Authors note: This story is kind of AU. Set at some point after season two timewise, where Alex and Maggie are in a serious relationship, but Mon-el doesn't exist and consequently, the end of season two didn't happen. Also in this story, only a few people know Kara is Supergirl, and even less know about her past. Fin.
...
"Hey, Maggie."
The technology specialist distractedly glances up from the maps and pictures and code that run across the massive array of screens in front of him as he warmly greets her. It seems like yesterday's coffee is still burned into the roof of the detective's mouth as she smiles back at Winn at the epicenter of the DEO. She'd been up for almost twenty hours, pushing twenty-one, but figures there's no point in pushing her souring mood onto others.
Besides she knew one person who'd make her feel better.
"Hey, where's Alex?"
Winn rolls away from his desk and spins in his chair as he scans furtively among the throngs of DEO agents milling about the base.
"Oh uh… she's probably with Kara. They should be back soon."
He says, gnawing off a twizzler, wordlessly offering her some. Maggie nods her acknowledgment, holding out her hand for the candy as she takes the empty chair beside him.
"Is Kara still in a bad mood?"
The blonde had been in some kind of strange funk for the last few days, nothing but scowls and despondent glances in the few times the detective had seen her. Shadows dark under her eyes, moving like a ghost, dead on her feet, though Supergirl activity had somehow spiked accordingly.
Almost everybody at the DEO, with the exception of Winn, Alex, Vasquez and J'onn had been giving her a wide berth, crowds literally parting, hushing into silence as the alien stalked by. Maggie had admittedly been unnerved the first day, unused to seeing overwhelming detachment instead of the excessive exuberance that had consistently marked her girlfriend's sister's features.
"Yeah… Her birthday's coming up…," Winn sighs, running a hand through his short spiky hair, "It's always kind of rough."
She nods.
When she'd asked Alex earlier, her girlfriend had mentioned something along the lines of the same thing, but had exchanged birthday with anniversary. Deduction told the detective, that whatever it was likely had something to do with both.
She doesn't pry for details for though.
She already knows that Kara and Supergirl, knows from Alex that the blonde's parents died when she was younger. Knows how that can be hard in itself.
So she doesn't pry for details, but Kara's rapidly becoming family.
And having been dealt a shitty hand when it came to families before, Maggie is eager to be there for this one anyway she can.
… ...
Red and blue lights wash over Maggie as she crouches against one of several squad cars parked haphazardly in the parking lot, the scene of the crime, the shit-stain where the glowing asshole almost shot her and almost shot Davidson and landed plenty of beamlike burning shots on civilians, property, and other officers who hadn't been so lucky, standing in the fucking parking lot where there are good people… people with families… people who are injured, if not dead already.
What remains are officers and agents struggling to maintain a containment zone, staffing a hastily formed triage area, talking to hollow-eyed witnesses, people who should be used to this violence of some sort. And it's awful that people see these things happen so often that they don't go to a motherfucking bar every night to drink their sorrows away because Maggie knows what that's like, they barely even run, gawking wide-eyed, fearful, but curious all the same.
"Stay back!," the detective yells at reporters who attempt to inch forward in search of their Pulitzer as another blue beam sears through air, metal, and concrete. She can hear the sizzling as it whistles towards her, can feel the heat, and is almost sure she won't be so lucky this time, when she feels wind rush by her.
And when she turns back to look she sees Kara soaring to block another blow.
Coming quite literally from nowhere.
Another attack from Supergirl threatens to knock the rock, the alleged power source from the man's hands, but he manages to hold on, stumbling back from the blonde as she continues to return fire with heat vision. But the assailant was fast too, and only one shot connects with his shoulder, hardly slowing him as he turned its full attention to Kara, who spends a fair amount of time darting around him, and her antics, staying just out of reach, taunting him. A distraction. To get his attention away from the civilians.
