Bella MacLeod's Twilight Fanfiction

Reborn

By BetterInTexas

Chapter 16:

Kara’s revelation – that she started taking drugs to offset the effects of the alcohol because she was directly responsible for injuring her – had shaken Alex to her core. No matter what Kara said, the older sister felt solely responsible for giving her the excuse if nothing else. The distress she was feeling was dimmed somewhat when Kara pulled her close, merging with her and moving them into a different memory.

Alex once again found herself wrapped up in her sister’s younger self, Kara’s presence all around her.

Young Kara was walking through the hospital taking in the voices surrounding her. She always ignored the conversations between families, feeling they had a right to privacy, especially in a place like this. Instead she focused on finding the voices of her children, the ones she regularly visited. She tried to visit hospitals in different cities once a week, but some she kept coming back to more often due to the patients who had little to no family.

One such little girl was in National City Children’s Hospital in the cancer ward.

Charity Kallis, age 10, had been a ward of the foster care system since she was 5. Her parents had been killed in a car crash and she had no relative willing to take her. Kara often made random stops to visit her before heading to her apartment after a battle or a save. The girl’s foster parents stayed with her for the most part but in Kara’s opinion, Char, as she liked to be called, was alone too often with only the nurses for company.

Though Kara generally preferred to enter incognito, dressed in her normal civilian attire, she had learned the ins and outs of this hospital and passages from the roof to evade most eyes. The parents on the floor were used to her sudden appearances and never said a word to the media to bring attention to her. The blonde realized that no matter her desire, she could not see every sick child in the world. Her self-imposed duties to save others, plus the college classes Jeremiah insisted she continue, cut significantly into her time.

Seeing the memory as Kara relived it, Alex couldn’t fathom why they were there. She knew Kara visited sick kids, but why was this memory so important? Was it just representative of Kara’s hospital visits?

Fully merged with her sister’s consciousness, Kara could feel Alex’s confusion and hoped she could convey why she had brought them here. “Alex, I won’t lie to you. When you were injured… when I caused your injury because I was drunk, the guilt I felt was tremendous. But instead of getting help, I chose to use drugs to quickly offset my intoxication when I needed to. Me being the reason you were injured was the final straw in me making that poor decision, but it was not the only reason. I almost sought them out after… this…”

Alex immediately sensed her sister’s turmoil. As always, when Kara needed her, Alex’s own troubles, fears and anxiety took a back seat. “I’m here, we’re together. We can lock this memory away if you want…”

“No! You need to know. I can’t stop you from feeling guilty, but you are in no way responsible and this is the only way I know to help you… for you to see you couldn’t have stopped me no matter what you did.” Kara was adamant so Alex stopped pushing and settled in to watch as young Kara continued to move down the hospital corridor.

“Supergirl, a word?” the head nurse asked, tapping her on the shoulder.

Kara stopped and walked into a mostly empty hallway. “What’s up, Sally?” she whispered.

“It’s Charity. She had surgery two weeks ago…”

“I know. How is she?” Kara did not have Justin monitor the children’s records though she easily could. She felt things like that were best kept private.

Sally hesitated before replying, “The surgery… wasn’t successful. The tumors have spread, some were not able to be removed without killing her. Afterward she developed an infection and with her immune system already weakened from radiation and chemo…”

“There is nothing you can do, is there?” Kara realized.

The nurse shook her head. “I’m really glad you came. I thought of calling Cat Grant but… Kara, she doesn’t have much time. Perhaps no longer than tonight.

Kara nodded her head, fighting back tears. “Her foster parents are with her? I didn’t hear them in her room. Should I talk to them?”

Sally’s face took on a look of anger before she schooled herself. It was brief but nothing was too fast for Kara to catch, not bullets or facial expressions. “Her foster parents… after she was diagnosed as terminal, she became a ward of the state once more. The couple have three other children…”

“And they abandoned her.” Kara finished. “How long since she has seen them? Have they spoken to her since the surgery?”

The silence was all the answer she needed. “Has anyone told her?”

“She knows.” Sally confirmed. “A counselor and I have spoken to her.”

Kara was grief-stricken. “I could have been there! Why didn’t you call Cat? She would have let me know!”

Sally shook her head and looked to the floor. “Because every time this happens, you die too. I’ve watched you… seen it too many times, Kara. You can’t keep doing this. The kids love seeing you, but your presence for all these deaths is too much for anyone to handle, even the girl of steel. Our nurses go to counseling to deal with this. They are older, some have decades in the medical field and seeing this happen over and over, it gets to all of us… this is becoming too much for you.”

