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chaotic-super · 11 months

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The Vampire Woman - 20

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Kara looks just about ready to collapse and Lena is worried. She hasn’t answered her question on what she was doing trying to drink the few drops of blood left in the blood bag Lena just devoured and she’s just silently swaying where she stands, her hands reaching out behind her to find the top of the island so she can lean against it.

“Kara, what’s going on? Are you ok?” Lena’s voice softens from the previous harsh tone, her shock and anger being pushed aside by her worry. “Kara, you don’t look so good.”

Her eyes are unfocused and she’s sweating. A literal bead of sweat drips down the side of her face for Lena’s eyes to track the path of, afraid to even touch her because she looks so delicate.

Kara backs up even further until her spine is pressed firmly to the counter and at that point, Lena moves one of the stools closer to her and directs her to take a seat. “Kara, come on, sit down.”

There’s no hesitation, Kara does as she’s told, albeit very slowly, so slowly that Lena only worries more. “I just want to help you, Kara. You can’t drink blood, that’s what vampires…do.” Lena pauses partway through her sentence, coming to the realisation that just because Kara is still mostly human, she still has vampire tendencies too, meaning that she likely has to drink blood along with eating food, she has to fuel both sets of her DNA and that’s probably why she’s ill now, she’s only been feeding her human half.

There’s no real reaction to anything she’s saying because from the look of things, Kara is struggling just to keep her eyes open, the fatigue too much for her. Lena stays close to her side, careful to not take her eyes off Kara just in case she slips and falls.

If she’s right about Kara needing blood to feed her vampire side then she needs to get her some but it’s strange. Kara has been eating normally for a human and hasn’t shown any signs of aggression or violence the way Lena does when she’s starving, she’s got no outward desire to hunt and that’s something she needs to delve deeper into with Kara. For now though, they need to get to her lab so they can test Kara, they can’t just have her drinking blood if it turns out she’s wrong, they need to test her cells against blood deprived cells of a vampire. The only problem with that is the fact that she can’t test herself because she’s just had a blood bag so she’s got to call in a favour or two.

“Let’s get you somewhere comfier, huh?” Lena carefully wraps her arms around Kara’s waist, nervous about getting too close for comfort but seeing that it’s necessary for Kara’s safety. “The couch looks good, let’s go over there.”

Kara is malleable and easy to encourage movement in but it has downsides, Lena has to keep a tight grip on her waist to keep her legs from crumpling beneath her and she has to plan out each and every step because Kara’s feet are barely moving forward and when they do, it’s at an unreliable pace and it makes it impossible for Lena to judge where they will land each time so she has to be extra vigilant to make sure she doesn’t step on them.

Kara isn’t much help but Lena at least has the clarity to understand that she isn’t doing it on purpose, she’s become weak and her health has taken a rapid decline that she can’t control. The rate of the decline is what scares Lena the most though. She watched the footage of Kara coming into the apartment and waving to the camera, she seemed fine, but then she goes to sleep and then she is somehow this bad. She needs to figure out how to help her safely and quickly.

She drops Kara onto the couch, helping her lie down with her head resting on a cushion, propped up the slightest bit. She then covers her with a blanket and goes to fetch Kara some water. Kara’s eyes are barely open when she gets back to her just moments later and she has to gently cradle the back of her head to help her drink the water, something Kara eagerly does, her throat dry and uncomfortable, scratchy even.

“That’s it, just take it slow.” Lena encourages her to drink as much as she can. “I’m going to call your sister for you, ok?”

“Ok.” Kara mumbles. “Lena, I don’t feel good.”

“I can’t imagine you do.”

Lena tucks the blanket tighter around Kara before she stands so she can call Alex. The phone call is quick, an urgency to her words stopping Alex from prolonging it in favour of heading right over to get to Kara. Lena calls Jess too, it’s becoming quite apparent that Jess and Kara have become good friends and she’d probably be yelled at for a week straight if she didn’t let her know what’s going on.

As soon as the calls have been made, Lena is sitting at Kara’s side, perched on the floor beside her, testing her temperature with a cool hand and watching her chest rise and fall with steady breaths, the only thing keeping her from becoming too worried. If her breathing changes, she might just end up having a panic attack or two though because it’s the only tangible thing keeping her sane.

It’s strange, Lena acknowledges, how this is one of the only times since she turned that she’s actually felt emotions this strong, this kind of fear.

She’s spent so long being shut off from the world, only developing surface relations, careful to never give too much away and always on the outside that now she’s unwittingly found herself in a situation that is the polar opposite of that, she feels completely out of her depth and she’s forced to reach out for help where she’s never had to do that before, she’s always been able to solve her own issues but now she’s realizing that she doesn’t have to take everything on alone. The only person she’s ever relied on is Jess and that was only ever trivial things so this is a whole new ball game and she’s finding that while it’s frightening, she doesn’t mind playing too much.

At the very least, Kara seems to be aware of her presence, her head tilted towards her and her lips making shapes of words she doesn’t have the energy to mutter. Lena watches, attempting the make sense of it and wishing that over the past few centuries, she had devoted time to learning how to lip read.

“Don’t try to talk, Kara. Just save your energy, you’re going to need it.” Lena mutters to her, debating whether or not to get her another blanket.

She doesn’t get her another blanket, she does stay beside her until Alex and Jess arrive though, not standing from her spot until she hears hurried knocking from the door and even then, she leads both Alex and Jess right over to Kara and then places herself back down in the spot that never had the chance to cool.

“Lena, what happened?” Alex chases her down to Kara’s side, her hands immediately cupping Kara’s face.

Lena shrugs. “She was fine when she was at L-Corp and she seemed alright when she got here based on the footage but then she went to sleep and has been like this since.”

“Something must be happening; we have to get her to the lab.”

“That’s not all.” Lena breathes.

Both Jess and Alex look tired, probably because of the never-ending amount of bad shit that keeps happening to them. Jess clears her throat. “What is it?”

“I left my blood bag on the counter when I was done with it, I found her trying to drink the few drops left in the bottom of it. I managed to stop her in time but I’m starting to wonder if this is happening because she’s only been feeding her human side, not her vampire side.”

“How do we figure that out?”

“We have to compare her cells to that of a starving vampire and see if they are similar, if they are then we know she needs to add blood into her diet and if not, then I have no clue how to help her.”

Alex shakes her head, her fingers pressing into Kara’s cheeks like she’s hoping to somehow transfer all of her energy and warmth into her sister to heal her. “So our problems are that it’s daytime so we have to try and figure out how to get you back to L-Corp and we have to find a hungry vampire, if you just ate then it can’t be you.”

