So what if the plot of the 100th episode isn’t ‘What if Supergirl never existed?’ .... what if it’s actually ‘What if Supergirl’s secrect wasn’t a Secret anymore?’
Got into some brainstorming with @kenzicraw 😏😏😏
Imagine, if you will:
- Bad Guy forces Kara to out herself.
- A villain like Lex, who sees the Supes as too far above us all and is obsessed with bringing them crashing down to earth with the rest of us. They terrorize the city in clever and awful ways and despite all the DEOs resources, they end up locked in a no-win scenario: Supergirl reveals her identity or thousands die. (very Joker-ala-Dark-Knight)
- Lena initially feels some satisfaction, as the revenge she was going to enact at the start of the season is put into action. Now the rest of the world knows what a deceiver Kara/Supergirl really is. And when the world turns on Supergirl then she’ll know what it is to be vilified, questioned at every turn, her intentions doubted by all, her life scrutinized. She’ll get a taste of Lena’s hell.
The news explodes, as you would expect.
Our villain, surprisingly, follows through on his promise- no one else in the city is harmed. But the damage is already done. He watches with smug satisfaction from a prison cell as Supergirl’s world burns.
Some people respond well- with sympathy, defending their hero... but many don’t. Many fall prey to the easy catharsis or watching someone so powerful fall, of feeling like they had a hand in bringing down the mighty Supergirl.
Worse still are the true threats- the many, many enemies Supergirl has made over the last five years. Those who have waited a very, very long time to get their pound of flesh.
It starts small. Vandalism at the monument. FALSE GOD sprayed in garish red across the newly-painted mural downtown. DECEIVER in bold red outside Catco. We get these scenes not through Kara’s eyes, but Lena’s, that pained-but-satisfied smirk telling us she’s also seeking catharsis, though not quite successfully.
But things escalate (as they do).
Kara’s apartment (and much of her building) burns. Supergirl manages to get the people out, but some push from her arms as soon as their feet safely hit the ground, accusation plainly woven into the anguish on their soot-stained faces.
We see in Kara’s eyes that it’s not the loss of her home that tears into her with sharp claws (though that cuts deep- her photos, the paintings where she poured her memories of krypton, the blanket Alex gave her when they were kids, the letters and drawings from children to Supergirl- every piece of the space she’d made her own- all gone). No, we see that, justified or not, she takes full responsibility. She sees their accusation and does not disagree, and it digs its claws deep. She put them in danger- their homes, their lives. And they now pay the cost.
- Eliza disappears into protective custody- barely persuaded to do so by her pleading daughters. She’s not there when they come for the house in Midvale.
- When the news choppers circle, showing the burnt husk of the eastern side, such a sharp contrast to the cheery exterior of the half they’d been able to save, its Lena’s reflection in the TV that our view refocuses to show.
Her smirk is gone. There’s a quiet, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it directive given to look into rebuilding, to make it happen. Discretely.
Lena’s phone is out and her hand hovering over Kara’s name. She clicks the screen black.
- There’s an attempt on James’ life. He’s too easy to get to in his hometown, is forced to leave the paper, go underground.
- Alex has been living covertly for some time- pseudonyms for her apartment lease, etc.- partly to provide cover and security as Director, partly as a reaction to the events of 2x19 (not that she’d admit that). She’s harder to find.
But the world is a small place, and they come for Kelly. Kelly, who is brave and selfless and refuses to stop seeing patients despite the increased threat. Obsidian’s background checks and extensive security should be enough.
Should be, but aren’t.
It’s Alex who takes the hit.
Kara puts the man in a coma.
Things get worse.
- Lena sees Kara face-to-face a month after the reveal. Kara lands softly on the balcony and Lena can’t hide her alarm when Kara finally steps into the light.
She’s a ghost of herself: gaunt. dark smudges beneath her eyes. She’s not in the suit and Lena doesn’t know if it’s even possible for a Kryptonian to lose weight but she looks thinner, smaller. The sleeves of her sweatshirt are too long, rolled once, and Lena’s stomach turns leaden when she realizes who she last saw wearing it.
Alex is semi-stable. Unconscious, unresponsive. But her heart is beating on its own.
(Kara knows this, because that rhythm in her ear is the tenuous thread binding her heart and sanity and humanity).
Lena swallows the thing rising in her throat at the haunted, wounded look in Kara’s eyes as she relays Alex’s condition.
Kara’s fists clench and unclench a few times after in the silence.
Kara is there to ask Lena for help. The DEO is scrambling to protect anyone connected to Kara, to trace the overflow of threats made publicly and across the dark web. They need more resources, but would be especially grateful for the help of Lena’s keen mind.
Gone unspoken is the battle of words and wills that likely occurred shortly before Kara arrived. that anyone at the DEO would even consider allowing Lena to help is a stark statement of how desperate they truly are.
Lena agrees immediately.
She calls a car. Kara doesn’t offer to fly them, just follows Lena to the elevator, her steps so heavily weighted Lena would swear they had never lifted off the ground in flight.
Lena tries not to stare at Kara under the brighter hallway lights.
