
“No integrity.”
She was on the floor of Adrian Vale’s office again.
Helpless again.
But it was different this time. She was in her Supergirl costume. But she still had her glasses on, her hair was still in a ponytail.
Jail cells stretched around them. She looked and she knew who was in those cells.
“Supergirl, help us.” Poison Ivy gasped through the bars of her cell.
“K-Kara… I’m sorry.” An unmasked Kate Kane, her costume torn and battered, begged in another cell.
“Bluebird!” Harley Quinn cried, her voice quivering with fear.
“Kara!” Alex, her sister cried out.
Kara tried to push herself up, but couldn’t do it. Her strength was gone, she couldn’t even push herself of her elbows.
“Mr Vale. Dinner is served.” A familiar voice loomed over her. Andrea Rojas had replaced his assistant Laura Moreau, she stood taking notes. Kara looked to her side and Vale hovered in.
“Supergirl please!” Another voice came from a cell, Selina Kyle’s Catwoman body suit had been torn open and a shadowy man was behind her, aggressively fucking her. Her tits swaying back and forth.
This was the same for everyone in the cells. Her friends, people she cared about, being taken, groped or fucked by shadowy figures.
“Why don’t you help them Supergirl?” Andrea’s voice sing songed. “Our readers want to know.”
“Don’t be too harsh to her, all her powers are gone. Mine now.” Vale laughed, looming over Kara until he dropped down on top of her, holding her wrists to the floor with one hand. “Keep the glasses on, I like the geeky look.” He laughed as his other hand snaked under her skirt.
It was simultaneously surreal and dreamlike, whilst being incredibly visceral and feeling incredibly real.
Kara struggled. “No… stop… Andrea help me…” She gasped as she felt Vale grab her roughly between her legs, rubbing her through her panties.
“First question Supergirl. Do you like being treated like this?” Andrea replied, ready to note down her answer.
Kara moaned loudly and involuntarily as she felt Vale rub her clit.
“So that’s a yes.” Andrea responded professionally, noting it down.
Kara gasped, unable to talk as Vale slid two fingers inside her and started to slowly fingerfuck her on the floor.
This wasn’t what had happened.
“Save us Superslut.” Ivy called, her naked body pushed up against the bars, her hard green cock pushed through them as the shadowy figure went to town on her ass.
“Can’t..” Kara gasped. Vale was inside her now, like there had been a scene missing to get to this point. “Ughhh… oh God… yess…” Kara moaned, as Vale began to pound her on the floor of his office.
“Is that quote is on the record, Kara.” Andrea casually asked her.
“G-g-gosh.…”Kara bit her lip hard enough to make it bleed. Once that had been enough to snap her out of something like this, but it didn’t do that today. “F-fuckkkk.”
“Language, Kara.” Alex chided as she took a break from sucking off two shadowy figures in her cell.
“Bluebird… please…” A naked and exhausted Harley begged, behind her, the shadowy figure morphed into a much more recognisable one with a pale face and green hair.
“I-I’m going to…” Kara gasped, as the powerful Vale jackhammered her, the floor cracking.
“Say it.” Vale and Andrea told her at the same time.
“Gonna… gonna… C-CUMMMMM…” Kara screamed.
“Good girl Kara.” A strange voice came from behind them. Sat at the desk. Another shadowy figure, only this one wasn’t male. It was a woman’s voice. Kara looked at her as her body convulsed from the massive orgasm ripping through her and didn’t recognise her, not at first.
Not until she saw that her nose was bleeding.
“Very good girl, Kara.”
“Kara.”
“….”
“Kara!”
“….”
“KARA! What the hell are you doing?!”
Kara snapped out of it.
She was no longer in the dreamlike Alcatraz inside her head. She was sat back in the CatCo conference room. And all eyes were on her.
Her hand was inside her slacks. She was panting, sweating, groaning. Her other hand was holding her naked breast, her shirt unbuttoned, tit pulled out of her wholesome white bra.
“Oh… oh my God…” She gasped, as the humiliation of what was happening became clear in her mind.
Her hands went straight to her sides, then realising how exposed she was, she quickly covered herself up. “Andrea… I-I…” Kara had no idea what to say. How the hell did you explain something like that?
“Fifteen minutes everyone.” Andrea announced matter of factly. The others in the room looked around dumbfounded, until she followed it up. “Now! Go!” Kara began to stand up with everyone, buttoning up her shirt, every fibre of her wanting, and resisting, the use of her super speed. “Not you Kara. Sit down.”
