Quantum Entanglement - Preview

Rating: Non-ABO, Explicit.

Description: The Soulmate AU. 

Tags: Cross-universe soulmates, Young love in a universe entangled with ours.

Word count: 1,339



Lena Luthor – Renowned scientist, philanthropist, and beloved friend — October 24th 1993 – February 12th 2022

Kara let the tears well in her eyes to remove the printed words from her sight. She had written them herself, so she knew what they said, but to see the ink and hold the newspaper in her hand was complete agony. Her nose clogged again, and she balled a tissue, forcing it up under her glasses to catch the drip. She tossed the paper aside and pushed out her chin in a full-on cry—sobs that sounded more like screams from between gritted teeth.

Her feet carried her through the rooms in the Tower, to the pale blue light of the lab, where she hesitated at the door in case Lena was inside. She knew Lena was there, but also not there—paradoxically confusing to her emotions, both a relief and harrowing to her soul at the same time.

Lena waited for her in a preserving cryo-chamber, locked in stasis – her face an empty enigma that still shocked Kara. She came in several times a day, expecting more from the mute lips that she never had the chance to kiss.

This was how she preferred it, when it was just the two of them. Her visits became more complicated when others were around.

“I didn’t tell her!” Kara howled in the presence of her sister, Kelly and all of their friends. “I never told her, Alex! She’s gone and she doesn’t know how much I loved her, how I saw a future with her – or that I considered her not just my friend, but my soulmate.”

They ached in her chest, all of those things left unsaid – and Kara repeated them over and over again, even though Lena couldn’t respond. It went on like that for days, weeks, and months until a whole year passed without her.

Spring rains pattered against the roof of the Tower, and one day Kara woke up to Brainy and Alex’s soft-footed approach.

“There is something we can do,” Brainy disclosed with a pained squint, his face green from embracing his true self to probe the whole of the universe for solutions. “Something you can do, Kara, but it might mean that you have to say goodbye to all of us.”

Alex appeared reluctant to share that piece of information, but she gestured for Brainy to continue and stood solemnly at his side as he presented his ideas.

“You can take Lena away from here — to a world in the new multiverse,” Brainy asserted and folded his hands in front of him to peer into the stasis-chamber where Lena looked like she was sleeping. “We thought that all known universes became One during the Crisis, but other universes simply took their place. I discovered during my trip to the future that there can never be a true singularity. There is an infinite number of possible worlds, and some of them connect to ours.”

“You might never return if you go,” Alex whispered, terrified and tearful as she stepped forward to place her hands on Kara’s shoulders. “I don’t want you to leave, Kara, but the whole thing is that you’re not here now. You just disappear more and more each day, and I can’t bear to watch that.”

Kara breathed in sharply, torn between feeling hopeful and distraught. “I’ll come back. If there’s any way back for us, I’ll figure it out.”

Alex nodded too vigorously to that and then pulled Kara to her chest. “You will. I know you will.”

Kara had to try, even though Brainy didn’t know what the full journey would entail.

With her mind made up, she said farewell to her family and took the steps that Brainy described -- but it would come to pass that she wouldn’t remember what those steps were, not the first and not the last. She just recalled how she felt during her goodbyes, the love of her family and her home. Those were the sentiments that stuck with her and became part of her innate feelings. She understood loyalty and love more deeply.

It wasn’t fair to expect Alex and Eliza to be there to send her off.

Kara couldn’t cope with the emotional burden of their combined terror and hope, so she passed the weight of it onto someone else’s shoulders — the only one to see the real scope of her anguish when she lifted the entire cryo-pod just to hesitate on the threshold of a portal.

Brainy had programmed it with the exact coordinates to a destination so obscure that they had never named it. Kara simply referred to it as her second chance.

“Are you certain you’re ready for this journey?” Brainy asked, his teeth pressed together in tight rows. It wasn’t really a grimace, just a tense reaction at losing two people that had become part of his found family.

“I faced Black Mercy and I survived the Phantom Zone twice,” Kara reminded him, if only to assure herself that she was capable of stepping into the unknown.

“Unlike Black Mercy, this place won’t be pulling on your memories to shape the world, Kara. It will craft one of its own choosing,” Brainy whispered and clasped Kara’s shoulder to meet her eyes. “There is a high possibility that you won’t remember Lena or your life before you enter this void. Your whole existence will be different. There’s no guarantee that you’ll find one another, and even if you do, unless you’re confirmed to be soulmates, you may never leave this place.”

Kara accepted his warning, let it hang over her for a few seconds longer, and then pulled him into an embrace. “I trust my heart, Brainy. I know it will guide me, even if I forget her name. Red Daughter felt our connection to Lena halfway around the world. I’ll feel it halfway across the universe, I have no doubt.”

Time was a sensitive thing in the grander universe.

From the moment Kara opened the cryo-pod, there would be no turning back. With one last burst of speed, she unhooked the latches and brought Lena into her arms where she had always rightfully belonged.

It wasn’t confidence that carried Kara forward with Lena limp and cradled to her chest, it was sheer desperation. The swirling portal swallowed them whole, and Kara succumbed to the sacrifice of giving up her entire world just for the chance of experiencing Lena’s love.

The weightless pull of being dragged lightyears away was less daunting than the foggy confusion that filled her head like static.

The taste of Lena’s name on her lips faded faster than the memory of her face, and Kara’s history came apart like the jagged fragments. She tried to hold onto them, grasp them with fingers that wouldn’t or couldn’t move as lights blinded her vision and the air in her lungs became stagnant.

Flickers of thoughts blew out in her head like candle flames – L-Corp, Alex, journalism, it all resonated within her, foreign and strange until the memories themselves were meaningless. Krypton and all of its incredible inventions faded out to black, her homeland forgotten.

Lena’s face blurred, leaving nothing but the radiance of her eyes.

The harder Kara tried to locate a meaning to where she was and why this was happening, the faster it all drained into the ether.

Kara swirled with it.

The void didn’t spit her out at the other side. It formed around her in reckless disregard for how uneasy she would feel at seeing a sudden horizon hanging overhead.

Kara blinked until the sun spots in her vision faded, and she looked into a pair of brilliant, mismatched eyes.

They belonged to the young woman who was standing at her side, observing her odd behavior with a smile on her face. She tied her black hair into a long braid with a string of twine and tucked it under the green velvet hood of her riding robes.

“Kara. You can hold my hand if you like.”