Chapter 5/5

When we're moving / The same direction

You take the longer way / To find the end

I'd love to lift you / Out of your sorrow

Help you leave behind / Your heartache

-The Boxer Rebellion – "Low"

"I got a job," he concedes with a heavy sigh. "M'gann gave me a job. She's teaching me how to be a bartender."

"Okay, this is good," Ral approves, rearing his flaxen blonde head. "It wasn't part of the plan, but we can make this work." Mon-El turns his face away from the nosy apparition standing at his side.

"What?" Kara asks, excitement coursing suddenly through her veins. The thrill burns out quicker than expected, and her smile slips from her face. "Wait. You were keeping this a secret," she realizes. "Why didn't you tell me about this?"

Mon-El busies himself with zipping up his pants and rooting around for his shirt, avoiding her pinpoint examination, and most importantly, the bright blue of her shining eyes. Or how she stands there, naked but for her black high heels, but confident as though she were fully clothed in battle armor. "Because," he says, throwing up his hands. "I don't know if I'll be any good at it…at any of it," he says, curiously. "Already it's a lot to learn and a lot of pressure."

"Am I putting too much on pressure on you?" she asks, her confidence slipping enough to catch his attention. A seed of insecurity growing in her voice. Her nakedness now obviously apparent to her, she begins gathering her clothes, first pulling her hopelessly wrinkled skirt before slipping into her bra as though it's an afterthought. "I don't mean to put pressure on you," she explains. "I swore to myself that I wouldn't do that again – it's how we went all wrong in the beginning. Mon-El…no one knows better than I do how hard it is to come here with nothing. At least I had the Danvers, all you have is…me."

"Look at her," Ral whispers into Mon-El ear. "She thinks she's doing something wrong, brother. We can't have her thinking that. Not if we want this to work. She thinks she's not enough. How can she think that? Fix it."

"No," Mon-El says, shaking his head fervently. "You're not pressuring me. I just…." He scratches his cheek to hide the tic of emotion in his jaw, before it gives him away. "I just want to be good for you. Be what you need."

"You are," she insists, a lump of emotion rising in her throat, threatening to choke off her air. "You are what I need."

"No," he disagrees. "I mean, here maybe…with this," he says, indicating the desk and all that they'd just done. "This is great. It's amazing, Kara. And you are everything I've ever wanted in a mate. But I know that you can't say the same about me."

"Tell him, Kara," Ral insists, though Mon-El knows she can't hear him. "Tell him that he's an idiot and that he's what you want too. Tell him that you only feel truly loved for who you are when you're in his arms."

It's all the things he wishes she would say to him.

She can see it in the way his eyes shutter, as if he's lost contact with her and his attention is elsewhere. He's slipping away from her. "Where are you right now?" she ask, drawing him back to her. "Mon-El?"

"What?" His head snaps up, as he tears his attention away from Ral, who seems quite disappointed that Kara's attention has shifted elsewhere.

"Where did you go just then?"

"I don't know what you mean," he insists, covering. Mon-El shakes his head, like a dog agitated over an uncomfortable high pitch only it can hear. Briefly, she stretches out her hearing, tuning it towards anything that might explain his apparent discomfort, but finds nothing. "I'm right here."

"Are you okay?" she asks, fearfully.

"I'm good," he promises, straightening his spine and placing his hands on his hips.

Kara narrows her eyes suspiciously searching for the cracks in his façade. "Hold it together," Ral urges, in a most unhelpful manner. He wants to yell, to scream, that if his friend really wanted to be helpful he would just shove off. Mon-El mentally draws himself in tight, hiding the cracks from his mate's extraordinary vision.

"Okay," she relents. He's hiding something, she's certain, but she believes she already knows what it is and she plans to bring it out into the open, but first things first. "I'm happy for you," she tells him. "About the job. I think you'll be great at it."

"I didn't tell you because…if I'm not great at it…if it turns out I screw this one up too…I didn't want you to be disappointed."

"Mon-El," she sighs, the lump in her throat returning, wetness springing to her eyes. She recalls how disappointed she was in him when interning at CatCo turned out not to be his thing. She recalls her disappointment when he'd attempted to be muscle-for-hire for a local loan shark. "Not everyone finds themselves on the first try. And you're at a disadvantage because this is all new to you."

"You're telling me," he mumbles. "I wasn't going to keep it a secret forever," he promises. "Just until I knew if it would work out. I wanted to surprise you, because if it does, I can go off the stipend and move out of the DEO, maybe get my own place…."

