Hey Supergang!

So this is a re-visioning of the pilot ep with Kara and Alex as best friends, NOT sisters. Best friends who are totally in love with each other and haven't yet faced it. This is just something I'm trying out, because even though I love their chemistry as sisters so so much...I also have such a huge crush on both of them and they could be such a gorgeous couple if they weren't sisters!

Note: The title of this chap is a phrase that I crafted from existing vocab on an adorably dorky Kryptonian dictionary that I found online. The phrase is "Kri-zhao," and it literally means "bright love," but I am using it here to mean a soulmate bond. So, what I'm saying is, I put these words together from a "credited" dictionary source, but the phrase on its own is my construction. I like throwing in little bits of other languages in all my stories when it's relevant, even if the translation is awkward...because no one really knows this language anyway! It just makes the fantasy a little more real. Please enjoy the story!

…...

I'd Carry a Plane for You

Chapter 1: Kri-zhao

…...

"Geneva?" Kara's face fell into a pout that was almost comically adorable. "But...but tonight's potstickers, and trivia night at Noonan's! And tomorrow you promised we'd go to the Botanic Gardens for the Cherry Blossom Festival!" She pushed a strand of her long blonde hair behind her ear as she gave her best friend her patented sad orphaned alien-puppydog eyes.

"I know babe, I'm sorry," Alex sighed, abandoning her half-packed suitcase to cross the room and hug her favorite person, hating to disappoint her. Kara put her head down against Alex's neck and hugged her back, in the gentle way she had been doing for twelve years so as not to crush her fragile human ribcage to a pulp. "You know I'd rather stay here and hang out with you, Kar. You know that. But if Hank says I have to go represent the entire United States at a secret international extra-normal operations summit...I kinda have to go."

"No you don't," Kara whined softly into Alex's neck, keeping her arms of steel locked gently around her best friend so she couldn't walk back to her room and continue packing. Just yet. "Tell him you have your own extra-normal operation in your living room that orders you to stay home and eat pot stickers because it's Friday night and we've barely seen each other in, like, weeks." Alex chuckled softly, tightening her hold on her adorable alien and sifting her fingers through Kara's silky soft hair, something that never failed to calm and placate the other girl when she was upset.

"I'm sorry, Kar," the dark-haired girl murmured again quietly, stroking her cheek so she'd look up. When blue and brown eyes locked together, they both couldn't help smiling at each other, and they rested their foreheads together for another minute in peaceful silence before Kara finally let go.

"Okay, okay. Go defend the world from face-melting telepathic alien dirtbags. I'll just stay here like a good little girl because how could I possibly help with that?" The blonde girl huffed, rolling her eyes, only half-joking.

"We're not gonna have this conversation again, are we? Right now?" Alex sighed, walking back to her bedroom to continue throwing clothes and toiletries into her suitcase, as she only had ten minutes left before she had to leave for the airport. "You've never been inside the DEO, Kara. You don't know what they could do to you. And I am not, not, not willing to find out!"

"But I could help! My cousin"— Kara began her usual counter-argument, only to be cut off by her best friend's usual reply before she could even finish her own sentence.

"Is the exception to the rule," Alex finished, clicking her suitcase shut with a snap and putting her hands on her hips impatiently. "He was grown-up and saving the world before the DEO was created. He was the reason the DEO was created. Everyone could see that he uses his powers for good, but every other alien that's ever landed on this planet has come to fuck shit up."

"Ahem," Kara said, folding her arms across her chest and cocking her head with an exasperated expression.

"Not you, dummy," Alex sighed; then she shook her head with a little sideways grin, unable to get mad at the girl she loved best in the world—the whole galaxy, really—when it was obvious she just wanted to stall for time so Alex wouldn't leave. The dark-haired girl smirked knowingly. "You're trying to make me miss my flight, aren't you?" She raised an eyebrow, and Kara grinned back sheepishly.

