A/N: I got some feedback about adding other POVs to this story, so this is my take on Alex's thoughts during 3x1
As with all my stories, it's just me and I often write when I can't sleep, so I apologize in advance for the grammar mistakes.
There are times when Alex looks at Kara and she sees who she used to be.
Nights when she searches the stars for a memory of home.
Days when she closes her eyes and imagines the sky a brilliant red.
Moments that reminder her that before she was anyone else, Kara was the last daughter of lost world.
Helpless.
Scared.
Alone.
Watching Kara now, Alex remembers that a part of her will always be these things.
It is the part of her that fights for those she loves.
That is reckless and imperfect.
That fears the weight of her own heart.
Alex looks beyond Kara to the city below and she thinks about the last time they stood on this balcony together.
About all the times she has given something of herself to protect people she will never meet and a home that will never truly be hers.
She thinks about all is has cost her.
The memories of her family, the comfort of her faith, even the openness of her heart.
But standing here with her now, telling her that Lena will be okay, she can't help but think how Kara had refused to let it take something else from her today.
Alex knows right away that something is wrong. She can't remember the last time her sister's voice was so full of panic and fear.
"Alex! Alex! Please. Alex!"
So she's already moving, running from her lab to the command room, her response automatic as she tries to calm her sister.
"I'm here. Hey, hey. I'm here."
And Kara's words are broken and muffled by wind she knows is passing by at inhuman speeds, but what she manages to hear only hastens her actions further.
"She's — her hearts beating too fast Alex. It's too fast, and she can't breathe."
Alex looks around the room, motioning to a startled Winn to pull up Kara's location and put her on speaker.
"Slow down, where are you?"
"I'm on my way there. Alex, I'm sorry, I had to, I'm sorry."
Alex knows that Kara is scared but she needs her to calm down, she needs to know how to help.
"You have to calm down. You have to tell me what's happening."
A second passes before Kara's voice finally comes back over the speakers.
"Lena. He tried to kill her. You have to help her Alex."
Alex ignores the way her chest tightens and forces herself to be calm, because god knows Kara isn't.
"Okay, okay. I've got a team coming okay. Just get her here."
The comms go silent again and Alex gives herself one second.
One second to breathe.
One second to think.
Then she's reaching past Winn to jam her hand against the intercom.
"This is Agent Danvers. I need med unit 1 to Area A with a crash cart, monitors, and an emergency kit now!."
Running her hand through her hair and letting out a steadying breath she turns to a still confused looking Winn.
"Make sure there's a med room ready downstairs okay? I don't know…I don't know what we're going to need."
Winn nods, pushing himself away from the desk, nearly stumbling as he makes it to his feet. He pauses, looks at her, words starting but failing to make their way out as they're cut off by the sound of rushing agents and medical equipment being pushed into the room.
Alex looks between him and the agents and he just nods, the words of comfort, or fear, or doubt he had wanted to say lost in the chaos.
Around her the command room is turned into a triage unit and she watches as Kara's tracker moves across the screen.
It's only been less than a minute since they cut off of comms, but she knows how long that can be; what that kind of time can mean.
Alex paces back and forth in front of the balcony doors.
She hates waiting.
Hates not knowing what to expect.
Hates these things especially when the people she cares about are in danger.
The sound of Kara's voice plays over and over in her head as she grips her hands into fists at her side to stop them from shaking
She closes her eyes for just a second.
Just a second until the anxious silence gives way and Kara comes crashing into room, Lena held tightly in her arms.
Alex catches her sister's stumbling form, feels the way her body is trembling with adrenaline and fear as her arms reluctantly let go and Lena is taken from her and placed on the gurney.
"What happened?"
The words stumble out over sister's quickened breathes.
"Edge tried to poison her, it, it was in her coffee."
Lena's body jerks off the table.
"Shit, she's seizing. Two-hundred milligrams phenobarbital, stat. Two liters of saline, run it open. I want a radial artery line and two red top.
Straining to hear over the erratic sound of monitors she listens to sound of Lena's heartbeat slowing and to the breathes that rattle in her lungs.
Alex leans closer, whispering words that feel as much a command to the herself as the woman in front of her.
"Come on Lena, calm down, calm down"
Readings and orders get shouted and repeated back to her.
"Blood pressure 70 over palp. Pulse is erratic and falling fast."
