Chapter Text
Alex didn’t want to be at the dive bar.
She didn’t want to be sociable or friendly and she certainly didn’t want to recount the events of her day like Kara was making everyone do. It was shitty enough the first time.
No, she wanted to be locked away in the dark of her silent apartment, a bottle of Scotch in one hand and a glass in the other. She hadn’t even really said yes to going to the bar; it was a place she’d done her damnedest to avoid since, well… Maggie.
For the most part, she’d succeeded. She’d made her excuses when the Superfriends decided that they would hang out there instead of Kara’s apartment and if anyone noticed the pattern, they knew Alex well enough not to say anything.
This place was Maggie’s long before it was hers and Alex knows how little Maggie has in her life that she truly values or cares about. Or, at least, she knew. Still, it didn’t seem fair for Alex to claim it for herself, to show her face and make things harder for the both of them. She couldn’t take this away from Maggie too.
On the rare occasion she’d agreed to go, like on Open Mic Night, she left early or was saved by a perfectly-timed DEO emergency for which she was always indescribably relieved.
It just… holds too many memories of things she never wants to forget but are still too raw to think about, even after three months. Especially after three months.
Kara must pick up on her reluctance to get involved because she doesn’t push her to talk, and Alex is somewhat grateful, even if she’s annoyed with Kara because she’s the one who dragged her there in the first place.
She stares into the bottom of her glass like it holds all the answers to the endless questions that never stop hounding her every waking minute, but all she sees is her pinched reflection scowling back at her through the liquid.
In reality, she knows the answer to every single one of those questions because it’s always the same.
Maggie.
Everything comes back to Maggie. And now, Alex realises, it always will.
She’s mulled it over in her mind again and again and she knows she should have seen it sooner because Maggie was the one person she thought she could never live without.
But now she does, and Alex knows that it’s her fault, that it was her decision.
It’s a decision that haunts her every damn day.
She goes back to her apartment and it feels strange - wrong, definitely wrong - that there’s only her living there. The space suddenly seems huge for just one person, but at the same time, it feels claustrophobic, like all the happy memories of mornings spent in bed or evenings snuggled together on the couch binging box-sets are suffocating her, fighting to remind her of everything she’s lost, of what she chose to let go.
In the moments of blissful ignorance she experiences all too often as her mind flits back into consciousness each morning, she expects to feel a warm body pressed against hers or hear a key sliding into the lock at the end of a long night shift or inhale the sweet scent of pancakes as they’re being made freshly in the kitchen, but each time, the realisation that Maggie is gone and none of those things are going to happen hits her in the pit of her stomach and she’s left winded, crushed under the weight of the loss she lives over and over again.
Sometimes she catches a glimpse of her bare ring finger as she’s working, the slight indentation in her skin serving as a permanent physical symbol of all the declarations of ride or die, of all the firsts they wanted but never got to have, of the promises that were so full of honesty and intent but now lie empty and abandoned, though in Alex’s case, far from forgotten.
Other times, when she’s called out to an emergency in the city, she automatically reaches for the little silver band to take it off to make sure that it doesn’t get lost or damaged during a fight and suddenly she has to fight the overwhelming prickling in her eyes as her heart plummets because the ring isn’t there and Maggie isn’t by her side fighting with her like Alex always took for granted that she would be. Like she was supposed to be.
The Maggie-shaped hole in Alex’s life widens with each second that passes because there’s a part of her ingrained in every tiny detail of Alex and who she is and everything she does. There’s no escaping Maggie Sawyer and that makes Alex’s decision all the harder to live with.
In the moment, some small fragment of her choice made sense because she’d always dreamed of having a huge family, and a part of her didn’t want to let go of something she’d been so certain of for so long, but now…
Now Alex knows that Maggie was her family, that she made her happier than she had been in a long time - probably ever - and she threw it all away. Now she knows that she chose wrong.
That decision has thrown her life back into turmoil she hadn’t felt since her dad died and she’s certain that there’s only one way she could ever hope to fix it.
She’s thought so many times about texting Maggie or just hitting her speed dial, wondering how many rings it would take for her to pick up, or whether she even would at all. While so much of Alex wanted to talk to Maggie, to hear her voice or feel her hand in hers, it didn’t seem fair.
