Chapter Text
It’s possible that Lena Luthor is in over her head.
It’s a bit alarming that this thought is only just now occurring to her, draped helplessly over a broad shoulder and drawing ragged breaths against the inside of a hastily applied burlap sack. She slumps in defeat, arms dangling uselessly in front of her as she sways with her captor’s movements. She’d tried fighting back at first, but the arm pinning her in place is roughly the same width as her torso, and her frantic kicks and scratches had failed to draw any sort of response.
There’s a loud scraping sound, and then Lena registers a sudden lack of daylight as they begin a descent below ground. The arm holding her in place vanishes momentarily, presumably to grasp onto the rungs of a ladder, but Lena doesn’t dare chance an escape with no idea of how high up they are or where they’re going. She simply allows herself to be carried down, limp body flopping uselessly during the descent.
This isn’t the way Lena had envisioned her day unfolding when she’d climbed out of bed this morning. True, her plan for a solo reconnaissance mission had been half-baked at best, and she probably should have informed her superiors about where she was going, but those thoughts have only just taken root, and it’s far too late to act on them now. J’onn is likely going to kill her when he hears about this, if whoever has taken her captive doesn’t beat him to it.
For a certified genius, Lena is capable of some astoundingly stupid decisions.
She supposes that even after all of the work she’s done to distance herself from her family legacy, she still suffers from that infamous Luthor hubris. Her brother had thought he was invincible too, and that conviction had ushered him into an early grave. While Lena’s intentions might be purer than her brother’s, her actions clearly still warrant an ego check every once in a while.
The DEO had gotten wind of some errant alien activity in the area and, rather than wait for the official operation, Lena had taken it upon herself to scope things out on her own. It’s not that she doesn’t trust the DEO’s competence, but it’s their methods she sometimes finds suspect. Given her sordid family history and her mother’s rather xenophobic handling of LuthorCorp’s policies since taking the helm, Lena has dedicated herself as wholly as she can to furthering the cause of alien rights. The DEO is generally fair to aliens, especially with J’onn as their director, but there is often an initial period of mistrust and containment associated with potential hostiles. If a bit of solo sleuthing can determine that the aliens in question are harmless and avoid such unpleasantness, then Lena is willing to put in the extra work.
Those righteous sentiments seem a bit foolishly idealistic now, as she is dropped unceremoniously onto her feet, blind and disoriented, in what she assumes is a section of National City’s sewer system. A hand at her back prods her forward and she begins to walk, placing her feet carefully to avoid stumbling. Their path carries them forward through a series of twists and turns, and after a while Lena isn’t confident that she’ll be able to find her way back to the exit even if she can somehow manage a daring escape.
Her journey comes to an abrupt end when she is shoved roughly from behind, the sudden momentum carrying her forward to land painfully on her hands and knees. She bites down on her lip to keep from crying out at the impact, ignoring the dampness from the floor that’s already beginning to seep through the fabric of her cargo pants.
The sack covering her head is suddenly ripped off, allowing her a view of the dark, dingy room in which she finds herself. The concrete walls loom high on all sides, and the persistent smell of sewage and lack of light confirm her earlier suspicions about her location. She attempts to rise to her feet, only for a heavy boot on her back to force her to her knees once more.
Lena glances behind to find two hulking, humanoid creatures towering over her, their reptilian features standing out starkly even in the low light of the tunnels. It’s the first glimpse she’s had of her captors, and she feels her breath catch at the sight of them. She’d come here in search of aliens, and it seems she’s found what she was looking for.
Suddenly, the two creatures behind her snap to attention, gazes fixed on an entrance across the room, and Lena follows their eyes as another person steps into her line of sight. The room becomes bathed in an eerie, red glow as another humanoid approaches - this one a woman. Her eyes burn red and luminous in the darkness, casting shadows across the dirty cement floors. She’s flanked on either side by two shorter figures, and Lena has already seen enough to presume that they’re aliens as well.
“You shouldn’t have come here, human,” the woman says, voice deep and authoritative as she takes a few more steps in Lena’s direction. Aside from the glowing eyes, she could almost pass for human herself, but there’s a certain aura of intimidation about her that betrays an otherworldly nature.
“I’m not exactly here by choice,” Lena responds from her place on the floor, focusing her efforts on keeping her voice from wavering.
The woman continues her approach until she’s directly in front of Lena, looming over her in the darkness as her eyes continue to glow an ominous red. Lena does her best to meet them, refusing to flinch away at the sight.
