Chapter 3: 3. Getting Lost
It took about five minutes for things to get even worse.
Kara had just set Lizzy down. She’d only taken her eyes off of her for a second, and she was just gone. She couldn’t believe it; her first day as a mother, and she’d already lost her kid.
“Could someone please tell me why there is a small child running around unattended in my Secret Government Facility?” J’onn somehow managed to convey equal amounts of accusation and disappointment along with a subtle undercurrent of resignation in a single sentance.
Kara was very familiar with that particular ability of his from her early days as Supergirl.
“Ummm...” She pushed her way through the unusually thick crowd on the DEO’s main floor to find J’onn dragging a belligerent Lizzy out of his office by the hand. She winced at the size of their audience, nearby agents doing their best to look busy and not at all like they were eavesdropping and trying really, really hard not to laugh. “I can explain?”
J’onn looked even more annoyed than he sounded. “Miss. Danvers...”
Kara winced. Oohh... last names were never a good sign.
“I take it that you are responsible for this?”
Lizzy took advantage of J’onn’s shift in attention to yank her hand free. She glared up at him, arms crossed over her round toddler belly, and blue eyes snapping with impotent rage. When he just frowned at her, she stomped a bare foot, her small vocabulary seemingly insufficient for the depth of her wrath.
“Sort of?” Kara tried to pick Lizzy up, but it was like trying to lift an armful of angry Jello. Angry Jello that shrieked as if it was being murdered.
“How can you be sort of responsible for a child?” J’onn demanded, raising his voice over the noise.
“It’s complicated...” Kara finally managed to get a grip on the kid, at which point Lizzy gave up mid-yell, collapsing limply in Kara’s arms as a last dramatic protest.
“I see.” J’onn left off his disapproving scowl to look past her, eyebrows raised. “Speaking of strays...” he muttered under his breath. “ Miss Luthor, what brings you to the DEO?”
Kara half-turned, shifting Lizzy to rest more comfortably against her shoulder, glad to see that she hadn’t lost Lena too.
“That’s part of the complicated, I’m afraid.” Lena confessed, joining Kara with a light touch to the small of her back, her fingers warm even through two layers of clothing. “Though I have to say, I’m relieved you need an explanation.”
“Explanation for what?” Alex cut in, her timely arrival sending most of their audience scattering.
“Alex!” Kara had literally never been so happy to see anyone in her life. “It’s a long story, but could we maybe...” she glanced around at the remaining oh so casually not eavesdropping co-workers, “talk somewhere more private?”
“We can use my office,” J’onn offered. “So long as you keep this one,” He levelled his brows at the toddler still playing possum. “Out of my cookies.”
Lizzy opened one eye. “Cookah?” she asked hopefully.
Kara sighed. “No more cookies!”
“You do have to admire her single-minded pursuit of a goal,” Lena admitted, shaking her head. “Shall we?”
Alex nodded, she and J’onn leading the way back to J’onn’s office. J’onn held the office door open for them, waving them towards a set of chairs in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”
Kara and Lena sat; Lena gracefully, crossing her legs and folding her hands neatly on her knee, looking every inch the professional CEO in a business meeting, for all that she was in jeans instead of a skirt, and Kara more collapsing than sitting, unused to juggling a second person. Lizzy instantly started wriggling in her lap. “’Izzy, down!”
“Lizzy up,” Kara retorted. “Here...” She fished the stuffed dog out of the diaper bag and handed it to her. Lizzy reluctantly subsided, leaning back against Kara’s chest and hugging the dog around its neck. She glared at J’onn through fluffy white fur as he sat down in his own chair on the other side of the desk and moved the small plate of cookies that Kara assumed had been their original bone of contention, away from the edge. Staring back at her, he very deliberately picked one up and took a bite.
Lizzy grumbled.
Alex stayed on her feet, arms crossed, and her gaze moving suspiciously between Kara and Lena. “Since Kara brought you here, Miss Luthor,” she said finally. “I’m guessing you’re involved in this somehow?”
Lena held up her left hand, showing off her rings. “Biblically, as it turns out. And please, call me Lena. If we’re going to be sisters, we really should be on a first name basis.”
Alex’s jaw dropped.
J’onn choked on his cookie.
Kara hid her face in her hands.“Lena!” she whined.
“What?” Lena was all innocence.
“Okay, back up.” Alex sounded a little strangled, but she rallied quickly. “Can we start from the beginning? Kara, who is this kid? And when exactly did you get married?”
Kara peeked through her fingers. “You really don’t know?”
Alex and J’onn both shook their heads and Kara dropped her hands with a sigh of relief. Whatever was messing with reality, it hadn’t spread to her family yet.