Kara said nothing, instead making her way to Charity’s room, Sally hurrying to catch up.

Kara was heartbroken when she saw the girl. Since her last visit, Char had grown her hair out a bit but lost at least twenty pounds off her already thin frame. She looked gaunt and her eyes were hollow.

Yet those same eyes brightened when she saw Kara. “Kara! You wore your suit!”

The blonde pulled a chair up to the bed and took the girl’s tiny, cold hand. “Yeah, I just came from a big forest in France. I wanted to see you. I’m sorry I haven’t been by to visit more.”

The little girl shrugged. “It’s okay. I’ve been watching you on the TV. Did you fight a bad guy in France? I thought all France had was the Eiffel Tower and that big museum.”

Kara forced a smile on her face. “No bad guy. There are a lot of trees in France. Some of the forests are hard to get around if you have to walk. A small plane had trouble staying in the air and crashed in a place that was hard to get to or even see them. I had to go help those people.”

“Did you save them?” Char asked quietly.

Kara never considered telling her the truth, that she had found the smoking wreckage with nothing but bodies in the surrounding areas. The only thing she had been able to do was fly the bodies to the search and rescue team on a road twenty miles away.

“I helped them get home.” Kara sat in silence, watching every detail of the girl’s face, afraid to use her x-ray vision on Char, scared of what she already knew she would see. Char was laying with her eyes closed now, her breathing labored and fighting to stay awake.

“Kara?” the girl whispered after a brief nap.

“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” the blonde assured her.

“I am. I can feel it,” Char said softly.

Kara closed her eyes, schooled her face then took a look at the monitors. Char’s vitals were falling. Sally must have noticed from her station because she appeared in the door.

“Char…” Kara started, then stopped, realizing she had no words.

“It’s okay. I’m going to see Mommy and Daddy in Heaven.” Char whispered knowingly. “Kara, I want you… would you fly me there?”

Kara felt like a knife had been twisted in her gut. She looked back at Sally who was in the doorway. The nurse shrugged her shoulders and nodded. Kara got the message. It was too late, and the girl had an hour at most, maybe minutes.

The blonde stood up and unclasped her cape.

“Are you sure?” Sally whispered, realizing what Kara planned to do.

“Clear the halls so I can get to the roof unseen.” the blonde answered.

A few minutes later the nurse, Kara and Char were on the roof, the little girl wrapped warmly in Kara’s cape, once one of two blankets she had used to keep Kal El warm when they first landed.

“Are you ready?” Kara asked the little girl who was grinning. She nodded her head and Kara began to slowly levitate from the roof, rising into the night sky. She hovered fifty feet over the roof and stopped, tilting the girl up in her arms so she could take in the city lights and the stars above.

“It’s beautiful.” Char whispered.

“Yes, it is.” the blonde said, looking closely at the girl in her arms.

“So, this is what flying is like? You do this all the time, huh?” The young girl’s quiet voice held such amazement.

Kara nodded and quietly replied, “Yeah, but you should have seen me the first time I flew. I got stuck in the air and couldn’t get down. I was only a few years older than you are now,” she admitted, getting a quiet laugh from the child.

“Do you think I will be able to fly in Heaven?”

Kara held the girl closer, seeing a peaceful look settle on her young friend’s face. “I know you will.”

The two stayed still in the air until Kara heard the young girl’s heart stop beating.

Slowly she dropped back to the roof where Sally stood waiting with a stretcher. She shook her head, tears frozen in her eyes. “I’ll carry her back to the room. Contact Cat. She will make the funeral arrangements.”

“The State…” Sally began to say before Kara interrupted her, shaking her head. “No, she will get a proper burial alongside her parents. Cat will make it happen. Tell her Kara said so… and I’ll be there. Does she have any other family?”

The nurse shook her head.

So, it was three days later that Kara stood in a cemetery with only three nurses, Cat Grant and the priest she had known since her first year in National City conducting the rites while the little girl was laid to rest next to her parents.

After turning down a ride from Cat Grant, Kara sat on a stone bench as the coffin was lowered. The Priest walked over and sat next to her. “How have you been?”

Kara didn’t answer, trying to feel anything but the sorrow that was weighing her down. Staring at her young friend’s grave, she said, “You told me once to figure out what I believe in, to hold on to it. I think I finally figure out what I believe.”

“May I ask?” The priest’s voice was comforting, but Kara was past being comforted.

