"They'll probably be sent up to Larkhill, but I can confidently assure you, regardless of what happens, the perpetrators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
The press are practically eating out of Commissioner Thore's hands, the lights and camera's flashing in front of him and the secret service agents that provide some consistency of a barrier to the yellow police tape as they try to smooth over the cluster fuck of a situation into something more palatable for the citizens of National City.
"Is the Red Hood Gang making a resurgence-"
"-City have the capacity to hold that many prisn-"
"- what about Super-"
"-there a plan for jobs considering-"
"What is the plan for those injured-"
All of the reporters are speaking over each other, searching for the next big headline but losing it the cachanoy of their own noise. And for one second, just one, Maggie wants to yell at them all to shut up.
She doesn't though.
Because she knows.
They're only scared.
The Dyer Office Park had been on fire.
Seventeen of the twenty-five buildings that comprised it, eight of which belonged to companies that contribute to at least twenty-five percent of National City's expenditures, had been up in flames.
Billowing dark plumes of smoke and orange, fiery conflagration and the steam from water hoses that desperately tried to combat it.
Now only nine of the buildings set alight had any real hope of being recovered.
And that had only been the structural damage.
The heat is oppressive and the flame-retardant jacket the Fire Department had distributed in the beginning of this cluster fuck is two sizes too big, only helping Maggie's clothes stick to her skin as she watches Thore try to smooth things from the triage zone with other officers, and she wants to scream.
But she doesn't.
Because they're just scared
"Those injured are being routed to Metro General, West Mercy, and Gateway Hospitals. Any overflow goes to our sister cities, and Midway City and Star City who have been gracious enough to extend a helping hand in this time of crisis. And in times of crisis, we must remain strong,"
The silver-haired commissioner says with all of the charisma that got him elected in the first place.
"It's a money grab if they send them to Larkhill, we all know they should send them to Arkham. Out of sight, out of mind, and they're supposed to be Gotham's problem anyway,"
Lucy whispers to the detective under her breath, picking frivolously at soot and burnt plaster particles off one of the spare NCPD jackets, and Maggie can only nod because she's right.
The Red Hood Gang used to be a purely Gotham City issue where they held notoriety in the late eighties, but a few years back their arson M.O showed up on the streets of National City. And that MO made it obvious who the culprits were now, even without their signature jacket insignias and non-flammable red beanie caps of the associates. The NCPD had been escorting them off the property for the last few hours, trotting out what looked more like a warped mass-produced hipster cult with guns, instead of the criminal enterprise they claimed to be.
"Come on, we have a job to do."
Lucy's not technically supposed to be here, she'd been off duty at the gun range when all of this shit went down. However, Lanes and days off didn't mix well and a DEO badge guaranteed access to almost any crime scene, so here she was and Maggie was grateful for the extra help.
Somehow, even with the impromptu appearance, Lucy's still the only semi-DEO agent on scene, which was odd because Kara was masquerading as Supergirl around here somewhere. In recent months, that meant a random DEO agent conservator appeared at every scene the caped hero stepped foot on. There had been whispers about some big reorganization in structure spearheaded by President Baker, but Maggie was so far removed from the inner workings of that place it was laughable. And these days Kara never really stayed long enough to ask.
She scoops up her stat-pad, hands Lucy hers, and fuck, she's definetly going to have to order out for dinner.
"- believe we will get these dangerous weapons off the streets. The Office Park is going to look a little bit different from now on, but with the resilience of our people-"
Thore drones as they step away from the observation tent, but a gust of wind interrupts him, sending some of the papers from the podium fluttering and everyone in the near vicinity reaching for their hats and grabbing their jackets. Maggie watches the others look up instinctively, probably looking for signs of a storm, but the detective knows better and turns around.
Speak of the devil.
Kara.
The news crew, some bystanders, and even a few of the officers start to clap, but the heroine, cradling her left arm close to her chest, holds none of the usual bravado that comes after what's considered a mission success.
