#sorry kara

[bigmammallama5]

finally, first drawpile of the year with @sango-blep ❤️ all technology is in working order and hopefully our sundays will start to clear up! some soff supercorp as we try to remember how to draw

[aviv-kasyanenko]

NEW YEAR’S EVE 2020 [1 of 3?]:

You’re going to think I enjoyed writing this, but please know that I didn’t.

Date: December 31st, 2020. About 11:30pm. Warnings: Idk, mob stuff. I don’t want to spoil it but if this is too much for you then why are you even here reading Russian shit rn lbr.

Well, he had to hand it to them: they could sure carry on a party in the face of just about anything.

Though Vorya had been plunged into darkness—not unlike the rest of the city, if stories recounted by drunken tongues were to be believed—the Russians had point-blank refused to allow their New Year’s Eve celebrations to be interrupted. The alcohol continued to flow as freely as one would expect from them, and even those who weren’t affiliated with the Vorshevsky family in some way had decided to stick around and ride out whatever was going on. It seemed unlikely there would be a better time to be found anywhere else.

Naturally, his immediate reaction to the blackout had been to blame the weather.

When hushed whispers started to circulate a rumour there’d been an explosion on the other side of the river, however, his mind wandered into uncomfortable territory only another glass of vodka could put to ease. The anxieties he’d been trying to avoid since he’d landed in the shit hole he now called home were only compounded by the text from their boss; evidence in itself that the man wasn’t worried about whatever this was.

Bombs were hardly the style of the French, and the Rutherfords had no reason to make such an ugly scar on the face of a city they were still battling desperately to keep under their control.

So if there had been an explosion the three main culprits weren’t responsible for, it really only left two options:

Either Arkady gave even fewer fucks about London than he’d initially thought, and would jump on just about any tragedy that he thought could be of benefit, or a not so unfamiliar enemy was rearing its ugly fucking head on a country it’d already spent years tormenting, and the old man already knew it was coming.

Aviv’s relationship with the HCA was well understood to be a complicated one. Whilst he couldn’t begrudge the Russian mob doing business with them—money was fucking money, and at the end of the day, that was all that mattered—that didn’t mean he hadn’t made his aversion to their goals abundantly clear. Those who affiliated with the Vorshevskys varied in their opinions; some of the Russians sympathised with the group’s goals, where others thought they were fucking insane. For those who’d originated from the former USSR countries the terrorist organization once again sought to control, however, it was a little more personal.

The Ukrainians, in particular, had been dealt a shitty hand by those cunts. Maybe the Kurylenkos had been in Launceston so long it didn’t matter to them.

Aviv didn’t much feel like looking past it, though.

Though he’d been sat at the bar in relative silence, enjoying a moment’s calm from what he was sure would be a party that carried on until the sun was all the light they needed to get home, it was interrupted just as he was about to request another refill.

“Aviv, can you help me with something?”

The Israeli had turned to the Kurylenko loyalist with a glare that said: No.                                

Even in the dimly lit room, it didn’t take long for him to realise that the expression he wore carried more anxiety than any of the inner turmoil he’d been fighting. All it took was a second for his gut to sink. The expectation had loomed heavy over all of their heads after the shit show that had been last year’s celebration, but now, as he looked back at a man visibly sweating, he was sure that their night was finally set to unravel. Something was very wrong.

Deciding the spare the others any concern until he was absolutely sure it was necessary, the fighter got to his feet and followed the green-as-grass security kid out to the back room.

The scene he was met with was not what he’d been expecting.

A second Kurylenko loyalist was stood in front of them, shining a torch downward to illuminate a pristinely wrapped Christmas gift; gold ribbon holding it together like it was the most innocent thing in the fucking world.

Were they joking?

“Bit fucking late for Chanukah, boys,” he mocked.

The man with the torch said nothing.

It was then Aviv noticed that his hands were red.