The door slammed shut and a disheveled looking Kara, who had at least been able to button back up her clothes stared at her notepad.
Her eyes began to water and her lip quivered. She forced herself not to cry. Andrea stared at her, unsure what to say. “I….” She had just watched one of her best journalists, seemingly in some kind of trance, start to masturbate in front of her and her colleagues. What did you say to that?
Kara looked up at her, her eyes sad and confused. She had noticed a small wet patch on her chair, then on her slacks. Her voice shook. “Andrea… I’ve been having these dreams… I-“ “Two weeks. Take two weeks off and sort yourself out. Jesus, Kara, I-I don’t know what else to say.” Andrea stared blankly. “Two weeks. Any therapy, whatever you need, we’ll pay for it. No questions asked.”
“Andrea-“
“Go. Just go.”
Kara got up, her heart breaking, the humiliation washing over her. She grabbed her suit jacket from the back of her chair and walked slowly out the door, unable to even look at Andrea.
The bullpen was silent as she shuffled through it, aware of every eye on her. The mix of confusion, pity and yes, mean spirited thoughts painted across several faces.
She grabbed her bag from her desk, then her laptop and walked towards the exit. Her super hearing picked up a single sales man mutter “slut” under his breath. Jess the receptionist, who hadn’t even been in the room, who Kara had worked with for years, couldn’t even look at her.
A few minutes was all it had taken for this piece of gossip to have travelled like wildfire.
Kara pressed the elevator button and a thought passed through her mind as she stepped into the mercifully empty elevator that opened.
At least it was over, whatever it was.
The doors closed and as she went to hit the button for the ground floor her head began to swim again. “Ugh.. what…” Kara put her fingers to her temples.
The elevator started to descend, she looked around her, and the walls weren’t elevator walls anymore. They were bars. Green bars.
She staggered, now surrounded by kryptonite cell bars.
She glanced down, still in her outfit from the office. For some reason this wasn’t as intense as the last hallucination, but still the kryptonite cut through her. “N-No…” She choked, trying to steady her breathing. Suddenly she was breathing with little gasps like she was having a panic attack.
She fell to a knee, she heard a voice, changing in her head. Mark. Alex. Kate. “No..” She whispered to herself again.
Her breathing was heavy now, she could feel sweat on her brow. “Get ready, this is where they’ll put you.” The strange twisted voice spoke to her. A figure stepping out of the darkness, on the other side of the green bars. This time her face clear. “They did much worse to me.” The figure spoke.
Kara looked up, she recognised the figure - it was the young woman from Hub City - the one that had escaped. “You deserve this, for what you did to my friends.”
The green bars glowed brighter, Kara started to scream as the pain wracked her body. “AHHH… G-God… Ughhh…”
Something snapped inside her, a thought - this wasn’t real. This wasn’t a kryptonite cage, it was an elevator. Yet, she still couldn’t breathe, could barely stand. “No… n-no… no…” Kara gasped, the pulse in her head now too much to bare. She tried to push back against it and for a moment the bars changed, back into the elevator door.
This wasn’t real.
Kara clutched her head. “I… c-can’t…” The panic exploded and then so did the elevator.
With a thunderous crash, the roof of the elevator blew upward as Kara shot through it like a missile. Metal peeled apart around her as she blasted straight up through the ceiling.
She didn’t stop.
The roof of the CatCo building buckled as Kara burst out of it, leaving a jagged hole in the concrete. Wind whipped around her as she hovered there, still in her now dirty work clothes, shirt torn, breathing hard.
She had at least been able to get away from the influence. Below her, alarms began to scream and inside the building, people were shouting. Kara stared down at the wreckage she had just made, the implications of what she had just done hitting her.
Her hands were shaking again.
Chapter 7: Karavision
After all that, if nothing else, Kara needed some air.
She hadn’t gone home. The humiliation of the conference room still burned in her chest and the looks from her coworkers replayed again and again in her mind.
The elevator incident had only made it worse. Alarms and shouting rang in her ears. A jagged hole in the roof of the building she worked in, with no explanation about how that happened.
She wanted to crawl under a rock and hide.
Instead, she had floated down into an alley, shed her dishevelled work outfit and changed into someone that made her feel powerful.
The cold upper air rushed past her face as she climbed above the city, the wind tearing through her hair and cape. Below her, National City spread out in a grid of lights and traffic. Sirens somewhere in the distance.
Kara closed her eyes for a moment and floated.
