26. Letting Go

Kara didn’t realize she’d been listening to Lizzy’s heartbeat until it stopped.

Her own stuttered in sympathy as she whirled around, faster than thought, faster than sound, but not fast enough to save her daughter. Not even fast enough to catch her as she crumpled and fell.

“No...” She whispered, feet rooted to the floor. It couldn’t be too late. It couldn’t. Not now, not after all of this.

“Lizzy?” Lena nearly tripped over the box of macaroni and stuffed zebra, kicking them aside and dropping to her knees to gather their little girl into her arms.  “Kara?” She called frantically, “I don’t think she’s breathing...”

“Lena...” Kara tried, her voice breaking. “I—”

“No!” Lena cut her off. “She’s not gone! She can’t be! We should be doing CPR, rescue breathing... something!”

Kara didn’t have the heart to tell her it wouldn’t work. How do you breathe life into a wish? Even one shaped like a child? “Here,” she said fixing the group of chastened bounty hunters with a glare that promised them any attempt at escape would be painful and futile, and crossed to Lena’s side, kneeling down and holding out her arms, “give her to me.”

Lena passed her over, gently cradling her head until she was settled in Kara’s lap. Kara let out a slow breath, closed her eyes and listened. She could hear Lena’s heartbeat; too fast, and her own; too slow. Shock, Alex would call it. But in her arms there was no heartbeat, no breath, none of the usual sounds of life at all, but there was... something. She furrowed her brow.

Winn groaned, sitting up and clutching the side of his head. “Ugh... I feel like I got hit by a bus.  What happened? Kara? When did you...? Wait, is that? Oh no... Is she?”

Kara nodded dumbly, opening her eyes. Whatever it was, she’d lost it again.

Lena choked on a short, dry sob, burying her face in Kara’s shoulder.  

“Wait!” Winn said hurriedly, “Don’t... just let me...” He levered himself to his feet, rummaging through the broken mess of his desk. “Ah ha!” He brandished his small black box that looked like it had been cobbled together out of spare parts. “I hope this still works...” He limped over to them, fiddling with the dials and wires until the machine lit up with a beep. He passed it over Lizzy and the beeping intensified, lights flashing.

“What is that thing?” Lena asked, hope blooming.

“It reads fifth dimensional energy,” Winn explained. “And it’s still picking something up from her. These too...” he said, pointing the reader at the scattered pieces of the talisman.

“But what does that mean?” Kara demanded more sharply than she intended.

“Oh, sorry... I think she’s still alive? I mean... still here, anyway. Do magical constructs really need a heartbeat?”

“You know what she is?”

“I was in and out of it for a while there,” Winn admitted. “Not awake enough to you know, move or do anything useful, but I caught some of that classic villain monologue.  She’s a wish, right? Pure fifth dimensional energy? If my readings are right, some of that energy is still in there.”

Lena exhaled shakily. “How do we wake her up?”

Winn shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea, but he might...” he suggested, pointing to Qwsp, still pinned under a rather smug looking tiger. “And also, where did the tiger come from?”

“Long story,” Kara said, standing up with Lizzy still safely cradled in her arms. “Can you let everyone in? We’re going to need some help.”

“Sure,” Winn said, handing his device to Lena and going back to his desk.  “This console is a disaster, but I think I can disable the alarm...there we go!”

The sirens cut off mid-wail, and the metal shutters creaked and groaned, rubble and shattered glass raining through the broken windows as they rolled back and the first rays of early sunrise shone in through a haze of dust.

Winn yelped and jumped as a large chunk of concrete fell to the floor and shattered at his feet. “Umm... what happened to the DEO?”

*****

It was a relief to let J’onn and Alex take charge once the doors were open and cleared of debris. J’onn eyed the ducks a little askance, but once he understood where they’d come from he let them be and ordered everyone else to leave them alone too. He had the bodies of the Ballyrosh and the tusked yeti taken down to the lab, and assigned two person teams to escort each of the surviving bounty hunters back to containment.

“And I want eyes on them at all times!” he added. “Human eyes. I don’t trust any of our security protocols right now.”  

The tiger proved difficult to shift, hissing and taking a swipe at the agents sent for Qwsp. He surrendered only when he realized Lizzy was being taken away, abandoning the imp and insisting on following Kara, Lena and Alex to the infirmary. He padded along beside Kara, raising his head every few steps to sniff at Lizzy and make sad little chirruping noises. 