Maggie searches for a new cover as Kara plants her feet, eyes narrowed as the glowing man stalks forward, absorbing beam after beam, that don't quite roll off the hero, and though the blonde has been reckless lately, she doesn't seem too worried. So Maggie doesn't either.
"We've got an ID on the suspect. Edward Moore. Abyormenite. No previous criminal record. Works… ah...worked as a garbage man." a different voice, Winn relays from the DEO base. "Nothing on the rock yet."
Abyormenite? Well, it explains the fire, not so much everything else.
Another burst of heat sends plaster raining across the sky as another beam is narrowly avoided by Kara skidding to divert it, Maggie invertedly meets Moore's twisted grin, but his eyes are empty as he turns his arm toward the crowd, threatening to shoot again.
Supergirl charges before the man could follow through with his target, but he, with a speed the detective could barely register, catches her fist as it flies at him. They stood at the stalemate for an instant before Moore dropped low and swept Kara's feet out from under her. She goes down fast. Easily. Almost too easy.
Moore doesn't hesitate this time, hand powering up for a final blow as if the fight is already over, but the detective quickly realizes it's not, that maybe Kara went down easily on purpose. Because the hero's entire self blurs, shivers out of existence for a moment so brief that Maggie isn't even sure she's registered it, then she's somewhere else, delivering a swift kick to Moore's forearm, followed by a concise uppercut to his chin. The man flies up two… three stories in the air, arms flailing, and so is the rock.
Rounded, smooth, no larger than a yo-yo, glinting azurely off the rays of the setting sun.
Finally, dislodged from his fist.
Kara kneels, pushing into the air after him and they both reach for it, but without the rock in contact, much of Moore's glow and power is rapidly seeping away. Maggie distantly registers something wrong about that, but the blonde whisks the seriousness of the thought away as she effortlessly catches the rock in one hand and pulls the man to the ground with the other, creating a plume of dust as they connect with the concrete.
When the dust finally clears, it becomes clear who won.
Supergirl. Standing tall over a curled up Moore.
Someone from the crowd whoops, a few more clap, a reporter cheers.
Maggie sighs, lifting a hand to rub her head, cringing at the throb across her temple. There was a raw scrape there, sending residual sparks of shock as she drew her fingers across it, but at least it wasn't a burn.
"It's kind of cool isn't it?"
The detective flinches at the sound, but turns to see it's only Davidson. Having not been so lucky, he presses a towel against his arm where the sleeve of his uniform and vest had been seared off by a heat beam, no doubt covering the reddening, scarring, burnt skin left in its place, but his youthful exuberance is ever present as he looks at the scene in awe.
"Cool? It's almost like you didn't get shot," Maggie returns grimly, straightening up once it becomes clear that Moore is no longer an immediate threat.
"Tis merely a flesh wound," He says smirking tiredly, then into his radio, " Commissioner Bica, the situation is contained, rapid response is no longer needed, but feel free to bring in a team to help with triage."
"Copy. I'll order the DEO in a containment unit for Mr. Moore, as well. Unless Supergirl is bringing him in?"
Both officers turn to look at the remnants of a battlefield, where the blonde still stands, motionless over Moore who continues to wither in on himself.
And Maggie feels that familiar uneasiness as she watches her girlfriend's younger sister.
"Uhhh...You should probably, send one in, the media is rabid. They'll probably want a statement." Maggie murmurs, covering for Kara as she steps into the containment zone with Davidson, maneuvering carefully around smoldering concrete.
"Copy. ETA is ten minutes."
As they approach, the detective realizes quickly that Moore doesn't seem to be much without the rock in his hand. Cradling his broken to his chest, the man shivers pitifully, the alien markings of an Abyormenite contrasting starkly against the spot where he's landed on the ground.
Maggie can't bring herself to feel sorry for him. Not with all the horror he's caused.
"Supergirl, you mind helping with some of the triage, some of these people could use a hospit-"
Maggie pauses.
"Supergirl?"