“That’s right. I have someone I can call but if they say yes, you can’t be there when they come by because a hungry vampire and two humans are not a good mix. We can’t do anything until nightfall, if my… acquaintance, is willing to make the trip, they won’t come until nightfall anyway, we just have to keep her stable until then but her heartrate is strong, it seems as though the main issue is her energy levels.”

“I can see that.” Alex watches Kara’s eyelids flutter. “Hey, you.”

“Alex?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Kara wrestles her hand free from beneath the blanket and reaches out towards her sister and Alex meets her halfway, their hands clasping when they meet. Alex tucks the blanket back down where Kara’s movements pushed it away and whispers to her. “We’re going to help you, don’t worry. Lena’s going to call someone and we’re going to get you back to L-Corp and everything will be alright. You just rest, ok?”

Kara has never heard sweeter words. She’s more than happy to just sit and rest while everyone else does the work, she’s desperate for sleep and is ecstatic to go back to the land of the dreamers, even if her sleep is a little restless at times. “Ok.”

Jess feels completely useless, she’s just standing off the side and trying not to get in the way of Alex getting to Kara since she knows that as much as she wants to be beside Kara to make sure she’s alright, Alex is a better fit for the situation, Kara will want Alex.

As Kara settles back down and closes her eyes once more, the three of them back away from her, still watching her out of the corner of their eyes, worried something else will go wrong but not wanting to stand right over her when she’s trying to rest.

Lena takes them into the kitchen where she promptly leaves them to go and make a couple of phone calls she’d really rather not make.

Alex and Jess are just casually pacing around the island, both walking in the same direction in their loop so they never overlap as they try to come up with solutions and reasons for things they have no idea about and that’s how Lena finds them when she gets back.

“I’m not even going to ask. I just made some calls and thanks to the shortage of blood, we’re going to have two hungry vampires over at L-Corp tonight. They are going to head over as soon as it’s safe to do so and we have to make sure that we’re ready for them because they are not too happy to be our test subjects and they have very short fuses so one wrong word and they are gone. We should head over to L-Corp before nightfall and get things sorted and then you two need to head out and lay low because it’s not safe for you there while they are there.”

Alex is not about to let her baby sister, the one that is currently in really bad shape, be alone in a room with several vampires, even if Lena is one of those vampires and she trusts her now. “I’m staying. I’m not leaving her side.”

“Same goes for me. We’re in this together. I’m not leaving.”

“You could get hurt, especially where starving vampires are involved. Like me, they buy blood bags but you saw what happened to me when I was starving, that could very easily happen to them, even if they don’t want that to happen.”

Jess nods. “Alright, so we’ll stay in the safe room off the lab, we’ll be close and you know we’ll be safe.”

Lena blinks. “Oh, that’s not too bad of an idea.”

“I know, I am capable of some intellectual thoughts every now and again.” Jess smiles. “The question now is about how we get to the lab now when it’s light out.”

“That’s simple, I’ll simply get Frank to come here and then I’ll just have to make a break for it and run as fast as I can to the car. It’s not the most dignified method of getting from point A to point B but it will have to do.”

Jess frowns and frowns hard. “That’ll hurt you.”

“Like a bitch.” Lena agrees. “Not as much as it will hurt Kara if we prioritise the wrong things and don’t get her the help she needs. Within a few minutes of being out of the sun, I’ll be right as rain. Even better if I can cover a good portion of my skin on the way out.”

Alex doesn’t know how to nicely portray that while she doesn’t want Lena to be in pain, she’d happily throw her out into the middle of the street on a sunny day if it means that Kara gets help so she keeps her mouth shut, letting Lena and Jess make the plan and standing there witnessing it going down.

Jess manages to convince Lena to cover up really well before running outside, that’s all Alex is taking in, her focus on her sister, whose chest is still rising and falling in a steady rhythm, a good sign if there ever was one.

Lena and Jess don’t push her to talk or even acknowledge the fact that she’s not looking anywhere other than her sister. After a while, she decides to move back to the living room and steadies herself into one of the chairs beside the couch, settling down to sit there for however long she needs to be there.

She doesn’t move when Lena and Jess start planning out the tests they need to do and she doesn’t move through two offered cups of coffee, both of which she declines so she can avoid as many bathroom breaks as she possibly can.

“Hey.” Lena walks around the back of her chair and leans close to her ear to mumble. “Frank is going to come by in a couple of hours. We don’t need to go just yet, we’d just be moving Kara to somewhere more uncomfortable when we don’t need to if we go sooner than that. Why don’t you go and get a drink and something to eat and I’ll sit with her in the meantime?”

“I’m good for a while longer,” Alex murmurs back to her.

“I’ll take a drink.” Kara’s sleepy voice cuts through the room, silencing all of them as they lean in closer to her groggy form.

Alex is out of the chair on her knees at Kara’s side in two seconds flat and gently stroking her cheek. “Kara, open your eyes for me.”

They all see the struggle that overtakes Kara as she tries her best but she does manage it, her eyes sensitive to the light until she blinks away the discomfort.

“Good job, now, what do you want to drink? Tea? Coffee? Water?” Alex offers despite not knowing what Lena actually has in her apartment, she’ll head to any store Kara wants as long as it means she’s being cared for. Her sister is the most important person in her life and she’ll do anything for her, even if she does enjoy lightly bullying her from time to time, certainly not when she’s in bad shape though, only when she’s having a good day that Alex can ruin because it’s against sibling code to let her sister have a good day if she can help it.

“Throat hurts.” Kara whimpers in lieu of deciding.

“I have some honey tea that might help with that.” Lena offers but she knows it won’t help. Her own throat gets dry and scratchy when she hasn’t had blood in a while. She’s not sure exactly how it works but she knows that with each new bit of information she’s learning about Kara, it looks like they are going to have to adapt her diet and not for the better.

Alex answers for Kara. “That sounds good, get her that.”

Lena is halfway to the kitchen when another sound brings them all to silence, this one being Kara’s stomach rumbling.

“Get her something to eat too,” Alex demands.

“I don’t want—” Kara goes to argue.

“You’re sick and you’re weak. I’ll force-feed you if I have to so it’s better if you just eat whatever we put in front of you and say thank you like the well-mannered woman mom raised you to be.”

“She clearly didn’t raise you to be well-mannered, meanie.” Kara croaks, forcing her tired limbs to help her sit up, something Alex realizes she’s got to help with after just a moment.

