415. Chapter 415

She’s stepped over the body of a dead officer – killed right in front of her eyes.

She knows his kids.

She knows his mother.

She’ll wind up being the one to knock on her mother’s door and tell her that her son died protecting her. Protecting all of them.

She knows his kids, and she knows his mother, and she stepped over his body and took his gun and shot to kill.

She’d fought her way to the bar.

Fought her way past streams of high school kids that she guided into a hidden basement, using all her ammo – his ammo – to protect them.

Fought her way over dead bodies and broken bones and fire, fire, fire.

Fought her way to get to Alex Danvers.

To get home.

Home, which tastes like Alex’s lips and smells like Alex’s body lotion.

Home, which feels like the embrace of Alex’s arms and sounds like Alex’s voice.

Home, which is… Alex.

But too soon, too soon, she and James compare notes on the streets outside.

Too soon, they look into each other’s eyes and know that they’ll burst if they can’t get back out there.

She knows Alex must be bursting, too.

She knows Alex thinks Maggie would be better suited to the whole command thing than she is.

She knows Alex is wrong, because she is expendable.

Alex is not.

So she draws her in for a long, heated kiss – a long, heated kiss punctuated with I love you, with be safe, with I’ll see you soon, with we’ll name her Gertrude – and she sets back into the streets with Guardian.

With James.

A man she’d been told to hunt.

A man who’s now one of the closest friends she’s ever had.

A man who’s now watching her back as she sprints out of the alleyway, across the street, because there’s a teenager, alone, terrified, trying to fight.

Maggie fights for them. James points them in the direction of safety.

They pull Maggie into a random hug. Maggie holds her glock out to the side so he doesn’t accidentally set it off. She hugs him back with one arm.

James watches her as the kid retreats, safely, safely, safely.

“I don’t like you being out here with only that little gun,” he tells her.

“I don’t like you being out here with only that little armor,” she retorts, and she hears him chuckle even as he slams his shield down in front of her, blocking a blast of Daxamite bullets.

“I owe you, Guardian,” she shouts as they fight back to back, Maggie immediately assessing the weaknesses in Daxamite armor, the soft spots, the spots she won’t shatter her bones trying to hit.

She hears it before he does: a Daxamite weapon reloading.

She throws herself into his body, and they both tumble onto the ground.

The heat of fire passes over their heads, and James grunts as he slams his shield into the helmet of the soldier Maggie’d just saved him from.

“I think we’re square now,” he shouts, and she grins briefly before sobering.

“We need to get to the school, James,” she calls to him, and he nods once, and she leads the way.

They find the kids from National City Elementary huddled in an inadequately protected lunchroom, and Maggie helps the teachers carry the most scared, the most injured, with one arm while she helps James shoot with the other.

She murmurs soothing words to the six year old clinging to her hip, to her chest, to her shoulders, telling them to close their eyes, not to look, even as she rotates over her other shoulder and shoots, shoots, shoots.

She clicks out of ammo and her body, not her bullets, become the children’s shield as she shepherds them into a safer bunker across the street, as James and the suit Winn made him pull overtime, absorbing bullets and discharging lead dust.

Only once does she lose sight of him, and it’s one of the most terrifying moments of her life.

She sets down the children – all safe now, all safe – and she screams his name, praying, praying, not to find him on the ground, not to find him somehow bleeding underneath all that armor.

And sure enough, he’s on his knees.

Conscious, awake. Alive.

But on his knees.

Images of Alex floating in that tank shriek into her brain, and she sees red.

She doesn’t know where she gets the shotgun from – she doesn’t look which dead comrade she’s picking it off from this time – she just knows that she’s hoisting it, cocking, shooting.

Once, twice, three, four times.

Enough to get the two Daxamite soldiers that had forced James onto his knees onto theirs.

“Winn was right,” James breathes by way of thank you.

“About what?” Maggie asks, breathless and bruised.

“Alex Danvers would never date someone who doesn’t own a firearm. Or how to use whatever she finds on the street.”

“Alex Danvers is a classy woman,” Maggie counters with a grin as they set off down the street at a jog, sticking to the shadows and looking for the next group to rescue.

James will tell everyone later – when the dust settles, when the bodies are buried, when the survivors have hugged and kissed and cried – that he and Maggie made a great team.

Alex’s eyes will shine and she’ll brag for weeks to anyone who’ll listen about how her girlfriend can keep up with a superhero in a war zone.

Pam in HR has never been more irritated with her; she has enough paperwork to file without the triplicate forms securing James Olsen’s confidential “secret” identity that are suddenly flooding her office.

But at least, she thinks, her team is alive for her to be irritated with.

There’s always, at least, that.