645. Chapter 645

She doesn’t say anything to Eliza when she gets out of the car.

She doesn’t say anything because there’s absolutely nothing to say.

Kara doesn’t speak either, not really.

Eliza sighs and watches her girls all but storm into the door Alex and her father had wanted to paint deep, rich blue in honor of the TARDIS when she was a child, when she would watch old school Doctor Who in his lap with hot chocolate and popcorn.

Before… before.

Now, Alex sweeps right up into the bathroom she used to fight Kara for. Eliza sighs again as she hears the shower squeak on.

It’s almost like having two teenagers back in the house.

It feels sad, and it feels… whole. Comforting.

The fine print of the mom contract, she tells Kara, grateful that Kara won’t flinch at the word, grateful that she has one daughter – who maybe doesn’t feel so much like her daughter right now – who’s willing to be in the same room as her.

And she doesn’t have super hearing, but she hears Kara’s quip about having signed up for sad drunk, but not for mean drunk.

She sighs – she has a feeling she’s not going to stop sighing for a few days – and pokes her head into their room.

“Alex, I’ve barely seen you since you got here. Come spend some time with me.”

And she immediately knows – hell, she knew before she opened the door – that Kara was exactly right about which kind of drunk Alex is right now.

“Spending time with you wasn’t the point. You know what, I’m not even sure what the point was at all. What, is Midvale supposed to protect me from feeling? Are you gonna chew me out for not forcing Kara to come here when she was sad? All six months of that? So, she gets six months to isolate herself and be a jerk, but I get, what, three days of the place that most reminds me of my father and I’m supposed to, what, heal? Get better? Forget her? Forget that I left her, that I ruined everything? Again?”

“Alex – “

“Am I talking to you, Kara? No, you know what, I’m not, because I begged you, I begged you, to talk to me, to at least be in the same room as me, god, for months, and you – “

“Alex – “

“Oh, I’m sorry Mom, am I being too harsh with your prize child? Is this why you brought me here, Kara, so you two could gang up on me, so – “

“Alex, darling, no one is ganging up on you.”

Alex tries to shrink back into her bed, away from her mother’s warm. Away from her mother’s calmness. Away from her mother’s understanding.

Because for the first half of her life, she knew this version of Eliza.

Then for the next decade, she knew another version. Someone overly harsh on her, someone who used to be the center of her world, now worrying more about some other girl than about her, loving some other girl more than her.

And now, it was back to the woman she’d known and idolized before… and she can’t keep up with the whiplash. She doesn’t want to keep up with the whiplash.

She just wants to be left alone.

She just wants… Maggie.

“Mom,” her voice cracks as Eliza perches on her bed, as she reaches her arms out.

And Alex doesn’t want to.

She doesn’t want to be weak. She doesn’t want the comfort of a mother’s arms when Maggie has none, when she abandoned Maggie to… nothing. To no one’s arms, because Alex’s had been all she had, and she abandoned her for… nothing, for everything, for nothing, for everything.

And she’s not sure when she starts talking. When she starts choking high-pitched words out into her wracking sobs, but eventually she realizes that Eliza isn’t the only one holding her.

That Kara, too, has crossed the room and crawled into Alex’s bed.

That Kara’s head is on her shoulder, that her arms are around her.

That her arms won’t let her fall.

“I’m sorry,” she squeaks, gasping for breath in a way that tears at Eliza’s heart, but at least her girl is letting it out.

“My brave girl,” she whispers as she kisses her forehead, as Kara shakes her head that no, no, she has nothing to be sorry for.

“M’ot,” Alex murmurs, and Eliza and Kara exchange a sad, bemused glance.

“Say it again, sis,” Kara encourages softly, and Alex takes a great, shuddering breath.

“I’m not,” she tries again, more clearly now. “Brave.”

“Crying doesn’t make you weak, Alex,” Kara says just above a whisper, stroking Alex’s hair and coaxing, finally, the glass of whiskey out of her hands. “It’s what makes you brave. That vulnerability.”

Alex scoffs as Eliza smiles at Kara gratefully. “Then why does it feel this way?” she asks, feeling like a teenager again.

A teenager, a kid. Like Maggie had made her feel.

Maggie.

She starts sobbing again, and this time, she doesn’t try to control it.

“It feels this way because your emotions are as powerful as you are, sweetie,” Eliza murmurs when Alex’s crying becomes quiet enough to be heard over. “It feels this way because you love her.”

“But I let her go, it’s me, it’s my fault, I don’t have the right to – “

“You have every right, Alex,” Kara objects, soft and firm and steely, somehow all at the same time. “Just because the final call was yours doesn’t make your heart ache any less.”

Alex shakes her head and sniffles and wipes her nose on the back of her hand. “It doesn’t feel like aching. It… it feels like…”

She shudders.

She thinks of the tank.

She thinks of being tortured.

Kara knows. Kara hugs her closer.

Eliza hugs both her girls.

“It’s okay that it feels like that, Alex,” Eliza whispers into her hair. “You don’t have to feel it alone. And you don’t have to feel it with my entire liquor cabinet.”

If she’d said it a year ago, it would have felt like ridicule. It would have felt like she was a disappointment. It would have felt like an accusation.

But somehow, tonight, it feels like the first thing to make Alex sniffle and smile and shake her head.

“I’m a federal agent,” she objects, but some of the vitriol is gone from her voice. “I don’t get to fall apart.”

“In this house, Alex, you can always fall apart,” Eliza promises. “Your sister and I will always keep the pieces for you. My brave girl.”

And this time, Alex lets them hold her.

This time, she doesn’t argue.