Authors Note: Set post season two, except Sanvers didn't get engaged they just moved in together.
…..
"The Uber has arrived."
Maggie announces, car keys twirling in between her fingers as she pokes her head into the DEO medical bay.
She'd gotten a pretty vague text message from Alex about an hour before her shift had ended asking if the detective could pick her up from work later, which wouldn't have been that out of the ordinary in itself if the detective had dropped her girlfriend off that morning, but she's ninety-eight percent sure Alex took the motorcycle, because it hadn't been in the parking garage when the detective had begun her own day.
The text had made a lot more sense, however, when it was followed up with Alex asking if the detective minded having Kara slum it out with them for the night.
On Maggie's end, it had been rather quiet and uneventful.
No uprisings, no protests, nothing so much as a carjacking.
Certainly, nothing that required the involvement of Supergirl.
So even when she'd texted back that she'd be over in an hour or so and had absolutely no qualms about Little Danvers bunking over with them for the night, she's still a little confused, because can't Kara fly?
Maggie's pretty positive that that's how Kara gets to the DEO every day and probably how she would get everywhere if it weren't for the whole pretending to be a completely human reporter thing.
"Hey, Maggie!"
Kara greets loudly and just a bit too off kilter to be normal, as Maggie slides completely into the medical bay, closing the door behind her.
And okay… maybe she had missed something.
She has to squint as she recognizes the bright yellow gleam of the sun lamps, and beneath them is the blonde, who looks like all signs of a verifiable nightmare.
Stripped away from her superhero uniform, Kara's lying on her back, her right arm in a sling, bare feet wrapped in gauze, covered in an uncomfortable amount of bruises and scratches that stain usually unblemished skin as they disappear into oversized athletic shorts and a cotton shirt embroidered with the DEO insignia.
Ouch.
But it doesn't look like it bothers the blonde much as she attempts to twist into something of a sitting position to wave at the detective, smiling entirely too wide considering the situation.
It's a weird kind of split seam seeing Kara as Kara in the DEO, rather than as Supergirl.
"Stay down, Kara. You have five more minutes."
Alex deadpans, from where she's curled over a small fortune of documents, not even looking at her sister as she marks something else off on a paper with an entirely too small font as the detective drifts closer.
"Hey, Mags."
Her girlfriend murmurs, a little of the tension seeping away from the tall brunette's shoulders when her eyes crinkle around the edges as she looks up with a small smile, so markedly different from the Cheshire-like grin emanating from her sister.
Maggie's heart flutters a little as she smiles back.
"Hey, Danvers. Little Danvers"
She greets, giving both sisters half a wave as she comes to a stop.
"It's too bright, Alex."
The blonde huffs as she abandons her effort to sit up all the way, staring right up into the bulbs as she moves her hands up to tug at the collar of her shirt.
"Then close your eyes."
Alex says exasperatedly, white knuckling her pen as she shoots the detective a 'see, what I deal with' look, when the blonde flops the arm not in a sling over her eyes with a dramatic sigh.
Maggie smiles sympathetically, but the confusion swirls within her.
"I… Is she okay?"
The detective asks after a beat because Kara is bubbly, but not this bubbly and it feels as if she should have heard at least a whisper of something happening if it's bad enough for sun lamps.
Briefly, she considered checking her radio, to see if it or any of the others were even online but abandons the thought as Alex answers her question.
"Oh, Kara? She's fine, going to be anyway. It's okay to ignore her, she's hyped up on pain meds."
Her girlfriend explains, starting on another document as she mumbles something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like 'fine until I deal with her anyway'.
Maggie quirks an eyebrow, but doesn't say anything, because it gives an explanation as to why Kara sounds so off as she shifts again, arm still covering her eyes.
"Don't ignore me… You should ignore Alex. She's just mad I was saving lives."
The blonde gripes and next to Maggie, Alex is taking a slow, forced inhalation, pushing the same breath out through her nose, a tell-tale sign she's trying not to get annoyed.