Lena filled Alex and Kara in on everything they’d missed as they got Lizzy settled in one of the beds, setting up Winn’s device to monitor her. The steady beep, beep, beep, and flashing light was reassuring, even if it was measuring energy flows instead of a heart rate. The tiger jumped up after her, making the bed creak and curling up at her feet like a giant house cat, its impossible rumbling purr oddly heartening.

“I don’t know what else to do for her,” Alex admitted. “I called Mom, and she’s on her way, but I don’t think this is a medical problem.” She rubbed her eyes, dark and sunken with exhaustion and worry. “I’m sorry, but unless Qwsp will talk, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Oh, he’ll talk.” Kara smoothed an errant curl back from Lizzy’s forehead. “I’ll make sure of that.” She detached her cape and drew it off her shoulders, laying it over Lizzy and tucking the edges in around her before turning to leave.

“Kara,” Lena said, catching her arm. “Be careful? I can’t— I don’t want to lose both of you.”

“You’re not losing either of us,” Kara promised her, pulling her in and ducking her head for a quick, desperate kiss.

Lena clung to her. “I love you,” she whispered fiercely.

“I love you too,” Kara murmured in return. “You’ll stay with them?” She asked Alex over Lena’s head.

“Of course.”

“Thank you.”

Qwsp didn’t seem surprised when she found him in his cell, perched on the edge of his cot. The two agents on duty at the door let her in with twin nods, locking the door behind her without a word.

“You’re here for answers I suppose?” The imp said, straightening the cuffs of his shirt fastidiously.

“By whatever means necessary,” Kara agreed, fists clenching and heat building up in the corners of her eyes.

“Oh there’s no need to flex those kryptonian muscles at me, Supergirl.” He sniffed. “I know when I’m beaten and all things considered this is still better than being stuck inside a piece of gaudy jewellery for all eternity, so I’ll tell you whatever I know, though I dare say it won’t be of much use.”

Kara blinked. She hadn’t expected cooperation. She was still aching to hit something, her stomach twisting with suppressed rage.

“Dissapointed?” Qwsp asked cannily, something nasty in the twist of his lips. “Would you have enjoyed beating me into submission? My, my... how very heroic of you.”

“I don’t hurt people for fun,” Kara gritted out between clenched teeth. “That’s your thing, not mine.”

“Fun, no... but vengeance? Ah, yes. You blame me for all of this...” He waved a long fingered hand, the gesture somehow encompassing their entire situation. “And you’re nearly right, but this wish was none of my doing. I merely seized an opportunity. I am not the villain of this story.

“Then who is?” Kara demanded.

“You already know that.” Qwsp shook a finger at her. “Don’t ask questions you already have the answer to or I may begin to regret my generosity.”

“Mxyzptlk...” Kara muttered.

“Yes.” Qwsp crossed one leg over the other and folded his hands on his knee. “His fingerprints are all over this mess. But that’s not the answer you truly seek.”

Kara glared, his mocking tone doing nothing to quell her growing urge to throw him through a wall. But he was right, infuriating as he was. “How do I save her?”

“Solve the riddle.”

“What riddle?”

“The riddle of the eight random pieces of nothing particularly important, of course,” Qwsp answered simply.

Kara frowned. “How will assembling the talisman help?”

Qwsp sighed. “You’re not the brains of this operation are you? Where’s your better half? Holding the little one’s hand I suppose? You should have sent her down here instead.”

“Lena’s not getting anywhere near you,” Kara growled. “You’ve done enough to her already!”

“Tut tut, I could have killed her, you know. I considered it, but I do hate to waste such lovely things... an error of judgement in this case. If she’d been dead I might have won. However, that’s neither here, nor there. I’m stuck with you, so I’ll keep my words small and simple.”

Kara reminded herself that she needed him alive, and resisted the impulse to melt his face. “Please,” she managed, though she nearly choked on the word, “just tell me what to do.”

“Manners at last...” Qwsp shook his head in disbelief. “Perhaps you’re not completely hopeless. Look, wishes are one thing,” he held up his left hand, “and mortals are another.” He held up the right. “You can have unimaginable power, or a little girl, but not both at the same time, you see? They can’t occupy the same space. In order to stop me, she had to stop being her.”

“So how do we change her back again?”

“How do you put a Genie back in a bottle when the bottle’s broken?” Qwsp countered. “Done is done. At least for you or me, but for the one who sent her...” He shrugged. “Answer the riddle. Summon the sender and maybe there will be a way, though it might not be a way you’re willing to take.”

*****

“This is impossible!” Kara threw her pencil, and Lena watched it fly across the room to bury itself point-first in the wall.

