#volatile-muses

‘So your sister mentioned you wanted to visit the zoo’, Lillian says lightly, leaning her hip against the counter, ‘and your niece suggested someone should go along'. Her mouth crooks in a small smile, and she shakes her head at her friend. ‘To make sure you don’t free the animals’. 

She slips into the cell, and her first act is to turn off the kryptonite lights. She’s never liked the colour, herself, and now they just make her feel queasy. She steps inside, crouches down, and places a hand on Astra’s shoulder, shaking her roughly. She doesn’t mean to be rough, but she’s hyper aware of what will happen if she gets caught, and she hasn’t known how to be gentle in a long time. ‘Astra’, she says, her voice tight and strained, ‘wake up’. 

It was really, really hard to adjust. She learned the days of the week. She learned how to count. She learned how to read clocks and how to count money and how to press the numbers on a calculator gently enough so that she wouldn’t break it. She learned history, she learned trivia that was relevant to her fabricated childhood, and she learned enough about sports to passably pretend that she had played t-ball as a kid. 

So it was okay. Or--it wasn’t okay but she had no other choice so it had to be okay. She was doing it. She was fine. Even if Jeremiah was gone and Alex was crushed and Eliza was lonely. It was all okay. She was fine. Things were going to be totally fine. 

The school year had ended, finally, and Kara found herself laying in bed on most mornings, not really wanting to get up. Eliza had to go to work and Alex had to babysit Kara so no one was allowed to do anything fun. Ever. And Kara was afraid that it was all just part of the growing resentment brewing between Alex and herself. Alex was being punished because Kara couldn’t be trusted to be alone. 

She lay quietly in bed, Alex snoring softly in the bed next to her, when she heard Eliza moving around in the kitchen. There was the bubbling of the coffee maker. The clink of mugs. The fridge opening. And then--

A sharp, horrified gasp and Eliza calling for them to get up. 

Alex bolted upright, disoriented and half-asleep, and blinked across the room at Kara. It only took Kara a moment to zip down the hall and halfway down the stairs, looking cautiously before walking down at a normal pace. 

Someone was standing on their porch. 

She was tall and beautiful and Kara was struck by how much she looked like her mother. But it couldn’t be. It wasn’t. Except--

Except that it was. 

Eliza was saying something to her, ushering her back up the stairs frantically, trying to block Kara from her mother’s view, but Kara didn’t hear it. All she knew was that her mother was on the porch and her mother was alive and Kara--Kara wasn’t alone anymore. 

Alura leans against Astra, turning to rest her head on her shoulder, and grips her hand tightly. She’s not sure if things between them are completely repaired, but they’re better than they were, and at least her sister isn’t too disgusted by her to hold her. ‘I... sometimes I think I might’ve felt it’, she murmurs, ‘in the pod. I... it’s mostly a blur... like I was dreaming, but... I remember dreaming of pain, and...’ she squeezes her eyes shut. ‘I’m so sorry that happened to you’. 

When Kara told him, he hadn’t believed it. There was no way that his mother was still alive. Though Kara wasn’t a liar. Nervously, he had agreed to come to the DEO. They thought that Astra might talk to him, of all people. He doubted it would be helpful. His mother had always preferred his cousin, not that he blamed her. Ker-Ze knew that Kara was simply superior. He took a breath and straighten his shoulders. His father’s voice echoed in his head. “Stand up, boy. You’re the heir to the Ze family, act like it.” He wanted to show that he hadn’t turned out to be a disappointment. 

There’s a particular ache in her chest that she’s come to associate with that terrible, defeated look in Alura’s eyes. There’s something about the way the woman slumps, the way she seems to curl in on herself, that tugs at her heart and leaves her breathless.