"I'm not mad, Kara. I just… never mind."
Maggie blinks once, twice, sensing an odd tension in this room that she can't quite place.
Something is clearly going over her head here.
"Okay, can someone explain what's going on?"
The detective asks into the air and Alex turns fully to Kara.
"Do you want to tell her or should I?"
Kara tilts her head a little, so she can peak out from under the crook of her elbow to gaze at the detective with blown pupils.
"I stopped a train."
She mumbles finally, like it wasn't a big deal.
"Really? Oh my God, Kara! You didn't stop a train, you got hit by a train!"
Alex sighs frustrated, then turns back to Maggie.
"She got hit by a train. And do you want to know why she got hit by a train, Maggie? She got hit by a train and blew out her powers trying to save a cat. And if that explanation sounds stupid and ridiculous and reckless, it's because it is!"
Her girlfriend exclaims, the sarcasm dripping off of her words as she massages her temples, clearly over it all.
And Alex is right, it does sound stupid and extremely reckless and unfortunately something that could be considered as on brand for the caped hero in recent months
Maggie looks back at Kara, but the blonde is staring at her sister now, trying to win a battle she is clearly losing.
"Hey! I saved the cat though, didn't I? And technically the train did stop."
Kara protests, still off kilter, clearly getting some of the good stuff, if she's this messed up and still trying to argue.
"The train stopped because it's programmed to stop when anything heavy hits it. And I didn't see any cat when J'onn and I were peeling you off the pavement, so I don't want to hear it."
Alex says, and her voice cracks this time, not from anger, but from fear, and suddenly it makes sense why her girlfriend is so wound up.
That without two hours under the sun lamps, there's a very high likelihood that Kara looked a lot worse than this whenever the med-vac team went out to get her.
Jesus Christ.
"When I said go home, it didn't mean go on patrol, Kara. I mean did it not occur to you when trying to save this 'cat' to, oh I don't know, fly and pick it up, instead of trying to stop 15,000 tons of moving metal! You've been training under kryptonite for the last two days! You could have died!"
Alex continues, voice rising an octave with tears in her eyes.
And this time, Kara doesn't try arguing, hiding behind her arms again.
"Look. Let's step back from this for a second."
Maggie interrupts gently, both her hands held up in surrender as she slides between the two sisters.
"The important part is everyone is alive, right?"
A beat passes, stretching for a moment too long, that Maggie thinks that somebody might actually have died, but then Alex nods, and Kara makes a thumbs up with her good hand.
"See, everyone's alive so-"
The blonde starts loosely, but the detective interrupts her.
"Hey, that wasn't a get-out-of-jail-free card, Little Danvers. You're only getting brownie points now because you're hyped up on some kind of Kryptonian-grade morphine, but the second you're sober, I'm not stopping whatever happens."
Kara groans, but doesn't say anything else, and with it the tension slips from the room so Maggie takes it as a win, as she moves closer to Alex.
The mountain of papers the taller brunette has got in front of her is nightmarish, it gives Maggie flashbacks to all the paperwork that she'd had to sign when she figured out Supergirl's real identity, and Alex only seems to be about two-thirds through it all.
"Jesus."
She mutters looking down at the mound of documents, as she perches on the arm of the chair Alex is sitting on.
"Bureaucracy."
Alex mutters simply, leaning into the crook of Maggie's shoulder.
"I should be able to get it done before tomorrow..."
A loud beeping noise echoes throughout the room before she gets any further.
The timer for the sunlamps.
"Can we go home now?"
Kara whispers. Quieter, more subdued.
Alex looks up at Maggie, then sighs as she reaches over to pat her sister on the shoulder.
"Yeah, Kara. Just give me a second to pack this stuff up, and we can go home."
… …
It turns out drugged-out Kara is just as, or even more, affectionate than the sober one, which isn't a problem really.
In fact, it kind of helped when they hobbled their way out of the DEO to the detective's Chevy Malibu, in long minutes rather than seconds because the blonde insisted she can walk in an entirely too upbeat manner, despite the gauze encasing her feet. She can't, of course, but they let her have her pride, and the blonde kind of ends up leaning onto both of them as they shuffle towards the entrance.
