Kara woke up to a completely quiet house with five steady heartbeats echoing in her ears soothingly. It seemed that the sunlight streaming in through the windows was rejuvenating enough to restore her abilities. Cat is curled around, her one leg thrown over Kara's, a hand fisted in her t-shirt, head pillowed on her chest. Carter was on her other side, spooning, fingers tangled in her hair. The most surprising of all though, was Lucy asleep in Alex's arms in the armchair across the rooms. Kara had never felt that loved before in her life. She settled back into the pillows and enjoyed her loved ones' presences so close to her.
Kara took that time to revel in being alive, in being around to protect them for longer. That fight had taught her a lot more than she had initially bargained for. Carter's hands clutched her harder in his sleep. Kara hadn't known that she was capable of a love like this. She had always known that she had loved Alex, since she had been a teenage girl, new to this planet and afraid.
Family hadn't been a foreign concept to her. She had lost her first one and it was life-altering, but the new one on Earth was equally special. She knew romantic love and knew that it was real, soulmates had existed on Krypton as well. This feeling was something different and scary, though. When she saw that curly dark hair nestled securely against her it was all-consuming and terrifying. It was distinctly maternal and Kara didn't quite know what to do with it. It felt as though it didn't matter what he did, it didn't matter who he became, or what he said; Kara would forgive it all and accept him back to her with open arms. This was love in its most pure and powerful form.
A tingle erupted on Kara's side underneath Carter's hand, opposite of the tattoo that marked her as Cat's. It didn't burn and hurt the way Kara had felt when Cat had gotten that tattoo. This was pleasant and soothing. She felt it all of the way down in her bones. She didn't know what it was or why it was happening, but it clearly wasn't a bad thing.
Cat let out a sigh and her hands finally relaxed onto Kara, her vice on the dirty cape falling slack. As gently as she could, not wanting to wake Cat, kara pulled up her shirt since Carter was occupying her own expanse of tattooed skin. There were swirls of blue ink in rows down her ribcage beneath Cat's left breast. Kara had to be glad that she could see this before anyone else was awake. It elicited a pull in her abdomen and an ache in a place in her heart that she had long thought dead and gone.
It was a Kryptonian script that Kara hadn't seen in years. It was as formal as the language had ever gotten. To anyone else it would seem like abstract art, but to Kara, it was a list. SHe had long forgotten that her mother and father had worn something similar with pride during her childhood years. Gently, she traced the letters of her own name, then Carter's, and Adam's. She could guess at the names that would be on her own side.
"Kara, what's that?" Alex asked, easing herself out of the knot of limbs that she and Lucy had become. "Whatever it is, I have it, too."
"It's a list. On Krypton every adult had it." Kara explained, her tone so much more soft than Alex was used to. Alex pulled up her shirt to analyze the markings, recognising the language of Kara's home.
"A list of what? Groceries that need picking up?"" Alex's sarcasm is potent but also very forced.
"Names." Kara says, listing out Cat's. "This is me, that's you, and Carter...and Adam Foster."
Alex dropped her shirt and sat on the end of the bed where Kara could trace out and read Alex's for her.
"Jeremiah, Eliza, me, Lucy, Cat, Carter, and Hank, and Vazquez... I didn't know that she had a first name." she murmurs.
"Why now?" Alex asks, tracing over Lucy's name again and again.
"I accepted my place in this world, now that I've found it. We call them your circle, back home. It's of the people who touch you, all of the way down to your soul. It's not your family, it's not the people who love you, it's not the people you love, but the ones who shake you down to your bones. It's the people who make you feel that ache in your chest." Kara says in that age-old wise beyond her years voice.
Alex only ever heard that tone when her sister spoke of Krypton.