There's a surreal, dizzying beyond any migraine or drug, troubled, almost desperate look in Kara's eyes, whirling with more colors that she previously thought existed. Like the usual topaz had given way to a churning mass of light. And briefly, stupidly, Maggie is tempted to ask her to turn off the light to check if it's really her, but the atmosphere has suddenly become so thick she can't will herself to joke about it.
"Rao…"
Breathy and disembodied an entirely unlike Kara.
Maggie blinks slowly, trying to maintain her composure, but her heart was beating fast. Something's wrong.
"Supergirl?"
"It's so… beautiful…"
The detective's eyes fall to the rock clutched in the blonde's hand, as she reaches out to touch the edge of Kara's shoulder.
"Sawyer did we ever get an ID on the ro-"
Maggie's hand touches the rough fiber of the supersuit.
It's like crossing a void.
Because Davidson's voice sounds distant somehow. He kept talking, but it was hard to comprehend, like she couldn't pay attention to it. Underwater and far far away, and what he was saying was important, but she couldn't… couldn't... and Maggie doesn't hear the rest because suddenly she realizes she can't breathe.
Can't breathe.
Can't bre-
Eyes wide, Maggie tries to raise her hand towards her own throat as her breathing stutters to a painful halt. She couldn't breathe ... couldn't speak ... and her vision begins to frighteningly dim along its edges, but her hand wouldn't move from Kara's shoulder, from Kara who hasn't so much as blinked. Nothing would move. And as her breath is ripped away she becomes painfully aware of everything else. Of sweat and crimson running in her body was hot, cold, tickling, making her tremble and shiver… Of air around her heavy and thick and sluggish and drawn out, like walking through a very thin kind of jelly, all the sounds out of synch and far away. Of her vision losing details of shapes, people, objects, and even Kara, whose shoulder she was touching, but now she couldn't even feel that. The thoughts in her head slush together. The walls of her mind come nearer, merging colors like a kaleidoscope, smothering everything that was even slightly coherent in her head.
And she can't… can't breathe.
Maggie tries to think to shake to feel. Blind panic coursing through her as she fought to breathe, to focus, to remember where she is.
And when her body allows her to blink, to finally close her eyes, she opens them to something more horrifying.
Darkness.
The night is cold and she can taste it on her skin, metallic neon and salty grey, shifting and blending. A hum, low in the distance, buzzes at the base of her skull. So much so that she could feel it taunting at her brain, keeping time like a metronome.
She blinks again and it doesn't go away.
Instead the cold, like frigid fingers, chill her rushing blood, freeze the synapses of her brain, form a vice grip around her chest, squeezing, crushing, dragging her heart somewhere below her knees, gouging out what of her warmth remains, until she can't breathe for another reason.
Emptiness.
Maggie knows this feeling. Has felt it before. But this is horrifying. Terrifying. All consuming.
Like she was being hollowed out. Like everyone she cared about was a grain of sand slipping through her fingers. Like everyone was just another face fading away. Of those who cared. Her aunt. And her wizened eyes and thinning hair. Davidson. His crooked smile and autumn freckles. Of those she loved. Of J'onn. His words of wisdom and fatherly advice. Of Kara. With azure eyes and boundless optimism. Of Alex. Her passionate love and fierce protectiveness. And she tries to hold on, but gone… gone... gone…
Like breath stolen from her body, the phantom tightening of her chest unravel thoughts that go unfinished, slipping away from her like spidery threads that she can't quite grasp. Too slick to catch until she can't even remember faces she passed on streets, much less the ones she's come to love.
Completely alone.
Alone. So alone. Left to face the black hole that threatened to swallow her on her own. Forced to take the leap without anyone by her side. She wants to curl her hand into a fist. She wants to scream. She wants to cry. She wants. But she can't… can't breathe.
The humming grows louder. Cranking, cranking cranking. But it's better than deafening silence.