Balancing Kara between them, all things considered, is a feat in itself, especially when even depowered and injured, the blonde's still what can only be described as solid.
There's a lot of nuances the detective still hasn't worked out about her girlfriend's little sister.
Why she seemed to weigh like three hundred pounds, despite having an Olympian's physique, was one of them.
Kryptonian physiology is a weird thing to wrap her head around and Maggie's fairly sure that the only handbook that would describe it lies somewhere deep within the Danvers household and, she supposes, with whoever raised Clark.
Kara's tactile nature does, however, becomes an issue later, when they're trying to manhandle the blonde up to the ninth floor of Alex's apartment, having become a lot more lethargic without the sun lamps fighting to counteract that particular side effect of the medication, and Maggie realizes that Little Danvers at the DEO was nothing compared to the deadweight she's dealing with now.
"Jesus, Kara you gotta give us something."
Maggie wheezes, closing the apartment door with the edge of her foot as Kara leans too far right into her and thank God they were the only ones out in the hallways. It would have been a hard fought battle trying to explain to their neighbors why Kara looks like this and wasn't in a hospital, while simultaneously preventing said person from exposing everything from here to the moon in back in her babbling stream of consciousness.
Lethargy intermixed with elation was an interesting combination.
"Sorry…. Sorry… Sawyer."
Kara drawls, mimicking Alex as she smiles dopily, trying to stand up straight again, but really only succeeding in listing left, right into Alex who winces.
"Rao… Alex! Issa icebox in here."
The blonde slurs as they manhandle her the rest of the way to the living room sofa, depositing her as gently onto the cushions as they can.
"It's room temp, Kara, you're just cold because you blew out your inner furnace. Now c'mon, lift your legs."
Alex murmurs softly, practically lifting the blonde's legs for her, semi-forcing Kara into a lying position until her gangly limbs are stretched across the couch.
"Mags, there's some heat packs under the sink next to the first aid kit. Can you grab some for me?
Her girlfriend asks, moving to the edge of the ottoman to peek under the bandages around Kara's feet.
Maggie nods, pivoting toward the bathroom and the heat packs are fairly easy to find, tucked up against the maroon first aid kit, just like Alex had said, and scoops six of them up into her arms.
When she returns to the living room, Alex is apparently satisfied that the blonde didn't blister her feet to shreds because she's moved on to draping one, two, four blankets over her sister.
"I'm… I'm… I'm not tired y'know."
Kara yawns, eye's drooping as they drift to Maggie, and she doesn't fight Alex as she tucks in the edges of a fifth blanket, so it's clear, no matter what the blonde says, where she's headed.
"Mhm. You don't have to sleep, just want to get you comfortable for movie night."
Alex agrees, patting her sister's shoulder as she humors her, and it's not really a lie if they turn the TV on.
"You're… a good man…"
The blonde sighs, half-lidded eyes rolling up to the ceiling, as the detective and Alex begin snapping the mechanisms on the packs to release the heat.
"We're good men?"
Maggie echoes, and it's almost like talking to someone after they got their wisdom teeth pulled as she sticks one the warm rectangular squares under the blankets near her feet. It would be just as funny, if it weren't for those angry bruises disappearing down her neck.
Kara makes a low hum, clearly drifting, her eyes slipping closed, then blinking open, as she rolls her good hand from under the blankets to wave it clunkily through the air.
"You are a good man… Charlie Brown."
She repeats again groggily, clarifying as the detective tucks another heat pack under her knees.
"Wow, you're really going to make us deal with Snoopy, huh?
Alex tuts, feigning annoyance, because Maggie knows for a fact the Charlie Brown Anniversary Collection is underneath their TV stand, not Kara's, so she knows who the real superfan is.
"Womp. Womp. Womp womp womp."
Kara mumbles in a poor imitation of the Charlie Brown adults and when her eyes close this time, they don't open again.