Her palid coloring is more pronounced. There’s a dried bit of reddish, rust-colored smudge on Kara’s collarbone.
Lena slams a door shut on the impending question of whose blood it is.
There had been a thought- an admittedly dark one- which had entered Lena’s mind as she had watched Supergirl’s enemies come for those closest to her, had found herself excluded from said endangered group. Apparently their conflict had reached Supergirl’s enemies’ ears, and Lena had been deemed too distant from Supergirl to be worth coming for.
Turns out there’s an upside to your best friend betraying you.
As they step out into the night toward the waiting car, Kara stiffens, and Lena has just enough time to realize she was wrong.
There’s a blur of movement, a hiss and the crack of pavement, and then they’re suddenly inside the car and speeding away.
Kara’s barking instructions to the driver and squinting out the window in a way Lena has come to recognize as the use of her advanced vision. The gaze she turns on Lena is wild with guilt and worry and pain.
It takes all the way through Kara’s raspy I’m-so-sorry-are-you-alright-Lena-can-you-hear-me for Lena to register that one of Kara’s hands is clamped against her shoulder and there’s a fresh sheen of something liquid against the dark of (not)her sweatshirt.
“You’re hit.”
Kara answers with a clipped, “it’s fine”- moving on as if snipers with black-market kryptonite bullets are a normal thing now- as if the value of her own life (in her own eyes, and assumedly also Lena’s) has dwindled to the point where the blood seeping and the green glowing from her skin should be no cause for alarm-
Something shatters within Lena.
We get Kara, in pain but frighteningly calm now- the calm of someone exhausted, worn thin, with nothing left to give- asking if Lena has tweezers or pliers in her purse. Asking her to pull the bullet out, as if fishing around in Kara’s shoulder for the bullet would be as easy as tinkering with one of her machines. As if having Kara’s blood on her hands would mean nothing.
- Lena does, in fact, have pliers.
She stays composed long enough to pull the bullet out. When the car stops she barely gets her door open in time to empty the contents of her stomach onto the pavement of the DEO garage.
Kara offers a brisk thank you and a promise to meet Lena in the command center, disappearing into the stairwell beside the elevator.
- Later, Lena finds Kara by accident. She had thought to wait to check on Alex until the deep hours of the night- her desire to see Alex’s condition for herself eventually winning out over the keen awareness that she’s likely not welcome anywhere near the older Danvers.
Lena pauses some distance from the room, the figures inside visible through the large windows, the sharp planes of Kara’s face lit by the monitors near Alex’s bed.
Again, that sensation of her stomach dropping, the ground beneath her feet going with it.
Kara’s head is bowed, the strong line of her shoulders bent- broken by the weight of grief.
Kara’s light- that blazing beacon of hope that had drawn Lena like icarus to the sun- is nowhere to be found.
Lena turns away, unable to watch any longer, wiping away the moisture that had suddenly appeared on her cheek.
She’s going to fix this.
She has to.
-
alright Kenz, take it away.
Don't mind if I do. *rubs hands together*
Alright yall, picture this:
With Supergirl in pieces, Superman in hiding on Argo with Lois and Superbaby, Supergirls allies desperately trying to stay ahead of the chaos, it’s the perfect time for a Super Bad to make a move.
He’s ex- Fort Rozz, we’re going old school. Kara’s mom imprisoned him, he’s just been waiting for the time to strike
He’s the guy who shot at them in the garage at Lena’s
He leads an enitre alien gang, they all have a bone to pick with Alura’s daughter
They draw Supergirl out with a direct threat against the DEO, since everyone Kara loves (who aren’t in hiding) are now there.
Of course, after a brief but significant look at Lena, she departs without question to meet this Big Bad.
Right before she takes off from her balcony, she locks eyes with Lena again. “Make sure my sister wakes up.”
MASSIVE ambush, she doesn’t stand a chance. She’s weak, physically and spiritually, and it takes its toll
There’s footage of Supergirl battling multiple baddies, all with powers of their own, armed with the black market Kryptonite. It’s not as potent as the real thing, but it’s clear how weak Supergirl is. She won’t win this fight
Lena is in the command center, watching with panic absolutely ripping her to pieces. She feels every hit Kara takes, winces as she’s thrown into buildings and cracks concrete with how hard they’re pummeling her.
She remembers she has Lex’s watch on her wrist. Not the transmatter portal one. The other one.
Brainy shouts a startled warning as Lena barrels right for Kara’s balcony and launches right off of it, slapping her wrist as she goes
Meanwhile, Kara is on her hands and knees, spitting blood and just trying to heave herself back to her feet
They’re taunting her. Rubbing it in how alone she is. How no one is coming to help her. How the bystanders surrounding them (there are many) are reveling in seeing their great deceiver get what she’s had coming. How does it feel, they ask, to know the love and admiration of her adopted planet were conditional in a way her love for them wasn’t.
Kara braces, staggers to her feet, smearing blood from the split in her lip. She sinks into a fighting stance, the same one Alex taught her, back in the beginning. When she was taking her first tiny baby steps into superheroing. When the biggest thing she had to worry about was how to navigate the hurricane that was Miss Grant. Before everything got so fucking hard.