Alex had made the choice to end things, which she knew devastated Maggie as much as it did her, so just calling her out of the blue seemed wrong. Who’s to say she’d even want to talk to her again anyway?
Maggie had warned her that she only had one and Alex had promised that one was all she needed. That simple fact was what stopped Alex from shooting off a text or hitting dial on her phone whenever she had a little too much time on her hands that allowed her to stop and think for just a second about the mess her life had become again.
Contacting Maggie now would just be selfish. It would reopen old wounds and unearth buried feelings for both of them and Alex doesn’t think she could bear it if she hurt Maggie again. She respects her too much for that, and she doesn’t deserve any more pain. She doesn’t know how Maggie would react, how she’d feel, whether she’s moved on…
Alex doesn’t know Maggie anymore.
With a cynical, humourless exhale of laughter and a long swig of her drink, Alex adds that realisation to the mounting pile of things she’s come to understand with hindsight.
Hindsight’s a bitch.
She must set down her glass harder than she intended because she’s suddenly aware that the attention of the table is entirely focused on her.
“Alex?” Kara ducks her head so that she’s at the same eye level as Alex. “Are you okay?”
Alex scans the faces around the rest of the table. Winn quickly goes back to telling James about some upgrade for his suit while J’onn sits quietly with a bottle of his favourite Martian ale, smiling at M’gann when she looks over.
If he has any inkling of what’s going on in her head right now, he’s good at hiding it.
“I’m fine.”
Alex downs the last of her drink and she can see from the half-skeptical, half-pitying look on Kara’s face that she doesn’t buy it. It’s what Alex has been telling herself every day for the last three months, and she doesn’t believe it either. Knowing her sister, she’ll let the matter drop while they’ve got company, but as soon as they’re alone she’ll push Alex into sharing her feelings no matter how many times she insists that there’s nothing new to tell.
Kara wraps her arm around Alex’s shoulder and draws her in for a hug. Alex lets her head rest on Kara’s shoulder for a second before she sits up with a sigh and picks at the soggy coaster on the table in front of her.
“Oooh, I love this song!” Kara declares when the music changes, her usual perfect smile spreading across her face.
It’s some stupid, crappy song about love that Alex recognises but doesn’t really know, and she has no idea why it’s playing in a dive bar. The only thing it does is reinforce the pounding in her head that had started earlier that afternoon.
Tired of sitting at the table, Alex offers to get the next round of drinks. Shoving her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket, she ambles over to the bar, which is a little busier than normal because it’s Happy Hour. Turns out irony’s a bitch, too.
“I’ll be with you in a minute, Alex,” M’gann says when Alex slides onto a free bar stool.
“Thanks.”
Alex thrums her fingers in a steady rhythm against the sticky countertop as she waits, scanning the various posters and photos on the wall. She hears Kara, J’onn and James laugh at something Winn says, but she doesn’t turn around. She heaves a heavy sigh and pushes her hair out of her eyes habitually.
“What can I get you?” M’gann asks, drying her hands on a tea towel.
“Uh, just five beers please. And whatever you’re having.”
“Coming right up,” M’gann replies with a grateful smile. She grabs five beers from the fridge behind her and removes their tops one by one. She looks at Alex, raising a questioning eyebrow. “Long day?”
Alex snorts. Every day is a long day. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
M’gann places the bottles in front of Alex, who already has a twenty in her hand. “Thanks.”
“Next round’s on the house.”
Alex nods her appreciation as she slips the change into her pocket and grabs the bottles by their necks.
Still lost in her own mind, she’s not tuned in to much of what’s happening around her, so the sudden, involuntary stab she feels twisting deep in her gut leaves her reeling long before she understands why.
All through the night…..
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I’ll be awake and I’ll be with you…
M’gann frowns as she looks over, equally concerned and surprised by Alex’s outburst. Alex just shakes her head to show that there’s no problem, at least not one that M’gann needs to worry about.
All through the night…
Alex takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and counts to ten, slowly. It does little to quell the frustration or the heartache or the overwhelming sadness that claws at every fibre of her being as each line of the song sends a fresh memory racing through her slightly-sobered mind. The images are as sharp as the day they were made and Alex has to take another deep breath to steady herself enough to fight the stinging in her eyes.
It feels like a sick joke, a twisted act of cruelty intended to make her already-shitty day a million times worse. And the timing couldn’t have been any poorer; she’s tired and a little drunk and her headache pangs more than ever.
