390. Chapter 390
He gets it.
He doesn’t want to, but he gets it.
He doesn’t want to, especially not when Winn doesn’t see it.
When Winn doesn’t know why he called it a night after a white woman – another one – runs screaming from him faster, more terrified, than she’d run screaming from the two white men who’d actually been attacking her.
He doesn’t want to, but he gets it.
Gets why it’s Kara and Clark.
Why it’s always Kara and Clark.
Even when they cause oil spills and get infected with Red Kryptonite and get the brunt of a bored, needs-to-skewer-someone news cycle, they still come out of it heroes.
Of course they do.
Clark the white midwestern farmboy and Kara the perky white blonde reporter.
He doesn’t want to get it.
Why Alex says “thank god Supergirl was there.” Right in front of him.
Like he doesn’t have a suit.
Like he doesn’t have a history.
Of being a hero.
Of saving people’s lives.
Hell, of saving her life.
He doesn’t want to get it, but he does.
Maggie meets him for lunch – she makes him meet her for lunch – because the woman who’d run from him reported the attack.
Reported the attack, and it landed on Maggie’s desk, and of course this white girl was acting more scared of the Black man who saved her than the white men who attacked her.
So he tries to tell her that he’s busy, that there’s this kid he’s taking care of.
Maggie already knows about the kid.
She’d texted Alex telling her to take him the hell out of that cell, to at least give the kid food, to treat him like a terrified child instead of a threat.
He tries to tell her that he’s busy, because he’d really rather not think about it.
She won’t have it.
“Great, I love kids,” she tells him. “When they’re not trying to beat me up. And I feel like this kid won’t. So bring him. I’ll buy.”
He has no choice.
The tone of her voice tells him he has no choice.
And she must have been serious. About loving kids.
Because even though he likes this kid – even though this kid might be his… reason – he hasn’t been able to get the kid to smile all day.
But Maggie gets him to smile in fifteen minutes.
Just once, just small. About how she keeps asking her girlfriend for a flash grenade – “you know, the ones that make those huge sounds, but she won’t give it to me. Seems to think I’d do something irresponsible with it. Can’t imagine why.” – and she looks up at James’s grateful smile as the kid occupies himself with food.
“So that woman you saved last night came to the precinct.”
“Did she.”
“I’m sorry, James.”
He glances at Marcus, and figures there’s nothing they can say that he doesn’t already know.
“Not your fault I don’t look like Kara or Clark.”
“And it’s not your fault that people are too…” She gestures toward Marcus with her chin to indicate that she doesn’t want to swear in front of him. James gives a small grin. “To understand that you’re just as much of a hero as them. More, even.”
“More?” James furrows his brow.
“They’re not risking what you are, James. And I’m not just talking about them being bulletproof. Because what happens when you take off that suit and one of my guys sees you heading home down a dark alley? Or on a brightly lit street, for that matter?”
James grimaces and has the sudden impulse to wrap his arms, his shield, around Marcus and never let go.
“Right. And that’s not your fault, you hear me?”
There’s a long silence, and James can do nothing but stare across the table at the woman who’s going to be his sister-in-law one day.
“Alex acted like I wasn’t even there. Just talking about how Supergirl saved the day. I got all those people out of the way. No armor, no protection, no thanks. Nothing. Me. And all those people, applauding her like it wasn’t my hands that… and Kara’s amazing, Kara – you know how I feel about Kara – I’m not trying to take anything away from her, I just…”
“A little more thanks and a little less racism, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“I’m not gonna make excuses for Alex.”
“You can, Maggie, I know she’s going through so much right now – “
He reaches across the table and touches her hand gently. “How are you both sleeping?”
“We’re not.”
Marcus is staring between them both now.
“Alex was scared. To be in that room with me. She felt like she was in a cage. And cages scare her,” he whispers, and James’s grip tightens around Maggie’s hand, and Maggie’s heart shatters into more splinters than her body can hold.
“You felt that from her, Marcus?”
Marcus nods, and Maggie forces a small grin onto her face.
“Thanks for telling me, kid.”
Marcus nods once, and then retreats back into his own world, his own thought processes, his own ruminations about his mother, about his people, about his father, about this man who’s trying to care for him, about this woman who just wants a flash grenade, about this other woman who just wants to never be in a cage again.
“James,” Maggie pivots the subject, because she’s not going to break in front of this child, and because James needs this. “You are a hero. Same as Kara, same as Clark. But you risk even more. And that’s… you’re amazing, you know that? A Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist by day, Guardian and protector of National City by night? Not too shabby of a resume, Olsen.”
He grimaces and he nods and he can’t wait for Alex to marry this woman already.
And Alex is waiting for him at the doors of CatCo when he brings Marcus back from lunch.
“Hey, listen, I can’t stay, J’onn’s got me basically confined to HQ until the shrink lets me back in the field, but I um… I wanted to apologize. For before. For implying that you weren’t in that square, too. I saw the footage. How many people you saved. You were a hero, James. Without that suit. And Winn’s working on some algorithm or other, but he told me to tell you the same thing. And to slap you on the chest like you always do to him. I’m not gonna do that. But I told you.”
James smiles down at her, and she kneels in front of Marcus.
“And I brought you something too, sweetheart,” she says, her voice softer, her eyes lighter. She holds out a gyroscope, beautiful silver that glistens with rainbows in the light. “I couldn’t find any toys from your planet, but J’onn says this is pretty close.”
Marcus says nothing, but he takes it from her hands, letting his fingers brush hers, linger on hers.
A thank you.
And an apology for her experience in that cage.
She stands and James thinks he hears her knees crack, thinks her sees pain flash across her eyes.
“I’m sorry, James,” she says again. “I know it’s not enough, but I’ll make it better. And everyone’s going to know what a hero James Olsen is. Guardian is. Okay?”
He tugs her into a hug, because his sister isn’t perfect, but she’s still his sister.
And he’s relieved to have her on his side.