“You won’t like the answer. I believe there is a high power. I think it must be a man, because this higher power reminds me of the Joker. I believe that it is pure evil, and we are here for its sick amusement. It’s like one of those Sim games. He creates us and then sits back to enjoy the show, no matter how sick it is. You and I are just toys.”

She looked at him. “You are a good man. You should find another job.”

Kara walked away, taking her time traversing the five miles to the only bar that could satisfy her needs. She had a bracelet in her handbag but felt no need to use it at one of the human bars she passed. She didn’t want an easy out.

Instead she walked into the mostly empty alien bar at three PM and stayed through the night until she passed out, barely remembering the sight and feel of green arms lifting her up from her booth to take her home.

“How could you keep going back? Why? So much pain.” Alex mumbled, a deep depression engulfing her followed by the memory of slipping into an alcohol induced haze once again.

“Somebody had to be there.” Kara whispered. “No one else cared.”

Knowing this was but one of Kara’s memories of similar losses, Alex understood that she couldn’t have stopped her sister, but it didn’t alleviate the guilt she felt for not seeing the whole picture soon enough to prevent what she knew they would soon be reliving.

When Kara moved to a different memory, Alex found herself standing next to her sister this time, seeing the blonde’s younger self sitting in the cell that Arkham called a counseling room. She was wearing a pink hoodie with the hood drawn over her head. Some maniacs were forced to come every day to this bare room to be studied and for some sort of counseling that would never work. Others did not come, deemed too dangerous to even be allowed out of their cells.

“Why are we at Arkham?” Alex asked, this time more curious than disturbed.

“I’m not sure, but given the path my mind is taking us, it can’t be good.” Kara replied.

The door opened and a pale man with a shaved head and scars on both sides of his mouth was brought in wearing handcuffs, leg irons with a gun pressed to the back of his head by a very tense guard.

“A little bit casual for a psychiatrist, even for this place. Are you the next young woman who thinks she can figure out what makes the Joker tick?” the maniac cackled, obviously believing she was another groupie he could turn into a monster.

Kara smiled wickedly and looked up at the man, brushing the hood off her head. “Hi.”

The surprise on the Joker’s face was easy to read. Without his makeup, he was just a pathetic, scarred man, not intimidating in the least… but he tried to be. “So, it’s you. Care to carry on our conversation from last time? Compare notes? I’m afraid I don’t have any recent stories to tell.”

Kara shook her head and the grin was gone. “You won’t have any stories after today. Today, I am going to make you feel something you haven’t felt in a very long time. Fear. Fear is a constant companion of mine along with anger. You said we were the same the last time we met, but I’m not really sure. If I feel fear it seems only right that you should as well. So today, I’m going to kill you.”

The man sat back with a creepy grin. “Now that sounds like fun. How are we doing this? You going to rip my arms off? Snapping my neck is too tame for you. Maybe burn me to ash? Now that could be fun. I still wouldn’t fear you. I’m not afraid of death, the same as you.”

Kara shook her head, knowing she had his undivided attention. “You are going to be afraid of this death. See I plan to make it quick. No pain at all. I talked to the Warden, not a big fan of yours by the way and we have it all worked out. I’m going to permanently end you in the worst way possible. See, after I snap your neck, I’m going to burn your tissues and then crush your bones so the Janitor can sweep you into a dustpan. Once that is done, the Warden is going to make an announcement to the press. You had a stroke and passed away quietly. Your body was cremated immediately afterward. He will then release a statement to the press, informing the public that you had been diagnosed with severe schizophrenia.”

“I’m not crazy.” the man quickly told her.

“Probably not. I’ve come to believe that you are just pure evil. You are what you say you are, a man with no limits, who lives outside of the rules. The big difference between me and you is hundreds of years from now, I’ll be in the history books and you will be forgotten. Once you are gone, quietly of course, the public will forget about you. As a symbol of ultimate evil, they feared you. As just a crazy serial killer who died from a stroke, you will become yesterday’s news. As the world moves on without you, new killers, new villains will appear. Maybe some news reports will compare them to you, but eventually people will completely forget about you. No one will fear your name or face. You will just be… forgotten. That’s the difference between you and me. I’ll never be forgotten. Are you ready to die? Want to take a moment to catch your breath, take your last one?”

Kara watched him closely. He was no longer smiling nor scowling. His eyes began to dart around the room. Then she saw it.