"No more curfews," she gathers.

"No more curfews," he echoes, confirming the direction his thoughts lead.

Kara smiles, imagining waking in his arms each morning, a kaleidoscope of butterflies taking flight in her belly. He's so uncertain about his future and Kara wishes he could see what she sees when she looks at him. The limitless potential, the goodness he hides under false detachment and the empathy for others he masks behind laughter and flippancy. "You're going to do great," she encourages him, the way he has encouraged her on so many occasions. "But even if bartending isn't your calling…then you'll find something else. What's important is that you don't stop trying." Kara takes a deep breath and tilts her head to the side, pushing her glasses back in place on the bridge of her nose. "Make a deal with me, okay?"

"I am yours to command," he chuckles. Kara flinches, because she knows he's hiding pain and uncertainty behind that glib response.

"If you promise not to give up on you…I promise not to give up on you."

Mon-El hears a catch in her voice and born of this evidence, he understands that her vow is about more than just him finding a suitable vocation. It's about his life—their life. At times, he wonders if she can see the all the fear and despair and the loss he works so hard to hide from her, and he thinks that maybe her instincts are more impeccable than he'd realized. "How can I say no to you?" he asks, genuinely.

"Promise?"

"I promise. I won't give up." A charged look passes between them, as though reading the truth in each other's eyes, and tension in Kara's shoulders visibly releases.

"It's getting closer now, brother," Ral reminds him. "The storm approaches, growing closer with each breath. But you're going to be fine," he pledges. "She'll be here for you when I no longer can."

Mon-El's gaze snaps towards Ral. What was that supposed to mean?

"So, when do you start? At the bar, I mean?"

"Yeah…so, my new schedule starts tomorrow – 7 PM to 2 AM. No more curfews. At least not on the nights that I'm working."

"You'll come over after closing?" she asks, both wondering and giving permission at the same time.

Mon-El's smile lights up, two dimples appearing on his face. "If you want."

Kara's grin matches his and her head bobs eagerly up and down. "I'll leave the window open for you." Mon-El's smile slips a little as her words clearly remind him of something. His eyes drift away from her again. "What is it?" she inquires.

"'But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?'" he quotes perfectly, the memory inherited from his father serving him well. "'It is the east and Juliet is the sun.'"

"You read Romeo and Juliet?" she asks.

"Saw the movie," he corrects. "Last night after returning to the DEO. I asked Winn about it and he added it to my queue. Do you think we're doomed?"

"What?" she exclaims, horrified. "Why would you ask that?"

"You kept referencing the story and saying we were like them."

"Because we come from rival planets," she assures him. "Not because I think our differences are going to tear us apart. Mon-El…we have more in common than not. More and more, every day," she smiles coyly, clearly referencing their ever-converging sexual needs. Kara slips into her pink, faux-wrap blouse and straightens it carefully, so that it doesn't appear as though it's been recently thrown into a heap on the floor.

"You really believe that?" he asks, hopefully.

"I do," she confirms. "The destruction of our planets, the loss of our cultures, the loss of our families, and being forced to make our way on a strange new world; doesn't that bring us together more than any cultural divergences can pull us apart?"

"I hope so," he agrees.

"It's not like we're Gata Fel-Ur and Trel-Gand," she reassures him.

"Uh-oh," Ral grimaces. "Tread carefully, brother."

"What about Gata Fel-Ur and Trel-Gand?" Mon-El's attention piques at her mention of the famous mixed-raced mates. The powerful muscles of his arms and upper back tense at the mention of the notorious lovers, and he braces to hear what she might say.

"I just meant…I'm not afraid of you. Even if you could, I know you would never hurt me like that."

"What exactly have you been told?"

"Does it matter?" she asks.

"Well, it happened long before you were born," he points out. "Truth has a tendency to become fiction over time."

"Truth is always truth," she answers, shaking her head.

"Remember," Ral warns. "She only knows the story she was told, and she was child then."

"Depends on who's telling it," he counters. Mon-El drops into her desk chair, leaning back to listen to tale about to unfold. "You should know that…doing what you do."