She turns into the sound, turns into it like it was all she has left, tried to pull it close, longing for it like nothing else, ever. Not like her father's approval. Not like food in a starving village. Not like Alex's love. But it was real and it was here and it was something that could feel the emptiness. It sweeps over thick and sour and hot, clogging in her throat and lungs, scouring over skin like hot, gooey tar and sticky molasses. Soaks the police vest she can no longer feel, stains the skin that she can no longer see. Feels nothing but this too hot temperature and knowing nothing but that she shouldn't be there. And the sound drags her further, deep sludging guilt, like visions of hands touching her body, rushing towards her, pulling at her, pulling her down, turning her round to meet another sensation, dragging her through transgressions she can't quite remember. Both familiar and disconcertingly not real.
She should have been dead. Dead dead dead
Until it was real again. A susurration. Lights brighter. Noise.
All she does is blink and where there was darkness before, colors swarmed around her like hornets as the void splintered, between reality and something else, something dizzying. Suddenly there is light - so much light - and darkness - so much darkness, so much more than there ever was light - and despair. Pain and agony and a deadly mixture of emotions that spread through her body like poison. Crunching her body in a grip that threatened to strangle and wrench and kill. Remembering, recalling took nothing at all.
And she realizes that the buzzing noises aren't hums.
They are screams.
Blood surges into veins that she thought were dying.
guilt sorrow grief isolation anxiety hopelessness agony agony
Agony. Agony clawing at her mind, pure physical pain as she clawed in turn, as it ate away at her head, her mind, her entire sense of being. So blinding white and oh god, the pain. Hooking her flesh, pulling and rending until she screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
And there was noise. More noise. More screams but not her own. Other people as she tries to curl up, tries to breathe, tries to cradle her head in her arms and beg for it to go away.
Tries tries. Fails.
The ash of burnt corpses and the torrent of Oh, please no. Nonononono. Not yet. She couldn't leave yet. She's not ready. Please don't. She can't. The pain and the misery and the fear and the guilt. Wanting to touch, comfort, and press their hands together because she needed them to know. They were friends. Friends didn't just let friends die. And friends didn't let friends be afraid and god, they had been so afraid. They were family. Family means no one left behind. Family means nobody gets left to die. She needs someone to know. To know how utterly afraid she was, to know that she wasn't ready. Not yet. Not ever.
An invisible hand squeezed her lungs. The feel of everything rushing by in colored blurs was disorientating. It hurt her eyes.
Because it was there, all like a well, and she didn't have a choice. She had to jump. Had to take the leap. The plunge. The big, final goodbye. She didn't want to, but she had to. She wanted to stay...but...b-
Breathe.
"Maggie!"
And suddenly she was ripped out.
Maggie shudders. Barely recognizes Davidson's voice, rough, deep, and concerned. Could feel herself tremble as she fights down the panic, a pounding pressure rapidly building behind her eyes and bile rising within her, as details of everything return. There's too much input. She's being drowned in sound and darkness and fire. She couldn't focus, couldn't tell what memories were real and which weren't.
More voices sift above her, echoes of screams, whirring sirens, copter blades slicing, footsteps pounding.
Every piece of the detective feels reckless, careless, like she's committing suicide, like she's thrown herself over and the road is freefall, nothing but speed and a headlong rush into the ground and it's all Maggie can do to breathe. To gulp in gasps of air that were denied before.
Distantly, she realizes she's on the ground now, recognizing rough concrete and crumbling plaster and someone pulling at her police vest.
Maggie spasms away from the grip, turns to her knees and tries to rake in air and expel the hot, churning feeling out because agony is in her veins, copper is in her mouth and now it's all she can taste, her brain is shrieking hysterical godgodgodgod and she hasn't believed in him in ages.
"Maggie, hey... look at me."
It is Davidson, the shadow of him close, his voice closer, syrupy, thick, and too loud. Scarlet crimson splatters the ground when she exhales, sinking into the dust, dissipating into cracks, staining her vision.
"What the hell?" Someone in a sea of background voices yells.
"Maggie, talk to me."
