Chapter Text
Kyle Mattinson has been waiting for this. The moment the house of cards that was his life was gonna tumbled down on top of him. He planned, speculated, feared. And it was here. With one knock on a door.
"Hi, my name is Alex Danvers, I'm a Special Agent from the FBI and…"
"I'm so sorry to stop you there," he said putting the palm of his hand in front of her. "But you being here kinda of starts something that you don't really understand. It's Supergirl around?"
"Wh… What are you talking about?" She stuttered, looking around the hallway, her eyes immediately focusing somewhere else. "I don't know Supergirl."
"Well, that's bad. Because in about three minutes, mercenaries hired by Cadmus are gonna storm this bad with the sole intent of killing me. So if Supergirl is around, we're really gonna need her."
"Why Cadmus want to kill you?" He heard before he saw her. The red and the blue were intimidated on the TV, but live was something out of this worlds. Which made sense in the situation.
Alex had her gun in her hand and Supergirl was looking around, trying to find the trouble the man promised. She couldn't see anything, but the fast heartbeats she heard from him made her believe something was up. He was in danger.
"Because I'm intellectual property and they don't want me on the DEO's hands. I have a plan, but you guys will have to follow my lead."
He got back inside his apartment and got a gym bag under the kitchen cabinet. When he opened it, there were weapons. A lot of weapons.
That made Alex point her gun at him and Supergirl turn to him ready for a fight. He predicted that.
"Not for you guys." He said messing around inside the bag, looking for something.
"I can just fly you guys out of here." Supergirl said, still in an offensive position.
"We do that, they come after us. They come after me. They have to believe I'm dead." He finally finds what he was looking for, a big device in a triangular form, that changed into a weird high tech bracelet once it touched his forearm. "This'll help us do it, but you have to play your part. But I don't have much time to explain."
He stroked his chest with the device and another him popped out from behind him.
Alex took a step back. "What the…"
"I'll explain later," he started to walk deeper into the apartment. "Just pretend you're talking to him and in 10 seconds fly through the window and meet me at this address in an hour."
"This is crazy," Supergirl said, walking to the dummy before taking the paper Kyle was offering.
"Welcome to my life." He said disappearing through the bedroom.
Supergirl waved her hand in front of the dummy, who smiled without moving the rest of his body. It was the weirdest thing she had ever seen. Alex was quickly alongside her, fascinated with what she was seeing.
"I so wanna know what this is."
"Exploding, that's what this is." Supergirl said, the imperceptible heat waves coming from it increasing by the millisecond. "We need to get out of here."
"Just a seco…"
She didn't get to finish, because a bunch of guys in tactical gear invaded the place. They seemed to get out of nowhere and had a single target, Kyle Mattinson.
Supergirl and Alex were there before the first shot, but they could still hear it. It was followed by about 20 more before the explosion. It was smaller than they expected, but Supergirl still left Alex on top of some random building to go back and check if the mercenaries were alive.
"I don't you want to check on them." She heard Kyle's voice in a distance. He was trying to catch some air, but didn't stop running. "It only works if they think I'm dead. I understand you know nothing about me, but you're a hero. Please help me save myself."
xxx
She stopped, looking from Alex to the fire coming from the apartment a few buildings away. Kyle wouldn't know her decision until they met again, he wouldn't even know if she heard him. She decided there that keeping him safe was more important than answers right now. However, the questions kept piling up and the reckoning would come.
Kyle ran for about fifteen minutes before getting on the bus. He knew the route by heart, studied that escaping plan like it was the only way to save his life. Which it was. He had prepared for everything, analyzed every scenario, followed every contingency. He did not expect that the boy from the grocery store close to work was the one thing to ruin it.
He fell in love. Hard. The unexpected, hit you like a hurricane kind of love that he didn't even know it existed. And the boy loved him back! With all his heart. Even with the secrets and lies. Even with the hiding most of his life away. He was loved and he wasn't ready to give that up.
"I need you to come with me." He told AJ as soon as he entered Ceaser's Things. He knew that was a mistake, he knew that could ruin everything. But he had to try.
"I'm working." AJ said playful, that beautiful smile moving things on Kyle's stomach. "You can't just come here because you're horny, you know. I'll see you tonight."
