442. Chapter 442

There’s no way in hell she’s letting anyone else go with Kara.

And after one look at her face, her boyfriend doesn’t even open his mouth to argue.

She kisses Maggie – kisses her breathless and passionate and desperate, kisses her with tongue and with roaming, solid hands and heady, breathy whispers of I love you – and she doesn’t care who sees.

She kisses her and she tells her she loves her because Clark said he can’t think of a better second for Kara, and neither can she, but still.

They might not come back alive.

So she kisses her and Maggie kisses her back and Clark smiles and averts his eyes politely and Kara clears her throat but she’s smiling, smiling, smiling like it’s the last chance she’s ever going to have, because this might be the last time she sees her sister happy.

But it won’t be. It won’t be.

She won’t allow it.

She will not lose.

Especially not with Alex by her side.

They stare at each other for a long moment once Alex and Maggie disentangle.

“You’ve got this, Little Danvers,” Maggie reminds her from behind, and Kara nods without looking at her, eyes only for her sister.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Am I ever not?” Alex teases without humor, and Kara puts one arm around her sister and flies.

Flies to the roof where she will save the Earth or lose it.

Flies to the roof where she will lose everything or realize that maybe, just maybe, she can have everything.

Because Lena is a part of their team now. Working away with Winn, the detonator – still warm from Lena’s touch – in her pocket.

She can lose everything, or she can have everything.

She squeezes Alex’s hand before she sets her down, Rhea across from them, and she ignores the clenching in her stomach, the rapid beating of Alex’s heart, of her own.

She tries to ignore the way Alex’s heart seizes every time Kara takes a punch, leaps every time she lands one.

She tries to ignore how damn tired her body is, but worse than that?

Worse than that, she tries to ignore how damn tired her heart is.

She’s going to lose.

She’s going to lose, because Rhea is too strong. Rhea is too strong and she’s attacking the city anyway, and she’s targeting children and she’s targeting hospitals and she’s targeting Kara’s very soul.

“I love you, Kara,” is the whisper Alex sends into the breeze, into the electrified air.

And a whisper?

A whisper from her big sister is all she needs.

Because suddenly Kara knows just how right Clark was. About having someone to fight for. To love that much.

She’s known it all along, really, but she’s been so caught up in trying to hang on to her past that she forgot all about her more recent past, about her present, about her future.

With her family. With Alex.

Because suddenly, she’s picturing Alex crawling under the kitchen table to comfort her when she got scared of the popcorn maker.

Suddenly, she’s listening to Alex roll her tongue over Kryptonian syllables, alone in her bed at night, practicing, practicing, so she could talk to Kara in her own language, so she wouldn’t feel so alone. So lost.

Suddenly, she’s on Alex’s couch during Sisters’ Night, and they’re swapping pints of ice cream and fighting over who picks more brownie and cookie dough bits out, and they’re laughing and Kara is safe, and warm, and home.

Home.

This is her home.

And she will defend it.

She catches Rhea’s fist and she pushes it forward, and she knows the fight is over.

She knows the fight is won.

Because she’s fighting for all the right reasons.

And when she embraces Alex as Rhea turns to dust, she sobs, because the last time one of the Danvers sisters had killed someone on a rooftop, it was Alex, and it was Astra, and it was always happening all over again.

Alex holds her, and she clings to Alex, and sweet relief rinses her exhaustion, because her home – her planet and her sister – are, once again, safe.