4. Finding Out

The fifth dimension...

That took a little while to sink in. Even after Alex had finished the exam and they’d all relocated to one of the larger conference rooms to share everything they’d learned and plan their next step, Kara still wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it.

Given her recent encounter with Mxyzptlk, he probably should have been the obvious suspect, or at least high on the list of possibilities, but somehow she hadn’t even considered him. Black Mercies, mind controlling aliens, alternate Earths... those had been her first thoughts, and they would have been difficult and dangerous enough, but this? This was terrifying and messy, because it wasn’t a dream, or an illusion, or some other Kara on some other Earth’s problem, it was her life, her reality. Whatever happened here, it was real.

Lena was real. Their marriage might not be, but how many people already believed it was?

Lizzy was real, or at least... she seemed real enough, and she was half Kryptonian; Alex’s DNA tests had confirmed it. Wherever she had come from, Lizzy was Kara and Lena’s biological daughter.

However that was supposed to have happened.

Kara wasn’t even sure if she wanted children. She’d never really thought of it as an option. Her entire species had been reduced to herself and her cousin and it had seemed too much to hope that Human and Kryptonian DNA would be compatible. She’d never even asked, almost afraid of the answer... but what if it was?

Lizzy might be a child-shaped prop in an inter-dimensional Imp’s twisted version of pulling Kara’s pigtails, and she would probably disappear as soon as they sent him on his way again, but what if there could be others?

Krypton might have a future after all.

“Hey, Earth to Kara...” Alex gave the back of her chair a little shake.  

“What?” Kara blinked, startled out of her reverie. “Oh, sorry. I spaced out there for a minute.”

Alex sat down beside her, brows furrowed in concern. “Are you okay?”  “I think Winn is about to get started...”

“I’m fine,” Kara assured her, summoning up a smile. “Really. Just... lots to think about.”

 “We’ll figure it out.”

“I know.”

“Did I miss anything?” Lena took the seat on the other side of Kara, sliding her phone back into her purse and hanging it over the back of her chair. She’d stepped out to make a business call and check in with her secretary while Winn was setting up his presentation.

“Nope,” Winn answered for her as he finished syncing up his laptop to the three large screens hanging on the wall over his head. “Just getting started.”

J’onn was already sitting in the middle of the table, arms crossed and wearing his most inscrutable expression, but the extra large hot chocolate in front of him suggested he was feeling the need for sugary fortification.

Lizzy was down on the carpet playing with a pile of cardboard boxes Winn had found in storage for her. She had spent the first five minutes climbing in and out of the bigger ones, tripping over the edges and falling more than once, but always getting back up and trying again. The smaller boxes went on her head, over her little stuffed dog, and into the bigger boxes. Once she was tired of that, she made careful stacks, placing each box very deliberately before adding the next one, only to knock them all down again with a roar and a squeal of glee.

Alex had succeeded where Kara had failed, and the kid was finally wearing socks and a pair of blue sneakers, though Kara had caught her trying to take them off more than once; her chubby toddler fingers tugging clumsily at the little Velcro straps.     

“Okay...” Winn hit a button and the lights dimmed as the screens lit up.

“Is everything all right at the office?” Kara whispered, leaning a little closer. She knew Lena must be eager to get back to work. Lcorp wouldn’t run itself, and getting caught up in unexpected, extranormal shenanigans couldn’t have been high up on her to do list today. The DEO was Kara’s safe space, these were her people, and so long as they had her back she knew everything was going to work out, but Lena didn’t have that.

“It will be,” Lena said, her voice hushed to match Kara’s. “I had to move a few meetings around.” She still looked a little out of place in her casual clothes, but even in jeans and a t-shirt there was something so... almost regal, Kara wanted to say, about her; a kind of ingrained nobility to the straightness of her spine and the line of her jaw that commanded respect, if not outright fealty. Cat had had it too, though Cat’s authority had been sharp and pointed, quick to strike, and never quite sheathed, even when she was at ease. Not unlike like her namesake. Lena wasn’t exactly soft, but she wasn’t so obvious about her edges, more tempered, and less inclined to be cruel.

Cat demanded her well-earned respect, and defended it viciously. Lena seemed to simply expect it as a birthright.

