Alex squirmed in her sleep, cheek rubbing against Maggie's shoulder as she readjusted herself in the waiting room chair, twisting as her blanket slipped off. Maggie eased the fabric back in place and Alex nestled into her side, murmuring incoherently.
Outside the first hint of sunlight was flickering on the horizon, but inside, the presence of fluorescent bulbs was unchanging and intrusive. Maggie bit her lip and sniffled as Alex settled, on her way to deep sleep again. The hand on Alex's back stilled and Maggie squeezed her close instead.
Inside, tension was still high and Kara's condition still a mystery. The detective dropped her head as tears sprung forward and darkened Alex's hair as she hugged the sleeping woman.
She had Alex in her arms now and it was almost enough to let her pretend everything was normal. Except sometimes Maggie froze with her touches and words. Sometimes she couldn't look at Alex without feeling everything she'd lost, without hearing their goodbye echo painfully in her ear.
Every time her eyes were assaulted by the harsh lights or her hearing invaded by rushed footsteps down the hall, she thought of Kara. She thought of Kara, alone in the sea of surgeons, bleeding when everyone always said she was invincible, but she wasn't, she wasn't, she wasn't.
Maggie spun her phone between her fingers, then paused and opened the notifications she had set up for Supergirl whenever she made the news. The first article was all speculation, but Maggie scrolled to the bottom, to the pictures that were emerging. The third image was a close up, showed the purple bruises on Kara's face in sharp pixels, showed the reflection of streetlights glistening in the torrent of blood down Kara's temple.
Maggie swallowed the lump in her throat and the rising nausea, rushing to close the page. She opened her messages again to eat away at time as she scrolled through her last texts with Kara—just short conversations after the break-up, always initiated by the blonde, always checking on Maggie, making sure she was okay until the texts faded weeks ago.
There was so much Maggie should have said to her, before the break-up and after it. Because her start with the youngest Danvers may have been rocky, but the middle hadn't been and neither had the ending, not really. Not when Kara had only ever been trying her hardest, for Alex, for Maggie, for her dead planet and the fate of her new one. So Maggie poured fragmented phrases and fractured feelings into the draft of a message to Little Danvers.
But all Maggie could feel was Alex, broken in her arms, and all she could see was Kara, broken in the street. It tore her words away and dissolved her composure.
A sob begged to break forward, stormed in her chest and Maggie buried her face in Alex's hair as silent, violent cries vibrated in her ribcage. The stillness of the room buzzed in response and Maggie deleted the text, wiping at her cheeks in the empty waiting area.
It was stupid, stupid, stupid.
She closed her eyes and counted the seconds between her breaths, but still, her lungs quivered and her eyes burned and she couldn't suppress the whimper that rattled out. She jammed a knuckle between her teeth and bit hard, muffled her cries.
Alex squirmed again, eyes fluttering open, then dropping halfway in the light.
"Maggie?" she murmured, voice raspy as her eyes closed again and her head lolled onto Maggie's shoulder.
"Hey," Maggie whispered, smoothing Alex's hair.
"Where'd you get this?" Alex tugged the blanket closer. " 's so soft."
Maggie smiled, diverting the path of tears down her cheeks. She wiped her eyes. "I brought it with me."
"Oh," Alex hummed. "Oh!" Her eyes blinked open heavily a she squinted up at Maggie. "Mags, you 'ere cryin'?"
She shook her head. "No, no I'm fine."
Alex blinked, struggling against sleep as she studied Maggie's face for a moment before letting her rigid frame fall limp against the detective, encircling her in a loose hug.
"Go back to sleep, Danvers," Maggie whispered, running her fingers through Alex's hair. "You've barely been out for two hours, you still need rest."
Alex mumbled, nestling into her embrace around Maggie, arms flaccid and breath warm against the detective's chest. Alex's fingers curled in Maggie's hair, her lips just above Maggie's collarbone.
"Love you."
Maggie gasped, cracked down the middle, froze. "Oh Alex." She kissed Alex's hair in the same place her tears had fallen. There was no confusion about the words she'd breathe back. "I love you, too."
/
Lena's eyes shot open for the sixth time since she'd climbed into bed five hours ago with alcohol coursing through her system—alcohol she'd tried to use to erase the image of Supergirl crashing into the street, to calm her nervousness when Kara didn't answer Lena's string of texts, when each call went to voicemail again and again and again.
Through the blurriness of scotch, something that had long been gnawing at the back of Lena's mind crept forward from shadow into light as Lena flopped onto her stomach, a ragged sigh deflating her lungs.
She pressed her face into the pillow and squeezed the sheets. With a groan, she extended her arm from beneath the blankets, groping at her nightstand until she found her cell. The sheets pooled at her waist as she twisted and sat up. White light spilled into the darkness when she turned on her phone, pressed the heels of her palm against her eyes in a futile attempt to stave off the throbbing in her head.
Squinting in the brightness, Lena stared at the screen. "What the hell," she murmured, thumb swiping upward to dial Kara again in a motion driven by worry and scotch.
Lena's fingers pattered against her thigh as the dial tone ripped silence away from early morning air and Lena felt her heart speeding in her chest, the perpetual worry expanding as the ringing morphed into an answering machine with Kara's voice too cheery, too sweet for the tightening grip of anxiety.
Desperation panged in Lena's chest to be wrong about Kara, for something to dispute the mounting evidence that her best friend was Supergirl, that her best friend had crashed from the sky and bled when she was supposed to be bulletproof.