The glow fades to what is presumably the woman’s normal eye color, though Lena can’t make it out in the darkness. Her eyes sweep over Lena’s frame as though appraising her. “You weren’t snooping around this place by coincidence. Who sent you?” she demands.
Lena shifts slightly, feeling the weight of the DEO issued handgun in her hip holster and the knife in her left boot as she considers her options. There are five of them against one of her, and she doesn’t know what kind of abilities they might have. Deeming it too risky to show aggression, she instead decides to keep talking for now.
“No one sent me,” she says evenly. It isn’t really a lie. The DEO hadn’t exactly ordered her on this fool’s errand. She can only hope that someone deigns to check up on her tracking device once they realize that she’s missing. “I heard reports of suspicious activity in the area and decided to check on it.”
“What are you, some kind of cop?” one of the figures in the doorway asks. Her voice sounds young, likely a teenager, and even in the darkness Lena suspects that her skin is not within the range of normal human pigmentation.
“She’s come to hunt us down, just like the rest of her kind,” the other figure accuses in a gravelly voice. This one is much shorter, stooped over slightly and face shrouded by the hood of the cloak she’s wearing.
The tall woman standing before Lena tilts her head slightly as they speak, seeming to take their comments into consideration.
“What do you want us to do with her, Supergirl?” asks one of the hulking reptilian creatures still standing behind Lena. His voice is impossibly deep, and he stumbles over the words as though his tongue is not suited to forming them.
Supergirl? The name causes an itch at the back of Lena’s skull. There had been another alien once who had gone by a similar moniker, before Lena’s own brother had taken him down in a bout of mutually assured destruction. Perhaps this woman had chosen the title as some sort of homage, or perhaps she had known him. Whatever the case, hearing the name sends an unbidden chill down Lena’s spine.
Supergirl seems to notice the sudden discomfort, if the way her head snaps down towards Lena at her involuntary shudder is any indication, but she doesn’t remark on it.
“I’ll handle her from here,” the woman says, tone just sinister enough in its lack of passion for a sense of dread to settle in Lena’s gut. “You’re dismissed.”
With twin salutes, the two larger guards turn and vanish from the room, leaving only Supergirl and the women she had entered with. She turns to address them next. “You can go as well.”
It’s the smaller figure that responds, voice pitched with uncertainty, “Are you sure? Perhaps we should interrogate her further? Ensure that there’s no one else with her.”
“She wasn’t lying about coming alone,” Supergirl says with complete confidence, leaving Lena to wonder how she could possibly know that. “Leave us.” Her tone brokers no room for further argument, and the two figures in the doorway turn to leave at once. Whoever this Supergirl is, she’s clearly the one in charge.
It’s just the two of them left now, and Supergirl circles around behind Lena. “Stand,” she commands. Lena hesitates for a moment, weighing her options only to find them wanting, and then she obeys, hoisting herself to her feet and ignoring the throb from her injured knees as a rough hand at her back shoves her forward.
They walk through a series of dark tunnels for what feels like an eternity, Supergirl a dark and imposing shadow at Lena’s back. The other woman is silent except to bark an occasional direction when the path forks, and it affords Lena time to search desperately for an exit, for all the good it does her.
They finally come to a small room at the end of a corridor. It’s even darker inside than it is in the dim hallway, and Lena hesitates in the doorway. This turns out to be the wrong decision, and without warning she’s shoved forward again, barely managing to stumble and stay on her feet. She moves into the center of the room and Supergirl steps behind her, her tall frame blocking the doorway.
“What are you going to do with me?” Lena asks, somehow managing a scathing glare despite the way her legs are shaking.
“I haven’t decided yet,” the other woman says lazily, as though it’s a matter of little consequence.
Deciding that her life doesn’t seem to be in immediate danger, Lena decides to keep the other woman talking as her mind continues to whir in search of escape. “Those other…men. They called you Supergirl.”
“Yes,” the woman answers.
“As in-”
“Yes”
“So does that mean-”
Before Lena can finish the sentence, the air is knocked from her lungs as a heavy force slams into her. With a speed that her mind can’t quite comprehend, she’s pinned up against the back wall of the room, a strong arm pressed against her windpipe so firmly that she can barely draw breath.
“Yes,” the woman responds again, voice low and menacing this time. Without hesitation, she reaches down to where Lena’s gun is concealed at her hip and removes it, crushing the barrel in her first as though it were made of cardboard. Then she does the same with the knife in Lena’s boot, the blade warping effortlessly under her palm without so much as grazing her skin. The movements are intentional, deliberate. There’s no doubt that she somehow knows exactly where to find the weapons. For good measure, she removes Lena’s cellphone from her pocket and crushes that within her grasp as well, the screen and motherboard shattering with a resounding crunch.