"I can fly you to Geneva," the blonde girl grumbled, knowing she'd lost now but playing it out just a tiny bit further; just hoping for one more of Alex's beaming smiles before she left, that were reserved for Kara and no one else.

"I'll see you Sunday night, my little solar panel. Be good. Try not to embarrass Winn and James too much at trivia night. They don't know you have a photographic Kryptonian memory, and boys have fragile egos you know." Alex gave Kara the big glowing smile she was hoping for, dark brown eyes shining with affection. Kara took Alex's hand and pulled her in for one more hug, pressing their foreheads together again. Over the course of the last twelve years, it had become increasingly difficult for both of them not to lean in those last few inches that separated best friends from something more...but they were both too terrified of losing each other to summon the guts to try. Alex was the only human being on the planet besides Kara's foster parents who knew who she really was, what she really was...she was the one person who made Kara feel safe, feel love, feel like she belonged. They'd shared almost everything since they were thirteen years old, including the apartment they now shared in National City since graduating from college two years ago. She couldn't risk losing Alex.

"Okay..." the blonde girl sighed, reaching both hands up to briefly run through her best friend's dark hair before standing on tiptoe to kiss her forehead. "Bye Lexie. I love you."

"I love you too, Kar. See you in three days." Kara watched Alex grab her rolling suitcase and exit their apartment, still pouting even after the other girl wasn't there to see it.

"Trivia night..." the blonde girl sighed to herself, resisting the urge to give in to self-pity and curl up on the couch with a half-gallon of ice cream and her Netflix queue.

…...

Once Kara got to Noonan's, she was glad to be there, despite missing Alex after only an hour. It wasn't as if she didn't love her other friends too. It wasn't the same as Alex...nothing was...but she loved them. They were smart and goofy and could eat almost as many buffalo wings as she could, which was really saying something since her metabolism was five times faster than theirs. Tonight's theme was horror movie trivia, which wasn't Kara's forte, so she sat back and let the boys do most of the talking for their team, simply enjoying being out and free on a Friday night, without Cat Grant barking orders at her or looking at her like she was an annoying mosquito. Kara sipped her Coke, letting her attention wander slightly...when suddenly the voice of the news anchor on the TV above the bar snapped her sharply to attention. On the screen was a picture of a plane circling low over the coastline of National City, one engine lighting up the night in flames.

"Is that the flight to Geneva? Did he say Geneva?" Kara gasped, her heart jumping straight up into her throat as she whipped off her lead-lined glasses and narrowed her eyes up at the top corner of the brick wall in front of her. Her x-ray vision quickly shot through the building, another mile's worth of skyscrapers that lined the National City coast, and up to the plane zigzagging over the water, seeing the terror on the faces of all the passengers as the plane shook and dropped in altitude. Yes. There was Alex. She looked scared too, but she was trying to calm and comfort the people around her, taking charge in a disaster in any way she could. Just like always.

No. Not Alex. Not Alex. Kara had spent her entire life on earth watching bad things happen that she knew she could stop. Forest fires, ambulances that didn't make it to the hospital in time, hell, even muggers and rapists in the dark alleys of her city. She let it all happen, because her cousin and her foster parents convinced her from the time she was thirteen years old that this world was not a safe place for her to be who she really was. She had let them convince her. And once Alex was recruited into the DEO, she jumped on the wagon too, terrified of Kara being used as a lab rat or caged and tortured like a Fort Rozz intergalactic criminal. Kara had let them all convince her. She had stood back and let all these things happen around her.

But not this. She didn't even think about it. She just jumped up from her bar stool and ran, leaving her purse and her glasses lying on the table between her friends as she burst into the street and ran down a side alley, ripping off her jacket as she ran faster, faster, and jumped into the air, rising about fifteen feet before she touched down again. It had been so long since she'd flown. "Come on!" She screamed at herself, furious and terrified and surging with Kryptonian adrenalin. The next time she jumped, she rocketed straight up into the sky, shooting past the skyscrapers and into the clouds.