To her credit, the burnt husks of concrete made that label a stretch. The blue of her uniform, obscured by the thick layers of soot and plaster dust, and the gray wisps of smoke twirling up into the atmosphere made that label a fantasy.
"Supergirl. To your right,"
Maggie says under her breath, when a beat or two passes of Kara gazing at the crowd, searching.
And she's right. The blonde is listening. Because she turns toward them.
"Friggin vultures,"
Lucy mutters, watching Kara ignore the reporters clambering for the next headline from behind the yellow police tape. It's ironic, Maggie thinks as both women slow their pace, how close most of those reporters were to Supergirl without knowing it.
"I'm sure Supergirl will give us a statement later-"
Thore says to reporters who aren't listening to what looks like a clear lie because Kara is moving fast and it's difficult to discern with the hazy air around them, but she doesn't look entirely too steady on her feet.
Lucy must realize it too, the detective can see it in the way she squints, the way her head tilts, and how she opens her mouth to say something, but by then Kara is quite literally on top of them, her uniform reeking sharply of smoky vapor, and she doesn't look apologetic at all, just very, very distracted.
"Whoa! Hey, hey hey… where are you going?"
Maggie yelps, almost spinning with the force of the movement as the other woman almost barrels through them. Lucy isn't so lucky, grabbing Kara's shoulder on sheer instinct for half-a second then stumbling three, no four steps to catch herself when the blonde jerks herself away.
"I… I… think… I need to go?"
Kara whispers with grandiosity, leaning away from them, like it's a question or some big secret.
"Yeah? Well, slow down a second. Take a breath."
The blonde doesn't heed Maggie's advice, shifting from one foot to another, looking away from them back out at the crowd.
"Yeah. No. I think I gotta…. I gotta go. We should go."
Kara says again with the same disillusioned urgency and the blonde is never this fidgety. Not as Kara Danvers, Never as Supergirl.
Seeing the blonde so off balance makes the detective feel off balance, wholly unused to seeing anything other than almost infuriating intrepid consistency in the field. If she wanted to leave, she would have left, not hung around and asked about it. She and Lucy exchange a glance, unspoken words flowing through them, because something isn't right.
"Ladies, gentlemen, we can assure you that National City's finest-"
Thore says in the distance, voice disappearing into the rapturous squawks of reporters, and the detective shoots a dirty look at the officers milling around that slow down too gaze, like drivers who slowed down on the interstate to stare at an accident. In a way, Kara is kind of right, they do need to get out of the public eye before they deal with this.
There's a radio tent a handful of feet away and it'll have to do.
She turns back and Kara's still mumbling a bunch of nothing to Lucy, head ducked low like a child being scolded, which doesn't appear too far off.
"What do you mean, you were shot?"
Lucy hisses loudly in response, half obscuring the blonde from view, briefly leaving the detective scrambling to figure out what the hell she heard. Because ignorance is bliss and in the worst case scenario, there's a very discernable difference between bullets that bounce off of you and kryptonite ones.
And oh, no Lucy means literally.
And nope. No way in hell. This is not happening out here.
"That's not the important part. We gotta go."
"Jesus Christ, K-Supergirl! What do you mean you got shot?"
It's a struggle to keep her voice low and even and not at all as exasperated as she feels, practically shoving them toward the radio tent.
Only Davidson is in there, eyebrows rising so high they disappear under his ginger curls when he takes them in, before quickly making himself scarce.
"It's nothing. It feels like it's just one of the stupid knock-off's." Kara mumbles, strained over groaning infrastructure and clambering crowds loud even from within the confines of the tent, and the detective can practically hear the crinkle in her brow. "You know if they're going to crowdsource the stuff, they could give me a cut of the profits, it's only fair."
The joke doesn't ring like it's supposed to.
Strained and hollow.
No one laughs.
