It's funny how the MCU started with the idea of being comicbook movies for the fans by the fans, unlike other cbms that seemed embarrassed of the source material. And now it's like lolwat you read comics like a nerd??? LMAO these movies are better than your nerd stories you nerd! You wanted to see the characters and stories you love?? Also, now the comics will change to reflect the movies because fuck you. No one hates comics more than the MCU fandom and Marvel Studios.
Honestly, with both the movies AND the comics, at this point I just think that no character or franchise or team or WHATEVER should exist in perpetuity.
Like the movies are spitting on the comics as source material, they absolutely hate the comics, but... the comics also hate the comics.
I've lightly dabbled in comics for like... ten-ish years? And I have watched almost every character I have loved do some fucked up, OOC thing bceause a new writer had to take them on or a new crossover event pretty much left them no chance BUT to be OOC to be relevant.
Like... I would get it if it were like "after ten years of absence, we're making a more modern version of X or Y character." Like, sure, every decade could have a new take on Cap or Wolverine or whomst the fuck ever. And it can be a small, somewaht contained story.
But having dozens of characters that have to be re-invented while also never leaving hte scene for more than a couple months, MAYBE a handful of years, while they have to fit whatever scene is set by the ~larger comic universe has been a mistake.
They constantly need to outdo themselves, which is how you get shit like Hydra!Cap or whatever the fuck.
I'm tired of all of it. All of it demands you buy into a massive, never ending ecosystem just to enjoy teh stories of one or two characters who have fuck all to do with teh massive, never ending ecosystem.
Death to all of them at this point. Many of the charcaters deserve better (if we ignore their worst runs) but like... fuck man.
"X character is great if you ignore the semi-AU run where he murders his own daughter" or whatever is just exhausting.
Marvel movies are just doing a speedrun of what comics have done to so many characters.
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recovered in time
(pt. i)
“From what I can tell, the implant seems to be interrupting the connection between your visual cortex and your emotional center,” Brainy says, eyes narrowed in concentration, two fingers pressed against the incision point at the base of Kara’s neck. “As well as inhibiting your frontal lobe and sending distress signals to the amygdala.”
“What does that mean?” Kara asks.
“It means that... you weren’t feeling like yourself,” Alex says, and Kara nods hesitantly at that.
“So, can you rid of it or not?” Alex asks, fixing Brainy with her most hardened stare.
“I’ve already determined five different ways to extract the device—”
“Great! So, we can—”
“—but none that wouldn’t immediately prove fatal or result in permanent brain damage.”
Eventually, Alex releases a long-suffering, shuddery sigh. “... You could have fucking led with that.”
“I did feel like myself though...” Kara interjects, suspending what was surely about to result in another very unproductive argument. “And I still feel like myself now. It’s just...” She ducks her head, fiddling with the sleeves of her shirt, already frayed from anxious attention. “... I felt so alone? Like, I’d been abandoned, or was suddenly in a world where I’d lost everyone all at once. Again.”
Kara shifts uncomfortably in her seat, now able to feel everyone’s eyes on her, burning holes into her skin. She has long since traded in her super-suit for comfy clothes, and her scarf has been upgraded to a pair of heat vision resistant blackout goggles, but it would take more than 24 measly hours for her to adjust to, well... everything.
“You’re not alone though,” Alex says, giving Kara’s knee a firm squeeze as if in reminder. “You know that, right?”
Kara rubs at her nose, sniffling herself back into some semblance of composure. “Yeah, I know.”
But of course, knowing something hardly ever outstrips the feeling of it, and Kara kinda just wishes that she still had Lena’s scarf on her.
//
“Hey Lena,” Kara calls out softly from the bed. She doesn’t lift her head from her pillow, but still offers a small wave in greeting.
“What gave me away?” Lena asks, and it’s almost playful, which makes everything that much easier.
“Well... Pretty much everything, actually.”
“Ah.”
Then the smell hits her, overwhelming her senses in an unexpected rush of heat and spice. Kara sits up right away, startled. “How did you...” is all she manages to get out, then pushed into her hands is a considerably sized takeout box of potstickers.
“I wanted to surprise you, so I might have created a hermetically sealed lunchbox just to sneak these in,” Lena says, and Kara’s already laughing softly. “The food’s still good though! I literally just slipped them inside right before walking into the building, so...”
“... Thank you,” Kara says. She inclines her head to the spot next to her, and feels the bed sink with Lena’s weight accordingly.
Kara starts eating, but does so with only one hand. The other just fidgets at her thigh, tugging at her sweatpants, lying in wait so impatiently. Then Lena takes the hand and holds it firmly in her own, and finally, it feels like Kara can breathe freely again.
“I never thanked you,” Kara says, “for, you know... everything.”
“You already did,” Lena reminds her, squeezing Kara’s hand.
“I... did?” Kara feels Lena nodding beside her. “Okay... so then, why does it feel like I still have so much left to owe you?”
Lena tries to hold her breath quietly, but Kara hears it; of course, she hears it. “I can’t answer that for you.”
A couple of hours later, when Alex pops into the room for her usual check-in, she stumbles upon an unexpected sight: Lena sitting up on the hospital bed, her legs tucked beneath the sheets as she answers emails on her phone, and Kara fast asleep, curled up around her.
Kara’s still holding Lena’s hand, her face buried in Lena’s shirt where it smells most like her, apparently, besides her hair.
Lena blushes a little, but can’t find it in her to regret her position.
//
“Alex says it’s because I didn’t see your face,” is the first thing Kara says the next time Lena visits. “I pretty much saw everyone else’s, but... never yours. So, I’ve imprinted on you, or something.”