Lena squirms against the other woman’s grip, but her efforts are laughably futile. The arm across her neck is like a steel bar, and it doesn’t so much as budge as Lena throws the whole of her weight against it. Fear rises within her as she begins to truly comprehend what she’s up against. She is a rabbit caught into the talons of a hawk – prey in the face of an apex predator.
Supergirl’s free hand rises to grip Lena’s left shoulder and then tightens, and an involuntary gasp of pain escapes Lena’s lips before she can stop it. The pressure continues to build until Lena is certain that her scapula will fracture under the force of it, and then it finally relents as something pops beneath her skin, just under the point of Supergirl’s thumb. Her tracking device - she registers through the fog of pain.
“Who are you, and who do you work for?” Supergirl demands, leaning in closer to Lena. The pressure on her windpipe increases and she sputters, choking against it.
The taller woman eases off slightly at the sight, allowing just enough leeway for Lena to gasp in a breath. Heart hammering against her rib cage, Lena realizes there is no possible worse answer to that question than the truth, so she hurriedly conjures up a fake name, hoping that Supergirl won’t be able to see through the lie. “K-Kieran. Kieran…Smith,” she gasps, fingers still scrabbling uselessly at the steel arm constricting her airway.
“Who do you work for?” Supergirl repeats, and when Lena doesn’t answer immediately, the pressure on her windpipe increases once more.
Unable to think up a suitable lie with the lack of oxygen currently making its way to her brain, Lena finally chokes out, “The DEO.”
That answer is apparently satisfactory, and the weight on her neck finally vanishes, allowing Lena to slump bonelessly to the floor at the other woman’s feet, gasping for air.
“You’d better hope no one comes looking for you,” Supergirl says menacingly as she takes a step backwards. “I don’t intend on taking any more prisoners.”
With that, she takes her leave and slams the heavy metal door shut behind her, leaving Lena in a crumpled heap in the darkness.
As the adrenaline drains from her system, Lena rubs the already-forming bruise on her shoulder and strains her eyes in the pitch blackness, willing them to adjust. Her efforts are in vain. She can hardly see her hands in front of her face.
With a sigh, she straightens up against the wall and waits for her heart rate to slow. For all of her curiosity about aliens and her desire to better understand them, this situation is leagues beyond the realm of what she’d been expecting. A Kryptonian. The very thing her madman of a brother had given his life to destroy. Humanity had been under the impression that Superman was the only one, the last vestige of a dead world. Apparently, they’d been wrong.
Lex had been so fearful of Superman’s abilities that he’d dedicated his life to finding a weakness, a feat he’d succeeded in before promptly taking the secret to his grave. Lena had always been curious about the methods her brother had used to take down a seemingly unstoppable force, but with Superman dead there hadn’t been a pressing reason to pursue such knowledge.
Lena had never necessarily agreed with her brother’s world view. Superman had only ever used his abilities to help those in need, and Lex’s feverish pursuit of a weakness had always seemed like the paranoia of a madman. But now, still feeling the ghost of an immovable arm against her neck, of steel fingers digging into the bone of her shoulder, Lena thinks she can understand at least a little of what had driven her brother’s crusade.
Who is this woman to Superman? Is she his sister? His lover? Is she out for revenge against a world that has taken her kinsman from her in such an untimely manner? Whatever the case, she’s clearly been operating in secret and unhindered for an indeterminate amount of time.
Lena knows that she needs to get word to the DEO. She needs them to know what kind of threat is lurking beneath the city’s surface. She still suspects that J’onn is going to kill her for going off on her own, but surely this intel is worth any risks she may have taken. She can only hope that someone at the DEO managed to get a signal off her tracker before it was destroyed.
I don’t intend on taking any more prisoners. Lena swallows despite the dryness in her throat as she recalls the Kryptonian’s words. She hopes that anyone the DEO sends after her will have the good sense to make a covert approach.
In the meantime, all Lena can do is drop her head into her hands and wait.
Kara stalks through the dark hallways, fingers still twitching with the effort of controlling her strength. It couldn’t be coincidence that their hideout was discovered now, when they were so close to bringing their plans to fruition. The humans may be weak, but they could also be cunning, insidious. It would be unwise to overlook this infiltration as anything less than a threat to their entire operation.
