Imagine Alex’s plane isn’t brought down and Supergirl never comes to be.
J’onn is firmly Hank Henshaw, known alien opponent.
Kara is Cat Grant’s assistant with aspirations to, uhhhh, figure out her aspirations.
Kara’s on a coffee run when she hears something she hasn’t heard in a decade, a spoken word that shocks her so deeply she drops her coffee cup on the cafe floor. It’s a young voice screaming “help!” but the word is screamed in a language she learned as a child, one spoken on a planet light years from here.
She’s sprinting out the door before the barista is even done scolding her for the spill.
There are three people – well, two humans and a small, greenish creature Kara recognizes from her childhood textbooks – fighting in an alley. It’s clearly young and terrified, and the black-clad humans are rough as they pick it up and throw it down hard, earning another garbled scream.
Kara’s punching him before she can even really think about it, sending him sprawling into the trash. The other one pulls back from where he’d been holding the creature down to gawk at her only to snap back as well from her lightly placed kicked. They’re both out cold.
The creature stares at her and backs itself away, crawling on all fours and trembling, it’s gill-like facial features flaring up in an attempt to intimidate. Kara squats down low and holds her palms up, submissive, and says, “I’m not going to harm you,” in it’s language. Her words are rusty – it’s been years and years – but the creature perks up and lets out an excited trill. Much to her surprise, it latches on to her hand and begins dragging her quickly down the alley.
Kara just follows along, confused and increasingly concerned about who she just beat up and where she’s being taken, and soon finds herself in the middle of a very sketchy warehouse in an even sketchier part of town.
The critter begins to chirp away again, calling out words Kara’s childhood vocabulary don’t quite catch, and all at once the walls seem to shift around her and the empty place she was before is now swarming with aliens.
There are dozens of them all around her, some holding guns and knives, some just watching, and Kara realizes with a gasp just how much she messed up.
She shakes the critter’s hand off hers and moves to run only for her entrance to be blocked, and she wants to fly but she’s not even sure if she still knows how and now all of the aliens are continuing to speak in dozens of tongues she only vaguely recognizes and she’s about two seconds away from rushing the smaller one near the window when a loud voice calls in English,
“ENOUGH.”
Everyone goes silent, and an alien approaches her that looks almost human. There’s something off about their eyes, though, which give them away.
“You saved her from the feds,” the creature says. “You’re one of us, then?”
Kara’s mouth stutters a bit but no words come out – her instinct is to deny deny deny, but it’s been so long since she could just talk about her actual, real self, so she nods. The alien smiles, a smile too wide and sharp to be human.
“Thank you for doing that. Are there more from your planet here?”
She shakes her head, whispers, “all dead,” and the alien puts its slightly too large hand on her shoulder.
“We understand. Most of us came to escape death and inprisonment only to find the cycle continue on earth. But we can protect you, like you protected ours. We are a community. A resistance.”
Kara nods, her heart beating fast as the idea of a community, and says, “what are you resisting?”
“Those men who attacked you are from an evil group that tries to snuff out all aliens on this planet. They’re called the DEO.”
Kara can feel it in her pulse as it beats faster and faster, that feeling of purpose and meaning coming in to play. People like her are here and they need her help.
Question of Smoke 