Alex shuffles her into place, stacking cushions around her to keep her upright. “Shut up, you. Let’s just focus on getting you better.”

Kara doesn’t fight her. She’s still exhausted, her body longing for rest she knows she doesn’t need since she’s been asleep for so long already and she’s desperately thirsty. Just waiting for Lena feels like waiting a lifetime.

Alex has a tight grip on her hand, one bordering on painful as her fingernails dig into her skin without her realizing and Kara’s not pointing it out because it’s the perfect distraction for her, exactly what she needs to take her mind off of the several horrible feelings circling around her body at the minute, very few of them easily identifiable because her body is a mixture of achy and numb.

Lena finishes the tea first whilst leaving Jess in the kitchen working on getting her something to eat, some tinned soup and some sandwiches from the looks of things.

“Here, it’s hot so take it slow. I brought you more water too in the meantime.”

“Thanks.” Kara forces out, happily taking the water, her hand shaking as she does so, making it a hard task getting the glass to her mouth. Taking notice of that fact, Lena gently covers Kara’s hand and helps to guide it to her mouth.

Kara’s cheeks flush, not liking how weak she is and terrified too because it was just yesterday she was being passive-aggressive towards Frank and having no issues packing her things up and now she’s lying on the couch barely able to so much as take a drink without help.

Jess speed-walks over with the tray of food, her steps hurried but her hands steady as she makes a conscious effort not to spill anything anywhere. “Here we go, try to eat something, Kara. It’s not pizza but it should make you feel a little bit better.”

Kara forces her lips up into a smile, appreciating the call back to when she was being annoying and purposefully asked for pizza after she donated her blood to Lena. “Thanks, Jess.”

“You’re welcome.” Jess places the tray on Kara’s lap, Alex helping to keep it steady when it lands, and then tucks a strand of Kara’s hair back behind her ear. “I’ll go find you a hair tie so you don’t get soup in your hair.”

“In the bathroom, I have some in a dish beside the mirror, they are easy to spot.” Lena directs her, not bothering with any further instructions because Jess has been here so many times picking things up for her that she knows the layout well, maybe even better than Lena herself.

Alex and Lena aren’t letting Kara take a moment before they are practically throwing the sandwiches at her, Alex literally lifting one of them up to her lips for her before Kara snatches it out of her hand and she takes a small bite to placate them. She chews slowly and swallows harshly, struggling to get it down her sore throat but once she does, she’s suddenly all too aware of how hungry she was and instantly takes another bite, one that’s much bigger this time.

She talks around her half-chewed bite. “Are you two just going to stare at me while I’m eating?”

“Probably.” Alex deadpans and then recoils when Kara opens her mouth and lets her take a good look at the mush in her mouth, a truly revolting sight. “You’re gross.”

Kara nods, agreeing and shoves more of the sandwich into her mouth, before dropping the rest of it onto the plate so she can go for the soup next.

There’s mild amusement and a whole bunch of relief in Alex’s eyes at the sight of Kara digging into the food so ravenously and it soothes her nerves enough that she moves from where she was kneeling to head for a chair, Lena doing the same with the other chair.

Jess marches back in, hair tie perched between a finger and thumb triumphantly. “I got one…oh, you’re really going at that.” She looks slightly horrified at the speed at which Kara is consuming the food. “Do I need to make more sandwiches?”

“Yes please.” It comes out muffled but Jess definitely gets the message and heads for the kitchen, handing Kara the hair tie before she goes, which Kara just slips onto her wrist and promptly ignores the existence of.

Somehow, they have all been sitting around for going on a half hour and Kara hasn’t slowed her intake of food at all. It’s worrying in a totally different way than before.

“Kara, are you full yet?” Alex asks, tired of seeing Kara stuffing her face with the third set of sandwiches Jess has made her.

Kara shakes her head. “No, I’m starving.”

Lena presses her lips together nervously. “How’s your throat? Any better?”

“A little.” Kara shrugs. “I’m not as tired now though.”

“That’s good. Do you think you’ll be able to walk down to the car?”

“Yeah, probably. It helps there’s an elevator, I probably couldn’t manage the stairs right now, my legs feel a little bit like jelly but I’m feeling much better for having something to eat.”

“Interesting.” Lena tilts her head, watching Kara even more closely.

Kara’s eyebrows scrunch. “What’s interesting?”

“You. Your human appetite and your vampire appetite are linked somewhat, I can tell. You’re managing to quench your vampire thirst for blood by eating so much food but not to the extent of fully regaining your strength. That’s on top of how long it has taken you to actually have an appetite for blood. It’s taken you a while to get to this point but it came on fast, your body doesn’t give you the same warnings it does to full vampires.”

“So this is a weird hybrid thing?”

Lena finds herself nodding slowly. “It looks like it. I obviously can’t confirm anything just yet, not until we’ve got you in for some tests but it’s looking like it’s something we can probably figure out a way to get a handle on your body’s reactions and how to prevent situations like this in the future.”

“Do you think I’ll need to drink blood?”

Lena hesitates. Drinking blood isn’t something she wants Kara to have to do but it’s looking like there aren’t going to be any other options. “I think so but we’ll see what happens with the test results.”

“Right.” Kara eats her feelings away with another bite of her food, continuing to shovel it into her mouth and chewing away, her stomach feeling dreadfully empty even though she knows she’s eating a lot.

The three women looking after her take it in turns grabbing her more food every now and again, all of them completely astonished by the vast amount she’s managing to put away and only refuse when they know they have to start getting ready to leave for L-Corp.

Lena is escorted to her bedroom by Jess, who rifles through her closet to try and find her some clothes that will cover up as much of her skin as possible to try and reduce the pain she’s going to be in making a run for the car.

Jess hands her several layers of clothes and Lena just takes them with an eye roll. She knows she’s not wearing all of these, there are way too many and she’ll only be out there for a few seconds so she’ll probably be fine. Most likely. It’s a high possibility. Like fifty-fifty chance. Alright, she’ll wear the clothes.

“Thank you for the help, Jess.”

“Not at all. I’m going to make sure you’re in the best condition possible by the time we get you across town. Shall I check with Frank and see where he is?”

“Yes please, I’ll start getting changed into every item of clothes in my closet, I guess.”

“Please do.”

Alex is working on getting Kara ready in the meantime, helping her into her room and then sitting her on the bed so she can slowly manoeuvre herself into fresh sweatpants, her back turned but staying in the room in case Kara manages to get herself into a pickle. “You good?”

“I’m good. Almost done. Can you take me to brush my teeth after?”

