392. Chapter 392

He tells James about finding his purpose on Mars.

With his daughter.

He doesn’t tell him about his purpose on Earth.

When his daughter – both of his daughters – were dead and gone.

Slaughtered.

He doesn’t tell him about finding Alex Danvers.

Alex and Kara.

Stumbling into a lifetime of caring for them.

He doesn’t tell him because he almost lost her. Just last week. Almost lost her and it was his fault.

His fault, because Alex thinks it’s her job to protect the world.

And maybe that’s technically part of her job description, but his entire life?

His entire life is about protecting Alex.

And he failed.

He failed because her lungs nearly flooded with water and her body quaked with fear and her girlfriend yelled and threw down that laptop and Kara nearly heat visioned a man’s face off and destroyed an interrogation room and Alex had to slice into her own skin with a goddamn credit card and it was his fault, his fault, his fault.

Her scars – the one on her shoulder and the ones on the inside that she won’t admit, but that he knows, keep her up at night – are his fault.

Because he’s supposed to protect her.

And he failed.

And he’s supposed to protect this Marcus boy.

And Alex wants to be the one to interrogate him, because she needs so desperately to be useful, confined to the DEO as she is.

And he needs so desperately for her to feel better that he lets her.

Even though he shouldn’t. Because the boy shouldn’t be interrogated at all.

And Alex is kind to him.

Or the DEO version of kind, anyway.

But the fact of the matter is, none of this should be happening. Not this way, anyway.

None of it should be happening, but Alex is thirsty for routine.

And routine, for her, is interrogation rooms.

Something else that’s his fault.

Because he took her fire and he forged her into a soldier.

His fault, his fault.

His fault.

So when Kara falls, when Kara’s body hits the ground like she’s under a red sun, he tells her.

Tells her what’s been boiling inside of him.

“You don’t mess with my family.”

But she can, she can, she can, and she does.

Because she’s stolen white Martian technology.

White Martian technology that they used to enslave his people. To slaughter his people.

And he remembers the feeling.

Of his control, his sense of self, his sense of everything, slip away.

Alex is the first one to get to him.

After she collects Kara, of course. After she comforts Kara, of course.

And rightfully so.

Kara needs her sister. Alex needs her sister.

But then she’s running to him, running to him because she heard, she heard, and she doesn’t care if she’s not supposed to be in the field, she heard, and don’t worry, they’ll find a way to combat that goddamned mind control thing, they’ll find a way, he’ll never have to go through that again, not ever, not ever, not ever.

He doesn’t cry and she doesn’t hold him.

They’re soldiers.

They’re too much of soldiers for their own good.

But he puts a hand on her shoulder and then it feels too distant.

So he puts a hand on her cheek, and she grasps at it, holds it there, leaning into his calloused palm, her eyes flooded with tears.

With the same guilt that’s swimming in his eyes, the same ghosts.

She wasn’t there for him.

He wasn’t there for her.

But they’re always there. For each other.

They have each other, now. Always will.

Always.

“I couldn’t ask for a better daughter, Alex,” he tells her, and she shudders with emotion, shudders with need and shudders with pain and shudders with suppressed fear.

“And I couldn’t ask for a better father,” she tells him, her voice small, her voice laced with death and laced with life, laced with love and laced with understanding.

There is no shame in surviving.

He only hopes they can both learn that, truly learn that – he and Alex and his other daughter, he and Alex and her little sister – together.