“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Kara looked at the chunk of oily black crystal sitting in front of her and said, “No, not really, but has that ever stopped me?”
Lena frowned. Kara’s levity was strained, brittle. There was a tension between them, like the invisible pressure formed by pressing the wrong end of one magnet to another. It made Lena more than nervous, she was scared. They had both seen so much since the cyborg returned to their world, carrying a dying copy of Lena, the same woman who was now waiting in a ship full of Lena dopplegangers, watching over the unmoving form of the love of her life, weighing the decisions she had to make.
“Something is bothering you, Kara. What is it?
Lena arched her brow. “It’s not as if you’re good at keeping secrets from me, now is it?”
Kara smiled wistfully. The big secret had almost destroyed them, nearly torn them apart. It had driven Lena down a dark path but Kara had never abandoned her.
“If it was you, if the only way to save me was what they wanted to do with that empty shell, would you do it?”
The major part of Lena, the part of her that wanted to believe in her own goodness as ardently as Kara believed in it, would immediately say no. It was grotesque and wrong, no different from, say, stealing an organ. It might even be murder.
“You know what’s been on my mind since… since that night?”
Kara meant the night that Lena had a few two-finger glasses of whiskey and flat out told Kara how she felt, the night when Kara, ever the knight in shining armor, refused to take advantage of Lena’s inebriation while making her reciprocal feelings very clear. The night that Lena felt those last pangs of dead and doubt flow away and she could finally sleep, a sleep so deep and so sound it was like the first real sleep of her life, sheltered in Kara’s loving embrace.
“That I might be immortal and you’re not. That one day you’ll be gone and I won’t, and what that will mean for me.”
Lena swallowed hard, trying not to choke up.
“I have to find a way then, I guess, because I won’t let you live on without me. I can’t leave you.”
Kara blinked a few times and Lena saw she was crying.
“I don’t want my love to be the thing that destroys you,” Kara whispered, taking Lena in her arms. “I love you so much. I love you with every cell in my body, it’s etched into every fibre of my being like the sunlight of my new home. You’re more to me the a red sunset. You’re my everything.”
Lena choked back her own tears, burying herself in Kara’s powerful embrace.
They took a moment for themselves, alone in the chamber, and stretched it out while Lena helped Kara change. She unclasped her cape and folded in her arms, surprised by the weight of the dense alien fabric, and set it aside.
She then found the hidden zippers and catches and helped Kara strip until she was bare, her sudden vulnerability making Lena’s chest clench. For all her muscles and surprising number of scars, she looked soft, almost delicate. Lena found herself touching those scars, feeling the hurts that had been so terrible that not even Kara’s invulnerability had saved her from them. The worst was the long but healed gash that ran from above her hip to just under her breasts, a gift from Reign.
Lena then helped her slip into a simple, loose white dress.
Old Lena- she had rejected taking a number and called herself that- joined them a few minutes later.
“Are we ready?” She said.
“We’re ready,” said Lena. Kara nodded in assent.
The lab was set up with three beds, each with their head aligned to the pedestal that held the sample of Harun-El that Lena had synthesized just for this. Kara would lie on one, the cyborg on another, and hopefully, the third would be occupied by a new body in a few minutes.
“I’ll start bringing her in.”
The life support for the cyborg’s body came first, and then they brought her in, using the same stasis pod that had carried Old Lena here from the Fortress of Solitude. Once they disabled the stasis field they’d have minutes.
More Lenas piled into the room, most notably 938, who stood aside to merely watch, and 1610, who could hopefully guarantee that transference was possible.
Only Lena and Old Lena worked on wiring Kara up and preparing the bed for the cyborg.
Neither of them had spoken of it, but somehow they had mutually agreed that they didn’t fully trust 938 or the others that came with her.
It was time. Lena rushed to help Old Lena move the broken body of the cyborg, with Diana stepping in for the literal heavy lifting. Lena could feel her brow burning with sweat as they worked.
Finally, they were wired up and that extra bed was waiting.
Old Lena nodded and threw the switch.