“Fear.” Kara said with satisfaction. “That look of fear. It’s why I came. What would be the only thing that could make someone like you afraid. I’ve sat up many nights thinking about it. Killing you would be too easy. It would give you what you want. Supergirl kills the Joker. Our names would be forever attached along with Batman. You would be a footnote to my legend. But to be forgotten? To be shrugged off by the people, just another lunatic gone for good, that scares the hell out of you, doesn’t it? I can see it on your face, in your eyes. Your heart is beating quicker, your breathing becoming panicked. You are sweating and I bet it feels cold, right?”

The man said nothing, nor did he need to.

Kara stood up and walked behind him, placing his face on the desk gently, strong enough in her grip that he was unable to move his torso. She pulled a weapon resembling a gun from the pocket of her hoodie.

“This little beauty is what I lovingly call Peacemaker. I always loved Val Kilmer in Tombstone. Ever seen it? Probably not. Anyway, I’ve never used this weapon before. It’s probably gonna sting a little bit.”

To her amusement the man begged. “Please don’t kill me like this.”

Kara pulled the trigger. Instead of the roar of a gun blast, it simply hissed as the needle from the barrel broke into the back of the Joker’s skull causing the man to let out a sharp scream. The blonde let go of his head and had a seat back in her chair.

After a few moments the Joker raised his head and looked at her, eyes wide, the fear etched across his face. She reveled in it. “There is now a small bomb planted at the base of your skull. It’s very tiny, smaller than a pearl. It’s an amazing little device I made in my free time. The bomb has a GPS in it, meaning I can track your movements anywhere in the galaxy. My supercomputer you asked about last time? It will be keeping track of you. If you step out of this building, you die immediately, painlessly. I have the Warden’s word that you will be dragged back inside to the mortuary where the plan I just explained to you will be completed. And I promise… you will be forgotten by history. You are going to be a nobody. Nothing special, just another crazy murderer among thousands, perhaps the hundreds of thousands of the next century. Enjoy the rest of your life here, knowing it has already begun. No one will fear your name, ever again. You will live knowing no one remembers you, a nobody… lost to time.”

Kara and Alex watched as young Kara walked out of Arkham satisfied. They felt the darkness in her, the same darkness she drew from when she fought. This time not one punch or blast of heat vision was needed. Kara had defeated him for good and that gave her a sense of giddiness she had not felt in a long while.

Alex knew then why Kara’s subconscious had brought them here. What she had done to the Joker, while greatly deserved, showed another level of how she coped with loss. Her mind had engineered a foolproof way to control those who were uncontrollable… one more way for her to exercise her demons when the world wouldn’t let her kill them. Figuring out the Joker’s true fear and then using his own brand of psychological manipulation was one more step down the path of Kara losing another part of herself and spiraling ever further down into the bottomless hole she could never fill.

She felt her sister’s remorse as the scene faded out to only the two of them, but Alex sensed her satisfaction too. Looking at her sister, she was surprised to see Kara watching her closely, her eyes showing her concern.

Alex chose to try and lighten the mood a little. “Well, this probably wasn’t a mentally healthy approach to take, but it was very effective… it’s not like he doesn’t deserve it.”

Kara smiled slightly, but it was tinged with regret. “Yes, but it shows how much I had quit listening to other people, I no longer cared what anyone thought. This was my way to stick it to Bruce for him not letting me kill the bastard all those times. He wasn’t happy I’d done it either.”

Her voice dropped a couple of octaves and took on an approximation of the dark knight’s tone. “Kara, you can’t be judge, jury and executioner! It’s not what we do!”

Alex grinned as Kara resumed her normal speaking voice. “Regardless, he couldn’t argue against what I did because I technically followed our agreement.” She sighed, her face taking on a thoughtful look.

“I have another memory, it kinda shows the same attitude, but you might find it a little funny from my perspective. You were there for part of it.” She genuinely smiled at Alex as she shifted them into the memory.

They found themselves standing outside the DEO’s desert facility, observing as young Kara landed forcefully, causing the ground to shake around her. She normally would have ignored this summons but being bored at work and with no one needing saving, she felt she could indulge her curiosity.

Surrounded by her sister, her DEO friends and other agents along with quite a few Army grunts were Lucy Lane and her Daddy, Samuel Lane. While Connolly’s call amused the both of them, he thought her presence may give them a heads up on whatever Lane was trying to cook up.

“Lane, what do you want?” She asked, shoulders back, head held high.

