The President is attacked by an alien, and it's a jurisdictional nightmare. Secret Service has authority over the President, science division has jurisdiction over alien crimes, FBI has jurisdiction over federal matters and this is pretty much as federal as it gets. Throw in TSA and she's got herself a real mess.

Maggie knows she's coming into this arm wrestling contest with the smallest muscle, but she's not about to just let them have it without a fight. This is her city, her airport, her population, her mission.

So she's not surprised when she sees all the feds hovering around. She's just fired up and ready to go.

She sees Supergirl approach, walking and talking with a ridiculously hot fed. They're clearly friendly; the fed has a chip on her shoulder when she talks to anyone else but softens a little when she talks directly to the girl in blue.

Maggie's brain tickles her.

The hot fed – Secret Service it turns out – comes over and tries to kick Maggie off the crime scene, and it's not that Maggie wasn't expecting the conversation. She just wasn't expecting how much it feels like foreplay. The fed's words are all business, but there's something unmistakable zinging through the air.

And Maggie doesn't miss that her name starts with A, and she's close to Supergirl, and she carries herself like a soldier. She notices, and she remembers, and she wonders, and she sends a little heartfelt plea to the universe.

Because, good god, sleeping with a superhero or not, she's completely gorgeous.


She's also, definitely not Secret Service. She's fucking DEO, a black ops secret agent whose best days are probably as complicated as Maggie's worst, and she looks amazing in that all-black catsuit with that gigantic gun on her shoulder.

And DEO are kind of soldiers and they probably work closely with Supergirl regularly and she bets they were involved with that Hellgrammite and that rogue military robot and with Myriad. And it's not that Maggie is sure, but this person the best lead she's had in a long time and she hoping harder than she has in a long time and it just…could possibly be her.

Back in her apartment Maggie pages through her Revelations journal, which she hasn't bothered to open in years and years, and she relives all of it. Not that she needs the reminders, because she remembers everything, but because, for the first time in years and years, it feels like this journal – like her whole damn life – might not have just been an exercise in futility. Like maybe it was actually leading to someone after all. Like maybe she was actually building –piece by impossibly slow piece – something that wouldn't be knocked down.

So Maggie finds Alex's phone number, which takes some serious detecting, and calls her, and invites her out to the alien bar.

And Alex rolls up on a motorcycle that makes Maggie weak in the knees, and she'd looked great in her suit and in her black tactical getup, but this leather jacket and jeans thing is just…well. Unreal.

And it's not that Maggie's unused to being around beautiful women. She's often around beautiful women, and she's, more often than not, with beautiful women. But there's something about Alex – and Maggie doesn't know if it's her look or her vibe or her letter or, just maybe, that she's Maggie's soulmate – that is completely throwing Maggie for a loop. Looking at Alex, being near Alex, is making Maggie feel like a baby gay again, like how she'd felt those first few weeks in Tampa, eyes wide and heart throbbing, looking at all of these girls who might one day like her back.

Maggie's dated a lot of women and slept with a lot of women, but Alex feels like the first girl she's ever seen.

Maggie leads her inside, and, of course, Darla is working, and of course Darla makes some snippy comment, which is bullshit because Maggie and Darla have been over for ages, and Maggie's been with Molly for a while now.

But it's as good an excuse as any. Maggie pointedly comes out to Alex, dropping the gay thing and the Nebraska thing (and the alien dating thing) in the same sentence.

She's hoping Alex will come out too, or will mention Nebraska or the midwest, or where she herself grew up, and Maggie will get a clear sign either way.

But Alex doesn't take the bait, doesn't come out herself as anything but a nerd who knows about alien physiology.

She doesn't mention Nebraska.

Maggie tries to shake it off. She knows it doesn't mean anything. People come out at their own pace, and everyone has a different take on the soulmate thing. Some people aren't actively searching, others think it's bad luck to bring it up to a potential person, and others are so jaded or so over it or so disgusted by the lack of free will that they actively avoid the subject.