"Here, let me take a look,"
Lucy mutters, shifting her stat-pat under her elbow to reach for the blonde's forearms, but Kara is already trying to move back toward the tent opening.
"No. Stay here and let me look."
There's a tremor just barely visible, when the heroine stubbornly holds her arm out, betraying at least a little pain even when Kara is clearly downplaying it, choosing to fiddle for her nonexistent earpiece with her good hand, studiously avoiding their gazes as the former Air Force Officer cuts away at the fabric around her sleeve.
"Well, it doesn't look too bad, but I don't think we can pull it out here. We probably need to let Alex take a look at it at base,"
Lucy says more to herself than anyone around her and the detective is inclined to agree. With Kara's track record of underexageratting injuries, Maggie expected the heroine to be hemorrhaging at best or half dead at worst, but when the threads of the supersuit are cut away, it looks like what it is.
It looked like a bullet hole. The sinewy muscle torn at the edges, decorated with trails of green tinted crimson and the spidery emerald veins of something that pretended to be kryptonite. And even that only stretches a few inches around the circumference, which is really the only thing that points to it still being there.
Kara's had worse.
Hell, Maggie's had worse.
But Kara doesn't voice her opinion. She doesn't say anything at all.
In fact, she hasn't even looked at them properly since she landed.
"Wiggle your fingers,"
Lucy instructs the blonde, still focused on the wound, as the detective looks away following Kara's line of sight, only seeing green tarp, though the blonde's vision reaches much further.
"Hey, I said wiggle your fingers,"
Lucy says again and Maggie senses more than sees the DEO agent pause her inspection of Kara's arm, but Kara's shifting back and forth. Back and forth. Back. Forth.
"Kara…"
But the blonde acts like she doesn't hear them, blinking hard, always blinking hard, looking everywhere except the duo in front of her.
"I'm going to say something. A-and… and… it's gonna sound insane, but they don't have faces."
Kara whispers softly, leaning in close, each word coming out of her mouth like a gun is against her temple for motivation.
"A-and… and.. I don't either. I think they stole it, but I can't be sure."
Maggie waits for the punchline. For Kara to smile and complain that no one ever laughs at her jokes. Then thinks about everything that's happened in the last few hours and realizes with a sinking feeling that it's likely not.
"What did she say?," Lucy asks incredulously, brows arched so high they almost disappear under the brim of her baseball cap, "What did you say?"
Kara just squirms, failing at another abortive movement toward the door in the three seconds for them to unthaw themselves when they realize they aren't getting any definitive answer.
"Did you get shot anywhere else?"
Lucy doesn't even question Kara's words, skips right over them, and by the line of questioning Lane's clearly thinking something along the lines of shock.
It would have been the likely culprit, especially with the way the blonde mumbles incoherently into the floor, but there's an odd familiarity. Too familiar. A familiarity that she can't shake.
Maggie knows what this is. She had been a cop for three years in Gotham before National City was even a gleam in her eye. No, she knows exactly what this is.
"Look at me."
Maggie orders.
"I can't because they stole m-my fa-"
"No one stole your face Kara, just look up."
"But I-"
"Just lift your head up Kara. Please."
Kara squints up, like a child expecting to be scolded, and what Maggie suspects is written all over her face as evidence.
Her pupils were blown to hell, cobalt blue hidden by inky, trembling black, unfocused and loopy were unfocused and loopy and it scared her.
"She's not in shock, Lucy. She's high."
"She's what?
"She's high, look at her eyes, they're the size of fucking saucers."
Lucy squints up in the darkness watching Kara watch them with owlish, glazed eyes.
"Jesus Christ."
"I think I should go."
"No, I think you should sit down."
Lucy grabs Kara's shoulders, directing her to the nearest empty bench, and trying in vain to make the taller woman sit. A task which is going to be harder than it had any right to be with Kara currently trying to act out her best impression of a dead fish.
