Chapter Fifteen: You Are So Much Like Your Father


Sam clapped a hand over her mouth hard to stifle a gasp. Eliza, eyes rattling around in her head to lock onto something, lay there in her hospital bed with a hand wrapped deftly around Lena's wrist. The raven-haired woman stood in complete shock.

"Eliza…?" Sam spoke from behind her fingers.

The woman laying bandaged in the hospital bed cleared her throat and wriggled her shoulders slightly to sit up more. Eliza must have dizzied herself with the effort because she gave up after a few attempts and took a tired breath. Her eyes then opened again with a looped sort of focus, as if she were chasing a pinball, when finally, her line of sight fell on the stunned brunette across the room. Lena's wrist had been let go and Eliza took that moment to beckon Sam closer with a wave.

"Come over here." The older woman instructed as she squinted to see more clearly.

Sam crossed the small room with held breath to stand on the opposite side of the bed from Lena. Eliza then reached a hand out and laid her palm and fingers flat on Sam's small baby bump, making Sam gasp slightly again.

"Where is Alexandra?" Eliza asked as she looked around the room confusingly. "And where rightly am I?

"Lena- Go get a nurse, hurry." Sam panicked. Lena didn't need to be asked twice, and was out the door in seconds.

"Eliza you've been in an accident, Alex will be here soon." Sam began to explain.

The injured Danvers matriarch dropped her eyes to Sam's pregnant belly again where her hand had stayed at rest. Sam had covered it with one of her own unknowingly, possibly in a mad effort to keep her tethered to the waking world by whatever means necessary. Eliza then lifted her eyes and smiled at her.

"It's a girl?" Eliza asked quietly, voice full of reverence.

Sam stuttered at first. "W-we… don't know yet."

Eliza's eyes dropped again to her hand where she moved a thumb back and forth regardfully. "It's a girl." She repeated, no longer a question.

Just then, Lena burst back into the room with two nurses. The women were soon asked to leave so that they could begin assessing Eliza's vitals properly and without hinderance. Now out in the lobby area, Sam immediately called Alex to tell her the good news.

Once Eliza had been looked over and evaluated to the hospital staff's satisfaction, a doctor was paged and Eliza was brought up to speed on her accident, as well as her diagnosis.


Even though the oldest Danvers sister had been reassured that her mother was coherent enough and checked thoroughly by no less than six different members of medical staff—including the doctor on duty—Alex still drove at least ten to fifteen over the speed limit back to the hospital in Austin with Kara riding shotgun. At least her BMW 540i could break seventy miles per hour without doing the "death wobble" she affectionately called the high-speed front end tremor Kara's pickup made when it was pushed past highway speed limits.

When they arrived, Kara swarmed over the hospital bed where Eliza was reclined, unfettered now by her previous tangle of wires and machines. A deep purple bruise bled from under the bandage at her temple and the sight made Alex's stomach fold into knots. It seemed as though it was all Alex could do to stand in the middle of the room with her hand over her heart and heave heavy sighs of relief one after the other. She watched as Eliza gently admonished a fretfully manic Kara who refused to cease her incessant hovering with, "Now stop that- I'm fine, you're wrinkling my nice hospital frock".

At least her sass is still intact.

With that thought, Alex couldn't help the smile that spread across her lips. For all of their vitriol over the years, Alex still had a deep yearning to be near her mother and to be a part of her life. Life… sort of just got in the way of that, it seemed. There had been a lot of things both said and unsaid that needed to be righted between them and Alex had been terrified with the thought of suddenly losing the one parent she had left, leaving all of their brokenness to remain in pieces forever. Living without her mother had not yet been a thought that had crossed her mind and to say that she was unprepared for such a thing would be a severe understatement.

Kara was still anxiously assessing and cataloging every stray hair and bump when Eliza gestured at Alex to come to her. As she did, Eliza took one of Alex's hands and patted the back of it in a comfortable manner as if to say, "There, there."

"You and I need to have a little chinwag I suppose." Eliza said before looking back at Kara. "Kara honey, will you and your friend—" she paused, not able to recall Lena's name at that moment.

"Lena, Mama. You've met her before, last summer?"

"Oh, I'm sorry baby—" Eliza turned her head to address Lena who was standing at the back of the small room and out of the way. "Lena darlin', you have been so kind- would you and Samantha mind lettin' me talk with my daughter for a spell?"

