"So…do you want to have dinner?" Alex questions. Astra's movements slow, before she frowns at Alex over the gap between their beds.
"Would it not be conducive to your health to heal first?"
"Well, uh, yeah, but, I mean…some other time from now."
Astra seems to think on it for a moment, before nodding once. To Alex, her relief is palpable.
"Why does dinner mean so much to you?"
"Uh…" Alex blinks, thinking it obvious. "You sort of make me see colour. I thought it would have been obvious." Astra looks…taken aback and Alex starts to feel uneasy.
"I make you see colour," Astra says slowly, before placing a hand to her chin, looking far from assured. "I have always seen in colour."
Alex's eyes widen. "Oh. But…so you must have seen me when we were both really young then?"
"No. I wasn't even on this planet."
Planet, Alex repeats in her head before sitting up, wincing at the pain in her ribs. "Yeah, right. I bet you even came from Krypton," Alex means it in a kind of sarcastic way, because her mother's tale of an alien girl from space was her bedtime story – but in a moment, there's a hand on her neck, waiting to squeeze all the air out of her lungs.
"How do you know that name?" Astra demands, eyes full of fire. Alex stutters, heart monitor jumping up. Astra lets go of her neck, sitting down casually on her bed, a few seconds before two nurses run in.
"Miss Danvers, are you alright?" One questions, coming over to check on her as the other checks the heart monitor, soon turning to Astra to get her back to her own bed.
"Yes," Alex says, briefly looking away from Astra to nod. "I'm fine. I, uh…" she doesn't know what to say, adrenaline still running through her system from Astra's actions. Soon, the nurses go away again and they're left alone in ICU.
"How do you know of Krypton?" Astra asks, voice far softer now. Alex swallows, before beginning her mother's story, just as she remembers it.
"When I- when my mother was young, she met a girl from space. Her name was Kara Zor-El and she was an alien, but she didn't look any different from you or I." Alex pauses, seeing Astra turn and give Alex her full attention. Continuing, Alex calms a little. "She had dark blonde hair and bright blue eyes and sunlight gave her powers, because our sun is yellow and her sun was red. Her planet was called Krypton, which had blown up in front of her eyes."
"Oh, Kara…" Astra murmurs and Alex tries to ignore it, even as she goes on.
"Kara was scared and confused and she cried a lot. Mom figured out she was an alien and didn't just think it because she crash-landed in a silver space ship. Mom took her home and got to know her and taught her how to use a kettle and make a pot-noodle. She taught her things about humans and how to blend in and helped her make up a story. She had to pretend she didn't remember anything when they went to the police, she had to pretend she'd seen her soulmate when she was very young, because she could see colour."
A silence reigns, briefly, before Astra falls back into her bed, crying.
"She's alive. She's alive and here."
"It was just a story," Alex mutters.
"It's not a story," Astra replies, voice distant. "Kara is my niece. To know she survived the destruction of our home world is…indescribable."
"Right…" Alex swallows, because Kara was only a few years younger than her mother – over twenty years ago. "How old are you, again?"
"Why?"
"Because," Alex says, not giving a proper answer as she stares at her soulmate, faintly terrified.
Astra glances over at her, wiping her eyes. "It is complicated. I was…detained, within a spacestation. The life support kept us unconscious, most of the time. I was born decades ago, but I have not grown in maturity or physicality."
"Right," Alex says again. "And you're…an alien. You're an alien. How do you get away with medical?" She looks around, "I mean, how did you even get past the nurses, we're in the ICU- and insurance! Health insurance! People don't get treated properly until they sign a bunch of forms."
"I…have an identity, here on Earth. Your computer systems are not hard to manipulate, though certainly difficult to navigate due to the lack of modern appliances."
Alex pauses, "How are you in the ICU, then? Do…aliens, run at a different temperature, naturally? Are they keeping you here because you have a different biology?"
"Yes and no," Astra says, "I run hotter than most. Too hot, said Nurse Fahad. They are keeping me under observation, despite how I keep telling them that I have always been like this."
They talk little, afterwards. Over the next couple of days, both are moved into a normal ward, until Alex is well enough to go home on her own, doctors note for all the classes she's missed and will miss, for the next week and a half, minimum. Astra follows her, taking the same taxi and eventually eating the same take-out Alex orders for them both.
"Does this count as dinner?" Astra questions once they're done, Alex feeling far more invigorated by the Chinese food.
"It's technically lunch," Alex swiftly dodges, not wanting Astra to abandon her to return to…wherever she'd been living since she'd arrived on Earth. "Do you have an address?"