It wasn't a question of 'if she had taken anything'. It was Kara. Kara barely even drank, much less Jessica Jonesed her way around crime scenes. No, this was likely due to whatever made that wound and Maggie wasn't so sure it was just a kryptonite bullet anymore.
The detective glances around the radio tent for a bottle of water or anything really to try and jumpstart the massive flush of whatever has the blonde tripping through hell.
"Come on, here. Sit down, right here. Don't move okay?"
Lucy is saying as the detective fishes some water bottles from under a service desk and when she pops up the other woman has finally coerced a twitchy, pale Kara into sitting.
"Should we call med-vac?"
Maggie huffs under her breath, offering the blonde a water bottle she doesn't take.
"No, that'll make a spectacle of it. I'll call medical, maybe we can just sneak her out of here." Lucy whispers slowly, then to Kara, "C'mon, drink some water it'll help."
The detective supposes that's true with Commissioner Thore and National City's entire media conglomerate beyond the flimsy tarp because despite what wasn't said it was more than just Supergirl's image, it was Kara's mental state.
"I can't, I have no face."
Kara whispers.
"Kara, trust me, you have a face. Just take the water."
Kara doesn't take the water, instead covering her ears like that would have any effect, shaking her head like a dog covered in water.
"Rao, rao, rao…"
She rants under her breath, sounding very much like someone trying and failing to stay calm.
"We should at least call Alex."
It feels awkward, even mentioning Alex, when she and her ex haven't properly spoken to each other in months, but it is Alex. And this is Kara. Aside from being probably the sole informational source of anything Kryptonian, she's also her sister, which is why it bothers the detective when Lucy looks just as nervous as she does.
"Look, there's a lot things going on that-"
The screech of Maggie's transistor radio interrupts the other woman's admission as it crackles to life.
"Sawyer, do you still have eyes on Supergirl? There's a DEO liaison, er… Agent Raymond Jensen, on scene inquiring about her whereabouts. Something about this being unsanctioned?"
Well, there's the DEO Liaison she'd been wondering about.
It's Davidson, sounding very, very confused and honestly there are too many twisting ties to this predicament for her to follow in this too long day.
'Fucking Hell,' Lucy mouths wordlessly, hitching her arms behind her head and about facing in the opposite direction.
"Uh… She bounced a few minutes ago. Don't have eyes on her."
The lie scrapes out of her throat like sandpaper and she wasn't sure why she lied. She'd wanted the DEO and the DEO, well the DEO besides Lucy, was here and she'd lied. But Lucy seems relieved, so that's something.
"Alright. I'll let'em know. Keep me posted.,"
Davidson crackles across the radio, still unsure, then the line goes silent again.
"I'll handle it." Lucy says. "You handle her. I'll handle this."
Then, at Maggie's wide eyed look, "Trust me you don't want Jensen involved with this."
The detective has a feeling that she doesn't have much choice in the matter.
"I'll handle it. And I'll…," Lucy glances at the crumbling blonde, "I'll call Alex and we'll figure it out, but we have to get Jensen off our backs. So just handle her for a second."
Lucy gives her one last pleading look before she disappears out of the tent.
"Rao… your face needs to stop looking like that. "
Kara warbles in the newly introduced silence, in the intervening moments she'd drawn her knees up to her chest, the fabric of a supposedly indestructible supersuit spooling into threads as she picks at it.
"No need to bring the way I look into this." Maggie mutters, a feeble attempt at a joke that didn't even seem to reach Kara, who is still staring at her like she had multiple heads, though she supposes for all she knew, that's what she did look like to her.
"I can't believe I miss your usual face."
Kara says again quietly, mostly to herself.
"My face is right here. I promise it's normal even if you don't see it that way right now."
"No." Kara murmurs simply, words slathered with dejected resignation. "It's really not."
The detective really wishes she'd stop looking at her like that, so weary and confused. It makes it hard to pull into the archives of the SOPs for what she was supposed to do in these situations, especially when a wounded Kryptonian became part of the equation.