"AJ," he took his hand and stared deep into the cashier's eyes. "I'm so sorry I'm doing this with you, but I don't have a choice. I was not prepared for this, for you. I didn't even know I could feel this much for someone and yet, here we are. I can't imagine doing this without you, you know? Living? It's so hard and tiring and repetitive. Every day, another day follows and it all… It's so much and so big and so scary. Yeah, scary. I'm scared and I spent a lot of time pretending I'm not and that is exhausting… It's exhausting and you are the only thing that makes me feel like it's worth it. And it's not fair for me to ask you this and it would be kinda crazy if you said yes, but I'm just hoping you are a bit crazy with me. A bit crazy about me? 'Cause I'm batshit crazy about you. So, please, I need you to come with me. Will you?"
xxx
There was a lot going on in Kara Danvers life. She just had a team up with her cousin Superman, who said how proud he was with her. She just started her career as a journalist. She met Lena Luthor and the woman was far from what Kara expected. She even had an unconscious man in the DEO that fell on Earth with a pod like hers. Being almost blown up was not on her plans. Sitting in a bench in the middle of National City waiting for a man at 4 AM was not on her plans. But there she was, hoping she made the right choice.
"He is gonna be here." Alex assured her, even though she wasn't that sure either. She wasn't that good lying to her sister anymore, though. "Probably. We need to trust your instincts, anyway. And for what is worth, I believe him."
"I know, it's just such a weird turn of events to come from a name search on Cadmus related people. It's too much of a coincidence."
"It's not a coincidence." Kyle said from behind her. "It's a conspiracy. My conspiracy, hoping that someday we could get here. To this point."
"What point?" Alex asked.
"The point where we work together to bring down the institution that kidnaped, experimented and tortured me. But there is a little of story time first. It's a lot to unload." He circled back the bench to face them.
"Well, we are ready to hear it." Supergirl said.
"Me too." Another person walks from the shadows. AJ.
"Fifteen years ago, I was in a car accident with my family. Everybody died but me. Maybe it would have been better if I did, because I was selected for an experimental treatment that used alien DNA to accelerate a human body healing process and save someone from the brink of death. I was seven.
"The treatment worked and after a year unconscious, I was up and running. I was this ball of energy jumping around in the big white lab where they trapped me. I did not understand what was happening at first. My parents were dead and they said I owned them my life. That if I stayed and helped them understand what happened, I would be saving lives. They made me think I had a choice, that I was part of the process.
"I found out later that the experiment didn't stop with saving my life. The alien DNA fused with mine, it was part of me. And if it gave powers to the owner, it could give powers to me too.
"They tried everything, electricity, hypnosis, drugs, bringing me back to the brink of death, drowning. I screamed in pain and could hear others do the same. I was not the only subject, but I was never allowed to meet them. I started to forget about my life before. My parents, my name. I was a code. S11. That was my new name.
"After three years and no results, I met the scientist that saved my life. He convinced the powers of be that maybe torturing me 24/7 wasn't the best way to make it work. They could train me so that if the powers did manifest, I could use them in favor of Cadmus.
"I learned code breaking, martial arts, precision training, every knowledge I would need to use the powers to the best of my abilities, powers I didn't even have yet. He tried so hard to protect me, the others scientist whispered he thought he was my dad.
"Nine more years, I got my chance to leave. They gave up on give me powers, but still wanted to hold on to hope they could find another method of bringing them out. So they made me come back once a month and surveillance me wherever I go.
"I knew I needed to find a way to escape, so I hatched a plan. I left breadcrumbs to connect Cadmus to my alias, Kyle Mattinson, in the hopes that you guys would find me. I worked out how to make them think I'm dead, using their own technology. And once they did, a worm would infect their system and erase every image they have of me, so that only people that worked directly with me could recognize me. That's how I ended up here, with you guys."
"But that's my problem right there." Alex pointed at him, standing up. "All of this is crazy enough on its own, but why go so hard for Supergirl and my help."
"Because the scientist they called my dad was Jeremiah Danvers. And the owner of the DNA I was infected with is called Kara Danvers."