Notes: Okay, this is where the story really starts to stray from canon. Going forward, there will be dialog incorporated from the various episodes.

March 13, 2019

Kara paced back and forth across her apartment, her mind and her heart racing as she replayed what had happened in Maggie's apartment and tried to keep from screaming. Kara knew that she sometimes missed social queues. It was a thing. It wasn't that she was stupid, it was just that she had to translate human cultural queues through a Kryptonian filter.

After sixteen years on Earth, she was pretty good at getting most things, but anything to do with romance was still something of a blind spot with her. She'd apparently missed Winn's attempts to flirt with her for almost a year, and there was the thing where she didn't even realize Cat's son was flirting with her until he asked her to dinner. It was part of the reason she had developed such a passion for romantic comedies. She's watched them obsessively trying to figure out the frankly bizarre human courtship rituals. It had taken her years to figure out that what constituted flirting in romantic comedies bore very little resemblance to flirting in the real world, but eventually, she'd managed to clue in, and she could mostly spot when other people were flirting. Mostly. She'd apparently missed that the weird back and forth between Maggie and Alex when they first met was some kind of flirting, but she suspected that had more to do with her assumption that Alex was straight than anything else.

Now, it looked like she'd uncovered another blind spot.

Her experience with attraction had always been something immediate. The first time she saw Cat's talk show, she'd been attracted to her. Something which had only gotten stronger when she'd gone in for her interview. The day she'd met James, she'd felt an immediate attraction, and she'd felt it again a few days later when she'd met Susan at the DEO, and again a few weeks later when she met Lucy. She'd been attracted to Lena at their initial meeting, before things had gotten twisted and complicated, to Mon-El before he even woke up, to Nia when they'd first met, and just a few weeks ago, she'd felt the moment she first laid eyes on Kate Kane like a physical blow. There had been others over the years. Kenny back in high school. A hand full of boys and girls in college.

She hadn't really felt much of anything the first time she met Maggie. She wasn't really sure how much of that had been the situation, but by the second time they'd met, there had been that weird tension in the air between Maggie and Alex, and after that, things had been weird, and by the time they weren't weird, Maggie was firmly in a box labeled 'Alex's girlfriend'.

Kara had known, intellectually, that Maggie was an attractive woman. But somewhere, over the past few months, between the day she'd bandaged the wound on Maggie's arm, and the time she'd flown in Maggie's window and hugged her senseless, she'd apparently become aware of that on a much more visceral level. She hadn't realized it. Not until she'd been about to tell Maggie how beautiful she was. Not until she'd realized she was repeating the same words she had used to describe Cat to Maggie weeks ago.

That wasn't the realization that she was attracted to Maggie that had stopped her in her tracks though. She'd dealt with attraction before. Nia and Lucy had been her friends and she'd never let her attraction to them get in the way. She could put that attraction to the side and just treasure their company. What had stopped Kara cold, what had made her panic, was the realization that what she felt for Maggie was a lot closer to what she'd felt for Kenny and for Cat, than the pleasant buzz of attraction she felt towards Lucy or Nia, or the visceral want she'd felt around Kate.

Kara wasn't human. She'd gotten so good at blending in that most people forgot she wasn't born on Earth, that she wasn't raised on Earth, that she had grown up with an entirely different set of hopes, dreams and expectations for more than a decade before arriving on Earth, and most of them didn't even realize that she hadn't really made anything other than a passing effort to assimilate into human culture for years after that. She might be fascinated with human notions of romance and passion. She might hope to find a partner she could share those things with. But they weren't the Kryptonian ideal for a relationship. Kara had been raised in a culture that viewed relationships as partnerships. Relationships were about people coming together, sharing burdens and caring for each other in times of need. El Mayarah. Stronger together.