"No…yes…it is…"
"Complicated?" Alex supplies, before digging in her fridge for a beer, popping the cap with only minimal effort, eyeing the red label briefly before glancing back. "You can hang here if you like. Any time."
"Is this because you see colours now?"
Alex swallows, before looking away with a shrug. "So what if it is? You're my soulmate, but I'm not yours. It's…a bummer." Alex drinks her beer, knowing she needs something stronger. In hospital, she'd gone cold turkey, but with her fridge full of alcohol in front of her that usually, she'd drink on weekends with friends, getting wasted in this very apartment…she's not quite sure if she can resist the urge.
A hand presses down on her shoulder. "Alexandra. You do not have to pretend."
"Yes, I do, because now I have to explain to everyone who realises I'm seeing colour that my soulmate isn't mine." Alex turns, glaring. "Do you know how that feels? To have something and- and be pitied for it? This is one in five hundred million. Unless Kara's soulmate found her, then I'm the only one on this continent who gets to say, 'my soulmate didn't see colours when they saw me'."
Astra flinches, "I am sorry, Alexandra-"
"Don't call me Alexandra," Alex hisses, "My name is Alex. Thanks for saving my life and giving me the ability to see colours. You can go now. You don't have to have dinner with me." Astra steps back, like she's been slapped, eyes wide.
"Alex- Alex. I- I did not mean to cause you this much grief."
"Too bad," Alex puts her beer down on her kitchen counter, going back into her fridge, searching for her good vodka that she'd gotten on her exchange the year before to Moscow.
"Alex, please stop, I can smell all that horrific liquid and I've seen what it does to you humans." Astra takes Alex's shoulders, pulling her back, away from the fridge. Alex attempts to fight, but her injuries pull and jostle, causing her to tear up. Stilling, Alex lets Astra bundle her up in her arms, stroking through her hair that desperately needs conditioner.
"I am sorry, brave one. I never meant to cause you this pain. Shh," Astra presses her lips against her head, kissing her lightly. "I would still like to have dinner with you, if you would wish it. Perhaps a recurring one."
Alex chokes a little, sniffing. "Please?"
"Of course, Alexandra."
After that, Astra visits every couple of days and they somehow have more dinners together than Alex ever expected. At least twice a week, for weeks on end, Alex and Astra have dinner. Because Alex can't cook for shit, they get take-out and Astra tries far more human food than she thought existed, before attempting – using Alex's kitchen – to make her own meals. The first few are complete disasters, mainly because Alex helps, but soon Astra gets the gist: don't let Alex anywhere near a stove.
Then, one day, a few weeks before Spring break, Astra brings someone. He's tall, stiff-backed, blond and blue-eyed and he eyes Alex with an expression that reminds her of Voldemort.
"So this is Astra's little pet human."
"So this is Astra's douchebag husband," Alex replies with little joy, feeling her heart drop even as her anger rises at his insults. Astra gives Alex a Look, before introducing Non to her properly. Dinner that night is stiff and vaguely unpleasant as Non doesn't leave Astra's side.
Astra had told Alex about Non before, being especially careful never to mention his relation to her until she slipped, one day, when telling Alex about her dual wedding with her sister, Alura, when she married Zor-El. Alex had been rather distraught about that and used as much of her natural – and learned – acting ability to keep from seeming too bitter when she thinks about him or he is brought up.
"That was a disaster," Alex says afterwards, when Astra and Non have left, floating out her window up into the dark sky. She thinks about Non and Astra, what their relationship must be like and shivers when her minds slips into the gutter. Sex has never really interested her, but thinking of her soulmate with someone else – disregarding that it's Non at all – makes her feel like something slimy is crawling up her back.
Alex goes surfing to clear her thoughts. Predictably, seeing as she knows those waves she's surfing into are a little rougher than perhaps she wants, but doesn't particularly care, Alex once again gets tugged down deep underneath the surface – though, to be fair, it took several hours and only after it started to rain, properly.
This time, Astra isn't there to pull her back up and Alex wakes up afterwards curled up in the backseat of a very warm car, a scared black girl, soaked to the bone beneath her, wrapped in several towels over her underwear, a black man driving up front.
"I heard you, in my head, calling out for your Kryptonian," she says, whispering through her shivers, even as she frowns. Alex looks at her strangely too, though, noting the rising familiarity as she stares at her face.
"Do I know you?"
"Maybe. I think I know you," the girl frowns deeper. "We've been warming you up – you went down really far. I nearly couldn't swim back up with you. Papa revived you. We don't think anything happened to your ribs, if you're worried about your chest. I know that CPR for humans can get rough at times."
