Supercorp- One shots

Red Kryptonite

She is the smouldering darkness to be found in the void of all things; the rage of a whole screaming world on fire that burns forever behind the stoic calm of her eyes. The ghosts of Krypton reach out with their soot black fingers into the bloom of her every breath, hungrily reaching for life, their jagged fingernails scoring scratches against the windpipe. Kara holds them back with the briefest gentle smile, always, but tonight she does not gently smile.

In the heart of the apartment, in the dark shadows by the windowsill, Lena finds her smirking malevolently at the street below. There is no need for answers about the strange behaviour of the day, of the apparent disregard for her duties or her sworn promises to protect the earth and all who inhabit it; the answers are to be found in the thin slithering veins of iridescent red that shimmered across her skin.

"So, Alex called," Lena said already defeated, she threw her keys on the table. "She said that you refused to go to the fire downtown. I was hoping right up until I opened the front door that I misheard her, but, here you are..." she sighs in disappointment and rubs her brow with the back of her hand.

It earns a sneering laugh. "Here I am," Kara turns and smirks with stretched out arms like a magician during the raucous applause after the final trick.

"There were good people stuck down there! Someone could have been hurt, Kara!"

Kara simply turned back to the window, "Let every last one of them burn," she mused thoughtfully, calmly even.

The words make Lena flinch.

"Oh," Kara turned back with a delighted expression that quickly became a narrowed-eyed scowl. "You don't like that? Poor little Lena. So trapped beneath the expectation of others. Lessers. The unworthy," she rolled her eyes. "They are afraid of us, you know. That's why they do it. That's why they need to be saved, because if we didn't save them? If we didn't swoop down from the sky and keep their little world safe and sound? Well, we might just be the ones tearing it apart brick by pathetic brick."

There is a terrifying lack of expression on Kara's face that makes Lena shiver. It has her stumbling backwards, not even aware she is doing it until the back of her heel catches the corner of the kitchen counter. It sends her falling, flailing, reaching out with outstretched hands in a fruitless attempt to catch herself. Lena closes her eyes and waits for the back of her head to hit the cold marble floor, but it doesn't come. In the split second it takes to crack her lids open again, a slim figure cloaked by darkness and shadow is stood above with firm hands holding her so softly it felt like she was levitating.

"They scream you know, still." Kara whispers and blinks rapidly after a moment, stuck and confused. Her voice is so small and quiet Lena has to strain her ears to listen. "Can you imagine a whole screaming world on fire forever stuck inside of you? In every waking moment? In every dream? They scream Lena. They reach out from the fire with charred hands and by the time I pull them out there's nothing left at the end of the wrist," Kara's voice trails to a silence.

Lena shrivelled in a horrified and breathless kind of sympathy, blinking and stumbling on the words in her mouth, by the time she is gently pulled up on to her feet she still hasn't found the right thing to say.

"Why have you never said anything to me?" Lena whispered with a heavy brow.

The question is not good enough but it's the first thing she settles on because the fact she is just hearing about this now is a personal failure. She should have been a better girlfriend, should have asked these questions sooner, should have loved Kara better, it all dawns on her too quickly.

"Because there's a darkness inside of you too," Kara replies with an unfeeling smirk. "You are so much better at keeping it safe and locked away where it can't hurt anyone and I had to follow your lead, I had to be a better woman than the darkness wanted to let me be, but maybe we're the monsters we're born to be."