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Joining The Superfriends - 12

Read it on Ao3 here!

Alex, Kelly, Lena and Nia all huddle around the TV in Kara’s loft, waiting for news on what’s happening with the fires and trying to see if any of the cameras are picking up on the whereabouts of their friends.

“I hope they’re ok.” Nia says, eyes not leaving the screen, worried because they haven’t spotted Kara, Brainy or J’onn in a little while and even though it is understandable and expected, it doesn’t stop them from worrying any less.”

Alex sighs, tension sitting heavy in her shoulders and back in a way that she knows will ache for days. “I hope everybody is ok.”

“Me too,” Lena says, wishing there was something she could do other than just sit here and watch as part of the city blazes on, crumbling to the ground from the wrath of the flames.

What they have learnt so far is that almost every building in that one-point seven-mile radius that the bugs were in has been set on fire and the ones that haven’t been are the ones close enough that the fire easily spread to them. This leaves absolutely no doubt that this attack was orchestrated, just like the original attack was.

With the bugs showing up first, it’s very obvious that Lex is the one behind this and by Lena’s best guess, the bugs scattered across the area and then self-destructed. It’s smart really, Lex gets to destroy the city and the evidence all in one go.

“Some of National City’s favourite heroes have been spotted helping to evacuate the area and have been rescuing citizens from the burning buildings. Supergirl herself has also been working closely with firefighters to put out the fires and prevent further spreading of this disaster.

“And now, for the terrible news, it has now been confirmed that six people have lost their lives to this inferno and it is suspected that there may also be as many as nine more people deceased.”

They all gasp audibly when the news anchor provides them with the news that they have been dreading, the kind of news that they have been praying wouldn’t come but here it is, and it can’t be ignored.

“I’m going to dig up every last piece of dirt on my brother and I’m going to make sure he spends the rest of his miserable life rotting in a cell for what he’s done.” Lena spits, eyes filled with rage-filled tears and her voice wobbling along with her chin, fists clenched so tightly that her nails are leaving little crescent moon indents in her palms as she tries to contain herself from breaking something in a mix of anger and anguish.

The fact that it’s Lena’s brother that has caused this damage, that she doesn’t just have to deal with the loss and pain that the situation has caused but also the additional pain of being related to the person that committed such a heinous crime leaves an awkward energy in the air, the other three women want to comfort her, to make her feel better somehow but not knowing how to do so when something so massively terrible has happened.

No words will be enough to make her feel better, to take away some of her pain and to free her of the burden of being lumped in with someone who could do something so horrible.

Instead, they don’t use words. Alex’s hand grips hers, pulling her off of the chair and onto the couch where they all move to and press her into the middle of. Lena finds herself sitting between Kelly and Alex, Nia on the other side of Kelly.

They all have to squish together to fit onto the couch cushions so Alex’s leg is pressed against the arm and the same goes for Nia on the other side.

Alex’s hand rests on Lena’s knee, her attention back on the TV to wait for more updates, hoping that they will get a glance at Kara to make sure she’s alright, although they know she probably won’t be. With how many people have died, it’s fairly likely that Kara has discovered more than one of the people that were confirmed dead and that’s not something a person can live through and not be haunted by.

Kelly’s arm wraps around the back of the couch behind Lena’s head, her body angled inwards in a way that makes Lena feel surrounded but not in an overwhelming way that makes her feel trapped, instead it’s creating a barrier around her, a safety net of sorts that is giving her comfort without a need for words, a clear way that Kelly is showing her that she’s there.

The longer Lena stares at the TV, the angrier she gets at her brother and the pain of what’s happening sits in her chest like a hole is being dug right between her ribs, each new casualty is another shovelful of her being dug out, her chest becoming hollower and hollower.

She forces herself to look away from the screen after a minute of it, the sight of what her brother has done bringing her more pain than she can say, more pain than it brings her brother because only a heartless monster could do something this awful.

Her eyes gloss around the room, taking in the space properly. She’s been here before for game night but this is the first time she’s really taking in everything there is to take in.

It’s difficult to drown out the words that the news anchor is saying but she makes her thoughts as loud as possible, talking to herself in her head and making notes on Kara’s loft like she is displaying it to herself, explaining each feature.

You could fit my apartment in here three times over with how big it is and this isn’t even considered a large apartment.

The entire place has been painted in pastels and where it couldn’t be painted, there’s exposed brick, I love exposed brick.

It’s very Kara, the cushions are especially her style.

In the corner, there’s a canvas and paints. There is a half-finished piece on an easel and from what she can see, Kara could have been an artist in another life because it’s incredible.