It took a minute to steady herself and find her slipstream; she'd never done anything like this before, trying to fly towards a moving object and match its speed and trajectory. But failure was not an option now. Flinging both her arms forward in front of her, she rocketed even faster towards the plane, in time to see the second engine ignite, and the plane begin to go into a genuine free-fall. Kara reached the plane, but wasn't quite sure where to begin; first she tried grabbing the wing to steady it, but she didn't have enough leverage to level the plane out. Her grip on the wing did have some steady effect, however; enough to make Alex look out the window in surprise and see her best friend flying there, trying with all her might to hold up the 747 single-handed. Kara looked over at Alex's window at the same time Alex was looking out at her, and they shared a silent, fierce moment of eye contact before Kara gave up on the wing and flew directly under the plane's belly, lifting the front of the plane up with her shoulders with a scream of intensity as she pushed her powerful body to its limits for the first time in her life. It was working, the plane was leveling out; but then just as she started to smile with relief, Kara looked up and saw the bridge dead ahead of them.

"Oh, come on!" She screamed in frustration. It was true, when she'd leapt into the air her only thought was for Alex; but she wasn't about to sacrifice other innocent lives in the process, and letting the plane slice through the suspension wires of the bridge would send dozens of cars plummeting to a watery grave. Cars with families, someone's parents, someone's children. With another shriek of intensity, Kara dug her hands into the belly of the plane, creating hand-holds in the metal, and pulling it sideways so the wings could pass vertically through the space between two wires. It was very, very close; the left wing scraped across the pavement, sending sparks into the air, but it didn't hit any cars. Kara was far too focused on her task to notice the dozens of phones pointing up and snapping pictures of her from the cars on the bridge as she passed them by, holding up the plane, with her long hair whipping behind her in the heavy winds. As soon as they'd made it safely through the bridge, Kara released her sideways momentum and let the plane settle into a level equilibrium on her shoulders once more, trying to slow its velocity as it crept closer and closer to the water's surface. Finally, she had no other choice than to release the huge aircraft as it touched down on the water, sending her under the surface for a few frightening, disorienting moments, as she was sucked into the undertow of the churning currents created by the plane's momentum as it crashed into the water. She may be bulletproof, but she still needed to breathe.

Finally, after a few moments that felt like hours, Kara found the surface, and came up gasping, pulling herself up onto the wing of the plane as she panted and trembled with waves of aftershock and relief. The sound of wild cheering made her look over at the passengers in the plane, every single one of whom was staring out at her and taking her picture. A shaft of light poured down over her dripping wet body from a rescue helicopter hovering above, and as soon as she looked up at it, she knew she had to get gone fast. With one last searching look at the plane, she caught Alex's stunned eyes, and smiled hugely; then she shot into the air again, so fast the helicopters couldn't possibly follow.

…...

Kara had to wash her hair three times to get all the grime and stinky jet fuel rinsed out, and by the time Alex got home from the rescued plane, the blonde girl was dried and changed and stuffing her face with pot stickers, her insides growling with hunger after all the energy she'd just exerted.

"Oh my God, Lex! Did you see me?" Kara abandoned her food and threw her arms around her best friend, letting go a second later when she heard the dark-haired girl yelp in pain. "Oh! Sorry! That was too hard. But you saw me right? You saw me save the plane? I can't believe I did it! I mean I always knew I could, if Clark can do it then I can do it, but he always told me to just lay low and blend in, and I tried Lexie, I tried so hard for so long, but now it's like I'm finally the real me, and it was so amazing..." Kara was rambling like an overexcited ten-year-old on Ritalin, pacing back and forth across the living room rug with a huge smile plastered across her face. Then she stopped and noticed the horrified—even angry?—look on her best friend's face.

