Archive of Our Own

It’s an ordinary morning, when it happens. They were up early enough that it was fine to get distracted, and now Alex is lying in bed, tracing the vertebrae in Kelly’s spine, thinking of the research project she’s just about to embark on at work—a way to use the electricity from different aliens’ brains to liaise with software one of her coworkers is developing. She’s trying not to get lost in the details so she doesn’t have to grab her computer and take notes. “You have all day for your research, you can spend this morning with me,” Kelly had said earlier, grinning at Alex as she teased her.

And then, all of a sudden, everything is different.

“Alex?” Kelly asks, but Alex, sitting straight up in bed now, can barely hear her.

Her head feels full, and all jumbled up, and she wonders if she’s having a stroke for a moment before—

Alex Danvers remembers the end of the world, the moment just before nothing at all, and everything else crashes into her with horrifying clarity.

*

Alex doesn’t go to work. After convincing Kelly she’s fine, she was just thinking about her project, she takes her bike to Kara’s apartment, heart in her throat—and then to CatCo after she realizes it’s late enough in the morning Kara should be there instead.

Kara is exactly where she should be, according to all the jumbled parts of Alex’s mind: in the middle of the office floor, at her desk, head down looking over an sheaf of papers but with the tension in her shoulders that tells Alex that Kara knows she’s here, is just acting like she doesn’t because a human wouldn’t know yet.

She looks up when Alex gets close enough: exactly eighteen feet away, just like Alex remembers telling her when they were kids. Except Alex didn’t tell her that, it was Jeremiah who gave her that number, because he was still alive then—but he wasn’t, actually…

Kara’s face creases in a perfect mask of not-too-much concern. “Alex? What’s wrong?”

“I have a question for you about the hypothetical existence of alternate universes,” Alex says. She watches realization dawn on Kara’s face, the way the mask cracks.

*

Kara’s self control lasts until they get to the roof of the CatCo building, and then she lets out a high-pitched, delighted laugh, wraps her arms around Alex, spins her around.

“You… you remember? I can’t believe it!”

Alex feels sick from the spinning, like her mind and body are both reeling in different directions. Kara puts her down just in time, still grinning, tears in her eyes.

“I don’t know what I remember,” Alex says. “I mean, I remember this world, everything until now, and I remember the other world too, up until trying to get everyone in the city onto a spaceship with Lena.”

It’s an unsettling feeling, holding so many memories in her mind all at once, like she’s a glass that’s overflowing, spilling wine all over her hand. She remembers a world where Lex Luthor is a hero—and a world where his trials were televised when she was in college. She remembers hearing about the Flash on the news years ago, and she remembers having to go to an alternate universe for his wedding. Other memories are so close they’re almost in stereo: two worlds in her mind where she cut her finger making a guitar string ring when she was fourteen, where Kara spent a month off and on hiding in the bathtub when she first arrived because Earth was too overwhelming for her, where she and Kara skipped their prom to go surfing. The way Alex’s makeup ran all down her face and Kara laughed, hair in wet salty hanks, sand all down her front and ruining her fancy new strapless bra. The feeling Alex had, unnamed but welling up and spilling over inside her with warmth.

In one world, she goes to work at a lab, and in the other, the apocalypse, ushering people into a huge metal box she was afraid would be their coffin, and then…

“I was hoping you could fill in the gaps,” she tells Kara.

“Yeah,” Kara says, still looking at Alex in amazement, with something else at the edges of her expression that Alex can’t quite identify. And then Kara tells her what happened, a brief play-by-play that makes a literal worlds-ending battle sound almost mundane.

After Earth-38, their Earth, was destroyed, after Alex died, after all the rest of the multiverses were destroyed too, Kara, J’onn and the rest of the “paragons” were able to defeat the Anti-Monitor and create a new universe, melded from the destroyed ones: this universe, Earth-Prime. Everyone here has false sets of memories to make it make sense, except the paragons, the last survivors of galaxies, who only have their memories of the dead worlds they outlived.

“That was three weeks ago,” Kara says, smiles, even though it’s clearly forced now. “It’s really good to see you, Alex.” She leans forward, like a question, and Alex leans in too, wraps her arms around Kara, tries to remember how to breathe.

The world they grew up in, all of the memories of almost every person Alex has known in her life: gone. Except for Kara’s, and J’onn’s, and… Alex’s.

Alex pulls back, frowning. “Why do I remember?” she asks. “If it’s been three weeks, what changed?”

Kara looks at her helplessly. “I don’t know,” she says.

*

Kara has to go back to work when she hears Snapper calling for her, and Alex makes her way out of the building to the other person she knows might be able to help.

The trouble with trying to figure out what happened, though, is that Alex doesn’t have any idea where to start looking. She was in bed, there weren’t any aliens or suspicious pieces of tech around, and she doesn’t remember being exposed to anything weird yesterday either.

J’onn agrees to look at her memories to check when she tells him, but he finds nothing out of the ordinary other than that there are more of them than there should be.

“I looked, when I first saw you in this universe,” he says, after, apologetic. “There weren’t any of your old memories there to bring forth in your mind. No one else has them, either.”

So it is just Alex, then. She had guessed, but hearing the words out loud still feels like a blow. She leans back against J’onn’s new desk—he’s still a detective in this universe, but his office here is different, a darker space, more wood panelling and bookshelves. It’s in a different building too, and that was fun, wrestling with her mind until she could figure out which address was the right one in this world. Alex can remember the last time she saw him on Earth-38, his hand on her shoulder, telling her he would see her soon and good luck, the fear and pride in his eyes.

J’onn gets a call, something about a case he’s working on, and he says she can borrow his office while he’s out, if she wants.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says, on his way out the door, and she reaches for a hug, alien-strong, like she always finds comforting from Kara. It helps from J’onn too.

Barry Allen doesn’t know anything either, and it’s so strange that Alex can just call him, on his regular cell phone, and ask him. The Legends, though in the same universe now, aren’t in this year to ask… and Kelly doesn’t know about the world—their world—ending.

It stops Alex short when she realizes it, heading back to their apartment for the evening after a day focused on this.

She and Kelly didn’t live together on Earth-38. They had been talking about getting a place, maybe one day, in the future, but—in Alex’s set of memories that belong to this world, that are getting easier to distinguish when she knows what she’s looking for, it’s been six months already. Six months of Kelly’s fancy french-pressed Kona coffee in the mornings, of mild arguments over takeout versus cooking at home, of sex in a bed they’re both going to sleep in after, and only the last three weeks of that are real.

