This was a new thing, fragile and beautiful. These moments had always been awkward before- Kelly wasn’t often at the Tower, but when she was she would give Alex the classic gift for luck and Nia and Brainy would have their little moment and Lena would awkwardly stand there and wish Kara good luck or something before they all ran off to fight the alien or… whatever.

Now it was Lena’s turn and she was going to savor it. She sauntered up to Kara, enjoying the look of surprise on everyone’s faces as she placed a soft, chaste kiss on her lover’s lips. Kara deepened it, bracketing Lena’s waist with her powerful hands. Standing there in her boots and cape, Kara was like a storybook night, even grinning like a teenager.

“What the hell was that?” Alex blurted.

“You all do it. Can’t I give my girl a good luck kiss?” said Lena.

Alex gaped at her. Nia began to giggle and Brainy nodded slowly, a secret smile on his face.

“How long?” Kelly asked.

“About five years,” said Lena, “it just took a while to figure it out.”

Kara nuzzled her nose into Lena’s hair and a deep rumble buzzed in her chest as she purred in delight.

“Is she purring?!” said Kelly.

“She does that,” Alex sighed. “Come on everybody, cowboy up and let’s get this guy bagged and tagged. I want to be back here for our victory dance in twenty.”

Lena stood next to Kelly and watched them leave.

“Have you ever thought about going with them?” said Kelly. “You’re a billionaire witch, you could probably-“

They were both cut off by the resounding boom behind them, and Lena whirled as a portal opened right in the middle of the Tower.

Lena watched in shock as Kara walked out. Not her Kara, another Kara from another timeline, a sickly, wounded woman with half her face and her arm and leg missing, replaced by sleek blue metal, and a blazing chunk of Kryptonite where her heart should be.

Kelly let out a shocked yelp and danced back, but Lena stepped forward.

“She won’t hurt us,” said Lena.

Then, she saw what Kara was carrying. Who she was carrying.

The Lena in her arms was not a mirror image. She was older, thinner, short hair streaked with gray and a patch over one eye, and she hung limp in Kara’s arms.

“Help her,” Kara rasped in her mechanical growl. “Please, Lena. Don’t let her die.”

“Come on,” Lena said, to Kelly. “You’re a doctor, you can help me.”

“I’m a psychologist, Lena.”

“Fine, you’re smart and you have hands. Kara, bring her to the medbay.”

“You’ll have to show me. We didn’t have one of these in my world.”

Lena nodded and led them down to the level below and directed Kara to lay… Lena on one of the beds and waved for Kelly to bring her instruments.

“What happened?”

“There was another me there,” said Kara. “She was wrong, broken… not like me. She took over her world, her Lena died, she kept mine like a pet.”

Lena looked at her.

“The Kryptonite has its uses,” Kara said, coldly.

Lena pressed a hand to her other self’s shoulder, shaking her gently.

“Lena,” said Lena. “Lena, can you hear me?”

“She has a pulse,” said Kelly, “but it’s faint. She’s breathing.”

“The Other,” said Kara. “She said she implanted some kind of device in her chest, triggered it before I…”

The Lena on the table convulsed, foamy spittle spraying from her mouth. It took Lena and Kelly to keep her from bucking off the table as Kara clutched the side of her head and wailed in rasping torment.

“Please don’t let her die, I can’t live without her. Please not now please.”

“She’s not going to die,” said Lena.

At that very moment, Kara -her Kara- walked into the medbay with Alex. As she approached, the protective Kryptonite suit formed and snapped into place around her.

Alex drew her alien pistol and aimed at the Other Kara.

“Get away from them.”

“Alex, no,” Lena shouted, stepping between them.

Her Kara gently pushed Alex’s arm down, sweeping her aim away.

“What happened to you?”

Other Kara rasped, “Lex. Killed me. Metallo protocol. Sent Lena to the phantom zone. Help her.

Alex holstered her weapon and rushed over, gently moving Kelly aside.

“Fuck, she’s not breathing, something is choking her. We need to get a breathing tube in.”

“Lena, do you have your watch?” said Kara. Her Kara.

“Yes.”

“The Fortress. Now.”

Lena nodded and stepped away from the table, activating her portal watch. The portal boomed open and Kara gently shouldered her cyborg doppleganger aside and took the dying Lena in her arms, and rushed through the portal, and Lena followed.

The cold was a shock but Lena didn’t care as the adrenaline roared in her veins.

“Follow me,” Kara said, before blurring away into the Fortress.

Lena ran after her, Alex and Kelly in tow.

“What is this place?” Kara rasped.