“Try not to wreck any more of the building please,” Alex said dryly, not looking up from her own pad of paper.

Kara huffed and crossed the room to wrench the pencil out of the wall. She inspected the tip only to find it broken and collapsed back into her chair beside Lizzy’s bed with a groan. “What if he’s lying? What if there is no riddle to solve?”

“Then we’ll try something else,” Lena interjected, crossing out a line and flipping to a new page. “But it makes sense. Qwsp couldn’t get it to work either. There must be a trick to it.” 

“A really good trick,” Winn agreed from the other bed, rubbing the lump on the side his head while he thought.

“Stop that!” Alex reached over and smacked his fingers with her pencil.

“Ow!” Winn stuck his wounded fingers in his mouth. “Tha urt!” he mumbled around them.

“It was supposed to.”

They’d been at this for hours and they were all exhausted.  Lena had a migraine and from the way Alex kept rubbing at her eyes, she probably did too. Winn was concussed, but still gamely trying to help and Kara looked like she really wished this was a problem she could solve with a swift right hook. They’d chosen to work in the infirmary because they needed Winn’s brain, however rattled, and Lena wasn’t letting Lizzy out of her sight, but the chairs were torture and there were only two beds. Sooner or later they were going to have to relocate or take shifts, but no one wanted to admit this might not be something they could solve in a day.

The eight pieces of the talisman were laid out on Winn’s bed, over his legs. They would have put them on Lizzy’s but the tiger had claimed that one and no one wanted to try and move him. It was such an innocuous assortment of objects. Nothing unusual or special... nothing that gave them any clue about why those particular things had been chosen except that they were commonly found in the places they’d been hidden. They could just as easily have been completely random.

“Banishing him was so easy!” Kara grumbled, toying with her broken pencil. “Just trick him into saying his name backwards, and whoosh! He’s gone.”

“Didn’t he write it backwards?” Lena asked, the barest hint of an idea tickling the back of her brain. “That’s what Eliza said...”

Kara shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Maybe...” Lena got up from her chair beside Kara and went to the end of Winn’s bed, studying the objects carefully with this new perspective. She reached for the box of macaroni and cheese, picking it up and placing it to the far left. Then came the xylophone, and the yarn, the zebra and the pink crayon. The next one was tricky, but it was the title that was important, not the object itself. The truth about Sharks joined the line, followed by the little curled leaf and the knife.

“Mxyzptlk,” she said, running a hand over the objects from left to right.

The resulting bang and flash of crackling blue light knocked her off her feet.

“Lena!” Kara caught her before she hit the floor, supporting her with an arm around her waist while the swirling cloud of smoke slowly resolved itself into a man, or an imp Lena supposed, though he looked more human than Qwsp.

There was a glint of silver on the covers where the pieces of the talisman had been, Winn picked it up and tossed it to Kara who quickly closed her hand around it.  

The imp coughed, clearing his throat and brushing blue dust off his jacket. He was shorter than Lena had expected, with dark, carelessly styled hair and a pinstriped suit over a purple T-shirt. Handsome, if you went for that boyishly charming sort of look.

“Kara Zor-El...” he said with an unironically impish grin, ignoring Lena completely, “did you miss me?”

*****

Kara made sure Lena was steady on her feet before stepping around her to grab Mxyzptlk by his shirt, lifting him up and slamming him into the wall. The plaster cracked, and the little silver chain wrapped around her fingers burned.

“I’ll take that as a no,” he said with a wince. “Was it something I said?”

“You...!” Kara fumed, literally unable to articulate just how unbelievable angry she was. “How could— You know what? I don’t even want to know why you did any of this. I kind of just want to hit you until it stops being fun.”

“Ah...”  He hedged, glancing around the room and not finding any sympathy there. “I’ve missed something.”

“You will be missing something—”

“Kara,” Lena cut in. “Maybe he doesn’t know?”

“How could he not know?”

“This may seem self serving,” Mxy said. “But could we maybe discuss this with everyone’s feet on the floor? You’re truly lovely when you’re angry my dear, but it’s difficult to appreciate you when I’m in this much pain.”          

“Fine.” Kara dropped him, taking a step back. “Talk.”

“Okay. Would anyone mind filling me in on what it is I’m supposed to have done?” He asked, straightening his shirt.

Alex caught Kara’s wrist before she could punch him. “You granted a wish,” she said. “And that wish turned into a little girl who can rearrange reality. These two,” she pointed to Lena and Kara, “became her parents, and apparently they’ve been married for three years. Last night the kid went nuclear on one of your cousins and his minions, and now she’s stuck as an incorporeal ball of infinite energy, and we don’t know how to get her back.”

