"What do we know?"
Alex walked into the DEO briskly, refusing to show the heartbreak she currently felt. On her way to work she'd cried, but only in the privacy of her own car. Right now she had to be Agent Alex Danvers, and keep it professional.
Kara, in her Supergirl outfit, walked over to her, lowering her voice. "DEO was a bust. Nobody here knows, J'onn didn't even know. And pretty much none of the other agents came in contact with Maggie."
"It has to be somebody at the precinct. It makes sense." Alex frowned. "I need to talk to the other people in her unit."
"Did you tell her?" Kara asked. "Is she going to help?"
"She… uh…" Alex sighed. "She's scared. She's shutting me out. And I… I don't know how to help her."
Kara's face softened, and she put a careful hand on her sister's shoulder, but Alex shrugged it off. "Not here. I need solutions, Kara. A plan. She's not going to like me digging around at the police station."
"You, no. But say… hypothetically speaking… I had to write an article about the efficiency of the NCPD… I could probably get some people to talk."
Alex nodded slowly. "It could work. But if Maggie catches you…"
"Catches? I'm just doing my job as a reporter." Kara smiled weakly. "It'll be alright, I promise. She can't stay mad at you for protecting her."
Alex pulled Kara into a hug, and closed her eyes. She needed her sister right now, more than ever. The emotional rollercoaster the last 24 hours had been was nothing short of surreal.
Maggie was scared. Alex knew it well enough. She put up her walls to protect Alex instead of herself. And Alex knew that she'd have done the exact same thing had it been her. But it didn't make the situation any better.
The only way to solve the problem was to find out what happened, and fast, before whoever was behind it tried something else.
Maggie took off her helmet and jumped off her bike with a little less elegance than she'd hoped. Her head was still pounding, both from the concussion and the confrontation she had with Alex, and it provided a great distraction.
Since she couldn't go back to work for at least another day, she figured a drink wouldn't hurt to mull things over by herself.
Alex' words still echoed through her mind. CADMUS. Of course, it couldn't have been anybody else out for her, she wasn't at all that interesting. A pro-alien cop. Only CADMUS would see her with a target on her back.
She knew how she'd treated Alex. She'd seen the heartbreak in the agent's eyes. But if it meant keeping Alex safe, Maggie would have gone to the end of the world to stay away from her.
She couldn't bear the thought of something happening to Alex by her own hands.
She put her helmet on the bar, and motioned for the bartender to get her a drink. She honestly didn't care what they gave her, as long as it was strong enough to hopefully make her forget everything that happened.
Lillian fucking Luthor.
Maggie vowed to herself that the next time she'd see the woman, she'd break her.
A voice behind her calling her name made her turn around, one hand instinctively reaching down to her thigh, where her gun holster was resting.
Though she relaxed when she saw it was Kara, in her civilian clothes, she realized immediately why she was there.
"What is it, Kara?" She turned back to her drink.
"I'm not here to fight." Kara said, taking a seat on the stool next to her. "I came to talk."
"Talk away." Maggie shot back sarcastically, taking another sip of her glass. "But if it's about Alex, I'm not interested."
"Do you realize what you're doing?" Kara asked her, looking at the detective's face. Maggie looked down.
"I'm well aware, yeah. Breaking her heart, making sure she never trusts me again, making her think that I don't care about her feelings." Maggie laughed humorlessly. "What else is new, right? This is the way it always ends."
"This is not how it's going to end, Maggie. Alex is out there looking for that CADMUS mole, whether you want her to or not. So you can't exactly expect her to stay out of danger." Kara shifted closer. "And let me tell you something. I love my sister to death, and I'd do anything to keep her safe. The only person who is hurting her right now, is you, by shutting her out."
"What do you propose, Kara?" Maggie looked her in the eyes now. "Letting Alex help me so CADMUS can capture both of us, and torture her? I have to do this alone to make sure the two of you, or anyone for that matter, don't get caught in the crossfire."
"Are you really that big of an egomaniac that you think everything revolves around you here?!" Kara shot back, crossing her arms. "The DEO has been out looking for CADMUS for months now. This is just another one of their plans."
"Yeah, well, it's one that just might work, Danvers." Maggie grunted. "And you two know it."
Kara took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. "Look. Alex doesn't know I came here. She thinks I'm talking to your unit, to try and get something out of them."
Maggie looked up again, frowning at the confession. Kara continued. "But you and I both know how Alex gets when she's scared for somebody else. She's going to take a stupid risk, like walking into CADMUS herself to keep you safe. And I don't want that. So the three of us need to work together to find this guy, instead of fighting over 'who's protecting whom from what', okay?"
Maggie swallowed thickly at the thought of Alex, guns blazing and running into CADMUS headquarters. "Y-You're right."
Kara sighed in relief at that. "Good. Okay, so we need to regroup. Tonight, my place."
Maggie nodded, and downed the rest of her glass. Kara hopped off the barstool and looked at her with a sad smile. "You're like my sister too, Maggie. We're a family. We look out for each other. You're never alone again."
The words touched Maggie more than the detective expected. Kara gave her a quick hug, before walking out of the bar, leaving her by herself.
Maggie turned back to the glass in front of her, swirling the ice cubes around. She had work to do.
She was losing it.
The self-control she'd worked so hard for.
But it didn't matter, as long as she got her answers.
So by the seventh punch, when she'd felt more than one bone break underneath her fingers, Alex shoved the alien against the wall of the alley she was in, and leaned in, so their faces were almost touching.
"I'm not going to ask you again." She whispered lowly, threateningly. "Tell me what happened on Thursday with that cop!"
"I didn't do anything!" The alien shot back, attempting to get out of her grip, but she grabbed him by the collar once again. "I'll kill you, I swear to all the Gods you've ever believed in. If you don't start talking, you'll never see daylight again."
"Fuck you!"
Another punch to the face. The alien recoiled, and slid down the wall, moaning helplessly. Alex stared at her knuckles, sensing by the pulsing feeling in her hand that the blood on them didn't just belong to him.
"Tell me!" Alex yelled, kicking him in the ribs until he curled up weakly. "Okay, okay!" He raised his hands. "I'll tell you everything, please!"
"Better." She stepped back, and allowed him to crawl up on his knees, before slowly stumbling to his feet. "She arrested me on Third street. I put up a fight, but she got me. And she brought me to the police station, and I swear I didn't do it! She let me go!"
Alex tried to keep her face hard, but the sound of his pleading made her realize that the man wasn't guilty at all, just terrified out of his mind.
Without another look she turned around and walked out of the alley, tucking her hands into her sleeves so nobody would notice her bleeding knuckles.
As she walked to her car, she hoped at least that Kara had better news.