517. Chapter 517

She’s fine in the field. Sometimes, she’s a little too fine in the field.

It’s the littler things that get to her.

Like having a bad conversation with her mother. Like having a good conversation with her mother.

Like wanting to eat at a different restaurant than Maggie does, and feeling like she’s a terrible girlfriend for it.

Like forgetting to set her alarm and Maggie wakes up late because of it, and she blames herself.

Like when she’s spending time with Maggie and feels guilty for not spending enough time with Kara; like when she’s spending time with Kara and feels guilty for not spending enough time with Maggie.

She panics and she tries not to and that just makes everything so much worse.

She synthesized Kryptonian-style anti-anxiety medicine for when Kara gets over stimulated when she was in grad school. She never thought to use any human versions for herself.

Because she’s always fine, and when she’s not fine?

She should just be stronger.

But Maggie tells her she doesn’t have to shove her feelings down anymore, and Kara holds pillows in her lap and strokes her hair and listens to her talk, listens to her cry. And she always has – Kara’s always been there – but it’s different now. Now that Alex has found so much more about herself to talk about, to share, to explore.

So now, she’s working on acknowledging her panic as real.

Because apparently, it’s real. Apparently, she’s real. And apparently, she deserves a full, happy life.

So she and Kara draw up a plan. And they draw Maggie into it.

A plan, a system, for when Alex starts to spiral.

When they were kids, after Jeremiah died, Kara would sometimes sing to her in Kryptonian. So that singing is part of the plan.

When she hyperventilated on first sleeping with Maggie, because god, how has she never felt this way before, how could anything possibly be this intense, Maggie put her hand on her chest and told her to breathe out into it, whispered pet names and nicknames and praise and soothing, soothing nonsense until Alex could control her breath, until Alex could calm her own spiral. So that breathing into Maggie’s hand is part of the plan.

But sometimes, she’s alone.

Sometimes, she’s alone, and that’s the trickier part to plan for.

She writes herself a letter, and she doesn’t think it’ll work, but it does; better than she’d expected.

She keeps a special folder of pictures on her phone: of herself on her surfboard as a teenager, Kara in the midst of leaping onto her back; of the first time she and Eliza took Kara to Disney Land, the sheer delight on her face; of Kara in Supergirl gear, posing Charlie’s Angels style with her and Maggie; of Alex and J’onn, at the bar, her leaning into his chest, his arm around her, his smile so, so, so proud; of Kara and Alex leaning into each other with laughter on Game Night, Winn and James doubled over in the background; of Maggie, sleepy and warm and open on a Sunday morning, wrapped in Alex’s sheets and beckoning her back to bed; of Maggie, kissing her like she’s never been kissed, loving her like she’s never been loved.

The pictures help. They help a lot.

Sometimes she’ll look up to find that minutes, hours, have gone by, just her staring at them, just her centering herself through her family. And it helps. So much.

But mostly, her plan is self-talk. Her plan is quieting her spiral voices – but gently, gently, because Kara keeps saying something about punishing herself making the panic worse – and listening more to the kinder voices.

The ones that remind her that she loves hard, so she hurts hard; the ones that remind her that she’s worth it and that she’s loved and that she single-handedly infiltrated Cadmus, dammit, she can get through this.

The ones that remind her that she is stronger than her strongest fears.

She doesn’t like it much: all this planning, all this attention, for herself, for her own well-being. It’s not something she’s… used to.

But she thinks she is. Getting used to it.

“It’s called self-care, get used to it, Danvers,” Maggie will tease her, and she’ll kiss her, and she’ll laugh, and her laughter is the best thing Alex has ever heard.