The detective fumbles for her words. She feels all wrong, lightheaded, and disconnected from the people moving fast around her. Breathe breathebreathebreathe staring at the plaster under her hands, speckling with spidery scarlet.
"W-what was that? What was that!"
Words sputtered and wheezed and dragged into existence. Her voice sounds thick and heavy and foreign, even to her own ears as she tries to curl into the concrete.
"What was-what was that What- what-"
Maggie tries to say, slurring over air, chest heaving to get more of it in.
"You need to breathe for me, Sawyer." Davidson instructs frantically, then shouting to someone else. "No don't touch her! The rock-"
Don't touch who, because his warm hand is on her shoulder as she dry heaves into air. But she can't decipher the rest, the ringing in her ears grows as her hearing fades, limbs growing heavy as she tries to breathe breathe breathe.
"What.. What.. was.."
Darkness encroaches the edge of her vision, intermingling with salt. There's no oxygen to breathe because all the air is drained out until she's left into a vacuum of her own gasps and tears of pain. Then Davidson's hand is gone, his presence, his anchor. And she didn't want that anchor gone.
"Mags, I'm here. It's me. It's me, Alex. Can you look at me?"
Maggie almost doesn't recognize that name, lost in a sea of otherness and heaviness, and that's terrifying, even after everything else. New hands are on her skin. The hands are fast, strong, familiar. They're everywhere. On her shoulders, along her hairline, and then cupping her chin bringing her head up back toward the light.
But she needed an anchor, so she clings to the familiar sound, grasping blindly at the hand to hold on to.
"Come on, let me help. Look at me please?"
Listen listen listen
She opens her eyes further than slits. Watches the world tilt on its side. The blocked off intersection. Red swirling lights. Crowds of bustling civilians, officers, reporters. The sidewalk spinning in disorientating patterns but beyond that… Alex. Her girlfriend Alex. Alex with her auburn hair slicing shadows over her face, crimson on the hand that is gripped in her own, concern in her amber eyes that shift rapidly between the detective and something behind her.
"-wasthat. W-what was that. What was that?"
She can't calm down. Even with the love of her life kneeling in front of her. Not with her heart racing, her lungs spasming, her mind collapsing.
"I don't know. I don't know. But we're going to fix it okay. Okay?"
Ever calm, ever steady.
"I'm going to give you something to help you relax…"
Alex is saying, still gripping a hand she can barely feel. Before she can nod, before she can agree, there's a sharp puncture at her neck.
Something within her unwinds.
Until it's easier to blink, breathe, see. Until everything soups together.
Relief.
Then she's floating.
Again.
Awareness comes in ebbing bursts as thoughts slowly filter into her head, limbs heavy and brain far too hazy to catch up with the present ticking by. Maggie tastes ash in her mouth as rumbling metal vibrates steadily underneath something that isn't quite a bed but isn't the hard concrete of the ground. A stretcher, she realizes and there's electrodes of a heart monitor on her wrists, a blood pressure cuff around her arm, an IV in her hand, something rough and plastic pushing cold air into her lungs. They must be in an ambulance.
"I've got her."
The detective tries to blink, skin feverish and tight as she recognizes the hazy shadow of Alex, struggles to sit up, to reach out to her, but her body won't cooperate and girlfriend is already turning away into the damning colors that slush across her vision and too harsh echoes of screams that had been all that too real.
Fingers brush against her hair, sweeping some of it away from her forehead.
"Hey… Hey… We're going to the DEO okay?"
Alex murmurs softly over beeping machines, somehow in front of the detective again. Her comfort reverberates against the constricted walls of the moving vehicle, but Maggie's throat was sore and her ears were ringing and she feels too tired to answer. Instead, she lets her eyes drift, darkness already attacking the edges from the medicine that tries to pull her under.
Metal walls. Fluorescent lights. A gearpack. The stethoscope around Alex's neck.
