Chapter Text
After returning from Maaldoria, med checks were required for everyone who had gone off-world—superhuman or not. Alex had cleared her own examination quickly, then settled in beside Kara, who was glaring daggers at Mon-El for revealing to the doctors that she’d been electrocuted by some sort of alien weapon, while she was put through as many tests as could be run with her bulletproof skin.
Though Alex wanted nothing more than to keep her sister in sight, once Kara (and Mon-El) had been cleared, the sisters split up; Kara went to check on the victims, while Alex did the same for her fellow DEO agents. The fact that Kara had Mon-El at her side only made Alex feel slightly better, so she quickly made her way to the other wing of the medbay, where her team was being examined.
Fortunately, most of the team was still in the vicinity, so Alex quickly conversed with each of them, doing a quick assessment of her own, before seeking out the department head, Dr. Amanda Kirby, for final confirmation.
She rapped gently on the door Dr. Kirby’s office, and opened it when she was told to do so.
“I assume you’re here for an update on your team?” Dr. Kirby said as soon as Alex had entered.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Fortunately, it’s good news. Alpha Team appears to have suffered no ill effects from their trip to Maaldoria. All their blood work and vitals are well within normal ranges, and they’ve been cleared to leave the facility at their leisure.”
Alex breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe her team when they insisted they were fine, but she knew they would say anything to speed up the post-mission evals, minimize paperwork, and get back to their normal lives. This time at least, it appeared all of them had been honest. “That is good news. Thank you, ma’am.”
“Except of course for Agent Schott.”
“What about Agent Schott?” Alex asked, her stomach clenching painfully in anticipation of what was surely horrible news. Of course, Winn, a civilian, had gotten into something when they’d—when she’d—left him alone on an alien planet...
“According to the computers, he passed every test we administered. The only problem is, I never saw him here.”
After Alex made sure Winn was alright, she was going to kill him.
“Going forward, we need a paper file for Agent Schott,” she stated. “Locked in a file cabinet with an old-fashioned key. No combination locks: I’ve seen him pick those.”
Dr. Kirby nodded, unfazed by the request. “I’ll see what I can do, Agent Danvers. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to file these reports.”
“Of course.”
After exiting Dr. Kirby’s office, Alex made her way to the first floor bullpen where she knew J’onn would be reviewing every result Dr. Kirby was filing while simultaneously coordinating efforts to get all of the victims returned to their homes.
“J’onn, I need to go,” Alex said without greeting. “But I will be back later to help with whatever you need.”
J’onn looked over at her and nodded. “Take care of Agent Schott.”
Alex didn’t bother asking how he’d known.
Winn was perched on the edge of the countertop in his bathroom, turned at the waist to examine the bruising that ran along his right side.
Until yesterday, he hadn’t been aware how many basic bodily functions required movement of his chest. The bones hurt, every breath burned, and he’d almost doubled over the first time he’d tried to pull on a T-shirt.
He started as he heard a knock on his door, hissed as that pulled on his side, and in his current state of exhaustion, almost banged his head into the mirror before he caught himself with his shoulder. He really hoped it was just his take-out, which he planned on shoveling in at a Kara-Danvers-esque rate then crashing. Hard. For at least eighteen hours. The DEO was just going to have to deal when he called in late tomorrow. After the day he'd had, he deserved at least that much.
Winn hadn’t slept much last night, jolting upright, soaked in sweat, as memories of staring down a gun barrel danced on the backs of his eyelids. If James had been just a second slower, Winn wasn’t sure he’d still be sitting here today.
Despite what was sure to be a repeat performance if he closed his eyes, Winn’s body was so desperate for rest that he was barely holding himself upright on the countertop. It took quite a bit of effort to lower himself to the ground without completely collapsing.
“Coming,” he called, yanking down the hem of his shirt and hissing as that motion too pulled at his bruised side.
On the way out of his bathroom, he stopped at his computer station to check who it was, and was surprised to find Alex on the other side of the door, a large silver suitcase in hand.
This could not be good.
If he revealed nothing and smiled his way through it, hopefully this encounter would be short and he could go to bed. Screw takeout. He wasn’t all that hungry anyway.
Winn forced on a smile, pushed his hair away from his face, and opened the door. “Hi, Alex,” he said cheerily. “What brings you to this—”
“You skipped your medical check." With that, she pushed her way into his apartment and kicked the door closed with her foot.