“So...” she started awkwardly, resisting the urge to fidget with her glasses. “Remember how you’ve kind of always wanted to be an Aunt?”
Alex’s eyes widened, and then narrowed. “That’s not funny.”
“You have no idea how much I wish it was a joke.”
Alex looked dubious. “You’re serious?”
Kara nodded.
“How did this happen?”
“I have no idea... Lena and I woke up together this morning, and she was just... there, in the apartment, and there was all this baby stuff, and pictures, and-.”
“Wait.” Alex frowned. “You woke up together?”
“Not on purpose!” Kara protested. “I went to bed with-“ She clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh no...” she gasped. “I forgot all about Mon-El.”
“Mon-El?” three voices questioned simultaneously. Lizzy just made a face.
“Umm... yeah?” Kara squeaked. “We kind of... um...”
J’onn held up a hand. “Please, don’t finish that sentence.”
“Who is Mon-El?” Lena sounded far less amused than she had a minute ago.
“Oh, um... Mike? He invited himself to your fundraiser...”
“I see... And is he your...?”
Kara shook her head. “No! I mean... we haven’t...we didn’t exactly... I don’t really want to talk about it,” she finished lamely. Understatement of the year. If she hadn’t already been pretty sure sleeping with Mon-El was a mistake, completely forgetting about him afterwards, even given their extenuation circumstances, would have been a huge red flag. She winced. “I should probably make sure he’s all right, though.”
“I’ll have someone look into it.” J’onn offered, still looking uncomfortable. “So, you two woke up together. In your apartment or Miss. Luthor’s?”
“Neither,” Lena interjected, explaining the situation far more succinctly than Kara ever could have. She finished with Bill from security. “Whatever, or whoever is responsible for this,” she concluded. “They didn’t just put us into` bed together. They put us into an entire life together.”
“So why aren’t we affected?” Alex asked J’onn, who shrugged.
“If it were only me, I would say it had something to do with my psychic abilities, but if you’re immune, I think we need to consider other possibilities.”
“It might be a matter of proximity,” Lena offered. “Not physical proximity, obviously,” she amended, “but clearly you’re both familiar with Kara, so if we were to consider a correlation between proximal relationships and reduced suggestibility...”
“...we might have a baseline to start figuring this out from,” Alex finished with a nod of approval. “Only one way to find out...” She leaned over and pressed the call button for the intercom on J’onn’s desk. “Agent Vasquez?”
“Yes Ma’am?”
“Could you come in here for a minute?”
“Right away, Ma’am.”
“This Vasquez,” Lena asked. “How well does she know Kara?”
“Peripherally,” J’onn explained before Kara could open her mouth. “Kara doesn’t officially work for the DEO, but given her relationship with Alex, and her connection to the media, she’s a valuable resource. She’s assisted on a few cases along with Vasquez, enough to give us an idea of how strong this thing is.”
A knock on the door prevented Lena from asking anymore questions, though Kara suspected it was a temporary reprieve. The longer this went on, the harder it was going to get to keep Lena from finding out a lot more about Kara’s involvement with the DEO than Kara was ready to tell her.
“Come in,” J’onn said.
Vasquez stepped in and closed the door behind her. “Agent Danvers? You asked for me?”
“Yes,” Alex said. “Mon-EL didn’t show up for training this morning, could you check the duty roster and see who might be available to go out and bring him in?”
Vasquez was far too professional to make a face, but Kara was pretty sure she wanted to. “Again, Ma’am? That’s the third time this week.” She consulted her tablet. “I can send Agents Ford and Shaw, they’ve been on desk duty since last Monday, they’ll be glad to get out.”
“Good idea.” Alex turned, casually bringing Vasquez’s attention to the family trio. “Kara, you saw him last night, did he say anything about not coming in today?”
“Uh...” Put on the spot, Kara struggled for a believable lie, and settled for the truth. “No?”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find him.” Vasquez made the changes on her tablet, looked up, paused, then glanced between Kara and Lena, furrowing her brow at Lizzy. “Who...”
“’Assez!” Lizzy chirped, waving.
The brief confusion on Vasquez’s face cleared. “Hey there, Lizzy!” She grinned. “Visiting the DEO with your Moms today? Don’t let J’onn catch you in his cookies again!”
“No, cookah...” Lizzy heaved an exaggerated sigh, pushing her lower lip out in a pout.
Vasquez chuckled. “You keep an eye on this one, Ms Danvers, Ms. Luthor.” She tucked her tablet under her arm “Anything else, Agent Danvers?”
“No, that’s all. Thank you, Agent Vasquez.”
With a last grin and a wave for Lizzy, Vasquez took her leave.
