trans_9 | Shady Solitude [Open!]

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Shady Solitude [Open!]

Kara Zor-El stepped out of the small Kryptonian temple to Rao and walked back onto the...could she call it a street? She wasn't sure. She'd privately nicknamed this place Religion Row, though, because of all of the houses of worship. She brushed back a lock of her impossibly shiny golden blonde hair, noticing that the more she was away from the affect of the yellow sun, the more her hair was fading to becoming just a regular, dull blonde. This, she wasn't so fond of. She liked it when her hair was all prismatic and shiny and impossibly unreal. She crossed her arms and sighed, walking through the area and seating herself underneath the shade of a large, inexplicably blue tree. She'll never get used to seeing some of the things here. Back home on Krypton, almost everything was made of organic crystal. This place is as organic as Krypton, but so much more filled with life...though perhaps not as much life as Kara's seen on Earth during her short time there.

She brought her knees up to her chest and hugged them, lost in her thoughts and daydreams, enjoying the solitude and being far and away from anyone named Brainiac.

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Kara smiled wistfully at Pirogoeth's description. "Someone who understands," she says. "That's refreshing." She tucked back a lock of her hair. "I was under long enough to have lost a lot of my memories," she said. "Sometimes something will trigger a new memory, but more often than not, the new memory is something that's dark and unwanted - a memory that leaves me wishing that I won't remember anymore. I sometimes can't help but wonder if not remembering will give me the fresh start that I need." Kara had blood on her hands. Her mother's blood. The blood of her classmates. She remembered this, and she tried hard to ignore it, all the more so because the entire reason she was put in suspended animation - the entire reason she was sent to Earth - was to kill her baby cousin.

Her baby cousin who was now a fully grown adult and Earth's greatest champion.

"Seven goddesses?" Kara asked after a moment. "We only have one god. Rao," she said. "He was a god who ignited our sun." She looked off into the center of the temple, thinking hard. "There was a goddess, to, Cythonna. Where Rao was the sun, warmth, and heat, she was his exact opposite - ice, frostiness, and cold. Rao imprisoned her in another dimension after the Wars of Fire and Ice." She looked back at Pirogoeth. "I don't know what happened to her, but I sometimes feel as though, with her having been imprisoned, Krypton lost some of its balance."

"I am a magic user. We know that even the coldest stone holds a spark of magic within, and thus, a power to do most anything," Pirogoeth explained.

To start again, to forget all the bad things she had suffered. What a nice thought that was. To never be plagued by those sad things again. However... "I would not," she finally said. "I have already suffered greatly. I know how to deal with it. To forget it would only make the next bad thing hurt worse than it would if I remembered what I have already struggled through," she said, closing her eyes. Even if those bad things ate at her, she could deal with them. She would not lose the one thing she had to gain from them because she wanted to be rid of them.

"It is hard to imagine, one god being able to do everything necessary. The world needs light and dark, not only the light. To seal away the opposites probably did do as you said," she said.

"My planet is destroyed," Kara said. "Something was wrong with the very core of it - certainly this had much to do with our universe's ancestor of one of these Brainiac 5's on this ship." She didn't want to think about Brainy, but...well, it seemed as though Kryptonians and Coluans would forever be bound together in some form or another. "That was a complicated sentence," she said lightly, before adding, "But still, you know how religion is. If you have not lost your faith, then you keep praying for some sort of miracle to occur. For something to intercept and save you from whatever fate it is that you've been damned to."

So many who had lost their homes. She was almost beginning to wonder if that was common too.

"Kuith was destroyed," Pirogoeth said, her tone neutral, cold, distant. "That was mine home, mine kingdom. Destroyed by a powerful darkness, which also destroyed the forces that had been invading at the time. Prayer...did nothing."

She looked at the ceiling. "If the gods ever intercept, it is not in a way that is obvious. Such...that if they do help, they only do it for those who do all they can to help themselves. But I have wonder many a time if perhaps they just love to watch us run like panicked sparklebunnies."

She looked at Kara. "Do thou hold a grudge, against the one known as Brainiac 5?"

Maybe that was how the ship chose a good chunk of it's...passengers. People with power who were outcasts...who really had nowhere else to go. The look that Kara gave Pirogoeth conveyed how sorry she felt over Pirogoeth's loss. Losing your own...it was not an easy task. "Panicked sparklebunnies. There's an image," Kara said with a chuckle. "I suppose that they need their entertainment too. And when you're all-powerful...well, we became their Wii. And their whee." She tilted her head, her eyes darkening at Brainiac's name. "One of them is actually a really sweet guy. The smaller, robotic one. He's more personable than the other one." Her voice darkening, she said, "I don't hold a grudge against either of them. I'm just in the middle of having a disagreement with the other one."

"I have seen the image a few times. It is quite amusing," Pirogoeth commented. Largo loved to terrorize them before eating them, after all. She did notice the look, but she didn't respond. It was better to keep a lock on those emotions and she didn't know what responding to the look would have done.

"Wii?" Pirogoeth said, looking a bit confused at the term.

She raised an eyebrow at the darkened look. "Is that why thou looked upset when I arrived?" She asked.

"It's a game system on Earth," Kara replied. "For recreation." She considered Pirogoeth's question for a minute. "It's silly, really. Stupid. I was playing around with him, and he said something, which caused me to say something, and the next thing I know, we're having a quarrel. And I stormed out on him," she explained. It's clear that she feels really bad about what happened, but that she's pretty darn angry about it too.

"The word system I am not familiar with in that context, but I believe I understand thy meaning," Pirogoeth said.