She could see it now. The last few weeks, she'd been going to Maggie. Every time something with Lockwood and the Children of Liberty body checked her, every time Alex hurt her, Maggie had been the person she'd gone to, or the person who reached out to her. Maggie, who was quickly becoming Kara's rock. She had somehow slotted into Kara's life the way a spouse would have, back on Krypton. A source of strength and comfort that she could share her burdens with.

It couldn't happen. It couldn't. No matter how good it felt having someone she could share everything with. No matter how good it felt waking up with Maggie's arms around her, or how much she suddenly wanted that every day.

Maggie belonged to Alex.

Kara dropped down on the couch, and squeezed her eyes shut.

Maggie belonged to Alex.

Kara wasn't under any delusion that they would get back together. Even if Alex suddenly changed her mind, there was no chance that Maggie would take her back. That wasn't the issue. Maggie was Alex's first girlfriend, her first love, very nearly her wife.

Maggie would never not belong to Alex.

But Kara couldn't just walk away from Maggie, either. Maggie was her family, and she'd promised she would do better this time. She promised that she would be there for Maggie whenever Maggie needed her. She'd just have to get it together, stuff her feelings down, and pretend she didn't feel anything more than friendship. She'd done it before. She'd done it for years, with Cat. She could do it again.

She looked over at the sound of someone in the hall, and bit down on the urge to scream. Alex was here for their sister night. She could do this. She could do this.

She had to do this.

March 14, 2019

Maggie had been a cop for nine years, and one skill she had honed to an art during that time was going from completely asleep to wide awake in the span of a single ring from her phone. It wasn't a skill she enjoyed, because one constant of her life was that good news came by text. If someone was calling her, she was about to hear something terrible. For some reason, people were under the mistaken impression that the human voice made bad news easier to take.

So, when her phone rang at just past one in the morning, Maggie wasn't under any illusion that she was going to like whatever waited for her on the other end of the line. When she saw Kara's name on her caller ID, she felt a moment of relief, wondering if it was just another call to come fetch a drunk superhero from Al's bar. Not ideal, but much better than any of the other options.

She swiped to accept the call.

"Maggie?" Kara said, and the dread came back, because Kara didn't sound drunk. She sounded terrified.

"Yeah," Maggie said. "Are you okay?"

"No. I… I was… It's James," Kara said, and Maggie could tell she was barely getting the words out between sobs.

"Kara, where are you?" Maggie asked as she climbed out of bed and started getting dressed.

"Plastino Memorial," Kara said.

"I'm on my way," Maggie said. "Kara, is anyone with you?"

"Alex is on her way."

Maggie bit back the curse. On her way meant Alex wasn't there yet, which meant Kara was alone. And even when Alex got there, it wouldn't be a lot better. Not when Alex didn't know. "Okay. I'll be there soon. I want you to sit down and wait for me, alright."

"Okay," Kara said. "Hurry."

"As fast as I can," Maggie said. She cut the connection and called J'onn.

"Maggie?"

"Kara's at Plastino Memorial. Something's happened to James. I don't know what, but Kara's almost incoherent. I'm on the way, but it will take me at least fifteen minutes. You're faster."

"I'm on my way."

Maggie hung up and started getting dressed.

By the time Maggie walked into the ER at Plastino Memorial seventeen minutes later, she'd been briefed by the scene commander. They didn't know much. Just that Supergirl had contacted them from the phone in the ER and told them that James Olsen had been shot in his office at CatCo, and that she had already transported him. They were still securing the scene. Two CSI's were reviewing CatCo's internal security footage, but it could be hours before they knew anything concrete, and given the location, the crime scene was going to be contaminated as hell.

Maggie had just thanked him and hung up. There was a part of her that wanted to go over and work the case. She and James weren't exactly best friends, but she knew him, had spent countless hours with him on game nights and other occasions where their lives intersected. It felt personal. Which was why she'd never be allowed to work the case. Because it was personal.

Besides, right now, Kara needed her.

