Those that come back without any kind of trauma, those do not exist.
Kara is no different in that regard.
Alex knew walking down those goddamn creaking steps, knew when the air reeked of slaughter, knew when the muted reds, greys, and yellows spattered out catastrophe in the basement interior that it wasn't going to be good. That this wasn't going to be easy. But there was a selfish hope, a selfish desire rooted within her that culled back common sense, and instead believed that Kara would walk out of this like she always did. That Kara would be tired, exhausted even, but okay and the brunette wouldn't allow herself to imagine any other outcome. It was the only thing that had kept Alex going, especially when she knows she is the one who failed.
She had failed, no matter what J'onn, Clark, and her mother said, when she couldn't protect her sister because it had been twenty-two gut-wrenching, soul-tearing days since her Kara's disappearance, and the DEO hadn't even been the ones to find her.
But those that come back without any kind of trauma, those do not exist.
It is painfully obvious now.
Her sister is all signs of a veritable nightmare, circles dark as sooty bruises under red-rimmed, fever-bright eyes, hair, a tangled, damp mess that hangs over her face in messy ringlets, bony angles and edges prominent in places that angles and edges weren't prominent before, shooting shadows against the ghastly parlor of her ashen skin highlighted under jaundiced, yellowing light.
Kara's drawn herself up into that corner. Knees tucked to her chest, bloodied arms encasing them, demeanor all but screaming to leave her alone.
Alex closes her eyes briefly as conflicting emotions run through her. The coolness of relief at knowing that Kara is alive, or at the very least breathing. The hot, all-consuming hatred, towards the men upstairs, dead or alive, and anyone else who had to do with this mess. The unshakeable fear that careens forward, working its way up with the deep-rooted guilt that comes with failure.
She waits for Kara make the first move, gifts her sister the autonomy that clearly wasn't given, as she continues murmuring stilted Kryptonese to the injured blonde who won't stop crying, who won't stop shaking. But it's better than listening to Kara speak, a low, barely intelligible string of words, begging to go home… home… home.
It tears holes in her chest to hear Kara's voice, so young-sounding and fractured.
The trust is built over painful minutes, rather than seconds. And that kills her because time is of the essence. The green emerald is very much visible, coursing through her sister's veins, seeping away strength and energy, reflective in unseeing eyes, tinging the crimson of wounds that shouldn't be bleeding. And the brunette has never seen kryptonite poisoning to this degree. Kara shouldn't be in here, but Alex knows she can't be the one to decide.
So, she waits. And she can feel J'onn's eyes on her, reluctant, but understanding. She can feel the impatience of Davidson and the worry that peels off the resolute, unwavering presence of Maggie.
They all want to say something. They don't.
And when Kara finally moves, slowly uncurling a crimson slicked hand, reaching out, blindly probing, until she encounters Alex's wrist, trembling fingers pressing against the rapid fluttering of her radial pulse, everyone's breaths are baited. The heat that radiates from just the slight touch is billowing, Kara has always run warm, but never that warm. And Alex knows what the blonde is doing, rooting herself in reality by reassuring herself of other's existence, and Kara hasn't done that in years.
It takes every morsel of restraint not to grab a hold of her sister then, instead she asks permission, forces herself to always ask permission, and she honestly doesn't know what to do if Kara says no.
But she doesn't say no. The nod is barely perceptible, and it's all the permission Alex needs.
Alex pulls her close until Kara's forehead rests heavily against the hollow of her shoulder, and the eldest Danvers feels the raw groan of pain right against her collarbone before the blonde goes so completely boneless against her that the brunette wonders if she'd just passed out.
The position is awkward, Kara's legs still folded up in front of her, head nestled between Alex's neck and left shoulder, and though the blonde doesn't protest the iron hug, she doesn't reciprocate it either. Instead only shifting slightly, until her ear is against Alex's collarbone, as to hear her older sister's heartbeat clearly, the renewed contact encouraging her to shiver again, almost violently; the trembling spasms rippling through with no remorse. Ignoring wave after wave of billowing feverish heat, Alex struggles to find a point on the wall to focus on in an effort to calm her breathing and lower her heart rate. And if it's hard to swallow the lump in her throat, the tears in her eyes are even more difficult to clear. But she must try because a panicky sister is the last thing Kara needs, but at least she's breathing. At least she's breathing…
At that point, Kara proves that she isn't completely unconscious, gasping breathlessly through shaking shoulders and trembling, whimpers her desire to go home once more.