"What were you thinking?" Alex demanded harshly, sounding more like a disappointed parent than a best friend, who by the way had just been rescued from a fiery death in the sky. The anger in her dark eyes completely took the wind out of Kara's sails, and she stopped dead in her tracks, falling silent for a moment as they stared at each other in disbelief. "Kara, you just outed yourself to the entire goddam world! Did you see all those pictures? What if someone recognizes you, what if they figure out who you are? Do you think I want to see you locked up in one of those fishbowls in the DEO?" The angry tears welling up in Alex's dark eyes were matched by the heartbroken ones in Kara's, staring back at her in disbelief.

"I was thinking..." Kara said slowly, as a tear spilled over and slid down her face, "...about saving your life."

"Kara, you can't risk yourself like that ever again, not even for me. Do you understand?" Alex demanded, crying now too as all the images of torture and experimentation that could befall her beloved Kara in the cells of the DEO flashed across her mind.

"No, Alex. You don't understand," Kara shook her head, her voice quivering with the effort of not bursting into sobs. "There was no choice for me. You were going to die. And I can't..." Kara's voice broke as she tried to pull herself together, wiping the tears angrily from her face. "I can't live without you. Don't you know that? If I just let you die, when I had the power to save you...I wouldn't care if they locked me in a Kryptonite cell for the rest of my life. It wouldn't matter. Nothing would matter." They both stared at each other with tears of terror and confusion and adrenalin running down their cheeks, silent for a few long moments. They weren't silent to Kara, of course; she could hear both their hearts beating fast, the blood rushing through their bodies, the elevated sound of Alex's breathing.

"Kara..." Alex whispered, her voice shellshocked with emotion as she crossed the space between them and tucked a lock of blonde hair behind her best friend's ear, stroking a tear from her cheek. "I didn't...I'm sorry, I, I..." Alex bit her lip furiously to hold herself together, tears still spilling from her dark eyes. "I can't live without you either." Kara stared at her best friend for a long moment, all the fears that had held her back before falling away in the clarity of her first post-rescue high.

"Fuck it," the blonde superhero murmured, and slipped both hands into her beloved Alex's shiny dark hair, kissing her hard on the mouth. Alex melted into Kara's kiss, like she had been expecting it, like she had been waiting for it (and she had, for years). It was slow, and tender, and burning, both their faces still wet with tears. No other first kiss had ever compared to this; how could it? How could anything good or right or true hold a candle to a first kiss with someone you've loved for half your life? The entire world fell away, all of Kara's natural super-senses reversing direction from out into the world, to in, into Alex, the rapid pounding of her heart, the warmth of her skin, the sweet smell of her strawberry shampoo that made Kara's knees weak.

"Oh my God, is this really happening?" Alex murmured breathlessly when they broke apart for air, her hands still holding Kara possessively by her hips, and slipping around to her lower back. There was no space between them, they were pressed flush against each other, and even without super-senses Alex could feel the warm, rapid pounding of Kara's heart.

"Only if you want it to," the blonde girl murmured back, leaning her forehead against Alex's the way she had a million times before; she knew the truth of the answer without having to ask, but she just needed to hear it. She needed to hear Alex say it.

"Kara...you carried a plane on your back for me..." Alex shook her head, laughing even while the tears were still sliding down her face. "I've wanted this since the day I saw you get out of that goddam pod when it crashed into the gully," She answered honestly, her fears slipping away like Kara's had a moment before. There was no reason to be afraid. They both knew it now.

"Me too," Kara smiled, as bright as the sun, kissing her again fiercely. "Lexie, Lexie...I crossed the entire galaxy to find you...my kri-zhao..."

"Bright love," Alex murmured back, having picked up a decent amount Kryptonese vocabulary over the past twelve years with Kara. "Brighter than the sun...like you..."

"Like us," Kara corrected her, not even realizing she was floating them up to the ceiling until she had Alex's back pressed up against it. It was almost an hour before they floated back down to the floor again.