There was a time, not so long ago, those words strung together in that order would have been laughable, but Kara had lost her primary support structure. Maggie knew Kara had other people around her who cared about her, ones who knew her secret and ones who didn't, but Kara had reached out to her, and Maggie knew that meant something. She wasn't sure what, especially after what happened that afternoon, but the fact that Kara had chosen to reach out to her before anyone else was important.

"Maggie," J'onn called.

Maggie turned towards the sound of J'onn's voice and saw him sitting on one of the benches in the waiting area, his arm around Kara's shoulders. Kara looked up at her, and Maggie felt her heart sink at the look of utter devastation on her face. She walked over and held her arms out, and Kara stood up and hugged her.

"Are you okay?" Maggie asked.

"No," Kara said. "There was so much blood. The bullet hit his spine, and…"

"You found him?" Maggie asked.

Kara nodded. "He had the signal watch. He must have activated it before he passed out."

Maggie squeezed Kara tightly, rubbing her back as she looked over Kara's shoulder at J'onn, one thought loud and clear in her mind. That if James had been hit in the spine, there was next to no chance he'd been the one to activate the watch. J'onn gave her a small nod, and she turned her attention back to Kara.

"What do you need right now?" she asked. "What can I do to help?"

"Just stay, please?" Kara asked.

"For as long as you want," Maggie said.

Maggie was sitting in the waiting room, holding Kara with Kara's head resting on her shoulder when Alex walked in. She looked around for a moment until she spotted Maggie, Kara and J'onn sitting in the waiting room, and Maggie saw the same look of shock on Alex's face that she'd had that night at the Valentine's day party. To her credit, she only hesitated for a moment before she headed over to them.

Kara stood up and Maggie watched as she and Alex hugged each other.

"Are you okay?" Alex asked.

"Yeah," Kara said. "I wasn't there when it happened. Supergirl found him, and she knows James is my friend, so she called me."

"Any idea why she didn't call me?"

"She was probably trying to protect you," J'onn said. "If Haley is monitoring your phone, and Supergirl were to contact you, it could get you fired, or arrested."

"Are things really that bad at the DEO?" Maggie asked.

Alex looked at her for a moment. "Things are kind of tense between Supergirl and the government right now. We're not supposed to have any contact."

"And you're okay with that?" Maggie asked.

"What does it matter to you?" Alex asked. "You never really liked Supergirl that much anyway."

"Guys, don't fight, please," Kara said.

"Sorry," Maggie said, and she sort of meant it. She was sorry she'd said it in front of Kara when Kara was already upset, but she was surprised by Alex. The Alex she'd known had always been ride or die for her friends, and the casual tone Alex had when she'd said she wasn't supposed to have any contact with Supergirl felt wrong.

"I wasn't fighting," Alex said.

"Kara!" someone called. Maggie looked over to see a tall girl with long black hair headed their way, followed by a man with shoulder length hair who was about the same height. Kara hugged the girl, then the man.

"Thanks for coming," Kara said.

"Of course," the man said.

"Nia, Brainy, this is Maggie," Kara said.

Maggie stood up. "Nice to meet you."

"Maggie Sawyer?" Brainy asked.

"Yes," Maggie said.

"Detective Maggie Sawyer of the National City Police Department, Science Division?"

"Yes."

"It's an honor," Brainy said.

"Thank you, I guess," Maggie said. "Do we know each other somehow?"

"No. We most certainly do not," Brainy said.

Maggie stared at Brainy for a moment, running through what she knew about him. He was from the future. He worked at the DEO with Alex. He was a Coluan. It wasn't much to go on. Nothing that gave her any sort of hint about why he even knew who she was.

"Are you a friend of James's?" Nia asked.

"Yeah," Maggie said. "I hadn't seen him in a while, but yeah."

"Family of James Olsen," the triage nurse called.

"Excuse me," Kara said, and headed towards the nurse's station. Nia and Brainy followed her.

"So…" Alex said.

Maggie turned to her. "Yes?"

"Um… Don't take this the wrong way, but why are you here?" Alex asked.