Alex answers. “Yeah, I’ll grab you a stool from the kitchen so you can sit while you brush them.”

Kara expects her to just go and get it but she doesn’t move and it becomes obvious that Alex is waiting for her to finish first so she’s not left in a dangerous situation, if getting dressed counts as a dangerous situation, that is.

“Done.”

Alex turns, checking on her and then nodding when she’s certain Kara hasn’t managed to choke herself out with her pants or something. She takes a couple of strides towards her before planting her palm in the middle of Kara’s chest, shoving her until she falls back on the bed in more of a lying position, her legs dangling off the edge.

“Oof.”

“Stay there and relax, I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Relax? You just assaulted me.”

“Dramatic.” Alex tuts, striding away.

Lena holds Kara up on one side and Alex on the other, each with their arms wrapped around her waist so that when they walk through the lobby, they just look like they are walking together rather than holding up a woman that walked through there perfectly fine just the day before.

Jess leads the way, checking that Frank is just outside the building as he informed them he would be. The car is waiting for them. Jess has them wait at the door and rushes to get the car door open so Lena can just dive right in.

She heads back over to them and swaps places with Lena, taking Kara’s side and the three of them make their way to the car, Kara being tossed inside with as much care as they can manage given the awkward stoop they have to do to get inside.

Once they are inside, Lena takes a deep breath and goes for it, her strides long and her stubbornness active in full force as she practically leaps into the car, her skin burning from each millisecond she spent in the sun.

She lands on the floor, her hands coming up to touch the burning skin of her face as she cries out. “Fuck!”

“Lena?” Kara goes to lean forward in her seat but can’t because of the seatbelt strapped across her and Alex’s arm holding her back.

Lena writhes for a moment more, her eyes pressed tightly shut and every muscle in her body held tight, the tension making her ache just as much as she’s burning. She keeps her face aimed towards the ground because she can’t bear to see the worried faces she can tell are surrounding her.

It takes several minutes for her to get her breath back. She was only in the sun for a few seconds but it was much longer than she’s spent out there in years. The two seconds she was out there whilst making Kara test her powers before was enough to rattle her so the ten seconds of running to the car were a lot more than she would usually ever allow herself to try and handle.

It seems worse because she knows she’s got to do the same thing again to get out of the car but it won’t be as bad because Frank will pull up right beside the side door of L-Corp and she’ll get inside much faster and have the chance to recover where she’s not in the field of vision of people counting on her.

By the time she’s composed herself, they are over halfway there and at that point, she heaves herself up into one of the spare seats, puts on her seatbelt and stares out of the window so she doesn’t have to look anyone in the eyes.

She might have been the one to offer to do what she did but that doesn’t mean she fully thought through the consequences of her actions. She knew it would hurt but she forgot that she wouldn’t have anywhere to hide when she was handling the pain, that she has to be on show for them to see her in a rare vulnerable moment.

She can feel the eyes of all of the other women on the side of her head but she’s determined not to look, not to see their faces now they have seen how weak she is when she’s exposed to sunlight, her greatest enemy, one she can’t fight.

Lena feels their stares all the way to L-Corp and she knows they see her for her weakness now because the moment the car pulls up, Alex tugs off her coat and holds it in her hands. “I’m going to run with you and try to block some of the light.”

All she manages is a nod. They think she’s weak, she’ll just look weaker if she fights and lets herself be reduced back to the state she was just in, it’s better to let Alex try and shield her. “Ok, get Kara inside first though.”

“Will do.”

Alex and Jess take an arm each, leading Kara just inside the door. Lena surveys Kara’s footsteps, making a mental note that she’s doing a thousand times better than when she had to pretty much drag her across the floor before because she was so weak. It does make her feel a little better in a selfish kind of way that Kara is weaker than her, that she’s worse off in this situation, because it means she’s not the weakest link in the bunch, she’s not the one everyone will pity, Kara has taken that role off her hands, shielding her from the full effects of being someone with a major flaw.

Alex comes back for her just seconds after Lena sees them disappear inside the door, her hands fidgeting with her coat to find the best way to hold it up for her. “Ok, Ms Luthor. Ready to make a break for it?”

“Yep.” Lena clambers to the door and on her way out, rests her palm against Alex’s spine, pushing her forward so they stay together on their sprint. There’s less pain this time because of the cover but there are still several places on her body that are screaming in agony but this time, Lena has the chance to dart around the corner and take the time to breathe without anyone watching her.

Jess and Alex don’t wait for her, they can see Kara once again losing her energy, she’s relying on them a little more with each step she takes and her breathing is getting heavier with the effort she’s putting into walking so they just head right for the lab. Lena can catch up soon enough anyway.

They put her on the bed down there, the one that might as well be reserved for her at this point. “Just relax, Kara,” Jess instructs and immediately starts getting the equipment they need ready, Alex helping where she can too.

Lena joins them not long after and she does so with her façade firmly in place, the one that screams power, so much so that if they didn’t know better, they would assume that she wasn’t just rolling around in pain on the floor of a car.

“Alright, we only have so much time so let’s get what tests we need done ready now and then I can get started right away when our guests of honour arrive.”

Alex looks up from what she’s doing. “Who are these people anyway?”

“Old friends.”

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chaotic-super · 11 months

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Joining The Superfriends - 21

Read it on AO3 here!

Well, Lena’s screwed.

Nia probably is too since Lena let her fall asleep over sixteen hours ago and she’s been unable to wake her up since. She’s been checking her pulse regularly and her breathing seems completely normal but she’s just not reacting when Lena tries to wake her up, it’s like she’s in some kind of a coma.

At first, Lena was just convinced that she must be finally getting some decent sleep and her body is just catching up on the sleep she’s been missing out on but she doesn’t seem to be having regular sleep cycles, her eyes never reactive when Lena checks them and she doesn’t respond to any kind of external stimulus at all.

Lena’s still holding out hope that Nia will wake up soon enough though and is actively working on figuring out what her dream might mean, working her way through book after book until she has a general idea of what it could potentially mean.

A light knock at the door interrupts Lena’s pacing. She’s been doing it for a while now and she’s actually gotten very good at reading while pacing, knowing exactly how many steps in each direction she can take before she has to turn around and walk in the other direction.

Lena looks up from her current reading material to see Supergirl in all of her glory leaning against the doorframe. “Hey, Lena. How is everything going in here? Have you been in here all day?”

Marking her page with a post-it note, Lena closes the book she was just reading and tosses it down onto the table, not flinching when it lands with a thump.