Deep down, Alex knows that it’s just a fluke, that whoever set it going on the jukebox has no idea what that song means, but it still feels personal. She allows herself a moment before she squares her shoulders, trying to pick herself up.
It’s just a song, she tells herself, but she knows it’s more than that.
It marked the end of something beautiful. It was the end of something beautiful.
The end of something Alex knows she’ll ever find again with anyone else.
She’ll never be able to hear that song without thinking of Maggie and what she gave up. She’ll never be able to hear those words without thinking of what they mean.
She decides she’ll polish off this beer and then call it a night; she’s had enough torture for one day. The music still deafens her even though it’s not overly loud and it’s hard not to let defeat slump back into her shoulders as she turns around.
Until it ends there is no end…
Alex can’t breathe.
All the oxygen is sucked from her lungs and the song is drowned out by the intense thrumming in her ears as her heart beats a mile a minute because suddenly she’s looking into the brownest eyes she’s ever known, eyes she so loved to get lost in. Pools of brown that she’d wake up to every day, smiling back at her softly, so warm and full of love.
Except that’s all gone.
As Alex sinks into the depths of Maggie’s eyes, all she sees is shock and sadness as the smaller woman stares wide-eyed back at her. A part of Alex’s swirling mind registers the hurt that flashes through them, and it feels like there’s a brick sitting in her stomach, weighing heavily and sinking further and further because she’s the cause of that hurt.
But the thing that makes it so, so much worse, is the absence of anger.
In the time that their eyes are locked, Alex sees so many different emotions laced through Maggie’s, but anger isn’t one of them, and that scares Alex because Maggie has every right to be angry with her, though nobody could be more bitter with Alex than herself. Did she need Maggie to be angry with her, to feel some sort of resentment? Maybe she did, selfishly. But Maggie isn’t like that.
She always wondered what would happen when their paths inevitably crossed. Would Maggie acknowledge her? Would she talk to her? Would she run for the hills? Would Alex be able to say the things she’s practiced a million times in her head? Would she be able to say anything at all?
A part of Alex hadn’t wanted to know the answers because there was a chance that they would be negative, and that just meant more suffering for both of them. She’d played out so many scenarios in her mind, and not many of them had the happy ending she wished they were already living. The happy ending they should have been living.
Now she’ll find out for real.
Someone in the room calls Alex’s name, but Alex never tears her eyes from Maggie.
The detective blinks once and Alex can see the quick rise and fall of her chest, the way that she seems frozen in her seat like a rabbit caught in headlights. She sees Maggie swallow hard as her eyebrows furrow together slightly. She’s clearly as jarred as Alex.
There’s no sign of her signature dimples, the ones that made Alex’s heart swoop and pretty much stop every time they popped out, and why would there be? Looking at Maggie’s face, it’s like they never even existed, and Alex doesn’t think she deserves to ever see them again anyway. She used to be the reason they spread across her cheeks. Now she’s the reason they’re gone.
Alex hears her name called again, more concerned this time.
And then Maggie is getting out of her seat, throwing her favourite leather jacket on, her expression now worryingly unreadable.
“Alex, what’s up? Are you okay?” Kara materialises in front of Alex, but Alex doesn’t look at her, watching as Maggie says something to the people she’s with.
“Alex?” Kara follows Alex’s line of sight, her crinkle forming between her eyebrows when she sees the reason for Alex’s unresponsive behaviour. “Maggie?”
Maggie turns on her heels and makes a beeline for the door. She throws one last glance Alex’s way as she pushes it open, but it’s brief and she doesn’t make eye contact.
“Maggie!” Alex’s legs move before she’s even thought about what she’s doing. She thrusts the beers into the arms of her confused sister and almost finds herself running across the room, watching as Maggie’s figure disappears through the door as she tries to catch up.
For such a tiny person, she’s quick.
“Maggie!” Alex bursts through the door. “Maggie, wait!”
Alex’s heart skips a beat when Maggie’s stride falters. She stands with her back to Alex for a second, and Alex wonders whether Maggie feels the same sensation of anxiety mixed with a sudden rush of adrenaline clutching at every cell in her body. Then she turns around, her face impassive. Her eyes don’t quite meet Alex’s, her arms folded tightly into her body and Alex senses that she’s almost completely shut off from her.