"One of the uniforms who caught the call knew I was friendly with James. They gave me a head's up."

Alex frowned. "You're not going to tell me the real reason, are you?"

Maggie sighed and looked over at J'onn. "Give us a minute?"

"Of course," he said. He got up and headed after Kara.

Maggie turned back to Alex. "James is a friend of Supergirl."

"I know," Alex said.

"So am I."

"Oh," Alex said. "I thought you didn't like her."

Maggie shrugged. "Things change. She saved my ass a while back, right before that business on Shelby Island."

"What happened?" Alex asked, and Maggie could hear the concern in her voice.

Maggie reached up and patted her arm. "Got grazed by a bullet. Wouldn't have been that big a deal, but it was alien tech."

"Are you okay?" Alex asked.

"Yeah. They had to debride the wound, which sucked, but if Supergirl hadn't been there, I'd have lost the arm."

Alex paled visibly, and Maggie felt a little bad.

"She didn't say anything," Alex said.

"The way I hear it, you two aren't running buddies anymore."

"But Shelby Island was before…"

"Before the DEO thanked her for bringing in a terrorist and a murderer by firing her. Good move, by the way."

"That wasn't my decision," Alex said.

"No, but you sure fell in line, didn't you?"

"What?"

"You threatened to arrest her, Alex."

"How do you know about that?"

"Like I said, she's a friend. Sometimes, friends talk about things that are bothering them. She talks a lot about you."

"Me?"

"Yeah," Maggie said. "She thought you were her friend. The two of you worked together for three years, and she saved your life how many times?"

"Fifteen."

"Fifteen times. She's save your life fifteen times. Fought alongside you for three years, but you tossed her aside like yesterday's trash because what, the bigots in charge decided to kick her to the curb for refusing to sell out the people she cares about?"

"Is that what she told you?"

"No. That's not what she told me. She still thinks the world of you, even after you threatened to arrest her."

"She attacked me with her heat vision," Alex snapped.

"Yeah. She mentioned that part. The part where she called out to you not to shoot, and you ignored her, and the only way she could stop you from shooting someone who was defending his home after a bunch of racists firebombed a funeral."

"We got there in the middle of the fight. We didn't know what was going on."

"Did you hear her tell you not to shoot?"

"Yes."

"Then you knew enough. You knew the woman who saved your life fifteen times, the woman who fought by your side for three years, the woman who fought her own family to protect this planet, the woman who forgave you after you literally stabbed her aunt in the back told you not to shoot. And after she stopped you from hurting an innocent man, you stood there and told her that after everything she's done, her word isn't good enough for you. She would die for you, without hesitation. She nearly has, more than once, and you made her feel like she was nothing to you."

"This isn't about Supergirl, is it?"

Maggie stood up and took a step towards Alex, getting right up in her personal space.

"That would be convenient for you, wouldn't it? If you could just put all of this down to me being mad about what happened between us. Except, I'm not. I knew better that to get involved with you. I knew we weren't on the same page. I knew I'd be setting myself up to get my heart broken, and I knew when it happened, I'm probably take you down with me. What happened between us, that's on me.

"So no, I'm not mad at you because of what happened between us. I'm mad at you because she never will be. She won't ever let herself be mad at you. She will stand there and take a Kryptonite bullet through the heart, just because you're the one firing it, and spend the whole time she's dying blaming herself for what you did. So the next time the woman who was willing to risk having her atoms smeared across a thousand light years of hyperspace to keep you and half the alien population of National City from being evicted from the planet asks you to listen, maybe you should remember that you owe her at least that much."

Maggie turned and headed towards the nurse's station, leaving a speechless Alex staring after her.

Maggie stood next to the vending machines, nursing a cup of truly terrible coffee and trying to calm herself down. She hadn't meant to lay into Alex like that. She hadn't realized just how angry she was at Alex for hurting Kara. But it was just like Alex to do what she thought was best, without stopping to listen to what people actually wanted.