“Careful, you’ll wake sleeping beauty over there.” Kara nods to Nia, who is still leaning against the desk, head down and eyes closed.

Lena rubs at her eyes with a hand, wiping away her own fatigue in harsh movements that make Kara’s eyes hurt just from watching her. “No, she won’t. I can’t wake her up.”

“What do you mean?” Kara’s only reaction is a frown, her face otherwise composed but it doesn’t fool Lena, she can see the panic in the way she gulps and the way her hands ball into fists at her side.

“I was helping her, she’s been having a reoccurring dream that’s been keeping her up at night so she’s barely slept the past few days but when I went to go and fetch Nia’s books for her, I came back here and found her exactly how she is now, fast asleep. That was sixteen hours ago. Her breathing and pulse are both fine but she’s not waking up.”

Despite Lena telling her that she’s not waking up, Kara’s trying it anyway, she has to see for herself. She walks over to Nia’s sleeping form and picks her up with ease until she’s lying across the table, at which point Kara stands over her, grabs her shoulders and shakes her without an ounce of delicacy.

Lena knows that Nia isn’t going to wake up but she does hope and she can’t help but hold her breath as Kara shakes her, waiting to see if there’s a reaction.

There’s not.

“Nia! Nia, wake up!” Kara tries again, disappointed when she, once again, gets no response.

“I tried that already. I do think she’s just sleeping but I didn’t think she’d sleep for this long, maybe we should get Alex and Brainy in here, Alex can check her over properly and Brainy might have more insight into what’s happening.”

“Good idea. I’ll take her to the med bay though, Alex will be able to make sure she’s alright there. Can you go and get them both? I think they’re in the kitchen making coffee.” Kara slips her hands beneath Nia’s body, lifting her up tenderly and being careful to not jolt her too much as she carried her out of the room, Lena hot on her heels.

They part when they get to the med bay, Lena rushing off rapidly while Kara continues on inside, lying Nia down on the bed in there and doing the only thing she knows how to do, placing the heart rate monitor and starting it up. The only reason she knows how it works is because of how many times she’s watched Alex use it on her but hey, at least she’s learned something through all of the times she’s taken a punch or two.

Alex, Brainy and Lena are rushing in just as she’s finishing up with the wires.

“What’s going on?” Brainy rushes to Nia’s side, scooping her hand up between his and holding it to his chest tightly.

Kara steps away from Nia to give Alex room to get close to her and set up the rest of the equipment she needs. “Um, Lena says she’s been asleep for sixteen hours now and she’s not showing any signs of waking up soon.”

“Why are we only learning about this now? If she’s been asleep for that long then we should have been told about this hours ago.” Alex pins her harsh, protective gaze onto Lena, her accusation making Lena suddenly question her decision to wait it out and see if Nia would wake up on her own.

“I thought she was just sleeping for a long time because she’s not slept properly in days, I thought she’d wake up on her own and didn’t want to tell you in case it was normal so as not to disclose the information Nia entrusted me with.”

Alex shakes her head. “Secrets are not more important than the health of the team.”

“I’m sorry.” Lena ducks her head. “I didn’t want to betray her trust.”

“I know,” Alex says, her focus now on Nia rather than on holding the conversation with Lena. “Brainy, you can stay but Lena and Kara, you guys head out, I need the space to check her over, we’ll fill you in when we know more.”

“But—” Kara goes to argue but the sharp look she gets stabbed with from Alex has her quietening down and taking one last worried look at her friend on the bed before heading out. “Ok, we’ll wait upstairs.”

Lena doesn’t want to leave, she wants to stay and see what test results Alex gets from Nia but based on the spiky glare she was getting before and the quick dismissal she and Kara just got, she’s not welcome here.

She knows she messed up by not telling anyone that she couldn’t wake Nia up but really, her name is literally Dreamer, how is she meant to know when something is terribly wrong as opposed to Nia just doing what she does best, dream?

Kara pulls Lena out with her by her hand, her fingers squeezing around Lena’s in what she hopes to be a reassuring manner. “Come on, how about we get you some coffee? You look like you need it.”

“Yeah, ok.” Lena barely registers what Kara’s saying, too in her head about her choice to just see if Nia would wake up on her own instead of having Alex, a trained medical professional, look her over.

“Lena, look at me.” Kara senses that Lena’s not really listening and she needs her to be with her, mentally rather than just physically. “Look at me.”

Lena does, her eyes glistening as she fights back her tears at how bad she feels now. “I’m sorry, Kara. I didn’t mean for her to be like this, I thought she was just asleep.”

“I know, and that’s why you need to listen to me, Lena. We will fix this and Nia will be just fine, we always find a way and this is no different. I need you to tell me exactly what’s going on with Nia though so we can help, can you do that?” Kara holds eye contact with Lena, not letting her break it by carefully pressing a finger beneath her chin when she tries to duck her head. “I know that you were just trying to help and I’m not going to fault you for that.”

Lena’s chin wobbles, her bottom lip quivering in time with it. “Maybe you should. I can’t believe that I actually sat beside her for that long convincing myself that she would be fine, I should have known, I should have sensed that something was wrong but I just let it keep going and going. Who knows how long I would have sat there with her comatose beside me if you hasn’t come in and taken over.”

Kara’s hands move to Lena’s shoulders. “Hey, don’t beat yourself up. Let’s get that coffee and go over all the information we have and then we can go from there.”

Lena nods, her way of doing things is clearly flawed so it’s better if they go with Kara’s plan now rather than her own. “Alright.”

Lena watches Kara carefully. She focuses on the way her lips purse as she reads over the books Lena herself was reading not too long ago and she maps out the contours of the lines on her forehead with her mind, her vision digging into each crease and wishing she could smooth them out.

With a huff, Kara shuts the book she’s reading. “I’m not really sure what we can do from here, Lena. The dream itself isn’t too complicated but we can’t narrow down the meaning when we can’t make a proper match between what she saw and what’s written here and then what we can find, there seem to be multiple options for what they could mean. That’s without taking the reoccurring factor into account.”

“I know, I spent hours trying to figure it out too, all I could gather from it is that most of the sign point to it being related to an upcoming event and it must be big or at least important for it to be reoccurring how it is.”

Kara sighs heavily, picking up her coffee mug and taking a sip only to pull away in disgust when she realizes that it’s long since gone cold. “Ew.” With a quick blast of heat vision, her coffee is once again steaming hot.

Lena holds out her mug and Kara takes the hint, using a second blast of her heat vision to warm hers up too. “Maybe we should stop focusing on what her dream was and focus on what her dream is now.”