"Okay… Okay..."
Alex murmurs sweeping her hand through Kara's hair.
"You know it's me, right? You know it's Alex?"
She asks hesitantly, and she can feel Kara's nod weakly.
"Mhm. That's good. That's good. J'onn's here too. And Maggie. And Davidson."
Kara nods again. Sluggish and heavy against her skin. Whispering something else that Alex can't understand, but that inability to comprehend is smothered against the overwhelming relief derived from knowing that Kara is at the very least oriented to her surroundings.
And Alex must work fast before the lucid thoughts dissipate again.
"Okay, we're going to help you up. So we can go home, okay?"
It feels manipulative, to mess with Kara's desperate need for security, to use it a bargaining chip, but it's necessary. If only so Kara will cooperate enough to get her out of this hellhole.
So she looks at Maggie, who despite everything, still sits an arm's length away from the sisters, already moving closer knowing what the brunette's about to ask.
Working quickly so Kara doesn't have time to protest, Alex moves her arm under Kara's left shoulder while Maggie moves to the other side, both standing and lifting the blonde up with then. Her sister shudders in fits and starts now, knees almost buckling as the height difference is unequally distributed, and it becomes terribly evident supporting Kara's quivering form, that the blonde hasn't stood in a long time. Weak and uncoordinated movements coupled with uncooperative limbs, making their steps small, making the distance they must cover, much longer than it needs to be.
Davidson ghosts ahead to clear the room. J'onn moves to let them past, staying behind to package the discarded remains of the Supergirl uniform. And all Alex can think is why, why, why...
They avoid the living room, there is no need to see the bloodbath again, but she can tell Kara senses it in the way her posture stiffens, in the way her breathing stutters not quite from the pain this time. Alex knows what sensory deprivation does to a person, she'd been in this field long enough too, had experienced it in some degree herself. Deprivation like that, it breaks the spirit, it diminishes, exhausts the energy that one takes for granted. And for someone like Kara, who depends so heavily on her senses, abilities amplifying them vastly past what any human would ever have, to have it all rush back must be cacophonic terror. So, Alex hastens the pace, pushing forward past, the sun-lit kitchen, the bullet-ridden sunroom, a musty, trashed bedroom, mind having cataloged what she wanted already, to get Kara away from this death-laden house.
Get Kara away from here.
Snow crushes into mush under her boots when they exit through a side door, frost coloring the trio's breath as the temperature dips, fluctuating rapidly. And it seems Davidson carried a similar kind of thinking concerning Kara, having pulled the squad car around back, away from the growing police presence in the front. Offering the slightest privacy, even when he knows it won't be much.
Alex can't even begin to express gratitude.
The newly acquired distance from kryptonite coupled with the rays of yellow sun that push through scattered grey clouds takes immediate effect on the Kryptonian. And Alex feels as strength slips back into Kara's stance as the green slips away, from her veins, then her eyes, vision evidently returning by the way she lurches forward, away from her and Maggie's steady grasp, stumbling to her knees, groaning, as her palms press flat against her face.
Alex kneels close next to her, goes to help her up, and forgets to ask because the blonde jerks away. Contorting almost spectacularly as she flails to the side, deeper into the rapidly melting ice around her.
"It's just me Kara, just me. It's just Alex."
She soothes, jerking away from Kara with lightning guilt. Behind her, she can hear Maggie moving, hears car doors opening and closing, hears low voices talking, but she can't focus on it right now.
"It's t-too m-much. Too… to brig- t-too to..."
Words slurred and breathy, but they are the first thing she'd uttered that wasn't about home and all Alex can do is keep up the incessant calm of Kryptonese, even when she feels exactly the opposite.
"It's going to be okay. I know it hurts. Just ride it through, ride it through. You're with me. No one is going to hurt you while you're with me."
Kara shudders, mumbling a slurred, unintelligible string of words, but she doesn't move away when Alex reaches for her again. And with permission this time, Alex rests her hand on Kara's back, feels quivering tendons and feverish heat, as the power continues to seep back into her sister's wilted demeanor.
The wounds are closing, the bruises beginning to fade, but Alex is painfully aware that without food and rest, the sun is only going to get them so far.
Crunching footsteps interrupt her train of thought and she looks away from Kara to see who's behind them.
It's Maggie. Her ex-fiancé holds a cotton soft army blanket, offers it out with sheepish look, dark, warm eyes flitting between Alex and her sister, because despite the billowing heat that rolls off her, her sister is still only clad in blue-thin scrubs in the height of winter.
