[DEO Headquarters, Medical Bay — July 2017, 11:47 PM]
The hospital bed was too short.
Mon-El's feet hung over the edge, a minor discomfort that somehow bothered him more than the IV drip in his arm or the monitoring equipment attached to his chest. He stared at the ceiling, counting tiles, counting breaths, counting the seconds since his father had died in his arms.
Three thousand two hundred and sixteen. Give or take.
"Your cellular readings are remarkable." Dr. Hamilton stood at the foot of the bed, reviewing data on her tablet with an expression of professional fascination. "The lead concentration in your bloodstream should have been lethal within seconds. Instead, your adaptive evolution accelerated to compensate in real-time."
"I survived."
"You more than survived." She turned the tablet to show him graphs he didn't understand. "Your cells have fundamentally restructured their response to lead exposure. What would have killed you six months ago now registers as minor stress. Stage five adaptation, possibly higher."
"Great." The word came out flat. Empty. He didn't care about cellular adaptation or remarkable survival rates. His father was dead. His mother was dead. He was the last of his bloodline, alone on a planet full of people who'd watched his family try to conquer them.
Dr. Hamilton studied him for a moment, then set down her tablet. "I'll give you some privacy. The physical recovery is progressing well—you should be clear for discharge by morning." She paused at the door. "I'm sorry about your father. He seemed like a good man."
"He was." Mon-El's voice cracked slightly. "He really was."
The door closed behind her. Silence settled over the medical bay—the hum of equipment, the distant murmur of activity in the corridors, the sound of a city trying to recover from near-extinction.
Mon-El closed his eyes and saw his father's face.
Be braver than I was. Lar Gand's final words, whispered through blood and dying breath. Don't wait so long to do what's right.
He hadn't waited. He'd fought his mother, won the trial, tried to end things peacefully. And Lar Gand had died anyway—murdered by the woman he'd loved, betrayed by the queen he'd served.
What was the point? What was any of it for?
The door opened again. Mon-El didn't look up, assuming Dr. Hamilton had forgotten something.
"Hey."
Kara's voice. Soft, tired, familiar.
He turned his head. She stood in the doorway, still in her Supergirl suit, soot and dust coating the blue fabric. Her hair was disheveled, her face marked with exhaustion—she'd been working rescue operations since the lead sky cleared, pulling survivors from rubble, coordinating emergency response.
"You should be resting," he said.
"So should you." She crossed to the bed, pulled a chair close, sat down without asking permission. Her hand found his on the blanket. "How are you feeling?"
"Hollow."
She didn't try to fix it. Didn't offer platitudes or comfort or promises that everything would be okay. Just held his hand and sat there, her presence a warmth against the cold emptiness in his chest.
"J'onn has casualty numbers," she said after a while. "Preliminary reports."
"Tell me."
"Twelve city blocks sustained major damage. Three hundred and forty-seven injured, most non-critical. Forty-three confirmed dead." A pause. "Better than bombardment would have been. Better than extinction."
"Still forty-three people."
"Still forty-three people," she agreed. "Plus the Daxamite casualties. The lead killed everyone who didn't evacuate in time."
Mon-El thought about the soldiers he'd fought—young men and women following orders, believing they were building a new home for their dying people. They'd been wrong. They'd been invaders. But they'd also been people, with families and hopes and lives that ended choking on Earth's atmosphere.
"I helped kill them." His voice was quiet. "The device—I asked Lena to activate it. I knew what it would do."
"You saved billions."
"By killing thousands."
"By stopping an invasion." Kara's grip tightened. "Mon-El, they were going to burn cities. Murder civilians. Enslave an entire planet. You made an impossible choice, and you chose to protect the people who couldn't protect themselves."
"That doesn't make it easier."
"No. It doesn't." She lifted his hand, pressed her lips against his knuckles. "It's never easy. Every time we save someone, we wonder about the people we couldn't save. Every time we stop a threat, we think about the cost." A breath. "But we keep doing it anyway. Because the alternative is worse."
He looked at her—really looked, past the costume and the cape, past the symbol on her chest. She was tired too. Grieving too. She'd lost friends in the invasion, colleagues, civilians she couldn't reach in time. But she was here, holding his hand, offering comfort she probably needed just as much.
"I love you," he said.
"I know." A small smile, the first he'd seen since the lead sky cleared. "I love you too."
---
A food tray appeared sometime around midnight—hospital standard, green Jell-O prominently featured. Mon-El stared at it without appetite, the idea of eating almost obscene when so many people were hungry or injured or dead.
Kara reached over and ate the Jell-O.
"Hey—"
"You weren't going to eat it." She finished the cup, set it aside. "And Jell-O is wasted on the grieving."
"That's... not a saying."
"It is now." She stood, crossed to the meal distribution unit, returned with two more cups of green Jell-O. "Want to split these?"
Despite everything, Mon-El almost smiled. "You're ridiculous."
"I'm hungry. There's a difference." She handed him a spoon. "Eat something. Doctor's orders."
"You're not a doctor."
"I'm a Kryptonian. We're naturally authoritative."
He ate the Jell-O. It tasted like nothing—artificial sweetener and gelatin, textures without meaning. But Kara was watching him with such hopeful determination that he finished the entire cup anyway.
"There," she said, satisfied. "Progress."
"It's Jell-O, not therapy."
"Small steps." She settled back into her chair, drawing her knees up, making herself comfortable in a way that suggested she planned to stay. "J'onn told me to tell you that the team's holding together. Alex is coordinating cleanup. Winn's tracking any Daxamite signals that might indicate returning forces. Everything's... as stable as it can be."
"And you?"
"I'm here." She met his eyes. "Where I want to be."
The night stretched on. Kara dozed in her chair, waking periodically to check on him, to squeeze his hand, to remind him he wasn't alone. Mon-El lay in the too-short bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about fathers and mothers and the complicated grief of losing people you loved and hated in equal measure.
Sometime before dawn, he slept.
His father's face followed him into dreams.
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