Shit.
Scrambling for something to move this forward, Maggie shifts on her feet, glancing for something, anything, and finally her eyes land on a first aid kit wedged in between the radio ports and stack of folders.
Basic First Aid.
Basic first aid she can do.
Maggie sits adjacent to Kara on the security bench.
"It's going to be okay. It's only temporary."
At least the detective hopes it is.
"Everyone always says it's going to be temporary…"
Maggie's brow furrows in confusion as the rest of the blonde's sentence trails off into a mumble of what is likely Kryptonian, sifting into something darker.
Everyone? Everyone was a broad term, especially when Lucy hasn't said a damn word about this being temporary.
"Well it will be, then." Maggie assures, grabbing the first aid kit from where she'd set it and handing it to him. "Here, I'll wrap your arm and- stop picking at that."
Kara starts to mutter something about not being a child, but the blue fabric around her left wrist that had been reduced to spooly thread is clear undeniability and it was likely that no one at the DEO was ready for a thorough sewing job. So instead, the blonde just huffs, stops and holds her arm out, squeezing her eyes shut and turning her head from her like she thinks she's successfully hiding from the world.
Maggie will let her live with that fantasy if it means progress.
The wound itself doesn't look detrimental, resembling many of the other faux kryptonite concoctions they'd come across, potent enough to hurt, but not potent enough to do any real damage.
The spidery emerald hasn't seemed to infiltrate further up her forearm, and when she wipes what is left of congealing crimson, it doesn't run fresh. So Kara wasn't going to bleed out, that was something.
"You got lucky, all things considered. Once we get it out, Alex'll probably just slap a band-aid on it."
Kara yanks her arm away from Maggie so hard that the gauze roll tears almost pulling the detective with, apparently that's the wrong thing to say.
"She's not n-not g-gonna have a face. No one's gonna have a face. T-They're gonna d-die…. They can't breathe with no faces, Rao, rao-"
The blonde is frantic and pale and ripping at the uniform again and no-
"Hey! Calm down! Right now! You're talking aren't you? Breathing air? Made eye contact at least once? You couldn't do all that if you had a face! So right now try to take a breath so we can make sure you don't fly into a building or bleed out or freak out about tripping forever or something!"
Kara stops ranting half-way through an inhale, eyes wide and glazed over, staring at her like the detective had committed some cardinal sin.
"Why would you say that?"
Maggie's stomach dropped. "Say what?"
"Tripping forever."
The tension in Kara's jaw is so visible when she grinds the phrase out, Maggie could probably bend an iron bar over it.
"Rao, why would you say that?"
"It's a thing that people always freak out about when they trip, but the whole point is that it doesn't actually happen!"
"No! N-no they have- Y-you guys have- there's literally a name for it. Uh… u-uh psychosis. Rao, that's why this time feels different. This doesn't happen when I usually tak-"
Kara curbs off the rest of that sentence with the ferocity of a sports car slamming its brakes on the interstate, but the gears grinding in the detective's mind don't slow as easily, sledging through the sludge of unintentional realization.
"It's not psychosis, Kara. It's not! No one's dying, you've convinced yourself it's true, but I'm telling you it's not!"
It's like filling water through a sieve, the bench vibrating with the force of Kara's tremors and Maggie's mouth feels stuffed with cotton because even when she knows her words are true, knowing why Kara thinks otherwise makes her blood curdle.
"I-I g-gotta go. I-I gotta… I- I I'm gonna-"
Kara stands suddenly and Maggie is sure, in that moment, that if the blonde actually tried to leave this time, nothing short of Superman himself was going to stop her. And if that happened, Maggie would have a lot of explaining to do to everyone.
Fortunately, for one moment in this momentous day, the odds seem to be on her side because when the heroine blurs out of line of sight, she hadn't actually left the confines of the small tent, just to the nearest trash can to expel everything she had for breakfast this morning.