Alex is the first to break the silence, feeling like it’s her responsibility to make the first move. She was the one who followed Maggie, after all. “You don’t have to leave.” Despite everything she wants to say, it’s the only coherent sentence that will form in Alex’s mind.
Maggie is quiet for a moment and that unnerves Alex. Then she sees the way that Maggie’s eyes suddenly look sad again, a little lost. Empty. “I can’t, Alex.”
Despite her mostly-guarded demeanour, Alex hears the slight waiver in Maggie’s voice. She doesn’t know what to make of Maggie’s words; it’s a loaded statement. And then Maggie is turning around, leaving Alex with no time to figure it out.
“Maggie, don’t leave. I, uh, I’ll go.”
It feels like any hope that Alex had of trying to make sure that the bar was Maggie’s place has gone, though she’ll be damned if she gives up trying. She owes Maggie that.
Maggie clears her throat. “You don’t have to do that. I didn’t really feel like coming out for a drink anyway.”
Alex gives a small nod of understanding. “Yeah, Kara kind of dragged me here too. I wasn’t really feelin’ it.”
‘Feelin’ it?’ Control yourself, Danvers.
Alex can’t let her mouth run away from her like it usually does, not now. She just needs to take a deep breath, compose herself and then let Maggie get on with her life.
Maggie’s mouth presses into a thin line. Three months ago, that would have been a knowing smile. “Ah.”
A heavy silence hangs between them, as thick as the clouds above them that threaten to erupt at any second.
“So, uh…” Alex scratches the back of her head and toes the ground with her shoe. She takes a hesitant step forward and gestures past Maggie. “I’ll go.”
“If you’re sure.”
Alex nods.
How did they get here? How did it get to this? When did they become that couple, the one that couldn’t be in the same room as one another?
Except this is different from most break-ups. Their apparent inability to be around each other isn’t caused by burning hatred, at least Alex hopes not - she could never hate Maggie. No, it all stems from pain. Being around each other, but not together… That’s a whole world of agony and torment that Alex is sure neither of them needs.
It still tortures Alex whenever she thinks about Maggie and how much she loves her, so to be this close to her, to talk to her and not be able to reach out to touch her or wrap her arms around her or pull her in for a kiss… It shatters her heart into a million tiny pieces that she doesn’t know how to put back together.
With a deep, heavy breath, Alex begins to walk away from the bar, deciding she’ll text Kara when she gets back to her apartment. Her heart speeds up the closer she gets to Maggie, who is walking the other way, her head always looking down.
And then Alex is standing by her bike, feeling further away from Maggie than ever. “Night, Mags.”
She silently curses herself for using her nickname for Maggie, but if the other woman notices, she doesn’t let it show.
“Yeah, uh, see you around, Danvers.”
And then Maggie is turning around, heading back towards the door and the words are coming out of Alex’s mouth before she even knows she’s saying them, cutting through the air like a knife.
“I miss you, Maggie.”
Alex sees Maggie freeze, her hand half way towards the door handle, just as the first drops of rain begin to fall from the sky. Hell, she’s as surprised as Maggie by her sudden revelation. When Maggie doesn’t move, Alex knows that she has to say something else.
“I miss you every day.” Alex can’t stop the little crack in her voice or the way that her throat constricts as she waits for Maggie to do something.
After what feels like an eternity to Alex, Maggie glances over her shoulder. Alex sees the way that Maggie’s hands curl into loose fists and unfurl repeatedly. She’s only ever seen her do that when she’s trying to figure something out, mulling things over and putting pieces together in her mind like the outstanding detective she is.
Maggie looks down again before she turns around slowly. Alex sees the way she worries her bottom lip between her teeth, and a few more seconds pass before she says anything.
“What…” Maggie squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. “What do you want me to say? That I miss you too? Because I do, Alex, so much. But that still doesn’t change the fact that we want different things. I can’t be the one to hold you back.” Maggie folds her arms tight across her body, and Alex worries that she’s already lost her before she ever really had chance to get her back. “I can’t be the reason you’re unhappy.”
“Oh, Maggie, no,” Alex says softly, instinctively taking a step closer to Maggie, who eyes her as she does so. Alex yearns to reach out, to touch her. “You could never make me unhappy, please know that-”
“But kids would make you happier.”