“We didn’t open it, but—”

Words seemed to fail Artyom, the man who had come to find him at the bar, at that point, and instead he gestured toward the box as if to say ‘take a look.’ It was rare that Aviv ever found himself feeling apprehensive, but as he realised the same red on the hands of the man opposite had since pooled around the bottom of the gift, it was impossible to ignore.

It looked like blood.

Hesitant to touch, he reached out just enough to tilt the label into view.

It read simply: ‘Joyeux Noël.’

“Who delivered this?” Aviv snapped, looking to each of them in turn. “Where’d you find it?”

“Some guy in a suit left it on the doorstep.”

“French?”

“I don’t know, he sounded American. I—”

With each word, Aviv could feel the blood in his veins begin to boil.

“What did he look like?”

“Uh, I don’t know. It was dark, he—” Artyom stuttered.

“Average height. Beard,” the other began in an attempt to save his friend from getting his head slammed into the fucking wall, “expensive looking suit.”

Didn’t narrow it down in the fucking slightest, but who else but a French piece of shit would’ve left such an obvious ‘fuck you’ right at the height of their party?

After a moment’s hesitation he usually wouldn’t have allowed himself, he finally untied the ribbon and removed the lid of the box. The smell hit so fucking fast he was surprised that the container had managed to hold it until now. Unmistakeable every time, pungent and assaulting, the kind that could make anyone sick to their stomach: it smelled like death.

As he looked down into the depths of the box, the view of whatever it was holding was obscured by plastic wrap; bloodied, and obviously not fit for fucking purpose given the swamp it was now sat in. Aviv never had a weak stomach for these things. His time working with the Vorshevskys had desensitised him to the most violent depths of a man’s imagination and the havoc it wrought. It wasn’t the idea of what he was going to find that bothered him, but more so who. The French had taken a lot of hits lately and he’d been glad for every single minute of their suffering. But it seemed unlikely that however they chose to finally get back at their biggest enemies would be anything short of personal.

It’d started with Svetlana, and would end with this.

Peeling back the barrier, the first thing he noted was the hair; beautiful blonde, eerily reminiscent of his dead girlfriend, albeit matted with so much blood it was hard to discern.

A fucking head.

Now that was absolutely a French fucking MO.

“Jesus fucking Christ…” Artyom muttered.

“Watch your mouth,” Aviv countered quietly, though unwilling to look up from the hair in his hand.

He almost didn’t want to touch her. But they needed to know.

“Who is it?”

As he eventually pushed back the hair to reveal the face of the victim, he realised that even the worst case scenarios his brain had been cycling through hadn’t been close. All at once, the striking pain of loss returned with unimaginable force and it felt like his chest was being fucking crushed. All the air in his lungs left him. Even if he’d wanted to answer their pig-ignorant question, he wasn’t sure he could’ve found the words to curse them to fucking hell.

Did they not know the place in which they stood?

Aviv wouldn’t pretend to not understand why their enemies had done this, but for what possible reason could they have chosen her beyond pettiness?

“Go and get Maksim,” he finally said. The sound of his own voice seemed foreign to him. “Andrei, too.”

If anyone was going to break it to the family, it should’ve been them.

Maksim could soften the blow for the Kurylenkos, and Andrei was almost certainly better suited than him to tell Mikhail that another one of his sister’s was dead.

“Aviv…who?”

The man didn’t even have it in him to be angry at the persistence.

Aviv had already lived through the pain of losing family once.

Not nearly as much as they had, though…

As he finally tore his eyes away from the decapitated head of Katarina Vorshevsky, he had only three words left to give:

“That’s my sister.”

[dreamcatcher-ktm]

Kara - Stormy Night

[ren-the-pen]

I promise I don’t have a problem.

[unnecessary-database]

More Mac&Cheese

Kara catches hell for feeding that villain the next morning at the DEO. Well, hell like J'onn shaking his head and sighing "I suppose that is your trademark," after letting Alex shout incredulously at her for three and a half full minutes. Kara stands slumped against the main control panel through it all while Winn definitely does not chuckle as she gets berated. Kara huffs a quick freeze breath at the back of Winn's neck in retaliation, setting him to yelping like a puppy, and she has the brief satisfaction of seeing J'onn bite back a smile.

