She had been both dreading and anticipating this moment. The portal platform activated, the display confirming that the arrival was from Argo City. Purple hues danced across the strange crystalline walls of the Fortress of Solitude and Lena held her breath. This was not going yo be an easy reunion.
Lena still found it difficult to believe that he would ever trust her. The Man of Steel. Superman. Kal-El of Krypton. Karan’s cousin.
He was dressed not in his super suit but a garment akin to a tunic bearing his colors and crest and he was not alone. A tall, narrowly built and energetic woman accompanied him, carrying a baby on one hip and guiding a toddler boy by the hand on the other side.
Lois Lane had a peculiar quality; she was thin and wiry and not conventionally lovely but somehow dominated every room she occupied with the same sheer force of personality that had captured the heart of the perfect man from the sky. Lena had fond memories of Lois when she and Clark and Lex were all friends in Metropolis, before her brother had gone mad. Lena was only a teenager then and intimidated by Lois.
Kara took a half step to greet her cousin, then paused. He wasn’t here for her.
Half machine, the Kara of an alternate world, one that was erased in the Crisis-that-was-not-a-Crisis, was in many ways a sad, harrowing creature to look upon. Half her face was missing, replaced with gleaming steel, and Lena had recently replace a chunk of Kryptonite in her chest with a safer power source, one that powered the machinery she needed to live without torturing her at the same time.
“Who are you?” the cyborg rasped, her voice distant and tinny, ever on the verge of tears.
Clark shot Kara - their Kara- a brief glance, and they did that annoying silent-nod thing they did with each other and Clark approached their guest.
Though Clark towered over both Karas -he was the among the tallest men that Lena had ever met- Lena knew that Kara overmatched him in both speed and raw strength, had actually witnessed them fight once when Clark was not himself. Still, he cut a regal and imposing figure. Kara wore her heritage like a mourning shroud as often as not, but Clark carried his like a banner.
The cyborg regarded him uneasily.
“My human name is Clark Kent, but I am Kal-El, the son of Jor-El.”
The cyborg looked up sharply and met his gaze, unwavering. She reached up with both hands, one unnaturally cold flesh and the other a skeletal claw, and lightly brushed either cheek.
“I never knew you on my Earth. I was sent by portal, not by pod, and there wasn’t enough energy to open it again before Krypton exploded.”
There as a brief, heavy pause and then he gathered her broken form in a bear hug and held her. The peculiar rasping noises she made turned out to be sobs, as she tried desperately to cry with the only tears her abused form could muster, a thin trickle of blood from her remaining eye.
“I was always alone. I was the last of my kind.” She drew back and looked at him. “You were a baby. You’re so big.”
“Kara tells me they’re taking your Lena to Themyscira, is that right?” Clark said, releasing her.
“Yes. I don’t know what that means. There was no such place where I came from.”
“They’ll help her. I can’t go, it’s a place of women.”
“I’m going,” said Lois. “I’ve never been and it sounds like you could use the moral support. Clark can watch the boys for a few days.”
Cyborg Kara edged closer to her and they spoke in hushed tones, about what Lena wasn’t sure.
Her attention was consumed by Clark as he loomed over her.
Kara walked to Lena’s side but said nothing, making a more profound statement by draping her arm protectively around Lena’s waist.
“Kara told me quite a bit about everything that’s happened between you.”
“She has?” Lena said, cautiously.
Clark looked bemused. “You both think I’m surprised, but I was there when you two first met and I have super-senses. I’m not sure which of your hearts was beating harder. It was just a matter of time, really.”
“It was our, ah, guest that pushed me to speak up,” said Lena, “to tell her how I feel. After that it was just… natural.”
Kara looked at her and Lena forgot everything. The biting cold of the Fortress, the weight of Superman’s gaze, the presence of Kara’s tragic doppelgänger, everything but the pure look of adoration in Kara’s silly smile. It was like the cyborg had told her that night she first appeared in Lena’s apartment: there was something fundamental between them, a link that could not be explained, not even quantified. It seemed silly to think about it in such terms but once Lena just let go of her fear and accepted it, it was as much part of the world as sunshine and birdsong. They belonged to each other as surely as the moon belongs to the sky.
“You two should visit,” said Clark. “Introduce Lena to your mother.”
“Clark,” Kara said, uneasily. “Krypton… how would I introduce her? I’m not going to pretend that we’re not together. Our language doesn’t even have a word for queer.”
“It does now,” he said. “Things are changing. They’re looking to the future, not the mistakes of the past.”
“Maybe we’ll visit,” Kara said, “but we have something to do first, someone who needs our help.”
That someone was being brought through now. The alternate Lena was an unsettling sight- Kara may have already met clones and parallel universe copies of herself but Lena was new at this and it was hard to process.
Inside the stasis pod, her twin was not quite her twin; older and leaner, she had laugh lines around her mouth but there was a worn quality to her beauty; even in an artificial sleep it was obvious that her closed eyes had seen too much.
“You’re going to be okay,” Lena told herself as Alex walked up.
