Basic premise = What if the 3x01 storyline went a little bit differently? All kinds of feels, and maybe even a reveal.

A/N: Some liberties are taken with the storyline and previous/past events, but the universe is canon.

Multiple POVs.

Please keep in mind I'm new at this...and quite obviously have no rights to the source material...here goes nothing

Alex feels the cloud of splintered wood and gravel as it descends at her back, she hears the sounds of the explosion give way to a dense echo from where she kneels on the ground.

A familiar hand comes to rest on her arm, and she turns to see Maggie in front of her.

She can see she's trying to tell her something, but it's hard to make sense of it against the ringing in her ears.

She focuses, willing her brain to pay attention to her fiancé's voice.

"Are you okay?"

She nods her head and surveys the detective's face ensuring she too is unharmed.

A little dusty, but fine she thinks.

She takes Maggie's hand and accepts her help in standing.

Around them, the sights and sounds of the scene come into harsh and jarring focus.

On reflex, she has her gun out, but in reality, she has no idea what or where the danger is.

They need answers now.

"Winn…J'onn, what's going on."

She presses her hand against the device in her ear as she tries to suppress the static she hears.

J'onn's determined voice finally breaks through and with it the heavy reality of their situation.

"Schott, did you see where that missile came from?"

"No, there's no heat signature, no atmospheric disruption, no electromagnetic signature… Alex, can you see anything?

She doesn't.

"Negative visual contact… it, it came out of nowhere."

Distant sirens fill the brief gaps of silence as she desperately tries to find J'onn and Kara in the crowded landscape.

Nothing about this is making any sense. They knew there might be an attack, how could they not see it?

Any further thought is cut off as her comm picks up again and Kara's voice cuts in and out.

"pressure regulator…low altitude."

She only manages to make out a few words before another explosion shakes the already unstable pier.

The building in front of her shudders and glass shatters to the pavement in response.

She and Maggie shield themselves from the new onslaught of debris as the ground groans beneath their feet.

The sky remains ominously vacant of any threat she can see.

Come on, where the hell is it?

The answer unspoken question comes as Winn and Jonn's frantic words reach her.

"I can't track the explosive source; the radar is not picking up any underwater signals."

"I'll clear the building. Danvers, Sawyer stay on the waterfront. Supergirl, find that submarine."

Kara's broken words finally fit together in her mind, and she catches up to what everyone else already knows, that they know what's attacking them, but they have no way to know how to stop it.

Maggie must somehow realize the turn the situation just took because she doesn't even question it before taking off after her and through the flow of panicked citizens.

They are almost to the water's edge when the feel of wind surging overhead forces her attention, and she looks up just in time to see the streak of red and blue cutting through the sky before it disappears into the water.

She takes off the rest of the way in a sprint.

God dammit Kara.

She feels helpless as they are forced to come to a stop. The water's calm surface betraying the uncertainty beneath her and the fear inside.

Every worst-case scenario is playing on a loop in her head until the harrowing moment when the third explosion hits and she doesn't have to imagine anything anymore.

With her eyes fixed toward the water, the full weight of its consequences bears down on her.

She tries in vain to reach her.

"Supergirl?"

"Supergirl?"

And then in desperation.

"Kara, answer me!"

"Kara!"

She closes her eyes and strains her hearing for any sound of her sister's voice.

She can't tell you how much time passes, but she can tell you when it stops.

A thundering explosion overcomes the frantic sound of sirens and panicked shouts and dissolves into a disquieting calm that can only hint at the disaster before her.

When she opens her eyes, there is no mistaking what happened.

The mangled steel and waves of debris tell her everything she needs to know.

As abruptly as it had all started, it was over.

Her sister's words from that morning echo in her mind.

'I will always make the decision I made.'

Kara reaches the missile just as it leaves the hull.

She braces against the weight of it but is pushed back by the force, and she knows.

Knows she won't be able to hold her breath much longer, knows that even if she could, she is still too weak from the first explosion.

The metal groans against her hands.

She hopes it will be enough.

It has to be enough.

'Supergirl saves the world. Why would I choose to be anyone else?'

She looks over her shoulder, her plan growing more improbable with each passing second.

She strains her hearing as it begins to fade.

There are so many other sounds she wishes she could focus on right now, so many other people, but she forces herself to block everything else out.

'My mother didn't send me to Earth to fall in love with a human, have children, live in a house with a white picket fence.'

