Chapter Sixteen
**Kara's POV**
Kara had been putting this off for a few days, unsure how to feel about any of it.
Now she was walking through the golden halls of the palace, heading toward the throne room, the weight of the crystal in her hand matching the weight in her chest.
She needed to talk to Odin about the ceremony for placing the Fortress. The mountains a few miles from the city would be perfect, isolated, beautiful, close enough to visit but far enough for privacy, and she wanted Loki to participate in it, but she needed Odin's permission.
But the last time she'd talked to Odin, things had gotten... heated.
---
**Flashback**
Kara stood in the throne room after hours, alone, staring up at the ceiling.
Or rather, through the ceiling.
Her x-ray vision had picked up something odd about the paint, the layers, the way the gold seemed just slightly too thick in places. So she'd looked deeper.
And found it.
A mural. Hidden beneath centuries of concealment. A woman in armor, hair long and pitched black as night flowing, holding Mjölnir, *Thor's* hammer, standing beside a younger Odin. Bodies littered the ground at their feet. Armies of the fallen. Conquest and blood and terrible power.
Kara's stomach had twisted.
She remembered learning about the war between Asgard and Krypton, thousands of years ago. she had briefly studied it with her Uncle Zod. Asgard had been an aggressor. Had sought to conquer. Had clashed with Krypton's defenses and found themselves... matched.
Then, suddenly, the war had stopped.
Asgard had halted all hostilities. Had paid reparations for deaths and damages. Had become, against all odds, a reliable ally.
Until the Kryptonian Council had banned all travel to everywhere outside Krypton's space for reasons the database didn't specify.
Kara had always wondered why.
Now, staring at the hidden mural, she was confused who the woman was.
"I see you have found one of Asgard's lost mysteries."
Kara didn't turn. She'd heard Odin approaching, the heavy footsteps, the faint rustle of his robes, the way the air itself seemed to shift in his presence.
"Who is she?" Kara asked, still looking up.
Odin was silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was tired. Old. Weighted with regret.
"Her name was Hela. My firstborn. My daughter."
Kara's breath caught. "Was?"
"Is," Odin corrected quietly. "Though I wish, sometimes, that the past tense were true."
He moved to stand beside her, looking up at the hidden mural, at the daughter he'd erased from history.
"I was different in my youth," he said. "Ambitious, prideful. I wanted to rule the Nine Realms. Then the universe beyond. Hela was my executioner. My weapon. Together, we conquered everything we touched."
His voice went hollow.
"Until we met Krypton."
Kara's hands clenched into fists.
"Your people were our equals," Odin continued. "Perhaps more than our equals. For the first time, I tasted defeat. Real defeat. And it... changed something in me."
He closed his eye—the one he still had.
"I sought knowledge. Power. I performed the ceremony", Mimir, the guardian of the well, demanded one of Odin's eyes as payment for a single draught from the well. I sacrificed my right eye, hung myself from Yggdrasil for nine days and nine nights. And when I woke, I understood. I saw what I had become. What I was doing. The trail of bodies I was leaving across the cosmos."
"So you stopped," Kara said quietly.
"I tried. I made peace with Krypton. Paid reparations. Swore to protect the Nine Realms instead of conquering them." His voice cracked. "But Hela... Hela refused. She wanted to continue. To expand. To rule. When I told her we were done with conquest, she rebelled."
Kara finally looked at him. "What did you do?"
Odin's face was carved from grief. "I couldn't kill her. She's my daughter. My blood. So I imprisoned her. Bound her with every ounce of my power. She's still there. Still alive. Still waiting."
"Where?"
"Hel. A realm between realms. As long as I live, she stays contained. But..." He looked down at his hands. "It takes so much out of me. Every day, I pour my strength into holding her there. And every day, I feel myself weakening."
Kara's mind raced. "Let me help her."
"What?"
"Let me try to change her. To reach her. To—"
"No." Odin's voice was steel. "Absolutely not."
"But if I could just talk to her—"
"She would kill you." Odin turned to face her fully, and his eye blazed with something between fear and fury. "Hela is death incarnate. She is the Goddess of Death. She draws power from Asgard itself, and if she were ever free, she would bathe the Nine Realms in blood."
"You don't know that!" Kara's voice rose. "People can change! You did!"
"I changed because I saw the consequences of my actions!" Odin roared. "Hela has seen nothing but the inside of a cage for thousands of years! Do you think that has made her more reasonable?!"
They'd argued. Shouted. Kara had insisted that everyone deserved a chance at redemption, that locking someone away forever without even *trying* was cruel.
Odin had insisted that some people were beyond saving, that Hela's rage and power made her too dangerous to ever release.
Finally, exhausted, they'd reached an uneasy truce.
"I will... consider it," Odin had said, his voice strained. "If you truly believe you can reach her, I will think on whether to allow you to try. But not yet. Not now. Give me time to decide."
Kara had nodded, throat tight with frustration and sadness.
And they hadn't spoken since.
---
**Present**
Kara stood in the hallway outside Odin's chambers, crystal clutched to her chest, trying to gather the courage to knock.
The Fortress of Solitude crystal.
The weight of it was more than physical.
A Fortress of Solitude was only used when a family had been completely wiped out. It was a memorial. A tomb. Each head of an El family line had carried it, updating it yearly with memories, knowledge, technology, everything that made them who they were.
Kara's crystal contained every generation of the El line. Jor-El. Lara. Their parents. Their parents' parents. Thousands of years of accumulated wisdom and memory and *life*, all compressed into a single, glowing shard.