“How was it?” Kelly asks, smile bright, when Alex steps in the door, still on autopilot. The question stops Alex short.

It takes her far too long to realize Kelly is asking about her work, where she didn’t even go today, the project that Clemmens probably started on without her. The project she’d been planning for months but this wasn’t even her job three weeks ago.

“Babe?” Kelly asks, and Alex feels the yawning chasm between the two of them, doesn’t know how to begin to bridge it. It was easy to talk to J’onn about this, and Kara, because even if Alex hadn’t known Kara remembered when she went to her, Kara was always who she dealt with this sort of thing with. And Kara and J’onn both had their memories. Kelly doesn’t.

How do you tell someone their life isn’t real? That you didn’t actually choose to move in with them, to boot?

Maybe you don’t. At least not not right away. If Alex got her memories back, there has to be a way for everyone else to as well, right? If she figures out how it happened, then she can do the same for Kelly. And then Kelly will remember the real world too.

“It was good,” Alex says, smiles.

*

Alex goes back to work the next day, but she doesn’t stay late like she usually would, spends every spare moment she has searching instead. She looks through alien books in J’onn’s office, researches the latest innovations in memory technology in this world, does physical sweeps of the perimeter of her apartment, roof, alleys, everything, just to find anything unusual.

It’s an unsettling realization that it’s this world, the one she didn’t really grow up in, that lives in Alex’s skin—her scar from her guitar string ring is on her index finger, not her ring finger like it was on Earth-38, and when she x-rays herself at the lab as part of an effort to find out if there’s anything physically wrong with her (there’s not), all evidence of her fractured rib from the battle at Barry’s wedding is gone too. It still doesn’t get her any closer to finding out what’s going on, and it hangs over her, like another shoe that’s going to drop when she’s least expecting it. Things like this don’t just happen, not without explanation, or without an alien or businessman showing up trying to kill them after.

Kara helps when she can, but she’s often too busy with Supergirl duties. In this world, where Alex and J’onn don’t work for the DEO—and the DEO works with Lex Luthor and is therefore untrustworthy—she has a lot more work to do. Alex understands. She should be spending more time on her own work, the neural network project that she pays cursory attention to but has mostly been taken over by one of her colleagues and a few eager interns.

And also, Kara mostly just seems glad that Alex’s memories are back. It’s not that she’s not helping, but Alex thinks it seems less urgent to her, finding out the how and why. Kara sits next to Alex at game night, walks closer to her in the street than she used to on their occasional lunchtime walks, making comparisons between worlds like not being able to talk about it has been eating away at her, asking Alex things like, “was Max Lord still arrested for insider trading in this world?”

Alex is glad to have her memories back too: it means she can help Kara, and the thought of not remembering parts of her life is… something she doesn’t like to think about. But it gets harder every day, week she can’t figure out why, every night not telling Kara how worried she is, every night not telling Kelly anything, fumbling through discussions with her about things like meal delivery services and possible vacation rentals, like they’re still in the fake, movie version of their lives Alex has already woken up from. It all makes her feel so… alone.

*

It’s a normal evening—part of the new normal, for the two of them. Since Alex got her memories back she’s been patrolling the city with Kara every few nights to try to get back in fighting shape, in a new suit that a confused Winn made for her when she asked him. They’re facing down a group of five-eyed, dark-clad aliens over a couple of rooftops in one of National City’s warehouse districts, and Alex has got one’s arms up behind them, is reaching for her reinforced handcuffs, when Kara screams.

It cuts off after a second but Alex is already running toward her, heart hammering in her chest, alien forgotten.

Kara is down, on her back on the roof, two aliens leaning over her, and Alex shoots as she runs. The aliens scatter, and Alex skids to a stop, drops to her knees. Kara’s eyes are open and she’s staring at nothing.

“Kara!”

“Alex,” she says, and struggles to get up. Alex helps her, checking her quickly for injuries as she does. No lacerations, no swelling on her head…

She realizes all of a sudden that Kara is staring at her, some strange emotion flitting behind her eyes. “This may sound crazy,” Kara says. “But I think I’m in an alternate universe.” 

Alex’s heart drops into her stomach.

“There are no alternate universes,” she tells her, and Kara laughs a little, sad and tired, like she knows something Alex doesn’t. 

“There are,” she says. “I met someone from one earlier this year, but I haven’t been to one where we existed too—or, I’m assuming I exist here because you know who I am.” 

Even if alternate universes still existed, Alex has had eyes on Kara almost this whole time—and Kara looks the same. She still has the shorter hair, still has her new supersuit. In all of the times they’ve dealt with alternate universes, body sharing or swapping has never been a part of it. 

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Alex asks. Kara’s face goes through multiple emotions in quick succession—confusion, fear, back to exhaustion. 

“I just got back from the DEO,” Kara says. “We had… I went up to bring Fort Rozz into space, and my Alex came up to get me. They had just cleared us to go home. I was just in my apartment with you—with her.” She frowns. “Why am I wearing pants? This looks like my supersuit but it’s…”

Oh, fuck. 

“Kara, you’re not in an alternate universe,” Alex says, carefully. “I am your Alex. You’ve just… Myriad happened four years ago.” 

Kara stares at her for a long moment, eyes wide. “What?” she asks, voice breaking.

* 

Alex remembers that night, nearly the same in both versions of her memories. The adrenaline rush of survival, how scared she had been and how relieved, after, and how she had followed Kara home because she hadn’t wanted to let her out of her sight. How Kara kept touching her every few minutes, like she had to reassure herself Alex was real, that she had come home. 

Back at Kara’s apartment, where Kara has flown both of them, Kara does that now too—feather-light brushes of her fingertips to Alex’s arms, shoulders, hands, as she takes in an apartment that’s hers but also isn’t, removed by years and a different universe. The gesture feels so like Kara-then and so little like Kara-now that it gives Alex whiplash.

The Kara in front of her seems like she’s in shock. Prodding her about when Jeremiah died and how she met Barry Allen reveals her remaining memories are from Earth-38, at least. Somehow Kara has lost years of her memories—but she hasn’t had them replaced with new ones. The thought shouldn’t be as comforting as it is.