(Of course, Maggie's evil voice whispers, if she's in love with Supergirl she's probably hoping to never meet you).

But before Maggie can gently push Alex at all – ask about where she grew up, if she's seeing anyone – they get a tiny bit of information from an alien (and Maggie gets a sense of Alex's interrogation style, which is…unethical to say the least) and Alex bolts.

And Maggie stays at the table and finishes both of their beers, her mind whirring.

God, she hopes it's Alex.


They both go to the President's event, her big signing. Alex looks absolutely amazing in the sunshine, and Maggie feels like a pervy teenager, completely unable to stop glowing at just being near her. Maggie decides to ignore the fact that Alex is busy making eyes at Supergirl, up in the sky.

Another fireball comes at the President and they all leap into action. Maggie finds herself next to the Infernian, and she makes a rookie mistake and stands too close, and her gun is heat-visioned into a red-hot poker and she has to drop it, and she loses the upper hand, and she's abducted to a warehouse. She's tied up with a thick rope, and she's scared but the Infernian seems like a monologuer, and for some indefinable reason, Maggie has full faith that Alex will come and get her.

And she does.

With her girlfriend of steel, but whatever.

And Alex is even braver than Maggie'd thought (or more in love, Maggie's evil voice whispers), because she uses her own body as a distraction when Supergirl takes a hit. And Maggie's brave too, so she finds a pipe just the right weight and chokes up on it and uses the form that took her college team to the state championships two years in a row to knock the hell out of the Infernian.

Alex and her supergirlfriend both look impressed, and Maggie just grins. "You guys are fun," she says, and she means it. It's been a while since she's been in an ass-kicking girl group like this, and she's liking the hell out of it.

Alex patches her up at the DEO and Maggie sees this new side of her – soft and a little uncertain while at the same time steady and dedicated and talented in this way that has nothing to do with creating physical harm.

And beautiful. She's so beautiful.

Maggie can't, for the life of her, figure Alex out. She's sending more than a couple vibes, but she's ignored every hint and vibe that Maggie's sent back her way.

And then Maggie's all fixed up, and it seems like Alex wants Maggie to stay, but also like she can barely meet Maggie's eyes

But Maggie has plans with Molly, and she's not about to miss a date to ogle another woman – even if that woman is, please god, her soulmate – so she leaves.

And she's pretty sure Alex watches her go.


The next case is a doozy. They get in a street fight and Maggie gets tased, blinking back to consciousness after a few seconds with her head cradled gently in Alex's hands. Alex talks her through it, her voice and her hands surprisingly soft and gentle for someone who had just been wailing on an alien with a baton she'd pulled out of who-knows-where.

They find themselves in the middle of an underground alien fight club, and Maggie hates that she can't stop staring at the little cutout in Alex's dress, just under her sternum. She can't help but compliment Alex, but she manages to keep it relatively professional. But even her simple "you clean up nice" makes Alex completely flustered ("you do too, with the shoes and the hair, and uh, all the…"), and she can't tell if Alex means to be flirting and is bad at it, or if she isn't used to being around human women, or if she's just awkward when she doesn't have at three guns strapped to her outer thighs.

Maggie tries not to let it mean anything.

Molly, Molly, Molly, Maggie chants to herself.

But now she knows what Alex's hand feels like in her own, and she knows what it's like to watch Alex beat the shit out of a special ops guy while wearing five-inch heels.

And she knows what it's like to watch Alex cradle Supergirl in her hands, eyes full of concern and love.

She wonders if Alex could ever look at her like that, like she isn't an abomination.

They manage to arrest Roulette later, and they couldn't have done it without Supergirl, and Maggie can't understand why but she just can't make herself hate the girl. Maggie should hate her. She's clearly sleeping with her soulmate, and/or with Alex, and Maggie wants to be the only one sleeping with her soulmate and/or with Alex (and please, she pleads, let them be the same person). But she just can't hate her. Maybe because of the Resonances – maybe because every single time the hero is hurt Maggie's body is flooded with fear and every single time she does something wonderful Maggie's heart expands with joy and love and pride.