The two women hover for a minute, but the blonde doesn't say anything else, mouth falling open just a little.
"Wow, that was fast."
Maggie murmurs, surprised.
"Oh yeah, a solar-flared Kryptonian is a tired Kryptonian and both don't stand in chance against warmth. She wouldn't have even made it through the opening credits."
Alex drawls, tucking Kara's hand back under the blankets, and her knees pop when she stands up.
"Thanks for helping out, I didn't mean for this to happen, it was kind of short notice."
Her girlfriend continues apologetically, but Maggie waves her off.
"Don't worry about it, Kara's very… interesting, when she's all loopy and I needed a workout anyway."
Maggie replies and Alex elbows her good-naturedly, smirking when the detective feigns hurt.
"Try saying that tomorrow, when you can't stand up. In fact, sit down, I'm gonna warm us something for dinner."
Her girlfriend says steering her toward the two-seater.
"You sure? I can help."
Maggie offers, heart only half in it, because sinking into the cushions of their sofa makes it feel like her feet are touching clouds and wow, she didn't realize how much her feet hurt until she was off of them.
"I'm sure I can handle the arduous task of putting leftovers in a microwave, Sawyer." Alex snarks, then softer. "And it'd be good to make sure she doesn't roll off the couch."
Maggie hums in agreement, kicking her own shoes off and grabbing at the spare blanket as Alex disappears behind her and even sleeping, or rather sedated really, Kara doesn't look entirely relaxed.
As if even drugged, there's still some part of her that's still on guard, though she supposes getting hit by a train compiled with the clusterfuck of what had been the last few months would do that to someone.
The detective lets her mind wander, letting herself relax into the sounds of Alex clinking around in the kitchen, the deeper, slower breathing of Kara as she drifts further into sleep, and the distant, muted sounds of National City that never quite seems to rest.
"That is a lot… of zeroes."
The detective whistles slowly, eyes falling on the paperwork that peeks out of Alex's go-bag.
Upwards of six figures type of zeroes, she realizes, shifting to look closer as the microwave dings in her periphery.
"It wasn't a passenger train, so no casualties, thank God, but the freight train had a lot of random shit in it, so that means a lot of zeros. Luckily, there's a super-secret "Superheroes Causing Lots Of Property Damage' fund."
Alex snarks, juggling two bowls of leftover pasta and an empty mixing bowl as she walks out of the kitchen.
"The government really calls it that? Isn't it… I don't know… a little on the nose?"
Maggie muses, accepting the warm bowl, cradling it close and letting the heat wash over her as she watches Alex nudge the ottoman over to her sister with her shin, putting the mixing bowl on top of it.
"Oh, it's not a government fund. Uncle Sam would never sign off on that. They won't even sign off on new athletic wear and those have been around since 1993. It's a three 'anonymous' multi-billionaires fund. It really only applies to Clark and Kara, but they thought putting their actual names on it, would actually be 'too on the nose', so they left it at that."
Three multi-billionaires?
Sometimes she's surprised Little Danvers doesn't have a penthouse… or a yacht.
The detective curls her legs back so the taller brunette can join her on the couch and Alex's feet are cold when they brush up against her own.
"Wow… I'm surprised they didn't try to turn it into some kind of acronym. I thought that was the new shtick. But seriously, that many zeros means some significant damage though. I'm surprised the department didn't hear about it."
She says, spooning some pasta in her mouth, as Alex reaches for the remote and begins flipping through the channels.
"That's because it didn't happen in National City. It happened up in Lafayette. And… I don't think anyone's going to hear about it. J'onn, Lucy and the clean up team are going to try to keep it under wraps."
Her girlfriend mutters, glancing at her sleeping sister again as she pulls up the streaming menu, something shifting in her tone.
"People around here don't like accepting the fact that their 'hero' can be mortal and there's no use throwing more fuel on the inferno that's become anti-alien sentiment recently, Kara has enough on her plate."