Power and alien radiation cascaded through the dark crystal and Kara arched on the bed, the cyborg matching her movements with mechanical whirring sounds and the grinding of damaged joints.
“Kara?” Lena said. “Are you alright?”
Kara answered her by screaming. Her entire body arched, heels and shoulders lifting her up, and she screamed a wordless cry of agony as the her skin paled and black veins thickened down her limbs, swelled under the skin of her face.
“Oh God,” said Old Lena. “We can’t do this! Shut it off!”
“NO!” Kara shrieked, “I can take it! I can take it!”
“Look,” 938 said, “Look!”
Something was happening on the third bed. A circulatory system was weaving itself through the air, black veins sliding through invisible flesh. Astonished, Lena watched a brain grow itself from thin air as a brilliant purple energy formed an aura around it. A skeletal structure soon followed.
1610 made strange gestures and her hands took on a strange glow as she concentrated on something Lena couldn’t see.
Kara was grinding her teeth. “I can feel her, I can hear her thoughts, it’s like when I touched Red Daughter.
A full on nude Kara lay on the third bed now. Her chest slowly began to rise and fall and her eyes twitched beneath their lids, as if she were breathing. Her mouth formed silent words.
The cyborg went totally limp, whatever left of the will and energy that kept her alive fading as her head tilted to one side and her form went slack, her remaining eye gone glassy and lifeless.
Finally, Old Lena broke the circuit and the machine powered down. The room was utterly silent except for Kara’s soft, pained whimpers and the steady breathing of an immaculate copy of her lying on the bed. Old Lena rushed to cover her, sweeping a blanket over her to her chin.
Kara slowly rolled off the bed, leaning on Lena. Alex and Diana rushed in, crowding in to support her.
“I’m alright, I’m alright,” she panted. “I’m okay, it just stung like hell.”
Lena felt a wave of relief followed by a sudden terror. What if it hadn’t worked? What if there was simply an empty shell lying there on the bed and the cyborg, after everything she’d experienced, after all that suffering as she combed the multiverse for her love, as just… gone? Over? Nothing left but a few chunks held together by old wires and broken bumps?
“I want everyone else out,” Lena said. “Kara stays. Everyone else goes.”
“You heard her,” Alex piped up.
It was Diana that herded them all out. 938 was the last to go, tears hot on her cheeks.
The clone was not moving, just breathing.
“Please,” Old Lena murmured between sobs. “Please don’t leave. Not when we’re so close. I can’t do this aga-“
She went silent, then looked up.
Slowly, the clone’s eyes fluttered open.
Kara grabbed Lena’s hand and their eyes briefly met.
“I couldn’t see,” the clone whispered. “I was falling, falling, I could hear you but you were always slipping away but now… great Rao, I can feel. I can feel.”
Slowly, she opened her eyes. The pair looked at one another and Old Lena pulled her into an embrace, the clone lunging into her arms. Moments later they were kissing each other relentlessly.
“Let’s give them some space,” said Lena.
Neither seemed to hear them, or even recall that they were there. As they hurried out of the room, Old Lena was pressing the clone back onto the bed.
Lena stepped out into the warm air of a Themysciran hotel evening and took a deep breath, the sweetness filling her lungs.
“I feel like someone dropped a prison asteroid on me,” Kara said, wryly.
“You smell like burnt rubber, too,” said Alex. “You need a bath.”
938 stormed up to them. “Did it work? Did it work? Did it bring her back?”
“Yes,” said Lena. “It worked.”
938 looked frantic, almost manic. “Do you think you could do it again?”
Lena felt a pang of unease.
“It’s too much strain on Kara. I won’t let her risk it.”
938 swallowed hard. “Give me the formula. Or just a sample. Anything. Please.”
938 grabbed her shoulders. “We could save so many Karas with this. We could help them. So many that wouldn’t need to die.”
“The Harun-El is dangerous,” said Lena. “It has almost magical powers. Honestly, after I saw you and your group being so nonchalant about mindwiping a Kara variant, I’m not sure I can trust you with it.”