Instead of answering, the smug bastard looked at his daughter. She handed Kara a sheet of paper. Kara looked it over then looked up at the General, heat vision simmering behind cold, blue eyes. The younger Lane stepped back quickly.

“A Presidential order? I’m a citizen of the UN, Lane. I don’t take orders from you, or Marsdin. Furthermore, I am certain Marsdin did not sign this because she knows better. She’s smart… unlike you. But just to satisfy my curiosity, we’ll verify your story.”

Kara handed the order to Connolly without ever taking her eyes off the General. “Did you seriously waste my time just to see if I would obey some pathetic, trumped-up military order of yours?”

The man shrugged off his nervous look and stood straighter. “You… you do have a residence in the US, correct? Supergirl may be a citizen of the world but…”

He stopped speaking when Supergirl lifted him by his throat off the ground. “There are no ‘buts’… I don’t answer to you… and you are wasting my time.”

The DEO agents around her eyed Lane’s soldiers who were looking around at each other, obviously not knowing what to do. Lucy had backed away from her father quickly, but no one else moved.

Kara dropped the General to the ground and looked towards his daughter. “You, short stuff, you are his secretary, right? Any reason I shouldn’t fly him to the White House and asked Olivia why he is falsifying her name on documents? That’s probably against a few laws. You went to law school before you became his secretary, right? As a matter of fact, let’s call her right now.”

Kara pulled out her phone and pulled up the President’s personal number and was about the hit the call button when Lucy shakily stepped up to her. “We… we have a new anti-insurgency device, weapon I mean. We were hoping you would agree to help us test it.”

Kara laughed, beginning to think playing catch the ball with Streaky would have been a better use of her time. “You hoped I would help by presenting me with a falsified Presidential order. Anti-Insurgency? Anti-alien you mean. Is this the Red Tornado project your Daddy has used billions of taxpayers’ dollars on without Congressional oversight?

“How do you know about Red Tornado?” Lane asked, standing from the ground, trying his best to use anger to hide the fear.

“Oh, Sammy… I know everything. There is nothing you can hide from me. This weapon, this android, is pathetic. It’s just a machine.” She sighed dramatically, then rolled her eyes. “Ok, fine. Bring it out. I see it standing in its little red box. You want me to fight it? I’ll fight it.”

“Then tomorrow at noon…” Lane began.

“No. Right now. The aliens won’t set up a time and date for you to fight. You called me here, you wasted my time, now bring me your toy robot.” The glee in her voice and the sadistic look on her face showed the two observers exactly what Kara’s mindset was as she taunted the pathetic excuse for a human who thought he was able to dictate to or control her in any way.

Kara and Alex watched as she playfully toyed with the robot. Fifteen minutes went by before the Red Tornado unleashed a vortex of wind with the power of an F5 tornado at her.

She stood in place, eyes glowing to burn the dust from them, mouth closed to keep the dirt out.

The creature, having no effect on her, moved forward. Kara caught its metallic fist with her own, crushing it. A dose of freeze breath over the machine followed by a punch to the chest and Samuel Lane’s little toy was in tiny pieces on the ground.

Young Kara laughed. “I could have used heat vision to evaporate it in seconds, perhaps just melt it into sludge. The vortex idea was dumb. I know you have seen me stand inside tornados more powerful. Or did you think it would hamper my flight abilities?”

“You just destroyed billions of dollars of…” Lane shouted before Kara picked him up by his arms, flew him away from his men and dropped him roughly to the ground.

Kara’s face took on a thoughtful look as she gazed down at the shaken General. “You are a truly pathetic man. Cadmus? What a joke. I guess Lex and Max will have a good laugh at your expense at the next meeting. A robot? I understand Amanda Waller wants to plant a nuclear bomb in a small isolated town to lure me in and detonate it on my arrival. Petersburg, Kentucky, right? Population 4,123. You are ready to sacrifice all those lives, just to have a shot at killing me. Let me guess, lives have to be lost for the greater good.”

Lane nodded, scrambling to his feet. “You evil bitch. You are the greatest threat to mankind…”

“No, I’m not.” Kara stopped him. “At the moment, you and your buddies are… at least to the 4,123 people living in Petersburg, Kentucky.”