“What do you mean?” A crinkle forms between Kara’s eyes and it takes everything in Lena not to reach out with a finger and press down on the flesh to smooth it out.

Lena takes a deep breath, rerunning the logic through her head to make sure she’s not about to talk out of her ass in front of Kara. “Ok, so, hear me out. What if the reason Nia isn’t waking up is because she’s dreaming? Sounds pretty logical, right? So, if she is dreaming, there’s a good chance that it’s a different dream from before because her other dream was keeping her awake while this one is making her sleep, it’s two ends of the spectrum, too little and too much, we need to get inside of her head to see what’s happening.”

Kara’s face doesn’t change throughout her messy explanation and not for a good thirty seconds afterwards either, finally, she opens her mouth to speak, closing it again a moment later and thinking for a bit longer before coming up with something to say. “That’s a good theory.”

“Do you think it’s worth looking into?”

Kara nods. “I do and I know how to do it too.” Without further prompting, Kara makes quick work of setting all of Nia’s books into a relatively neat pile and then heads for the door, stopping to look back over her shoulder and beckon Lena to follow her. “You coming?”

Lena rushes to her feet, almost tripping as she finds her balance and ups her pace to catch up with Kara’s long, confident strides. “Where are we going?”

“The med bay.”

Lena can barely keep up with Kara, her strides far too determined for Lena’s uncertain gait.

“Alex, we’ve got a plan!” Kara announces their presence, “Brainy, I need that weird forehead thing you used to see into my mind when we first met and I need you to make it so Lena and I can go into her dream.”

Brainy frowns, “I think that if anyone is going into Nia Nal’s dreams, it should be me.”

“Are you caught up on all of the things that have been happening in her dreams recently?” Kara challenges.

Brainy hesitates, his hands still cradling Nia’s. “Well, no.”

“Then it has to be us, there’s too much stuff to catch you up on so we need you to just do whatever you can to make this happen so we can try and figure out what in the world is happening to Nia.” Kara moves over to Alex. “Have you found anything on any of the tests? Anything that might show why she’s like this?”

Alex looks down at Nia, sadness evident on her face. “No, I haven’t but she is stable.” She turns to Lena. “Hey, sorry I snapped at you.”

“Don’t worry about it, I deserve it.”

“No, you don’t.”

Brainy breaks through the moment, not letting them argue over something he deems insignificant when his girlfriend is lying prone on a bed in the med bay. “I’ll be right back, I have the device in storage still and I believe that it will only take me approximately eight minutes to repurpose it so you can enter her dreams.”

“Alright, we’ll go over the test results again just to be sure while you go and do that then, Brainy,” Lena says, a little worried about her plan now that they are actually going through with it and needing the reassurance of the tests to tell her that Nia is healthy enough that she can cope with having her and Kara’s consciousness darting around in her head for a little while.

Alex doesn’t put up much of a fuss at Lena wanting to double-check the results, she can tell by the apprehension clinging to her bones that Lena needs to see them for her own peace of mind rather than because she doesn’t trust her judgement and skills.

Lena takes the tablet Alex offers her and immediately notices that she has a lot of brain activity and that all of her stats are completely fine. That’s good news. “I hope this works.”

“Me too but why do you need to see her dream if she already told you what it is?”

“I think it’s a different one and I need to see it because I think that something terrible is going to happen and it’s going to happen sooner than we want it to,” Lena says, trying to rid the panic from her chest and ground herself before they get on with what they need to do.

Kara takes a seat beside Nia after pulling up a couple of chairs to the side of the bed. Of all of the strange things that she’s done over the years of her being Supergirl, this is going to be up there with the weirdest because seriously, she’s about to go into somebody else’s dream.

She’s had Brainy in her head before and Alex in her black mercy induced dream but to go into somebody else’s feels personal on a level that makes her a bit uneasy. It makes her feel like she’s invading Nia’s privacy a bit but as of yet, she hasn’t come up with any other ideas of how to help get Nia out of her comatose state so they are going to have to go through with Lena’s plan.

It doesn’t take a genius to see how much Lena is beating herself up because she didn’t instinctively know that Nia was in a bad way, how could she? Nia was just asleep, something that everyone sees on a regular basis since she’s always napping around The Tower and it makes sense that Lena would think that she’s just sleeping for a while to catch up on sleep after barely catching a wink for several days in a row. Kara just wishes she could say something to make Lena feel better. Maybe if the plan works it will help to alleviate some of the guilt that Lena is riddled with.

Those few minutes that Brainy is off sorting out his device to make it compatible with their situation feel like hours because they don’t have a lot to say, their worry for Nia palpable and their brains refusing to do them the service of allowing them to make small talk. It’s probably a good thing really, they would end up feeling bad for talking about the weather in a situation like this once it’s over anyway.

Brainy does appear not long after, with a confident swagger to his walk now that he has his mind partially occupied on his work rather than Nia’s wellbeing.

“I have recalibrated these devices so that you can enter her dream seamlessly. I have added an inbuilt distress signal so that I can pull you out if you need me to, this device will let me know when you want to come out anyway and I can remotely put you under. For safety, I would suggest you both be monitored the entire time you’re in Nia’s dreams. You will also wake up naturally if the dream comes to a natural end. That’s what we’re hoping for.”

“Ok, that sounds good,” Kara says, urging Lena to come and take a seat next to her by gently tugging on her sleeve.

Lena clasps onto the edge of Kara’s cape, nervous but trusting in Brainy and his device. He’s a smart guy and they have Alex watching over them too. This should be fine.

Brainy and Alex start surrounding them, working like a well-oiled machine as they set up the devices on their foreheads, a long, white bar of an item with wires coming off of it and then adding more wires around their bodies to track their stats while they are under, mostly just tracking brain activity, heart rate and blood pressure.

Lena tries not to fidget as Alex carefully sticks wires and electrodes onto her, repositioning them where she has to and being gentler than Lena has ever seen her be. She’s been told about Alex’s past as a doctor but she’s never really seen her in practice properly. It’s a nice surprise and it leaves her with no doubts that Alex was a good doctor, it’s almost a shame she quit being one but she does a lot of good as a badass vigilante too. A doctor, a secret agent and a superhero, Alex has done it all, she really has.

“Are you ready?” Brainy asks, giving them one last chance to back out, one that neither woman is about to take.

Kara and Lena share one last look before nodding, both of them nervous and doing their best not to show it. “We’re ready,” Kara speaks for them both.