What a sick joke that would be, if Maggie can't hate the woman whose stolen her soulmate away from her, just because the Resonances have conditioned her to care?

But Supergirl keeps saving the world and seeming like a genuinely wonderful person, and she's so important to Alex, and even though Alex is brand new somehow she's so important to Maggie. So, even soulmate aside, Maggie can't do anything but respect her.


Maggie is absolutely furious when the order comes down to let Roulette go. This kind of wealthy, connected, privileged bullshit is why she works at NCPD, not Gotham. Why she's in the science division instead of doing drug busts and turning the other cheek when "important" people are the ones caught.

But orders are orders, and she has to let Roulette go. She doesn't even plant anything on her. She hates being a good cop, sometimes.

Alex shows up, and she doesn't stutter this time, but there's a tightness behind her eyes as she offers to buy Maggie a beer. Maggie can't tell if she's offering a friendly drink with a co-worker or asking her out, but she knows that, even if Molly hadn't shown up just then, her answer would have been no. There's no way she's going out for a drink, alone, at night, when she's so upset about her day at work, with someone she's as drawn to as Alex Danvers. Not while she has a girlfriend. That's not a mistake she'll ever make again.

So she leaves with Molly and she swears that Alex looks...despondent.

Molly notices too. She asks a lot of questions about Alex that night, and the next night, and the next. And Maggie isn't sure that it's Alex, and she's not going to leave this thing with Molly that's been going so well until she's sure. So she's confused, and she's growing more and more worried that Molly's going to leave her, like everyone does.

And she feels the same thing trickling back to her from her soulbond. And she wonders if maybe it's Alex worrying about her, too.


They go out to drinks. First once, then a bunch of times.

Maggie learns that Alex has great reflexes and is legitimately amazing at pool and has a deep sarcastic streak that she uses to hide how sweet and gentle she can be.

Maggie learns that making Alex laugh might be her new favorite thing.

Maggie learns that Alex is two years younger than her.

Maggie learns that Alex's dad died when Maggie was seventeen. She remembers the sorrow that sliced her up from the inside when she was seventeen.

And there's something a little weird about how Alex says it – how Alex says that her dad died – like that's not the full story. And Maggie remembers that her limbs didn't go numb like they were supposed to when she felt all of that sharp grief, and it kind of makes sense if maybe "dead" isn't exactly the word.

It really, honestly, might be Alex.

She wonders, again and again, if Alex knows that they're soulmates, but isn't saying anything because she doesn't want to know her as anything more than a friend.

She wonders if it's because of Supergirl.

She worries it's because of abomination.


Molly dumps her, hard.

She calls her insensitive, hard-headed, obsessed with work. She says that Maggie never shares herself at all, that the walls she has up all the time are borderline sociopathic. She hands Maggie the couple t-shirts and toothbrush she'd kept at Molly's, and tells her not to call or come by, ever.

It's far from the worst breakup Maggie's ever had, but she's fucking exhausted.

She's tired of being punished for loving her job. She's tired of being dumped and left by people she actually likes. She's tired of putting in so much work for someone who isn't willing to put it back.

She's tired of trying so fucking hard, all the time, with these women who walk at the first sign of trouble. She's tired of caring like this.

She wonders, for the millionth time, if Emily was right about her. If she's really so unloveable.

And she knows Molly isn't her soulmate, and Emily wasn't her soulmate, and Steph wasn't her soulmate. But she's thirty-one years old, and she's tired of waiting.

Maybe it's Alex, maybe it isn't.

But Maggie's done waiting. It's time to find out.


"So, Danvers. Met your soulmate yet?"

Alex almost chokes, but Maggie manages to keep her cool. Alex is just so fucking cute – so adorable and so beautiful and so strong and so smart but so easy to fluster – and Maggie can barely handle it.