“Oh.” Kara adjusted her glasses and then twisted her fingers together on the table. “Sorry, I know this is kind of a huge mess right now... and if Winn’s right, it’s probably all my fault.”

“Kara, its fine.” Lena untangled Kara’s hands, and prevented further fidgeting by capturing one with hers and winding them together. “If this fifth-dimensional being has some kind of fixation with you, that’s not your fault.” She smirked. “Though I can’t really blame him.”

Kara snorted and bumped her shoulder into Lena’s, grateful for the low lighting that hid her blush. On the subject of real and not real, what was this? Was Lena under some kind of reality-altering effect too? Was Kara? Lena nearly always left her feeling a little flustered... but flustered was kind of Kara’s thing. It didn’t mean anything... right?

“Ahem.” J’onn cleared his throat. “If we could begin?”

 Oh, right.

Kara ignored Alex and Winn’s questioning glances, tipping her chin up and hanging onto Lena’s hand. Friends could hold hands. She and Alex held hands all the time. It was totally fine.

“Okay...” Winn clicked something on his laptop, bringing up the first image, a map of National City with red dots scattered around it. “After I realized Lizzy was emitting fifth dimensional energy, I modified our surveillance programs and scanned the city, and I found eight more similar signatures. They’re not radiating as strongly as she is, and there doesn’t seem to be any kind of pattern, but whatever they are, they might tell us more about what’s going on here.”

“Before that, we did some digging. Lena went through the major general news sites for the last three years. So far it looks like we were right, and right now this is a localized reality shift. I hacked into your government records...” he waved a finger at Lena and Kara. “And that’s where things started getting weird.”

The next image was a marriage certificate, dated April 1st, 2014. “I found this, and this...” It was a birth certificate.Name: Eliza Louise Luthor-DanversDate of Birth: June 7th, 2015Parents: Lena Luthor and Kara Danvers.

Kara heard Lena’s sharp inhale and when she glanced sideways, there was a new stiffness in her shoulders and jaw. She opened her mouth to say something but Lena squeezed her hand and shook her head minutely. Kara shut it again without a word and squeezed back reassuringly.

No one else seemed to notice, and Winn was already moving on.

“We skimmed through some smaller news sites, gossip magazines, and celebrity news, and found these.” He flipped through wedding photos, interviews, minor news articles about Lcorp’s CEO, glamour shots of a pregnant Lena and dozens of baby pictures, some just of Lizzy, others including the entire family.

“I didn’t realize it at first,” Winn continued. “But none of the pictures have anyone else in them. Only you two and the kid, and the dates don’t make any sense. Lena, you didn’t even move to National City until last year, but according to these articles, you guys met over three years ago, dated for a few months, then got married and had a kid. Everything else, Lex Luthor’s crimes, trial and conviction, the renaming of your company, your mother’s trial, and escape, those are all the same. Kara, you were easier, there isn’t a whole lot of media interest in assistants, even Cat Grant’s, but there was that one article about you and the Flash, and it’s the same article I remember reading last year, except instead of ‘CEO’s assistant rescued by daring new superhero,’ it’s ‘CEO’s wife...’ and there are mentions of you added to the original interviews and articles about Lena and Lcorp.”

He paused to take a breath. “I think... and this is just a theory, but I think that if this really was someone from the fifth dimension, they didn’t actually change a whole lot. It’s more like they cut and pasted their own version of reality into the spaces around ours and then just let it spread. I’ve set up a program to keep track of mentions of you two online, and they’re multiplying exponentially. The more hits these fake articles and pictures get, the more of them pop up, and the more people are talking about you.”

“Can you take them down?” Kara asked.

“Yeah, but I can’t make people forget them or stop talking about it, and if Bill and Vasquez are any example the effect seems to be even stronger in person. We,” he gestured around the table, “are harder to convince, because our memories of you two, and Kara especially, mean we’re more firmly rooted in this reality, but for most people in National city...”he shrugged. “They don’t know what they don’t know, or they don’t know it well enough, so they see an article about this gorgeous queer power couple or a kid that shouldn’t exist and subconsciously they rationalize it, with this fifth dimensional whammy providing a ready-made explanation. I’ll do what I can online, but if we don’t want it to spread even further you’ll have to try not to be seen together.”