Maggie cycles through every scenario she can come up with as she jumps up to sweep Kara's sweaty cowlicked hair away from her forehead as the blonde brings up mouthful after mouthful of bile, half expecting to be knocked over as she did so and immensely relieved when she wasn't. Her hands feel like lead against the heat sweltering off the heroine, but she keeps them there until Kara's really only dry heaving, letting go completely when she realizes Kara isn't doing much of anything any more. Just resting her forehead against the rim of the trash can, gangly fingers leaving indents in the sides of stretched plastic.
The silence stretches for a moment. Then two. Then ten.
And since the blonde isn't going to break it…
"Kara… you took something didn't you?"
Her body language shifts in that moment, so suddenly rigid that Maggie knows the answer before Kara even opens her mouth.
"Kara- I just- just… why?"
Maggie doesn't even know what to say.
She thinks of her father, who was never home sober. Of Greenaway, her old CI who got hooked on his own product and snuffed out the light in his own eyes. Of Alex and her four-year sober chip and how Jeremiah almost ruined all that.
It feels stupid to even ask because Kara's always had a lot on her plate. Being National City's foremost first responder was a feat in itself, add a nine-to-five investigative job, the pipe bomb that had been alien sentiment, and every self-proclaimed villain headlining every day of the week, anyone would be stretched thin.
But even with all that, Kara seemed to drift around in some impervious shimmering bubble of sorts. Things hit her often, hit her hard, but she always had this golden aura of gaiety. Of strength. Even on the phone call they'd shared after the Reign World Killer Fiasco, there had been a bunch of reassurances that everything was fine, don't worry, bigger they are harder they fall type pep talk. The only time the detective had ever seen her sad really, was after Mon-el and the whole Daxamite invasion. It had always been a little Stepford-Wifeish, if not peculiar, facilitated by maybe the strongest support system the detective would probably ever see in her lifetime.
Now though, with the blonde's shoulders sagging over a warped plastic bin,it's downright horrifying.
"This… T-this is karma."
Kara's fingers tremble against the plastic, whispered words disappearing into the trash void.
"Wha- Karma?"
"Being stuck like this."
"Kara, you're not stuck like this."
Maggie says exasperatedly.
"I-I am though… I'm stuck like this, I might as w-well make peace with it. I'm never going to see a normal face… face again."
Honestly, apart from a forced detox and somewhere dark and quiet to sleep this bad trip off, what Kara really needs is a hug.
"I don't know how to convince you that it's going to be fine."
Kara only sniffs loudly and the plastic cracks this time under the pressure.
"Come on… Get up. You'll feel better if you do."
Whether it's because all that manic energy is finally fading or if Kara truly believes the detective's words, this time the blonde does listen, a mess of gangly limbs and trembling power.
Maggie hauls Kara back to the bench, deposits her there, handing off a water bottle that she doesn't explain what it is for this time.
"I don't… I d-don't deserve…. Rao… Everyone's g-gonna be mad…"
The blonde laughs deliriously, a weird sound that doesn't fit the dripping masochism of the statement as she picks at the wrapper on the bottle.
"Kara… I'm not mad… I'm not, just what did you take? I need to know so I can help."
The wrapper of the bottle falls to the floor, scraping softly against dirt in the strained silence.
"Neurotrol."
Kara whispers, like it is painful to say, a hurt expression morphing her features away from manic confusion.
Neurotrol.
Neurotrol was an alien street drug that she'd only heard about in passing, more prevalent in the East Coast Market, where it was ravaging the populations of New Jersey and both Virginias.
It was way past gateway anything, as unpredictable as it was dangerous.
Jesus Christ.
For the briefest of moments, Maggie finds herself irrationally angry at everyone, including Kara herself, and it's hard not to let that emotion slip into her words, even when she's as guilty as the rest of them. For just assuming, Kara'd been fine all this time.