She glances towards those bystanders, the ones with phones trained on the chaos of the scene, and she remembers how each of them are a light to her. Even now, they are precious.
It’s like the alien said. Her love is not conditional. She’ll fight to protect them until she can’t anymore, no matter how much they call for her blood.
The alien raises his weapon with a triumphant grin, Kara sees the green glow at the end of the barrel. She makes sure she has the faces of her family clearly seared into her minds eye, holding with everything she has to those she loves-
Just in time for a hulking, mechanical something to crash into the lead alien with the crunch of metal on bone
Kara can’t help the broken cry of Lenas name as she watches her best friend, clad head to toe in a new and improved Lexosuit, haul the alien high, then send him hurtling clear to the other side of the city. His companions converge on this new threat, but Lena fires a whole arsenal into their midst with no hesitation.
Kara joins the fray the best her battered body allows, and they stand back to back against the alien gang.
It’s brutal, the aliens fight dirty, but with a resurgence of strength with Lenas arrival, her steady presence at her back, Kara helps beat them into submission
By then, the backyard kryptonite has taken its toll, and when the skeleton crew of DEO agents finally arrive for containment, Kara’s body finally relents
Lena catches her as she falls, solar flared and barely conscious. She still manages to look up at Lena, blood absolutely coating her face and green lines etched in her skin and eyes, and says “Told you to look out for Alex.”
Lena holds her close, brushes her bangs from her forehead. “You needed me more than she did,” she says. “And when she wakes up, who do you think she’d rather see? Me or you?”
Kara gives her a pained smile. “Fair point.”
She passes out
Lena hauls ass back to the DEO, cradling Kara against her chest. It’s a strange sense of reverse deja vu, Lena racing to save Kara from the poison in her body.
After a harrowing few moments of barking orders, frantically activating sunlamps and new suits that filter out kryptonite, Kara’s heart monitor evens out, her breathing slows, and she sleeps
Lena flits between both Danvers girls, along with J’onn, Brainy, Nia, and Kelly
Any animosity there was before the fight is forgotten for now
But even as Kara stabilizes and even Alex starts to stir, threats keep coming in. The gangs not done. And with Supergirl out of commission, the Director of the DEO down, and everyone again in the same place, they’re vulnerable.
Lena stands at the command console, thinking of the girl upstairs who barreled into a battle she knew she couldn’t win. She thinks of her sister, who would have been at her side if she could have been.
She thinks of everything she’s lost already, and she seized with such a sharp rage. She thinks “no more. Not on my watch.”
She looks at Brainy. “I need Myriad.”
Understandably, he resists. Remember the last time she tried to use it? Remember how well that was received? What does she even need it for, anyway?
She explains that to fix this, they need to undo it completely.
If the whole world forgets Supergirl exists, then there is no one for them to hate. She, and the rest of her family, will be safe.
It takes some convincing, but Lena is unmovable and downright scary in her insistence that this is the best way to protect Kara
Brainy sets to work erasing literally every single piece of news footage of Supergirl. Every picture, social media post, news article, all of it. Gone.
Lena works feverishly to outfit Myriad to not mind control, but to erase
J’onn is harder to convince, since it’s his Martian abilities that they need to make this work. He remembers how it felt to take Alex’s memories, and he’s not thrilled to take the whole fucking planets memories without a single one to give their consent
But he looks in on his earth daughters, battered and still bloody, and that’s all the push he needs to quietly agree when Lena asks
Later, after its all said and done and both Danvers girls are on the mend, picture Lena and Kara on the roof. It’s a peaceful night, and Lena climbs up to see Kara silhouetted against the lights of the city.
Lena quietly joins her, and after a brief look and a small smile from Kara (still with a busted lip and bruises EVERYWHERE, she’s still powerless) they stand there together silently.
The world has no recollection of Supergirl now. Only the Superfriends now know she even exists. In a way, both Lena and Kara see the crossroads laid out before her.
If Kara takes up the mantel again, they now see what the repercussions would be if the secret got out. There’s no more question.
Is it worth it?
She could just fade into the shadows and no one would be the wiser. Her family and friends would be safe, from the threat of her secret at least.
“What will you do now?” Lena asks. Gently.
Kara takes a deep breath, looks up to the stars.
“I love this planet,” she says. “And I love it’s people. That never changes.”
She glances at Lena, then away. Lena tried not to look too closely at what that means.
“But I think I could use a vacation,” Kara says, smiling softly. “No one will know what they’re missing.”
Lena finds she doesn’t quite agree. She thinks, on some level, the world will wonder why in times of hardship they look to the sky with hope. Why they believe in themselves a little more than they used to, why hope and compassion come easier than anger and hatred.
But she nods, accepting that if anyone deserves a break, a breather, it’s Kara.
And besides, they both know it won’t last long. Even if they don’t mention it, they both know there will come a day when Kara will act to save someone without thinking, just like with Alex and her plane. She’ll return to being the hero she always was and always will be.
This is what happens when @storyiicharacter and I are left unsupervised.
@kenzicraw we’re the kid.
