Cars honking. The incessant buzzing of some sort of insect around her.
Heels clicking on the pavement.
The sounds of National City waking up to another day of work.
Though her head was pounding horribly, Alex opened her eyes, already fearing what she'd done the night before to get a hangover this bad.
It took her three seconds to realize that she wasn't, in fact, lying on her bed with a hangover, although whatever was underneath her was softer than the ground.
The smell hit her next.
And sent her right back to reality.
She was lying in a dumpster.
Oh god…
The lid was down on top of her, and she reached for it weakly, pushing it off. The early morning sun hit her right in the face, and she winced away from it.
She had to get out.
She reached for the edge, and tried to pull herself up, but only now saw the state she was in. Her grimy underwear, and her stump. Her entire body shaking.
What the hell happened…
Carefully, she tried to maneuver out of the bin, but she knew it was only a matter of time until she slipped. Sure enough, after a few seconds, she felt her arms shake as she toppled over onto the ground, her back hitting the asphalt of the alley.
"Shit…" She winced. Her mind from the night before was blank, but with all the information rushing back to her – she realized. Maggie.
She got to her hands and knees, and crawled out of the alley, knowing that it was faster than trying to hop to safety. She didn't have a phone… Kara?
Kara always seemed to sense when she was in trouble. A sister's instinct, probably combined with super hearing.
"Kara…" She whispered weakly. "H-help me…"
The last thing she wanted was for somebody to see her like this, when she didn't know what happened. She only remembered the smell of paint, the rest of the evening was a blur. The thought scared her beyond measure.
After a few seconds, she heard a familiar whoosh behind her, and her head spun with relief. She stopped moving and turned around to face her sister. But the strangled gasp behind her made her all the more self-conscious, as she realized the state she was in.
"Alex…" Kara's eyes were wide. "I… W-what happened?!"
"I… I d-don't know." Alex sobbed. "S-someone took it…"
"Took what?!"
"My leg…" The agent looked down at the stump once more, and willed herself not to cry at the sight. Kara took a hold of her sister, and pulled her into her arms as she shot up into the sky, towards the DEO.
But a hand on her shoulder made her look down, as Alex shook her head weakly. "No… Not the DEO… please."
Don't let them see me like this.
Kara understood, and changed course, flying lower to finally land through the big open windows of Alex's apartment.
She set her sister down onto the couch and reached for the crutch in the corner, handing it over to Alex silently.
She knew how embarrassed her sister was. Getting her leg back was a big step towards recovery. And if some assholes stole it, Kara wouldn't hesitate in breaking them.
"I'm going to run you a bath, okay?" She said, before disappearing into the bathroom to turn on the taps. When she returned to the living room, she found her sister staring at the exact same spot.
Kara knelt down in front of her sister and grabbed her hands, looking her in the eyes. "Alex… Can you tell me what happened? Who did this?"
All Alex did was shake her head.
Before Kara could respond, or push for an answer, the door to the apartment swung open, and Maggie walked inside. The second she saw Alex, she dropped the keys she'd been holding, her eyes widening.
"Babe…"
She ran forward and enveloped Alex in a hug, only then noticing the disheveled and undressed state she was in. "What happened to you?!"
Kara shot Maggie a look that said they needed to talk in a second, as she carefully picked Alex up from the couch and carried her into the bathroom. Maggie didn't go after them, but her mind was already racing.
Something had happened to Alex, and she hadn't known. That's why she wasn't answering her phone.
She ran a hand through her hair. It had to have been Jade. She had abducted Alex, probably to paint her… God knows what she'd made her do after that.
The memories that surfaced in the car proved that Jade had murdered Hayden, and had made her an accomplice in faking evidence, but it didn't mean that she was innocent. There was still a hole between Hayden's death and when she'd woken up in the alley. Anything could have happened.
But now, with Jade's body being found… Everything she seemed to know went back to square one.
Kara closed the bathroom door on her way out, and folded her arms as she walked over to Maggie. "Are you okay?"
"Am I okay?!" Maggie huffed. "What the hell happened to her, Kara?!"
"I don't know… I heard her cry for help five minutes ago, so I flew over to where she was. She was in an alley, I found her like that!"
Maggie closed her eyes, and winced. So Jade was behind it.
That meant that either the Ragh'tah had abducted Alex, and murdered the real Jade…
… Or Alex had murdered the alien or the real Jade.
"Fuck…" Maggie whispered, opening her eyes again. "This is bad, this is bad."
"Can you please tell me what the hell is going on?!" Kara shot back. "We found you in a dumpster yesterday morning, after you were missing, and now Alex is-…" She stopped herself. "Tell me who I need to kill to make this stop."
"An alien. A Ragh'tah." Maggie wrapped her arms around herself. "Goes by the name of Jade Hayes, a painter. I need to call J'onn."
"I'll do it." Kara shook her head. "You stay with her. I'll keep you posted. I'm going to kick that thing's ass all the way back to its galaxy."
Maggie sighed, as she watched Kara speed away through the window, before she tried to compose herself and knocked on the bathroom door. "Alex?"
No reply.
"Babe, it's me. Can I come in?"
Maggie waited for the weak 'yes', before she opened the door.
Alex sat in the tub, left knee pulled up to her chest, and staring down into the water. Maggie approached her quietly, and crouched down, grabbing Alex's wet hand with her own to kiss the back of it.