Alex feels Kara stiffen under her touch.
"It's alright, Kara," the brunette murmurs, "It's just Maggie. She's just helping. We just need to warm you up and give you some rest."
The blonde trembles silently, leaning further into Alex's grasp, one hand snaking away from her eyes to find her sister's pulse again.
"…Rest," Kara repeats after a while.
"Yeah, Kara." Alex nods against her sister's head, the smoothness of her skin rasping against blonde, dirty hair. "You get to rest."
Alex helps Maggie deposit the army-green blanket around Kara's shoulders, and together they lift her the final few steps to the squad car until they are depositing her gently in the back seat.
But Alex doesn't follow. Not yet.
Instead, she stands, swallows thickly, and she forces herself to meet her ex-fiancé's dark amber eyes.
"I… I don't even know how to thank you, Maggie."
The detective is already shaking her head.
"You don't have to say anything, Danvers."
"But, I do though, I do… because… God I don't know.. I don't…"
Maggie puts a hand on her shoulder, the electrical touch stops her rambling instantly, as deep imploring eyes search her own.
"Alex. It's okay. I would do anything for Little Danvers. I would do anything for the both of you. We fight every night for something, and when the sun sets we're all the same, even if we're not together anymore."
"Maggie…"
Maggie smiles sadly, eyes drifting to Kara, huddled in the safety of the squad car.
"We wanted different things, sue us, but we can't look back for nothing. I'll always be there for you if you need me, just call."
"Thank you."
Alex whispers, words so quiet they almost disappear in the wind.
Guilt writhing to the surface, and she's unsure if it ever entirely went away.
Maggie nods.
"Don't beat yourself up over this, Alex."
"I… uh, what?"
Suddenly unable to follow the conversation anymore.
"Don't beat yourself. I hate that this had to happen. I can't even imagine… Imagine how… this happened. But I know that if I feel this way, you feel ten times worse."
Alex looks away, shoves her hands into her pockets, glancing morosely at the house, before turning back to Maggie.
"Don't lose yourself up there."
The detective murmurs, tapping her temple.
"You need Kara, Kara needs you. It's going to be a long road, but you're the Danvers sisters, you guys...
"Always come with a warning."
They murmur at the same time.
Maggie gives her a small smile, a whimsical little thing that lingers even in the circumstance. The detective hands her a water bottle, gestures toward the squad car.
"I have to finish up some paperwork. The car is yours until whenever you need."
Alex's eyes trail the detective as she trudges through snow back toward the house, before sliding into the backseat next to Kara.
"Hey, want to try drinking something?"
She asks softly.
The water is warmed, courtesy of the interior heating of the squad car, but Kara makes no active move for it. So, Alex cups the blonde's hands around it, directs the mouth of the bottle to Kara's stained, bloody lips. Kara flinches at first, startling a little, having been lost in her own mind. But once she felt the soothing heat of the water, though, she presses against Alex as much as she can, craving the physical contact, as she swallows the liquid in large gulps.
It's empty in seconds.
For a moment neither of them say anything.
And Alex is content to sit in this silence, and just hold her sister, to just hold her and never let her go.
"Alex?"
Kara murmurs her name quietly, hesitantly, and though an odd petulance is present, the slurred shakiness has dissipated, assuring the return of strength, and god the familiarity of her sister's voice is something Alex doesn't ever want to not hear again.
"Yeah?"
Kara's moving again, trying to fill in the gaps, hands moving to press against her cobalt eyes once more.
"This is… This is real, right?"
Alex's heart shatters.
"Of course, ... Of course, this is real. You don't ever have to go back there…. Ever."
Alex weather's the emotional storm by holding her closer and Kara coughs haggardly underneath her, turning to press her face into the brunette's shoulder.
"I figured… because usually when I open my eyes… it's just… just dark..."
Her sister groans in a whisper, a free hand moving back to Alex's wrist, pressing firmly against the pulse.
Alex hums her assurance not trusting her voice to not waver if she chooses to speak again.
"Alex?" Kara asks again, breathily, voice muffled against the blankets and her older sister's shoulder.
"Yeah, Kara?"
The taller brunette responds, willing up the confidence to keep her voice steady, shifting a little, not to evade the unrelenting pulses of heat radiating from her sister, but to rescue the bottle threatening to tip from Kara's hand.
"I can sleep now… can't I?"
