Chapter Ten: People Like Us
It was midafternoon when Kara pulled into the driveway at Alex and Sam's, having driven over an hour and a half in what felt like thirty minutes. She spent that time exhausting every memory she had of one of the most difficult times in her life, apart from losing her parents, and so many things started to become clear along the way. They hit her one at a time, over and over and over.
Kara smacked the steering wheel with the heel of her hand every time something made sense. Every clipped word and conversation cut short whenever she would enter a room, every last-minute cancellation, every time her friends were unable to come to the phone, not to mention the fact that they quit taking her calls altogether. The isolation she had felt from the last legs of her childhood and well into her adulthood was a lonely and desolate hell on earth… and was a kind of pain that she wouldn't wish on anyone, no matter how deserving. Kara slowly began to realize that all the special treatment and sickeningly kind words that had been given to her for most of her life was a fantastically cruel and unusual punishment for a supposed crime that she had been unaware of committing. All while she had been unknowingly socially excommunicated, and essentially cut off from all friendships and interactions with others her age. Her only lifeline to the real world was Alex, and even she had left her behind to wither and die in that town, a hollow and unfulfilled shell of a person.
She was upset with herself. She was upset with her sister. She was upset with Hank. Quite frankly, she was upset with everyone and everything. Once she was parked, her boots thudded up the concrete walk to her sister's front door and it was there that she pounded against it with a fist. Sam answered quickly, giving Kara a bewildered look as she opened the door.
"Kara, what's wrong?" The brunette asked, immediately concerned. It was unlike the younger Danvers to just show up unannounced when they usually had to prod at her for weeks for a visit… unless of course Lena was due to visit at the same time.
"Where's my sister?" Kara hurriedly replied with a question of her own.
"She's working a case—" Sam pulled the door open wider and stepped through, reaching out for the blonde. "Tell me what's wrong… you're scaring me."
Kara recoiled with her shoulder. "I just need to talk to my sister, I- I think I left my phone at home." The tears in her eyes quickly menaced their return.
"Okay, okay, come inside then before you spontaneously combust or something." Sam instructed as she urged her across the threshold, shutting the door behind them. "Sit there on the couch for a sec, let me go call her." The brunette gestured into the living room and turned to step down the hallway, but not before stopping in her tracks to give one last look at the frenetic and somewhat broken looking woman behind her. "Kara please, whatever it is—"
Kara merely turned her face away, trembling in her effort to keep still and to keep from falling apart. Sam, no doubt feeling dejected, seemed to hang her head a bit and then stepped away to go and call her wife.
Back in the living room, it was everything the blonde could do to keep from doubling over and covering her ears with her hands. For years she had awakened during the night with the sounds of screams, realizing only that they were her own. A brown and beaten leather gambler hat that ghosted up and down a never-ending set of stairs haunted her dreams, and with them the sounds of loud shouting voices were usually what clapped her hands around the sides of her head in an effort to protect herself.
She sat at the edge of the couch cushions, moving from one to the other with her overwhelming state of anxiousness. The world beneath her feet was spinning much too fast, and she was doing everything she could just to hold on for dear life. Back and forth Kara flitted from one corner of the living room to the other while she waited for her sister. Sam, frightened beyond words, stood just out of sight in the kitchen and watched as the youngest Danvers sibling languished and thrashed about the place quietly, appearing as though she were lost in her own personal hell. Kara had made it to the floor in front of the couch where she hugged her knees after another few minutes of aimless, agitated pacing and eventually began to rock back and forth slightly as if to self-soothe.
Finally, the front door swung open, and a flash of reddish-brown hair followed.
"Kara! What's wrong—" Alex called out to her younger sister as she rushed into the living room. "What's happened?"
Kara, angry enough to spit nails, stood and clenched her fists at her sides. "Why don't you tell me?" A lump in her throat bobbed wildly up and down with the urge to cry again.
"What are you talking about?" The panic in Alex's voice subsided then into something of a dull trepidation.
"April! April Edge- Tell me what happened to her and don't you fucking lie to me." Kara shouted.
"You watch your mouth little sister; you are still in my house." Alex's tone suddenly became very serious. She looked over her shoulder then at Sam, who stood just outside of the kitchen with wide eyes. "Babe, I need to talk to Kara for a minute, may we please have the room?"