"Neurotrol? Why didn't you go to anyone about this? Before it got this bad-"
"There's no one!"
Kara interrupts harshly and suddenly there are tears, hot and angry, dripping down flushed cheeks before the detective can even process it.
"She… S-she made herself forget. Everyone- They changed things. They c-can't know I… I… who I am. Because it's dangerous or they said it was the only way."
Kara's talking too fast, words all thick and slurred as she pushes through words that Maggie struggles to make sense of.
"And now W-winn's gone and- and J'onn quit and A-Alex doesn't even recognize me in this t-this and Lucy stays away and Lena hates my guts and Snapper fired me and… and I c-can't do a single thing with the DEO interfering. I-I I… I guess I just didn't know how… h-how hard it would be to do it all alone."
Alone.
Kara thinks she's all alone.
It's horrifying that the blonde's even considered that, much less truly believed it.
Maggie wants to yell at her. To tell her she's crazy. Of course she's not alone. Yet even in her mind it rings false, coming from the detective who'd only exchanged a good handful of video chats with the woman outside of work, post the breakup.
A lot can happen in a year in a half, Maggie thinks, and it makes her feel sick.
Lena and Kara had always been on the rocks.
But if Winn's gone. J'onn is no longer in the vicinity. Lucy has been splitting her time between here and DC.
She was fired from Catco.
Clearly the DEO structural reorganization was scales ahead of what she ever imagined it being, the sudden appearance of DEO liaisons at every scene Supergirl ended up on making painful sense.
And… and somehow Alex doesn't know that Kara's Supergirl. That's what she can't wrap her mind around. She doesn't know how that would even work. Alex had always been the Supergirl behind Supergirl. . It was a poorly kept secret, even back when Maggie didn't know the main secret, the way they were each other's emotional sounding boards. They talked about everything.
The loop she's been left out of is painfully large, and unless Kara's stream of consciousness was just a continuation of this drug-induced hallucination, it begged the question, who exactly was in Kara's corner?
"It… it hurts… I just… I just don't want it to hurt any more."
Blonde hair curtains forward, slicing then obscuring her features when she leans forward and covers her face with her good hand. Maggie suspects she isn't talking about the clotting wound on the arm curled against her stomach.
"Kara… I… I'm sorry."
It's an awful, almost superficial thing to say, but what else is there.
"I know we haven't been the closest since… since back then… and clearly there's been a lot of… of… stuff going on that's more than a little shitty. But you have to know my door is always open. You can talk to me… Don't feel like you can't do that."
The detective's lost too many friends who felt they were pushed toward the ledge, she refuses to let that be Kara.
"We can talk our way out of this when Lucy gets back. We don't have to say anything. You can sleep it off at the DEO. At Alex's. On my couch if you have too, I don't care. Just… don't go home alone okay?"
Kara's nods pitifully, a mess of blonde hair and trembling limbs, with the way her shoulders shake its obvious she's crying again and it's all Maggie can do to not to give her a hug right then, instead she just pats her shoulder and when Kara doesn't pull away she can at least count that as a success.
"Rao… I can't… We can't talk about this when we have no faces." Kara mumbles into her hands after a minute, "There are more important things."
The masochistic self sacrifice rears its ugly head once more and Maggie stomps it down with all her might.
"Look at me. Seriously, look at me. You matter too."
For a moment, Maggie isn't entirely sure the blonde even believes what she's said, but then she nods. Slight if only barely there, but a nod nonetheless.
"I don't… I don't wanna look at them if they don't have faces, Maggie," Kara mutters, stiffening in the silence. " I don't wanna see them not be able to breathe."
The detective sighs, finally deciding against arguing a pointless perspective.
"You don't have to, just keep doing what you're doing."
Kara relaxes fractionally at the reaffirmation, but the rigidness is still there and those sudden words make sense a minute later when there are footsteps outside.
"-they're a bunch of vultures I swear."