Up here, things made more sense. It would be ok. She would work out what was happening to her. Punch whoever was behind it in the face and be back at CatCo like nothing had happened by the end of the month.
Her breathing slowly steadied as the tension bled out of her shoulders. The headache that had haunted her all morning dulled and disappeared. She let out in a deep breath. “You’re fine. You’re going to be fine.”
She forced herself to think it through logically. Yes, the meeting had been a disaster. A deeply confusing and humiliating disaster. Yes, she had literally blown a hole through CatCo’s roof. That was… not great. But she could fix things. She always did. She was Supergirl after all.
Maybe she could fly back and fix the roof, before anyone really noticed. She was sure she’d be pretty good at construction if she focused.
Her lips twitched slightly. Maybe she’d leave the roof repair to professionals.
An explanation for what had happened, what she could tell Andrea, eluded her. Then her hearing caught a distant call. A cry for help.
She tilted her head slightly, filtering through the noise of the city. A man’s voice, angry. Another voice pleading.
The city rushed up to meet her as she dove down through it towards a small convenience store on the corner. Two men outside. One shoving the other against the wall near the entrance.
She dropped toward the street. “Hey!!” She called as she landed lightly on the pavement. “Leave him a-a…” She stopped. Something felt off. “A-alone…”
The street looked wrong and it took her a moment to understand why. The lighting was too bright. Not sunlight bright. A strange kind of studio bright. The kind of harsh illumination used on television sets.
Kara blinked, the light was right in her face. The convenience store behind the two men now looked strangely artificial. The windows had a plastic shine to them. The sidewalk suddenly seemed a little too clean. Even the sky above her seemed flat and artificial.
A laugh track played somewhere overhead.
Kara froze. “…What?”
A spotlight snapped on above her and a voice suddenly boomed from nowhere. “AND HERE SHE IS, FOLKS! NATIONAL CITY’S FAVOURITE. THE GIRL OF STEEL HERSELF! SUPERGIRL!”
This time the crowd broke into applause. Kara looked around in confusion. Where had they come from?
The two men she had come to stop had frozen in place like actors waiting for a cue. “Leave him alone.” The man being pushed against the door said to her in an exaggerated stage whisper.
“W-what..” Kara was so confused.
“You’re line. Leave him alone. That’s your cue.” The apparent victim said again, frustration in his voice. “Come on blondie. Jeez.”
“Ok, cut.” A voice came from behind her and from nowhere, the darkness, somehow familiar to her. “Kara, honey, we’re burning daylight here. This isn’t Shakespeare. Hit the lines otherwise we’ll have to get Power Girl on the phone.”
The announcers voice chimed in, cheerful and exaggerated. “DON’T WORRY FOLKS, THE GIRL OF STEEL’S ADVENTURES WILL CONTINUE AFTER THESE MESSAGES. WILL SUPERGIRL SAVE THE DAY, OR WILL THE MOST POWERFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD EMBARRASS HERSELF, YET AGAIN?”
The crowd cheered.
The men suddenly resumed motion, but their movements were exaggerated, theatrical, one of them waved his arms dramatically, his voice hamming it up. “Oh no! It’s Supergirl! Whatever shall we do?”
The victim leaned toward him conspiratorially. “I don’t know.” He stage whispered. “But between you and me, she doesn’t look all that impressive these days.” More canned laughter rang out behind her.
Kara stared at them and found herself saying. “L-leave him alone.” Stumbling over her words woodenly. The canned laughter was suddenly overwhelmed, heckling and booing from the crowd drowning it out.
Behind her something was thrown to the ground with a clatter. The familiar voice agian, a woman’s voice. “Goddammit! Ok that’s lunch. Can someone get this blonde bimbo some acting lessons? I’m going to have to make some rewrites.” She walked past Kara who instantly recognised her as the woman from her hallucination about Alcatraz. The one from Hub City. “Ratings have been falling for months anyway.”
The studio lights went out.
The two men fighting stopped.
Impossibly, Kara saw herself, in full civilian outfit walk by, writing a review. “Poor special effects, terribly melodramatic and holier than thou repetitive plots. Not to mention I’m sick of this Ally McBeal, Sex and the City influence. I give Supergirl one star out of a possible five.”
Her stomach twisted. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. The voice came again. “THE SUPERGIRL SHOW HAS BEEN PUT ON HIATUS FOR RETOOLING.”
She took a step back and the scenery shifted again. The lighting grew warmer, more colourful now. She was in a room she recognised, but hadn’t thought about in years. Her old dorm room at National City College.