Lane’s face was turning such a deep shade of purple, Kara wondered if he’d die from a stroke on the spot. Staring smugly at the apoplectic man, she continued, “If I wanted to take over this planet, which is light years behind the rest of the universe in technology, I would have already. There are planets that would invade and take the Earth’s resources, exterminating humanity to make way for their own empire to grow. I’m the only thing that keeps them from doing so. Sometimes the world doesn’t need heroes. Sometimes it needs bad guys to stand up to the really bad guys. I am what I have to be. Stop wasting time and innocent lives trying to figure out some way to kill me. Just send a ‘thank you’ card to Catco or the Daily Planet. Send it to your first born who hates you. I talk about you with her often. She thinks you are scum. Hard to disagree.”

Kara prepared to fly off.

“We will never stop!” Lane yelled.

The blonde turned back to the General. “Fine. I have an offer for you. No need to kill innocents, your own people, those you have sworn to protect. Place a bomb at a testing facility. I’ll even sit on the thing. I doubt it will kill me, but it might. There is only one condition.”

“What would that be?” the man asked warily.

“Lucy has to be sitting beside me. It’s for the greater good, right? Over 4,000 lives are worth wasting for a shot to kill me. I’m making it easier and a lot more palatable for your number crunchers. Only one has to die, the one daughter that still loves you. Do we have an agreement?”

The look on the General’s face told her what she had already known.

“Hypocrite. You know nothing of the greater good. If you waste my time again, I’ll permanently disfigure and disable your daughter. We understand each other?” Kara took his silence as agreement and flew away, leaving the man in the desert four miles from his men.

The two sisters suddenly found themselves alone in the desert.

Alex whistled, then quietly laughed, shaking her head. “Well, you effectively punctured his pompous ass. You figured out Lane’s weakness, just like you did with Joker… toying and manipulating both, putting them right where you wanted them. I don’t know why you think this shows you in a bad light… I don’t think you did anything wrong in either case… especially considering what I did to Lane.”

Kara’s face scrunched up at her sister’s last few words, confused. “I don’t… what did you mean? What did you do to him?”

Alex froze, mentally kicking herself for not censoring her comments, unsure how to answer, knowing she couldn’t lie to Kara, not while their minds were merged. She straightened her back, holding herself still, her eyes meeting Kara’s. Taking a deep breath, she replied, “I murdered him.”

Fortress of Solitude

“Oh, dear.” Kelex said in the quiet room with only the Danvers as his company.

“What’s going on?” Eliza asked immediately, turning towards the monitors. “I don’t see a change in their brainwaves. It’s been over 12 hours since that spike…”

“It’s Connolly.” Kelex explained, calming Eliza. “He has been calling multiple lines in an attempt to speak to Alex. He has probably figured out she is not at work, nor are the two of you. I have no doubt he will be looking for Clark next and discover the boy missed school. The man usually calls once a week to check on her so I should probably take this.”

To the Danvers’ surprise Kelex answered in a perfect replication of Alex’s voice. “What’s up?”

Kelex had set the call so Connolly could be heard by the others in the room, but Connolly could only hear him.

The man’s voice sounded a little worried. “I thought I would give you a few days after the anniversary, but I couldn’t find you anywhere. No one is answering at your parents’ home either. Are you okay?”

“When am I ever okay?” Kelex asked.

“Good point.” The family heard him sigh in resignation. “You weren’t answering your phone and I was worried. I thought you were done with Cadmus cells. You find another one?”

Kelex answered doing a brilliant impersonation of Alex when she’s irritated. “If I did, I would call you with the location of the bodies. The last one was it. I cut Hardcastle’s head off and left a sword in his chest.”

At this revelation, Jeremiah and Eliza gasped in shock, while Clark just stared wide-eyed.

His voice tinged with exasperation and concern, Connolly replied, “Going alone… Alex, couldn’t you at least let me, or someone know, ‘Hey, I’m going hunting and I’ll be here in case I need backup’? I agreed to stay out of it but c’mon kid, I’m worried. You left 52 bodies at the last site. All it would have taken is one person to get a lucky shot. I promised I wouldn’t bother you with your personal massacre but a heads-up maybe?”

“Like I said, I’m done. All of them are dead. No more threats at this time. If something new comes up, I will let you know.” Kelex replied.

There was silence on the speaker for a moment, then a sigh. “I know the anniversary was tough on you. How you been doing? Really?”

Kelex was silent for a moment, going through thousands of possible answers.

“I’m fine,” the robot deciding outright lying was his best option. “Nothing has changed, at least not yet.”

“Still watching the sun, huh?” the man asked.

Kelex ramped up his ‘irritable Alex’ voice to her ‘Alex getting angry’ voice. “I thought we agreed not to talk about it. I believe what I believe, and you believe what you believe. She will come back to me. I don’t want to have this argument again… at least not on the phone where I can’t hit you.”

