413. Chapter 413

She knows.

Of course she knows.

She knows what Kara did with Winn. To secure an alternative route home.

Hell, it was Alex’s idea.

But double-crossing Lilian – or, more precisely, making sure they had a plan in place for when Lilian inevitably double-crossed them – didn’t make Alex’s stomach any less queasy.

Didn’t make her conscience any less sharp.

Her father had told her once, when he caught her lying about doing her homework as a child, that a conscience is like a sharp stone. The more things you do that hurt people, the more the stone wears away, until sometimes, it can even get round like a pebble, with no sharp edges at all.

And then people can do terrible, terrible things. And it won’t even hurt.

And Alex?

Alex has done terrible, unforgivable things.

She’d almost come to think of that tank, that cage, as some kind of penance.

Oh, she’d held on. For Kara. For Maggie.

But she’d be lying if something about being punished for being exactly who she was like that hadn’t felt… fitting. To her.

So her conscience?

Her conscience has long since been whittled pretty smooth.

But Maggie had been sharpening it. Kara, James, Winn, J’onn, had been sharpening it.

And now?

Working with Lilian Luthor? The man who did god knows what with her father for years? The woman who kidnapped Kara, whose lackey shot Maggie? The woman who massacred an entire bar full of family, friends, lovers, just trying to escape the world and enjoy each other? The woman whose ambitions were passively genocidal at best, actively genocidal on an average day, whose xenophobia had no depth, whose conscience made Alex’s look like a five-point star?

That, she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to forgive herself for.

Even if she and Kara have a backup plan.

Even if she and Kara are prepared to be double-crossed.

There shouldn’t be double-crossing with this woman to begin with. There should be no crossing. Period.

She can’t sleep for weeks after.

And it’s not because of the ash and dust still coating the atmosphere.

Well, it is.

It is exactly because of that. Because of the number of bodies that she and Maggie and James have carried together, have buried together.

It is exactly because of that.

But it’s also because she can’t close her eyes without seeing Lilian Luthor as a comrade.

Teaming up with a genocidal guerrilla fighter to combat a genocidal force commander.

She can’t wrap her mind around it, and god, she doesn’t want to.

“Alex,” Maggie will rasp, because Alex’s eyes will be closed, but her breathing will be too shallow to be sleeping, and Maggie’s head is always on her chest these days – making sure her heart is still beating – so she knows.

Of course she knows. She always does.

“What does it make me, Maggie? I mean, I’ve done some pretty unforgivable things – “

“Do you really think anything’s unforgivable, Danvers?”

“Yes. I do. And I’ve done plenty of them. And this? What does it make me, Maggie? To align myself, my entire team, with this woman who…”

“Alex, you did the best you could. You did the best you could at the end of the world, and you want to know something, babe?” She leans up on her elbow and gestures at the open room with open palms. “The world didn’t end. Because of you, Alex Danvers. You kept the world turning. Tough choices and all, you kept the world turning. She didn’t hurt anyone on your watch, Alex. You and Kara didn’t allow it. You’re too good to have allowed it, okay? You’re too good to beat yourself up like this.”

“I don’t know why I deserve you, Maggie Sawyer.”

“Something about loving me, maybe?”

Alex smiles softly and she sighs. She’s not done feeling guilty. She’s not done hating herself.

But with Maggie in her arms, looking at her like that, like that, like that – maybe she can find something inside herself to still love, after all.