575. Chapter 575

It’s about Kara, at first.

Because Alex is an excellent liar, and she knows Lena is, too.

Which is exactly how she knows that Lena’s skills at lying come from the same place hers do: survival.

Which is exactly how she knows that Lena isn’t lying about loving her sister. About her sister being Lena’s hero. Kara, not Supergirl.

So at first, it’s about Kara, that they bond.

They laugh softly – like she did with Maggie – about how no, the glasses really don’t help. About Kara’s hilariously transparent slips of the tongue about flying on a bus, about what planet she’s from, about not being able to see without her glasses.

But that’s all it is: about Kara. On their own, they don’t know what to talk about, at first.

Polite exchanges about work and about how Maggie’s doing. But it’s strictly focused on Kara.

At first.

Then it becomes about the science.

The science, first, because these are two women who grew up wanting to change the world, who grew up knowing that their minds were special but feeling that themselves as people would never quite be… enough.

The science, first, because Winn won’t shut up about this genius idea he and Lena had yesterday, and Alex wants to smack him on the back of the head for not inviting her.

She refrains. She’s working on it with Maggie.

But Winn still gets a stern talking-to, and she gets invited to all their super secret science meetings after that.

So they talk about reversing climate change and growing food in seemingly impossible conditions and truly renewable fuel and ways to defeat Cadmus for good.

And that’s when it bridges from science to… life.

Because Cadmus has taken both of their parents, in too many ways to count.

And that’s when they start getting beers – well, Alex gets beers, Lena gets red wine – together, when it’s no longer about Kara or quantum physics or biomechanics.

That’s when it becomes about… them.

About watching a sibling receive more love than they know what to do with; about never quite measuring up; about dreaming of making their mother proud, about taking comfort when they talk to the stars at night and see them twinkle, because sure, it’s light from thermonuclear explosions dozens of lightyears away passing through Earth’s atmosphere into their retina, but they both imagined – imagine – that the stars that they can never reach are, somehow, more proud of them than their mothers will ever be.

Sort of, for Alex. Because Eliza at least would never abandon her.

It’s those nights that she holds Lena, rests her cheek on Lena’s hair, wondering if this is what intimate friendship with a woman who’s not your girlfriend and not your sister feels like.

And then there are nights that Lena sighs and turns down her laptop because Alex Danvers, like her little sister, has free reign to pass by Jess and come into her office whenever she wants.

Nights that Alex has gotten into another fight with her mother and can’t tell if it was her fault, or not, or both, and Lena knows all about gaslighting so please, can she help her make sense of it?

Lena tends to avoid hard liquor at work, but she starts keeping an extra bottle of bourbon in her office, just for Alex. Just in moderation. With water.

Because she and Alex are too similar sometimes; both of them could easily flip off the edge, dive into oblivion.

But they don’t.

They don’t, because of a lot of long, complicated, painful, and glorious reasons.

But one of those reasons, now, is because they have each other.