And the bedroom, the bed, it’s…appealing, in other circumstances anyway. It’s not the pretty, patterned sheets though, and it’s not the cosy look of the room, the way everything is on show, borderline cluttered but in a good way, in the way where it shows that Kara has nothing to hide, the room, and the apartment radiates honesty.

Alex nudges her slightly, “you ok? You’re drifting off somewhere.”

Lena becomes aware of the fact that it’s not normal to be staring around another person’s place aimlessly, especially not when said person’s family is sitting beside her, expecting her to be shattered by the news that her brother is a homicidal maniac but instead she’s giving herself a mental tour of Kara’s apartment, being sure not to miss out on anything she can see from her vantage point.

She nods slightly, a single tilt of her head up and then down again. She speaks, her voice dry and croaky, “I’m ok, just trying not to listen to it, I can’t listen to it.”

And just like that, Nia thumbs across the remote, searching for the mute button and the sound is turned off, the others following along with it by reading the subtitles that Nia put on after muting it.

“Thank you.” Lena croaks again.

Kelly gives her a soft look. “We’re here for you, Lena. I’m going to go and get you something to drink, you don’t sound too good.”

“I still have some water, it’s in the bedroom.” Lena offers up, scooting to the edge of the couch like she’s about to get up but is pulled back by Alex, preventing her from doing so.

“Just stay here, Lena, tonight we worry about our people out there, the citizens and one other person. You. Let us be here for you tonight and then we can all worry about Lex tomorrow, alright?” The quiet words hit her hard. More meaningful than she can say.

Choking down her emotions and trying not to cry at the sheer amount of love and support in this room, not just directed at her but the way that she hadn’t noticed that Kelly had given Nia her jacket and Alex is watching everyone out of the corner of her eye, making sure that everyone is as ok as they can be, it’s overwhelming. “Ok, Alex.”

Kelly brings her the water, sliding back down between Lena and Nia, bringing a blanket with her to spread across their laps.

They all fall back into watching the TV, eyes once again searching for their people but they don’t see them. In fact, they don’t see them on the screen at all, not on the aerial shots of the burning streets and not on the shots of the buildings that have now been put out. They don’t see them at all.

In fact, they don’t see them until after all of the buildings have been put out. That might be because they had all fallen asleep at some point of watching the screen but since they can’t pinpoint when exactly that happened, they can’t confirm nor deny anything.

They see Kara, Brainy and J’onn when they come flying in a few hours later, somewhere between eight and nine in the morning, the sound of the boots hitting the floor and them shuffling their way in on tired feet enough to rouse them and have them let out relived breaths at having the people they care about back home safe.

“Thank god you’re alright.” Lena whimpers into Kara’s ear when it’s her turn to hug Kara, Alex sneaking in for the first hug since she woke up a few seconds faster, giving her the head start.

“Are you all ok?” Kelly asks, analysing their faces but seeing nothing but the intense fatigue that is written beneath their eyes.

Kara hums a tired, “yeah.” She rubs at her eyes with the back of one hand, her fingers covered in soot and ash, just like her suit and face. “Yeah, I need a shower though, we all do. J’onn, Brainy, do you mind if I take the first one and you can go after?”

“Of course, it’s your place,” J’onn says, a look of grief flashing across his face briefly before he can hide it behind his mask again. Kara doesn’t give him a chance to take it back, shooting off to hurry through to the bathroom and be done quickly, knowing that Brainy and J’onn must be as desperate to get clean as she is.

All of them except Kara catch J’onn’s look, all unable to see anything other than the look of pure sadness on his face and in his eyes.

“J’onn, are you sure you’re-“ Kelly starts but J’onn is looking down at his feet and shaking his head before she can even finish the question.

“The Tower is…it’s damaged, badly. It’s been partially burned down. I thought it was going to be alright because it wasn’t alight when we first got there but more fires kept popping up and eventually, they took part of The Tower with them. It’ll take months to rebuild it.”

Not caring about the dirt across his body, they fall into a group hug around him, no words available that they could say to make it better so they don’t say anything at all, something that they are finding to happen a lot.

J’onn accepts the hug, the tension on his face obvious as he tries to hide how utterly distraught he is to lose everything, to have his business and The Tower, which is made of Martian technology so damaged.

Kara comes whizzing out of the bathroom dressed in sweatpants and a long-sleeved tee, her hair lying damp and limp around her shoulders. “Bathroom’s free!” She calls, attempting to make her voice light and cheery but failing, just sounding strained instead.

