One More Chance

Chapter 2 - Empty

"KARA!!"

Alex was paralyzed.

"Kara, do you hear me? Kara! For God's sake, answer me!"

Her legs were still shaking and she could fall at any moment, but she ran to the blast site with the agents after her.

Kara came back to herself after a few seconds where she was paralyzed looking in horror at that fireball rising through the air. She couldn't even breathe with the dread that gripped her chest like a huge steel hand. She heard Alex calling on the wire, increasingly distressed, but she had no voice to speak, she couldn't reason out of panic. The only thing she felt was a terror that took over her entire body making her shake from head to toe thinking about Lena. Lena was in that rubble!

Without thinking about anything else, and like lightning, Kara approached what was left of that shed, reduced to rubble and blew all that fire. "Please, Rao, don't take my Lena. Please, please!" Alex was calling to her almost in tears and screams through the communicator, but Kara couldn't hear or see anything else. Alex stopped calling out to her the moment she saw the fire dying quickly. She deduced it was Kara and calmed down to think and rushed over to help her. Approaching, she saw Kara flinging pieces of rubble all over the place, not caring where they landed, pieces of concrete and metal flying away from her. She just needed to find Lena.

Then she found her. Underneath a large part of the shed roof structure. Kara went frozen and white with panic. Lena managed to get very close to the exit, but the explosion occurred before she could actually get out safely. The displacement of the air mass threw her against the metallic structure that supported the construction, sending splinters to all sides, knocking all the walls and the roof down.

Lena was still dimly conscious when her eyes met Kara's, the beautiful tearful blue eyes filled with dread to see her so hurt like this. Lena felt a cold pain that ran through her entire body, a huge pressure in her chest and her belly, she couldn't breathe properly, because she felt pain with every movement she made to breathe. She was already short of breath, the feeling she had was like she was drowning. Kara was seized with panic. She wanted to scream and her voice didn't come out, she wanted to help and didn't know what to do. It was as if she was out of control of her own body, as if she were out of it. Lena was very injured, barely breathing. Kara was afraid to touch her and hurt her even more, she was frozen in fear, not knowing how to act. Not knowing how she managed to do that, she called Alex on the wire, in a barely audible voice:

"Alex... Alex, help me... Lena is very, very hurt. Help me, please! Help me..."

Kara was shaking. She knelt beside Lena, running her x-ray vision over her body, and then terror froze her all over. Shrapnel had pierced Lena's lungs, which slowly filled with blood with each passing minute. Her heart was beating an abnormal rhythm, damaged, and sending blood throughout her body, in a hemorrhage that felt out of control. Her liver and kidneys were partially crushed by the impact of the structures that fell on her. Her spine fractured. Kara turned livid as if life had abandoned her. That scenario was the worst of all, even without having the necessary medical knowledge to know the real extent of it all.

"Lena, Lena... Alex is coming, she's going to help you, okay? I know she will. You're going to be fine, she's going to heal you!"

Despair blinded Kara, she filled her eyes with tears, tears that ran down her face and dripped onto Lena's clothes. She couldn't accept that she'd failed, that she hadn't made it in time to get Lena out of there safely. Her Lena. Her beloved Lena... now Kara was sure of what she felt for Lena now, and the fear of losing her was suffocating Kara.

Alex came running as fast as she could over all that wreckage. She couldn't even get close enough to look at Lena properly before Kara started haphazardly recounting everything she could see in the quick scan she'd given Lena. As Alex approached, and hearing everything Kara had seen, she knew that there would be no time to transport Lena to try to save her, but she also knew that there was nothing left to be done, even if they took her away. If what Kara said was true, Lena's time was up, there was nothing left any human being could do to save her life. Her eyes filled with tears, the lump in her throat took over Alex, leaving her speechless in that instant. She lowered her eyes and met Lena's large green eyes, in a silent communication, apologizing for her impotence in the face of such a serious situation.