Not a second has been allowed during which John might be enticed into filling it with thoughts: he won’t permit himself to grow abstracted. Constantly moving, focused on ensuring the safety of as many people as he viably can, is his chosen method and he refuses to be distanced from it. Any moment his mind endeavors to wander ( what’s happening? are the tides of the conflict in their favor? is Kara all right? ), it’s forcibly yanked back to Earth. There’s nothing further John can offer to help her, as much as the he loathes the utter notion of it; however, he can do what he’s able for the citizens of National City on the ground. Such measures are precisely what he enacts, alongside many other agents at the DEO he has come to know on a more than merely superficial basis. Although Supergirl and her allies are facing the brunt of the inflicted chaos, the violence which spills over leaves a number among his colleagues injured, taken, or worse. It’s nothing new to John nor unanticipated, even if it never fails to strike him keenly each time. Couldn’t he have done more, worked harder, acted quicker, handled a situation differently, to avoid it? More postulations he won’t dwell on. John’s aware that he’ll certainly compensate for it in the aftermath, should he make it through alive.
When it ends, it feels as if it’s all at once. One minute, the world is in peril and the next, it’s safe again. The knowledge doesn’t completely quiet the adrenaline he’s been operating on, and his head is quick to turn at any mention of the girl he said goodbye to at the beginning of it all. Finally, when one of his co-workers mentions Kara’s presence in the training room, he relinquishes the fight against his own emotions as he heads off to find her. John doesn’t believe himself to be indispensable; they can do without him for a brief while. As he opens the door, he realizes that he hadn’t quite believed she was safe until now, when he could confirm it with his own eyes. “Yeah, I’m here.” He feels too attuned with her every movement, the start and stop towards him, the blanching of her visage. “I knew that you’d do it. And that you’d come back.” A ghost of a grin appears along his lips before John shortens the distance between them, pulling Kara into an embrace that encompasses too many colliding sensations for him to even attempt to name. “You saved so many lives, y’know that? Mine, too.” She must be aware, even though he says it, regardless. “I’m just glad I got to see you again — Kara.”
oceans rage within the recesses of kara’s gaze, mind and body warring until arms-- his arms-- embrace her tired and battered body. he had held such faith in her, even when they’d stood upon the precipice of destruction, even when she had doubted herself-- allowed the history of another planet to engulf her memory, even when she had proven culpable in a lie of omission of which he would have every reason to shun her. that faith, she still felt within every fiber of strength he held her, a calm overtaking the ocean’s wrath. arms tighten slightly, hold firm, though not too firm. golden hair cascades around mingled shoulders, uneasy breath escaping as a few tears fall unseen. the league had saved many, the salvation of earth from it’s the latest threat could not be denied, but.. how many had perished in the crossfire? how many had brainiac’s sentries wiped from terran soil before the collection had begun? “i wish it could have been more, john. i can hear them, all the people searching, hoping, wailing for those we couldn’t save.” she can remember climbing through one of kandor city’s drainage pipes, a girl escaping collection by the sheer grace of rao having guided her mother to her. kara zor-el understood earth’s pain, it was her own, two-fold.
yet in the wake of destruction, rao had blessed her again, had spared the man’s life who held her now. “i don’t know what i would have done if you were one of them.” kara pulls back slightly meets his gaze with her own as lips part, something heavily held behind her words of which even kara is not quite fully sure how to express. realization, of a sort, floods her soul, the woman unable to pinpoint the moment the man before her had become such a critical element within her life because it hadn’t been a singular moment but more of an amalgamation of them which had become fixtures. breath becomes labored, the noise of the outside world slowly beginning to fade-- be it a result of something she has yet to understand or something else unclear. again kara’s soul wars within itself, desired action becoming overwritten by a need for honesty. for him to understand all of her, her actions and justifications and not just the parts of her he thought he knew before she can allow anything else to move forward. “i killed him, john. the league was going to bring him in, try to use him to help restore the other cities but he got back up, he was going to kill batman and kal and i felt so much rage course through me. for what he had done to krypton and my father, for what he did on earth and all those other worlds, for collecting this city and.. you. for what he was doing in that moment. and now, some of those cities are lost forever because of me.”