"Of course." Lena replied, turning her gaze to Alex. "We'll be hunting for which vending machines have chocolate around the waiting area."

Sam perked up at that and nodded eagerly. The door behind them was on its way shut when Alex threw her chin at it in Kara's direction. Kara sulked for only a moment before recognizing that the two did need a moment alone after so many years, so she followed suit and exited the room, letting the door -click- softly shut behind her. Now that they were alone, Alex hung her head slightly and stood over her wounded mother.

"How have you been keepin', baby?" Eliza asked with tired eyes as she settled further back into the mound of pillows that had been stacked behind her.

Alex wasn't quite sure where to begin. She felt sad, dejected, hurt, angry… anger being her instinctual reaction to pain, either physical or emotional. The question brought the sting of tears to her eyes. Who was to blame for the years she went without a mother? Was it even worth it to lay blame anywhere—or with anyone—at this point? That was time they should have shared, which Alex felt very much as if they had been stolen from her. She knew her mother loved her, but she had long settled on believing that her mother only loved a version of her; One that would never come true. She would not marry a man just to please Eliza and was even more averse to the idea of bearing children with a man just because it was a thing that was expected. Alex had always been vocal about her nonconformity, even as a child. She had said throughout her youth that she would marry the person that she loved and would only have children if she wanted them, not just because other people wanted her to. Though, apart from becoming a police officer, becoming a mother was a deep and silent yearning she held close to her heart for many years. She had remained ornery and free willed despite all instruction to "behave" and to "do as other children do". This was the unshakable foundation within Alex that Eliza had failed to reconstruct. She most certainly would not behave and would only do as her heart told her.

Alex stood still and found herself utterly unable to find any appropriate answer for her mother's inquiry. How had she been keeping? Her back teeth gnashed together in consternation, chewing on the question for a long time. Her mother would have damn well known "How she'd been keeping" if she hadn't forced her to make one of the hardest decisions of her life. She'd left town to spare her sister an unbearable agony, felt the bitter scrape of loneliness in a new city, made new friends, fell in love, became a cop, and got married. Apart from surviving a gunshot wound, Eliza had made no other effort to see her. So how on earth was she expected to answer?

"You are so much like your father." Eliza admitted, noting her daughter's marathon for words behind her eyes.

It seemed as though where words failed, tears spoke. The dam holding back Alex's grief finally broke as she leaned down to place her forehead on the hand that held her own. She had shattered so easily. After too many years of not seeing or speaking to her mother, it took the mere mention of her father to hinge her over into a crying, folded mess straight into Eliza's lap. Alex sobbed at her mother's bedside while gentle fingers combed through her reddish-brown hair.

"I love you, Alexandra. I need you to know that."

Alex sniffled and raised her head to look up at her mother with that.

"I've come to realize that I may have been far too proud to admit that I was wrong… about many things. That makes me so ashamed I could just die." She thumbed a few tears away from Alex's cheek and continued, "I wish I could take it all back. I would have you come home and see you at my kitchen table every morning—" Her eyes glistened and the tip of her nose and cheeks bloomed a bright red. "But I know that time has passed, and you seem to have a family of your own now. I'm sorry, baby girl."

Alex let out a long breath and with it all the hurt and guilt she'd held trapped inside of her body since the day she left their small drop of a town behind. She felt all the deep-seated anger in her bones dissolve and evaporate out of her pores, leaving her feeling lighter and somewhat made anew.

"It's okay now, Mama." Alex replied with another careful hug around her mother's middle. "I love you."


Finally convinced that her mother was in no immediate danger of somehow falling back asleep and not waking up again, Alex agreed to let Sam drive them home for the evening with the vow of returning bright and early the next morning. Eliza still had at least a few more nights left in the hospital before doctors would be anywhere near willing to discharge her, regarding the healing bone of her skull. Meanwhile, Kara and Lena had left earlier in the day to check in on the horses back at Danvers Ranch. Eliza seemed restless with the thought of no one to look after things while she was away, so the youngest Danvers gave her word that she would see to it that not a single mare was left untended. Such a sympathetic chord had been struck by her mother's fretting over her small clutter of barn cats that Kara even agreed to care for them as well.

