Author's Note: Hello everyone, here's the next installment of I'm Coming Home. Now we get to see how Maggie has spent the year since she and Alex split up. I didn't have nearly as much time to write as I thought I would over the Thanksgiving holiday but I figured better to publish what I had than to wait until I have more written. Besides, this actually seemed like a good place to break up the section on Maggie's year.

I'm rushing a bit to get this one out and as I've said before I don't use a beta so please feel free to point out any spelling or grammatical errors. Thanks.

Still don't own anything but the story idea. Enjoy!

After she sent the text though doubts started to assail Alex. What did Maggie want to tell her? Had she met someone? Was she just doing the honorable thing and telling her in person so she wouldn't find out from someone else or worse yet when she ran into Maggie and her new girlfriend (fiancée...wife!?)

The next two weeks were the longest of Alex's life.

A Year in the Life: Maggie (Part 1)

Maggie didn't have the luxury of spending a week in bed. She had just a week to get everything ready to leave for Gotham. She spent her days passing off her active cases to her temporary replacement, sending out change of address notices, and putting her motorcycle into storage. Riding it just reminded her of Alex so she decided to leave it and just take her car. At least she didn't have to worry about finding a place to stay in Gotham. GPD had set her up in a studio apartment near the GPD headquarters where she would be working. During nights that week though, she allowed herself to mourn.

That first night she had gone to her friend's place like she told Alex. Her friend had been supportive, giving her a pint of vegan ice cream and trying to get her to talk but all Maggie wanted was to be alone so she could cry. Since she was 14 years old the only person that had ever made her feel safe enough to let them see her cry was Alex. So she moved into an inexpensive but clean hotel for the rest of the week. Every night she cried herself to sleep clutching Alex's Hello Sunshine t-shirt, which she had surreptitiously put in with her things when she had packed up before leaving their, no Alex's, apartment. Occasionally she would bury her face in the t-shirt and inhale deeply, the lingering scent of Alex calming and torturing her all at once.

Somehow, Kara tracked her down during that week and tried to convince her to change her mind, to go talk to Alex to work things out.

"Maggie, you guys belong together, you have to know that. Just talk to Alex. I'm sure you cam work things out if you try!"

"She wants kids and I don't Kara. How are we going to work that out. Either I agree to have kids and eventually I resent her for forcing me into something I didn't really want to do or she agrees not to have kids and she eventually resents me from keeping her from something she's wanted since she was a little girl. I don't see any middle ground there do you!" Maggie was shouting and on the verge of tears, taking a deep breath she reigned her emotions back in.

" I just think," Kara began but Maggie interrupted her.

"Please just stop, please," she pleaded wearily with the blonde.

It was obvious to Kara that the detective was suffering just as much as her sister was but she could see that she wasn't going to change Maggie's mind. "Okay," she said resignedly "but you're making a mistake." She turned to leave.

As the door closed behind her she heard Maggie whisper, "Take care of her for me."

"I will, Maggie, I promise," she whispered back even though she knew Maggie couldn't hear her through the closed door.

A week after she left Alex, Maggie threw a couple of suitcases in the back of her car along with a few things she was taking from the office and drove away from National City. She was crying so hard she had to pull over to the side of the road four times in the first two hours because she couldn't see the road through her tears. The further away she got from Alex the more it hurt but after a while the endless miles of highway numbed her mind and she was able to stop crying.

By the time she arrived in Gotham 5 hours later, Maggie had locked her pain away in a box in the deepest recesses of her heart. Twenty some years of experience, since she was a 14 year old girl abandoned by the people who were supposed to love her the most, helped her put on a mask so complete that most of the folks she met in Gotham had no idea how badly she was hurting. That was exactly the way she wanted it. She didn't need their pity and she didn't want them to see her weakness.

Setting up GPD's new Science Division kept Maggie very busy, almost too busy to miss Alex, almost. It was interesting, exciting and very challenging. The problem was she wanted to share it all with Alex. When she was writing up procedures and regulations for the division she knew Alex would have had great incite as to what she should include and what she should reject. When she was requisitioning equipment she wanted to complain to Alex that Gotham didn't have access to much of the specialized equipment necessary for dealing with the aliens the new division would be encountering on a daily basis. And when it came time to start recruiting personnel for the new division she wanted to tell Alex how different it was from the early days of NCPD's Science Division.

Back then nobody had ever heard of a Science Division and the best, most experienced officers and detectives were reluctant to risk a promising career on what many thought would soon be nothing more than a failed experiment. Maggie had always seen it as cutting edge policing and was thrilled to get a detective slot in the new organization. She had been proven correct and the NCPD Science Division was now nationally recognized as an elite police organization. That meant Maggie could recruit from the cream of the crop when hiring to fill everything from officers and detectives to administrative assistants for Gotham's new Science Division. Of course, it also meant she had many more applicants than she had positions and there too she knew Alex would have been invaluable in helping her cull through the herd.

She spent long hours at the office and most days she took work home with her. She could have just stayed at the office but at home she could get comfortable in a pair of sweat pants and Alex's Hello Sunshine t-shirt, curl up on the couch and go through regulation drafts, requisition forms and personnel files in peace. She could also do something she would never admit to anyone that she did. She talked to Alex, not really, obviously, but in her head.

"What do you think of this guy, babe. He's got a pretty good case closure rate."

"Your worried about those write ups for excessive force aren't you? Good point, that guy Jones has almost the same closure rate and nothing negative on his record since he was a beat cop. I'll put this guy in the probably not pile."

Maggie knew most folks would think she was touched in the head talking to her ex fiancé like she was right there in the room with her but it calmed her and made her miss Alex just a little bit less.

One positive thing about her move to Gotham was that it allowed her to reconnect with her younger brother Alberto or Bert as everyone had called him when they were kids. Bert had been just ten years old when her parents had kicked her out and they hadn't even let her say goodbye.

She had adored her baby brother and he had worshipped his big sister. She often wondered what they had told him about why she was gone. She knew he was too young to understand what had happened but she had no doubt they had made it clear to him that it was her fault. That she had done something unforgivable.

Just a few months before she had moved to Gotham she learned from an old acquaintance from Blue Springs, one of the few who hadn't turned their back on her completely, that Bert was living their with his wife Lexie and there two children. She had been hesitant to make contact. Did he hate her she wondered? But now that she was living in Gotham she decided it was time to call him and at least ask if he wanted to hear her side of the story.