“I’m sorry Alex. We did agree.” Connolly apologized. “How are your parents doing? Are you still mad that they… um…”

“That they, what? Left me alone when I asked for help? Refused to believe there was a chance she was alive and help me prepare for her return, formulate a plan to find her and get her out of the sun? Is that what you want to know?” Kelex was in full-blown ‘angry Alex’ mode now. He wasn’t so sure it wasn’t his own feelings he was projecting either, a thought he filed away to ponder later. “I needed a lot of people’s help and have gotten nothing but pitying looks from my friends and family who think I am holding on for no reason and are waiting for me to lose my mind.”

Connolly’s tone was now cautious. “So… still mad then. You haven’t completely cut yourself off, have you?”

Kelex now entered his ‘Alex clenching her teeth to avoid cussing the man out’ voice. “I told you before, we work together, we eat Sunday dinner and I go to every event Clark is a part of. What else do you want from me? Between Cadmus, finding Kara, helping the CDC and being part of a family that thinks I’m insane, I have been doing fine. I haven’t cut anyone off.”

“But Cadmus is over, right?” Connolly was pushing now and Kelex was getting angry on Alex’s behalf.

“I hope so. I would hate to think I wasted Kara’s sword if there was one more out there.”

“So, maybe you could take a vacation?” Connolly asked tentatively. “Come hang out with me and Jess for a few days. How long is it since you have been here? You don’t have to be in the Fortress for Kelex to monitor the sun. There are some great camping areas outside the city.”

“I’m busy.” Kelex told him shortly. “I just told you how full my life is. Just because Cadmus is dead does not mean I don’t have other responsibilities. I don’t have time to take vacations.”

Connolly backed down immediately. “Sorry. Just an offer. I’ll let you go… umm, you aren’t still thinking about that crazy plan with the Phantom Zone, are you?”

Kelex sighed in an eerily similar fashion as Alex. “I have to find her first. It’s a last option and I haven’t determined how to send a projector into the core of the sun, then track her from the Phantom Zone, and then guide her back to the Fortress. I don’t have the technology yet. Once I do, when I find her, I will create the tech if it is the only option.”

Connolly’s breath exploded over the speaker as he exclaimed, “Alex, God knows I’m no scientist but opening up a rip in the core of the sun to suck Kara up all so you can go into this endless, timeless void and find her… part of the sun is going to go with her too. How do you know it’s safe… for Earth? For the solar system? Seems taking a part of the sun out might start a chain reaction that could be… bad?”

“Like you said, you aren’t a scientist. It’s a work in progress. I’ll figure it out… and you know how smart Kelex is. If anyone can pull this off we can. I would bet he is smarter than a Coluan, easily. Probably makes those green idiots look like fools. Seriously, he is the best AI in existence. I don’t know what I would do without him and his calm, all knowing, wise…” Kelex stopped speaking, realizing Alex probably wouldn’t have gone that far. “Regardless I can handle it. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Connolly sighed. “Yeah, okay. If you need anything, you know I’m here, right?”

Kelex began to dismiss him once again but stopped, seeing an opportunity. “There is something you can do for me.”

“Name it, as long as it doesn’t involve sucking up the core of the sun into a timeless void.” Connolly replied with the utmost sincerity.

“Stop being such a baby. It’s a big core.” Kelex told him, perfectly matching the tone Alex used when she was annoyed. “I want you to find Dante Youngblood. Bring him back to civilization. You can find him if you want to.”

“I don’t want to.” Connolly said immediately.

“I want you to.”

“Alex, what he did…”

“Was the same thing you did. He turned Kara into a killer, the same as you did for me. It isn’t right that he has isolated himself from the world over misplaced guilt. We did what we had to do and the two of you helped us, shaped us. You have Jessica, you have your friends. He has no one any longer. Find him and bring him back to Metropolis. He needs you and your brothers. You asked and this is what I want.”

Nothing was said for a moment before the man finally gave in. “Fine. Any particular reason for this? You haven’t given a damn about Dante since Kara died… disappeared.”

Kelex replied using Alex’s command tone. “I still don’t give much of a damn, but just do it, okay? Kara wouldn’t want him to be alone, no matter what happened in the past. I’m not saying I want him over for family dinner. Just find him and bring him back to his friends.”

Connolly was silent, then sighed. “Okay. Anything else?”

“No… just take care of yourself, okay?” Kelex softened his tone as he knew Alex would do. She sincerely loved the man as a mentor and true friend.

