"Well," Alex said, bringing four beers to the table, "I bet he's working with a partner."

"Why? Why would you say that?" Winn asked.

"I'm just saying," Alex said, "in every situation, Guardian seems to be one step ahead." She walked around the table, back to her seat. "That screams sidekick." She didn't really know what to make of this new vigilante, but she was certain he had help.

"Sidekick?!" Winn exclaimed. "Okay, so, if, if this guy actually had a number two, I think they would actually be more equals," he said. Alex took a swig of her beer and watched curiously as James shot Winn a weird look.

"My cousin worked with a vigilante, once," Kara interjected. "Tons of gadgets, lots of demons. I mean, vigilantes are nuts!"

"Or maybe you are just afraid of the competition," James chimed in.

Kara scoffed. "No, no, no, no, Alex, you agree with me right?"

She nodded. "Mm hmm," she said.

"I mean, masks, the voice-changer things? It's weird. It's weird!"

Alex was in the middle of taking a swig from her fresh beer when she heard a familiar voice from behind her.

"Danvers!"

She nearly spat out her beer, her left hand coming up to her lips to wipe away any escaping liquid.

'Shit.'

She forced herself to swallow, set the bottle back on the table and turned around, noticing that Kara had also turned at the mention of their family name, but Alex knew who had said it and that it had been intended entirely for her. As she expected, Maggie stood there, by a pool table. She really should have known better than to come back to the alien bar, but she thought that, on the off-chance Maggie was there, she wouldn't disturb her while in a group.

'No such luck,' she thought to herself, sighing inwardly. Talking to Maggie was pretty much the last thing she wanted to do right now. Or ever.

"Hey," Maggie said, a small smile on her face. "It's been a hot minute," she said, stepping closer. "How are you?"

Alex managed to get herself off the bar stool and walked a couple of paces over to the other woman. "Yeah, good, good, yeah," she stuttered, avoiding looking at Maggie in the eye. She then realized, with a sinking pit in her stomach, that she should introduce Maggie to her table.

"Uhhhh, everybody," she said, "this is Maggie." The other woman stepped forward to the table. "Maggie, this is, uhm, everyone." She took a breath. "This is James, Winn and," she exhaled, "Kara."

"Oh the sister!" exclaimed Maggie. "Oh, I've heard so much about you from Alex!"

'Oh my God, please, Kara, please, please, please, please don't-' Alex prayed fervently for Kara not to say anything that might complicate things.

"And I've heard all about you," she heard her sister say, knowingly.

Alex's eyes widened in panic and she silently swore vengeance on Kara later. Her worlds were colliding and she was absolutely not comfortable with that. Then Maggie turned back to her and Alex tried desperately to look cool and okay and in control and she was pretty sure she had failed. 'Dammit,' she thought to herself. This was the most awkward she had felt in a long time and awkward wasn't a word that was normally used to describe Alex Danvers. Confident. Self-assured. Strong. Those were all words she'd heard used to describe herself. Awkward just didn't make the list, at least not usually. Only, it appeared, when she was in the presence of the beautiful detective.

"Uh, can I borrow you a minute?" she asked, in a higher-than-usual-pitched voice.

Alex briefly went over the alternatives in her mind and, finding none other than dying of sheer embarrassment and discomfort, she shrugged and sort of nodded and said yeah.

Maggie smiled a goodbye to the table and they walked away from the group together.

"Hey, so you haven't returned any of my calls," Maggie said, in a low voice. "I've been worried about you."

"Oh," Alex exhaled. "I've been working." Work was always a convenient excuse, particularly as chunks of it were classified. She used it to excuse herself from irritating social events regularly. She realized, though, that this was the first time she was using it as an excuse with Maggie and she wasn't sure she liked it, but reasoned that it was self-defense.

Maggie rolled her eyes. "Right. There must have been a lot of rogue aliens at large," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, showing she wasn't buying it.

Alex chose to take her statement literally. "There always are," she replied, forcing a small chuckle.

Maggie stopped walking. "Listen, uhm..."

Alex stopped as well and reluctantly turned to face her.

"I just wanted to make sure everything was okay..." She paused. "With us. Because the last time we saw each other, things got a little... uhm, you know, like, complicated," she ended with a bit of a nervous laugh.

'Complicated?!' Alex thought to herself, annoyed. 'You break my heart and make me sob in my sister's arms and you call that complicated?!' She forced herself to remain composed. She shrugged. "I don't know," she said with a serenity that belied her chaotic emotions. "I thought they were pretty straightforward." She winced inwardly at her use of the word, but soldiered on. "You know, I'm fresh off the boat," she said, taking a bit of pleasure at throwing Maggie's words back at her. "That's not your thing." She shrugged. "It's no big deal." She remained calm, despite the fact that it was a big deal. It was the biggest of deals. This woman had made Alex realize she was attracted to her, encouraged her to come out to her sister and then rejected her. Big deal was the understatement of the century. She considered and decided she deserved an Oscar for her performance.