It was supposed to go to Kal.
But Kal had died on Krypton. In the pod, in the explosion, with her mother and Aunt.
So it had passed to her.
She was the last. The only El left in all the universe.
And now she was supposed to plant it in some mountain and call it her "summer home" because apparently that's what royalty did. They had vacation houses. Multiple residences. Places to retreat when the main palace got boring.
Kara didn't want a summer home.
She wanted her family back.
She wanted her planet back.
She wanted to stop carrying this crushing weight of being the last, the only, the one who survived when everyone else didn't.
Part of her, a small, dark part she tried not to acknowledge, wished she could just make it stop. Numb the pain. Take the memories and file them away where they couldn't hurt anymore. Let herself rest.
But the greater part—the part that had met Thor, that had been adopted by Frigga and Odin, that had found friends in the Avengers and a brother in Loki, that part wanted to keep going. Wanted to honor those she'd lost by living. By being happy.
By building something new.
She just didn't know how to reconcile the two.
Kara stood there, crystal pressed to her chest, and felt the tears start.
She'd been holding them back for weeks. Months, maybe. Ever since she'd woken up. Since she'd learned Kal was dead. Since she'd realized everyone *everyone* she'd ever known was gone.
She'd refused to let herself feel it. Refused to break down. Refused to be weak.
But now, standing alone in the hallway, the weight of it all crashed down at once.
Every held in tear, every cut-off sob, every moment of grief she'd pushed aside.
Her breathing went ragged. Her knees buckled.
She was about to collapse when arms caught her.
Strong arms. Steady arms.
Odin pulled her against his chest, holding her like she weighed nothing, his voice a low rumble in her ear.
"It's alright to cry, my young daughter," he murmured. "It does not make you weak. Remember them. Honor them. Honor what they fought for to bring you to us."
And Kara broke.
She clutched at his robes and sobbed greatly, heaving sobs that tore through her chest and left her gasping. She cried for her planet, for her city of Argo, for her friends who'd never know what happened to her.
And then she cried for her family.
For Aunt Lara and Uncle Jor-El. For baby Kal, who never got to grow up. For her parents, who'd sacrificed everything to give her this chance.
Odin held her through all of it, didn't tell her to stop, didn't tell her to be strong, just held her and let her grieve.
At some point, the world went soft and dark.
---
Kara woke in her bed.
Sunlight—Asgardian sunlight, warmer and gentler than Earth's—streamed through the windows. Frigga sat beside her, embroidering something delicate and golden.
"Good morning, dear one," Frigga said with a soft smile. "You've been asleep all day."
Kara blinked, disoriented. "I... what?"
"Odin brought you here after you fell asleep in his arms. He said you'd had a difficult day." Frigga set aside her embroidery and brushed a strand of blonde hair from Kara's face. "We've postponed the planting ceremony until tomorrow. Give you time to rest."
"Oh." Kara's throat felt raw. Her eyes were puffy. But somehow, she felt... lighter. "Thank you."
"There's one more thing," Frigga added, her smile widening. "Loki will be joining us tomorrow. Under guard, of course, but he'll be there."
Kara sat up. "Really?"
"Odin thought you might appreciate having your brother present." Frigga's expression went soft. "He loves you very much, you know. He's not always good at showing it, but he does."
Kara's eyes burned again, but this time with something warmer than grief.
"Thank you," she whispered.
---
**The Next Morning**
The royal family stood on the mountain, snow crunching beneath their feet, the city of Asgard glittering in the valley below.
Thor stood to Kara's right, Mjölnir at his side, looking proud and protective. Frigga stood to her left, radiating calm support. Odin stood behind them all, hands clasped, eye watching carefully.
And Loki—shackled but present, two guards flanking him—stood slightly apart, offering Kara a small, encouraging smirk.
"You've got this, little sister," he said. "Just don't accidentally blow up the mountain."
"That was *one time*," Kara protested.
"You blew up a mountain?" Thor asked, delighted.
"I was practicing! and I accidently ran into a mountain at full speed, completely not my fault."
Despite everything, Kara found herself smiling.
She knelt and pressed the crystal into the snow-covered ground.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the crystal began to glow.
Brighter. Brighter. Light erupting from its core, spreading outward in geometric patterns, Kryptonian script spiraling up from the earth in shimmering holographic waves.
The ground trembled.
And then it *grew*.
Crystal upon crystal, building upward, expanding, forming walls and spires and towers—a fortress of pure, glowing crystal that climbed toward the sky like a frozen cathedral.
Six hundred feet tall.
Magnificent. Alien. Beautiful.
The Fortress of Solitude.
When the light finally faded, Kara stood and stared at what she'd created.
A castle of memory and hope.
The family approached the entrance together. A pedestal stood just inside, waiting, its surface smooth and expectant.
The family crystal—smaller than the Fortress crystal, but no less important—was heavy in Kara's hand once again.
She looked over at her new family. All of them were looking back at her with encouraging smiles.
Thor gave her a thumbs up.
Frigga nodded, pride shining in her eyes.
Loki winked, despite his chains.
And Odin, Odin stepped forward and rested a hand on her shoulder.
"It's time, daughter," he said gently.
Kara smiled. Remembered last night. Remembered being held like a father holds a child. Remembered feeling safe for the first time since Krypton fell.
"Yeah," she said softly. "It is."
She let go of the breath she'd been holding.
And inserted the crystal.
The Fortress came alive.