And at the feet of her bed… a shock of burnt orange hair, a bloodied towel, the insignia of the police department's badge. Davidson, she realizes, one hand pressing the towel against his arm, the other is knuckle white against an arm rail. His mouth moves, but she doesn't understand whatever comes out, trapped in whirling delirium.
Her eyes drift away, pulling back into the alluring lull of sleep, but before they close, Alex moves slightly, and she sees one more person occupying the small space.
Blue fabric, a sweep of red cape.
Kara.
The fuzzy image of her anyway. Skin pale, arms limp at her sides, legs strewn over the edge of the adjoining bench as if someone moved her there, instead of having chosen to sit there of her own accord.
Her jaw is clenched, her features emotionless, her eyes… tortured.
Bloodshot and completely, terrifyingly vacant, staring somewhere into the middle distance.
The rock is nowhere to be seen.
Maggie willingly lets the darkness take her back.
…. ….
The second time Maggie awakes, she isn't sure it's even real, because her body won't cooperate or even dare try to move of its own accord. Like she's encased in quicksand. Sinking. It takes her long seconds to form bits and pieces and pull it all together. Shades of white and gray, the scent of antiseptic stinging her nostrils, neon numbers on a glowing screen. A hospital?
Her head floods with various memories of segments of dialogue-
"... blood pressures a little low, but…"
".. get an ECG started… "
"... contained in holding cell B..."
"... NCPD will finish cleanup…"
-And she has to will herself to concentrate, to focus on the voices she hears that aren't snippets from the past, tasting antiseptic instead of ash in her mouth as she forces slow and steady breaths.
Maggie's mind clears enough to recognizes the softness of a hospital bed and a voice- warbled and scratchy and hoarse- that wasn't her own, speaking above all the sound bytes, cementing the detective in the present.
"There…"
Through slitted eyes, Maggie hazily discerns the back of Kara, still in her super suit, perched on the edge of an examination table. Her legs dangle off the edge, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped around herself as Alex sits next to her, not quite touching her, but clearly as close as she can be without the blonde protesting.
Kara swallows, attempts to begin again.
"There was a moment, I know... when I was under in the dark, that something… whatever I'd been reduced to, not even consciousness, j-just a vague awareness in the dark. And beneath that darkness there was another kind—it was deeper—warm, like a substance."
The blonde's shoulders shake, a violent tremble in tune with her watery words.
"I could feel them, Alex. I knew, I knew them. They waited for me, there. So clear... I could feel them."
The tension stretches thick as Kara lets out a slow, forced breath as if trying to hold a dam of tears threatened to spill down her face.
"I could feel … I could feel them. Their love. Their presence. Them... They were there. And it was l-like I was part of everything that I have ever loved... And we were all... all of us… just fading out. And all… All I h-had to do was let go…"
Maggie blinks slowly, something hard pricking her eyes, something hard coiling in her stomach.
"And I-I wanted it to be over, I wanted it so bad, I wanted it done, cause I w-was tired. So I did. I said, 'Darkness, yeah' and I let go... And I could still feel their love there. Even more than before," she mutters, words strangled and quiet.
"Nothing. Nothing but that love."
The blonde's words trail breathily into the air as if even she can't fathom what she's saying.
"And then I woke up."
Maggie doesn't wince at Kara's anger, not at the bite in her tone, not at the groaning of metal beneath her fingers, but she does wince at the sheer helplessness beneath it.
"Kara…"
"You woke me up and it was real again."
"Kara."
"But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that I think I… I knew it couldn't have been real. I wanted it to be real. Rao, I wanted it so bad… w-wanted to go home. But it would have meant leaving this one… It's h-here, I know it is, because when I look at you I can feel it. And... and when I look at you and at Kal and Lois and W-Winn and-and J'onn and M-maggie. I'm... I'm home. I don't want that to go away. I don't want to forget. I just want the pain to be gone."
The blonde shudders once, twice, then she's leaning into her sister… crying.
