Kryptonite Weakness

Once upon a time, Supergirl had to crawl.

That is not how most superhero stories go. Most superhero stories have flying and strength and wonderful things happening at tremendous speed. This one has all of those things too — but first, it has a girl on her hands and knees on a dusty warehouse floor, moving toward something twelve feet away.

Here is why.

There is a substance called kryptonite. It is the remains of Krypton itself — pieces of the planet's core, flung across the galaxy when the world exploded, turned radioactive by the energy of the destruction. Most pieces drifted away into empty space. But some fell into nearby systems. Some landed on Earth.

Green kryptonite, the most common kind, does something to a Kryptonian that is very hard to describe. It does not simply hurt. It takes away. It reaches into Kryptonian cells and removes the sun-energy that Earth's yellow star puts there — the energy that makes Kara strong and fast and able to fly. Without it, she is still herself, still brave and clever and kind, but she is also small and slow and breakable in a way she had almost forgotten since landing on Earth.

Superman had warned her about it. She had learned the theory. She had not yet experienced it directly.

That changed on a gray afternoon in late autumn.

A man named Marcus Drayne had done something reckless with money he should not have spent. He had purchased, from a very questionable source, a fragment of genuine green kryptonite, sealed in a lead-lined case. Lead, he had read, blocked the radiation completely. He had used this knowledge as a plan: trap three of his warehouse employees inside the old Midvale textile building, open the case when Supergirl arrived, and use the resulting weakness as negotiating leverage for something he wanted.

It was not a good plan. It was, in fact, a very bad plan. But Marcus Drayne did not fully understand this yet.

Kara picked up the emergency signal and arrived at the warehouse within minutes. She hit the main door at speed and crossed the threshold without slowing.

And then her legs stopped working.

Not gradually. Not with warning. The green light hit her cells and the sun-energy vanished and her legs simply refused to hold her. She went down on one knee in the doorway, and the impact of her knee on the concrete floor was the loudest sound in the building.

She took a breath.

She took another one.

The kryptonite glow was coming from a table twelve feet away. There was a case on the table — lead-lined, open. She could see the fragment inside, the size of a fist, glowing that terrible cold green. She knew that if she could get to the case and close the lid, the lead lining would block the radiation completely.

Twelve feet.

She looked at the three employees against the far wall. They were frightened and uncomfortable, but unharmed. She looked at Marcus Drayne, who was standing near the table with the open kryptonite case, watching her with an expression that had moved from confidence to uncertainty in the last thirty seconds. He had expected her to fall completely. She had not fallen completely.

Kara did not try to stand. She already knew she couldn't.

She began to crawl.

It is not an easy thing to describe, what it felt like. Every foot forward was a negotiation — a pulling of one hand toward the next position, a dragging of knees over cold concrete. The green light pressed down on her like something heavy. Her arms, which could usually lift a truck without straining, trembled.

She moved forward anyway.

One foot. Two feet. She passed the halfway point. Marcus Drayne took a step backward, which was the most useful thing he did all evening. Three quarters. She could see the latch on the lead case now, the simple hinged clasp that all she needed to do was flip.

She reached the table leg. She pulled herself up by it. Her hand found the lid of the case.

She closed it.

CLICK.

The green light disappeared.

The silence that followed was very complete.

And then, slowly, like sunlight coming through clouds after a storm, the warmth came back. Sun-energy seeping back into her cells one by one, her muscles remembering what they were for, her legs finding their strength again.

By the time the Department of Extranormal Operations arrived twelve minutes later, Kara was standing upright near the door. The three employees were being walked to safety by their colleagues. Marcus Drayne was sitting on the floor with his arms around his knees, waiting to be collected. He had not planned for a scenario where she simply kept moving.

The kryptonite fragment was sealed, cataloged, and taken into evidence.

Kara sat on the warehouse steps afterward while the DEO processed the scene, and she thought about the crawling.

It was not a glamorous image. A girl in a blue suit, on her hands and knees, moving across a dusty concrete floor. No flying. No speed. No heat vision or freeze breath. Just moving forward because moving forward was what needed doing.

She thought about what her father had once said about the symbol on their family's crest.

It means we keep trying. Even when it is hard. Especially then.

She had been knocked down. She had felt genuinely helpless for the first time since arriving on Earth.

And she had kept moving.

Being vulnerable, she thought, was not the worst thing. Every person was vulnerable at some point. Every person had a kryptonite, something that made them feel small and slow and uncertain.

The only thing that truly defeated you was stopping. Deciding you were too knocked down to try.

She had not decided that.

She flew home through the gray afternoon sky, and the clouds parted just as she cleared the rooftops of Midvale, and the yellow sun found her and filled her back up completely.

She was all right.

She was more than all right.