Not that Maggie had a lot of room to talk. She was just as bad. Everything had to go her way. She didn't like Valentine's day and I didn't want to talk about why, so instead of having a conversation like a fucking adult, she'd just ignored any hints that her girlfriend wanted to celebrate it. She'd drop massive amounts of money on concert tickets without checking to see if Alex already had plans. She'd spent her and Alex's entire relationship, and most of her other relationships, dictating terms, and the relationship worked because Alex was willing to bend over backwards to accommodate what Maggie did and didn't want, right up until Maggie had found the one thing Alex wasn't willing to bend on.

It was funny how much easier it was to see the mistakes they'd both made when she was on the outside, watching Alex make those same mistakes with Kara. Choosing the mindwipe when Kara begged her not to. Taking away Kara's safe space. Taking away the person Kara could always be completely honest with.

Maggie wanted to go back and scream at her, to ask what the hell she'd been thinking, but she couldn't. Because Alex didn't know she'd done it, and because Maggie wasn't enough of a hypocrite to pretend like she wouldn't have been one of the ones lining up to have her mind wiped if she'd still been in the inner circle. She would have protected Kara, even before. She knew, because she'd done it. She'd kept Kara's secret, and not just because of Alex. She'd kept it because Kara had lost enough. Her home. Her whole world. She would have been in line to protect Kara, and it would have been wrong, because taking away her home and family again was too much.

"You okay?"

Maggie looked up to see Kara standing at the entrance to the small room that held the vending machines.

"Yeah," Maggie said. "Just… Seeing Alex is hard."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked you to stay."

"No," Maggie said. She tossed the lukewarm coffee into the trash. "No, you needed me here, and I wanted to be here for you."

"What you said to Alex…"

"You heard that?"

"Hard to miss."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Kara said. "It's nice, knowing you care that much."

"Well, you know, I always did have a thing for blondes."

Kara laughed, just a little too loud, and Maggie watched in fascination as the cutest blush spread across her face.

Maggie reached out and caught one of Kara's hands in hers.

"How are you doing?" Maggie asked.

"Better. J'onn thinks Manchester Black shot James to get to him."

"Shit. Any idea where Manchester is now?"

"Not yet, but J'onn's searching for him. It's only a matter of time."

"Do you want me to stay with you?" Maggie said.

"Yes, but I think you should go," Kara said. "I know being here is hard, and I don't want you to get hurt."

"Will you be okay if I go?"

"Yeah," Kara said. "Things are weird, but Alex is still my sister. And J'onn and Nia and Brainy and Lena are all here. I'll be fine. Thank you for coming."

"Of course." Maggie pulled Kara into a hug. "If you need me…"

"I'll call."

Kara hovered over Maggie's apartment, watching her with X-Ray vision as she sat trimming one of her Bonsai trees. The last twenty-four hours had been an unending stream of insanity, and it had all started with the moment when she realized that her feelings for Maggie had shifted. She'd been in a near panic at the time, terrified of going near her because of how easy it would be to destroy what was still a fragile relationship, and equally terrified of the damage she could do to her relationship with Alex. Now, though, all she wanted was to be close to her. To have someone she could talk to and be honest with in a way she couldn't with Alex or J'onn or Nia or Brainy. Someone who knew her, and who didn't look at her like they were expecting her to make everything better with just a wave of her hand.

A part of her felt like she should keep her distance, like this was every bit as dangerous as it had felt the night before, but she knew she couldn't stay away. As selfish as it was, she needed Maggie right now. She'd just have to keep her feelings bottled up, the way she had with James when James was still with Lucy. Because there was no way that could possibly end badly.

She took a deep breath and let it out as she drifted down, until she was hovering outside Maggie's window. She knocked softly. Maggie looked up from her tree, and her face split with a big smile framed by the most beautiful dimples, and Kara swore she felt her heart skip a beat.

This was a terrible idea.

