The Shield

Linda Danvers, Supergirl

Before Linda was me and I was Linda, I never though about wearing the shield. By the time that my Luthor had created me, the Superman of my world was dead. I could remember him through Lana, but Lana and I weren’t exactly the same person. I never really felt like I was trying to live up to him. It always seemed that the costume was made for me.

I tried not to think about the fact that it was me that was made for the costume. It got harder to avoid those thoughts once I met the Superman of this world.

Linda always though about the shield. From the very first day that we merged, she was trying to live up to something.

Initially she was trying to live up to the image of Superman. She knew that she hadn’t lived a particularly heroic life. She thought that there were others more deserving of the crest she was wearing. But she couldn’t give it to them, so she did her best to make up for her past: to make sure that the idea of Superman didn’t become tainted because of her.

It wasn’t till I was gone that Linda started to feel like she was in my shadow. Superman had saved millions. I had been willing to die saved HER. Linda Danvers didn’t think she was the kind of person heroes died to save. When she looked in the mirror, she still saw a punk kid who ran off from her bright and shiny future to wallow in filth and darkness-- someone who went from a cop’s daughter to a sacrifice for her boyfriend's cult. When Linda had started thinking this way, she felt even less deserving of the shield on her chest than she had compared herself to Superman.

But I was an angel, like we were before: I watched her. There had never been a time she worked harder to deserve it.

And then Linda met Kara Zor-El.

Linda had tried everything she knew to save the lost little girl. She fought every enemy that was presented, and then she sought more to fight. She stood her ground against the Specter. She even gave herself over to violent and certain, if not immediate, death. None of it worked. She wished she could simply do for Kara what I had done for her. And still, she never thought she deserved it.

And in the end, she was glad that neither Superman nor I had to be the one put the little lost girl back in the ship and send her off to her death. Selfless, even when her selflessness was met with defeat.

Linda Danvers will never believe she deserves the shield she wears, but she'll never stop trying to protect the ones who (in her mind, at least) do.

The truth is, she is perhaps the one who deserves it most.

I know Linda; if she could see past her own guilt, the irony would kill her.