"Thanks," Alex says, looking out the window. "Where are we going?"
"You wrote your address in the back of your wetsuit," the man speaks for the first time. "You're lucky we found it. Skin to skin contact when cold isn't just a human habit, thankfully and we took your wetsuit off the normal way. I'm J'onn, J'onn J'onzz – but I'm more well known as John Laurent. My daughter, E'hlan, is better known as Ellen Laurent."
"Ellen?" Something in Alex's head clicks then and she looks up at E'hlan incredulously. "Susie's girlfriend?"
E'hlan raises her eyebrows. "You know Susie?"
"She's my sister," Alex explains, to the immediate amusement of the car's other occupants.
"Now we know why Susie was being weird on the phone, once we told her the address to meet us at – we were having a little family holiday here, before Susie goes home to Midvale to see your mom."
"Awesome," Alex grins a little, before curling further in to E'hlan's warm body.
When they get to her apartment, however, it's to witness a shouting match between the normally demure Susan Danvers-Vasquez and a raging Astra. Upon seeing Alex in E'hlan's arms though, Astra melts, quickly coming over to take her, Susie close behind as Astra holds her close, practically crying.
"Hey, stop that," Alex gently chastises, before looking to Susie and reaching out a hand, gripping it tightly. "Hey, sis."
"Hey, Lilo – you really need to stop half-drowning. Mom would kill me if I told her you'd died."
"She wasn't half-drowned, she was drowned. That's twice in a row now, right?" E'hlan looks between Alex and Susie, "And twice in a row she was revived by an alien from outer-space."
"What?" Susie's eyes widen, looking to Astra. "You have your own alien?"
"Possessive, much," Alex mutters, looking to her sister's girlfriend before looking up at Astra, who looked rather confused at the other people's words. In answer to her inquiring look, E'hlan and J'onn then seem to…grow. Alex's eyes widen as she takes in their tall, green selves, before she looks to Astra and says in a matter-of-factly way, "Now those are proper aliens."
The group stay together for the next couple of hours before J'onn informs them that Susie's flight would be soon. Susie says goodbye to Alex and orders her to keep in better contact – and to tell them the next time she makes a friend like Astra – before E'hlan and J'onn whisk her away to the airport, ready to return to the West coast.
"You are making a bad habit of nearly dying, brave one," Astra says afterwards, when they're curled up together on the sofa, Chinese take-out on their laps. Alex chuckles, shrugging.
"You non-Earthers will always be there to save me."
Astra snorts, "Try telling that one to your mother, who, may I remind you, will most likely get the full details from your elder sister once she sets foot in this Midvale town you grew up in."
Alex pauses, "Right. Remind me not to answer my cell for a couple of days." Astra makes a noise of amusement before sighing.
"Non and I have decided to dissolve our vows to each other."
Alex looks at Astra sharply, "You're what now?"
"I believe the human variation is, 'we're getting a divorce'."
"Oh," Alex says, surprised, "Just over dinner?"
Astra shrugs, looking less than comfortable, "Non dislikes our attachment. It is another form of marriage, in his mind and he dislikes how it invalidates our own vows."
"Oh," Alex struggles with that for a second, "So we're…married, in your culture?"
Astra pauses, before raising her eyebrows. "Do you want to be married to me, Alexandra?"
Alex bites her lip, "Well, it's rather sudden, is all."
"Unless we both consider it true, then we are not tied together as such, brave one."
"…okay," Alex shifts where she sits, leaning over to the coffee-table to place her empty plate on top. "Why did you agree to get a divorce then?"
"I thought I just explained that," Astra frowns.
"No," Alex weighs her words carefully, "You explained why Non thinks you should…dissolve your vows to each other. Do you think the same thing – is it why you agreed? Or are you agreeing because you care for Non that much? Or is it for another reason?" Alex sits back down, resting her head against the sofa at an angle, looking to Astra.
Astra herself mulls over her words for a short while, before nodding. "I had my own reason."
"…and?"
Astra's lip twitches, "It is my own. Mayhaps I will tell you, but not tonight."
"Okay, then." A comfortable silence falls, before Alex picks up her TV remote. "So, want to watch a movie or something?"
"Don't these 'movies' need other refreshments?"
"Yeah," Alex nods decisively, "You get the ice-cream, I'll put on the movie."
Astra chuckles, "Your delegating is amusing." But she gets up, heading towards the kitchen for ice-cream. Alex turns her head to watch her, eyeing her appreciatively.
"You have a nice ass, Astra."
"Thank-you. So do you."
Alex lets out startled, "Ha!" before looking back to the TV, very pleased with herself indeed.