“So let me get this straight,” Kara says, cheerful in the way that Alex knows is forced, staring at what Alex thinks (is embarrassed to realize she doesn’t actually know) is one of her newer paintings—a National City sunset that gives way to stars. “I’m not in an alternate universe, I’ve just lost four years of memories. I can’t be in an alternate universe because there are no more alternate universes, because two months ago some guy called the Anti-Monitor destroyed them all, including ours. So I guess I am in an alternate universe to the one I remember, but I haven’t... gone anywhere. And Barry, J’onn, Clark, some other people and I brought back this one universe, Earth-Prime, which is all of them combined, sort of, except everyone here has fake memories and thinks this universe has been around forever. Except the seven of us who lived through the destruction of the other universes, and you.”

“Including me,” Alex says, forces a smile when Kara turns to look at her, suddenly afraid. It’s strange to see her like this—still looking physically the same as she did an hour ago but four years of new mannerisms, changes in expression, rolled back. Kara has gotten more sure of herself, in those years, holds herself taller. Alex rushes to reassure her. “I have Earth-Prime memories, but a few weeks ago I got my Earth-38 memories back too. We haven’t been able to figure out how yet.”

The look of relief on Kara’s face looks almost the same as it did that day Alex came to see her at work. Both of these things, Alex getting her memories back, Kara losing hers, happening so close together—part of Alex knows they have to be connected, that there’s a clue here that will make this all make sense. The rest of her feels like a tiny ship in a storm—battered this way and that, no steady ground beneath her, no idea where the next wave is coming from. 

“I’m glad you remember too,” Kara says, and there’s something raw and open in her expression that makes Alex think, again, of how many worlds now Kara has watched destroyed.

“We’re going to figure this out,” Alex tells her. “J’onn’s off-planet right now—” some minor skirmish on the moon, apparently, “but he’ll be back tomorrow and he’ll have ideas too. For now let’s get you comfortable. You still took a hit tonight, even if you don’t remember it.”

Kara grimaces, but seems to take the point. “I remember taking some different hits, at least. Can you tell me what I’m missing though? If I’m going to be here a while I should know what I’m getting into.”

Going to be here a while, like there’s a universe for Kara to go back to, not just things she’s forgotten. Alex doesn’t correct her—this has to be hard enough.

“Yeah,” she says. “I can do that.” She sits on one of the padded chairs, across from Kara, wonders only after if Kara-then would expect Alex to sit beside her instead. Moving now would be more awkward, anyway. Alex takes a deep breath and starts to fill Kara in about what she should know about this world. It’s easier than it would have been weeks ago—this is a question she’s had to consider for Kara-with-her-memories’ benefit too.

The briefing style works for a few minutes, and then Kara interrupts her, more interested in who are these other people who have been coming to game nights than details about Earth-Prime events that neither of them have lived through. Kara recites the list of her new friends with due seriousness—“Lena Luthor, who didn’t know I was Supergirl on Earth-38 but does here,” “James’ sister Kelly, who’s a psychologist,” and looks so shocked and horrified when Alex tells her about her long term relationship with “a Daxamite?” that Alex can’t help laughing at her.

“Well at least I’m not dating him now,” Kara says. “Alex, I can’t believe you let me have such terrible taste.”

Alex, still laughing (a little desperate, because nothing about Kara losing this many memories should be funny, but what’s the alternative to laughing?), just shakes her head. “As if I could make your taste worse,” she manages.

“Am I missing anything?” Kara says, tossing a pillow across the room that hits Alex in the stomach and winds her a little.

It shouldn’t be the thing to sober her, but all of a sudden there are tears in her eyes, not from the hit, but from a sudden strange sadness, longing.

“Alex?” Kara asks, concern in her voice now, and Alex blinks the tears away, sits up.

“You’re still a brat,” she says, and laughs at Kara’s mock outrage this time, dodges the next pillow.

This is… nice. When was the last time they had done this, in either world? How strange it feels now is unsettling, like the ground has fallen out from under Alex and she’s only just noticed.

Kara throws a third pillow—the last of her ammo—and asks,

“We still have sister nights, don’t we?” half-joking, half-cautious all of a sudden, like—what kind of world would it be if they didn’t?

They don’t.

But it’s not the kind of world Alex wants to live in anymore either.

“Definitely,” she says.

The shift in universes didn’t make much of a difference to most of National City, Alex has noticed. The hipsters are still skateboarding in the park by Kara’s apartment, all the streets are still in the same places, and Alex can still order dumplings from three of Kara’s favourite restaurants, watch her face light up as she smells them.

They sit down on the same couch this time, and Kara snuggles into her side then pauses, tense for a moment, to ask, “This is okay, right? I know I’m not… I mean I am from here, but…”

“Of course,” Alex says, wrapping an arm around Kara’s shoulders and holding her closer, feeling how Kara’s muscles lose some of the tension Alex didn’t realize they were holding, feeling something settle inside her too.

It shouldn’t feel this easy, to fall back into this kind of relationship with Kara, the easy physicality, Kara asking if Veep was still on, and what were the best episodes to watch again for the first time, as if this was something they still did with each other.

These are old memories though, threading back through both worlds, an alien girl desperate for the comfort of touch, a relationship Alex hadn’t thought she wanted until Kara was the most important person in the world to her, and—she can’t remember why they had stopped doing this in the first place.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Kara says, quieter than before, the barest hint of a tremble to her voice, and Alex hugs her tighter, puts her head on Kara’s and breathes in the smell of her hair, lets herself sink in. Tries to be the calm that Kara seems to so desperately need.

“I’m glad you’re here too,” she says.

*

The world feels a little bit colder as soon as Alex leaves Kara’s apartment, and she wraps her leather jacket tighter around herself. Kara will be fine. She’s just getting ready for bed now and they’re going to meet up again in the morning, and… it shouldn’t make a difference to how lonely Alex has been feeling, Kara losing her memories. Or, it should have made things feel worse.

But the best Alex has felt in weeks, since she got her memories back, was sitting on the couch with Kara, her nose in Kara’s hair, Kara playing with her fingers. How had her relationship with Kara deteriorated so much that in both worlds, Alex doesn’t remember their last sister night? The last time they had been physically close like that for longer than a quick hug? How had she not noticed?