“You don’t understand,” she pleaded. “I can’t watch any more of them die. Every time it happens it’s like I’m watching my Kara fall all over again. I need to help them. Please.”
The doors opened behind Lena and she turned. The clone, once the cyborg, strode out of the temple in bare feet and a plain white gown, her Lena walking proudly beside her.
Old Lena looked down from the apex of the marble steps.
“I’m older than most of you,” she said, her voice carrying over them all. “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. I escaped the Phantom Zone myself and tumbled through more worlds than I can count, looking for my Zhao, trying to find her before she suffered the consequences of my actions. The woman I loved was a rotting corpse kept alive by science created to kill her, because I couldn’t let her go.”
938 scowled, her voice strained. “It’s not fair for you to lecture us. You got yours back. You got yours back. I’ll never see mine again, except I do, every time I close my fucking eyes I see her falling and falling and it’s my fault! I killed her! I KILLED HER!”
938 sagged to her knees, burying her face in her hands.
“If I’d just jumped after her instead of using her webs… if I hadn’t been so focused on beating my brother… I lost everything.”
Diana, who had been silent the entire time, walked over and towered above 938.
“Lena,” she said. “Look at me.”
“But I didn’t catch her.”
“Did you throw her off the bridge?”
“No, but it was my fault she was there, any way you slice it. He killed her to hurt me.”
“You are not responsible for her death.”
“You don’t understand,” 938 said. “With great power must also come great responsibility.”
Resting a meaty hand on her shoulder, Diana said, “Perhaps, but you are not a god. You are not responsible for everything.”
Old Lena and her Kara strode down the temple steps and joined Lena and Kara.
“Fine,” 938 finally said. “I can’t make you give it to me and I’m not going to fight any of you. We’ll go, but take this.”
She offered Lena a small device, a copy of the one she wore on her wrist. Lena tentatively took it.
“You can use that to call us if you need us.”
Without another word, she turned and fell in with the others, boarding their ship. When she reached the top of the ramp, she stopped and took a long look at both Karas before disappearing inside.
The ship lifted silently into the air and then winked out of existence with a blast of air rushing in to fill the vacuum.
“We should start looking for a way home, as well,” said Old Lena.
Old Lena looked her in the eye.
“Don’t do that to yourselves,” said Lena. She turned to the clone. “Especially you. Whatever debt you think you owe, Kara, whatever guilt you have from being the last survivor of your home world, you’ve paid it. You’ve suffered so much, and your kindness has meant so much to me. Stay here.”
“This world already has a Supergirl.”
“Exactly,” said Kara. “That’s why you should stay. I can handle the cape stuff. You can just rest.”
“You can remain here,” said Diana, rising to join them. “Remain here on this island, beyond the reach of man’s world.”
Old Lena and the clone looked at each other.
“I want to stay,” said Old Lena.
“That’s all I needed to hear,” said the clone. “I just… if you really need me, you’ll call, right? You’ll ask me for help.”
Lena looked at her Kara, then at old Lena.
“No. I don’t think we will.”
“Even the mightiest warrior dreams of laying down sword and spear,” said Diana. “Rest.”
“Yes, Kara rest. We’ll be taking your new body for a test drive soon enough.”
The clone blushed beet red. “Ah. Yes. I see. May I speak with Lena? Alone?”
“Come on, Kara,” said Alex. “Give them some space.”
The others left. Lena was alone with the clone, the cyborg, whatever she was now, the breeze tugging gently at their clothes.
“Am I really her?” said the clone.
“I can’t help but wonder. I remember Lex running me through with the harpoon. I remember fading out, then waking up with the machinery in my body and a sobbing Lena greeting me full of grief and joy. Then it happened again. How many times can I be remade before I’m not me anymore? What if-“
“Kara,” Lena interrupted. “Do you feel the breeze on your skin? Is that real? Is your love for her real?”
“Then so are you. We’re on Paradise Island and the love of your life is waiting for you. Go get her.”
The clone smiled. “I’m going to. You go get yours.”
