"Bacon?"
"Oh, I'm a vegetarian, actually." Maggie replied, almost mechanically. She was used to picking out her own food, ensuring that everything she ate was in agreement with her diet.
But the woman reaching out a spatula full of cooked and greasy bacon, raised a skeptical eyebrow. "What?"
"I'm vegetarian." Maggie repeated, assuming that the woman hadn't understood her.
"What? What's that?"
Now it was Maggie's turn to sound confused. "I… I don't eat meat."
"No, you need your strength." The woman shook her head, dropping a huge load of bacon on her plate. "Proteins, very important."
"No, no." Maggie shook her head. "Please, no meat for me. Don't you have eggs, or something?"
"Not today, and not for you."
Maggie sighed, refusing to draw any more attention to herself after remembering what Ada had told her about the townspeople. She had to show to them that she wasn't going to end the world. She had to play nice.
So with a quick smile, she turned around and took a seat at an empty table.
Alone with her six slices of bacon.
It wasn't even truly that Maggie hated meat. But she'd spent an entire summer when she was 17 working in a slaughterhouse to pay for police academy, and she'd honestly hated the work so much that she swore to herself that she'd never touch meat again.
But she knew that the woman that had given her the food was keeping an eye on her. And if she dumped the only food she got in the trash, she'd get into trouble for sure.
'The Shepard has given you this gift'. She could already hear their shocked voices in her head.
So she closed her eyes, and tried not to think about it, as she put the first slice in her mouth.
Willing herself to swallow it, and take the next piece. After all, the woman had been right. She was going to need her strength.
"I majored in journalism, but one of the extra classes I took was kind of a 101 on aliens. My professor was a cop that got injured in an alien attack in Metropolis and was pulled off-duty. It was super interesting stuff, and I really wanted to specialize in aliens."
Both Alex and Maggie were speechless as they listened to the game-changing explanation of the blonde woman in front of them. A glance towards her wife made it clear that Alex was still a bit wary about the whole situation, but Maggie knew that she would never voice that concern unless she was absolutely sure something was fishy.
Ada continued. "… I got a job working for the Daily Planet in Metropolis, writing pieces on alien activity in the city. It gave me some informants and contacts, and one day I heard about the Shepard and his cult in the desert. I thought it was perfect, so I started investigating."
"Two years ago." Alex supplied with a raised eyebrow. Ada laughed weakly, and nodded. "I only arrived in the Settlement about a year ago, I researched it first. And I didn't get the Shepard's trust from day one – unlike Maggie here. That was pretty much love at first sight."
Maggie nodded slowly. "...So, you got close to him, married him… What was your endgame?"
"I was waiting for him to return back to civilization. He does it once in a while, god knows why." Ada frowned. "… But if he did, I'd tip off a guy who knows Superman, and he would take him down, so we could set the people in the cult free. I kept on waiting, but it didn't happen. That's how it became over a year. And I needed to be as close to him as possible. I kept a journal."
"Do you still have it?"
"It'll probably still be back in my room at the bunker." Ada nodded.
Alex excused herself quickly, probably trying to get another chopper in the air to go retrieve it. And if not, to call her sister to fly her over.
Leaving Maggie alone with Ada, who folded her arms. "So… Margaret."
"Just Maggie."
The blonde laughed. "Was it your first time?"
"Undercover? No. But it was the first time I did something big."
"Did you have a handler?"
Maggie motioned to the door that Alex had just walked out of. Ada nodded in understanding. "The agent… She seems a bit touchy-feely though. An awkward one-night-stand that went too far?"
Maggie sighed, realizing that there was no way she could avoid the topic any longer. Her stomach turned, as she cleared her throat. "My wife, actually."
Ada's eyes widened. "I- oh."
Maggie cast her eyes downward, to stare at the floor of the med bay. She knew that what she'd done had been wrong. Had been cheating, not okay in the slightest.
But it had all been cover, it hadn't meant anything.
At least she thought so.
"Well… that changes things." Ada rubbed the back of her neck with a frown, seemingly trying to process. "And also takes a lot of balls. I broke up with my boyfriend of two years to go undercover, I basically made everyone think I died, just to be sure."
"Why?" Maggie frowned. "I was terrified of having nobody in there, why wouldn't you want anyone to come back to?!"
"Because I wasn't sure if I was coming back, at all." Ada said simply.
And Maggie understood. She might have had an entire government operation behind her, with a strike team and helicopters that could extract her in fifteen minutes time, but going in alone as a journalist… that was something else completely.
