795. Chapter 795

A shuffling sound in the living room woke Alex with a start. She reached for the alien laser she’d insisted on keeping by her bedside since Rick Malverne.

Maggie - still herself only half-awake - put a drowsy hand on Alex’s, soothing both her panic and her soldier-trained instincts. “Relax, Danvers,” she murmured, her voice still thick with sleep. “It’s just family.”

“But Kara always comes right in through the window.”

Their bedroom door - which Maggie had long ago insisted they actually needed - creaked open slowly, and a bashfully smiling face poked through the gap.

“Well, sometimes family comes through interdimensional portals.”

“Iris?” Alex asked, her brain trying to catch up with her body, though a smile was already tugging at her lips.

A thud and a distinct ow confirmed that it was, indeed, Iris. Because Barry rarely crossed through Vibe’s portal with anything resembling grace.

Alex checked to make sure she had actually fallen asleep wearing clothes - one of Maggie’s old sweatshirts and plaid boxers counted as clothes, she figured - before tumbling, just as gracelessly as Barry, out of bed and into Iris’s arms.

“What the hell are you doing here? Not that I’m complaining.”

Another thud in the living room answered her question. Or, at least, tried to. “What are we doing crossing through a magic portal -”

“It’s not magic, John, it’s just Cisco’s metahuman -”

“Yeah, sure Oliver, just like this one keeps coming back to life -”

“And aren’t you happy I do?”

Alex looked over Iris’s shoulder to see Sara Lance batting her eyelashes playfully at an unnerved-looking John Diggle, Oliver shaking his head next to them.

But Alex recognized Oliver’s effort not to smile, and saw right through it. He was the one she launched herself at first, just because she knew how much it bothered him.

He hugged her back, stiff but warm - because it didn’t actually bother him, and they both knew it - and Barry was next. He nearly scooped Alex off her feet - just like her sister could, with utterly accidental ease, just like Wally did, except Wally full-out spun Alex around. She laughed and tucked her feet in so she didn’t knock over everyone in range.

And as Cisco was coming through the portal, Alex grabbed both him and John around the shoulders and squeezed, hard, before transferring her group hug energy to Caitlin, Sara, and Felicity.

“Maggie, what the hell?” she asked, keenly aware that her hair was probably Harry Potter-esque from sleep.

Kara zoomed through the window with Lena in her arms, as if on cue. “Maggie and I knew you’ve been feeling lonely lately,” Kara explained, setting Lena down in Oliver’s arms - again, to make him squirm and to make everyone else slap his back and laugh.

“Good to see you, Mr. Queen,” Lena kissed his cheek. He shook his head and smiled as he set her down gently, gently, with a soft nod hello.

“So you figured you’d sneak the entire extended family into our apartment for, what?”

“Sunday brunch!” Cisco and Wally jumped up and down at the same time, Wally whipping out two massive boxes of donuts from somewhere behind his back.

Maggie stood in the doorway of their bedroom, watching Alex laugh and hug and very nearly cry.

Because these people – these people, and the ones filing through the door now, J’onn and Nia and Brainy and James and Winn and Sam – these people were the ones who were allowed to know she could cry.

Family was allowed to know that she could cry.

“You’re a good egg, Sawyer,” John stepped back to stand with her, watching the joy around them with her, arms crossed comfortably over his chest.

“I try,” Maggie said as she caught Alex’s glistening eyes from across the room.

“You succeed,” Kara called from all the way in the kitchen, in the midst of her competition with Barry and Wally to see who could get the most donuts in her mouth at once.

“Damn superhearing!” Maggie and John called back in unison.

Laughter filled the room, because even though Maggie had called everyone here for Alex, it was more than that, and they all knew it. It was for everyone. And it was, just for a moment, perfect.