492. Chapter 492
“Danvers,” Maggie chuckles, her voice low and full of barely suppressed bemusement. “What is this?”
She’s on her knees, digging through Alex’s kitchen cabinets, looking for another cookie sheet – Kara and the crew are coming over tonight, and she promised Winn she’d make thumbprints – and she’s tugged out, instead, an old toaster.
A very old toaster.
“Oh, that?” Alex leans over the kitchen cabinet, a lopsided grin spreading over her face, her eyes starting to sparkle.
“That’s the first toaster Kara ever used. My mother wanted to throw it out because we got a little… overenthusiastic about it, but uh… I kept it.”
Alex squats next to Maggie and takes the stained old thing from her hands, turning it over and over in hers.
Her mind turns back a bit over a decade as Maggie watches, as Maggie beams. As Maggie watches the woman she loves remember the childhood that should have been longer.
She was fourteen years old – she was small, with big eyes – and Kara was smaller, with even bigger eyes.
Even bigger eyes that she somehow managed to keep open, even with her entire planet gone, even with…
Well.
It was Alex’s job to make that all better, wasn’t it?
Alex’s job to make her feel like she had family. Like she was one of their own.
She decided on waffles.
She decided on waffles to ease Kara – Kara, who was always, always, always eating – into her first Saturday morning on Earth.
She decided on waffles, and she decided Kara would love them, because she loved them herself, and shouldn’t little sisters love the same things their big sisters do?
But when Kara padded down to the kitchen and poured herself orange juice – her new favorite drink, apparently because it tasted an awful lot like a treat they had on Krypton – and the toaster popped the waffles out, Kara jumped, her head hitting the ceiling, and Kara shrieked, and Kara hid.
Alex didn’t know whether to laugh or apologize.
Both sounds spluttered out of her mouth as she dove down to the kitchen floor – down into the small crater Kara had made when she dove – with her new little sister, arm automatically wrapping around her.
“It’s okay, Kara! It’s okay! It’s just waffles! Nothing bad, I promise! It’s okay. I got you.”
Kara narrowed her eyes, her breathing calming slowly.
“What’s a waffle?”
Alex beamed and stood, slipping the waffles onto a paper towel and crawling back down to Kara’s little crater.
“Waffles,” she said, pleased with herself, even as Eliza and Jeremiah rushed down the stairs, alarmed at the noise, at the destruction.
Kara munched down and her eyes flew wide.
“What made these?” she wanted to know, and Alex grinned.
“A toaster! Here,” she grabbed Kara’s hand and stood up, only flinching slightly as her bones cracked under Kara’s grip.
By the time Eliza and Jeremiah reached the kitchen, both breathless, Kara and Alex were both bent over the toaster, giggling almost maniacally as waffles and toast popped out of its grills like a jack-in-the-box.
“Alexandra, how could you let this happen?” Eliza wanted to know, but Alex was too excited to care.
She couldn’t wait to show Kara toaster strudels.
“She would leave me messages with the icing,” she tells Maggie now, all these years later, holding that old toaster, her fingers warmed by her girlfriend’s hands.
“When she first tasted them, she was so excited that there was fruit inside the crust that she said it couldn’t possibly get any better. But when I insisted she try the icing, she never looked back.”
Maggie chuckles and rolls her eyes affectionately. “I bet she didn’t. What kinda messages did she leave you?”
Alex laughs and goes from a squat to sitting on the kitchen floor, still holding that old toaster, still holding Maggie’s hands.
“That she loves me, that she can’t wait to watch the next musical with me. Math equations, sometimes. Secrets in Kryptonian writing, so our parents couldn’t understand – she taught me a lot of Kryptonian.” She laughs again. “Her language looks even more ridiculous in toaster strudel icing than English does.”
Maggie tilts her head at the nostalgia in Alex’s face, in the depth of love for her sister forming her every feature.
“Hey. I have an idea for tonight. For dessert.”
“I thought you were making those cookies for Winn?”
“Oh, I will. But first uh… I wanna make something for Kara. Wanna help me?”
Kara shrieks and cries and rushes into Alex’s arms when she sees what they’ve done a couple of hours later as she, James, and Winn pour into Alex’s apartment.
The counter is littered with plates of warm, crispy toaster strudels, all decorated with messages of love, of affirmation in both English and Kryptonian – all decorated with Supergirl symbols and stick figures in capes – and as Kara crushes Alex in her arms, Alex smiles and shakes her head.
“This was all Maggie, sis,” she grins, and Maggie purses her lips and blushes while Winn leans into her and whispers that she’s a good egg.
Maggie doesn’t have a chance to respond before Kara knocks the wind out of her, hugging her hard and hugging her genuine.
“We did it with your original toaster, Kid Danvers,” she manages, and Kara hugs her even closer.
They only stop hugging when Winn yelps at the little Guardian toaster strudel Alex and Maggie had drawn, with a stick figure with a computer in the background.
Kara and Maggie separate and join in the laughter, Kara heading over to ogle her sisters’ art with James and Winn.
Alex pulls Maggie into her arms and kisses her soundly, slowly, deeply.
“I love you so damn much, Maggie Sawyer.”
Maggie beams and reaches back for a solitary plate next to the sink. She offers it up to Alex, whose brow furrows before she sobs out a laugh.
In icing, Maggie’s meticulously written “our first t. strudel” with an “A + M” adorned heart underneath it.
They kiss and they laugh as they bite into it from opposite sides, all smiles and scrunched noses.
James snaps a picture on his phone, and Kara prints it for her desk at CatCo.
Along with her little toaster.