736. Chapter 736

The first Mother’s Day after Kara came to Earth, her art teacher had all the students in her class make cards for their mothers.

Kara’s was dead.

The teacher had forgotten.

She didn’t cry. Not in school, anyway.

But when she got home, she tore off her glasses and burned a hole into her bedroom ceiling with her eyes.

Kara got comforted, and Alex got in trouble – why didn’t you anticipate what she’d be expected to do in art class, Alexandra?

She spent that Mother’s Day locked in her room, distinctly ignoring Eliza and yelling and repeatedly slamming her door when Jeremiah would attempt to come in and make peace.

In college, Alex would call home, but only when someone else would mention the day and she’d suddenly remember, a guilty anger twisting in her stomach.

Kara would often answer the phone, because she’d be home from college to spend the day with Eliza.

It would make Alex’s guilt swirl even harder, that Kara’s mother had been vaporized, yet Alex’s was right there, just miles away, and she could barely even be bothered to call.

And yet, there Kara was, with the mother who never made her call her Mom, with the woman who figured out how to cut her hair on earth, how to get her through the nightmares before Alex tried to help her stop having them altogether.

She asked Kara about it, one year when she did happen to be home in Midvale around the holiday.

Alex was drunk. Of course she was drunk.

“Does it ever bother you? That they expected us to be sisters, my parents to be your parents, even though your family, your whole planet, had just… you know.”

“Died?”

Another swig of bourbon.

“Yeah.”

Kara just adjusted her glasses and squinted at her older sister sadly.

“You know, Eliza loves you more than anything.”

Alex pointed drunkenly. “You’re avoiding the question.”

“And you’re drunk.”

“And I’m also an ungrateful daughter, apparently, who can only ever fight with her mother even though she got stuck with two teenage girls for the price – literally, the price – of one.”

Kara let the barb about her being the reason for Jeremiah being taken by the DEO slide. She tried to take the bottle from Alex’s hands.

Alex shifted beyond her reach, and Kara just sighed, resigning herself to another long night.

But then there was Astra, and Myriad, and you are Alex Danvers.

And then there was less drinking, less fighting with Eliza.

And then there was more noticing.

Because then, there was her sister, more broken than she’d ever been.

Because when the next Mother’s Day rolled around, Kara didn’t call anyone. She didn’t even call Eliza.

She just curled into her quilts and black and white musicals; she ordered three times her usual amounts of potstickers; and she refused calls, and she did nothing but file report after report for work.

Her family let themselves into her apartment – with an actual key, rather than Alex’s foot this time – but Kara didn’t seem to register their presence.

“I’m worried about her,” Winn whispered as James nodded and Alex took a deep breath, clenching and unclenching fists that she wished she could smash into Kara’s – her? – uncle, over, and over, and over again.

Because Non had forced her to relive all of it.

He’d given Kara her mother back. And then he’d stripped it all away again.

Both the woman and the ideal.

He’d taken it all.

“Kara,” Alex climbed over the back of the couch – like she’d done when they were teenagers, hoping to elicit a sense of familiarity in Kara, awaken a sense of normalcy – but Kara didn’t respond.

She didn’t move, not at all. She didn’t even blink.

Alex glanced over at Winn and James.

Winn held clenched fists to his mouth, trying not to cry; James had one hand on Winn’s side, the other gently over his own stomach.

“Hey. I got you,” Alex whispered, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice.

A faint, muffled sound from Kara’s throat.

A good sign.

James and Winn nodded sadly, encouragingly, at Alex.

“Is it okay if the three of us watch with you?” she asked, and Kara didn’t respond, this time.

But she didn’t say no.

So they all settled in. Alex arranged Kara into her arms, somehow, without Kara moving – but without protesting to being moved – James and Winn sitting on the floor, curled in the same quilt with their backs resting on the couch.

None of them spoke for hours, for movie after movie.

But they all stayed, close, cuddled, awake.

Waiting.

“You know,” James started, his voice low with gravity and hoarse with lack of use, “I think the hardest thing about my dad being gone is not being able to ask him things. What about… what about you, Alex?”

She surprised even herself by answering immediately. “Not knowing if he’d be proud of me. Thinking I’ve let him down because I was such an ass to my mom for so many years.” A swig of beer. “I mean, she was an ass to me, too, and there’s no excuse for that, but… But she was suddenly doing it all alone, and I didn’t think… anyway, sometimes I think he’d be ashamed of me. For not being able to… I don’t know. Replace him. Or something.”

Another swig, this time of Winn’s beer, because hers was empty. He didn’t object, and she gave a rough kiss to his temple as thanks.

“He’d be damn proud of you, Alex,” he put his hand on her thigh, just as James put his own on her hand.

“Not like my dad, anyway. I know he’s alive, so it’s different, but… for me, it’s the opposite. The fear that he… is proud of me. That I’m like him.”

“You’re nothing like him,” Kara spoke up suddenly, and all three of them went silent.

They waited.

She waited.

Then the floodgates opened.

“You’re nothing like your father, but sometimes, I’m afraid I’m like mine. Or like my mother. All I ever wanted to be was like them. Like my parents. To make them proud. To take care of Kal-El. And then I couldn’t even do that, because he was Superman, and I was just… just some worthless little girl, helpless and useless and couldn’t even keep Kenny safe and couldn’t stop Eliza from hurting Alex because I needed her so badly and I…”

“Kara, you couldn’t have – “ But James’s soft hand squeezing her’s stopped Alex, to let Kara keep going.

“Everyone acts like Mother’s Day is some kind of gift. Something to celebrate. But it’s… You know, there are a lot of human traditions, holidays, that made no sense to me when I first got here. This is one that still doesn’t make sense. Why just one day? And what about those of us who wake up in cold sweats because we can’t remember what our mother’s laughter sounded like? Or the ones who can’t stop picture the way she died? Wondered if she was scared, if she and my father were holding each other. If she screamed, or cried, or…”

Kara’s voice broke, and both James and Winn shifted to kneel in front of her, to hold her hands while Alex wrapped her arms around Kara’s shoulders and brushed stray hair away from her forehead.

A long silence overtook the apartment, broken only by the credits rolling on one of Kara’s old films.

“I miss her,” Kara whispered simply, brokenly.

Her family held her closer.

She sank into their touches.

“You’re not alone,” James whispered softly, and the ghost of a smile painted Kara’s lips.

“We’re here,” Winn nodded, and she squeezed his hand, but not too tight, because he was only human, after all.

“I got you,” Alex kissed her temple, and Kara closed her eyes and sank into the embrace.

“Can I… there’s a Kryptonian prayer… would you guys… can I… can we…?”

“We’d be honored,” Alex assured her, and James and Winn’s soft smiles echoed her affirmation.

And when she offered her prayer, they didn’t need to understand the words – though Alex did, for the most part – to know that Kara added pieces for their parents, too, their friends.

Come and gone through this universe with both whispers and whimpers, joys and agonies, loves and losses.

Kara wove them all into her prayer, for their souls, for the souls of those still living.

For Alura.

Lost and flawed and past, but maybe, in her – in them, in this family – not gone.