 Kara goes to work at CatCo, where she pitches an article about the sustainability of bridges around National City, gets shut down, tries again with a pitch about the dangers of old structures and gets the tentative go-ahead. She schedules interviews with all the right officials and gets to digging. She discovers, to her immense displeasure, that Dr. Kieran was correct last night, the bridge she was trying to blow up was old and several other whistle-blowers about that exact bridge have been silenced. Kara sets up interviews with them too and just like that, it's time to meet Lena for lunch at L-Corp. 

Kara feels the familiar rush of anticipation in the walk up to Lena's office, and the usual rush of relief as she sees Lena whole and smiling delightedly at her, the warmth that's the same every time as Lena folds her into a hug. She ignores it all. This is totally normal to feel about your best friend. Totally normal.

"I brought your favorite," she says, holding up containers of mac and cheese, and is rewarded with Lena's grin. "Since I know you haven't been eating enough, so don't even think about telling me you had a big breakfast. You're finishing this."

Lena holds up her hands in surrender at Kara's stern tone. "Yes, ma'am," she promises, still grinning and taking the containers in her hands, and Kara relaxes slightly. "Not sure how you know I haven't been eating enough, but I guess I'm on the naughty list until you deem otherwise."

Kara trips over the carpet. Lena raises an eyebrow. 

"You're--you're not--you're not on the naughty list!" Kara splutters. Half of Lena's mouth rises like she's trying not to smile. "And don't question my best friend powers! I know when you haven't been eating."

"Sees you when you're sleeping, huh?"

"Oh shut up," Kara mutters, face red and shoving at Lena, who's smiling in full now. "We all know you don't sleep, and that's next on my list of things to fix."

"So many dirty responses to that line I will keep to myself," Lena says on the inhale, and Kara closes her eyes as they sit down on the couch, praying for either patience or something stronger. She opens her eyes to see Lena biting down on both her lips to keep her mouth shut on all the words she knows will render Kara speechless for a full thirty seconds. "Okay," Lena says, handing Kara a container and picking up her own. "Talk to me, what's the latest article?"

Kara waits for Lena to start eating before launching into her latest about the faulty bridge. Lena raises her eyebrows appreciatively. "Nice, Miss Ace Reporter." Kara blushes. "Where'd you get the idea?"

Kara shrugs, not sure how to respond without giving herself away. "I was just chatting with Winn about some cool new building going up on the South Side, you know, and he mentioned how old some of the stuff in the city is, despite it being overall much newer than places on the East Coast. I got interested. Figured there was a story in there somewhere."

Lena smiles like she knows something as she pokes at her dish in a way that reminds Kara strangely of Dr. Kieran last night. "I'm very impressed, Miss Danvers. Better it's you raking the muck than someone who'd rather just blow it all up to get attention drawn, right?"

Kara's smile is a little held back in guilt this time. It's funny that Lena would phrase it like that.

[panther-of-shadows]

“Your punk-rock phase was very strange”

I loved Alex, but punk Alex is priceless... and offended Kara is hilarious

[brainy-storm]

R. J. Brande: Boys, I present to you Querl Dox, codename Brainiac 5! Say hello, Querl!

Brainiac 5: [muttering] ...buffer connected to the megadrive... ...Greetings... ...megadrive joined to the cybertram.. “

-  Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #63

I’ve been too hyped about how Brainy is going to be showing up on Supergirl and couldn’t wait to see him on the screen, so here is a recoloured pic of Jesse Rath (who has been cast to play him) as Alak Tarr from Defiance.

Judging from this, if the team does the costume design right I think he’ll make an excellent Brainiac 5 in terms of appearances. (Assuming they keep him green all the time. Though they might not if it’s to costly/too much of a hassle).

and by excellent I mean omg sorry to do this twice to you girl but this Brainy and I are getting married now

[louloutche]

Sometimes Alex feels straighter than Kara

and she’s already had sex with a woman