“THE SUPERGIRL SHOW HAS BEEN RENEWED FOR ANOTHER SEASON. At a much lower budget. EVERYONE GIVE IT UP FOR SUPERGIRL: THE COLLEGE YEARS!”
Kara noticed the Taylor Swift poster above her bed, then glanced at herself in a mirror, she was different. Her Supergirl costume was gone, replaced by a flannel shirt and sweatpants. “What is h-happening?”
She turned and saw him on her bed, Richard Malverne, her old college boyfriend. Her first real boyfriend full stop. She hadn’t seen him in years. “Wait… Dick? What are you doing here, where… where’s my costume?”
She realised her shirt was fully unbuttoned, hanging loose around her shoulders. Kara had a moment of clarity, she could fly away from all this, get away from whatever was happening.
But then a little voice came into her head. That’s not what happened. You never showed Dick your powers.
Richard - Dick - was laying back on the bed, his shirt off, jeans unzipped. Kara got an extreme sense of deja vu. “Your… costume? Are you ok Kara?” He was laughing. “All those essays must have broken your brain.”
“I-I guess they did…” Kara blushed, she always liked the way he’d poke fun at her. The way they’d banter. He was the first guy she’d ever really liked that way.
“Come over here, come on.” He smiled, beckoning her to the bed.
Something crossed her mind. Wasn’t she supposed to be stopping a crime? Wasn’t she Supergirl? Or was that all long in the future, and here she was back in her old college dorm with her old college boyfriend. Wasn’t that better? Simpler?
She crawled next to him, letting him spoon her. Kara gasped as she felt his cold hand snake inside her open shirt, grab her pert, pale tit and squeeze.
“Nice and slow, just like last time.” He whispered in her ear, biting her earlobe, sending a shiver down her spine.
She remembered that back here, nineteen years old, she had powers but they weren’t fully developed yet. That she was a lot more sensitive to his touch.
“Mmmm… oh… Dick…” She gasped as he flicked her nipple and pinched it, she could feel his hard cock pressed up against her ass. Could feel his other hand tugging down her sweatpants.
It crossed her mind that she was in a memory again… only, unlike the other ones this was exactly as it had happened. He had fingered her from behind, just like this. Had lightly choked her - the first time anyone had choked her - and she had cum so hard for him, losing control of her heat vision just enough to scorch the wall next to the bed.
Thank God he hadn’t noticed.
She had distracted him, climbing on top of him, riding him without a rubber. She felt him slide inside her as she tossed her shirt to the floor. “Oh… oh God, Dick it’s so big…” She gasped as she began to slowly bounce on him, feeling a second climax already building up inside her.
Then it began to change from her memory. Richard groaned, pulled himself up and sucked on her bouncing tits. His voice filled her head. She closed her eyes tightly. “Tell me who you want Kara. Right now.”
“Oh… Dick…”
“What do you want Kara?”
“I…oh fff… I want….”
“Yes?”
“I want Dick. I WANT DICK!” The laughter track exploded and she closed her eyes as a massive orgasm began to rock her body.
She opened her eyes to find herself sat, back against the wall on the sidewalk, back in her costume.
Back to reality.
“You hear that? Supergirl wants DICK!” The criminal, the man she had come to stop was stood over her laughing.
The man she had tried to help, slumped over but awake, his face was a mixture of fear and disgust. Her hand was inside the waistband of her short skirt.
She had been touching herself again.
She pulled the hand free, fingers glistening in the light. “Oh… oh God.”
She had lost control again. Some kind of weird parody of her life, followed by a deep dive into a memory she hadn’t thought about in years.
Another laugh track echoed quietly through her mind. “Come back next week, when we find out more about the frat boy Kara hooked up with at a kegger! He never called her!”
A chill ran down her spine, Kara clenched her fists hard.
The illusion was gone. So was the criminal. Kara didn’t check to see if his victim was ok, she flew away as fast as she could.
Home.
A week passed, though to Kara it felt less like time moving forward and more like being trapped in a loop.
Things had gotten dark.
Her apartment had grown dim and stale, the curtains never opened. Dishes and takeout boxes piled up in the sink. The television had been left on at some point, now playing to no one with the volume muted.
Kara hadn’t really noticed when the place had become a mess. She hadn’t left. Not once.
