Chapter Text
The pain appeared seconds after her first real exposure to Earths yellow sun before her body became extraordinary as her mother exclaimed but it wasn’t until she was safely ensconced in her new bed chamber later that evening that Kara Zor-El, Kara Danvers as she was now to be known, discovered exactly what the pain had been. Upon the inside of her left wrist, where the pain had been, were strange markings.
Standing out against her pale skin, the two black markings were easily discernible but she didn’t understand them, the only one she truly recognised was the black crest of the great house of El. The same symbol that had been emblazoned across her rescuers chest earlier in the day.
Somehow Kara knew that these strange markings were going to make her even more of an outcast to the humans and thus kept them hidden. Throughout the years she had gotten rather creative on how to disguise them, long sleeved shirts, bracelets when wearing long sleeves in the middle of the Midvale summers was too strange, a watch that Eliza had bought her for her eighteenth birthday/fifth anniversary on Earth and then the long sleeves of her Super Suit.
In the early days of being on Earth, she’d been quite confused as to what this all meant. She had glimpsed similar markings on the wrists of her new human parents, a small bird and what she would come to learn was a DNA strand adorned the wrists of Eliza and Jeremiah Danvers. Kal-El later told her that in his early years on Earth he had gained the strange markings also but during a time when his powers had fizzled out, later termed a Solar Flare, markings that were matched on the wrist of his wife.
At the learning institute that the Danvers had her attend, she learnt more about the strange markings with her teachers explaining to the class that the markings usually appeared within the first years of childhood and that though most of the population had them, some did not. This explanation helped Kara feel less isolated as an alien, she had a way to pass as human in this strange new world.
The children would often coo and cheer at those amongst them that were lucky enough to find their matching marks so early in life and explained, not directly to Kara; this she learnt by eavesdropping, that when they met their match their marks became hot and though the marks had been so far apart in the beginning they moved closer together when the match was met.
In order to seal the deal, so to speak, the bearers of the marks had to join their wrists together by grasping forearms and bringing the two sets of marks together.
Throughout the tumultuous times, Kara would often wonder about her second mark, the strange circle with the words ‘Department of Extranormal Operations’ around the edge and the letters ‘DEO’ in the centre of the strange looking bird. She would wonder if her match was someone she knew or if this person were somewhere else on the planet and often times she would wonder what the strange circle and words meant. What exactly was a department of extranormal operations?
It wasn’t until the night that she saved the plane carrying her foster sister, Alexandra Danvers, that she learnt exactly what a department of extranormal operations was.