“Three, two, one.” Brainy remotely switches on the devices and in an instant Kara and Lena are unconscious, their bodies sliding on their chairs until they are leaning against each other, keeping each other up like two cards in a card pyramid.

Kara is shocked to find herself lying on the ground in what appears to be a desert of some kind, sand trickling into her suit and making her feel all icky.

A quick glance around shows her that Lena is right beside her, also in the process of figuring out what’s going on and very intrigued by the glow of the bright turquoise sand they are resting on.

“Lena, are you alright?”

“Fine. Are you?”

“Yeah, let’s try and find Nia.” Kara heaves herself to her feet, hating the feeling of the sand racing its way through her suit until it’s pooled up in her boots. For a dream, this feels awfully real and any other time that would be cool but there’s not much worse than having sand in your shoes.

Lena takes a good look around. She uses her hand to block the rays of a harsh sun from her eyes, noting with a hint of excitement that it’s a red sun, the same as Rao, the sun from Kara’s home planet. “The sun is really pretty.”

“It is, it reminds me of home.” Kara smiles slightly but doesn’t linger on it for long, letting herself have only a tiny amount of time to embrace the moment before getting back to task.

They look all the way around them, looking out over the sand to try and spot anything other than desert and they don’t have to search for long because off in the distance to the south of them, they can spot a giant structure of what appears to be a castle of some kind, one that you would see in a fairy-tale. It has turrets and flags and towers. It’s majestic.

Lena finds herself drawn to it and not just because it’s the only thing here other than sand. “I have a feeling that Nia might be there.”

“You really think so?” Kara questions.

“I do.”

“Let’s go then.”

They trudge their way through the sand, cursing the coarse feeling of it as it rubs against their skin, hurting them even in the dream which doesn’t bode well if they have to face anything worse than some sand.

It takes them a while to get there but also simultaneously no time at all, their perception of time warped by the dream completely. They find themselves standing before a great gate, wood and metal intertwined to create a rustic-looking beauty that Lena thinks would make a great garden gate if it were much smaller.

Kara reaches out to try and push it open and trips when her hand goes right through it, her body falling after it. Lena can’t stop the snort of laughter that she lets out, the noise loud and obnoxious as she walks through the gate herself only to then trip over herself as her foot catches on Kara’s body that is still on the floor from where she fell.

“You just fell for me.” Kara laughs.

“Try that again after the second date and maybe I’ll find it cute.” Lena rolls her eyes, pushing herself to her feet and pulling Kara up with her, looking around the courtyard to see where they should go next. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Say what you want about dreams, they can be really helpful when you need a little bit of a hand figuring out where to go next,” Lena replies, looking up at one of the turrets of the castle that is glowing with a faint pink and yellow ripple.

Kara’s eyes widen at the sight. “That’s…something.”

“It sure is,” Lena says, finding the door closest to the turret and hoping that they will just find some stairs that will lead right the way up to it.

Once they are inside the castle, an easy feat if there ever was one, they become pretty bummed to find out that in every direction they look is a hallway that looks identical to the others, one that doesn’t fit into what a hallway in a castle should look like, one that you’d expect to find in a doctor’s office.

“Well, that’s less helpful.”

A loud, high-pitched scream from above them and somewhere to the right has all of their hair standing up, their ass cheeks clenching and their eyes widening. They follow it, almost by instinct at this point that if something is scary, they should go toward it like the idiots in movies that always die first.

As they are trying to find the source of the noise, the screech happens again, this time closer but still above them, perhaps directly above. Lena almost jumps out of her skin at the sound of it and holds a hand over her chest to steady her pounding heart. “Holy shit, I’m suddenly remembering why I usually leave the missions to anyone else but me. I can’t wait until I can get back to my lab and just pretend none of this ever happened.”

“As if, you come on a mission once and your life is forever changed and you can no longer back out of being sucked into coming out on more missions, we’ll have to get you started in training so you can learn to kick some major balls.” Kara smiles at Lena for a moment, her smile only then widening when she notices a little doorway blended into the wall, a panel of plaster jutting out on hinges in the most peculiar way. “Ah, a door.”

“That’s not a door, that’s a wall built by a blind person who thought they were building a window.” Lena reluctantly follows Kara through the gap, keeping her in arm’s reach at all times.

“Don’t be mean,” Kara says, a complete lack of bite to her tone. She reaches out behind her as a third scream echoes through the new hallway they are now in. Lena takes her offered hand and skims her eyes over the exposed brick of the new hallway they are in. It looks like a servant’s passage, much more befitting of a castle.

They come to the apex of a narrow set of stairs and come to a stop when they see something they were not expecting before.

“Hey, Nia,” Kara calls out quietly at the woman standing in the middle of a banquet hall atop a great wooden table. She’s dressed in a squirrel costume and is throwing the large, heavy candles from the table up at a boombox that is strung from the ceiling by a thick rope.

Nia turns to them rapidly, startled by their presence, and without thinking she tosses a candle in their direction. Kara, thinking quick on her feet, ducks. Lena isn’t so lucky and the candle hits her in her chest, sending her gasping to her knees while she cradles her injured left boob in her hands. “Ow!"

Nia’s hands shoot up to cover her mouth as she gasps in shock. “Oh my god! I’m so sorry, Lena!”

“Don’t worry about it.” Lena wheezes, making her way to her feet, hands still cradling her injured boob, “accidents happen.”

“Is your—” Nia points to her own boobs for a moment awkwardly, “ok?”

“Give me a minute to recover and then I’ll tell you.” Lena breathes heavily through her nose, releasing her boob after a few long moments. “Ok, ok, so, how are you, Nia?”

“Me? You’re the one that’s injured!” Nia exclaims.

Lena shrugs. “You’re the one in a comatose state in the med bay and the one that we had to use some of Brainy’s future tech to get into the dream of.”

Nia’s face goes blank. “What?”

Kara nods. “Yeah, that about sums it up. You went to sleep and haven’t woken up, we’re nearing seventeen hours at this point and this is a dream, nice squirrel costume by the way, you want some nuts?”

Nia looks down at what she’s wearing and her eyes grow so wide that both Lena and Kara momentarily worry that they might pop right out of her skull. “Oh, I hadn’t noticed that.”

“And what exactly did you think you were doing with the candles?” Lena asks, very confused about what’s happening and her now aching boob making it hard to concentrate.

A scream fills the air, ricocheting through the open space and answering Lena’s question. The boombox shakes with the force of the sound and it makes them all rush to cover their ears. “I was trying to destroy that.”