The outside world felt distant and hostile. News broadcasts mentioned Supergirl occasionally, speculating about her sudden disappearance. She had watched a little of the news, Jack Ryder, a tabloid hack, had reported she had failed to help a civilian and had hinted to what she’d been up to instead but Kara couldn’t bring herself to watch long enough to hear the details.
She was exhausted.
Bags under her eyes, her super body pushed to a limit she had never had any concern about.
Sleep came in short, fractured bursts. Every time she closed her eyes the hallucinations waited.
Sometimes they came in dreams. Sometimes they came whilst she was awake, only realising what had happened after she snapped out of it. Usually in some state of undress having cum once or twice during the hallucination.
The worst part was she couldn’t always tell the difference anymore.
Kara sat on the couch in just an oversized sweatshirt, her knees drawn up against her chest. Her hair hung limp, loose and unwashed around her shoulders. The television flickered across her face, lighting the dark circles under her eyes.
Her hands trembled slightly in her lap. Her lips dry. Her fingers were painted with dried cum. Her thighs too.
Her costume, the new one that Mark had gifted her, lay on the floor in front of her. Clothes lay all over the apartment.
She had spent the past two hours reliving a date, her first in National City three years before, when she was new and fresh faced. Cat Grant’s new assistant.
As her fragile mind tried to remember it, she had gone out with someone she had met on a dating app only to leave early - a mix of seeing straight through his misogynistic pick up artistry and the need for Supergirl to go be a hero. She had flown away to put out an office block fire and left the prick with the bill.
But that’s not what had happened in the reliving it. No, in this version, all too vivid for Kara, she had taken his negging with good humour, had, against her better judgement, found him attractive. She had gone back with him to his apartment and allowed him to do all sorts of dirty and degrading things to her.
The thought of it now filled her with shame. But as the wet patches on the couch and carpet showed, the thought of it earlier had ruined her.
She only snapped out of it - or had been allowed to snap out of it - as she climaxed hard to the thought of him spitting on her in her costume. The spit running down her face, dripping onto her S shield.
She couldn’t escape the visual of her on her knees, pushing her chest out, begging the man - this misogynist prick she barely remembered - to cum all over her S shield.
She knew it hadn’t happened like that. But it felt so real…
She considered getting up, she was hungry, but there came a sound. A knock.
Kara flinched.
There was a slow, hollow pounding against the front door.
She stared toward the hallway, a rising sense of anxiety inside her. Another knock. Louder this time.
Her heart began to race. Was it real? She curled up on the couch, wished it away.
She had heard things over the past week. Voices. Footsteps in empty rooms. The creak of doors that hadn’t moved. She had closed the broken balcony door several times only to find it open again and again. Yet, nothing had been there. Her super senses would have known.
Another knock echoed through the apartment. Louder still. “Kara!” A voice called through the door.
She froze, she croaked. “Mark?”
“Kara, open the door.” Kara didn’t move. Another knock, harder this time. “Kara, I know you’re in there.”
Slowly and carefully, Kara pushed herself off the couch. Her legs felt impossibly weak, like she hadn’t used them properly in days.
She walked with slow, uncertain steps. At the door she hesitated and her hand hovered over the lock. What if it wasn’t real? What if opening the door just meant letting something else in?
“Kara.” Mark’s voice said again, softer now. “Please.”
She unlocked it.
The door creaked open and Mark stood in the hallway outside. For a moment he just stared at her as shock spread across his face. Kara barely looked like herself. The oversized sweater hung loose and dirty, her hair tangled, her eyes bloodshot and hollow.
She hadn’t even bothered with her glasses. She looked exhausted physically and mentally.
Mark glanced past her shoulder into the apartment, at the mess and the darkness, then back at her. “You look like hell.”
Kara leaned against the doorframe, suddenly unsure if she had the strength to stand much longer. “You shouldn’t be here, b-boundaries Mark.”
Mark stepped inside anyway. “I tried your communicator. Many, many times.” He closed the door behind him. “You didn’t answer.” His voice carried a note of frustration. “It’s been a week, Kara.”
She sank back against the wall, a note of confusion on her face. “A week?”
Mark looked around again, taking in the state of the apartment. For the first time since they had met, when Mark loomed over her, he genuinely looked like the one with the power in the room. Kara looked like she could crumple at any time.
He closed the door and his expression darkened. “I had to step in. After what happened at CatCo.” Kara’s stomach twisted. “An elevator explodes, some janitor says he saw Supergirl punch through the roof of the building. Then she and Kara Danvers both disappear for a week? I mean… don’t let me tell you how to manage your secret identity, but that’s pretty weak, right?”