“Just try not to destroy the sun, okay?” Connolly’s tone was filled with the fondness Kelex knew he felt for his young protégé.

The call ended and Kelex looked at the three surrounding him. They had finally taken their eyes off Kara and Alex and were staring at him, stunned expressions on each face. “What?”

“Dude, how many times have I talked to Alex on the phone and it’s really been you? You even speak like her.” Clark asked, his voice full of awe.

“Never. I have never replicated her voice when speaking to any of you.” he answered them honestly. “I have dealt with the CDC at times when Alex was on her… excursions and could not be disturbed.”

“She thinks we abandoned her.” Jeremiah finally realized the truth of what his and Eliza’s feud with their eldest daughter was truly about… and he had no idea how they could fix it.

“We did.” Eliza admitted, tears forming in her eyes. “We failed her… we should have helped. She was alone, trying to figure this out.”

“She wasn’t alone… she had me.” Kelex told her. “You should know, Jeremiah, we used your extensive research on Kara’s DNA to build a tracer system to first find her and then to track her whereabouts. It would have taken much longer without your knowledge of her physiology.”

“These plans the two of you came up with, the Phantom Zone…” Eliza realized, fear lacing her words, “She wanted to send Kara to the Phantom Zone and go in after her? She could have been lost forever!”

Kelex shrugged his shoulders. “I pointed this out to Alex. It was a possibility. She didn’t give a damn. Her words, not mine. She would risk anything for Kara, you know this.”

Waiting a moment for them to absorb this unsettling fact, he continued. “We estimated once we had pulled Kara into the Phantom Zone, we would use the tracer system to track her by her DNA. The Phantom Zone may be a timeless void, but matter does exist. If it didn’t, Indigo would have never been able to activate Kara’s pod and allow an escape. We believed if we could determine her exact position in the sun and found a metal that could survive the sun long enough to activate the projector, the damage to the star would be minimal. At that point it would be possible for Alex to go into the Phantom Zone and bring her out, using our projector in the Fortress as a beacon to arrive minutes later.”

“Or years later.” Jeremiah pointed out, obviously very shaken, even showing some anger, most likely at Alex’s willingness to risk her life on a half-assed plan.

“I never said we had perfected the plan, or no risk was involved.” Kelex said, responding to the dark scowl on Jeremiah’s face. “It would most likely have taken years. Regardless, that was our plan of last resort. The one we favored was to use a crystal to send and open a Rann Transporter if only for a second. We thought of having her land on Mars. Any solar energy brought over would no doubt scorch the entire planet but as Kara has always been fond of saying, ‘It’s just White Martians. They don’t count’. Once she was on Mars… well, we hadn’t gotten that far. We hoped to contact Lobo to install one on Mars that led here to the Fortress. But, before any of these prototypes could be built, we needed to find the right metal, tools to manipulate it and Kara’s exact location. Unfortunately, we had none of those, but the search continued.”

Eliza shook her head, not believing how much thought Alex had put into this. The mother assumed Alex was just watching the sun for unusual activity and monitoring it for flying objects launched towards Earth.

“Kelex,” Clark asked hesitantly, “Connolly said Alex took out Cadmus. How many… how many people did she kill?”

“408 in six months. In addition, she saved 1,326 aliens who were being held captive and experimented on or tortured by the organization.”

No one said a word before Jeremiah cleared his throat. “408 people?” He knew his daughter had killed those she found at Cadmus locations but hearing the exact number floored him.

“Yes, 408 people who would have attempted to kill Clark at some point in the future. She saved 1,326 sentient life forms, taken against their will and put through what had always been Kara’s worst nightmare.”

“These plans… one could have literally caused the sun to implode on itself…” Eliza started, switching the subject back, obviously having great trouble reconciling everything she was now learning about her daughter.

“We had protocols to get the family out of the solar system quickly with enough time to spare. The risk was minimal regardless. It would have been mostly solar energy that was easily replaced by the constant reactions in the core. Unlike Jor El, I know what I am doing. Jor El tried to continuously harness and use Rao’s radiation. Our plan would have just been misplacing a tiny amount, no more than is emitted during normal solar storms. The transporter idea was risky in that sending solar energy of that concentration to a planet would have possibly scorched the planet of all life. It was why we chose Mars… after all, the best White Martian is a dead White Martian.” Kelex said without remorse.

He turned back to the monitors, continuing his vigil over Kara and Alex, effectively shutting down the conversation.