She lets out a frustrated huff as she turns yet another bend in the corridor, not slowing her gait. The humans are the reason Kara and her fellows are relegated to the darkness of the sewers; the reason she’s had to live the majority of her life on this planet underground. They are a species unaccepting of anything they regard as different, and the slew of alien refugees who have found their way to Earth over the years fall decidedly into that category.
It had been a bitter pill for Kara to swallow, arriving on Earth decades later than intended to find that the baby cousin she’d been sent to protect had already grown up and been murdered in cold blood. A man named Lex Luthor, supposedly the best that humanity had to offer, had managed to find and exploit a weakness, and he’d used it to send Kal-El to an untimely grave. Kal-El, the last son of Krypton, who by all accounts had been an idealist and had only sought to use his powers to help the very people who rejected him.
Kara would not make the same mistake.
In her twelve years on Earth, she has seen enough of humanity to know they are not deserving of her help, or even her mercy. Not only do they deny aliens, her people, the basic rights required to live peacefully, but they can’t even resist squabbling and fighting amongst themselves. They are a corrupted species, one that needs a firm hand to lead them before they bring themselves to inevitable ruin. This was Kara’s destiny. It was what she’d been preparing for since she’d seen firsthand the atrocities this planet had to offer.
Still, it had been a long time since Kara had interacted with a human one on one. The woman now locked in one of the makeshift holding cells – this Kieren Smith – certainly didn’t seem particularly threatening. But then, a lone human so rarely did. Their menace usually lay in their superior numbers.
Kara turns another corner and enters the makeshift canteen in which Xeema and Jhahir await her. It’s a cramped room with a few overturned barrels and crates serving as tables and chairs and a stack of meager supplies piled neatly along a raised platform on the far wall. Two other aliens are seated at a crate across the room and glance up as Kara enters, but they return to their meals as she takes a seat across from her companions. They are two of the thirty or so refugees housed by their small colony; each of them – aside from Kara – too inhuman in appearance to live freely in the outside world. They hide underground to avoid becoming targets of the humans’ prejudice, or their ire.
Kara hides for a different reason. She stays with the colony to keep her existence a secret until it is time to act, and to protect the more vulnerable members of her community.
“What of the human?” Jhahir asks, pulling her hood back to reveal an amphibious face, her wide, froggy eyes blinking up at Kara expectantly.
“DEO,” she says curtly, slumping into a chair across from her mentor.
“Meddling again,” Jhahir says, narrowing her eyes. “What did you do with her?”
“She’s contained in one of the holding rooms on the west side until we come to a more permanent decision,” Kara answers.
“We should make an example of her,” Xheema pipes up eagerly from the other side of the table, eyes shining with youthful exuberance. “Make sure none of their kind ever bother us again.”
“That would require us to reveal ourselves,” Jhahir says gently, still clearly pleased by the younger alien’s enthusiasm. “These matters require patience.”
Kara nods thoughtfully from across the table, taking in the older woman’s words. Though Kara had taken over as the colony’s leader when she came of age, it was Jhahir who had established it and had taken in and raised the majority of its members, including Kara herself. As one of the earliest aliens to seek refuge on Earth, Jhahir had quickly learned of its dangers and had sought to protect others of their kind from the same injustices she had suffered. She had found and rescued Kara at the young age of thirteen, mere months after her arrival on the planet.
“She had a tracking device on her,” Kara says. “I disabled it, but others may come looking for her. She may prove useful as a deterrent, or as a bargaining chip.”
Jhahir nods thoughtfully at Kara’s words. “Very well, we’ll keep her contained for now. We can set extra guards on the perimeter in case any of her fellows come snooping about.”
Satisfied that their business is concluded, Kara excuses herself and rises from the table. She steps back into the winding halls of the underground labyrinth, suddenly feeling restless. She is deeply uneasy about the presence of a human within the walls of her home, even one that is thoroughly detained. She sets her senses on high alert, vowing to keep her people safe at any cost.
The afternoon’s excitement has interrupted the normal flow of Kara’s day, and so she is behind on making her rounds. She takes a left down the hall to the makeshift living areas – three larger rooms filled with bedrolls and their occupant’s meager possessions. Some of the aliens staying with them are only passing through, while others have been with them for years. Regardless of timing, the colony provides a safe space for as long as it’s needed. Kara makes a point of checking up on the occupants every few days, both to make sure they have what they need and that none of the newer guests have ill intentions. Jhahir has always assured her that her mere presence is a comfort to many of their kind, and Kara takes that responsibility seriously.
