#but it went a little sideways and didn't actually fill the prompt anymore

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Alt S4 - Lena & Red Daughter

Red Daughter has no strength to fight as they press her into Alex's- no... Lex's machine. When the strap tightens around her chest, pinning her in place, she wishes it would continue to squeeze, compressing her ribs and lungs until there was nothing left of her.

Lex deceived her.

Lex... despised her.

All she knew is no longer real, and without her nation, her Alex, her purpose... she has no reason to exist.

She is not the antithesis to Supergirl's facetious hero.

She is not the true hero to save America from its own folly.

She is nothing.

Soon, that much will be true.

Through her tears she hears a door slam, and sees the blurry shape of Otis Graves approaching with a body slung across his shoulders. He slips the boneless figure to the concrete floor without ceremony, rolling his shoulders in ignorance of the moan pulled from his roughly handled cargo.

"You really did a number on her, boss," Otis remarks, nudging his prisoner with the toe of his boot. "Your own sister, too."

Lena?

Red Daughter blinks, and the cloud of her despair parts long enough for her to recognize the limp form below her, bruised features and all.

"Lena," she breathes. Her gaze snaps to Lex. "You can't!"

"The tin soldier has a heart after all," her mentor delivers coldly. "How quaint."

"Do what you want with me! You may hate Kryptonians, but Lena is your family--!"

"Family who laid in wait to kill me! Would have worked too, if not for your... gifts." He clenches his fist, and his veins pulse faintly purple through his skin.

A faint moan issues from Lena, fighting to return to consciousness. Before she can so much as pry open her heavy eyelids, Lex snaps his fingers and gestures sharply to the empty canister beside Red Daughter.

"Load her in."

Otis grabs Lena by the throat and drags her towards the machine. For the first time, Red Daughter starts to struggle.

"Let her go! Alex, please--!"

"My name. Is not. ALEX!!" His fist slams into the console, denting the steel panel with the force of it.

He turns towards her, and the hatred in his gaze saps what little strength Red Daughter has reclaimed.

"We are not family, kryptonian. You're not even a person. You're an echo who has outlived her purpose. My sister," he says, glancing to where Otis is latching the constrictive strap across Lena's chest, "she was family."

"Has she outlived her purpose too?"

Lex's gaze cools into something almost akin to affection.

"No," he says calmly. "But I won't risk her fulfilling hers."

What that means, he doesn't deign to explain to his false daughter. He turns back to his work, and Otis retreats to linger behind him, now idle and bored.

Red Daughter turns her attention to Lena, and finds the object of so many weeks' fascination studying her with eyes just shy of focused.

"Sup'rgirl?"

The name slurs on Lena's lips, but jolts Red Daughter to the core. She hesitates, and in the moment of silence that follows Lena's brain fills in the pieces.

"Oh," comes the sigh, strained by bruised ribs. "You're her."

Red Daughter hears accusation in the words, though Lena's brow furrows only in confusion. "Can't you just... vwoosh?"

The childlike sound would almost bring tears to Red Daughter's eyes, but she is empty of those too.

"I do not have my powers."

"Solar flare," Lena murmurs, blinking into greater clarity. Her gaze focuses on Red Daughter anew, and something new sparks in a chest thought empty. "It's okay. We just have to hold out."

"Hold out...?" Hold out what? Their hands are trapped, and Red Daughter is certain that Lex would sooner chop their hands off rather than give them something they asked for.

"Until Supergirl gets here."

"I'm afraid you'll be dead long before that happens, sis," Lex declares, striding towards Lena's berth with a smirk on his lips. Red Daughter can hardly believe his features were ever so soft as she glimpses in her memories.

But Lena seems familiar with this version of Lex, and doesn't quail under the dark intent he regards her with.

"Then my only regret will be that I wasn't able to watch her hand your ass to you on a Kryptonian platter."

The crack of Lex's hand against her cheek wrenches her head to the side. Red Daughter lunges forward, only to be caught against the strap pinning her in place. Lena flinches when Lex's hand lifts again, but this time it caresses reddening skin with a touch gentler than...

In that moment, Red Daughter realizes that for all his smiles, all his gentle features, Lex has never touched her.

Not once.

"For what it's worth," Lex tells his sister, "I will think of you fondly."

"And the world will only ever think of you as a madman."

"Good bye, ace."

At a press of a button, the top of Lena's chamber starts to lower, slowly moving to seal her within. Lex senses Red Daughter's stare, and turns a new smirk on her.

"Don't worry," he says in a mockery of comfort, "you won't have to live without her for very long."

He presses a second button, commanding the lid to descend over her own chamber as well. When the process is complete and Red Daughter is sealed alone within the darkness, it feels familiar, somehow.

Somewhere, muffled as though from far away, machinery comes to life with a deceptively pleasant hum.

At least, she considers silently to herself as the memory of her chamber in Kasnia flashes through her mind, with its images of Lena's smiles, Lena's happiness, plastered to the walls-- at least she is not alone.

Then the screaming starts.

---

Red Daughter expects the pain to come to her first, but the hum of machinery comes not from her canister, but Lena's.

The sound of her agony returns what Red Daughter's anguish stole: her powers.

In an instant she tears free from her restraints and through the metal facing of her prison. Faster than anyone can blink, Otis is dead, Lex is unconscious, and Red Daughter's fist punches through the console Lex had used to to activate the machine.

The screams die with the machine, but the silence is even more chilling.

She wrenches her fist free from the sparking console and rips Lena's coffin apart, and the next thing Red Daughter knows, Lena isn't confined to a picture or partially obscured through a crowd. Lena is in her arms and she is dying.

Tears of blood course down Lena's cheeks, and oozes from her nose and ears. When Lena coughs, blood bubbles to her lips, freckling Red Daughter's chin with every choking breath.

Lena would not be the first person Red Daughter has lost, but she is the one that reveals the truth: for all Lex has called her a hero, she has never learned how to save a life.

---

Lena saves her own life. Or rather, a man named Jack Spheer does, even from beyond the grave. It is his nanobots who support Lena's internal organs until they can heal from the cellular damage done by Lex's machine.

Red Daughter knows surrendering Lena to the DEO means surrendering herself, but she doesn't hesitate. When she delivered Lena to the organization that sought to kill Red Daughter, she was fully prepared to meet her temporarily thwarted fate-- so long as Lena survives.

But Lena's hand remains locked around Red Daughter's, and so Alex-- the real Alex, real and tangible and breathtaking-- belays the arrest in favor of treating Lena. And though an armed guard stands outside the door, she is permitted to stay with Lena after the nanobots are administered and a coma induced to speed their work.

And so Red Daughter sits, her world narrowed to a single bed and a single occupant, until her mirror image enters the room on quiet feet.

"Thank you," comes the ready gratitude, relieved and warm and all the things Red Daughter doesn't deserve. "For saving her."

Red Daughter doesn't respond.

How can she, when she is no longer certain who has done the saving?