Fixing History - Supercorp

Lara

Lara tried to move, but everything felt like she had been hit with a building. Not wanting to move again, Lara tuned in to the sounds around her. Someone was breathing deeply next to her.

Scrunching her eyes, Lara slowly tried to open them. Dim lighting in the room made it easier for her to open her eyes, it didn't help with telling shadows apart from whomever was here as her eyes adjusted to being open.

As her eyes adjusted, Lara smiled seeing her Mother sleeping in the chair next to the bed. Her smile didn't last as she remembered where she was. This wasn't her Mother, not yet, maybe not ever. Lara's smile turned to silent tears as the thought settled.

Wiping them away, Lara realised her hood and mask were still in place, thank Roa! If the mask was still in place, Kara hadn't tried to remove it.

Groaning again at the pain her body was in, Lara closed her eyes, missing Kara stirring in her chair.

"Wh-what happened?" Kara croaked as she rubbed her eyes. At the sound, Lara kept her eyes closed, not wanting to face Kara yet. Lara hoped Kara would go back to sleep, or better leave, but she had no such luck. "I know you're awake."

Lara kept her eyes closed, hoping she was just trying to get a reaction. "I can't help if you won't talk to me." It took everything in her not to open her eyes, or let the tears in her eyes fall. Kara had said those words to her every time she was in trouble. "I know who you are... at least partly." Kara's voice was quiet, if she hadn't had super hearing she wouldn't have heard it.

Knowing Kara had some idea about who she was had the last of her will power failing, Lara opened her eyes slowly, sighing softly.

"Hey." Kara now faced with an awake Lara seemed to lose the quiet confidence Lara had heard.

"Hey." Lara coughed over the word, her throat dryer than she had ever felt. "Can you put the sun lamps on? I should be fine in an hour under them." Kara nodded, moving to a switch on the wall to turn the lamps on. She also picked up a jug of water for Lara from a nearby table on her way back to her chair.

"So... Do you want to explain what happened?" Kara was picking at a corner of her cape, not looking at Lara for more than a second.

Lara huffed a laugh. "A lot has happened, care to be more specific?"

"Um... what happened to bring you here?"

Lara looked at the door, hoping an emergency would mean Kara had to leave. No such luck. "I was on Earth One to see some friends. When I came back... I didn't exist. History changed and I opened another portal. I was aiming for Earth One again, but we had been messing with the devices... I flew through the portal just as an explosion knocked me out. I have no idea why I ended up here." Lara had moved her gaze to Kara, who was looking at her with as much confusion as Lara could imagine seeing your maybe future daughter would give you.

Kara blinked back to the present, "I'm going to, um, to talk to Alex and Brainy." Lara didn't have time to ask her about anything else before Kara was zooming out of the room.

Kara wasn't sure what to think anymore, her... daughter was in the other room - a girl whose name she still didn't know - and she didn't know how she could help her. Kara found Alex and Brainy talking at the consul, hopefully about their guest. "Hey guys." The others stopped talking to look at Kara as she slumped into a chair next to the consul. "Anything?"

Alex gave Brainy a look, stopping him from answering. "You first. What did she say? You've been up there for hours." Alex knew she'd said something to make Kara frown.

"She didn't say anything."

"Crinkle."

Kara rubbed at her forehead. "Fine. She doesn't know why she's ended up here, but she did say she had been visiting Earth One and came back to find she didn't exist. Thought jumping back to Earth One would help her find out what went wrong before time solidified in her time." As she spoke Alex and Brainy shared a look. "Why do you two keep looking at each other?" Brainy looked to Alex once more, for confirmation her could talk.

Brainy cleared his throat. "That lines up with my theory."

Kara sat up in her chair. "What theory?"

Alex jumped in. "He believes that when she travelled through the portal, instead of taking her wherever she wanted to go - Earth One - she travelled to a time where her existance has yet to be erased... a time where she may still exist."

"So what are you saying? If she does exist she won't for too much longer?" Kara looked between the two of them.

Brainy looked up at her from his fixed stare at the floor. "More like, she still exists because any changes to the timeline are still fixable. One wrong decision and she will cease to exist."

Kara slumped back in her chair, pushing her palms into her eyes. "Okay. So anything I do now could wipe her out of existance?"

"Not just you, any of us changing our choices could erase her, but your's and whomever you had her with, your choices would erase her much faster, potentailly instantly depending on how drastic the change." Alex sat in the chair next to Kara, a hand on her shoulder. "About that... we could do with figuring out who her father is, assuming you don't want her wiped out of existence?" Kara realised what Alex was asking.

Looking at Alex, Kara gave her a sad smile. "I'm not going to actively erase her Alex. But I'm not sure who it could be and something tells me she won't give up that information easily."

Alex nodded. Kara was lost, she wasn't sure she wanted to know anything else, wasn't sure she wanted to fix whatever had changed. "She was bleeding when you brought her in. We kept some of the gauze we cleaned her up with. If you wanted... we could run a DNA profile against everyone in our system. It would give us an answer in a few hours."

Kara didn't want to, but what else could they do? Not finding out could mean she disappeared and none of them would be able to stop it; or they find out and do everything they can to either fix her history or let her be erased.

"Run the test."