Nobody comments on it though and she understands why when she walks into the living room to see everyone crowding around a shattered J’onn, Brainy standing off to the side, his arm tentatively reaching out into the pile of bodies to rest his hand on J’onn’s shoulder.

She wanders over to the group. There’s no way for her to directly hug J’onn because of everyone else in the way so she just opens her arms and presses herself against both Lena and Alex, closing her eyes and resting her head against Lena’s shoulder, not caring that her wet hair is getting the back of Lena’s shirt damp.

J’onn nudges them away after a minute, in desperate need of a minute alone. “Excuse me guys, I’m going to go and have a shower so I stop getting ash all over the floor.”

It’s an excuse and they all know it, well, everyone except Brainy who is feeling a little put out that he is the last to get a shower but determines that it’s because he was the cleanest of the three of them, mostly just helping to organize rescue teams and evacuations while J’onn and Kara were going into the buildings to carry people out, admittedly quicker and stronger than him.

“How have you guys been? Have you managed to get some rest?” Kara asks, plopping down onto one end of the couch, and pulling Lena with her so she’s beside her.

“Unfortunately, not so much.” Kelly jumps in, “we were watching the news and it kept us up watching all those people suffering and we were trying to look out for you guys so we would know that you’re ok. We did fall asleep at some point though.”

Kara’s eyes darken at the mention of what happened out there. “Yeah, I get that. It was really bad out there, and it still is. There’s a lot of damage, a lot of people were injured and about a dozen dead from what I managed to find out.”

“I guess we will have our jobs cut out for us then when it comes to rebuilding?” Nia asks, smiling though it’s a strained smile.

Kara smiles back, “yeah, we’ll help as much as we can but we will have to work on The Tower too, we’re missing a roof.”

“Did you manage to determine the cause of the fires?” Alex asks.

“I watched those stupid bugs explode before my eyes and they went with a good amount of fire when they did for such small things, I think they must have had magnesium in them or something because the spark they caused was too big for a normal circuit. They were programmed to find fabric too before they exploded, they all swarmed to materials, so carpets, curtains, couches and things like that, I stopped as many as I could but you guys already saw how many there were, I couldn’t stop them.”

Lena listens to Kara carefully, looking for anything she can use to bring her brother down. “When did the last of the fires start? I can check the time against the last time the satellite was active.”

“Maybe around five-thirty to six, somewhere around that time,” Kara recalls, not entirely sure because between putting out the fires with her freeze breath and dragging people out of the buildings, she didn’t have much time to be checking her watch.

Lena grabs her laptop, opens it and rushes to get into the records of the satellite only to be left disappointed. “The satellite has been shut down. It’s inactive now.”

“What?” Alex rushes to look over her shoulder. “Why would it be shut down? Those things cost millions of dollars, if not billions, so why would he throw away a perfectly good one on this? What does Lex gain from doing any of this, there’s nothing he can gain from this.”

Staring down at the screen, Lena sits one part dumbfounded and two parts terrified. “He knows I’m here and I would guess that now that I’m no longer there building things for him, he isn’t getting enough decent tech coming up through Luthor Corp so the company will be losing money, a lot of it. I did seventy percent of all the builds in the lab and he wants to scare me into coming back. It’s working.”

“How can it be working, you know we’ll protect you, Lena, he won’t get to you.” Alex lets her anger simmer into her voice, not bothering to hide the fact that she thinks that is a terrible idea.

“It’s not about me. He’s showing me that he’ll just keep killing innocent people until I do come back and while Lex can’t do what I do, he is very good at covering his tracks.”

Brainy steps forward, adding something to the conversation for the first time in a while. “By my calculations, there is an eighty-four percent chance that he has made a mistake that would incriminate him in his crimes. The design of the bugs, while fully functioning, is sloppy, and the hardware within them, along with the serum inside them, isn’t something I’ve seen before, meaning it can likely be tracked. I don’t believe you will have to go back to Metropolis, and quite frankly, I don’t want you to.”

Lena’s lips turn down, trying not to cry for the millionth time today. “I don’t think we have time to look, his attacks have been so close together that I’m not convinced that we would find anything before he kills more people.”

Kara removes the laptop from atop of her knees, sliding it onto the coffee table instead. Then she takes Lena’s hand between her own. “Lena, I have superspeed, we can do this. You’re not going back, you belong with us, you’re a Super friend now, through and through.”

“You’re sure?”

Nia steps closer, dragging Brainy with her by his arm. “We’re sure, Lena. You’re one of us.”

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