“Understandable but can we figure out how to get Nia to wake up so we can leave this hellscape please?” Kara asks, not enjoying her time here in any way, shape or form.

Lena agrees right away. “That’s a great plan. Nia, do you know if we can get higher up in the castle from here?”

“We’re in a castle? Neat.”

“That’s a no then.” Lena sighs. “How have you been here for this long and yet you don’t know anything about what’s going on?”

Nia’s lips turn down and she finally climbs off the table, coming down to the same level as Lena and Kara. “I don’t know, this just happens sometimes, I sort of become entwined with my dreams to the point where I don’t question them.”

“Well maybe that’s how we get out of here, we make you more aware of your dream and I know where to take you to do that.” Lena smiles at Nia, her dimples coming out as she tries to make Nia feel more comfortable. “We saw a turret on the way inside that was glowing, I’d bet my non-injured boob that we can find a few answers in there.”

“Ok, sounds good to me.” Kara shrugs, heading for a door that is on the opposite side of the banquet hall they are in.

The three of them pass through the door and as they do, Nia gasps. Her squirrel costume has disappeared and in its place, her Dreamer outfit has appeared except rather than the usual blue, it’s bright pink.

Lena tilts her head while looking at it, deciding if she approves of it or not. It’s kind of giving Stephanie vibes from LazyTown but she’s here for it. She gives Nia a thumbs up and then keeps heading on her way.

They follow the twists and turns of the hallways they have found themselves in, plain stone slabs adorning the floors while the walls are exposed brick. They feel like they are walking around in circles but there’s nothing else they can do but keep looking for a way up.

They scan each brick they pass and are careful not to trip on the uneven slabs, periodically stubbing their toes and cursing Nia’s dream for giving them all of the awful things people normally try to avoid in real life, sand in shoes, random screaming and now stubbed toes. This dream is nothing short of uncomfortable. Maybe that’s the point.

“Hey Nia, what kind of things annoy you?” Lena asks, eyebrows pulling together.

Nia shrugs. “I don’t know, this?”

Kara catches on to Lena’s train of thought much quicker than Nia does. “What annoys you just in general?”

“I don’t like when people chew with their mouths open.”

Kara shakes her head. “No, that’s not what we mean. What annoys you like…when we’re on a mission?”

“I don’t like booby traps.” Nia shrugs and just a moment later she trips on a wire tracing across the width of the hallway, sending her sprawling across the floor and barely avoiding the axe that swings down from the ceiling.

“Ah, so that’s going to be a problem.” Lena sucks her lips into her mouth. “Maybe we should be making her think about things that make her happy instead.”

Kara nods, staring at the axe for a moment and noting how sharp the edge is. “Nia, think about puppies or something.”

Like magic, a group of puppies come barrelling down the hallway from behind them and run right past them, not stopping for a moment and disappearing from view just moments after like they were never there in the first place.

“That’s kind of cool,” Lena admits. “Nia, make us a door leading to the glowing turret please, maybe a nice one, perhaps something elaborate and fancy, just for the hell of it.”

A white and gold door appears, swirling shapes engraved into it, leaves and flowers etched into the wood in places. It’s a really nice door basically.

Kara tries the door but it’s locked and even a good harsh shove with her shoulder proves fruitless, doing nothing more than starting up a nice bruise that will match the one on Lena’s left boob. “A key, Nia?”

A large brass key drops from the ceiling above them.

“Thanks.” Kara picks it up and slides it into the lock, opening it up to a spiral staircase. “Let’s get up there and get out of here, it sucks here, Nia, no offence.”

“If I can control it all then it means it’s a lucid dream.” Nia frowns. “Lucid dreams in Naltorians aren’t that common, despite our powers. It’s a sign of my powers trying to protect me from having dreams that could be detrimental to my health. I guess the other dream was getting to the point where I needed protection from it. The lucid dreams let me control my own dreams, hence letting me provide a safe space for myself but it’s also not uncommon for people to be terrorized in their lucid dreams because they don’t recognize them for what they are and let their emotions dictate their unconscious choices, that’s why the dream has sucked, it’s playing off my annoyance from my recent lack of sleep. It’s interesting to think about.”

They reach the top of the stairs as Nia finishes her explanation. They’re in the turret, they know that now because the glow is emanating from the centre of the room and it’s not the turret itself emitting the light but a portal watch, one similar to the design that Nia has seen Lena begin planning to build.

“I think that’s our way out.” Nia picks it up without hesitation, pressing a couple of buttons and watching as a portal opens. “Who wants to go first?”

Kara places a hand on Nia’s shoulder as she passes her. “Good job, Dreamer.” She passes through the portal.

Lena follows suit. “I agree with that sentiment, come right through after me, ok?”

“I will.”

Lena passes through.

Nia takes a deep breath and passes through.

Nia’s eyes flutter open to the bright lights of the med bay, forcing her to shut them again just a moment later because it hurts. “Ow, we need to add dimming bulbs in here.”

“We have them, we just don’t use them,” Alex replies, watching Nia’s stats for a minute before humming, happy that they are all normal. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“Thanks, it’s been a journey.”

“I know, I’ve been told. Kara and Lena woke up a little while ago, I offered to stay with you while they went to go and freshen up. Your boyfriend, however, refused to leave your side.” Alex shifts her gaze to Brainy, the Coluan face down on the mattress, snoring slightly.

Nia doesn’t fight the smile that spreads across her face. “Don’t wake him.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Alex puts her tablet down and presses the back of her hand to Nia’s forehead. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired.”

“You’ve been asleep for hours.”

“I know.” Nia laughs. “It wasn’t a relaxing sleep.”

Alex sits down on the chair Kara was unconscious in not long ago. “Was it really bad?”

“Not really bad. Not as bad as the reason I was stuck in my dream in the first place.” Nia’s eyes are already drooping again. “There’s something bad coming, Alex, something that’s going to be really difficult to handle and we have to be ready for it.”

Alex sniffs. “Then we’ll be ready.”

“I hope so.” Nia pressed her head back into her pillow.

“Is that such a good idea?”

Nia grins, little dimples appearing on her cheeks from how wide she’s smiling. “Yeah, I just learned how to lucid dream and I want to ride a unicorn. I know how to wake up by myself now, don’t worry.”

Alex shakes her head. “You can wait to practice your lucid dreaming later, we have fresh coffee in the kitchen for now.”

Nia pouts and it’s honestly a pretty good contender to Kara’s infamous pout. “Really?”

“Really, now get your butt up, we have preparations to get on with if your prediction is correct.”

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