Upon arriving, Kara quickly discovered that there were a great many things out of order which needed immediate addressing at the ranch, especially the state of the master bedroom and its adjoining bathroom. It was an old house, to be sure, but a lot of the flooring and baseboards were in shambles as well as nearly every door jamb in the structure being off kilter, making the doors themselves either stick halfway open or struggle to open at all. Curious about the integrity of the house's foundation, Kara trudged up the stairs to her old bedroom to find a marble from some long stored-away boardgame boxes and placed it on a desk, where it promptly rolled to the left and fell to the floor.

Lena was all the while following closely behind and taking mental notes of what all Kara would eventually ask to remind her about when bringing up the state of the ranch to her sister. Kara almost couldn't believe it. Her first instinct was to question how Eliza could let everything get into such bad shape but quickly corrected herself when she realized that her mother probably wasn't aware of the rapidly deteriorating structural integrity of the house in the first place. Perhaps not fully, anyway. The memory of putting out the fire in the kitchen and the smell of burnt cookies instantly bombarded the blonde and made her shake her head in dismay.

Damn. All this was right beneath my nose…?

Kara put her hands on her hips and twirled around in the bedroom, her eyes jumping from sad, sagging walls to the water intrusion stains on the ceiling. Lena could tell how fast the gears were churning inside the other woman's head. Kara was spiraling and needed an anchor. Lena reached out for her then and placed a hand at the notch where her collarbones met just above her sternum. The physical touch made Kara's head snap towards Lena, and her eyes began to water. Kara's chin quivered with the threat of tears.

"What do we do now…?" She whispered.


When the next morning came, Lena was up and moving around with Kara as soon as the sun shined its warm greeting through the blinds. After the stables had been mucked and horses watered and fed, mail gathered, and house locked on Danvers Ranch the day before, the two made their way back into town and fell exhaustedly together in Kara's bed. It wasn't often that they shared a bed and didn't make love in it, but after the rough couple of days they had endured, they both had fallen straight to sleep once Lena rested her weary head on Kara's chest.

Well rested now and eager to head back to Austin if only for the day, Kara practically pulled Lena by the hand until they were back in her truck and headed west. Once they arrived back at the recovery wing of the hospital, they found Alex just outside of Eliza's room slumped against the wall of the hallway with her head in her hands. Kara was at her side in seconds.

"She asked where she was—" A tiny sob quaked Alex's shoulders when she spoke. "She doesn't remember a thing." She began to cry, clenching her fists at either side of her face. "She doesn't remember a damn thing!"

Kara, knowing all too well the daunting face her sister made when she neared her breaking point, rushed to grab at Alex's arms to keep them at her sides lest one of them plow a fist through a wall. Kara simply held her upright as sobs racked her older sister violently. It had been a very long time since she had seen Alex so upset, and quite frankly it scared her. For now, it was all the blonde could do to simply hold her as she bawled and shook with her broken heartedness. Kara looked up at Lena standing across from them then. Her bright blue-eyed gaze bored deep into the other woman with a helpless sort of stare, one that said, "Please tell me how to fix this."

If Lena were being honest, it wasn't a sort of solution that she could give to her. But she could show her. Little did Kara know that she was already doing the best thing she could for her sister, which was just being there in the first place. Lena gave Kara an approving nod, knowing that the blonde would understand, and then turned to enter the room where she found Sam sitting at the edge of the bed. She was holding one of Eliza's hands in her own while the older woman slept. Sam's eyes were red from crying when she looked up at Lena.

"They—" She choked on the word and tried again, "They had to sedate her."

Lena frowned and moved to kneel next to Sam.

"When we got here, the nurses told us not to be surprised if she started asking where she was again. She was confused, so we tried talking to her and she just started yelling. I think she was just scared… but it was a lot." Sam explained through her tears. "Alex is devastated."

Lena leaned in to hug her best friend. She realized that whatever it was that Alex and her mother had spoken about the day before had been fruitful in some way, because she knew that it had been years since they had been in the same room together. Although, the fact that Eliza hadn't remembered any of it more than likely explained why Alex had fallen apart the way she did. Lena's heart broke for the sisters, and for her best friend.

"Everything is going to be alright, Sam. We've got each other and you've got Alex, Kara has me… As long as we all stick together, everything will be alright."

"I love you." Sam cried into Lena's shoulder.