"Fine," Kara relents, hopping up to sit on the edge of the desk. "Gata was sheltered and she got in over her head. Crown Prince Trel seduced her, isolated her from everything she ever knew and loved, and made her feel like a second class citizen in a palace that should have become her home. At the urging of the Kryptonian High Council, it was agreed in the marriage contracts that they would attempt to conceive a child naturally rather than through the birthing matrix. It was hoped that a naturally conceived child might unite Krypton and Daxam after centuries of separation. Not long after their bonding ceremony she became pregnant with this child. Then the man that she trusted and loved got drunk and killed her and the unborn child she carried, in the mistaken belief that she had been pregnant by another already at the time of their union. He was unwilling to risk having Daxamite power fall under the rule of a bastard Kryptonian heir. That's not going to be us, Mon-El. There are no more crowns, no more councils, and no people to unite. There's nothing left to rule."

He wants to rebut her story; to tell her everything he knows about what actually happened to Gata and Trel. But to make her believe the truth he would have to explain how he knows what he knows, and Mon-El isn't sure he wants to go back there, even if only in memory.

"She's not ready," Ral agrees. "And neither are you. Besides...why tell her when there's nothing that can be done?"

"We don't know that," Mon-El mumbles.

"Let her have her story," Ral pleads. "For now at least."

"What was that?" Kara asks, confused by his comment.

"Nothing," he covers. "I just meant that we don't know…that's the reason she died."

"We know enough."

After a moment of consideration, Mon-El relents without a fight. "I suppose. No wonder you hated me on spec. Thinking that we murder our pregnant wives on Daxam."

"Mon-El," she shakes her head. "Honestly…I didn't even remember that story until much later. After I stopped hating you for no reason."

"Well, that's something, I guess," Ral deadpans.

"Good to know," Mon-El nods. He moves to stand from the chair, but she places her foot on his knee which spikes his curiosity.

"There's something else I wanted…needed…to talk to you about. Actually, I was hoping that you'd bring it up on your own, but it's not like I gave you time to take a breath when you walked into the door. I practically threw myself at you, didn't I? I mean…it's just that I had been thinking about you all day, and waiting, without panties—"

"Kara, you're babbling," he chuckles, a dimpled grin spreading across his face. He could watch her do this all day. For a second, he wonders if she wants to talk to him about the night they had unprotected sex and what that might mean for them. "You're babbling and crinkling. What is it?"

Kara sighs, and then takes a deep breath. Now that the moment of truth is here, she's terrified of saying the wrong thing, of him thinking she's disappointed in him or that she wants to push him away. "Can we talk about…Valor?"

The smile melts from his face and he should have known—should have known—that she would figure it out in ten seconds flat and, damn it, he was supposed to be the one to tell her. But now, she's sure to be furious at him for not telling her the moment it happened. His brain scrambles for excuses, alibis, anything that might him out of this.

"She's giving you an opening, you idiot," Ral grates, frustrated. "Come clean now while you can. If you lie to her and she proves it on her own, you will most certainly lose her trust."

Ral isn't wrong, Mon-El knows. "I came here to tell you. I wanted to tell you before you figured it out. I guess…I underestimated you," he chuckles raggedly, scratching at his cheek. "I just want you to know that there wasn't a plan," he adds, afraid to search her face for clues to her inner thoughts. "It just…happened."

"I know," she nods.

"I heard the crash from a few miles away and…."

"And you couldn't do nothing," she finishes.

"Yeah," he confirms, drumming his fingers on the desk.

"That part I understand, baby," she soothes. The term of endearment surprises—thrills—him, giving him hope, and he can't stop himself from looking up into her face. "No one understands that better than I do. I'm so proud of you."

"For becoming the hero you always wanted me to be?"

"No," she replies. "For making your own choice…for being your own person."

And it's true, Mon-El realizes. In the early hours of the morning, he heard the sounds of lives in distress, and he didn't stop to think about what Kara might have done in the same situation. He simply acted, in a moment of absolute purity. In that instant, as he leapt into action while monitoring the sounds of a tearful woman's 911 call, Mon-El of Daxam was more himself than he had ever been in perhaps his entire life.

Kara climbs down from her seat and settles into his lap. His arms go around her waist as if they are meant to perch there. "But tell me about the rest of it." She cups his cheek with one hand and turns his gaze to meet hers. "The stuff they're not talking about on the news."

"What stuff?" he asks, clearly confused about what information she wants.

"The transformers," she offers, the pride in her eyes just a moment before not turning to pity and sadness.

"Oh, she's good," Ral praises, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, an expression of admiration on his face. "She'll know all your secrets soon enough and you won't even need me anymore."

"You know about that?" Mon-El's pitch rises, a tinge of fear in his voice. "How do you know about that?" He had been so careful. Blended in with members of the DEO, avoided all the cameras by moving quickly and using blind spots, and moving up towards the roof where the security was significantly more lax.