Some of the living spaces are already empty. Farro and R’akka, the pair of Vhilurian brothers who brought in the human prisoner, have already returned to their regular guard duty, and several of the colony’s other members have scattered as they go about their day. It is predominantly the sick and the elderly who occupy the bedrolls at this time of the afternoon.
Kara moves through the space slowly, nodding in acknowledgement to the weaker and bed bound of her fellows as she goes. She is struck, not for the first time, by how lucky she is that this planet has made her strong, nearly invincible. It has not been as kind to all of its alien inhabitants. Some have difficulty with the composition of the atmosphere, so different from the air on the home worlds they’ve left behind. Others are weakened, rather than emboldened, by the Earth’s yellow sun. They have no means to protect themselves on a hostile world, and so Kara seeks to fulfill that role for them.
The choice to take up the mantle of Supergirl has been a controversial one among her people. Jhahir, in particular, had thought it distasteful to adopt a name given by humans to one who worked with humans, but Kara knew so little of her cousin’s life on Earth that it had seemed one of the few ways for her to honor his memory. She would be a symbol of hope to aliens in the same way her cousin had apparently been to the entire world. She made a point of pushing down the small, nagging voice at the back of her head that insisted that Kal-El would not approve of her plans for the future. Perhaps if he hadn’t been so soft and trusting, he would be here to relay such misgivings himself.
With a sigh, Kara crosses into the third and smallest of the living quarters, occupied primarily by a family from Cignus 7. The father and the older sons are nowhere to be found, likely already out for the day, which leaves only the mother and their youngest to greet Kara as she enters the room. Finn, the only one of the couple’s children to have been born on Earth, has been sick for weeks with no improvement. He alternates between fevers and hypothermia, bound to his bedroll the majority of time as he is too weak to move around on his own. Kara has some knowledge of Cignian biology and has done her best with what limited supplies she has, but the Earth medicines she has at her disposal have so far failed them both.
She crouches down next to Finn on the floor, placing a comforting hand on the end of his bed. His mother gives her a tired smile.
“How are you feeling today, Finn?” she asks, tone gentle as she appraises the small, sickly figure before her. It is one of the few situations on this planet that leaves Kara feeling completely powerless.
“I’m okay,” he responds, tiny voice weak and raspy. “The soup you brought me yesterday helped a lot.”
The truth of those words is suspect, considering the boy’s face is as pale and drawn as it’s ever been, but Kara still gives him an encouraging smile in response. “That’s great to hear. You’re a strong boy, Finn. I bet you’ll be as strong as I am, one day.”
With one more soft smile, Kara rises, nods to each of the aliens before her, and then makes her way back into the hall. She leans up against the wall outside the door for a moment, before she releases a shaky breath, squares her shoulders, and continues on.
The halls are quiet as Kara walks them, the silence disrupted only by the squelching sound of her boots on the damp floor. She passes the makeshift washroom, the closet where the colony’s small cache of weapons is stored, and another holding cell, finding all of them empty, before she finally pauses in the doorway of the last stop on her journey.
The machines hum quietly in the dark of Kara’s lab, each one pilfered from the world above and running on stolen electricity. This room holds the culmination of almost a decade of work and planning, a project Kara has toiled over since she was still just a teenager clinging to the knowledge of her lost home world. It has been quite the undertaking to recreate using only the primitive technologies available on Earth, but now that it is nearly complete, Kara feels the familiar mingling of pride and trepidation as she gazes upon her work.
She’s only taken two steps into the room when a scratching, scuffling sound prickles at her ears and she freezes, suddenly on high alert. It only takes the realization that the sound is coming from the prisoner’s cell to spur her to action, and then the lab is suddenly empty once more.
Lena has no sense of how much time passes in the dark, cramped room. After she’s left alone, she spends a few minutes finding her bearings, then she promptly moves on to getting the lay of her surroundings, hands searching uncertainly in the darkness. The contents of the room are sparse – a rickety wooden stool, some type of thin bedroll shoved into one of the corners, and a rusted metal basin whose purpose Lena recognizes with a vague sense of disgust. Sure, she’d forsaken the life of extreme luxury she’d grown up accustomed to when she’d made the decision to step away from LuthorCorp, but these squalid conditions are still a bit much to digest.
Once she’s finished her appraisal of the room’s contents, she sets her attention to running her hands along the walls in the vain hope that there might be some sort of light switch. She finds nothing but cold, rugged cement beneath her fingertips as she charts the length of her prison, finding the area of the room to be a paltry few square meters.