“The Fortress of Solitude,” said Lena. “Kara’s cousin built this place with Kryptonian technology from his pod.”

“Cousin?” said the cyborg. “Pos?”

“Don’t you have all this stuff on your Earth?” said Alex.

“No. I was teleported to my Earth, not sent aboard a pod. There was only enough energy for me… Kal-El was supposed to join me but…”

“He’s here,” said Lena. “In our world, he lived and became a hero like you. He’s the Superman.”

Cyborg Kara stumbled, skidding to a stop as she stared up at the massive statues of Jor-El and his wife, Lara Lor-Van. Clark’s parents.

They finally caught up to Kara, who placed Lena gently in one of the pods and pulled down the canopy. A soft hiss of air was followed by a hollow thrum as the machine came to life.

“She’s in stasis,” said Kara. “I’ll run scans and we can collect samples, find out what’s wrong.”

Cyborg Kara let out a strange, rasping sound, pained and guttural. She was sobbing.

Kara, still protected by her suit, stepped in and put her arms around her counterpart, pulling her into a hug.

“We’re going to save her. I promise.”

“Please. Please just let me speak to her one more time.”

“We’ll do more than that. I promise.”

“Kara,” said Lena. “Let me look at her.”

Kara stepped aside. Lena stepped close to the cyborg, a deep pang of sadness exploding in her chest as the broken woman turned away.

“Don’t look at me.”

“I have to if I’m going to fix you.”

“Fix me?”

“I can replace the Kryptonite as a power source for your cybernetics, repair some of this damage. If you’ll let me.”

She looked at Lena uncertainly. Kara put a hand on her shoulder.

“Your Lena is going to need you, and you don’t deserve this pain. Let us help you.”

“…alright.”

“Alex,” said Kara. “Take the portal back to the tower. Call everyone. I’m going to send a message to Clark on Argo.”

Lena led Cyborg Kara away to another lab and motioned for her to sit down, then began going over her with the benefit of Kryptonian technology.

“My God,” Lena whispered.

The cyborg had to be in constant agony. Her mechanical components had taken damage her flesh would have shrugged off. When she took a blood sample, she found that the very Kryptonite that kept her alive was turning her blood corrosive, and her superhuman healing and a healthy dose of nanites were keeping it in balance, but did nothing to spare her the pain of the radiation.

It was a losing battle. She would eventually rot from the inside.

“I need you to lie down, and to trust me.”

She began by fabricating a new power source. The Kryptonite had never been essential to the Metallo Protocol- the point had been to make the subject deadly to Superman.

Once she had it online and modified to fit into the power plant on Kara’s chest, it was simply a matter of carefully lifting the Kryptonite core out and swapping out the connections. Once she had the wiring done, all she had to do was lock the power supply in place.

Lena sealed the Kryptonite behind a Kryptonian force field, containing its radiation.

Once she did, Cyborg Kara sucked in a sharp, shocked breath.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she whispered, “it doesn’t hurt.”

“I’m not done,” Lena said, gently. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s my own work.”

It took hours. She started on the most painful parts for Kara, carefully repairing and rebuilding joints and connections between her organic and mechanical systems. It really was a wonder. Her counterpart was a genius.

Obviously.

She fixed the speaker in her throat last, making her voice clearer if not perfect.

“Thank you,” Kara murmured. A tear of dark blood flowed down her cheek and her chest shook with relief. “Part of me was afraid I’d die before she wakes.”

“I wouldn’t let that happen.”

“I left her alone, Lena. She was trapped in that awful place and the… other… me was a monster. She hurt my Lena.”

“Kara,” said Lena.

“I did something terrible. I had to, she made me. She made me.”

Lena gently dabbed the crimson streak from her cheek. “Hush. It’s okay. It’s over now, you’re safe with us.”

Cyborg Kara swallowed and looked at her, just looked at her, and Lena felt a jolt ripple through her. She looked just like her Kara, looking at her as if she made the sun rise.

“Come on, let’s see where we are with, um, me,” said Lena.

The mood was somber when they walked back into the chamber. Kara no longer needed her Kryptonite resistant suit, so it didn’t activate.

Lena’s counterpart lay in the stasis pod like some futuristic Snow White, eyes closed, frozen. Cyborg Kara pressed her intact hand to the glass.

Kara put her hand on it.

“I won’t give up on her,” Kara promised. “I swear it.”

“I know you won’t,” said the cyborg. “You’re me.”

Alex stormed into the room.

“Okay,” said Alex. “Kara, I called in a favor. Can we move this pod?”

“If we have to,” said Kara. “Why?”

“We’re taking her to Themyscira,” said Alex.