Pirogoeth looked at her, a bit of curiosity showing on her face. "What was the original comment of offense?" She asked.

"Original comment that was offensive to him...or to me?" Supergirl smiled. Fact was, Brainiac 5 was as good at pushing her buttons as she was at pushing his. It proved for a very volatile chemistry. The smile faded and a serious expression crossed her face as she said, "I went to go talk to him..and that led to some mild flirtation, only Brainy...took it for me taking joy from making him uncomfortable. He didn't believe it could be anything else, and that upset me. So, I told him I wouldn't be bothering him anymore, and I left."

Pirogoeth thought this over carefully for a moment. "I take it there was another reason for thine flirtations, then?" She asked.

Kara closed her eyes tightly. She hated admitting this. Hated it. Kon had thought it was the most hilarious thing ever. "I might have a soft spot for the little green booger."

Pirogoeth nodded. She had taken a guess, if she reacted that badly to it. "Then he is an idiot. At least you are fortunate enough to know that before trying for anything beyond that."

Kara nodded. "That part of me that's sensible and smart and mature knows that. Believes it, even. I just can't shake the feeling that..." she trailed off, and, thinking better of her decision, shook her head. "It doesn't matter. It'd just be me fooling myself into hoping something that's never going to happen anyway." She reached up and gathered her hair, bringing all of her long, shining mane over one shoulder. "It's not like I won't be able to work with him in a group sitch. That kinda thing is necessary, and if there's one thing I learned back home, it's how to be a team player."

At least, Kara liked to think that. Fact is, she'd trained under the Amazons and she'd watched the JSA do their thing, but she hadn't really been part of a team yet. This was her trail by fire.

"Boys are stupid," she said. "It doesn't matter what part of the universe they're from. They're stupid."

"It's better when they're stupid," Pirogoeth said. "At least then you know the part of them that is bad and can figure out if they're worth the effort instead of finding out too late," she said calmly.

"So, is he worth the effort? To the part of you that's not sensible?"

Was he? He was obsessed with his work, it always seemed like he had a hard time to relating to people on the most basic of levels, he could be an arrogant little snot at the best of times and even worse at the worst.

But he was sweet. And he was kind. And he was caring. And when he was holding her hand, Kara - almost indestructible as she was - felt safe in a way that she'd never felt safe before. She wasn't a damsel in distress - she didn't need rescuing. But she knew that if they were in a fight, he'd have her back. He was the brains to her brawn.

But did the pros outweigh the cons?

Kara shrugged. "I'm still trying to figure that out."

PIrogoeth nodded. "Then I will just say this. Everyone has flaws, something inside them that is sometimes cruel or hostile. At least with Brainiac 5, you are aware of how that side had manifested itself. If you decide to try for him, then at least you are prepared for any harm he may cause," she said.

It was better to have someone who drove you crazy before attempting to court then to court someone who was seemingly perfect and ended up being the evil that destroyed your kingdom.

"Are you speaking from experience?" Kara asked softly. "Sorry...I didn't mean to - I was just curious."

Pirogoeth was right, though. Everyone was flawed. Kara herself had a lot of flaws. Like the fact that I'm supposed to be an assassin.

Pirogoeth was silent for several long moments before closing her eyes. "Yes. He seemed perfect. He wasn't. The darkness within him manifested in a far worse way than being an idiot, a thoughtless fool, or even unfaithful," she said, her voice cold and detached as much as she could make it, but the way her body slumped showed that it was a great pain.

Kara reached out to Pirogoeth and then stopped. Everyone had different levels of tolerance when it came to personal space bubbles, and the way that Pirogoeth spoke, Kara sensed that she was noble in birth. "I'm sorry to hear that," Kara said. "Can...I ask what happened? If it's a topic I shouldn't, you know, bring up, don't worry about it. No harm, no foul."

Pirogoeth was silent for a good minute, pondering on whether or not to answer.

"He was the one who destroyed Kuith. He found Largo and I entertaining, so he decided to pretend to play on our side of the board. I found out who he really was. Then I killed him moments before I awoke from the pod."

"..." Kara wasn't sure what to say here, but the parallels were...frightening. "That can't have been easy."

"It was not easy," Pirogoeth said, weariness entering her voice. "Even after I knew the truth, it took many weeks before I moved against him to strike him down. It was....mine own weakness, that I let my emotions rule me so long, but now he is gone and I have done what I needed to do."

After losing what little he had left back home, but she can leave that out.

"But you still did it. You were strong enough to push past it and do what needed to be one. That's really very admirable," Kara replied with awe in her voice. She didn't know if she'd ever be that strong. Everyone expected her to be that strong, though. Everyone expected her to be perfect. Flawless. A role model. But she was just a teenager in a new world, and she was still trying to learn, to figure things out. To figure herself out. She wished for a life with the luxury to just grow into who she was supposed to be without a million people telling her to be Superman in a skirt. "Do you think you'll ever be able to trust again?"

"No. I was not," Pirogoeth said. "He merely did the one thing that, for a moment, buried the love I had for him under a fierce anger that let me complete the task. There was nothing admirable about what I did. There was no joy or relief. Only....a sense of finally reaching the end of a long journey."

Largo had to die. He had to take the one thing she had left other than himself from her before she finally snapped enough to take his life. She had won the war, but lost the battle.

"Trust? That would depend on how you define trust."

"As in...do you ever think you'll be able to open your heart to let anyone in?" Betrayal affected people in many different ways and everyone reacted differently to it. Kara wasn't sure what she'd do if she was ever betrayed like that. Though, when she'd thought Brainy had betrayed her awhile back...she'd been ready to snap his neck.

Shady Solitude [Open!]

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