Kara rubbed her temples, her head had started pounding again.
Mark continued. “We had to set up this whole elaborate thing. Break a supervillain out, have him target CatCo - explain that he came after you - Kara Danvers, not Supergirl I mean. I had to doctor so much CCTV, you wouldn’t believe it.” He looked back at her. “So, you’re going to tell me what actually happened. And what is happening… because this is very strange.”
Kara cleared her throat, opened her mouth to answer… and the room shifted.
The walls looked… farther away. The hallway seemed longer than it should be. Her breath caught. She gasped. “No. Not again.”
“Kara?” Mark said, a little worried but still studying her. She was so uncertain on her feet.
She stared at him, her eyes unfocused. The sound of his voice warped slightly, stretching in strange ways. She whispered something Mark didn’t catch, her shaking hands grabbed the edge of the kitchen counter to steady herself. Mark watched as she bent over, legs quivering, her hand slid between her legs as the other kept her upright.
He was witnessing one of her little hallucinations.
“Jesus, Kara. What are you doing?” He said, mostly in disgust, but he couldn’t deny it was a titillating sight to witness.
The Girl of Steel a sweaty exhausted wreck, moaning and fingering herself. He was unsure exactly what to do, then a voice spoke from behind him. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about her like this Agent Sullivan.”
Mark turned.
A woman stepped out of the shadows near the balcony window. About 20. Dark hair. Calm. Smiling. She rubbed a small amount of blood off her nose. The girl from Hub City.
“Oh don’t worry, she won’t listen to us. She’s reliving her first encounter with Maxwell Lord right now, only… you know… through my lens. Poor thing, she’s falling apart.” They both glanced at Kara, eyes closed and moaning as she rubbed her clit faster and faster under her oversized sweater. “You can admit to me all the terrible thoughts you’ve had about her. Or don’t. I’ve seen them all anyway.”
Mark’s expression hardened instantly as his eyes locked on her. “Rebecca. This doesn’t have to continue like this. We can use you. Help you. Someone who can dismantle the mind of a Kryptonian from across a city block? That’s not exactly common. That is a very useful talent and a potentially very lucrative talent. But you need guidance. Look at yourself, every time you do this, you’re hurting yourself.”
He pointed to her bleeding nose.
“Yeah, I know I’m on borrowed time, I’m not stupid. But melting the brain of your blonde lapdog here has been making my last days a lot of fun.” Rebecca snapped at him. “Crippling the Girl of Steel.”
“That’s not going to happen Becca.” Mark shook his head, his eyes darkening. “Sure you can read my mind, but you know I’ve got contingencies set up, your not the only telepath we have access to.” An implied threat hung in the air. “How about you let her go, come back to the research facility and see your friends. They miss you.”
Rebecca glanced at Kara, for the first time something close to pity on her face. “She has no idea what you have in store for her, does she?”
“No.” Mark answered coldly.
“I think she’s more valuable to you than I am. I’ll let her go, but you let me go. Whatever state she’s left in.”
“Fine.” Mark responded, full of calculation.
“Fine.”
Like that Kara’s moans stopped, she had the same dumbfounded expression on her face as reality came creeping back into her mind. Pulling herself up straight. For the first time she saw the girl in her apartment. “You.”
“Yes, me. Cool trick huh? I got into your place last week - you really have to fix that balcony door - psychically shielded myself from you all week. You had no clue. Girl of Steel. Woman of mush.”
For a moment the apartment was silent except for Kara’s ragged breathing.
Mark stepped back from the two of them. Kara slumped back against the kitchen counter, one hand gripping the edge hard enough that the laminate creaked under her fingers, staring a hole through Rebecca. Her voice was weak, trembling. “You… tortured me for a week…”
She snapped the edge of the laminate off.
“Oh, I barely scratched the surface, blondie. Or Kara Zor-El. Supergirl. Superslut. Bluebird. Whatever you want to call yourself. I barely did anything and look at the state of you. And it was easy. And I know from being in your head, that you’re far too much of a goody too shoes to ever do anything about it.”
A beat.
Kara’s eyes slowly turned red.
She fired a beam of heat vision into Rebecca’s shoulder, cutting through it. “AHHHH!” Instantly cauterising the wound.
“Guess I’m learning.” Kara spat as Rebecca cried out in pain. “You’ll live.”
“Fuck you!” Rebecca sent a jolt of psychic interference that sent both Kara and Mark backwards.