Damn it. Winn was banking on having at least another day before someone noticed.
“My test results say otherwise,” he said levelly, his smile never slipping from his face.
“Your fake test results. Dr. Kirby says she never saw you.”
Up until that point, Winn was pretty sure Dr. Kirby couldn’t have picked him out of a line-up if his life depended on it. It was both touching, but incredibly unfortunate giving the timing, that he was wrong.
Recovering quickly, Winn waved his hand at Alex. “I’m fine. Everyone else came back clean. I wasn’t exposed to anything they weren’t.”
“It’s protocol,” she insisted as she hoisted the suitcase onto the table and popped open the lid. “Now sit.”
“Alex… Alex, wait. Just wait.” Winn hurried over to the table, wincing as his side protested the quick motion, and waved his hands to distract her from her mission. “This really isn’t necessary. I’m fine. You’re fine. Nothing’s broken—” The rest of his protest died in his mouth as he saw her expression and belatedly realized that was the wrong thing to say.
“Why should something be broken?” Alex asked, her tone sharp as a razor wire.
Winn debated lying again, but that would most likely end up with Alex threatening him rather spectacularly with just her ring finger. The fastest course of action now was to downplay what had happened, enough to where he could get away without an examination.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Alex, but he hated doctors, hospitals and medbays in general. He’d seen, and been to, a lot of them after his dad had gone to prison (both psych and other), and more than a few times in grade and high school. Despite Winn’s best efforts, the winning combination of his father’s infamy, his own intellect, and his propensity to keep to himself, vainly trying to get through school without causing any incidents, had made him a target more than a few times. That that’d left him with both a deep-seeded desire to leave Newark at eighteen and never ever return, and a fairly decent grasp of basic medicine, which was how he knew his current set of injuries were painful but minor, and would heal on their own.
“The alien may have thrown me around a little bit before I knocked him out,” Winn replied, his tone as level as he could manage. “But I’m fine, really.”
“So you’ve said.” Alex pulled out the chair next to her and patted the seat. “Sit.”
“Alex,” Winn whined, drawing out the syllables of her name in a final plea to just get her to leave. He didn’t want to be examined and was fairly certain that if he sat, he wasn’t going to be getting up again, which was only going to bode worse for him when she inevitably noticed.
“Sit or I call J’onn.”
Damn her. “That’s low even for you, Danvers,” Winn scowled. Without another valid option though, he lowered himself into the chair.
After Alex took his blood and sent the portable machine spinning as it analyzed it, she turned her attention to his eye. “I don’t suppose you got this checked out yesterday?” she asked as she pulled on a set of latex gloves.
“No need. It’s not broken, and my vision is not impaired.”
He thought he might have offered too much information from the way she was now staring at him, so instead of shutting up and letting her form her own conclusions, he barreled forward, trying to make it better. “I’ve, uh, picked up a few things working with you all. It’s hard not to, given how banged up you all get on these missions of late.”
Alex still looked less than convinced. However, she did let the subject drop and tuned her attention back to Winn’s eye, which thankfully was far less swollen than it had been this morning. “A broken cheekbone is the least of my worries when it comes to eye injuries,” she said as she gently palpated from his cheek to his forehead. “I really should have dragged you to medical yesterday, but I was so distracted about Maggie staying—” She broke off in an instant and looked up at Winn, almost in a panic.
Winn quickly reached up and grabbed her hand, gently pulling it away from his face and clasping it between them. “Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay, Alex. I’ve suspected for a while now. I’m really, really, really happy for you.”
Alex’s panicked expression morphed into one of shock. “You have?”
“Who do you think has to go over the phone bills you’re trying to expense?” Winn asked, before pointing at himself. “Seriously, though, four hour phone conversations are not normal. What even do you both talk about for that long?” He paused, then wrinkled his nose as he quickly added, “Actually, don’t tell me. I think I’d rather not know.”
“You’re not upset?” At this, Alex actually looked away, as if Winn could be anything but happy for her in this moment.
“Alex. Hey, look at me.” She did, somewhat reluctantly, looking as uncertain as Winn had ever seen her. “I could never be upset with you for being who you are.”
Alex nodded fast and repeatedly, her lips pressed tightly together and her eyes glinting with a hint of wetness. “I haven’t told anyone else,” she said softly. “Well, besides Kara and my mom, so can you…”
“Absotively posilutely. Your secret is safe with me.”