“Oh... That.”

“Yes, that!” Kara snapped, throwing her hands up. “Has it ever occurred to you to ask someone before just randomly granting their wishes?

 “It has actually, but in this case it didn’t exactly come up...”

“Why?” Kara demanded, crossing her arms over her chest. “Because you’re some kind of all-knowing, all-powerful imp-man?”

“No, because it wasn’t your wish I was granting,” Mxyzptlk shot back with some asperity. “It was mine.”

That caught Kara off guard. “What?”

Mxy shuffled his feet, hands in his pockets. “I wished for your happiness,” he admitted sheepishly. “You’d won and I was being pulled back to my dimension, but that Daxamite oaf was only going to make you miserable, so... I cheated a little. Names have power,” he said indicating the chain in her hand.

Kara really looked at it for the first time. It was a bracelet with eight charms, one for each letter, cast in silver kryptonian characters. Mxyzptlk’s talisman.

“I’d forgotten that our wishes tend to have a mind of their own, it’s been so long since one of us actually made one instead of tricking you lot into it. I only meant to help...” he added.

“Oh...” the anger left Kara in a rush and she wobbled slightly as she stepped back, arms falling to her sides.

Lena was there to steady her, taking her hand and clasping it tightly between them. “Can you help us now?” she asked Mxy. “We don’t need wishes or infinite power, we just want our daughter back.”

“May I?” he gestured to the bed behind them, and Lena tugged Kara aside to let him pass. The tiger snarled at him as he approached, fur bristling along its spine. “Now that’s just rude.” Mxy snapped his fingers. The snarl became a squeak, and an orange tabby cat fell to the bed where the tiger had been a moment before. “Much better,” he said, making a shooing motion.  The cat leapt to the other bed, turning to hiss at him from behind the dubious safety of Winn’s knees.

Mxyzptlk held a glowing hand out over Lizzy, eyes closed. Everyone held their breath, Lena’s hand tightening over Kara’s in a grip that would have been painful for anyone else.

“I’m sorry,” Mxy said after a few minutes, dropping his hand. “She’s still in there, but what she did... As a wish her abilities would have been nearly infinite, but when she took a mortal form she limited herself and your bodies simply aren’t built to withstand that kind of power. She’s trying to hold herself together, but she’s fading quickly.”

 “So help her!” Lena pleaded.

“I can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t undo what’s already been done.”

“You can’t put a genie back in a broken bottle...” Kara added tonelessly. She felt numb; heavy, like she was about to buckle under an impossible burden, but also so weightless she might float away.  

“Exactly,” Mxy said.

“Can’t you just make her a new body?” Alex asked.

“It’s more complicated than that,” Mxy said. “The Fifth Dimension is more energy than mass. Sometimes, when one of us makes a wish, a selfless wish, that energy becomes something else, something more...” He hesitated, running a hand through his hair. “It’s how we’re born,” he continued finally. “Her name in my world would be L, Z, Y, or Lzy.”

“Non-binary reproduction...” Winn breathed. “That’s so cool.”

Mxy ignored him. “The Lizzy you know is more than one of your children, but less than one of ours. She’s a true mix of both of our dimensions and I can’t just make her a new form, drop her into it and have her still be her. The best I can do is take her back to the fifth dimension to become what she was meant to become, and in a few hundred years or so she could return. Thanks to the yellow sun on this planet, you would likely still be alive, Kara Zor El, though you may not remember her.

“If I take her out of this dimension, all that she wrought will come undone. You’ll go back to reality as you knew it, and it will be as if none of this ever happened.”

“And that’s the only way?”

Mxy nodded. “She can either die as your daughter, or live as mine.”     

“But she would live, if you took her?” Lena asked, eyes dry though there was a terrible hollowness to her voice and there was no strength left in her grip on Kara’s hand.

“She would lose the mortal part of herself and she would be changed, as all children are when they grow up, but yes, she would live.”

Lena took a deep breath and nodded. “Do that then.”

“Kara?” Mxy asked.

Kara felt like it was literally tearing her in two to agree, but she didn’t see any other way. Lizzy’s life mattered far more than the happiness the three of them had found with each other. “Do it,” she said. “But can we say goodbye first? Will she hear us?”

“She’ll hear you.”

“Let me and Winn go first,” Alex offered. “That way you can be alone...”

“Thank you,” Lena said.

