"Maggie?! What's going on?!" Alex was shocked at the sight of the detective sitting at the counter holding her gun that was currently pointed to Alex' face.
Her first response was to raise her hands. She knew better than to think that Maggie was actually going to shoot her, but Maggie's face showed nothing but hatred.
"What. Did. You. Do." Maggie sneered at her with a fire in her eyes that Alex had never seen directed towards her.
"I… What?" Alex was taken aback by the whole situation. She'd honestly expected anything but this. She carefully took a step into Maggie's direction, but didn't want to make a wrong move either.
"Why did I just get a call from my boss that he's going to 'make sure I'm safe' and that 'this won't change the way he thinks about me'?" Maggie whispered it, but the anger in her voice was undeniable. "What did you do?!"
"Maggie… Listen to me." Alex said. "Put the gun down."
"Tell me. Now." She waved the gun empathically. In that moment, Alex got absolutely terrified that the situation was taking a turn for the worst. She raised her hands, and remained nailed to the ground as she looked her girlfriend in the eyes. "I had to talk to your boss, because something happened while you were out."
Maggie was breathing heavily, but showed no signs of lowering the firearm.
Alex continued. "Somebody has it out for you. They know you're diabetic, and they manipulated your levels to make you think you were okay."
Maggie's eyes were glazed with tears, and she finally allowed one to slip to her cheek. "I… I knew it…" She whispered.
The agent's stomach somersaulted again. "What are you talking about?"
"I felt… Sick. I thought it was just the flu or…" She trailed off. "But I knew it had something to do with my levels."
"Why didn't you do something?" Alex whispered hopelessly, tired of seeing the detective hurt just because she was too stubborn to reach out to anyone.
Maggie looked down for a second, before lowering the gun still pointed at her girlfriend. "You think whoever's trying to kill me is at work?"
"I can't rule anything out." Alex sighed. "I'm sorry, I… This isn't the way I pictured me telling you."
Maggie seemed to think about something, before her eyes widened. "There was a note."
"Note? What note?"
"In my bag… A few days ago…" Maggie reached for her cellphone. "I took a picture of it. It was just a prank, I thought…"
She flipped the phone to Alex to show a photo of a yellow post-it with one line of text on it written in sharpie.
Checkmate, Sawyer.
"This has to be from whoever did it." Alex zoomed in on the handwriting, but couldn't decipher anything about it. "When did you get this?"
"Last Thursday, I think. I saw it when I came back to my apartment."
"And where did you go on Thursday? Who did you talk to?!"
"I... I…" Maggie clenched her eyes shut, trying to remember. "I had a case. Uh… I was at the station, and then I went out in the field to round up a suspect, interrogated him, and then I went home, and you came over."
Alex nodded, remembering their date night together. Nothing had seemed off about the detective in any way. "You need to make a list of all the people that could have accessed your equipment."
"But it's not somebody in my unit. They wouldn't do that."
"Unless someone forced them to." Alex said dryly. "We're not ruling anybody out."
"Alex." Maggie shot back. "I trust those guys with my life. I've put my ass on the line for them, and they'd do the same for me. They're clean."
"And if they aren't?! I'm not going to risk you getting hurt or worse just because of your ideals. We know CADMUS is capable of-…" Alex bit her tongue, realizing her mistake immediately. Maggie's eyes widened. "CADMUS? You're… CADMUS is after me?"
Alex turned around. "We don't know that for sure."
"But you do." Maggie took a shaky breath, processing the information. "Well, I mean, that's it, right?"
Alex spun around again to face her. "What do you mean, that's it?"
"If CADMUS wants me dead…" Maggie plopped back down onto the stool dejectedly. "We can't stop them."
"What the hell?!" Alex jumped up. "No! Jesus, Maggie, I don't even recognize you anymore! We're going to get through this, we're going to find whoever did this to you and I'm going to make sure they're going to pay for what they did!"
"I need to be alone right now." Maggie sighed. "Please go."
"I'm not leaving you when you're like this." Alex shook her head, eyeing the gun in the detective's lap. She didn't like the worst case scenario her mind was currently making up.
"Leave, Danvers. I'm not going to ask again nicely."
"Ask however the hell you want, I'm not abandoning you." Alex shot back.
"If you don't get the fuck out of here right now… Alex, it's you!" Maggie yelled, finally losing her patience. "They're doing this to get in your head, they're doing this because you care about me!"
"So what…?" Alex whispered back, feeling tears brim in her eyes.
Maggie looked down, her own tears falling freely. "I don't know what they want with you, but I don't want to be the reason they capture you, or torture you, or kill you. So leave." She wiped angrily at her cheeks with the back of her hand. "I'll handle this. I'll find the asshole that tampered with my stuff, and I'll put a bullet in the back of their head. I swear. But you're not getting roped into this. Over my dead body."
"Maggie, please…" Alex tried to reason, but it seemed that the detective had made up her mind.
"Al, you said yourself that I was on the list of people you cared about. Well, my list is much shorter than yours. And you're in the top spot, I know I can't beat your sister on yours."
Alex opened her mouth to argue, but Maggie continued nonetheless. "But if you care about me like I care about you, you'll walk out of here right now, and don't look back until this is over."
Time seemed to slow down, as Alex realized that she had to make a choice. And either one would mean sacrifice. Either decision would mean heartbreak. But neither could really keep Maggie safe.
She felt herself turn on her heels and walk out the door. And before it closed, she heard a sob behind her.
As she stumbled out of Maggie's apartment building, she pressed her phone to her ear once again.
If Maggie didn't want her helping her, she'd do it herself. But she'd be damned if she let anybody put their hands on her girlfriend again.