"Nope, no sign of him yet."

And Maggie had been prepared for a lot of possibilities. For Alex to say yes, that she's happily committed to her soulmate. For Alex to scoff out a laugh and say I can't believe that youd hadn't figured out that I'm with Supergirl, you call yourself a detective, honestly. For Alex to say no but she doesn't want to, that she's too much of scientist or a badass to believe in that, to scoff out a laugh that Maggie is such an immature princess girl for even asking.

But Maggie was never, not in her wildest dreams, prepared for this.

For Alex to have said him.

Maggie's brain stutters, her mind choosing to shut down and decline to reboot rather than process that pronoun.

All she can think is, on a horrifying loop, oh my fucking god.

Him.

Maggie resists the urge to crawl under the table and never come out. There is no way this ends well for her. Alex said "him," which means she's either straight or is convinced that she is, and honestly, the second option isn't much better.

And it kind of really seems like Alex really might be Maggie's soulmate, and if Maggie was paired with someone straight or someone in denial – with someone who wouldn't or couldn't love her in the way she wants…jesus. That would be just fucking perfect.

The fucking perfect cap on a fucking perfect life.

Kicked out at fourteen for being a lesbian, and paired with a straight girl who will play her in pool but will never love her back.

Never able to be fully happy – never able to live the life she was destined for – simply because she's gay. Because being gay is such a terrible thing that her soulmate won't even consider it.

Because she's an abomination.

Maggie struggles to reboot her brain, to snap back into the conversation, to say something back to Alex, but her evil little voice is the only thing coming back online.

Well, it whispers, at least she isn't fucking Supergirl, then.

Alex asks about Maggie's soulmate, and Maggie drops a female pronoun ("kind of hoping she'll hurry the fuck up, you know?"), and watches with dismay as Alex's face flicks through at least twelve different emotions.

Jesus christ. All of the out and proud gay women in the world, and Maggie's probably-soulmate is so far in the closet that she has tea with Mr. Tumnus every night? Alex is amazing, and Maggie wants it to be her, but she can't help but wonder why her soulmate couldn't just be a single lesbian from Hawaii with a quick brain and a penchant for bruised ribs.

But Alex is blinking and stuttering, and she finally manages to say, "When did…how did…how do you know your soulmate is a woman?"

Maggie feels, with a weight that nearly crushes her, about twelve years too old for this.

She has her rule about closet cases, after having her heart trampled by so many of them these last few years. No straight girls, no fresh-off-the-boat girls, no "experimenting" girls, no closeted girls who want to pull Maggie back into the soft darkness with them.

Those relationships never work out.

And maybe Alex is her soulmate and maybe she isn't, but that only makes it worse.

If Alex tramples on her, like all the other girls have – if Alex decides she isn't really gay, like all the other girls did – how could Maggie possibly recover from that? Emily hadn't loved her enough and Steph hadn't loved her enough and Molly hadn't loved her enough and she'll carry those scars forever, but if her soulmate didn't?

If Alex didn't?

There are still so many "if's" but Maggie find herself – still sitting down at her favorite table in her favorite bar across from this beautiful woman who has quickly become her favorite person – overwhelmed with devastation.

She's not proud of it, later, but she's frustrated and sad, so she does the only thing she can think to do in that moment (other than reaching across the table and taking Alex's face in her hands and finding out a different way if Alex could like girls).

She leans forward and cocks her head, some of her frustration probably coming across as aggression. "How do you know yours is a man?"

Alex –not completely unexpectedly – flips out. She stutters, she sputters, she equivocates. "I, it…uh. I mean, just, of course he's a man," she manages.

But that's even more exhausting. Because this idea – that Alex's soulmate is going to be man, that any woman's soulmate is going to be man – is still so pervasive, even now. Even if Alex had known that she liked girls – and it seems like she hadn't – it doesn't mean the world would have told her a female soulmate was really an option. There's this thing, where girls will kiss other girls, and sleep with other girls, and be in serious committed relationships with other girls, but will still expect their soulmates to be men. And it's fine, with society. It's cute, almost.