"After the news hit about Valor this morning, I started fielding calls from people with eyewitness reports of a man, on multiple occasions, purposefully draining power transformers from the rooftops of several downtown office buildings. Their descriptions matched the description of Valor provided by Mrs. Hardwick."

"Who?"

"The woman you saved," Kara informs him. "Anyway…I did the math and put it together, which is kind of my job. What I need you tell me is…why?" She knows why, or at least she thinks she does. But he needs to talk about it, and she needs to hear it from his own mouth. "I knew that you could absorb electricity to repair your body on a cellular level—you were doing it before you came out of your coma. But I never realized you'd learned to control it."

"Barely," he acknowledges. "I can absorb it, all right, but shutting it off can be tricky. And when I get too much I have to burn it off or I feel sick."

"According to the eyewitnesses, all of the events occurred between three and five in morning. All times when you should have been safely signed in at the DEO, which means you were breaking curfew to do it." Kara looks at him pointedly. "I know that you would never break the DEO's rules unless it was for a good reason."

Mon-El shrugs in a nonchalant manner that doesn't fool her for a second. "I was never very good at following rules."

Kara cards her fingers through his hair, and Mon-El leans into her touch. "When was the last time you slept for more than an hour or two at a time?" she asks.

Mon-El's eyes slide over the Ral, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, and a knowing smirk on his face. An hour or two at a time would be a generous estimate of the kind of sleep he's been getting. "Does the Medusa Virus count?"

"No, it doesn't." She pins him with a glare that tells him he's still expected to answer the question she asked. "When?"

"It's been a while."

"When?"

"I slept fine for the first two weeks after coming out of stasis, but then…." His voice trails off.

"Then the nightmares started," she adds. Off his shocked his expression, she interjects, "Don't look so surprised. I came here with my memories intact, just like you. Sometimes I wonder if Kal-El wasn't the lucky one. He craves the memories I have of Krypton, and I'm thankful for them, but I wouldn't wish those last few days on anyone. The terror of it…still haunts me." Her eyes glaze over as though recalling the parts that she allows to penetrate her memory.

"Nightmares," he echoes. "Right." If only that was all of it. If only he could tell her about the invisible dead friend that stalks his every move. The dead friend he's not sure he wants to abandon him. How can he ever find a way to say goodbye?

"But it's important to sleep and it's important to dream, Mon-El? Even if it's terrifying. I know…I tried to avoid it, too. But it's a part of the grieving process and if you don't do that then it's like…running on that treadmill of yours. Pouring in all that effort and getting nowhere."

"Beautiful and smart," Ral points out.

"It also helps to have someone to talk to. And you need to know that I am always here for you. No matter what. It's what mates are for, right?"

Words easier said than actualized, Mon-El knows, but he loves her nonetheless for saying them. It's just that there's so much she doesn't know, and telling her would surely cost him the gains he has made with her. "Right," he replies.

"I believe it's why Rao brought you to me." Kara leans down a places a chaste kiss on her mate's lips. "Because you need me."

"She's not wrong," Ral chimes in. "I mean…it was probably Lure or Bask or…hey, maybe even Fallon. But who am I to argue over divinities at a time like this? Your arrival on her planetary doorstep was no accident, brother. You'd be smart to accept this."

Mon-El slides his hand up her spine to the back of her neck and steers her down for another kiss. She doesn't resist as his lips takes hers in a much less chaste fashion than the kiss she initiated. When he pulls away, the room spins a little around her, her breath coming in quick pants. "I definitely need you," he agrees, his gray eyes warming over. "Have I mentioned lately that I made an excellent choice for a mate?"

Kara throws her head back for a laugh. "Oh…you chose me, did you?"

"That's the way I remember it," he chuckles. "Long before you took me to your splendorous bed. For which I am eternally grateful, by the way.

"Liar," she accuses, but there's no heat in her voice.

"No," he nods his head. "I am grateful." His hand slithers up her skirt, coming within centimeters of her heated promised land.

Kara smacks him in the chest, but lets his hand claim its spot without a fight. "I meant about you choosing me."

"Oh…that's completely true."

"When did that happen? I must have missed it."