It dawns on Maggie that she's never seen Kara cry before, has never seen the split seam between exuberance, confidence, and anger.
Alex pulls her sister close, murmurs comfort as the blonde trembles, rubs circles against her back as the tears continue to fall.
It dawns on the detective that she never wants to see her cry again.
"I hafta leave…. I hafta leave," Kara whispers tearfully, barely heard over cranking machinery.
"You don't have to leave, Kara", Alex is saying, steady and soothing, like she's said this a dozen times before, in the special tone Maggie has only ever heard use with her sister.
"I hafta… leave. I have t-too."
But with the way she leans into her sister, it seems there's no intention of her ever letting go.
"Okay… okay, Kara. Just… when you do… Call me okay? When you get there?"
Maggie closes her eyes. Slow and sluggish.
When she opens them, both of the sisters are gone.
…. ….
The next time, the last time, Maggie sprouts from hazy consciousness the aching delirium that had taken residence in her skull in the preceding hours had faded considerably, and somehow she feels more awake than she has in a long time. As if everything that happened was some distant memory, the details of the nightmare already slipping away.
She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, relieved that her hands can finally move to feel rough cotton beneath her, soft in her grip as she works to take back control of her body and catalog the damage. Someone's rid her of the police vest, replaced instead with a greying sweatshirt and there's still an IV in her left wrist, tubing twisting up somewhere behind her, but aside from that... a sharp ripple of pain crept up her injured body when she attempts to shift her position further, and the detective winces as the twinge radiates to other less sore areas.
Fuck.
Beside her, there's a spastic movement, as her groan startles someone into awareness.
Alex.
Hair mussed, circles under her eyes, still in her DEO uniform.
"Maggie! You're awake!"
Alex's whisper is calm and genuine and real, even the entire complexity of her face was the most convincing and most genuine, un-threatening thing the detective swore she'd ever seen. It was almost like a lighthouse has lit up her chest, solidifying the gravity that had been ripped from beneath her feet.
"I'm okay," she says breathlessly, and dislikes the sound of it, weak and soft. "I'm okay," she tries again, forcing her voice to steady.
The eldest Danvers shakes her head with a smile that doesn't quite reach her bloodshot eyes, wordlessly holding out her hand for her to hold, as they pretend for a moment that whatever the hell happened, hadn't.
It works for a few moments, long enough for her to realize that they're the only ones in the room, long enough to realize that her gut is telling her that something, something that she can't quite put a finger on, is wrong. She's not sure if she wants to find out, she knows she needs to, but it's easier to sit like this. To pretend, but the beep of the machines shatters the facade, brings them back to piercing reality.
"Does your head still hurt?"
Alex asks softly, vision skirting to the screen above her.
"Not really… just sore." the detective murmurs, focusing on the warmth Alex's hands create, ignoring the shadows in her vision. Ignores how they smile, taunt, know.
Her girlfriend's eyes shift from relief to sadness as she bites her lip.
"No vision changes? No ringing ears?"
"I'm fine, Al. I swear."
Maggie affirms, though she's unsure about the conviction behind it because there's this feeling of forced isolation, of fear that she can't quite seem to shake off.
"I'm sorry… I just… when I saw you… it wasn't good."
Alex mutters into Maggie's fist, as she moves to cradle it, like a koala bear to a tree.
"Alex… What... what happened?"
She starts, looking away.
"It was a Sisrahtac," Alex murmurs, then, sensing her confusion, clarifies, "The rock, not Moore. From the Helion realm."
"J'onn says they're this kind interdimensional parasites, they feed on neural energy by essentially projecting an illusion of the user's perceived inner desires and use the distraction to siphon away the rest. On Abyormenites they have some type of symbiotic relationship. With other species not so much…"
Uneasiness churns deep within her as she processes Alex's words.
