580. Chapter 580

In the end – or at the beginning, as it were – they had so many songs they didn’t know how to choose just one.

Alex stressed and Alex cried, because it had to be perfect – their wedding had to be perfect – and Maggie tried to console her, to assure her, to gently kiss away her face and her worries. Kara took her flying and James took her sparring.

In the end, though, it was Winn that made her feel better.

He cleared his throat one morning in the command center of the DEO, loudly and nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Excuse me, everyone? I need your attention.”

“What is it, Agent Schott?” J’onn pretended to be annoyed, but he knew, and he could barely contain the smile growing on his face.

He put on a good show, though, and Winn would run and slide into a hug with Papa Bear later as thanks.

“Alex,” Winn started, holding up the flash drive.

“Did you manage to plot the path and origin of that hull fragment we uncovered last week?” Alex rushed forward, reaching eagerly for the drive.

Winn snatched it away, and J’onn nearly choked on his laughter. Kara nudged him with her elbow, and he crossed his arms over his chest and kept his eyes on his eldest human daughter, trying to look grave.

“Uh, no,” Winn said. “I mean, I’ll have that to you by this afternoon, Agent Danvers, but I um… I had another project I was working on.”

“Winn, what could be more important than – “

“It’s for you. And Maggie. It’s… for the wedding. You were worried about choosing a wedding song. The best wedding song for you two. You wanted it to be perfect. So perfect that you didn’t stop to think about another option. But I figured, why just have one? You guys have so many forms of love together: why sum it all up with one song? So I… I gave you them all.”

He presented the flash drive to her with a little bow, like he was presenting her with a grand treasure.

And really, he was.

Alex most certainly didn’t cry in front of the entire DEO that morning.

Certainly not.

But she did hug Winn hard enough to leave a mark, and when she pulled away, her tears were on his shirt.

It was one of the best hugs he’d ever had.

During the wedding, he and Kara danced with their sister and her new wife during most of the playlist.

But for some of the songs, they got up, and they sang for them.

“Um, ‘scuse me, everyone. Um. I know Alex and Maggie love this song – the amount of times I’ve watched them make out to it at the bar is really upsetting, so much so that I had to beg M’gann and Darla to take it off their playlists.”

Everyone laughed, and M’gann and Darla held up their glasses in a toast to Winn. He lifted his imaginary glass higher and exchanged a grin with Kara.

“I mean, lesbihonest, those of you who’ve gone to the bar with Alex and Maggie know that I really could be talking about any song.”

“Here here!” James called softly, and Alex clung to Maggie while she leaned into James’s arms, laughing and blushing and crying all at once.

“But this song… this song is a special one. To me. Because this song is a story, more than anything. And I’ve… I’ve watched Alex and Maggie go through this story together. And I’m honored to watch them continue this story together. Alex, you… crap, I just lost a bet to James, I said I wouldn’t cry… I don’t know who I’d be without you. And Maggie, my favorite pool shark, I don’t know who I’d be without you, either. I always wanted a family. I met Kara, and found one. And now you’re part of it, and I… well, anyway. I’m gonna shut up and sing now.”

He cleared his throat and Kara took his hand and squeezed as she nodded to Lucy to start up on her guitar.

As she plucked out the first few notes of the song, an audible ‘awww’ rose through the crowd.

“I know, right?” Winn said softly into the microphone, and James made a note to talk to him about his natural performing talent later.

Soft laughter and Maggie’s tears mingled along with the first notes Winn sang.

“I met you in the dark,

you lit me up.

You made me feel as though I was enough.”

Kara took over in the next part of the song, and their voices joined during the bridge, and Alex and Maggie pulled each other closer as prompted, dancing with their foreheads together and tears on their faces.

But that wasn’t what made even J’onn cry.

Somewhere in the midst of the chorus, Alex found her own voice, and stared right into her wife’s arms, and sang.

And Maggie sobbed and shook smiled because she was so in love with Alex, too.

They both laughed quietly together at “I’ll bring you coffee with a kiss on your head,” because, even they both went to kiss each other’s foreheads, they both knew exactly what the other was thinking: that Maggie’s coffee order is “gross.”

But that Alex loves her so much she’ll bring it to her, anyway.

That Maggie loves her so much that she got her coffee wearing nothing but boxers and Alex’s t-shirt, that first morning.

A lifetime of firsts.

Including this.

Including dancing at their wedding, surrounded by the people they loved most in the world, wrapped in the voices of Alex’s little sister and one of their best friends.

Wrapped in each other, forever and ever.

They thought – both of them thought – that they couldn’t possibly get more emotional than they had already.

Kara proved them wrong.

Because she took the microphone a little bit before the party wound down.

“Hey everyone. So I know I’ve made speeches and sang already, but I just have one more thing. Well, not really a thing, more like… um.” She glanced toward the door, looking for something or someone that Alex and Maggie couldn’t see. She must have seen what she wanted to, though, because she nodded with an excited glow in her eyes.

“Okay, so… Maggie, we’ve said it before, but I want to say it again: we love having you as part of this family. And you and Alex make an absolutely beautiful family.” Kara’s chest wracked in a soft, silent sob, and Alex almost went up to hug her sister, but Kara held out her hand and shook her head.

“I’m okay. I’m losing a bet to absolutely no one, though, because I would never have bet against my crying tonight.”

“Yeah, Schott,” Iris West teased, and Winn laughed harder than anyone.

“So like I was saying. You two make a beautiful family, a perfect family. But um… but I think there can never be too much beauty in this world, so I wanted… I wanted to add to it. I hope that’s okay. James?”

And she nodded at the door she’d been looking at before. James strolled through with an enormous grin and and enormous dog.

“No,” Maggie whispered, tears pooling already.

“Kara, you didn’t,” Alex dropped to her knees, because even though she said one thing, she already knew to answer.

James guided the pup to them steadily, his camera at the ready in one of his hands.

“I did,” Kara said into the mic. “She’s a retired police pup, and she needed a home, and I thought who better? And no, Alex, you can’t rename her Gertrude. You’re welcome, Maggie.”

Both of them barely heard Kara as they let their new family member sniff them, get comfortable with them. Lean forward and lick their faces immediately.

“Kara,” Alex whispered as she felt Kara approaching behind her. “Thank you.”

She leaned into her sister even as her hands met Maggie’s over their pup’s fur.

“Only the best for the best couple I know,” Kara whispered, kissing Alex’s temple with a wet smile and a soaring heart.