Kara’s head was pounding as she fell to the floor. Mark ducked behind her couch.
Kara stood breathing hard, leaning on the broken kitchen counter, a intrusive thought sneaking into her her - the landlord would make her pay for that - her chest rising and falling, eyes still glowing faintly red.
For a moment the room was silent except for Kara and Rebecca’s ragged breathing.
Then Rebecca started laughing. A low, disbelieving laugh through clenched teeth. “Wow… That really took it out of you, didn’t it? Kryptonite and nonstop gooning. Supergirl’s secret weaknesses.”
Kara didn’t dispel this wisdom. Her legs were trembling. The week of torment clung to her. The adrenaline of anger was the only thing holding her upright. Her voice sounded hoarse as she managed to spit out “Don’t. Don’t you say another word.”
Rebecca tilted her head, studying her. Up close she could see how terrible Kara looked, pale to the point of translucence. Sweat clung to her hairline. That said, Rebecca didn’t look much better. A thin trail of blood from Rebecca’s nose had already returned, trickling down past her lip.
“You look terrible.” Rebecca taunted.
Kara’s eyes flickered red again. “Shut up.”
Rebecca’s smile widened faintly. Another drop of blood fell from her nose to the floor as she began to push back into Kara’s mind. Kara stepped forward, she tried to resist. “N-no… Don’t. Get. Out.”
Rebecca’s eyes darkened.
The apartment shifted again.
“We’re not done yet.”
Kara felt it immediately. The walls stretched. Mark’s voice somewhere behind her warped and elongated like a tape being slowed down.
“No.” Kara said louder, panic rising in her chest. “No, no, no-”
Rebecca’s voice cut through everything. “Let’s go somewhere familiar.”
Kara was suddenly standing in the office at L-Corp. It was quiet. Sunlight poured through the massive windows overlooking National City. She knew the place of course, but as she caught site of herself stood there in her shirt and skirt, she realised she also knew when this memory was taking place.
Her stomach dropped.
“No.”
Across the room stood Lena Luthor. Back straight, arms folded tightly across her chest. Poured into one of her $4,000 business suits. Exactly as Kara remembered her.
Her hair was dark against the light. Her expression guarded but wounded.
This was the last day. Their last conversation.
Kara staggered backward. “Rebecca…” She whispered desperately. “Please, don’t do this.”
It was like the scene was paused, nothing moved except for Kara. Then, Rebecca’s voice echoed everywhere and nowhere. “I thought this would be fun. To remind you of this. Would you say this was the worst defeat of your life? The worst moment?”
Kara shook her head violently. “Don’t make me watch this.” Her arms were animated now. “Please Rebecca!”
Lena turned slowly until her eyes met Kara’s. Pain flickered across her face. “Kara.”
Kara squeezed her eyes shut. “No. No please…” But the memory didn’t stop.
“I know,” Lena said quietly. The scene was unfolding exactly as it had “I know who you are. You’re Supergirl.”
Kara’s chest heaved. “I didn’t lie to hurt you,” Kara heard herself say, the words dragged out of her like they had been the first time.
Lena’s expression hardened. “But that’s exactly what you did.”
Kara tried to move but couldn’t. She was trapped inside the moment. Rebecca’s whisper slid through her mind. “You begged so nicely for me not to touch this one. You were all too happy for me to playback those jerks from college or what happened with Reign. But this one…”
Kara choked, unable to stop a tear running down her cheek. “Please, Rebecca stop-”
“No, I don’t think I will.” Rebecca cruelly replied.
Lena was still speaking. “Have a good laugh at me, did you?”
Kara felt tears spilling down her cheeks. “No. Lena, no…”
Lena looked away, hurt visible across her face. For Kara this stung worse than anger. “You said you trusted me.”
“I do.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
Kara’s voice broke. “I was scared.”
Lena let out a bitter laugh. “Of me?”
“Of losing you.” Silence filled the office, then Kara heard the words she remembered too well. Her voice soft and trembling. “I love you.”
Lena’s expression cracked. For a moment the hurt and anger vanished, replaced by something softer. “I love you too,” Lena said quietly. Hope flared in Kara’s chest, just like it had then. Then Lena continued “But you’ve already lost me.”
The hope shattered. Kara collapsed to her knees. “Please…” She begged into the empty air. “Rebecca please don’t make me watch this again-”
Rebecca suddenly appeared before her, looked at her coldly, and then replayed the scene.
In the apartment, Kara’s body sagged against the kitchen counter, her eyes were unfocused, tears streaming down her face. She whispered broken pleas to someone who wasn’t there.