When Alex gets back to her own apartment—her own apartment that she shares with Kelly now—Kelly is already asleep. There’s a note on the kitchen counter along with some flowers from the shop on Kelly’s way home from work: lilies.

Alex stops and stares, at once feeling a glow of affection and like she’s going to throw up. She hates lilies: the smell reminds her of her father’s funeral. She loves lilies because they’re the first flower Kelly brought her.

The dual memories rise in her gorge with the overpowering scent of the flowers and she staggers to the couch, lies down, tells herself she doesn’t need to cry over this. Not just the lilies, but that Kelly doesn’t know about one of the memories, that Alex can’t tell her.

It wasn’t a conscious decision, not to tell Kara about her relationship with Kelly, when Alex was running through the list of new people in Kara’s life, she just hadn’t wanted to burden Kara with this feeling swamping her right now—the loneliness, the grief.

But she and Kara have never talked about Alex’s relationships much, other than when Alex was first coming out, and… Alex sits up on the couch, staring into the darkness of the apartment, sick with realization.

That was when it had started, the pulling away. When Alex had started dating Maggie, had come out. All of her problems, with her sexuality, with her dating life, they were a weight on Alex-and-Kara that was heavy enough to fracture them. And Alex has been too self-absorbed to even notice.

Fuck.

She puts her head in her hands, tries to stop shaking, to quell the urge to leave the apartment again to get a drink, or three, or five. She has to go to sleep in her bed with her partner who loves her, and she has to get up, and she has to see Kara in the morning. 

She’s not going to fuck things up again. Alex doesn’t need to tell Kara about her problems with Kelly, about any of this because Alex is fine, and when she figures out how to get Kelly’s memories back, things with Kelly will be fine again too. In the meantime, it’s… not relevant.

In the meantime, Alex is going to focus on helping Kara. Kara needs her, so Alex is going to be there for her, in a way she hasn’t been for years, and together, they’ll be able to fix things. They have to.

*

“Where were you last night anyway?” Kelly asks in the morning at their breakfast counter, in between bites of flaxseed oatmeal, and Alex pauses with her toast halfway to her mouth.

“I was at Kara’s,” she says.

“Was everything alright?” Kelly asks, brow wrinkling in a concerned frown. “You’re not usually over there so late.”

Alex hesitates for a moment, but Kelly is concerned, and Alex wants to be able to tell her things. She used to tell her everything that went on in her adventures with Kara, other than when work NDAs prevented her.

“Kara has some sort of partial amnesia,” she says. She explains what happened with the alien attack yesterday, how Kara thought she was in an alternate universe—skips quickly past that part before Kelly can ask something like do those exist—how she only remembers up to the middle of 2016, and it’s probably an alien thing, but Alex is going to figure it out.

“That sounds awful,” Kelly says, frowning. “And it probably is an alien thing, you’re right—usually amnesia isn’t as clear cut as it is in the movies. With what you’ve described, if it were natural she would probably have difficulty forming new memories too.”

“I guess I can find that out when I go see her today,” Alex says, checking the time on her phone. “I’m meeting J’onn there in an hour to see if he has any ideas.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Kelly asks, finishing her breakfast and taking her bowl to the sink. “I don’t take friends as clients, but I could give her the names of some old colleagues, if she wants to talk to someone.”

Of course, this is exactly what Alex didn’t want to happen, staring her in the face.

“Kara doesn’t remember that I’m gay,” she says slowly, staring down at her half-eaten peanut butter toast so she doesn’t have to look up at Kelly. “I don’t… want to come out to her again yet. So I’m not sure that would be a good idea.”

When she does look up, Kelly is frowning. “I thought she reacted well when you came out?” she asks.

Kara did. She told Alex it was fine, and she loved her, but then there was that weight, the growing space between them. And Alex can’t tell Kelly she doesn’t know if it was Alex coming out or just Alex dumping her problems all over that relationship, but telling Kara about Kelly would be both, right now, all tied up in this sick feeling in her stomach.

“Alex,” Kelly says. There are warm hands around hers, and Kelly waits until Alex looks up at her before she keeps talking. “I can’t say I’m thrilled by the thought of being back in the closet around your sister, or for you to be either, but it’s fine. Coming out is hard, no matter how many times you do it. And if you think it would help Kara to speak to someone, I can get you some names, you don’t have to say they came from me. But… this sounds like something you should talk to Kara about when she does get her memories back.”

It’s a much better response than Alex was expecting, though she really shouldn’t have been surprised. That’s Kelly, being mature at her when Alex is a mess.

The thought of trying to talk to Kara about any of this when she gets her memories back though, to talk about what happened, to apologize…

“Thank you,” she tells Kelly, and then, “I’ll think about talking to Kara,” and means it not at all.

*

When Alex steps inside Kara’s apartment, the difference from last night is marked. All of Kara’s paintings are out, spread across her coffee table, couches and walls, and there are more of them than Alex realized. Quick paint sketches of Noonan’s, CatCo, detailed, hyper-realistic illustrations of what Alex knows from the Black Mercy is Kara’s home on Krypton, and oils of people in varying levels of detail: J’onn, Winn, Lena… her.

Alex steps closer to the last painting propped on the couch, unable to stop herself. In it, she has a soft smile on her face, hair curled. She remembers this day. This was Kara’s Earth birthday a few years ago, the one she almost skipped to go to a concert. Bile rises in her throat at the memory, the way Kara had looked when she had come to her apartment with the cupcake—listless, eyes red, like she hadn’t expected Alex to come. That had been close to the beginning of it.

It hadn’t happened at all in this universe, she realizes. Alex had come to Kara’s Earth birthday, with no almost-cancellation beforehand. Things had still changed between them around the same time—death by a different thousand cuts, maybe, but this night… if it hadn’t happened here, did that mean Kara had painted it after arriving in this universe?

Alex tries to see the apartment through Kara’s eyes, to remember the way she felt coming here when she got her Earth-38 memories back, noticed what photographs and paintings were different, what furniture Kara didn’t have anymore. It’s different for Kara though—she doesn’t know if something is new in the apartment because she doesn’t remember putting it there or because it just turned up with the creation of this universe that she has no memories of at all. She doesn’t have the flicker that Alex gets of remembering Thanksgiving dinners at the long table—at the same time she knows she’s never seen that piece of furniture once in her other life—Kara just has the unfamiliarity of it all, of suddenly waking up somewhere strange to her.