Kara sat back with a sigh. “That answers that question. Now what?”
“Now we figure out exactly how much of a mess we’re dealing with.” Alex said. “Lena, would you be willing to work with one of our agents to hack into government records, see if you can find a paper trail? Marriage license, birth certificate, and anything else you can think of that might have been altered?”
Lena nodded. “I’ll let my assistant know I’ll be in late today.”
“You think Agent Schott will be immune?” J’onn asked.
Alex nodded. “If Vasquez was confused for even a moment, Winn should be fine. Kara, can you bring Lizzy down to my lab? I want to run some tests.”
“Sure.” Kara stood up, slinging her bag over one shoulder and settling Lizzy on her hip.
“I’ll have Miss Luthor and Agent Schott set up in here.” J’onn offered.
“Good.” Alex ushered Kara out the door. “We’ll reconvene in an hour.”
*****
Lizzy was not particularly interested in sitting still for an exam, but Alex gave her a stethoscope and showed her how to use it to listen to her heartbeat and her eyes widened in delighted wonder. She insisted on listening to Kara’s heartbeat next, but she was disappointed when she tried it on her dog.
“Ax, ‘isten,” she said, holding out the end of the stethoscope in one hand and the dog in his little red cape in the other to Alex. “No bump.”
“Sorry kid,” Alex told her, patting the dogs head and prepping a needle to draw a blood sample. “He’s not real. He doesn’t have a heart, just stuffing.”
Lizzy cradled the dog in her lap and pressed the silver diaphragm back to her own chest. “’Izzy bump,” she said, her little brow crinkled thoughtfully.
“Well, she’s definitely not human,” Alex said when the needle snapped against Lizzy’s unblemished arm. “We’ll have to wait for the results of the DNA swab to be sure, but you might actually have a daughter...”
“How is that even possible?” Kara picked up the sharp point from the floor and threw it away.
“I have no idea,” Alex admitted. “But we’re going to find out. How are you handling all of this by the way?” she asked, stripping off her gloves. “I mean... waking up with Lena Luthor? I know she’s your friend, but that had to be weird, for both of you.”
“So weird!” Kara boosted herself up on the exam table beside Lizzy, kicking her heels idly. “She handled it better than I did though actually. I was a babbling idiot.”
“That I can believe.” Alex chuckled at Kara’s wounded expression. “But you might be surprised. I doubt she’s nearly as chill about this as she seems.”
“Maybe...” Kara shrugged, unconvinced. “You’re going to be nice to her though, right? Not all suspicious and judgey? I promised her you’d be cool.”
Alex snorted. “What? You get married, and suddenly I’m not allowed to worry about you anymore?”
“Alex...” Kara frowned, crossing her arms.
“Okay, okay.” Alex held her hands up in surrender. “I’m cool.” She picked up Lizzy’s chart and made another notation. “I feel kind of bad for her, actually. All of this,” she indicated the DEO around them with a swirl of her pen, “is a lot to take in, and you? You’re a handful even without the Super back story.”
“Ha, ha,” Kara deadpanned. “Don’t forget the kid, whatever she is...”
“I might be able to help with that one,” Winn announced from the doorway, fiddling with something that looked like it might have once been a remote control before he had jammed a bunch of wires into one end and welded on a few dials and a string of lights.
“What is that?” Alex sounded less than impressed.
“Hey, be nice, it’s just a prototype okay? Give me one minute...” Winn finished his adjustments and pointed the thing at Lizzy, who looked even less impressed than Alex until it whirred to life and lit up with a triumphant little beep, the lights blinking excitedly. “Yes!” Winn crowed. “We have a winner!”
Kara caught Lizzy around the middle when she made a two handed grab for the little device and nearly toppled off the exam table. “What’s the prize?”
“Uh... you two admitting I’m a genius?”
Alex rolled her eyes. “Absolutely, right after you tell us what that thing just did.”
“Oh, right. So, remember when J’onn had me looking at all of those old artifacts from the DEO’s storage vaults last week?”
“Yeah, you were trying to find something to help me with Mxyptlk,” Kara said. “But it was a dead end.”
“Well...” Winn hedged. “I did find one thing, an amulet, but Mon-El... um... borrowed it before I could finish my report, and I never got it back. I got some really interesting initial energy readings though. It had a distinctive signature, like nothing I’ve ever seen before, almost as if it wasn’t quite all the way here, if you know what I mean.”
“Just spit it out Winn,” Alex said. “What does this have to do with the kid?”
“I can’t be sure.” Winn admitted. “But if these readings are right, she might not be the only one we have to worry about. I think someone might have sent her here...”
Kara was getting a bad feeling about this. “Sent her from where?”
“The fifth dimension.”
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