The almost inaudible words filled with heartbreak and agony pierce Alex’s skin and she feels the ache seep deep into her bones. This is the thing she’s asked herself time and time again with every sleepless night, solo bike ride, long shower, but standing here in the now-pouring rain, the answer has never been clearer; Maggie is the only one who’ll ever truly make her feel complete.
“Maybe once, yeah. Maybe, at one time in my life, even when I thought I’d never find my soulmate, nothing would’ve made me happier than to have kids of my own. And I guess I still believed that three months ago.” Maggie isn’t looking at Alex anymore; her gaze is fully trained on a puddle that’s forming quickly between them. “But being without you, Maggie…. I’ve never felt so lonely or lost or unhappy in my life. You made me realise who I am, and that is nothing without you. I want you.” Raw emotion pours into Alex’s voice. “When I told you I loved you forever, it wasn’t a lie. I’ve never stopped loving you and I never will.”
The rain beats down unrelentingly now, soaking both women to the skin, but neither makes a move to go inside. Maggie pushes away a clump of hair that was plastered to her cheek and nibbles at the edge of her thumb, only looking up at Alex with her sudden declaration of what she wants.
Of who she wants.
Alex doesn’t know what to do; should she say something else, should she keep quiet and let Maggie have a second to process things… Has she said too much and completely and utterly ruined everything forever?
Maggie shoves her hands into her jacket pockets. “I spent a lot of my life learning to be alone, to only have a few people care about me and only a few to care about. I learned to be okay with that because I had to be. And then, out of nowhere, there was you and this whole new family. You gave me so much more than I ever thought I’d have or even deserved and I’ll always be grateful for that, but Alex…. I couldn’t lose you again.”
Hearing those words in all their naked honesty, a sense of uncharacteristic boldness overcomes Alex. She strides forward, closing the gap between her and Maggie, leaving only inches between them. Alex is so close she can smell Maggie’s sweet perfume, the one that lingers on Alex’s favourite t-shirt that she keeps buried in her drawer. Maggie doesn’t react, and Alex doesn’t know whether to interpret that as good or bad.
“You told me that I got one, and I blew it, I know that,” Alex begins, pushing her sodden hair out of her eyes.
She doesn’t get to finish.
All the breath is jarred from her lungs as she’s pushed forcefully against the wall. She feels a sense of warmth spread through her body - something that she hasn’t experienced for a long time - despite the bitter cold of the rain that stings her skin because Maggie’s lips are on hers, Maggie’s hands are cupping her cheeks, Maggie’s body is moulding into hers, pressing her against the wall and Alex is kissing back, slipping her hands down Maggie’s muscular back until they reach her waist, pulling her in impossibly closer. Her hands instinctively find her favourite spot on Maggie’s body, the one that has Maggie moaning into her mouth, and she feels a fresh, intense heat burn through her veins, a sensation that only Maggie could give her.
After a minute of getting lost in Maggie and everything she’s missed for a quarter of a year, Alex forces herself to break away, to take a second. She finds Maggie’s eyes searching hers, a flicker of the light that had been visibly extinguished reigniting and she feels herself soften even more when Maggie looks up to the sky. Alex follows her gaze and she laughs for the first time in months, partly at the rain and how truly drowned they are, but mostly because she can’t contain her happiness at having Maggie in her arms again.
She looks down to find Maggie looking back at her, a hint of her perfect dimples beginning to paint her cheeks and Alex knows that Maggie feels the same in that moment without saying. Alex feels her heart swell with the love that never faltered, love that she never should have questioned or thrown away. She tucks a smattering of Maggie’s hair behind her ear and is quick to flip their positions so that Maggie is thrust against the wall.
Alex captures Maggie’s lips and traces her fingertips down her perfect jaw as the smaller woman’s hands find Alex’s taut back, holding her tight.
A part of Alex’s brain that she readily chooses to ignore tells her that this isn’t it; they’ll have to talk. A lot. But for now, with Maggie’s lips on hers and her hands finding her hair and one of her thighs slipped between her legs, Alex’s doesn’t care. Right now is all that matters, and right now is perfect.
This time, there’s no meter, just precious time to make up for all the days they’ve spent apart. Tonight, this is where they’re supposed to be.
Maybe forever won’t be an empty promise after all.