Kara's unwillingness to do anything on her own, to ask for permission for anything even when it isn't warranted, only hammers into the fact that Alex knows nothing about what happened. Only the aftermath, and not even that, because Maggie, God, Maggie had been the first one on scene.
There are questions that will have to be answered, where they're going to have to root through what happened, if not certainly for Kara's mental state, then at least for the report, but that time is not here. It is not now. So, the eldest Danvers answers, even when it doesn't feel right, setting the mug on the free space on the seat.
"Yes, you can sleep."
"But… I-I can't though..." Kara's voice is thick with exhaustion and rough with defeat, even when Alex feels her trying to clear her throat, trying to protest what she so desperately needs. "F-fuck, why can't I sleep?"
Her words trail off into an echo of a whisper, uttered in such a way that Alex isn't sure whether the question is directed at her or if the blonde is merely talking to herself. And if this were any other time, Alex would have laughed because Kara Danvers hardly ever swears, she's a kid like that, a kid... But this is hardly Kara Danvers, instead something of a shell of what she used to be, but Alex squeezes her hand anyway. Tucks her closer under her arm.
"It's okay to sleep now, Kara, the danger's gone."
Silence reigns for a long moment, but Alex knows her sister hasn't heeded her advice. The blonde sits too rigidly against her, breaths uneven enough to elude the pull of rest, and Alex can feel her grinding her teeth together, something the eldest Danvers knows for a fact Kara hasn't done since those first weeks on Earth. She wants so badly to fix it. To stop it all. There's nothing she can really do but continue to run her free hand through Kara's loose blonde hair and wish for rest, gazing absentmindedly out the window, watching Maggie and Davidson fill out paperwork on the porch, watching police officers move in and out the house, as the younger blonde all but compresses herself into her shoulder.
"They… they… had to want information out of me," the exhausted, but determined whisper wrangles its way forward minutes later, proves her earlier presumptions right, as the heat at her wrist dissipates when Kara suddenly pulls her hand away.
"They never t-told me what they wanted. T-they never asked… they n-never asked… ne-never asked..."
Her murmurs are lethargic but writhe with desperation, dubiousness, a hint of fear, and dark burgeoning thoughts. The heat dissipating further as her younger sister moves further away. The brunette tired, wrung out, and needing just a bit of sleep to face any other problems that might come their way, feels the bubbling anxiety sends spikes of adrenaline-fueled concern into her own drowsy state. Because if it's this hard for her to stay awake, then Kara must be fighting tooth and nail.
A growling noise of effort exited Alex's throat as she shifts up and to the side, moving with Kara until the sisters are facing each other.
"Kara. Kara, look at me."
She murmurs soothingly, but her sister's line of sight is aimed elsewhere, everywhere but her. Cobalt eyes as wide and fearful and lost as they had been earlier, shoulders heaving larger and larger, trying to take in futile breaths, that refuse to completely draw themselves inwards.
"They're g-gonna come back. Rao… They're g-gonna come back and… and and.. They're g-gonna hurt you and J-Jonn and, and Winn and M-maggie and… and..."
"Kara! I need you to focus on me, can you do that for me?"
Alex begs, her own heartbeat increasing in tandem with the rising anxiety. She slides tentative fingers across Kara's face, stops her sister from shaking, from looking away, until grounding her sister with her touch. Making her look at her.
"They're gonna come… come back, Lex… They're gonna…"
The blonde's eyes are on the house again, inescapable fear clouding them.
"No. No, they're not. We took care of them, so you're safe here, Kara. You're here. It's just you and me here, yeah? Just you and me. Only you and me."
Alex hastens to assure, using the bottom of her thumbs to wipe Kara's tears away. Unsure whether to consider it a success when Kara doesn't pull away.
"I'm with you."
The shaky utterance is better than nothing at all, even when absolutely zero confidence backs the words up.
"Mhm. You're with me. It's just you and me. You're safe."
She soothes in a calming litany, searching Kara's eyes for residual fear and anxiety, and when it's still there pulls her closer. Until her arms are wrapped tight around the trembling blonde.
"I'm with you."
Slightly more confident this time and Kara all but collapses into the hug, tears streaming, shoulders quivering, and for the first time she reciprocates the grip. Holding on like there's nothing left to hold on too.
"You did great, Kara. What they did, what they wanted, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you're here. What matters is that that you're safe. You…"
She picks her words carefully, tries to find the right ones that'll make everything hurt less.
"You're safe, Kara. You won. You beat them."
She continues with a steady murmur of pride, "You beat them."