“Thank you.” Without warning, Alex pulled Winn into a painfully tight hug, releasing him the second he yelped in pain. “What was that?”
So caught up in the moment, the truth slipped out before Winn could temper it. “Just some bruised ribs.”
In that second, any sign of their previous conversation and ensuing feelings were gone. Alex’s expression had snapped back to pure business. “Yesterday or today?”
The damage had already been done, so Winn preemptively winced as he responded, “Both?”
“Shirt up. Now.”
After Alex declared Winn's injuries superficial, his bloodwork normal, and had applied some sort of miracle salve to his bruises—which holy hell, he could pull in a full breath again and not feel like The Hulk was sitting on his chest—she packed up her suitcase, but didn’t leave.
Winn was fading even faster now, solely managing to keep himself upright by leveraging his elbow against the side of the table. And his takeout hadn’t arrived yet. Though, now that he thought about it, it was possible he’d never actually submitted the order. Not that he was that hungry anymore anyway. Sleep was his number one priority as soon as Alex left.
“Um, everything okay?” Winn asked, really hoping that answer was ‘yes’. He steeled himself though, just in case it wasn’t.
“I came here for another reason.” Alex took a deep breath then said, “I need to apologize.”
Winn blinked at her. “Huh?”
“For how I treated you at the clinic.”
That was so totally unexpected but Winn's brain refused to put the pieces together to understand why. “I don’t—I don’t get it.”
“I’m sorry for insisting you go with me to Slavers’ Moon. I know you’d programmed the tablet, but I was so worried about Kara that I literally couldn’t think about anything else, including how to get us home. So I made you come along. Then left you alone, after everything you’d told me.” She exhaled deeply then continued, “I shouldn’t have done that. I should have left Vasquez with you. But I was so worried about Kara, on another planet without her powers, I…” she trailed off with a shrug. “I’m sorry, Winn.”
Truth be told, it would have been nice to have had some backup on Maaldoria, given everything, but if Vasquez had been there, she would have just shot the alien, before Winn had had a chance to prove himself to, well, himself. “You were right though,” was all he said. “I needed to get back out there.” It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d seen Alex push for something she knew was right, and she had ended up being right. He couldn’t stay hidden in the van or behind a desk for forever. Not with how their cases were escalating of late.
“But not like that. Not without training, not without a weapon, and certainly not alone on an alien planet. You've always had my back, and I blew my chance to have yours.”
Upon seeing the pained expression on Alex's face, Winn learned forward and pulled her into a hug. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m okay. We’re okay. I knocked out an alien and didn't die in the process, nabbed some space dirt, and everyone got home in one piece. That's a win in my book.”
He felt Alex nod into his shoulder as she wrapped her arms around him, this time much more gently.
“I’ll do better next time. I won’t go crazy. We’ll make sure you have some training—”
Winn pulled away in surprise. “What? No! No, no, no, no, no.” He’d heard stories of the DEO training regime and had seen how battered all the newbies, but especially Demos, had incurred during his first three months. “I take it all back. I’m perfectly happy in the van and/or behind my desk. I promise I won’t ever get out again. Ever! Just don’t put me through training.”
Alex either didn’t notice that he hadn’t said those things out loud before, or was too caught up in her new mission to care. With a deadly serious expression, she replied, “That is not negotiable. Here or with James, you need to be able to protect yourself. And really, you should have had to do it a long time ago.”
There was something in her expression that suggested arguing would be futile, and despite the pop of adrenaline her statement had given him, Winn didn’t have the energy to continue. “Fine. But I want it on the record that I’m doing it under duress.”
“As long as you can defend yourself, I really don’t care how you see it. We’ll start when your ribs heal. Four hours a day, five days a week.”
That sounded exhausting. “For how long?”
“Until you can beat me in a fight.”
“So for the next year, then.” He groaned. “Is it too late for me to go back to CatCo?”
Alex huffed out a laugh. “Are you going to be okay by yourself here tonight? I can stay if you need me to.”
Winn shook his head. “I have my security system and honestly, being back out there and taking out that alien did a lot for my fear. Besides, I’m just going to crash the second you leave, and at this rate, I won’t even have time to fixate on what might have happened.”
“You’ll call me though, if not?”
Winn looked up at her and nodded. “Always.”