391. Chapter 391
He won’t let her back into the field.
J’onn.
Or the DEO shrink.
“He’s a therapist, babe,” Maggie tries to soothe her, but Alex insists on calling him her shrink.
And she insists on telling everyone who will listen that she’s fine, she’s fine, and can everyone stop acting like she’s not and can someone just please give her back her damn gun already?
They let her interrogate the boy because she’ll probably kill someone if she doesn’t have something to do.
And with Alex’s history of violence? Extreme violence? Sadistic violence?
It’s not an idle possibility.
So she kneels down when Marcus comes into the DEO, and J’onn notices her flinching, still in pain from the week before, but he thinks he only notices because her thoughts are so loud.
Because her pain is so damn loud.
“Hey Marcus. I’m Alex. You wanna come in here and have a chat with me?”
He says nothing. He just stares at her. Alex’s eyes shift from J’onn to James and back again, and she guides the boy into the interrogation room.
“You like burgers, Marcus?” No response.
“I’m gonna order us a couple. Okay?”
She makes a point of calling the place herself. In front of him.
So maybe he’ll see her more as a regular person and less of a secret agent. Less of a soldier.
Hell, she doesn’t feel like much of a soldier lately anyway.
Especially not now.
Not locked in this interrogation room, technically in control but really completely out of it, the boy holding all the cards, the walls holding them both in, and she knows it won’t start filling with water but she can’t help but constantly checking the corners of the rooms for pipes, and she knows it won’t start filling with water but she can’t help constantly wondering how long the boy can hold his breath, if his species even can hold their breath, what kinds of things he’d need if submerged in water.
Surely she’d die. Holding him above her.
She tries to talk to him.
Tries to ask him about school. About his mom.
He says nothing.
The burgers come. She thanks Vasquez, who gives the boy a wink.
He still says nothing.
“You’re really not hungry, Marcus?” she asks, but she knows damn well he’s not.
Because she wasn’t, either, after everyone she knew watched her father nearly massacre hundreds of people.
And she isn’t, now, when her skin keeps crawling, when her body keeps threatening to seize, when every small sound indicates the oncoming rush of water that her brain knows won’t come, but that her body is convinced will happen.
That the throbbing scar on her shoulder is convinced will happen.
Kara notices first.
It’s Alex’s heartbeat that gives her away.
She waves over J’onn, and she points and she whispers, and he sighs, because he knows, and he wishes she would talk to him.
But he knows she won’t.
Not yet.
She tells him that she wants to help his mom.
That they need to find her, so they can protect her from from doing bad things to other people.
James flinches.
J’onn flinches.
Finding the boy’s mom would do no such thing.
And Alex doesn’t know this, because to her, Marcus is just a child. A little traumatized, maybe, but innocent. Oblivious.
She doesn’t know he doesn’t have the privilege to be oblivious.
Because he might be an alien, but he’s an alien with the wrong color skin on a white supremacist planet.
And he might be a child, but he knows that when government people – or whoever she is, anyway – want to find people who look like his mom, who look like him, it’s not to protect her from doing bad things to people.
His mom would never hurt anybody on purpose.
But of course this woman who thinks she’s being nice to him doesn’t know that.
Because she sees his mother’s purple eyes and she sees his mother’s brown skin, and she doesn’t know it, but she’s telling him exactly what he needs to know.
That he should keep his mouth shut, because this woman doesn’t know how to help her mother.
Because protecting his mother from doing bad things to people is hurting his mother. Is locking his mother away. Forever. Supposedly for her own protection.
A euphemism.
He learned that word in school last week.
A euphemism to make her feel better about the work she does.
And he knows she’s scared. Scared of something about this room. Something about this cage.
He doesn’t blame her. It scares him, too.
He thinks maybe they have more in common than she understands, but also less in common than she assumes.
She’s itching to get out of this room.
Her skin is crawling.
So is his.
Maybe that’s enough common ground.
Maybe it isn’t.
He doesn’t know.
He just knows her wants to be let go.
And he imagines she does, too.
It’ll happen sooner, the less he says.
She’ll get overwhelmed. She’ll get frustrated. She doesn’t seem like the type to give up, but to get out of that room? She will.
He knows. So he waits.
And he’s right, because she slips out of the room, and she tells them that the man with the suit and the shield and the helmet would do a better job getting through to him.
He likes that man.
Maybe.
Maybe he can like that man. James, he said his name was. James.
His face had felt smooth. Solid.
Safe.
He knows he scares James.
That James is terrified of failing him.
Of failing him, of something happening to his mother, to him, and being powerless to stop it.
Marcus knows about feeling powerless.
He thinks he can like James.
And Alex?
Alex runs into another woman’s arms, shorter than her, longer hair.
Because “Kara texted me, babe, told me your heartrate went through the roof,” and Alex says she’s fine, she’s fine, but Marcus knows better, and so does the woman holding her.
“Alex, it’s okay to not be able to be in an interrogation room. And I – “ He sees the woman glance in the room. At him. And he sees her face run cold.
“Babe, what – he’s a child, what the hell is he doing in an – “
“His mother was responsible for – “
“I don’t give a damn what his mother was responsible for, Danvers – J’onn, James, how the hell could you allow this?”
“Detective Sawyer, this is DEO business, and – “
“And this is my damn city, Director Henshaw, and I’ve kept my mouth shut about your alien Guantanamo for too long, but J’onn, he’s a little boy, how – “
“Maggie, I was just trying to talk to him – “
“Well maybe you could have taken him out to eat or something instead of – “
“That’s exactly what Mr. Olsen was about to do, Detective Sawyer.”
“I… I was?”
“J’onn’s right, James. Look at him. He’s looking at you. He wants you.”
James stares and James sighs, and Maggie touches his hand, and it steadies him.
He nods and Maggie grimaces relief.
“Alex, I’m sorry, I know we’re not supposed to interfere in each other’s jobs, I just – “
“No, no, Maggie, you’re right, I…” Maggie’s brow furrows, because Alex Danvers never gives in this easily.
“Alex, are you – “
“I’m fine. I’m just capable of admitting when I’m wrong, okay? Sometimes. I just… I’m tired, Maggie. I’m just… I’m tired. Of being stuck here, of… of feeling like getting information out of an elementary school kid is the best I can do for my team. And I couldn’t even do that, I couldn’t… I couldn’t…”
And suddenly Alex is breaking, and Maggie and J’onn are taking her to a side office, and then she’s sobbing, sobbing against J’onn’s chest and Maggie’s arms, hyperventilating because she has oxygen, now, she’s not in a cage, now, except she is, she is, and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever get out of it.
“I got you, babe,” Maggie whispers into her hair, and J’onn tries desperately not to feel, because Alex’s thoughts are loud and her feelings are louder – screaming, screaming, so much screaming – and his face holds stoic, and his body holds steady, but he misses M’gann and he misses his daughter’s smile, and he misses the time when he would never have put that little boy in a box, but so much has happened, too much has happened, and he’s losing his grip and he’s losing his empathy, and if Alex was his way out, she’s also got to be his way back in.
“We’ve all got you, Alex,” he tells her, and she sobs harder, and Maggie holds her closer, and J’onn wishes harder for James to trust himself with that boy, to trust himself because he won’t fail another child, another one of his children.
But he has faith in them.
And maybe that faith is exactly what they all need.