“I was information gathering,” Kara says, hesitant, behind her all of a sudden. When Alex turns, Kara is tugging at her bangs like she’s still not used to them.

“It’s your stuff, you’re allowed,” Alex tells her, and reaches out her arms for a hug, feels a guilty thrill when Kara immediately melts into her arms. “Did you sleep at all?”

“I’m an alien, I don’t need sleep,” Kara jokes, and then, when Alex pulls back to glare at her, adds, “I just fought some aliens or flew a giant spaceship into space, depending on whether you ask my body or my mind—I was a little wired. I’ll be fine.”

There’s a knock on the door before Alex can respond to that, and Kara super-speeds over to let J’onn in, gives him a hug too.

While Kara’s greeting J’onn, Alex moves enough of the paintings off the furniture so they can all sit down. She wonders if it was on purpose that Kara placed the one of her where Alex had been sitting last night.

J’onn can’t read Kara’s mind for ideas, of course, like he did with Alex’s when she came to see him about her memories, but he does still have thoughts about what could have caused this— causes unrelated to Alex regaining her memories from another universe, though he does agree it’s suspicious, both of these things happening so close together.

“Human minds are easier to alter, so there are more possibilities,” J’onn says, apologetic, and Alex sighs.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she says.

Kara’s looking between them in confusion, and Alex grimaces, stops to explain last year to Kara, how someone at the DEO was trying to find out Kara’s identity through its employees, and how Alex agreed to have J’onn alter her memories so she didn’t know Kara was Supergirl and couldn’t betray her.

“It was a rough few months—probably more for you than me,” Alex says with a sad, lopsided smile, and Kara looks so pained at the story that Alex decides she really doesn’t need to go into how Alex ended up getting her memories back.

“I think the two of you should start looking for the Rrutans,” J’onn says, when it’s clear neither of them is going to say anything else. “They’re a psionic race and their description matches what the two of you were fighting last night. I’m not sure about the details of their gifts, but if they can read Kryptonian minds this seems like something they could do. I’ll see if I can find out what other aliens could do this and are in the city.”

“Thanks J’onn,” Alex says, then hesitates. “I had another favour I wanted to ask too, if you don’t mind.”

“Another shift as a certain blonde reporter?” he asks wryly, raising an eyebrow at Alex. A moment later, there’s another Kara sitting across from her. “Consider it done.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Kara asks, frowning as she looks between the two of them. “Last time J’onn played me at work Miss Grant saw right through him.”

“Cat’s not at CatCo anymore,” Alex reminds her. “And you’re a reporter now—you have a lot less daily oversight.” To put it mildly.

“I’ve gotten much more used to using my telepathy on humans,” J’onn says. “I’ll be fine.”

At that Kara nods, though she still doesn’t look exactly happy about it.

When J’onn leaves, with hugs for both of them, Kara turns to Alex, plasters a fake smile on her face. “So, I know the DEO is out, but is there somewhere else we can go to plan? Should we call Winn and James to help?”

“No,” Alex says automatically, then pauses. That was what Kara had done that year, wasn’t it? “I mean, we should keep this one just between the three of us, for now.”

“Why?” Kara asks, frowning. “Winn and James still help with superfriends stuff, don’t they? I mean, Winn could probably hack into the DEO’s equipment to see if we could track these aliens that way, at least.”

“We haven’t told anyone else about the different universes yet,” Alex says slowly. “I don’t think they could help without knowing about that.”

Kara’s frown deepens. “Why not?” she asks, and then pauses. “You mean you haven’t told anyone about getting your memories back either?”

Alex fidgets, tries to keep her face blank, to not let Kara know she’s prodding at a sore spot, however unintentionally. “Just you and J’onn,” she says, and then adds, as Kara is opening her mouth, probably to ask why again, “We haven’t told anyone else about the alternate universes because they can’t get their memories back. Yet.”

Kara doesn’t say anything, and Alex turns away and busies herself with arranging the paintings on the couches, back where they were before she’d moved them. All of a sudden there are arms around her, alien heat at her back.

“I’m sorry,” Kara says. “That sounds lonely.”

Alex has absolutely nothing to say to that—nothing she can say at least without getting emotional and embarrassing herself—especially when they’re supposed to be working, but she leans into Kara’s warmth, lets herself be hugged for a moment before pulling away.

“So what is the plan?” Kara asks, and Alex takes a deep breath.

“Do you want to fly us?”

Kara grins, and Alex gets a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach.

*

In the air, Kara gushes about the pants in her new suit. “I’m still not sure about the hair, but pants! I should have had pants years ago! I didn’t have pants years ago, did I?”

“No, those are recent,” Alex says, smiles at Kara’s enthusiasm. Flying with Kara is always great, whenever it happens, especially if they’re not actively in danger. It reminds Alex of that time when they were in Midvale, when Kara had taken them out over the city, the water—before the DEO had come for Jeremiah and anything bad had happened.

“Turn here,” she says. “We’re going to the bar.”

“We go to a bar now?” Kara asks, wrinkling her nose, and—right. They hadn’t found the bar that first year either. Alex grins.

“It’s on Main and Cordova,” she says.

There’s nothing special about National City’s alien district from the street, at least during the day, but when they get close enough, Kara looks around, wide-eyed, at the warehouses before they touch down. There’s no one outside, but that’s no barrier to x-ray vision.

“Alex?” she asks, hovering in the air.

“It’s an alien bar,” Alex says. “This is National City’s alien district. Who better to ask, right?”

“An alien bar,” Kara repeats slowly. “How long has National City had an alien bar? Or an alien district? How did we find out about it?”

“I think since before you became Supergirl,” Alex says, thinking of how rundown it looked, when they first came, how Maggie had already been a regular… she stops. Which universe she’s thinking of has slipped her mind, and she has to check. It was both, wasn’t it? Most things Alex just knows which one they’re from, but it’s not like the memories feel particularly different from each other in themselves, the difference is in how they fit into the chronology of Alex’s life. Lives. Background information like how long the alien bar has been around—as opposed to whether Lex Luthor is a war criminal or not—is harder.

She figures it out eventually.

“Yeah,” she says. “It’s been here for years—in both universes. We found it…” because of Maggie. So Alex definitely isn’t going to say that. “Through a mission.”  