It stayed silent between the two of them for a while, the only sound coming from the dripping of Alex's wet hair into the water.
"I remember." Maggie whispered finally, looking up at Alex. "It took me a day, but I remember what happened."
Alex tilted her head to look at her.
Maggie smiled weakly. "Kara is already at the DEO, they're going to help us find her."
"M-my leg." Alex whispered brokenly.
Maggie nodded silently, as she pressed another kiss to Alex's hand. "We're going to find it."
She wasn't all that worried about finding Alex's leg. Milo had told her that he'd implanted a tracker into the prosthetic, just to have another failsafe in case of an abduction.
God, if she hadn't been locked up…
She could have gone out looking for her. She could have saved her from whatever Jade had done to her. She could clearly see that something had broken within Alex.
"She painted you, didn't she?" Maggie said, already knowing the answer.
"I-I can smell… paint."
Maggie leaned back, taking a second to think. Holmes and his team had searched the art studio, but it was completely clean. Which means that she either took Alex to a different location, or she'd cleared out everything before the police could get it.
"Y-you."
The detective looked up at the monosyllabic word, hissed by Alex. "S-she was you."
"Me?" Maggie frowned.
"I thought you came to rescue me."
Alex's whispers stung. Maggie took a shaky breath, already feeling her throat close.
"We can't let her win this, babe." She shook her head, letting go of Alex's hand. "Letting it get to us, that's what she wants. Alex, I'm going to kick her fucking ass for messing with you like that."
Maggie got up and was already halfway out the door seeing red, before she realized that Alex needed her more than she needed revenge right now. She sighed, and dropped down next to her now sobbing girlfriend. "I love you. I love you, I love you…"
She whispered the mantra over and over again, as she held Alex tight. But then, her girlfriend raised a shaky hand, and put it on Maggie's cheek. "Go…"
For a second, Maggie thought that Alex was rejecting her comforts, but then she saw the slight yet familiar determination behind her watery eyes. "Get her."
All Maggie could do, was nod.
"I can't trace her. She shapeshifts almost every minute, I can't keep track." Winn grunted as he went over the CCTV footage he'd hacked into. Kara nodded, uttering a grunt of frustration.
J'onn walked over to them. The two looked up from the monitor.
"Winn, keep trying to track her. Kara, you fly over the city. Keep patrolling, maybe we can spot her like that."
J'onn didn't even have the energy to sound convincing. All three of them knew that it was a lost cause, but they weren't ready to give up yet.
Winn went back to tapping into camera databases and trying to see if the vanished paintings appeared anywhere on his radar.
Kara walked to the Launchpad on the balcony, ready for another round of flying over the city, but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the figure walking up the steps.
"Maggie?! What are you doing here? What about-…"
"-Alex is fine." Maggie assured her quickly. "She will be, once this is over."
"You should be home with her." Kara hadn't meant for her tone to sound accusing, but she was tired of the both of them running into danger and getting hurt without her knowing. She could have helped them, she could have done something…
"I know how we can find Ja- the alien."
J'onn and Winn both seemed interested in hearing what she had to say. Not caring that she was calling the shots, Maggie slipped into detective mode, and looked up. "Kara, you need to go to the morgue and check if the female body they brought in last night is human. Winn, you need to activate the tracker on Alex's prosthetic and tell me where I can find it."
She finally turned to J'onn. "You and I are going to pay a visit to an old friend."
All three of them went to work without a second thought.
"Hotel Three-niner five. Juliet one-zero-one. DEO special agent Henshaw, stationed in National City, clearance level A."
"Detective Sawyer, NCPD, joint DEO taskforce, clearance level C."
Sam smirked as he watched them walk in, lowering his rifle. "Couldn't miss me?"
Maggie winked at him, but his eyes widened when he saw the size of the cheeseburger she pulled from behind her back.
She didn't lose any time in doing the security and safety checks, before getting to business. "We need to speak with him again, Sam."
"He won't be too happy." The man frowned. "Ever since you talked to him, he's been on edge. Aggressive. Shifting more."
Maggie didn't feel an ounce of regret. "Well, then, this is going to break him." She took a deep breath, and continued. "We need to be able to touch him, this time."
"That's imp-…" Sam started, but J'onn finally spoke up from his other side. "Sam, I know about the protocols, but we need to do this."
"He has information that we need. And we have a plan on how to get it."
Sam opened and closed his mouth a few times, before raising an eyebrow. "If you're talking about attempting to torture the thing, believe me, I'd love to look the other way on it with the way he's been behaving, but I can't let you in contact with him. He'd kill you on sight."
"Trust me." Maggie shook her head. "This will work."
"I take full responsibility for this, Sam." J'onn looked at him. "This isn't on you at all. You just need to bring him to us."
Sam nodded slowly. "Understood, sir."
He walked off, as Maggie and J'onn walked into the interrogation room.
"Ready?"
"Let's hope this works." J'onn sighed, before looking up, and shifting from his Hank Henshaw exterior, into a familiar redheaded woman.
The opposite door opened, and the Magh'rah, in Laurent's form, was pushed inside by Sam. He shackled the alien to the floor, and dropped him down onto the chair. One last nod at Maggie, and he was off.
But the Magh'rah only had eyes for the woman now sitting in front of him. His eyes widened dramatically, as he only managed to stammer.
"Y-you're here."
J'onn, as the woman, nodded. "I came to see you. I need your help."
"Anything you want, my darling Alice."