Sam nodded her head apprehensively. "Okay… I'll be in the back." Her eyes signaled concern once more and Alex merely gave a nod of her own in return.
Now that they were alone, Alex turned her attention back to her sister and held her hands out in surrender as she took careful steps forward as if to embrace her. Kara bristled, and the anger returned.
"No. You tell me what happened to April. Now." The blonde demanded, her voice shaking a bit.
"Okay." Alex withdrew her hands and smoothed the hair at the back of her neck. "I will. But first I need you to know how much it killed me to keep it from you."
Kara felt like she was living in a horror movie. "Keep what from me…?" She was terrified of what Alex was about to tell her and suddenly regretted the fact that any of it was happening or being said at all.
How do I make it stop? How do I make it stop… How do I make it stop…
Her sister's face grew sullen then, and the whites of her eyes became a harsh tint of pink from trapping her tears. "Do you remember when we heard that April went to bible camp after Daddy died?" Kara continued to stand and stare at her attentively, immobilized with terror. "It was a different kind of camp, Kara. They—" Alex began to wring her hands together anxiously, taking another longer moment to find the right words. "It was a place where they thought they could… fix people. People like us, Kara." She gestured with her hand then between them. "But she—" Alex found it so difficult to verbalize after so many years of hiding the truth from her younger sister. Finally, and with no small amount of anguish, the oldest Danvers sister drew in a deep breath and finished, "She never left. They found her in her room with a note."
"No. Please—" Kara pleaded and began to take great gasps for air. "No…" It was as if her lungs were almost powerless and she had to work double-time to get them to function.
"Kara—" Alex said in an attempt to calm her and moved toward her again.
"No, Alex- no!" She shouted again, and finally; she broke. "No!"
The blonde balled her fists over her eyes and cried openly. Her voice was hoarse with the strength of her tormented weeping, and she sounded much like that of a small, wounded animal stuck in a foothold trap. Her bawling sent her to her knees back onto the floor in front of the couch.
Alex, stricken with a profound sense of guilt and sadness, began to cry for her sister. "I wanted to tell you, I swear..."
"Why didn't you!?" Kara snapped at her in a loud voice, shoving the pair of hands that reached down for her shoulders away.
"Because I love you!" Alex shot back. "Because I love you and I knew how badly it would hurt you, and because it was one of the last times I let Mama convince me to do something I shouldn't have." She dropped to her knees in front of Kara, reaching out for her again. "She wanted me to help you to forget and to move on and… I just couldn't stay in that house and continue lie to you every day. Kara, listen to me, I care about you so much and I just want you to be okay—"
"Oh, you care?! You left, Alex! You left me there…!" Kara screamed, swatting her sister's hands from her arms yet again. She could count on one hand all the times she had ever yelled at her sister in her life. It felt awful, but once she had tipped over and spilled, it came rushing out of her like a raging river.
"What about me, goddammit!?" Alex shouted finally; a loud sob lurching its way painfully out of her chest. She was fighting to speak between her tears at this point and sat back on her feet with a defeated gust of breath. "Do you know how many times I got my ass handed to me after school because I wouldn't let the boys in my grade talk about you?" Alex continued, throwing her hands up in the air, "All preconceived notions of 'never hit a girl' went right out the window as soon as I started swinging." Alex had fallen back into her natural accent, and it was heavy with frustration. "They'd follow you and they'd spit at you…" The masseter muscles in her jaw worked ferociously as she gnashed the back of her teeth repeatedly. "D'you remember any of that?!"
Kara stilled then, blinking through her tears.
"You got older, and you got quieter." Alex said, softer now. "You wouldn't talk to me anymore. Why do you think I kept trying to get you to come out here all the time?" She began to cry in between her words freely. "I will never stop caring about you. I wouldn't have sped halfway across the city in an unmarked because my wife told me you were here and that something was very wrong if I didn't care about you, Kara." She tried to place a hand on her sister one last time, who only leaned softly out of the way instead of recoiling altogether.
"I had to leave. It was an impossible situation, and I am so sorry. I wish I had been stronger. But I want you to know something else… That woman down the hall?" Alex said, lifting a hand to point away from them. "That woman loves me, Kara, more than I will probably ever know. I was dyin' and she gave me something to live for. She gave me back myself." She admitted, folding her hands into her lap with a sigh. "Believe me, I wanted to take you with me. But… I don't really have to sit here and tell you about leading a horse to water, do I?