Kara’s quiet for a moment and then she laughs a little. “I can’t believe this has been here the whole time and I’ve never been. I mean, after a whole year of being Supergirl! Not to mention before.” She hesitates. “There are other aliens on Earth who aren’t Fort Rozz escapees, right?”

How caught up they had been hunting aliens that first year—how caught up Alex had been even before that with making sure Kara kept her identity a secret, so this was a place she never would have found. All of the aliens who were Fort Rozz escapees had been gunning for Kara, so they’d been busy, but… it’s a sobering realization that Kara hadn’t known there were aliens on Earth who weren’t criminals until after they came back down from space.

“Yeah,” Alex says. “I mean, still some crime, but—lots of refugees, like you.”

“Cool,” Kara says, looking pleased but also overwhelmed. “Okay, let’s do this.”

Information gathering at the bar is harder since M’gann went back to Mars—there was nothing like a telepath who spent all her time in the place to send you on the right track, as long as she didn’t think you were going to beat up someone who didn’t deserve it. It doesn’t help that some of the regulars seem to think Alex is responsible for Maggie transferring back to Gotham either, even though that isn’t actually true on this Earth. At least they don’t say so in front of Kara.

There are still a couple of aliens willing to talk to Alex though, and from them she finds out that no, no one around here has seen an Rrutan, and is she sure they’re on Earth?

“They could just as easily make you forget you seen them though,” an older Dathar, clutching a fruity cocktail about the size of his head, says, which is when Alex realizes they’re probably not going to get a whole lot more out of this stop on their search. When she turns to ask Kara if she’s ready to go though, Kara is still staring around the place in wonder, eyes a little damp.

Even in the morning, the bar is full of obvious aliens drinking, not worrying about being seen. All of the signs are in Traders’ and a couple of languages Alex doesn’t know, English only a brief scrawl on the bottom.

“Do you want to come back later?” she asks Kara instead, and then at her questioning look, adds, “I’m assuming you don’t want to try off-world liquor at ten in the morning.”

Kara smiles softly. “Yeah,” she says. “That sounds great.”

For now, they move on. There’s the rest of the alien district to search, and then the warehouse district where they were when Kara lost her memory in the first place. Even with Kara missing some of her memories, they still work together seamlessly.

It’s a good feeling. Watching Kara rediscover things about National City that Alex is used to taking for granted feels like an unexpected gift.

After a few hours though, Alex is dead on her feet. Despite her activities the past few weeks, and how it hasn’t really been that long before that since Alex was in peak shape on Earth-38, this body, put back together by whatever made Earth-Prime, has been working in a lab for over a year and doesn’t have nearly as much stamina.

“We should call it,” Alex says, the fact that Kara’s stomach is grumbling constantly making her feel better about it at least.

“Yes, please,” Kara groans. “I could eat like, three dozen doughnuts. Why aren’t there snacks in the pockets that I now have?”

“Well, they wouldn’t fit three dozen doughnuts in them anyway,” Alex says, but their earlier trip has given her an idea. “Want to fly us back into the city? I know a place.”

*

The street food fair happens every weekend in the alien district, year round—a National City winter is no barrier to people and aliens alike roaming the streets at all hours of the night.

“This is… alien food,” Kara says when she sees the group of stalls, eyes lighting up. Her arms tighten around Alex in the air.

Alex laughs at her delight.

“This is all alien food! Has this always been here? We have to come here all the time, right?”

They don’t. Alex used to come with Maggie, first dating and then as friends, and she’s taken Kelly once, but it felt more like a curiosity than a shared interest. She and Kara have been here together exactly once too, to have dinner in a group that also involved Nia, Winn, James and J’onn, before heading over to the alien bar for karaoke, and…

It hits her all of a sudden that this was an Earth-Prime memory only—this whole market didn’t exist in Earth-38 in the first place. Alex could ask Kelly and she would tell Alex she remembered, but—the real Kelly isn’t here either. And Alex knows she shouldn’t think like that, because it’s not true, but it still feels like it is, and every so often it feels like it’s rising up to choke her.

“Alex?” Kara asks, and Alex wrestles the memory down. They’re almost at the ground now, floating just a few stories above the market.

“I’m sorry,” Alex says. “The fair has been here for years, but just on Earth-Prime. I don’t remember how often we’ve been.”

It’s a terrible lie. She should have just said they came all the time, should have said anything else. But Kara ignores it, floats them the rest of the way to the ground instead.

“Are you okay?” Kara asks. She unwinds her arms from Alex’s, lets her go, and Alex staggers for a moment, unmoored.

“I’m fine,” Alex says, forces a smile. “It’s hard to remember things sometimes—too many options. Let’s get some food.”

Kara frowns a little, but she lets Alex steer her toward the stalls. It’s a strange experience, the smells triggering memories of eating things Alex has never actually seen in her life.

“So… four years,” Kara says when they have a mountain of food in front of them at a fold-up plastic table. They’re halfway through a plate of hashta, off-world vegetables fried in egg yolks until half-burnt and then garnished with pickles, and Kara has multiple plates of spicy smelling food that looks like candy-covered worms, and is apparently not edible to humans, that she’s snacking on too. “You told me some of what’s happened in, y’know, the world—Daxamite invasion, you losing your memories, the DEO going bad, but… what’s happened for you?”

“What do you mean?” Alex asks, and Kara shrugs, taking another huge bite of food and getting a big blob of ketchup on her nose. Alex snorts, reaches forward to wipe it off with a napkin, and Kara smiles at her.

“I mean what’s happened in your life other than saving the world? Promotions? Road trips? Taken enough time off work to go on any dates?”

Alex chokes, and immediately there’s a super strong arm behind her, rubbing her back—Kara learned years ago not to thump. Alex waves her off.

“I got promoted to Director of the DEO on Earth-38,” she says, knowing that’s the universe Kara’s asking about. “Permanently, this time. Well, mostly, I got deposed a couple of times. And the two of us took a road trip to Mars in J’onn’s car.” That gets Kara looking interested, and Alex laughs, tells the rest of the story.

“Don’t you have questions about your four years?” she asks Kara, when she’s done, and Kara hesitates.

“I do,” she says. “I want to know if I’ve… proved myself, to National City and the rest of the world, I want to know if I ever get to actually do some heroing with Kal-El, I want to…” she laughs a little. “I was dating a Daxamite, so I’m not sure I actually want to hear anymore about my dating life. But, none of that has happened for me if I don’t remember it, y’know? The last four years have happened for you, and I… you seem sad.”