"I love you too."

Later that afternoon, the family was told that Eliza would no longer be able to remain living at the house on Danvers Ranch without constant supervision. The state had decided to revoke her driver's license after her accident, so she would no longer be able to operate a vehicle either. They were handed informational pamphlets detailing their options as far as assisted living facilities and what to expect moving forward. Lena could see how run down and emotionally exhausted both Kara and Alex were as they each sat and read after the doctor left the room. Alex pulled her hair out of her eyes and rested her elbows on her knees and Kara was sat in almost the same position. Neither of them spoke a word for a long time after that.

Sam, out of ideas and nearly fresh out of hope, eventually pulled Lena out of a chair and brought her along to go get food for everyone. The brunette knew that eating was probably the last thing on everyone's minds, but she also knew that when Alex didn't eat, she became easily frustrated. It was especially important now to keep her fed and alert. Lena offered back jokingly as they strolled down the long hallway that food was also a driving force in Kara's mood, which made Sam laugh lightly. The sound of it was welcome against Lena's ears, and she noticed it came with the first smile of the day. At least now she could say there had been at least one.


The Danvers sisters remained sat in their continued disbelief in Eliza's dreary hospital room well into the afternoon, static and hunched amongst the flurry of never-ending bodies moving in and out. They paid no mind to yet another knock at the door, which sounded less like a notice of entry and more of a request. If it had been any of the hospital staff, they usually entered moments after knocking, but the door remained closed. Alex tilted her head curiously and looked over at Kara then, who returned a slightly confused look of her own. It was the eldest sister who eventually got up and crossed the room to answer it, as whomever it was had not taken it upon themselves to come in. When Alex pulled the door open, a man in a thin, brown leather jacket stood there holding a bouquet of limp yellow and white hydrangeas. His eyes were dark, and he smiled unflatteringly around wrinkled lines of what was no doubt the home of a permanent scowl. She recognized him as Morgan Edge, and immediately froze.

"Alexandra, well hello there." He spoke gruffly. The sound of his voice alone made her feel faint.

Kara rose from her chair around the corner. "Alex, who is it?"

"Stay right there, Kara." Alex shot a hand out to keep her sister from the door, but her instinctive sense of protectiveness was a second too late. Kara had laid her eyes on him and stumbled backwards into a tray table, sending its contents clattering to the floor.

Morgan's eyes flicked to the blonde standing behind Alex and his jaw suddenly set hard. "I've come by to offer my well wishes to Mrs. Danvers. I heard she had fallen ill, and I was in the area." He said as he stuck the bouquet out at Alex.

Alex hesitated for a split-second and then took the pitiful, weepy flowers from his hands with a short swipe. She knew she wanted to be rid of the man that plagued her younger sister's nightmares… and fast. "Thank you, sir, but she's not taking any visitors today."

The man paused and furrowed his brow accusingly at Alex. "Not even for friends of the family?"

"Yes sir, and when I see one, I will tell them the same thing." Alex replied quickly.

Morgan's audacious expression shifted into something that looked like malice then and he sucked his teeth loudly. The way he glowered at her sent a chill up her spine. "You're going to no doubt need some help in the comin' months and I had a mind to offer it to you, but I see now that any assistance of mine would be unwelcome."

Alex wanted to punch him right in the mouth but kept her arms at her sides. She knew Morgan Edge well enough to know that he would only ever offer anything if he were the one to gain the most, of course. What possibly could he even want from them? With an audible gruff, he turned on his bootheels to exit the doorway and stomp back down the hall.

As soon as the door clicked shut, Alex spun to catch her sister on her way down to her knees. Kara began to gasp at the air in the room as if she were drowning. Sputtering and clawing at the collar on her shirt, the blonde rapidly spiraled into a full-blown panic attack and beads of sweat began to pour down from her hairline. It was all Alex could do to let Kara heave and squeeze her arms so tightly it hurt her, but she knew that Kara was lost to her body and the only choice she had was to let her ride it out.

As if their timing couldn't have possibly been any worse, Lena and Sam reentered the room with their dinner boxes. Lena's first reaction to setting her eyes upon the women huddled together on the floor was to run to Kara, but Sam grabbed her by an arm before she could take a step. "Wait."