Kara thought of Vasquez, of that moment of confusion, and it made sense. She wondered who else in her life might be vulnerable. Not James, surely, but maybe Cat? That would be an interesting conversation. Eliza? How would she feel about having a granddaughter named after her? And Lena? Did she have anyone who would see through the lie?

 Speaking of Lena... She looked calm enough at a glance, but if the steadily tightening grip on Kara’s hand was any indication, that composure was only skin deep.

“So how do we remove this... whammy...?” J’onn asked.

“Find whoever is responsible, Mxyzptlk I’m assuming, given his interest in Kara,” Alex suggested, anger clear in the set of her jaw, “and kick his ass back to the fifth dimension. Again.”

“Again?” Lena asked. “You’ve already banished him once?”

“I did... wait,” now Kara was confused, “didn’t Mon EL say the banishment held for ninety days? So how could this be Mxy?”

No one seemed to have an answer for that.

No one at the table, anyway.  

“I told you!” Mon El barged in with a bang, slamming the door back on its hinges, and bringing the rank stench of raw sewage in with him. He looked even worse than he smelled. He was filthy, though it looked like he might have made some attempt to wash his hands and face, and his hair was spiked and matted with some unidentifiable brown goo. He was dressed in a mismatched assortment of ill fitting clothes that only made it all worse.

“I told you how dangerous they were,” he continued at a volume that made Lizzy cover her ears, “and you didn’t listen! You should have killed it when you—” he broke off, frowning at the last slide; a magazine article about working moms with a picture of Lena in one of her perfectly tailored skirt suits, smiling at a bashful Kara in a blue sundress. Lizzy was in her arms, dressed in a miniature version of Kara’s outfit with little buckle shoes, and Kara had an arm around her waist.

There was really no way to misinterpret that.

Mon El’s scowl darkened and Winn hastily snapped lid down on his laptop, flicking the lights back up to full power and throwing an apologetic grimace Kara’s way. She winced and disentangled her hand from Lena’s, not eager to deal with another childish outburst of jealousy right now.  However misplaced it might be.

“What do you know?” J’onn demanded, interrupting what was undoubtedly about to be a nasty comment. Never Mon El’s biggest fan, he looked even less impressed than usual.

Distracted, Mon El turned his sneer on J’onn instead of Kara and Lena. “I know that I woke up naked in a pile of garbage this morning. Stranded at the dump, and not in bed with Kara where I should have been.”

The corner of Lena’s lip curled in wordless distaste, not obviously, hardly even enough to notice, but Kara saw it and she wanted to drag Mon El out of there and throw him in the showers until he was ready to stop being so horribly awful and rude, and embarrassing.

“I dug up some clothes,” he went on, obliviously, “and headed here, but your agents found me first, and imagine my surprise when they couldn’t stop gossiping about how cute Kara’s kid was, and how lucky I was that her wife was visiting the DEO today so I probably wouldn’t get written up for missing training again. Then I come up here, to ask you all what the hell is going on... so now I guess I get to say I told you so!”

Okay, Kara really was going to throw him somewhere... maybe out the nearest window, she was halfway out of her chair when Alex stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, and a subtle tilt of her head towards Lena. Oh, right... secret identity. 

Alex stood up instead, mouth pressed in a flat line and her eyes snapping. “Unless you have some actual information, the only person you need to be telling anything to is yourself, and the message should be ‘shut up and go take a shower.’”

Mon El glowered, an ugly and stubborn tilt to the set of his jaw, and Kara decided it was time to get involved. In a non-super powered way of course, before someone got hurt.

Probably Mon El.

She was so sick and tired of his attitude, but right now they needed information more than Mon El needed a comeuppance. “Look,” she said, pulling Alex back down. “We’ve all had a really weird morning, and the only thing we know for sure is that the fifth dimension is involved somehow. Mxyzptlk is our most likely suspect, but he shouldn’t be able to cross into our dimension right now, so if you know more...” She held up a hand when he opened his mouth. “And you can be civil, we’ll listen.”