Of course, this is when a human comes up to ask Kara for an autograph—she’s still in her Supergirl outfit, and Alex fiddles with her phone: there’s a message from J’onn checking in by text in their group chat to let them know things at CatCo went fine, he can go back tomorrow if they need.

When the fan leaves, Kara looks at Alex again, and Alex feels helpless under that sad, piercing gaze.

“You were right, earlier,” she says, looking down at her hands. “It is lonely, being the only one with all these memories.” Alex shrugs. “Before that, things were good. So, y’know. Once I figure out how to get everyone else’s memories from Earth-38 too, it’ll be good again.”  

“I’m sorry,” Kara says, quiet. “But yeah, we should probably talk about that. Do you remember anything unusual about when you got your memories back?”

“What?” Alex asks, startled. It happened when she was in bed with Kelly, and she does not want to tell Kara about that. But it’s not that being in bed with her partner was unusual, anyway. “Why?”

Kara gives her a look like Alex is the one being strange. “That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? Trying to figure out what happened to both of our memories? I know the two of us had been working on that before I lost mine, but I don’t remember that now, so we should get back on the same page.”

“We should be focusing on getting your memories back,” Alex says. “It’s not like I’m missing anything.” Other than being able to talk to her partner. But she should have known Kara would latch on as soon as Alex admitted to not being okay about it.

“I am going to ignore that, because I think we should be doing both, and I am on this mission with you,” Kara says, arch. “Besides, they could be connected. We don’t want to miss anything.”

She does have a point. Alex thinks back to that week. Her project was coming up at work, so she had been focused on that. She definitely hadn’t been fighting any aliens—she’s not sure she’d fought any aliens, with Kara or otherwise, since this universe began, though she does have Earth-Prime memories of doing it before her career change.

They’d had a game night two nights before. Kara had seemed off for a couple of weeks by then (ha), but without her memories, Alex hadn’t been able to tell how sad Kara had been. Kara had told her some of it in fits and starts, in the weeks after Alex got her memories back. How lonely she’d felt—and Alex had bitten down on her own feelings of the same, because it couldn’t compare, could it?

It sounds like a whole lot of nothing. She gives Kara a brief overview of her week anyway, minus most of her feelings about it.

She shrugs. “I haven’t been able to find a connection.”

“I don’t see one either,” Kara says. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. We’ll find it.” She reaches across the table for Alex’s hand, takes it in both of hers, and Alex looks up, startled. Kara’s hands are warm and soft around hers, and she looks at Alex like she’s sure. Like if the two of them are working together, obviously they’ll figure it out. Alex wishes she had Kara’s faith.

After a while of this, she gently extricates her hand and asks, “Are you ready for that alien liquor?”

Kara’s smile has to be the next best thing.

*

They spend the rest of the week sweeping National City, everywhere both of them can think of. J’onn keeps working at CatCo for Kara and sends new leads through the group chat, along with questions for Kara about in-house editorial guidelines. None of the leads pan out.

The Legends get back a couple of days into this, but they don’t have any answers on either Alex’s regained memories or Kara’s missing ones. Alex isn’t really surprised, because there wasn’t actually a connection there, but it’s still disappointing.

She stays out late with Kara most nights and sees Kelly sometimes in the evenings, but more often just in the morning for breakfast. Alex likes to look at her sleeping when she gets in, because that way, other than the little star tattoo on the wrong shoulder, it almost feels like it could be the Kelly she started dating.

Alex can feel the strain in that relationship, but working with Kara again is a good distraction. It feels like they’re on the edge of something. Like if they can just get this, figure out how Alex got her memories back, then they’ll be able to get everyone else’s too, and everything will be okay again. Even doing the work itself, her and Kara in sync like they used to be… it’s the best Alex has felt since getting her memories back.

After breakfast one morning, before Alex can make it out the door, Kelly says, “It’s been a few days. If Kara isn’t getting her memory back right away, have you thought about having that conversation?”

“Not yet,” is all Alex can manage, with a smile and kiss as she grabs her things to go out with Kara—her work bag abandoned in the kitchen.

“You should think about it,” Kelly says, look of careful concern on her face. “And let me know if you want to talk about it more too.”

Alex doesn’t. And she doesn’t want to think about telling Kara either, because things are going fine right now. She’ll… talk to Kara when she gets her memories back, probably, she’ll apologize, and ask how to make things better, and… she doesn’t want to think about that. Things are going well right now. Alex doesn’t want to mess them up.

By Sunday afternoon, with both of them half-covered in sewer sludge, Kara decides they need a break, which is probably a fair assessment. Alex is taking shameless advantage of her lab’s vacation policies, she’s still barely seen Kelly, and J’onn told her yesterday that he was really starting to enjoy Kara’s skirts.

A break means Alex collapsing on Kara’s couch after a long shower that she beat Kara in a rock-paper-scissors match for first dibs on, both arms over her eyes, listening to the water run while Kara gets clean. It’s good, what they’ve been doing, though Alex’s muscles are achy and burning from all the activity they’re no longer used to, working in the lab. The lack of results is starting to get to her too. How hard can it be to find some aliens? Definitely harder without the DEO helping them.

The shower turns off, and then Kara is on the couch half on top of her, lying with her face buried in Alex’s belly. She makes a strangled groaning noise and then snuggles in—then pulls back a second later.

“Sorry,” Kara says. “I was just—habit.”

“It’s fine,” Alex says, gesturing back toward herself, ignoring the fact that it was probably the rapid increase in her heartbeat that sent Kara running in the first place. “You can lie on me if you want.” They ordered pizza on the way back, so they don’t need to move until it gets here.

Kara pulls back to sitting though, looking away and tugging at her hair, and Alex rouses herself too.

“How are you doing?” she asks. Kara startles for a moment and then laughs a little.

“I’m fine,” she says. “I just forget you’re not my Alex sometimes, you know? Which is silly, because you are, but…” Alex’s heart clenches. She knows the feeling.

“I’m still yours,” Alex says, and Kara turns to look at her. “If you want to lie on me, or… whatever you would do, at home, I want that too, okay?” It feels like the coward’s way out, not admitting that Alex really wants that closeness, and that she and Kara don’t have it anymore. But Kara lies back down, more tentative at first, and then relaxing onto Alex.

