703. Chapter 703

It’s been so much a part of Alex’s life for so long that it takes Kara a while to notice.

How often she drinks.

How hard she drinks.

Alone and lonely and nonstop.

And Alex thinks she’s slick, at Thanksgiving.

Getting the whiskey when Kara took away her beer.

But Kara notices.

Of course she notices.

She just doesn’t want to say anything in front of Eliza, because Alex doesn’t need that right now.

She needs Kara. And now, she needs Maggie.

Because Maggie’s the one who brings it up to Alex. Gently, softly. Lovingly.

And Alex thinks it’s absolutely ridiculous.

So ridiculous, in fact, that she stormed into Kara’s apartment and nearly paced a hole in the floor, ranting and tossing up her hands because the night she came out to Maggie she had three shots lined up for herself and she drinks just as often as I do and I don’t drink that often anyway and Rao, Kara, do you think she could be right?

It’s easy for Kara to stop drinking around Alex. Human alcohol doesn’t do it for her, anyway.

It’s not much of a sacrifice for Maggie to stop, either.

Because Alex is more important, and they can discover more creative ways to relieve stress together, anyway.

No; the harder parts are balancing Alex herself.

“Kid, she’s refusing to go to a meeting this morning,” Maggie reports to Kara over the phone, her hair still mussed from sleep, Alex tugging on her running shoes moodily.

“I can go running, I’ll be fine!” she shouts so Kara can hear her over the phone, but it’s fruitless, because her little sister is already flying throughh their window, hands on her hips.

“I’ll go with you, Alex,” she tells her, and it’s not an offer; it’s a statement of fact.

“Maggie, you wanna come down here and take her to the showers?” Kara buzzes through the DEO intercom, because her sister is barely standing up anymore.

She’s caked in dirt and sweat and just a little bit of blood, because sometimes the only way to fight through the frustration is sparring with an alien whose physical strength – even diminished in her special training room – is so much greater than her own.

Kara smiles when Maggie appears in the doorway, slightly breathless but with pure love and adoration in her eyes, wrapping her arm around her exhausted, drained girlfriend, paying no mind to the sweat or the grit on her skin, focused only on giving her everything she needs.

“Comments like that aren’t helpful, Eliza,” Kara explains softly, on a conference call with her foster mother and her one-day sister-in-law after Alex breaks down from yet another conversation gone wrong.

“I know how much you love her and that you were only trying to express support, Dr. Danvers, but Alex hears criticism from you more harshly than she’ll hear it from anyone else,” Maggie follows up, and Kara squeezes her hand, because it’s so good to have someone else in the mix of all this.

“Come here, sweetie,” Maggie wraps Alex up in her arms the night she earns her first chip, and they both sigh happily as Kara snuggles in beside them.

“I love having two sisters,” Kara murmurs as Maggie makes sure the blankets fall over her, too.

“You always will, Little Danvers,” Maggie promises, and Alex smiles into the crook of her neck, because she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it’s true.