Maggie hums in agreement, bringing in another spoonful of pasta to her mouth.
That sentiment isn't a new one for Alex. Nor is it for the detective.
National City had a notorious ability to simultaneously take everything Kara did for granted, while setting alight to everything she stood for.
And it's sad how quickly people forget, until they want something again.
"Wait. Lafayette… Isn't that-"
Alex looks at her knowingly and Maggie gets her answer.
Lafayette was about one hundred and twenty miles east of National City and was a relatively small, quiet town compared to the burgeoning metropolis.
And it's not like Kara is only confined to the city limits where she lived, what she did as Supergirl often transcended countries, continents, even dimensions every once in a while, but there was no real reason for her to be in Lafayette.
Next to her, Alex's eyes are cast downward, toying with her own pasta, instead of eating it.
"I think…. I think Kara's not dealing with what happened."
Alex whispers, like she doesn't want to say it, and it's a hard pill to swallow, especially when it's true.
The Daxamite invasion had taken a toll on them all.
But there's living through it and then there's single handedly forcing an entire species off of the planet, including her boyfriend.
Sometimes, she thinks they shouldn't have let the blonde make that choice on her own.
Yet knows somewhere deeper that Kara would have fought them on it.
Would have taken the decision from them to shoulder the burden on her own.
And it must have been something that happened long ago, to make her so prone to self-sacrificing.
"I want to say I'm being paranoid because Kara can be reckless sometimes, I know, I mean I grew up with her, but after that... There was no real reason for her to be in Lafayette. What happened tonight shouldn't have happened. But I feel like… I don't know, that it's been building up to this point and I'm just watching it happen in slow motion."
Alex sighs, leaning her head back against the two-seater, pasta momentarily forgotten as she looks at the detective with misty eyes.
"She won't talk to me about it, completely avoids the topic, and I mean this was the happiest I've seen her in weeks, and that's only because she's hyped up on pain meds. And I don't want to have to have Kara get hit by a train to see her happy, you know?"
Alex says, clenching her jaw, and Maggie reaches out under the blankets to rub her knee.
"Yeah, I don't think that would be sustainable."
The detective starts, agreeing, putting her own pasta down.
"I… but on a serious note, you know her more than anyone else, so... I don't think you're being paranoid and I know that Kara's been having a rough go of it lately, but I also know she's got a lot of people in her corner."
Maggie continues carefully, glancing at the injured Kryptonian, still a little unused too how Alex fully trusts her with things like this.
"And so maybe Little Danvers doesn't need a lecture when she wakes up, maybe we just need to talk it out instead, you know, so she knows someone else is there, even if she already knows. It's a lot harder running away from problems if you don't have super speed."
She says and Alex's smile doesn't quite meet her eyes as she glances wistfully back at her sister, but eventually she nods ruefully.
"I shouldn't have gotten mad earlier, I know, but I… we still haven't figured out a way for the sun-lamps to not over do the whole solar radiation thing, so she's going to look like a living bruise for the next few days, but you should have seen her earlier, Maggie… I…"
Maggie shifts a little more, recognizing when Alex starts chasing those dark thoughts down the rabbit hole, and brings her hand up, feathering her fingers down the side of Alex's face, along her jaw, urging her girlfriend to look at her, and she does.
"Hey, you don't need to worry about that. Kara knows you always have her back; knows she would have to pry it away from your iron-clad grip. So, when this current situation becomes, I don't know less… critical? We'll take it like we always do, one step at a time."
She says and Alex smiles, more real this time, and sometimes Maggie still can't shake how weird this little family of theirs is.
"Together."
Alex echoes, sparing her sister another glance as she leans into Maggie, picking up her bowl again.
"Wouldn't have it any other way."
Maggie says, curling her hands around the warmth of her own pasta, the colors of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown start dancing across the screen when Alex presses play.
~ 'I really don't think you have anything to worry about Charlie Brown. After all, science has shown a person's character isn't really established until he's at least five years old.'
'But I am five! I'm more than five!'
