Title: what we cling to
Fandom: Supergirl (tv)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Kal-El & Kara Zor-El, but heed the content notes
Length: 500 words
Contents: references to possible future situational incest (ie, whether the last two people from Krypton should get together), alien bigotry on the part of a Kryptonian AI, minor identity/persona dissociation

Author's note: My headcanon for Kryptonian culture is clearly pretty dark. Also, I was thinking of 'rock' as the verb, as in something that disturbs the balance or certainty. Written as a five-drabble sequence.

*****

For many years, the AI at the fortress is Kal's only friend. Not Clark's only friend -- in truth, the AI is never a friend to the human-raised boy who has no memory of Krypton -- but the only one who knows Kal-El, not Clark or Superman. On Krypton, the monitor-servant would be only one of many teachers for a boy, but on Earth... it's the only teacher Kal will ever have. All else is lost.

When it identifies the life pod approaching the planet -- the Kryptonian life pod -- Kal is the one it tells to find Kara.

*****

When the pod lands, Clark can barely trust his eyes. He's familiar with Kryptonian technology only from holograms the AI shared with him, but even so, the curves of the ship feel like coming home. There is a moment, when he rips it open, that the shock on the girl's face reminds him that he knows nothing of the culture they come from -- that he was raised by aliens and an AI that tutored him only after he reached his teens. He feels -- rude. Crude. Wrong.

Then her smile breaks out like sunshine, and Clark can breathe again.

*****

Kal brings Kara to the fortress. She walks the crystal corridors with sadness in her eyes, Superman's red cape around her shoulders for warmth. The yellow sun hasn't strengthened her yet, but already she fits here more than Clark does.

She knows more about Kal than Clark does. His parents. Their family. The life he was supposed to grow into. To her, the loss is fresh, but not total. She has her memories, and a purpose: to protect him.

Time may have taken that from both of them, but she can still rescue him from a deadly danger: being alone.

*****

The AI wants Kara to stay at the fortress. It thinks she should be kept... clean of alien influence. Human influence.

But Clark can see she's just a child, and a child needs more than an AI and an empty palace. She needs family. If she stays, Clark will find himself stepping into that role.

And Clark -- no, Kal -- knows deep in his bones that he can't do that. They're the last of their people. They may choose to love elsewhere, in the end, but if Krypton is to live on at all... he can't be her brother.

*****

He takes Kara to the Danvers instead. They're good people, honest people, with a daughter of their own. They can be trusted with the last daughter of Krypton.

Kara writes him every week at first. Then every month. Eventually, the letters trail off to greetings passed through mutual friends.

Clark tells himself that she needs to be her own person. To be independent from him, and from the legacy of Krypton.

But it isn't until she decides -- freely -- to follow in Superman's footsteps, to be like him -- that he thinks he might have made the right choice.