Lena recovers quickly, “Well... what do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Kara admits, running her fingers down the back of her neck, feeling the tender skin still raised in jagged lines. “There’s still so much I feel like I can’t trust right now.”
“But you trust me...”
“Yeah.”
Lena carefully cradles Kara’s hand in both of hers, and it feels like a thank you of sorts. Then Kara draws their joined hands closer and closer, pressing her lips gently to Lena’s knuckles, and sighs in a way that could only ever be an expression of deep gratitude.
//
Kara’s days all seem to unfold the same way, with Alex and Brainy running tests, Lena stopping by once per day for company, and Kara just trying to break up the monotony of it all with podcasts, books on tape, and tossing a tiny bouncy ball around the room to test her reflexes.
For that last one, she has to stop the moment she hears Alex approaching her room, of course, because of all the broken glass and knocked over plants, and such.
Until one day, she overhears a couple of DEO agents discussing some urgent mission—not exactly a rare occurrence, given her super-hearing, but she perks up, ears honing in at the mention of Lex Luthor.
But when they also mention how Lena might be in danger, Kara is already out of bed and flying out the window.
Kara hasn’t flown since donning her blackout goggles, but she remembers enough to travel at a height that would be safe from any threat of collision. And before long, she’s hurtling straight for the source of all the distant commotion now pounding in her ears.
She practically crashes in landing, the earth cracking beneath her bare feet. She whips her head toward where Lena’s heartbeat is fluttering the loudest, then hears low chuckles coming from the same direction.
“You’re all so pathetic and predictable,” Lex crows. “At least try to make it somewhat of a challenge for me. God, it’s all just too easy.”
“Kara, get out of here!” Lena’s voice shouts out to her, muffled and desperate. “It’s a trap!”
But Kara takes a step toward them anyway, and immediately, the entire world seems to scream in protest.
Kara falls to her knees, hands clapping over her ears but to no avail. The excruciating sound is coming from her own head, akin to hot spikes scraping at the inside of her skull. She calls out to Lena, but can’t even make out her own voice over the pain.
She crumples over, helpless, her teeth gritted as she pushes her face into the dirt and shakes uncontrollably. She knows she has to get up; she’s a sitting duck like this. She can’t save Lena like this.
And so, Kara does the one thing that she can do.
She rips the goggles off her face, hurling them somewhere behind her, and jerks her head up.
She sees a blur of colors, then a single hand outstretched towards her, clutching onto something silver and vaguely rectangular.
She fires a burst of heat vision right at that hand, and feels the back of her head explode.
//
“Man... she couldn’t just put them down gently?” mutters a voice that’s not unfamiliar. “She just had to throw the goggles like a goddamn shot-putter or something? These things cost a fortune!”
“All right, that’s enough, Demos,” says Alex, a much more familiar voice. “I’ll worry about the budget, okay? You just get everyone else back to headquarters.”
“’M’sorry,” Kara says, or at least she tries to say. “My bad...” Her eyes still shut tight, she flashes a thumbs up, then lets her arm flop back down to the ground. Alex stops her when she attempts to sit up.
“Hey, not so fast, you jerk,” Alex says, somehow keeping Kara grounded with a single hand pressed against her shoulder. “We’re getting a stretcher for you.”
“I don’t think I need a stretcher.”
“Yeah, well... nobody asked you,” Alex sighs, before grumbling, “God, what’s taking them so long? Ugh, hang on... Hey, can you watch her? I’ll be right back.”
Lena’s there now, and Kara can actually feel herself grinning without even meaning to. “No, don’t... You shouldn’t have come, Kara.” But there’s a smile in Lena’s voice, and Kara’s grin grows wider for it. “I’m serious!”
“Okay, me too.” Kara then winces as a sharp pain gradually surfaces, trickling into reality. “The back of my head is killing me...”
“Yeah, you’re bleeding.”
Kara scoffs. “I don’t bleed; I’m Supergirl.”
“Okay, Supergirl... but somebody got blood all over my shirt, and it sure as hell isn’t me, so...”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then check for yourself.”
Kara goes rigid, her humor dashed and her brow furrowing heavily.
“... You know I can’t do that.”
Soft fingertips brush down Kara’s face, tucking her hair behind her ear so tenderly. “Listen,” Lena says. “You destroyed Lex’s transmitter, along with most of his right hand, and I think you blew out the implant in your head in the process as well.”
There are thoughts then—the kind that Kara is unwilling to say aloud lest they develop reasons to be true. Thoughts like, what if the explosion damaged parts of her brain permanently? What if it severed that neural link between her eyes and everything else for good? And, how can she risk losing the one person who she believes to be absolutely, 100% real?
Lena draws Kara’s attention with a gentle hand squeeze. “Hey, where’d you go?” she asks softly.
“I’m still here,” Kara says. “Still just right here.”
But Lena seems to understand Kara’s concerns, unvoiced or not, because she leans a bit closer and asks, “Do you trust me...?”
And, yes; yes, she does.
With a deep breath filling out her lungs, Kara slowly opens her eyes. Everything’s a blur at first, just like before. But then little by little, bit by bit, the night sky comes into focus. She stares up at the darkness, counts as many stars as she can to put off the inevitable.
Then her hand is being tugged and squeezed in the gentlest reminder, so she turns her head, blinking her eyes in preparation before looking up to see Lena Luthor smiling down at her.
“Hey,” Kara says.
“Hey yourself,” Lena returns.
Kara nods thoughtfully, then gestures to Lena’s shirt. “Sorry, but I can’t afford dry cleaning,” she says, squinting at the various splashes of red—light but unfortunately prominent against the very white material—and Lena just laughs and laughs.
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