"I figured it was better if my parents just accepted that I was gone, and would be pleasantly surprised if I did show up at their doorstep, rather than give them the rest of their lives with uncertainty and false hope if I ended up in a shallow grave somewhere."
"But someone had to have known what you were doing?"
"Yeah, a friend of mine, at the Daily Planet."
Maggie felt slightly relieved. At least Ada did have something left. But then she saw the change in the woman's posture.
"Look, I really think we need to talk about what happened in there."
"I don't." Maggie shook her head. "I wasn't me, you weren't you. I thought you were a brainwashed, hopeless and naïve sheep that was praying to some alien, hoping that he'd save her…" Maggie trailed off. "I have a life that I came back to."
Ada grimaced. And Maggie realized with a jolt that she'd crossed a line, especially with what Ada had just told her about leaving everything behind. But before she could apologize or continue, Ada nodded. "You're right. We were both pretending to be somebody we weren't. But… I… Maggie, for me this hasn't changed anything."
"Yeah, because you knew who I was since I walked in." Maggie defended. "You didn't have to pretend."
"I had to pretend for far longer than you."
"That's not what I meant." Maggie sighed. "Look, we trusted each other. We had… something. But it's over now, I'm not who I was in there, and I can't be that person now."
"Can't or won't?" Ada raised an eyebrow.
"Both!" Maggie shot back. "I'm married, Ada! I'm not saying that it didn't mean anything, it meant the world to me to have you in there! But it was meant to end the second I walked out of that town. And… I can't deal with it here. I have too much on my plate already."
Ada swallowed thickly at the words. "Well, I'd hate to be a burden to you, Maggie."
Maggie wanted to reply, but watched as the woman shoved past her, and out of the room.
Fuck.
"Does the name Adeline Collins mean anything to you?" Alex asked subtly, the second her feet had touched the sand of the Settlement main street.
Her sister, who had landed behind her and was now patting the dust off her uniform, tilted her head. "What's it about?"
"Apparently she's a journalist at the Daily Planet. I figured maybe you knew her."
"The name does ring a bell…" Kara frowned in thought. "Uh… Wait, is she the one that writes all of the alien stuff?"
"Yeah, she is." Alex was relieved that her sister seemed to recognize the woman, that her story at least wasn't made up on the spot.
Kara nodded quickly. "Yeah, I haven't met her, but I know Clark has. He sends me some of her work sometimes. She's a good read. Why the interest?"
"She was here. Investigating the cult. Maggie and her were friends."
"No way!" Kara's eyes widened in shock. "She's dead?!"
Alex sighed. "No, she woke up, just like Maggie. We don't know why. That's why we're here – we need to come get her journal. She's been in the cult for a year now, and she was married to the Shepard."
Kara noticed that Alex's tone was a bit more distant than it usually was, and stopped walking to put a hand on her sister's shoulder. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." Alex said. But it was obvious that Kara didn't buy it.
Alex pressed her lips together. "It's just... Maggie's been really distant, and she's been… different. And… Kara, you didn't see the way she was acting around that woman."
"How?"
Alex frowned. "It's… it's probably just me being paranoid. She told me that Ada was her only true friend in there, of course she cares about her. I guess I'm just jealous… I feel like I'm going to lose her, Kara."
Kara's expression softened immediately, as she pulled Alex in for a hug. She felt her sister take a shaky breath below her, and rubbed her back slowly.
When they pulled away, Alex dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. "She said that she wanted me to stay. But that was before she had somebody who knows what it was like in there. And I'm just… really grateful that she has somebody she can talk to. But it hurts, Kara, it fucking hurts to see her like that."
"I know." Kara nodded in understanding. "But the best thing you can do right now is let her be, and give her whatever she needs from you. As much as you can."
Alex closed her eyes, willing to keep the fresh set of tears inside, as she started making her way over to the forest once again. She felt her sister trail close behind her, but stayed silent.
Only after they'd reached the bunker, based on the maps and guidelines Maggie had previously given them, did Alex finally break the silence. "You're going to have to pull off the hatch."
Kara frowned, squinting her eyes and apparently using her x-ray vision to scout ahead into the maze of underground corridors below them. She reached for the hatch, but froze before she could pull it off.
Alex sensed that something was wrong immediately. "What? What is it?"
Kara looked up to meet her sister's eyes. "I- I think there's someone down there, Alex."