 Mon El still looked mutinous, but he sat down at the table between Lena and J’onn. Lena subtly shifted her chair closer to Kara’s.

“Back on Daxam,” he said. “We had a lot of problems with imps like Mxyzptlk, until we stopped trying to banish them and just started killing them instead. After that, they started using conduits, or talismans. Lamps, bottles, rings... any kind of physical object they could imbue with a piece of their power.

“Ooh, like D’jinn, or Genies!” Winn cut in. “That makes sense with what I found in my research for Earth encounters too.”

“Okay, but as far as I know I haven’t rubbed any lamps lately,” Kara protested.

“Yeah, that part is a myth,” Mon El continued. “They don’t exactly need your permission to ruin your life.”

“So where did the idea of three wishes come from?”

“Oh they still grant wishes.” He said with a derisive sneer. “The talismans might be powerful, but they’re not alive, and the imp can’t interfere directly without being in this dimension, so without a wish, nothing happens. But once the wish is made... and you might not even know you’ve made it, thoughts and dreams aren’t much different than words when you can cross dimensions as easily as crossing the street, they’ve got you. They think it’s funny to play with people; give them everything they’ve ever wanted, and then corrupt it or snatch it all away again.

 “The only way to stop this bastard is to find his talisman, use it to summon him, and then kill him.

“That seems a little extreme,” Lena said with a hint of ice. “So far this feels more like an elaborate prank than anything truly sinister.”

“I agree.” J’onn leaned forward over the table, steepling his hands together. “But I’m interested in the idea of summoning the culprit to answer for his crimes. If this Mr. Mxyzptlk set all of this in motion, whatever his motivation may be, then he can undo it just as easily. How do we find this talisman?”

Alex glanced at Lizzy, sitting inside one of her boxes with a second one over her head, glaring out at Mon El from under the flaps of carboard. “Could it be the kid?”

“No, it has to be an inanimate object, something they can channel their power through. Living things don’t work, though I have heard of them using bones or wooden staffs.”

“Those eight power signatures you found,” Alex said to Winn. “Could one of them be the talisman?”

“I guess...” Winn opened his laptop and brought the map of National City back up on the screens. “Though I would expect it to be stronger... is it possible it’s broken?”

 “I don’t know,” Mon El admitted, looking unsure for the first time. “I’ve only heard stories... and nothing about a talisman breaking into pieces.”

“Then I suggest we seek out whatever is emitting those signatures.” J’onn said. “If one, or all of them prove to be a link to Mr. Mxyzptlk, we can decide what to do from there.” He sounded unreasonably smug to be back in control of the situation. “Meanwhile, Miss Luthor, I suggest you try to live your life as normally as possible. If Agent Schott is correct, staying away from Miss. Danvers and the child should help to mitigate the effects. This... situation is now under DEO jurisdiction. We’ll keep you updated as necessary.”

Lena raised an eyebrow. “How generous of you... You’re not even going to ask me to sign a non-disclosure agreement?”

J’onn folded his arms, drumming his fingers on the table thoughtfully. “I don’t think that’s necessary. You’ve proven your discretion in the past, and your involvement in this case should be minimal.”

“Really?” The second brow joined the first. “You think being married to Supergirl counts as minimal involvement?”

Kara actually felt her heart miss a beat, And if Alex and Winn’s poleaxed expressions were anything to go by, so did they. J’onn just looked resigned.

“You know Kara is Supergirl,” Alex said flatly, levelling Kara with a look that promised an unpleasant conversation in their future, for all that her words were directed at Lena.

“I didn’t tell her!”

“Was I not supposed to?” Lena asked at the same time. She glanced from Alex to Kara, biting her lip and looking torn between guilt and exasperation. “I’m sorry, Kara. The hair and glasses might work on the general public, but I promise anyone who’s spent more than five minutes with both sides of you has figured it out... You really didn’t know that I knew...?” Lena winced. “Oh. Well, that’s awkward.”

There was a beat of utter silence, and then...

“Miss Luthor,” J’onn said with every evidence of solemnity, though Kara thought she could detect a hint of laughter under his characteristically gruff tone. “Let’s talk about that non disclosure agreement.”