She hears Lucy before she sees her, the tent flap rustling as she steps inside.
"Well it is a story, I'm sure Kara is holed up somewhere writing about it."
Alex is saying, appearing at the entrance behind the Air Force Officer. It's awkward seeing Alex after all this time and for none of the reasons Maggie thought it would be. She's dressed down too, all plaid shirt and blue jeans, the only evidence of anything remotely DEO is the ID emblazoned with Assistant Director in bold letters.
The other woman offers her half a smile, while Lucy's grin is so forced, the detective could probably bend iron with it. Maggie feels queasy as she waves back with the awkwardness of a middle schooler. Kara's like a rock beside her and there's Alex talking about her sister like she isn't even there.
Jesus Christ, the way she's talking it sounds like Kara never even told her she'd gotten fired.
"Supergirl? Long day, huh?"
Alex continues, averting her attention towards the blonde, quivering in her seat. And the concern is there because even without that knowledge, Alex isn't a sadist, but it just feels off.
Kara nods into her hands.
Who the heck signed off on this?
"She still thinks we have no faces."
Maggie whispers under breath, standing to make room. Alex looks at her brow furrowed, then back at Kara.
"Well, I'll take a look at your arm, then huh?"
The blonde juts it out as her sister approaches and
It's painfully clinical. Everything she does, when she sits down. Like she's just one of the DEO medical doctors, like they're just coworkers, not sisters.
"You know your intervention in this wasn't sanctioned right?," Alex says, peeking under the bandage. "I don't care as much, but Colonel Haley will want an explanation."
Colonel Haley can stick a branch up her butt for all the detective cares.
Kara doesn't say anything either, just sniffs quietly, clearly trying not to cry pressing her face further into her hand.
Alex pauses, leaning back to look at the blonde, clearly this version of her is only used to utter professionalism in the field.
"Hey, don't worry, I'll keep her off your back for now. I know you have a lot on your plate."
If only she knew.
Maggie gives them room, stands up and crosses the length toward the entrance where Lucy's lurking and the question must be in her eyes.
"If you're going to ask if I knew. I didn't." Lucy lets out a breath of air, gazing over at the Danvers sisters. "I found out a few weeks ago. J'onn said it was a split time sensitive decision."
So J'onn was responsible for the memory wipe, sometimes she forgets just how powerful he was.
"Time sensitive enough not to think the consequences through?"
"Time sensitive enough to not call or inform anyone to debate it, because trust me if I had been there… but you know what Danvers think they're doing in the name of the greater good. Now we're in this shit show. I already gave J'onn an earful, probably ruined his sabbatical with his Dad. Last I heard they were in Galapagps."
Maggie hums. Of course, J'onn was out of town.
"Maybe shoot me a text next time," she whispers, then looking back at Kara, "You do know, she's not dealing with this, like at all right?"
Careful not to use the blonde's real name, with Alex so near.
"Of course. I know she's stretching herself thin. Anyone can see that. I can see that all the way from DC. She needs to sleep more, eat more. It's practically impossible to do this with a 9 to 5."
"Lucy. She got fired."
"She got what?"
Clearly, Kara doesn't share anything with anyone. Just turned things completely inward and that was going to be her downfall.
"Fired, Lucy."
And she wants to say something about the neurotol but she promised Kara.
"Shit."
"Yeah."
"You did a good job with the bandages" Alex calls over her shoulder, from across the room, finishing up.
"We need to be better friends."
Amongst other things.
There's a shuffle of movement across the room that has them both looking up, but it's just Alex helping the wilted flower that is Kara stand up.
"It was a good call, I think we can pull it out at the DEO." Alex is saying to her sister not sister. "A few stitches and a painkiller, then keep you for a few hours while the hallucinogenic wears off. Then you can go home."
"Home," Kara echoes softly with bloodshot eyes. "Yeah."
And Maggie knows they don't mean the same thing.