Alex laid a hand on Lizzy’s head. “Take care of yourself, kid. You’re going to make one hell of an Imp.”

She helped Winn limp over and he curled her little fingers into a fist, bumping it with his own. “I’ll miss you, you little terror. Don’t be afraid to bite anyone who tries to mess with you.”

“Come on.” Alex tugged him away, beckoning to Mxyzptlk as well. “You too. They’ll call you when they’re ready.”

When the three of them were gone, Kara and Lena lay down to either side of Lizzy, linking their hands across her belly. They stayed just like that for a few minutes, neither one of them willing to admit that this was really goodbye, not just to Lizzy, but to the life they’d all built together.  

“Don’t be scared sweetheart,” Lena said finally. “We have to stay here, but your dad will take care of you, and the fifth dimension will have cookies, and tigers, and spears, and so many new things to see and learn. I wish I could see you all grown up, you’re going to be so amazing, but—” her voice broke, and she clutched at Kara’s hand, blinking back tears.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” Kara finished for her. “I might not remember you, but you remember for us okay? And then you can tell me all about it and I’ll tell you about your Mommy and all the great things she did while you were gone.” She swallowed hard against a lump in her throat. “We love you kiddo.”

Kara pushed herself up and stretched over Lizzy to press a kiss to Lena’s forehead. “You stay here,” she whispered. “I’ll get Mxyzptlk.”

Lena nodded, and Kara untangled her hand and went to find the imp. He followed her back wordlessly, the gravity of the situation dampening even his usual mirth. She helped Lena up, pulling her back against her chest and wrapping her arms around her. She set her own grief aside. It would be waiting for her later, but for now, in this moment, she would be strong for her family.

“Do it,” she said.

Mxy extended both hands over the bed this time and the fire that licked along his fingers was darker than Lizzy’s, a deeper, royal blue that moved in thick curling ripples instead of her mischievous quicksilver flickering. Kara couldn’t see what he was doing, but the hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she could feel the energy shift in the room. Something was drawing, pulling away and leaving a gaping hole behind. It stretched almost to the breaking point and then there was a vicious crackling and sparks of bright blue lightning snapped at Mxy’s fingers and he jumped back with a shout, shaking his hands.

Lena shifted in Kara’s arms. “What happened?”  

“She won’t go,” Mxy said, inspecting his fingertips. The skin looked slightly charred. “Her refusal was rather... violent.”

Kara couldn’t help it, she laughed; a gallows chuckle. “That sounds like our Lizzy.”

“Oh hell...” Lena leaned back into Kara’s chest. “What happens, if she dies here? Would we remember her then? Would everything stay the same?”

“Since she wouldn’t technically leave the dimension, yes?” Mxy looked extremely confused. “Why does that matter?”

“Because dying is okay, so long as people remember you...” Lena said softly. “This is our fault. We tried to teach her about death, and instead we’ve created a martyr.”

“Not a martyr,” Kara corrected her, “a bright and loving little girl who wants her moms to remember her and be happy. How long do we have to convince her to go with you?”

Mxy shrugged. “A few hours? Maybe more.”

“Lena, can you stay with her? I’ll be right back, I just want to check on something.”

Lena nodded, stepping out of Kara’s arms and sitting down on the bed to take Lizzy’s hand. The tabby cat crept out of his hiding place under the sheets on Winn’s bed and leapt back over, rubbing his head against Lena’s hip and starting up a rumbling purr. Lena stroked him absently, and Kara cocked her head at Mxy, silently asking him to come with her.

“What aren’t you telling us?” She asked once the door was closed behind them and they’d gone a little ways up the corridor. “Qwsp implied there was something else you could do for Lizzy, something I wouldn’t like, but if the alternative is watching her die I’m willing to try anything. What is it?”

Mxy eyed her shrewdly, but didn’t deny it. “You won’t do it.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“She can’t survive as a wish trapped in a broken mortal body and apparently she doesn’t want to live as an imp, so to save her I’d have to make her into something new, but that would take real power, creation level power.”

“And you can’t create life...”

“No,” Mxy admitted, “but I can move it around. If I were to take a life from someone else, I could use it to heal her and make her truly mortal. She’d still have some of my powers, and probably some of yours, but she wouldn’t be a wish anymore, or an imp.”

That was... about as awful as Kara had expected. She thought fleetingly of sneaking Mxy down into containment. Surely there were beings down there who didn’t deserve the life they’d been given? But how could she ask her daughter to live with the shadow of death over her?

“Fine,” she said, bracing herself. “Take mine.”