563. Chapter 563

She told him when he was being held prisoner – for being an alien, for being born with blood, with skin, with abilities xenophobic white men like Harper want to cut open, experiment on, torture – that this was rock bottom.

And she knew what kind of person she was going to be.

Because a few years before? When he found her, drunk and high and humiliated in a jail cell, trying her hardest to keep from swaying, to keep from praying that the one friend from her lab she still had wouldn’t call her mother to bail her out, because god, if Eliza ever saw her like this, ever found out that she..

When he found her, she was at rock bottom.

But a different kind of rock bottom. The kind that she’d created herself. Sort of. The kind that the death of Kara’s planet, Clark’s abandonment, Cadmus – though she hadn’t know it then – and Eliza, god, Eliza and her expectations, Eliza and her tough love, Eliza and her on-again-off-again love and emotional abuse had collided to spiral her into.

Combined with her own deep sense of self-loathing. Her own deep sense of worthlessness.

Because she used to be the star, the one that Eliza fawned over. The one whose nightmares Eliza paid attention to, curled into her bed to hold her against.

Until her nightmares were nothing next to Kara’s, her pain was nothing next to Kara’s, her life was nothing next to Kara’s.

She was just… nothing, next to Kara. Except her protector.

And she couldn’t even do that.

Because now? Now, she was nothing but the fuck up who’d tried to drive when she could barely walk, could barely see straight.

She could have killed someone. Herself.

She cared, profoundly, about the first.

She wasn’t sure if she cared too much about the second.

But J’onn? Well, Hank, then?

Hank told her that she was special. That she wasn’t a freak for climbing up on her roof in Midvale and watching the stars, wondering if her father was amongst them, if she even believed in that sort of thing. Wondering if she could ever measure up.

Wondering if she could ever be… enough.

Hank didn’t chide her for being drunk, for being high. He didn’t wrinkle his nose as the scent of whiskey on her breath, the scent of smoke and sweat and disaster on her clothes. He didn’t lecture her about driving drunk.

He didn’t ask why she was partying so hard she was failing out of school.

It seemed her already knew.

He was quiet on the drive to… wherever it was they were going.

She wasn’t even sure why she was going with him. Why she trusted him.

Was she so easy to manipulate, to control, that all some stalker guy had to do was bail her out of jail, not tell her mother, and call her special for her to go with him… wherever?

Apparently so.

But though he never quite explained how he knew so much about her, he was delicate when he brought up Kara. Delicate, not threatening, not coercive, when he told her that she could learn to fight the kinds of threats that Kara’s enemies, anyone that found out about her – both human and Kryptonian – could represent.

She could finish her degrees. She could sober up (though he didn’t put it like that). She could learn to fight. Learn to strategize. Learn to, finally, protect Kara from something other than a loud popcorn maker.

She could learn to protect Kara from the entire world.

She explained the bruises by saying she’d taken up a strike-focused kickboxing class. To let off some energy from long hours at the lab. To make sure her body stayed as sharp as her mind.

She’d never lied to Kara before. Kara had no reason not to believe her.

So the bruises, the cuts, the stiffness, the mental and physical exhaustion?

Same old workaholic Alex.

There was a group, run deep in the basement of the DEO.

A group so she could talk through her grief, her rage, her transformation into a soldier. She never really talked, after all. But she listened. J’onn determined that it was a good enough start.

Becoming a soldier – becoming ruthless – came naturally to her. She’d always had a borderline unhealthy protective streak, and her training fed into that well.

In her mind, it was always Kara that she was protecting.

In her mind, it was always penance that she was doing.

For what, she wasn’t always sure.

She rose through the ranks – beat Hank – sooner than any recruit ever had. Part of her was surprised, since so many other recruits had military backgrounds. The other part of her just grimaced and nodded, like it had been expected.

Because, of course, she expected nothing less from herself.

She didn’t socialize, not really. She watched the other recruits go out for nights of bonding, of drinking, of talking and laughing and tossing french fries into each other’s mouths.

She went exactly once, and only because that Vasquez person was compelling in a way she couldn’t quiet put her finger on.

But it reminded her too much of… of before. Before J’onn found her, saved her. From the world, from herself.

She never went again, but Vasquez always seem to keep a quiet eye on her after that.

It was Vasquez who got her patched her up – “ma’am, I’m afraid I’ll have to take you to the med bay whether you want to go or not” – when she went too long on the heavy bag in the basement without wrapping her hands, when her knuckles were bloodied and bruised and swollen.

It was Vasquez who made her eat when she forgot – “ma’am, I’m done with my lunch, and I noticed you like Noonan’s fries, so please have the rest” – and she forgot so frequently that she could swear Vasquez was ordering extra food just for her.

It was Vasquez who kept her self-destructive, overworking tendencies somewhat in check – “ma’am, with respect, you’ve been on shift more or less without rest for twenty-eight hours” – and Vasquez who saved her life more than once by talking her through some technobabble in the field.

But it was J’onn who watched her with eyes that she could only describe as fatherly as she had her hair cut soon after she started training.

J’onn who nodded softly to himself before covering her shoulder with a warm hand after he overheard Alex arguing with her mother over the phone, something about “I like it this way, Mom, it’s easier to keep up in the lab.”

J’onn who debriefed her after her first mission. Her first mission that went disastrously, that got people killed, because she couldn’t hold on, she wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t good enough.

He told her about his own first mission. About the people he’d lost in the field. About the gutting feeling of responsibility when you think of their families. About how it never goes away, not really; but the parts that linger – if you don’t allow them to eat away at you – will make you a better soldier. A better person.

J’onn who would smile only, it seemed, for her; when he watched her teach new recruits, watched her battle her own demons and the world’s.

Watched her slowly, slowly, start to win.