Her shoulder twinges, and she brings her fingers up to brush the injured area, feeling the shift of the broken pieces of her tracker just beneath the skin. She wonders if they could be of any use to her should she find some way to remove them, but even as the thought comes to her, she suspects the device has been pulverized beyond any remaining utility. Even were she able to find something sharp enough to slice her skin, the risk of infection would likely outweigh any potential benefits.
With a sigh, she slumps back down against the wall and turns out her pockets, finding their contents sadly wanting. She hadn’t anticipated being away from home for long, and so she hadn’t brought much with her. The ruined remains of her phone already litter the floor where Supergirl has dropped them, which leaves only a thin leather wallet and a set of house keys in the left-side pocket of her pants. Lena realizes with a jolt that the wallet contains her ID card, and she’s grateful that Supergirl hadn’t bothered to confiscate it as well.
A thought suddenly occurs to her, and Lena slips one of the credit cards from her wallet and palms it as she makes her way to the heavy metal door that bars her exit. She feels along the slit between the door and the wall, fixating on the bare amount of light visible through the gap. She slides the credit card down until it hits the top of the latch, and then she begins to fiddle with the mechanism, unsure if her methods will even prove effective on this type of lock.
Before that question can be answered, the door slams open, the force of it throwing Lena backwards to land painfully on her tail bone. She is momentarily blindsided by the burst of pain, and the credit card flies from her hand during the impact.
“What do you think you’re doing?” an angry voice demands from the doorway. Lena’s insides turn to ice as she realizes she’s been caught. How had Supergirl even heard her?
There is no convincing lie she can come up with to dispel the very obvious truth of her intentions, and so she simply stares up at Supergirl with wide, unblinking eyes. Lena knows that if the other woman decides she has outlived her usefulness, Lena will not even register the blow that kills her.
Sensing that Lena has chosen silence as her answer, the alien lets out a frustrated growl and stalks further into the room. Lena instinctively begins to scramble backwards on her palms, but her efforts are cut short as she is hoisted to her feet by the front of her shirt.
“I have been lenient with you so far,” Supergirl says through gritted teeth, “but if I decide that you pose a threat to us, I will not hesitate to end your pathetic existence.”
Lena’s throat constricts with fear, but she still manages to choke out. “I don’t mean you or your people any harm. I just want to go home.”
Supergirl’s grip only tightens on Lena’s collar. “Don’t take me for a fool, human. Your kind has only ever sought to destroy us.”
The venom in Supergirl’s words gives Lena pause. Sure, human-alien relations have long been a point of contention, and the rallying cries of the prejudiced - Lena’s own mother included - are still a significant voice in the conversation, but there has also been a lot of progress in recent years. Many of Earth’s inhabitants, human and alien alike, have grown tired of the fighting and have begun to favor a move towards a more peaceful coexistence. There were, of course, still aliens that shared Supergirl’s viewpoint, but they tended to be on the more radical side of the aisle.
“That isn’t true,” Lena says, strengthening her voice with conviction as she manages to get her legs back under her, the tips of her toes brushing the floor. “There are plenty of aliens and humans living together in harmony. Hell, my boss is an alien.”
The Kryptonian’s grip slackens slightly at Lena’s words, and she pauses for a moment as though waiting for something. Her brow knits in confusion. “You’re lying,” she says, though her tone is now colored by a touch of uncertainty.
Lena can see that she’s somehow managed to sow a seed of doubt within the woman before her, and she grabs onto the notion like a lifeline. “I’m not,” she insists. “Have you actually spent any time among humans recently? Many of us are very accepting of aliens, even advocate for their rights. There’s an unprecedented amount of support being garnered for President Marsden’s Alien Amnesty Act. We’re not perfect, but many of us are trying to be better.”
There’s a war behind Supergirl’s eyes now as they rove desperately over Lena’s face, searching for something that she is apparently unable to find. She releases the collar of Lena’s shirt with a rough shove, causing the smaller woman to tumble back onto the dirty cement floor with a pained wheeze.
“Don’t play games with me,” Supergirl growls, earlier confusion replaced with blind fury, and Lena doesn’t dare to so much as move in the face of it. “And give up on any attempts at escaping. Even if you manage to make it out of this room, I promise you won’t make it past me.”
With that she turns and takes her leave again, leaving Lena sprawled on her back in the dirt and wondering what the hell just happened.