573. Chapter 573

She’s on her way to drunk – she’d rather be high, but Gideon doesn’t supply everything – and she’s thinking about Snart.

About Snart and Laurel and about Jackson.

Jackson, who’s very much alive but whose eyes haven’t been quite the same since they traveled back to the Civil War.

She heaves a sigh and glances around the bar approvingly. She knows – because Kara had told her in hushed tones and with eyes that reminded her of both Laurel’s resilience and, a little bit, of her own inner demons – that this bar has seen so much death. Too much death, too much blood.

But, looking around, what she’s seeing is life. So much damn life.

She wonders what Rip would think of a place like this. All these aliens, all these humans.

Hell, she wonders where Rip is.

She takes another long, slow swig of her drink as her eye catches on the tight-as-sin jeans hugging Kara’s sister’s ass just so. A subtle grin forms on her lips.

The woman putting her arms around the eldest Danvers sister as Alex lines up a shot on the pool table – the detective, Maggie, her name was – is lucky.

But hell, so is Alex.

Her sister may be Supergirl, and live with all the attendant dangers involved therein. But that’s exactly the thing.

She lives with them. Because Alex’s sister is alive.

“Lance!” Maggie’s voice drags her out of Laurel’s reproachful look and into the present, into the bar. “Isn’t a night out of the Waverider supposed to mean you having fun?”

Sara sighs with a twisted grin and swirls her drink around the glass before finishing it in one go. She signals for another before standing and sauntering over to the couple, swishing her hips just a little bit more than she normally would.

She watches Alex gulp and her grin deepens.

“You’ve got two assumptions there, Sawyer. One: that nights in the Waverider aren’t wild and wacky fun. And two: that I’m not having fun sitting at the bar drinking alone.”

She flinches with a crinkled nose and a grimace as the words come out of her mouth.

“Did it sound less sad in your head, Sara?” Alex takes pity on her, and Sara pretends to glare.

“So what do you two do for fun then? Other than the obvious?” She points between them, somehow suggestive without being lewd, evocative without being objectifying.

“She loses to me at pool.”

“I try to get her to give me flash grenades.”

They speak at the same time and Sara grins, reaching up to grab herself a pool cue from the rack on the wall.

“Flash grenades? Is that what the kids are calling it in 2017?” she grins as she starts setting up the table for a fresh game.

Alex blushes and stammers and Sara winks at Maggie.

“They might be adoptive sisters, but somehow the oddly attractive awkwardness runs in the family, huh?” she asks, and Alex splutters some more.

There’s laughter and there’s blushing and there’s flirting.

There’s Maggie losing and there’s Sara giving her pointers and there’s Alex messing up on purpose so Sara gives her pointers, too.

There’s even more laughing and blushing and flirting after that.

But after a few games – and a few more drinks – Sara’s eyes keep flitting to Maggie’s hip.

“What?” Maggie wants to know, checking her fly. “Lance, what – “

“Your shield. My dad’s a cop, too. A detective.” She pauses and sips on a bottle of beer, shaking her head. “No. It’s 2017. He’d be a captain, now. Hard to keep track sometimes.”

“Did he want you to join the force?” Alex asks, hopping up to sit on the pool table until M’gann waves her off from across the bar.

Sara laughs, low and liquid and just this side of lost.

“Hell no. He wanted us to stay far away from that gig. Too dangerous. He taught us how to handle a gun and how to defend ourselves, but…” She shrugs and she sighs and she twists her mouth into a small grin.

“The Gambit,” Maggie supplies softly, because she’s heard the stories.

“Do you ever wanna go back? In the Waverider?” Alex asks, and Sara nods and then shakes her head and then nods again.

“If I hadn’t gone with Ollie, Laurel might have. And I… the hell that those years were? I would never risk putting that on my sister. Or on the timeline.”

Maggie takes Alex’s hand when Sara mentions Laurel, and Alex reaches for Sara’s.

“Well, don’t we know how to have fun?” Sara chuckles dryly after a few moments of damp silence.

“We do, actually,” Alex grins, kissing Maggie’s hand and squeezing Sara’s.

And that giddiness – borne, not of levity, but of gratefulness, to be alive, to be breathing one more day, to be holding hands with… well, with family – spreads through Alex’s fingertips and into Sara’s, into Maggie’s.

And the rest of the night is exactly what a night away from the Waverider should be.