But Alex doesn't need numbers to know what's happening, to know that they are running out of time.
She turns to her sister, hopeful for anything that will help.
"Kara I need to know what poison he used."
But Kara sounds as helpless as she feels.
"I-I-I don't — I don't know."
Her mind screams at itself.
Think. Come on. You have to Think.
"Mustard gas, cyanide, strychnine"
The answer is here, it has to be.
She leans in toward Lena, smelling her breath.
Almonds. It smells like Almonds, and she thinks it to herself, making sure she's right before saying it out loud.
"Almonds…Cyanide."
But finding the answer isn't a solution and the numbers in front of her are still falling too fast.
"Push fifty mils of sodium thiosulfate."
Alex presses the stethoscope again to Lena's chest hoping the monitors are wrong, but they're not.
She forces herself to focus.
"How long has it been?"
Her sister's voice hesitates, but answers.
"Ah, A-About two, three minutes."
Shit. It isn't enough. It isn't going to be enough.
Desperate now she looks up at Kara.
"We need time but her body's already shutting down. If we can slow her circulation, induce hypothermia, we can protect her brain and heart while the medicine counteracts the poison"
"I can do it. Let me do it."
Alex motions for the team to stand back and for first time since this all started Alex sees something other than fear in her sister's eyes, she sees resolve.
Kara lets out a slow, steady breath, the cold air floating over Lena, and Alex watches as the temperature starts to drop.
She rests a hand on her sister's shoulder.
"That's enough"
And she hopes she's right.
Seconds pass and Kara's desperate refrain becomes a part with her own silent pleas
"Come on, come on, come on, come on Lena"
Then, after minutes of feeling nothing but doubt, there comes flickering hope.
The image of Lena's steady heartbeat plays on the sreen.
"Normal sinus rhythm"
And she remembers what It feels like to breathe.
Alex has a memory of Kara huddled on the roof of their home, the remnants of tears of her face. She remembers the sound of her own voice only minutes before blaming her for what happened. Her father was gone, he wasn't coming back, and Alex had hated Kara for that, hated that she was there and he wasn't.
But when she thinks of that memory now, it isn't the hatred or grief that she remembers, it's the care with which Kara had held her glasses in her hand like they were the most fragile thing that ever existed, like if they broke then a part of her would too.
She looks at Kara and how she holds Lena's hand the same way now.
She thinks how she has always had to do this.
That Kara has allowed herself to love carefully, but never completely.
That she is afraid to let go of the things she has for fear she will lose them forever.
How even though she wants to hold onto them with all the strength she has, she can't. That if she does they might break.
Alex thinks about what it means for her to have to choose between these two different types of loss.
She hopes that one day maybe she won't need to.
Leaning against the doorway, Alex knows that Kara can hear her there, hear the way her heartbeat is still a little too fast, and so she isn't surprised at the sound of her sister's voice even though she never looks up.
"Do you think it's the right thing to do? To tell her?"
Alex pushes herself off the door frame and steps into the room.
"I do. For all the reasons you already know, for all the reasons J'onn told you, and for one more."
Kara looks at her, hopeful.
"What?"
Alex moves next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
"You both deserve it"
Kara leans into her and Alex places a kiss against her temple.
"I love you, and I'm proud of you, but don't think what you did today doesn't scare the shit of me and don't think I won't tell Eliza if you ever do it again."
Kara laughs quietly.
"She'd probably just blame you"
Alex smiles back
"Yeah, you're probably right, but still."
A second passes between them and Kara looks down at where her hand in Lena's. Her voice quit, reserved once more.
"I didn't even think. It would have only been a second but."
Alex tightens her hold on her sister.
"But what if?"
Kara nods and lets her head rest on Alex's shoulder.
"yeah, what if"
And the words are so simple that the moment feels wanting of more, but Alex knows the true weight that they carry, the burden they hide.
What if I'm not fast enough.
What if I'm not strong enough.
What if I'm not enough.
Because this world has cost her so much but it keeps asking for more.
And even though she can't give her back what she's lost, she can do this, she can tell her that she deserves more — that she doesn't have to choose.
Then together they can rid her memories of dust and together they can pick up the debris of her past.
Thanks for reading!
Thoughts? Feeling? Comments?
A/N: I want to add one more chapter from Lena's POV I think, so feedback is appreciated.