453. Chapter 453

She’s on the drunk side of tipsy when Alex’s key scrapes her apartment door.

She’s on the drunk side of tipsy and the bottle of scotch is next to her like a water bottle and her wrists are wrapped and she’s slamming into her heavy bag with old school Linkin Park slamming in her eardrums, in her walls, in her bones.

Alex doesn’t ask, and she doesn’t interrupt.

But she does close the bottle of scotch and replace it with a glass of water. Maggie glances at her and maybe glares slightly, but she goes back to her punch combinations, her switch kicks, her keeping on her toes and cascading her emotional pain into physical pain.

Alex sits silently on the couch, and Alex watches.

“Rotate your hips more on that last combination, Sawyer,” she observes after a few long minutes, shouting slightly to be heard over the music.

“I don’t need DEO tips, Danvers,” Maggie parries before slamming everything she has into the bag for a solid thirty seconds, grunting in frustration and exertion and pent-up rage being let loose, her cool being let out of its carefully sealed container. She switches off the music and looks around for what Alex did with the scotch bottle futilely before shrugging and chugging the water.

“Good workout?” Alex asks, and Maggie grunts something unintelligible as she pants her way to the sink for more water.

“Tough day?”

“Doesn’t matter, Danvers. How was yours? Heard one of your old nemeses came back, one of the former Fort Rozz prisoners?”

Alex shrugs. “Wasn’t a bad fight. Kara handled him easily. What about you?”

“What about me, Alex?”

“Are you going to tell me – “

“No! You know what, no, I’m not, because you know what, Alex, it never changes anything. Telling you about my parents? They still hate me, but you know what it did do? Made me think about it more, made me feel it again. Telling you about Emily? I’m still an asshole, but you know what it did do? Make me remember what a runner I am, made me realize I haven’t changed all that much, that I still can’t trust people, I still can’t – “

“Did you cheat on me?” Alex stands, her voice low and soft and just this side of broken.

“What? No,” Maggie answers, her face so open, so apologetic, so surprised at the question, that Alex feels an odd stirring of pride in her gut. That it might occur to Maggie to be terrified, but it wouldn’t occur to her to implode them – implode herself – like that.

Or at least, that’s what Alex hopes it means.

“I just…” She heaves a sigh and she chugs more water and she roughly undoes her wrist wraps.

“I’m scared, Alex. And I hate telling anyone I’m scared. I just… I kissed you because I almost died, and I told you I want a lifetime of firsts with you because you almost died, and you asked me to marry you because the entire damn planet almost died, and I just… how many times can I almost lose you? Wouldn’t it be better to leave than to watch… because it’ll happen. Inevitably. One of us. Both of us. And I can’t… Alex, I can’t lose you.”

Alex stares at her, tears mixing with her sweat, now, and nods slowly as she walks around the couch to stand in front of her, tentative, like she’s approaching a wounded deer.

“You can’t lose me, so you’re tempted to… leave me?”

“Tempted? No, Alex, there’s… there’s nothing I want more than I want you, I just…”

“You’re scared.”

“I’m terrified.” Her voice cracks and Alex’s heart cracks along with it. She reaches for Maggie’s hands and Maggie barely hesitates before taking them and pulling Alex closer into her, sweat-soaked tank be damned.

“Then be terrified with me. Figure things out with me. You… Maggie, the world’s not going to end if you let yourself heal. If you let me help you heal. The world’s not gonna end if you take care of yourself, if you let someone – let me – take care of you. Together. You don’t have to run, Maggie, and we can take our time. Fuck marriage, screw all that, we can just… we can have our firsts, and we don’t have to call them anything, I just… Maggie, you’re in pain. You’re in pain and you think that if you shut it down, it’ll make it better, but that’s the opposite of what you always tell me to do. So now I’m telling you: you can take care of yourself instead of burying it. You can let me – and all our friends, they love you, too, Maggie – let us take care of you.”

Maggie chokes down a sob and she steps back – a big step back, and both of their bodies keen from the loss of contact, but if she stays that close to her, she’ll surrender, and god, she can’t, she can’t, she won’t.

Because she can’t do that to her. Not to Alex.

“But that’s just the thing, Alex: I don’t want you to have to take care of me. You found your father again, and then you lost him in such an awful, awful way. You were kidnapped, you were tortured, you were seconds away from dying. Your sister almost got launched across the universe, you almost blew your sister up. You need to be taken care of right now, Alex, you need to be focused on. And if I make you focus on me, make the others take care of me – Winn and Kara are both just getting out of abusive relationships, James is just figuring out how to be himself and a superhero… it’s selfish, Alex, to ask all of you to drop all that and take care of… me.”

“But it’s not, Maggie. You deserve to be loved, you deserve to take care of yourself, and sometimes, that’s letting people in. The world won’t end, Maggie, and we’ll all be fine. There’s enough love between us all to go around, trust me. Can you do that? Can you trust me? Instead of leave me?”

Maggie stares up at her for a long, long moment, and Alex tentatively steps back into her space.

“You know your pout is even more effective than Kara’s, right?”

“Well where do you think she got it from?”

Maggie smiles, and it lights up her entire tear-stained face as she pulls Alex down for a hard, desperate, loving, loving, loving, kiss.

“It figures that Supergirl learned how to be a hero from the best hero there is.”

Alex smiles and shakes her head through her own tears.

“That’s you, Maggie Sawyer. That’s you.”

She kisses her again, and they start to walk each other toward the bathroom, toward the shower, but Alex pauses and breaks the kiss, a grin forming on her slightly swollen lips.

“Did you just imply that Kara’s pouts are one of Supergirl’s assets as a hero?”

“Clearly no enemy’s ever pouted at you while you’re trying to arrest them. We need to expand your repertoire, Danvers.”

Alex laughs, and it’s breathy and heady and so, so relieved.

“I love you, Maggie. I’m always going to love you.”

“I’m always going to love you too, Alex Danvers.”

And she will. God, god, god, she will.