"But what I saw… what I felt..." Maggie chokes on her words, finds that when she focuses on what she remembers, the details are too sharp for comfort, too present in her mind. Oily and slick and condescending and dripping with churning guilt, disgust, fear, agony. The detective swallows hard. "I… There was so much… I c-can't describe it… but… it hurt. So much. It hurt. I'm not a masochist, Al. But god… all that was there was pain..."
Her vision blurs as she averts her gaze toward her knees, remembers the lights, the darks, the utter isolation.
Alex is silent.
Her silence lasts so long that Maggie eventually turns her head to look at her, wondering if she'd said something wrong, but Alex eventually nods, as if deciding something for herself.
"Maggie… You never touched the Sisrahtac. You touched Kara." her girlfriend says slowly, gauging her reaction. "It gave her, her most… inner desire. Everything else, her other emotions, her memories… it was siphoned onto you."
Maggie blinks once. Twice. Trying to understand.
"What?"
"Your minds melded, Maggie. You were in her head."
What?
Darkness flutters in her mind. Pulses, pounds, thumps like a heart, like an organ deep inside of her.
But no. Those weren't her emotions. Those weren't her thoughts. Her feelings. But if they weren't hers then why did it hurt so much? Why did it feel like her heart was broken and her stomach was going to come out of her mouth?
"-couldn't handle two consciousnesses at once, Davidson had somehow pulled you back, but when I got there you were bleeding and you were panicking and God, Kara wouldn't even move, wouldn't even blink-"
And it's only after Alex says Kara's name the second time, that the ramifications of what her girlfriend is saying hits her.
"I…" Maggie mutters breathily, interrupting whatever Alex was about to say. "I was… You're saying that it wasn't the Sisrahtac that made that pain, it just… pushed what already existed onto…?
The detective barely has to meet Alex's eyes, barely has to decipher the dozen emotions rippling through her crumbling facial expression to know the answer and the detective feels nausea swirling in her stomach, hot and angry, pushing up like water in frozen pipe as she struggles to push it down.
"Remember… when I told you that Kara came to live with me when she was 13?"
"You said her parents died."
Maggie murmurs exasperatedly, mind already coming up with worst-case scenarios pulled together with bits and parts of memories that frantically try to piece themselves together. Of Kara's exaggerated startle responses. Of how she never seemed to sleep. Of how every outward display seemed overly skewed towards exuberance. Of the heavy codependency, the Danvers sisters shared.
Of the conversation she vaguely remembers taking place in the very room she lies in now.
Was it abuse? A car wreck? A fire? Domestic violence? Because Maggie remembers so clearly thinking she should have been dead. Dead dead dead. But that hadn't been her own words, thought with so much conviction.
"It wasn't just her parents, Maggie. It was her planet. She saw her world die… saw it go up in flames. She and Clark are the only ones left."
Maggie clenches her teeth, closing her eyes as she squeezed Alex's hand so tightly that she feels prickling numbness. But her girlfriend doesn't complain, only returns the grip as the detective tries to tamp down the remnants of ghostly emotions- of Kara's emotions. Of desperation. Want. Anxiety and grief and suffering, uncertainty - more than she ever knew existed. It hurt. Raw and open and it hurt.
When she opens her eyes again, there's salt in her eyes, blurring her vision.
And Alex is quick, nudging her to the side, as she moves to sit next to her. Resting her cheek against the detective's hair as she wraps her arms around her.
"She wanted to die, Alex. All she could think about was how much s-she wanted to die!"
Maggie stutters over stagnant loneliness..
"We're working on it."
And while it's unclear who Alex means by we, it's horrifically transparent that this wasn't a new topic. That the feeling wasn't new. The detective leans further into Alex's embrace, tries to suffocate in her warmth, any and all talk the detective wanted to accumulate was gone, replaced for silent gibberish and a heavy tongue.
"We're working on it."
It hurt so much.
… ….
"Did she call?"
Maggie asks, long minutes later, voice muffled in the sweatshirt.
She feels Alex hold her closer, subtle surprise coloring her girlfriend's movements, as she nods against her head.
"Yeah, Maggie… she called."