Without another word, Kara crumpled over onto her legs like a wooden doll whose string had been cut loose and sobbed loudly, and it was only then that Alex was finally able to wrap her arms around her. She let Kara weep and scream her agonies into her shoulder for what felt like an hour, and then when the blonde had begun to quiet and heaved long, exhausted sighs one after the other behind her tears, Sam peeked her head out of the hallway and into the living room.
"Alex…?" The brunette asked silently with her eyes to join them. A welcoming hand floated out for her, beckoning her to come closer and she ran to them, and folded herself inside Alex's arms with her own tightly around Kara. She let out a sigh of relief then. "I'm glad that's over. You two are very loud and that was very scary."
Kara let herself be squeezed again. "I'm sorry for yellin'—"
"No no, it's alright. I mean, just- next time let me know beforehand so I can go spend an hour at the bookstore with your sister's credit card instead."
That pulled a quiet laugh from the youngest in the room. Alex kissed the top of her wife's head and then Kara's. They sat there on the floor of the living room for a long time after and just held each other knowing that moments like these, spent in the arms of the people you love, are best treasured quietly and with deep reverence.
Later that afternoon, Sam insisted that Kara stay the night and take the guest bedroom. Alex soon after had asked Kara to keep her company while she set up the charcoal grill on their back patio to cook burgers for dinner. When the sun drooped lower in the sky, the heat began to dissipate and with the small westerly breeze, it was a decent evening to be outside. The springtime was nearing its end, and very quickly the scorch of summer would be upon them. Inside the house, Sam had happily squirreled herself away for the evening with her 'to be read' pile of books and a jar of peanut butter.
Kara still had trouble with the fog in her mind that dwelled after such an emotional upset, but her sister took great care to keep her engaged and present as they sat together and drank a few beers.
"Mama got your invitations." The blonde said, breaking their comfortable silence as they sat in their fold-out lawn chairs. "Both of them."
"I reckoned she did." Alex replied somewhat dismissively, peeling back a corner of the label on her beer with a thumbnail. She acted as if hearing the truth out loud didn't hurt any more than knowing it on the inside did.
Kara sat with that for a moment and then asked carefully, "Have you talked to her… at all?"
Alex merely pursed her lips into a frown and shook her head. "We don't do that anymore." She admitted, taking another long pull from her beer. "Not like we ever did much of it before either."
"But you still invited her."
Her older sister nodded solemnly. "She's still my mom." She sighed then. "I just… I wish things had been different. So many things, for both of us." Alex said as she turned her head and gave Kara a sad smile.
"I know." The blonde replied. "I'll never be able to thank you enough for watching over me and giving up a lot of your childhood to safeguard mine. But... why?"
Alex craned her head backwards and looked up at the sky. "Well." She took another swig of her beer. "Someone had to do it." Leaning back into her chair, she crossed an ankle over a knee and took a deep breath in and out before continuing, "I knew that if I didn't, nobody else would. Not the way you needed." The mahogany-haired woman brought her head forward again and tossed her chin at her sister. "I just… knew that it was something I was meant to do. This is going to sound—" She scrunched her face with a sort of 'blech' gesture, "But… I've always felt like it was why I was put on earth. To take care of you."
Kara trapped the bubbling laughter that dared to rise out of her. "Yeah. That does sound a bit—" She mimicked the grossed-out face from her older sister just moments before and Alex swung the back of her hand in her direction in response.
"Oh- shut up and grab me another beer." Alex scoffed. Kara stood up and let loose a laugh, and then came back to her seat with two more bottles. She handed one to Alex and leaned forward with her elbows perched on her knees.
"Can I tell you something?" The youngest Danvers asked quietly.
"Kara, honestly, I wish that you would so I can finally stop talking." Alex said as she rolled her eyes with a feigned sense of desperation. They laughed again.
"I'm pretty sure Lena is my Sam."
When Alex heard the words, she half-expected the blonde sitting next to her to be staring down at the ground or out into space, anywhere but at her… but when she lifted her eyes, there she was, looking at her dead on.
Alex tossed her brow agreeingly. "I know. I'm pretty sure I knew before you did. Hell, Sam apparently knew before anyone did." She replied before turning in her chair to face her younger sister directly and chose to speak her next words plainly. "You need to talk to her."
Kara nodded. "I know."