It's this weird expectation that what happens before your soulmate doesn't count, so it's not like you're really gay. It's just fun between girls while they're waiting. "Open for the wait," they call it.

Maggie hates it. There's nothing wrong with being bisexual or anything else, but there's something seriously wrong with that. With being "gay light" or "temporarily bi" or "open until" or whatever the fuck they call it – with insisting, firmly and consistently and without any proof, that a man will be the endpoint, even if girls have been every single other point.

And it – the expectation that the pot at the end of the rainbow holds a man – just makes this conversation so much harder. Because liking girls, having noticed girls, crushing on girls, hooking up with girls, doesn't even open up what they need to talk about.

And that pisses Maggie off so much – makes her so mad, makes her so frustrated at the world that told her and told Alex and tells everyone that their soulmates must be men – that she digs in, one eyebrow up.

"You sure about that?"

But Alex panics – genuinely seems to panic, and her tears are rising and nearly spilling over.

Maggie just made her start to cry.

Maggie snaps back, horrified with herself, realizing with a blast of guilt that this is no way to treat a friend, especially not someone who may be wondering about this for the very first time. Especially not someone who has burrowed her way so far into Maggie's heart.

Especially not someone who, even if she can't ever love her back, might be her soulmate.

She tries to play it off as a joke, flashing a dimple and waving a dismissive hand in the air. "I'm fucking with you, Danvers," she lies, but it falls flat.

She feels really bad, so she tries to explain. She wonders, as she opens her mouth, at the depth of her reaction to seeing Alex upset, to seeing Alex close to tears. It's unsettling.

She kind of has to be her soulmate, but even then. This soulmate thing is no joke.

"I mean, of course I'm not sure of anything until I meet her, but I've known I was a lesbian since I was fourteen, so it'd be pretty fucked up for the universe to have set me up with a dude."

Alex looks less like crying now. She nods, a couple times, eyes still wide. "Yeah, sorry, that makes sense. I just wasn't thinking."

"It's fine," she lies. Alex makes a little face, and Maggie is more upset that she could have imagined but she can't help but laugh lightly at this woman across from her. God, this nerd.

"Really, you're fine," she tells her. And it's still a lie but she finds herself ready to say anything to make Alex less upset. "You're not the first to ask. Although…" Maggie trails off for a second, gathering herself.

Because Alex is really smart and really tough and she's been at the DEO for two and half years and that timeline really matches up with when Maggie started getting second-hand cracked ribs, and it really might be her. And Maggie doesn't want to make her cry, but she just has to know if it's her. So she pushes, just a little, just once more.

"Although what?"

"Although usually the girls who ask me that are the ones who are starting to hope that their ink was about a girl too."

And Alex sputters again. "Mine…I'm, I'm straight, Maggie."

"Yeah," Maggie says, waving that away again, shoving down how much that hurts to hear. If she had a nickel. "Yeah, I know, you've said. But…" she takes a breath. She owes it to herself to be sure.

The idea of her soulmate has kept her afloat through countless swamping waves these last seventeen years, and she's not quite ready to give up on her. Not just yet.

And, just maybe, she owes it to Alex too.

Because, just maybe, this person who has come to love aliens and is a scientist and might want to test every hypothesis – this woman who has already demonstrated that she contains more multitudes that anyone Maggie has ever met – could surprise her again.

Could love her back.

So she says it. "But, you sure about that? Cause I've met a number of girls who were definitely straight, until they met their very gay, very female soulmates. It happens."

Alex says nothing, just blinks again and again.

Maggie's heart shatters in her chest. "Sorry," she says after a long and very uncomfortable moment. "I didn't mean to make it weird. I'm just fucking with you, kinda."

But she isn't, and they both know it.

And her heart is breaking, and it's broken before, but this feels kind of like the first time.