The unfamiliar heartbeat hammers in her ears until the escalating rhythm peaks.

The sound of the firing pin resonates at last.

She wills what strength remains and pushes back, finding purchase against the current as she hurtles herself and the missile back toward the submarine.

Everything slows down then, pushes in on itself before ripping apart.

She shuts her eyes against the onslaught of pain, and the last thing she recognizes is Alex's voice as it erupts inside head becoming part with a harsh, conflicting mixture of sounds before merging into one singular, piercing pitch.

All her senses fade into chaos; explode into a blinding light, then nothing.

The world and its madness mute around her.

Alex will have time to think later about how she sees it; a flash of red in a literal sea.

She will have time to be reminded of her own fears and the nightmares when they return in the days to come.

But right now, there is no time for anything else…so she jumps.

The frigid water shocks her system, and it takes precious seconds for her body to respond.

Regaining control, her lungs burn in the effort it takes to swim deeper.

The need for oxygen feels desperate, the achingly familiar panic of not enough air and not enough time threatening to consume the progress of her efforts.

She pushes back against the cold blackness.

'Kara Danvers saved me more times than Supergirl ever did.'

The visage of red that appears is so sudden and surreal she cannot be sure it is real.

She closes her eyes and feels the heavy weight of Kara's cape in her hands; there is no time left for doubt or relief.

Breaking the surface oxygen floods her body, and her arm reflexively tightens around her sister's waist in a desperate attempt to keep them both afloat.

She is losing the struggle against her failing strength when she suddenly sees J'onn next to her in the water and before she can even feel grateful, they are back on the cracked pavement.

She doesn't comprehend everything that comes next.

Voices she can't quite recognize and faces she can't quite see filter in and out.

She feels the detached sensation of Kara removed from her arms.

She tries to stand, to follow, but her body revolts against the strain of her efforts and she remains on the broken ground as violent shivers wrack her form.

Somewhere in her mind, she registers her own symptoms of hypothermia and shock.

Everything comes in and out of focus in time with her erratic heartbeat.

She feels a mask on her face and the intrusion of air into her lungs followed by a sharp pain in her arm and the feeling of something heavy wrapped around her.

The shock of warmth and pain forces her out of her own confusion and into the haunting reality that surrounds her.

Her mind rushes to make sense of what she sees as the world speeds back up.

Images of a nightmare fill her vision.

Kara's still form atop her torn cape.

Lena's fingers held firmly against her neck as she shakes her head.

Maggie back to her as she presses over and over against her sister's chest.

She pushes weakly against the hands holding her back.

Her own broken voice reverberating and unrecognizable as she pleads with them to let her go.

"I have to help. I can help."

But she can't.

The last of the adrenaline keeping her conscious threatens to leave her.

The edges of her vision darken and blur.

She closes her eyes.

But the images remain.

There is no waking up from this.

Kara remembers silence like this.

It reminds her of the void of space.

The doubt in that stillness.

Of wanting it to end.

Of fearing it when it does.

It reminds her of the eery sense of calm that filled the city the night after the invasion.

Of Loved ones held a little tighter, prayers of thanks said a little louder, of the quietness that gave way to panic.

The city screamed for weeks — a cacophony of sirens and alarms.

A city she fought to protect, fighting back in anger and distrust.

Kara had already seen one world destroy itself.

She would not allow another.

She would not be responsible.

She had presumed safety in happiness, had confused love for humanity.

She could not allow herself to be fooled any longer by the want of these things.

So that night she grieved, and by the morning she forgot.

She grieved the love she had felt, the comfort it reminded her of.

She grieved the reminder of her planet's virtues and the forgiveness of its sins.

She grieved all the things she had lost in this place.

This place, her home.

She has been many things to many people here, but never who she was.

And now that they knew the truth of her, she would never get the chance.

That is what was left to grieve.

Not the loss of a man, but the loss of what the love of others had given her.

Memories…forgiveness…safety…innocence.

This world did not deserve her burdens; it deserved her humanity.

And she had lost that too.

She had killed to protect this place.

To protect her home.

And in return, it killed the only human part of her.

So she had grieved.

And now, for the briefest of moments, she gave up.

Because Kara Zor-el was lost to the quite of space.

Because Kara Danvers was lost to the weight of humanity.

Because how can she save anyone if she is broken.

There is a box somewhere down here and I'm told that if you click on it you can make words magically appear for me to read...Yea for magic, and you!