Lena stood and watched in horror as Alex talked Kara into a series of controlled breaths and her hands eventually let go of her sister. She rubbed the backs of her arms where they pained her but stayed calmly sat on the floor until Kara's quaking began to cease. When the blonde finally returned to reality and realized she was not actually dying, her eyes floated up to meet Lena's green and blue ones, who Sam then tapped in the affirmative at a shoulder blade to go to her. Alex stood with a few more panted breaths, and Lena took her place.

"I've got you…" Lena whispered.

Kara had thrown her arms around her neck and sighed so many times that Lena thought surely twenty minutes at least had passed. It was as if Kara simply could not get close enough to her. She pulled at her arms and scooted ever closer, heaving great big heavy gasps every once in a while when she panicked momentarily at the thought of having forgotten how to breathe again.

It wasn't until later which Lena discovered that the man in the brown jacket they had passed in the hallway with a knit brow and scornful glare to match was Morgan Edge, and it was at that moment she knew; She'd not be going anywhere.


Kara and her sister spent the rest of the evening at Eliza's side discussing viable options for what to do next. Their mother would be discharged from the hospital soon and she could no longer be trusted to live in solitude, regrettable as that was. Then there was also the ranch to consider, and the horses.

"I could move back and keep it up, but I don't know if I could tend everything and Mama at the same time. I'd need to hire a hand and I don't even know what the books look like…" Kara trailed off as soon as the thought of money entered the conversation. Her forehead dropped back into her hands.

"Here look, this place has a location in Austin just a mile from our house…" Alex finally chimed in after a long while of silent reading. It drew Sam's attention, who came to stand next to Alex and peered down at the pamphlet. Lena had been in and out of the room periodically throughout the day to make calls, and every time she reentered the room it was as if she brought with her a lungful of fresh air. But she was missing her now and decided to stand and go in search of her. She needed to get out from underneath this low hanging, dark cloud above her head. Kara had never been so stressed in her entire life, and she shuddered to think of how much of a mess she would be if Lena had not insisted on being there for her every step of the way.

"Okay. Could you make some calls? I need to go get some air." Kara said as she rose from her chair stiffly and stretched. Her eyes fell to Eliza again, and she walked over to grasp at her hand one more time. She must have done it a hundred times already that day but had failed to rouse her mother even once. Kara just wanted her to be awake again. Was that too much to ask? Eliza had woken earlier in the day just for a moment and smiled at her daughters like the panicked confusion that transpired that morning had never happened… but her tiredness quickly overtook her once more—presumably from all of her medications—and she closed her eyes to sleep again. Kara's level of stress skyrocketed every time Eliza fell back asleep. For now, she very much needed to get out of that room.

"She's alright, Kara, go. We'll start looking into it now." Sam reassured her.

Kara nodded tiredly and then made her way out. The hallway felt like such a long stretch of bare-walled emptiness. People lose things here… Kara's anxiety slammed hard against the very middle of her. She felt her chest grow tighter and tighter until she pushed a door open and was hit with a fresh gust of outside air. With no small amount of relief, Kara pulled in a breath through her nose and felt the bottoms of her feet inside of her boots again. It felt like she had raised her head out of churning water and was finally able to breathe. The palms of her hands were clammy and sweat beaded on her top lip, which she wiped away with the sleeve of her shirt. Now that she'd somehow made it outside and into the courtyard more or less unscathed, her hands came to rest at her hips and she took great care to pull in long and deep breaths, pursing her lips to push them out slowly in an attempt to ease her sympathetic nervous system.

After a few moments, the familiar -clack- of Lena's short heels sounded from around a vined pillar in the green courtyard, and the woman stepping inside of them eventually emerged with a red lipped smile as she ended a call. Lena smiled at the sight of her as she walked up to Kara's front and into her space, and then ran the backs of her knuckles along a soft cheek.

"How are you doing, my love?" Lena asked, flitting her eyes back and forth between Kara's blue ones.

Kara sighed heavily. "Better now." She said, leaning into the hand palming her cheek now. "I think we've got a plan. Or half of one."

Lena smiled again. "That's something."

One or two nurses had come out of the same door Kara had exited and maybe half a dozen more people milled about the open space around them, but the blonde couldn't seem to tear her eyes away from Lena. They stood still, lingering in their gaze of one another, and then Kara leaned in to press a short kiss softly onto Lena's lips.

"You're something."