"It's no wonder," he tells her. "You were a little busy punching me in the face and saying, 'Stay down, Daxamite!' Then when you were all fire, and steel and uncompromising authority, I knew I was lost. Did I mention the legs that go up to…here?" his questing thumb brushes against her warm and still damp thatch. Kara's breath catches before she giggles that laugh; the one that lets Mon-El almost believe for half a second that he can make her happy. He grins in return. I love you.

His eyes speak of emotions that his mouth has yet to reveal, and Kara finds her lungs unable to work for a moment. Does he feel those things she sees in his eyes? Truly? Is he aware of it? Her belly flutters deep and low in the pit of her womb. Will he say the words? And will she be ready to hear them when he does?

On Krypton, marriages were made for love and affection, but on Daxam such was not the case. There, children were paired off with plans toward consolidating power and currency and gaining political capital. Mon-El would not have been raised with the same expectations of a mate that she was. Kara wonders, for the first time, who had been his betrothed? Like all Daxamite children he would have been matched with a mate before reaching puberty and then wedded at some point during young adulthood. Yet, he had never spoken of a wife or even any family members, but there must have been someone. She resolves to one day ask about the life taken from him.

But, she wonders, can he see in her eyes what she sees in his? Is that what she feels for him? Love? Surely, undeniably, there is affection—she would never allow him to be so free with her body were there not. She has given herself to him to in so many ways; her body, her commitment, her future, but she withholds her heart.

There's a voice inside that whispers she can still lose him. He teeters on the edge of something he might not survive and if she lets herself love him and loses him…it will destroy her. She cannot lay herself bare in that way, not until she learns how to help him survive.

"We can't," she sighs, brushes his hand away from between her legs, and adds, "Again."

"I bet we could if we tried," he disagrees.

"There's too much to fix, Mon-El, and we should do it as quickly as possible. There's no time to delay."

"Great," he replies, as though game for whatever she has in mind. "What are we fixing?"

"Look, James assigned me the Valor story. He wants me to get an interview with our new superhero."

"Seriously? He hasn't figured it out yet? Just a few months ago I was fighting that creature alongside him…."

"Sometimes people only see what they want to see…or what you let them see." She points to her glasses to prove her point. "I should know."

He felt the crushing weight of his heroic choice weighing down upon him once more. "Yeah, I don't know how I feel about giving an interview."

"You don't have to—not really. That's the beauty of it. We sit down together and decide what information we'll release to the public and what we won't. That way the ravenous public will me mollified for the time being and you'll be able to maintain a great deal more anonymity."

Mon-El considers her proposal and feels the heavy weight easing from his shoulders. "It could work."

"Of course it will, don't be silly. It's my idea, isn't it?" Kara reaches up and in two shakes of tail feather her flowing locks disappear into a neat and tidy chignon, and she's back to being Kara Danvers, Intrepid Stringer. A sliver of sadness streaks through Mon-El, as he watches his sunshine, the Kara only he gets to see, be enveloped by the alter ego she wears like a second skin.

"So what now?"

"We go to DEO, together, and confess to J'onn and Alex about your nocturnal activities and how it led to the appearance of Valor."

Mon-El's head falls back smacking into the headrest of her office chair. He grimaces almost comically. Only Kara would recognize the hint of truth in his expression. "Do we have to?"

"Yes…we do," she answers, staring at him over the tops of her extraneous glasses like a humorless school marm. "Besides…what do you think are the odds that Alex hasn't figured it out already?"

"I'm going to guess the odds are pretty low."

Kara shrugs. "There's a chance she's having an off day. Or that she's been locked in a panic room somewhere without access to a television…or her phone."

"Well if she didn't have her phone that would explain why she hasn't contacted you about being locked in a panic room," he reasons. "Whatever that is." Kara giggles, and an answering grin spreads across Mon-El's face, deepening the dimples there. After a moment, his face slides back to a more serious landscape. "All right then. I suppose I should go dance to some music."

"What…? I don't…oh! I think you mean 'face the music'." Kara gathers her duffel bag as well as her purse and reaches her hand for his, holding it as he stands up.

"Is that the same thing as a Faragut Nemsan?" he wonders.

"I'm not familiar."

"It's a Daxam custom where a citizen stands before the wronged and acknowledges wrongdoings so that they may be redressed."

"Sounds about right," she nods, walking with him to the door.

"I like the way 'face the music' sounds better," he tells her. "Less like I'm going to have my ass handed to me and more like I'm going to a party."

Kara laughed, locking the office door behind her as they step out into the hall. "C'mon," she chuckles and then takes his hand again. "I'm sure it won't be that bad, and I know how much you love a party."

The End