"I like you, Alex, it's just, y'know, the situation." Maggie smiled up at her. "It's nothing personal."

"No, I didn't think it was," she said smoothly, lying through her teeth. 'You don't want me,' she thought, 'of course it's personal.'

"Okay." Maggie's eyes flicked down for an instant and then back up, looking intensely into Alex's eyes. "Good. Still friends?" the shorter woman asked, a ten gigawatt smile on her face.

Alex paused, having tracked Maggie's glance. "Of course," she finally said, unable to resist Maggie's grin, despite the fact that she really didn't want to have to spend any more time than absolutely necessary with the woman who had caused her so much pain. Agreeing was the quickest way to escape, though, so she forced a smile back and they kind of nodded at each other. With that, Alex walked past her back to the relative safety of the table, deciding that she would deal with the repercussions of continuing to ignore Maggie Sawyer later.

"You okay?" Kara asked.

"Yeah," she responded, "I'm good." She was lying, of course, but that was mostly for the benefit of the others. There was no way she was going to come out to James and Winn, not here and not now. If she needed to, she'd talk to Kara later on. She sat down. "So, where is Mon-El?" she asked, desperately wanting to change the subject. "I mean, doesn't he practically live at this place?"

"Oh, knowing him, he's probably at Darla's apartment or Eve's apartment or with that blonde Valeronian... What's the word for a male floozy?" Kara asked.

"A Daxamite," Alex deadpanned, after a moment's thought.

"Hah!" Kara grinned and clinked bottles with Alex. "Well, at least he's having fun on Earth."

The others chatted for a few minutes with Alex barely paying attention. She kept replaying the conversation in her head as she fiddled with the label on her bottle of beer, occasionally smiling or nodding in agreement with the others at the table, hardly hearing anything.

"I've been worried about you," Maggie's words echoed. They'd gone from texting several times a day to absolutely no contact whatsoever. After Alex had walked out of that very same bar, days ago, she hadn't returned any of Maggie's texts or phone calls. Even reading the texts or listening to the voice mails was difficult. It was as though each time her wounded heart started to scab over, Maggie would attempt to contact her, ripping the scab off and forcing her to start all over again. Just like tonight. Tonight's encounter had reset her "get over Maggie" progress to approximately negative seventeen. The other woman had the ability to undo her entirely. She took a long pull at her beer and sighed.

"I like you, Alex," she had said. What did that even mean? It had given Alex hope, which is exactly what she didn't need when she was trying to get over Maggie. On the one hand, it meant that she liked her as a friend. 'As a friend,' she scoffed silently. Three words which caused Alex to grind her teeth. Or, and this was the dangerous part, it meant that Alex had been right in thinking Maggie felt similarly. It meant that Alex was reading the signs correctly, that Maggie was attracted to her, too. And she'd used her name. Not Danvers. Alex. She'd said it, the last time they'd seen each other. "Alex, don't go," she'd said. And again, she'd used it when talking to Kara. And then once more, just now. She knew that, for herself, she'd long ago stopped thinking of her as Sawyer. She'd become Maggie to her as she'd seen beyond the tough cop exterior and caught a glimpse of the woman beneath it. So did it mean something that suddenly Maggie was using Alex instead of Danvers all the time?

She sighed. This line of thinking was exactly what she shouldn't be thinking about. She shouldn't be thinking that maybe Maggie wanted her. She shouldn't be thinking about their kiss. She shouldn't be thinking about how she wanted to do it again. And again. And again. She sighed again and tipped her beer back, finishing off the alcohol. She stood up from the table and went to get another round.

Maggie had looked at her lips during their conversation. She'd noticed it, just a quick glance down and then back up to meet her eyes. Did it mean anything? Or was it literally because her lips were at eye level for the shorter woman? Was she thinking about their kiss? Or was Alex reading too much into something as simple as eye movement? Alex sighed and brought the drinks back to the table.

As Alex began her third beer of the evening, she considered how enthusiastically Maggie had reacted to Kara. She let a small smile rise to her lips. 'Did she think I was on a date?' Alex nearly laughed out loud at the prospect of Maggie Sawyer being jealous of Kara - but then, she'd already shown she was a bit jealous of Supergirl. Running buddies, isn't that how she'd put it? She took another swig of the beer, considering the possibilities.

And then she stopped.

'This isn't helpful,' she told herself, sternly. 'Hope is the enemy here. She doesn't want you. She's told you as much. Just... forget her, Alex.' She took a deep breath and another drink of beer, trying to drown the pain of the rejection as well as the small ember of hope that kept threatening to burst into flame despite her best attempts to extinguish it.