Rebecca stood a few feet away, swaying slightly. Blood now ran steadily from her nose.
Mark watched both of them carefully, his expression completely neutral. He slipped a small device from inside his jacket. Compact and black, it was a neural disruptor.
His eyes moved between them. He couldn’t fully tell what was going on inside their heads, but he suspected Rebecca was winning. Kara’s breathing was ragged even in the real world. He knew that if Rebecca pushed just a little further, she’d break Kara completely.
Impressive.
Very impressive.
Mark leant back on the edge of the couch and adjusted his grip on the device. He’d wait. Let Rebecca finish the job, then take her down. She was far to powerful of an asset to waste. Though the blood and her pale demeanour was worrying him.
Still, even dead they would be able to replicate her power.
Rebecca suddenly inhaled sharply and her smile faltered, she looked even more unsteady on her feet.
In Kara’s mind, Lena’s final words echoed. “But you’ve already lost me.”
Kara sobbed openly now. “I’m sorry.”
Rebecca pressed a hand to her temple, the blood from her nose poured faster now. Something inside her skull throbbed violently. A white-hot spike of pain exploded behind her eyes. The room spun. “Oh… that’s…” Her knees buckled. Mark frowned. Rebecca’s eyes widened in sudden terror. “I think-”
The sentence never finished.
Rebecca collapsed and her body hit the floor hard.
The psychic pressure in Kara’s mind vanished instantly. Kara gasped and dropped to the ground as reality slammed back into her mind. She curled in on herself, shaking violently. Crying.
Mark looked down at Rebecca as blood pooled beneath her head, her eyes open and empty. A brain aneurysm. It had been too much strain. Shame but he’d suspected that might happen eventually. He crouched, confirming what he already knew.
Dead.
Then he stood and looked over at Kara. The Girl of Steel was curled on the kitchen floor. Trembling. Shaking. Broken sobs shaking her entire body even as her mind returned to the real world.
Mark watched her for a long time. Cold and calculated. He slipped the unused disruptor device back into his pocket. Well, there was only ever going to be one active asset.
He looked down at Kara again. Still crying.
A look of disgust that he couldn’t hide and that she couldn’t see spread across his face. *******
A week later, Kara stood on the sidewalk across from CatCo. She adjusted her glasses and stared up at the building. Her stomach turned. Right now she’d rather face Doomsday than this.
She caught sight of herself in a reflection. She looked better. On the surface at least. Her hair was clean, pulled back neatly. She wore one of her usual blouses and a skirt that actually fit properly. The dark circles under her eyes had faded enough to be hidden with a little help. If someone passed her on the street, they wouldn’t look twice.
The bullpen was loud. Comfortingly chaotic and familiar. No one stopped when she walked in, a few people glanced up.
“Hey, Kara.”
“Morning.”
“Welcome back.”
She smiled.“Yeah.” She said lightly, setting her bag down at her desk. “G-good to be back.”
And that was it. No interrogation. No tension hanging in the air. They had moved on to the next thing. This was CatCo after all. This was National City. Exploding elevators, missing reporters, alien attacks, it all blurred together eventually.
Hell, Cat Grant’s list of perversions were way more scandalous than a reporter masturbating in a meeting. People didn’t linger on strange things.
“Kara.” Andrea stood a few feet away, arms crossed, expression composed. Her eyes were sharp and observant. They lingered on Kara. “Welcome back."
“Thank you.” Kara replied, pushing herself to her feet. “I’m really sorry about… um.. I-”
Andrea held up a hand, stopping her. “We’ve already discussed the official explanation. Stress from the Alcatraz incident. You needed time to recover.” Her gaze didn’t waver. “But remember, I signed off on your return under one condition.”
Kara’s throat tightened slightly. “The therapist.”
Andrea nodded once. “Mandatory. Ongoing. You attend, you report in and you take it seriously.”
“I am. I am taking it seriously.”
A beat.
Andrea studied her. For a second the careful, neutral expression slipped. There was something else there. Was it suspicion? Recognition? “You’re not as good at hiding things as you think you are.” She said quietly. Kara froze. Another beat. Then, just as quickly as it had shifted, her expression reset. “But… your work speaks for itself. Don’t make me regret bringing you back.”
And then she turned and walked away. Kara stood there for a moment, her pulse just a little too fast.
It was clear to Kara that maybe Andrea hadn’t fully bought the explanation of the hole in the roof.