Lena pressed hard against her forehead, stomach uneasy and hands shaky. With a sigh, she tossed off the sheets and flicked on the lights.
She had work in two hours and breakfast scheduled with Kara in three, before her day really got started.
She changed from her pajamas into a black pencil skirt and white, silky blouse. The normalcy was eerie under the weight of her impending revelation and its concomitant worry.
With coffee brewing, Lena opened the messages on her phone and bypassed Kara, this time she shot off a text to a different contact: Alex Danvers.
/
Beneath the warm presence of Maggie's hand, Alex writhed, sleepless in her exhausted state. Unconsciously, Maggie moved to sooth her, running a thumb back and forth over Alex's shoulder blade.
The taller woman turned into the touch, stilling for a moment before she bolted upward.
"Oh shit!" Alex sat up, raising her head from Maggie's lap, one hand falling on the detective's thigh as Alex moved, propped herself up.
"Whoa, hey." Maggie's eyes opened, and she rubbed them with loose fists before dropping her hand to rub Alex's back. "What's up? What's going on?"
Alex groaned, scrambling upward and tipping forward. "I gotta—I gotta call my mom. She needs to know about Kara. I forgot, ugh I completely forgot and now it's been hours and she didn't know and—" Alex patted her pants, eyes darting around until she froze, found the phone inside her sweater and yanked it out. "Damn it, shit my phone is dead."
Alex looked up, eyes wide and heart racing as she shook out her hands and bounced her leg.
"Okay, hey," Maggie said. Her slow and steady voice juxtaposed Alex's hysterics. "Here," she pulled a charger from her bag. "No big deal."
Alex curled her fingers around the cord, looking down at it before raising her gaze to meet Maggie's. "Thanks. Sorry." Her cheeks burned pink.
"Don't be sorry," Maggie smiled softly, reached out to hug Alex but hesitated, suddenly aware of the distance that'd inched between them. In the bright lights, no longer under the easy blanket of exhaustion and necessity, she was increasingly unsure of where she stood and pulled back before Alex could notice. "Uh, the doctors said Kara's out of surgery but they're not letting visitors in yet."
Alex turned around, phone in her hand but forgotten now that the charger had been inserted. "How long ago?"
"About forty five minutes. I had to beg one of the other agents for information, I was out in the hallway I had to call my boss."
Alex tilted her head, looking up at Maggie from the agent's crouched position near an outlet.
"To um… to ask for a day, or a couple, off for an emergency." Maggie coughed and looked down, cheeks red. "A uh, a family emergency. I just thought you might want someone around, you know?" She swirled her hand in a circle, kept her gaze firmly on the white speckled tiles of the medical wing. "With everything going on and I don't know, maybe I was wrong to think you'd want me here. It was dumb, I should have asked you first, I just thought you should have someone looking out for you and I'm—I'm so worried about Kara, too, I know she's not my sister and I know it's been weeks since we've talked but I keep an eye out for her on the police comms, in the sky and…." Maggie rubbed her palms against her jeans. "I get it if you want me to leave, I totally would understand, just keep me updated on Kara, okay? Please? Just a text to tell me she's okay and um, you take care of yourself, Danvers. I didn't mean to intrude, I just needed to see you and I thought…" Maggie shook her head and turned toward the exit. "It was stupid, I'm sorry."
"Whoa wait, Maggie!" Alex stood up, let the phone drop from her hand. "Hey, slow down."
She intercepted the space between Maggie and the door. "I thought…" Alex's eyes raised to meet Maggie's, all watery and wide. "I thought we were in this together. You said we were doing this together."
"I just don't want to get in the way," Maggie said. "Or intrude, I mean you'll have your mom coming soon I'm sure, and J'onn's here, and James and Winn. You don't need me and I don't want to make this any harder for you, I don't want to make things worse."
"No hey, no not at all. Maggie?" Alex urged her chin up with gentle fingers and the detective was pliant beneath her touch. "Can I hug you?"
Maggie nodded, bottom lip quivering as Alex enveloped the woman in her arms. "Mags, I would not have made it through last night, if you hadn't shown up, okay? I couldn't do this without you. I can't do this without you. You helped me so much."
A sob slithered from her lips on a gasp for breath. "Yeah?"
Alex's chin bobbed against Maggie's shoulder as she nodded. "Yeah. So don't go around here thinking I don't want you or don't need you, all right? I want to be here for you, too. Together."
Maggie nodded and squeezed Alex closer.
"I guess this is harder for both of us than I thought, huh?"
Maggie let out a watery laugh and sniffled. "Yeah."
Every beat of Alex's heart was a cry of I missed you, I missed you, I miss you. She let her fingers curl loosely around Maggie's. "Hey and um also while we're talking, I just wanted to say, Maggie, that—"
Incessant vibrating from Alex's cell severed her sentence. She let go and knelt down to look at the phone where it was plugged into the outlet. Her face blanched, chest growing tight a she scrolled through the notifications.
"What is it?" Maggie asked, seeing Alex's features turn.
"Well J'onn told my mom about Kara, she's already on her way."
Maggie nodded. "Okay, and?"
Alex dropped her forehead into her hand. "I'm fairly certain that Lena knows exactly who Kara is."
A/N: So, there's the second chapter a few of you requested :) ... you're also getting an eventual third part. Hope you liked it so far!