Maggie got up and unlocked the window, then stood aside so Kara could come inside. Kara barely had her feet on the ground before Maggie pulled her into a hug.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Kara said. "The dam is going to need a lot of work, but honestly, as fights go, it wasn't that bad."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it," Maggie said as she let go.

Kara smiled and caught one of Maggie's hands in her own, giving it a small squeeze.

"I'm fine," Kara said in what she hoped was a reassuring tone. "Manchester Black is dead. The rest of the Elite are in prison. The Amnesty repeal is stuck in committee in congress, and is likely to die there, and James is going to make a full recovery."

"He is?" Maggie asked. "How? I thought his spine was shattered."

"I'm not sure," Kara admitted. "Some sort of regenerative drug Lena's been developing. I didn't ask the details."

"Yeah. Sometimes with Lena, it's better not to."

"Maggie…"

"I'm sorry. I know you like her, but…"

"You're not a fan."

"Yeah. The whole 'making Kryptonite' thing. Seriously, what the fuck?"

"She was trying to help," Kara said.

"By making poison that's only deadly to two people on the planet?"

"She found out that one of her friends was Reign, and she was using the Kryptonite to keep her restrained while she figured out how to remove the crazy, world killing monster personality from her brunch buddy."

"Yeah, now I'm angry and creeped out."

"I'm making it sound bad," Kara said.

"I'm not really sure there's a way it doesn't sound bad."

"She did end up helping with the whole Reign situation. And she saved James's life today."

"Then I guess we'll call this one a win."

"Good. I could use all of those I can get."

"Yeah," Maggie said. "You've had a rough run of it that last few months."

"That's an understatement. Ever since Olivia got outed as an alien, I feel like the whole world has gone insane. But at least with the Elite out of the way, we can focus on turning public opinion around defeating the Amnesty repeal and getting rid of Lockwood and the Children of Liberty."

"You going to hit them with another round of articles?" Maggie asked.

"Either that, or toss Baker and Lockwood into space," Kara said.

"If only," Maggie said. "You know, you should talk to some of the aliens who've been around since before the Amnesty. Interview them about what life was like before they were able to live out in the open."

"That's a good idea," Kara said. "You know a lot of them. Could you help me set up some interviews?"

"I could try. I'm not sure how many of them would be willing to talk to a reporter, but if I tell them you're the one doing to interviews, I think at least a few of them would meet with you."

Kara felt herself blush a little at the reminder of how the aliens viewed both of her personas, and when Maggie smiled at her, she had to fight down the urge to lean in and kiss her, which probably meant it was time to go, before she did something stupid.

She gave Maggie's hand a small squeeze. "I should let you get back to your night."

"Okay," Maggie said, and it was probably Kara's imagination, but she could have sworn Maggie sounded a little disappointed. "You headed back to the hospital?"

"No," Kara said with a shake of her head. "Everyone else is staying until James can have visitors, but I can't spend another night there. I know Alex will probably be mad at me for not coming back, but hospitals are hard for me."

"Why would Alex get mad?"

"Because I kind of skipped out today. I went with J'onn to help with Manchester Black, but I couldn't tell Alex why I wasn't there, and you know Alex."

"She got pissed, because she thought you'd run out on family," Maggie said.

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry," Maggie said.

"It's not your fault."

"No, it's not, but you're hurting, and I don't know how to help."

"You being here helps," Kara said.

Maggie squeezed Kara's hands again. "I know you probably want to go home and sleep in your own bed, but if you'd rather not be alone, you could stay."

Kara's heart skipped a beat at the thought of spending the night curled up with Maggie. That alone was enough to let her know she should say no, even without the urge to kiss her that came with it. Just being this close to Maggie was making her heart pound, and she knew she should say no. She knew she should, and she opened her mouth to do just that, but what came out was, "I'd really like that."

She knew the whole night was going to be torture. Having Maggie right there and having to keep what she was feeling to herself. But the smile Maggie gave her was worth it.