176. Chapter 176

When he died – when he was taken – she was a little girl who hadn’t had her first kiss and didn’t know that those feelings she had when sleeping over at Vicky Donahue’s were romantic, were lesbian, were… sexual.

And now that he’s back? Now that he’s back – rescued, finally, from the hell that had been Cadmus – his little girl is a grown woman, and she has saved lives, and she has taken lives, and last night, she screamed her way through four straight orgasms with her girlfriend’s tongue between her legs and her fingers buried deep inside her.

And Alex loves him. She loves him more than she knows how to describe. She loves him, and she knows he loves her, but she doesn’t look up at him when she speaks anymore because she’s not an entire head shorter than him anymore. She loves him, and yesterday, she killed for him, because sometimes, that’s the only way she knows how to prove to her father figures that she loves them, that she is worthy of them.

She loves him, but his eyes are different and his smile is the same, but her eyes are different and so is her smile, and she doesn’t know how to explain to him why.

Doesn’t know how to explain to him that the reason Maggie is over the house for dinner is not because she’s the brave detective who took a bullet to save his life and the lives of four other agents the other week; doesn’t know how to explain to him that Maggie is there because she’s her girlfriend, because she has a girlfriend, because she’s a lesbian.

Maggie knows Alex wants to tell him – tonight – because she changed her outfit six times before leaving, because she kept taking slow, slow breaths, because this morning when they woke up Alex was quiet and warm but scared, scared, scared.

Kara knows Alex wants to tell him – tonight – because the skin behind her eyes is tense, nervous, terrified, because she’s laughing a little too much, a little too easily, because she’s tripping over her own feet and chewing the inside of her cheek like she hasn’t eaten in weeks.

Eliza knows Alex wants to tell him – tonight – because Maggie and Kara keep replacing her wine, her beer, her bourbon, with seltzer, with cranberry juice, with water.

For his part, Jeremiah watches his eldest daughter and squints slightly. He doesn’t remember her like this – giggly, nervous, giddy – and his eyes keep drifting to Detective Sawyer, to the woman who looks at Alex like she is the sun and the moon and every star in the sky, to the woman who didn’t hesitate to put her body between him and a bullet, who Alex had screamed for, who Alex had run for, who Alex had broken formation and killed for.

His little girl took lives for a living now.

His little girl was in love with another girl, now.

He just wasn’t sure if she knew it, so he said nothing.

But Alex did.

“So Dad,” she interrupts Kara as she’s telling him about some inconsequential case at the DEO, and Kara quiets immediately, eyes wide, eyes sharp, eyes protective, eyes believing in her sister, scared that her sister wouldn’t believe in herself. She catches Maggie’s glance and they nod at each other slightly across the dinner table, both ready to help their favorite girl out, both ready to give her whatever she needs.

“Alexandra, you interrupted your sister,” Eliza observes, and Kara puts her hand on Eliza’s, shaking her head that it’s fine, this is more important. Eliza sighs softly, silently, and Jeremiah’s heart cringes at the years he missed, the years where Kara had to play go-between with his wife and his eldest, the years where Kara learned to balance protecting her sister and her adoptive mother, without him, without him, without him.

But he keeps his eyes deliberately dry – a skill he’d honed in Cadmus – and he watches Alex carefully. Maybe she does know she’s in love, after all.

“Dad, I um… there’s a thing. A thing that happened since… since you went away. That you should know about. That I want you to know about, because I want you to know me. I mean, it’s not really something that happened, more of something I realized, but also I guess some things happened, I mean…”

She reaches for Kara’s wine glass and Maggie stills her, soothes her, helps remind her that she can do this sober, she can, she can, she can, with a gentle hand on her knee.

Alex drinks from her glass of seltzer instead, and Jeremiah hates himself, because his daughter needed him, all these years she needed him, needed him, but he wasn’t there, was nowhere, so she poisoned her liver instead.

“I’m in love with Maggie, Dad. I – she – she’s my girlfriend. She’s my girlfriend and I’m gay. A lesbian. I’m gay, and I want you to know because I think I’ve always been gay? I just didn’t know, I didn’t realize, I didn’t want to disappoint Mom, I didn’t think it was an option, but now it is, and now this is my life, and I wanted you to know because I want you to know me, and I want you to love me, as me, not as the long haired straight girl you remember me as.”

Maggie isn’t breathing and a single tear streaks her face, and Kara is beaming through her own tears. Sister and girlfriend alike reach for Alex’s hands, and Maggie kisses her knuckles and Kara squeezes with just the right amount of pressure.

Eliza stares down at the table because she knows she and Jeremiah are going to have a long talk later about exactly what Alex meant by not wanting to disappoint her, but Jeremiah is rising, Jeremiah is striding across the table, and he’s kneeling in front of his eldest daughter and he’s taking her hands from Maggie and Kara and he brings them between his and he kisses them, kisses her tear-stained, trembling cheeks, kisses her forehead. Strokes her short hair, holds her face between his calloused hands.

“Alex Danvers. My brave girl. You know the only thing that got me through all those years?”

Alex bites down a sob and shakes her head, and Kara crouches down on Jeremiah’s other side, putting her hand on Alex’s knee while Maggie guards the small of Alex’s back with a tender hand.

“The thought that you and your sister were safe. Were happy. And Detective Sawyer – Maggie – she makes you happy. I can tell. You never giggled like that, even as a teenager, except with Kara. But it’s different now: you’re right. You’re different. And that’s good. It’s wonderful. Because Alex, I don’t need you to be the girl I remember. I need you to be the woman that you are. And you’re perfect. Just like you are.”

“Dad,” Alex chokes, and she’s slipping out of her chair and into his arms, and Kara reaches out for Maggie’s hand, and Maggie takes it and squeezes, because the person they both love most in the world is sobbing, but sobbing from a decade of relieved grief, almost three decades of relieved suppression, sobbing from the sheer pain of sweet healing.

Eliza watches and lets a tear drop from her eyes, because she wishes she’d had Jeremiah all these years to remind her to remind Alex how perfect she really is.

“I love you, Alex. I love you.”

“I love you too, Dad. I love you, too.”