'Oh well, that's the way it goes.'~
And unfortunately, sometimes that is the way life goes.
.. … … …
They make it five hours. Kind of.
Maggie had woken up, all stiff and sore from falling asleep on the two-seater, at a quarter past five to the sound of retching.
And now minutes later, Alex's arm is draped carefully across Kara's shoulders, not pulling her close although she clearly wants too, instead rubbing soothing circles on her arm, while the detective holds back the blonde's hair as she expels yesterday's dinner into the plastic mixing bowl.
Maggie can see that it hurts, sees her trembling shoulders and hears those hitching breaths, and knows she's crying even when she's not looking at Kara head on.
And something yanks at her heart pulling it somewhere below her knees because it feels so, so wrong to see Kara like this.
"You're okay. You're okay."
Alex is saying all soft and low and it's clear that the pain killers had worn off.
Two more, blue encapsulated pills that don't look like anything Maggie's ever seen before, sit next to a bottle of water on the coffee table, but she's clearly in no state to take them.
"Rao… It. I-it h-hurts…"
Kara groans over the bowl, shoulder hitching again, all lost and miserable.
"I know, I know. I know it hurts. Ride it out for us, okay?"
Alex soothes, in lieu of much else to say, continuing with her murmured assurances as she waits for her sister to settle.
Kara doesn't answer, pressing her forehead down against the lid of the bowl, breathing all off, hiccupy and rough, even when the worst of it seems to have passed.
"You have to breathe, Kara. Come on, can you breathe with us?"
Maggie says, shifting a little to give the taller blonde more space.
"M'sorry. M'sorry. I... I-I- I… I'm s-sorry. M'sorry-"
Kara gasps out into the bowl instead, long fingers white knuckling onto the sides, and Maggie has a distinct feeling of what she's apologizing for, but to be honest, right now she couldn't care less of a damn about it.
She just wants Kara to be okay.
"No. No, you don't have anything to apologize for anything, just breathe for us, okay? In and out. C'mon, we've done this before. In and out."
Alex pacifies, demonstrating the movement, as she urges her sister to look up.
"Rao… it hurts it- it-. I didn't m-mean to. M'sorry. I didn't m-mean to... swear. I'm sorry… I-I messed up. I..."
Kara wheezes, but her grip loosens on the bowl fractionally, as she struggles to follow some semblance of what they're asking and Maggie takes the opportunity to slide the bowl away from her, putting it on the table to deal with later."
"Hey! Hey… No one's mad! It's okay, you're okay, we're okay. Understand?"
Alex interrupts firmly, leaning down closer to her level, but Kara's face is buried in the crook of her elbow now, avoiding her gaze.
"I messed everything up. I-I s-should… I should go."
The blonde stutters out around gasping breaths, words rife with pain and self-loathing, and the detective doesn't know which one is worse as she blinks down at Kara as if she's grown two heads, because there is no way in hell that Little Danvers is walking out of the apartment like this.
"You don't have to go anywhere, Little Danvers. You're right where you need to be."
Maggie says and Kara wavers, fighting with herself as she trembles, and why is she fighting them so hard on this.
"Stronger together, you told me that, remember? El Marayah. Those aren't just words you know. We're stronger together. We want you here. So just stay, okay."
Alex murmurs and whatever internal battle Kara is waging with herself gives in, because she's crying harder now, curling almost desperately into Alex's arms, eyes shut, too-tight muscles not fully relaxed, shaky and scared and it feels like the detective is intruding in a moment that she shouldn't be a part of.
So she can't quite stifle her surprise when, with her good hand, Kara blindly reaches for her own.
Maggie let's her own fingers curl carefully over Kara's, feels how hard she's shaking, feels how cold she is, and thinks of El Marayah.
She'd stay here all night if she had too.
..
Fin.
…..
Authors Note: Maggie knows the gist about Kara's background, but doesn't know specifics, so she doesn't know the Kara was essentially sent to Earth to be Clark's protector shtick.
Let me know what you thought?