773. Chapter 773

She goes to work and she does what she’s supposed to and she even has Game Night and Sisters’ Night and all that.

Because she doesn’t want to worry anyone, and she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that she doesn’t deserve their care, their comfort.

She might scream if she has to see pity written across their faces, because she’s never quite been able to escape being the orphan whose entire planet exploded, has she?

In her own head, if no one else’s.

The ray of sunshine who’s supposed to be relentlessly happy, a puppy with open eyes and an eagerly wagging tail.

She can’t tell them she just wants to be put to sleep.

She just wants to rest.

If that rest is forever, so be it.

So fucking be it.

But she doesn’t want to tell them, because they don’t deserve to suffer, and she doesn’t deserve their concern.

They’d tell her she did, and they’d be wrong.

They’d tell her they loved her, and they’d be right; but they’d be wrong about that being enough.

Not that they weren’t enough.

Just that, even filling herself with their love - and she knew they had so much for her, even if she couldn’t quite tell why - she was too empty on the inside for it to matter, in the end.

Because they love her, sure; but they don’t really know her. They can’t.

They see her sunny and happy and they love her sunny and happy.

They couldn’t possibly love her, not really, if they really…. knew.

Knew how much hatred was inside her - mostly for herself, sure, but hatred was hatred was hatred, wasn’t it? - knew what a hopeless, loveless void made up her insides.

So she says nothing, except in those moments when she’d been awake for too long, had too much alien liquor to drink, when she couldn’t possibly even think about pretending anymore, because if she did, she’d just die then and there.

She says nothing, but the remnants of those especially hopeless moments remain.

Maggie notices the cuts on her arms that definitely didn’t come from fighting crime.

Alex notices the glaze in her eyes when they’re all supposed to be watching her favorite movie, but Kara is just watching the void, the abyss, the different ways her suffering can finally, mercifully, stop.

“Kara,” Alex starts, making sure to be holding her.

Because she remembers - she knows Kara doesn’t think she remembers - her rages when they were teenagers. The way she would punch and destroy and scream when she thought she was alone in the woods by the school, alone on the beach by the house, and she thought no one could see her or hear her.

But she remembers the way Kara’s fists relish burying themselves into something, and she says it doesn’t hurt because it doesn’t injure her, but Alex knows that a lack of injury doesn’t mean a lack of pain.

She remembers, so she makes sure to have her arms around her little sister, because the other thing she knows about Kara is that as much as she wants to hurt herself, she’ll never lash those fists out if it means hurting Alex, too.

“I’m fine,” Kara stiffens automatically, and Alex exchanges a quiet glance with her wife.

“I didn’t even ask anything,” Alex says, and it’s soft and lacking judgment, and when Kara turns roughly to look her in the face, she doesn’t find the pity she was expecting.

It makes her angry, and it makes her hopeful.

Because she’s become resigned to being hopeless. And Alex approaching her with respect and not pity, understanding but not judgment… that just messes with her plans.

It threatens to ruin everything, because if there’s hope to be found in the world, that means she might have reason to fight through it.

That she’ll have to deal with feeling like this longer and longer, suffer more and more, instead of being fully hopeless enough to end it now.

“I am, though. I’m fine,” she still insists, because this is hard to let go of. Her emptiness feels like something substantial, like the only thing she has to hold on to, anymore.

“It’s okay if you’re not fine, Little Danvers,” Maggie tells her, like she’s talking about the weather, like she’s reminding her to wear a raincoat. Like Kara is normal. Like she’s normal and special all at the same time. Like she’s worth paying attention to, worth, maybe, loving; but like, maybe, she’s not just a carrier for hopeless melancholy and pain.

“I can’t be Supergirl if I’m not fine,” Kara admits, talking like she’s beyond her own body. Like whatever small piece of her soul that biologically wants to survive is fighting the rest of her that doesn’t. That wants to tell Alex and Maggie. That wants them to help.

“You don’t need to be Supergirl,” Alex kisses her temple, smoothing her hair out of her face like she used to when they were teenagers and she thought Kara had fallen asleep. “You’re enough as Kara.”

“Kara Danvers doesn’t save the world.”

“Supergirl isn’t super without Kara Danvers,” Maggie counteroffers, “so you’ve gotta take care of both. You deserve to take care of both.”

Kara nearly scoffs at the word. Deserve. What does Maggie know about what she deserves?

“Hey,” Alex intercedes, and Kara curses herself for being so damn obvious. “We don’t love you because you save the world. You save the world, and we love you. Separate.”

“How do I deserve to live on it if I can’t save it?”

“I’ve never saved the world,” Maggie raises her hand like she’s in math class. Even though that’s technically not true. But it has, indeed, been in less direct ways than Kara and even Alex have. So her wife and sister-in-law let the comment slide, because they know what’s coming next. “Do I not deserve to live here? And I know, Kara, I know it’s not the same, because I’m not you and this is about you, and it’s different when it’s someone else, the logic feels different. But I promise, the logic isn’t actually any different. And we don’t love you any less when you need to be a depressed ball of depression on the couch.”

“A depressed ball of depression,” Kara repeats, and she’s surprised that her lips are twitching upward of their own accord.

“Yep.” Maggie looks vaguely pleased with herself, and Alex kisses her cheek, and Kara remembers what love looks like, and wonders how she got to be surrounded by so much of it.

“I don’t want you to stay here because I need you, Kara. I don’t want you to want to live because I don’t want to live without you.” Alex, to her credit, isn’t crying. Kara vaguely knows that she will, later, but she’s not now, and Kara has never appreciated anything quite as much. “I want you to stay here because you want to stay here. But I can want it enough for both of us, in the meantime. I don’t mind holding that for you. I can. Maggie and I both can. Your whole family can.”

Family.

Something she lost and something she found.

Something that was stripped from her, literally vaporized from her, and something that they fought to give back to her.

“I’m just a big burden,” she objects, but she lets herself lay back in Alex’s arms.

“We’re all meant to hold each other,” Maggie reminds her, soft and sincere and with a pain in her voice that reminds Kara that Maggie, too, has probably spent many years not wanting to be here, either. “You’re not a burden in the bad sense, Kara; we’re all meant to hold each other’s burdens, when they get too heavy. And we work out; we can handle it.”

Alex flexes her biceps for emphasis of her wife’s point, and a laugh sneaks out of Kara’s throat.

She’d forgotten how.

But maybe she was allowed to let people remind her.

And maybe it was okay if she couldn’t remember, for a while.

Maybe they could remember for her.

“I think I need a break,” she whispers, because she knows that they know that by break, she means hospital care and an inpatient facility and everything that goes with it.

“Then we’ll get you a break. As long as you need,” Alex kisses her temple again, and she lets herself feel small and cared for, for once.

Because maybe they do mean it when they tell her they love her.

And maybe she can let that fill her up after all.