“I miss ‘my world’ sometimes,” Kara says after a little while, quiet. “I know that’s not really a world I can miss, because it’s not like it’s there waiting for me, it’s just the past. But when I think about how our universe is gone too, all the things that are different here, even though so many of them are the same… it feels like when Krypton was destroyed. Like losing a world all over again.”

Alex misses that world sometimes too. Things seemed simpler then—even though she knows that really wasn’t the case, is just the effect of hindsight. It’s strange to think about, what Kara said, that there’s no world for her to go back to, because she seems like a completely different person from Alex’s (current) Kara sometimes. But that also means this Kara isn’t going away, she’ll just… remember more, when they figure out how to get her memories back.

And then Alex’s brain processes the rest of what Kara actually said and she gets a sinking feeling in her stomach. She can’t believe she had forgotten.

“Kara,” she says, and there must be something in her voice, because Kara tenses immediately. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

*

Kara is still, through Alex’s halting explanation of what happened to Argo City. The failsafe built to protect it, when Krypton was destroyed. How they discovered the asteroid years ago, when they were looking for a cure for a Worldkiller, one of Krypton’s creations. How Kara had been planning to go live there, with her mother, but ended up deciding to stay on Earth instead. The last is the most painful to admit, a time Alex tries not to think about, usually, but Kara barely reacts. 

Alex feels awful for forgetting this Kara didn’t know in the first place. It should have been the first thing she’d told Kara, when she had lost her memory.

Eventually, when Alex has stopped talking, Kara sits up, slowly, staring at the table.

“Is there… can I talk to her?” she asks, voice shaky. “My mother?”

“I think you have an ansible somewhere,” Alex says. “A phone that can…” She gets up and starts rummaging in Kara’s drawers. She thought she’d seen it somewhere.

Kara floats past her, opening the drawer in her bedside table and pulling the device out—it looks like a cell phone, just bigger and a little rounded.

Of course, that’s when the doorbell rings.

“It’s the pizza,” Kara says, not even glancing over.

“I’ll get it,” Alex says. “You…” she gestures at the phone and then flees.

There’s nowhere to go in the open plan apartment where Alex can not hear this conversation. She ends up on the balcony, though as soon as she’s outside she wishes she’d brought a sweater. It works, though, for the most part. She can’t hear the actual words that Kara and Alura are saying to each other, but she can hear the tears in Kara’s voice, the way her voice rises and falls in heartbreak.

Alex has never forgiven Alura. Not for sending Kara away in the first place—selfishly, she can forgive that, because it brought Kara to her, even though it hurt her—but for not looking for her, after she survived. The whole time Kara was growing up on Earth, when she was crying under her covers for a planet’s worth of loss, or hiding herself so she could fit in, and be safe, and survive here, Alura was just… out there, running Argo’s high council, living her life. It’s not like the Kryptonians didn’t have space travel. She just… didn’t come. And Kara was going to leave Alex for her anyway.

That’s not a thought Alex can hold in her mind for any length of time. She shoves it firmly down in her mind, pulls out her phone and starts hunting for cat videos. She should have brought the food outside with her.

Eventually, the door opens. “Do you want some pizza?” Kara asks, voice scratchy.

Kara has made them both slightly scorched mugs of hot chocolate, warmed up the pizza (also slightly scorched from heat vision), and pulled up Netflix.

They get through three episodes of Carmel Nights, a show original to this universe that Alex has been enjoying, in spite of how overdramatic and soapy it is, before Netflix stops to ask if they want to keep watching. Alex hasn’t taken in a single thing that’s happened on the show in the last hour at least, but she’s about to press play anyway when Kara takes a deep breath.

“My mother said she thought I had died,” she says, voice very small, and Alex stops moving. “And that’s why she didn’t come looking for me. I was in the Phantom Zone for twenty four years, so I can understand her not being able to find me, but… Kal-El was on Earth. She didn’t even make it to Earth, because if she had, he wouldn’t have had to grow up here, without his culture.” Kara clutches at Alex’s arm, and Alex wraps her other arm, the one that’s been over Kara’s shoulders the past hour or so, tighter around her. “She was the only ranking house member left on Argo, so she ended up on the council and that kept her busy. And I’m so happy she’s alive, but I…” Kara trails off. She’s shaking, and all Alex can do is hold her.

“When I went into space with Fort Rozz, you came,” Kara says. “I could have been dead, you could have died coming, but you came, and I—if you could do that, why couldn’t my mother look for me?”

Her shoulders shake with sobs, and all Alex can do is hold her as tightly as she can, cursing Kara’s mother in her mind.

“I’m sorry,” Alex says. “I’m sorry, Kara.”

Alex doesn’t know why Alura didn’t come, and Kara making her coming after her out to be this noble thing makes her uncomfortable and a little guilty too. Alex didn’t know if she was going to die or not, going out in that ship, or if Kara was. She just knew that if she couldn’t save Kara… it wouldn’t be any kind of life for her left on Earth. And she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t try. When Alex does think of Alura, she wonders how Kara’s mother lives with herself, if the reason she’s still on Argo instead of on Earth with her daughter is so she doesn’t have to look her guilt in the face every day.

Eventually Kara stills, sinks in to Alex’s arms. She pulls back a minute later, determined look on her tear-streaked face.

“When I told you I was going into space,” Kara says, “That I wanted you to have a good life, and find love, and be happy…”

It takes her a moment to realize Kara isn’t talking about going to Argo—because Kara doesn’t remember that at all—but the first time. Myriad. When Alex came out to get her. Those are the words she said then almost exactly, the ones Alex used to hear in her nightmares the whole year after—nightmares where Kara didn’t come back.

“You told me you couldn’t, and I made you promise, and,” Kara looks down. “I just keep thinking how selfish that was, because I couldn’t do it without you either, I couldn’t live in this world without you in it, Alex.”

She’s crying again, Alex can hear it, the hitch in her breath, and she leans in, wraps her arms around Kara, holds her close.

Alex wants to cry too because Kara never told her this. Kara turned around and tried to move to Metropolis, even before Alex did find love—and dumped all of her problems on their relationship and fucked things up between them.

“Just this world?” she asks, and her voice breaks against the joke. “Space would be fine?”

She wishes she could take the words back as soon as they’re out of her mouth, because Kara did try to move to Argo City, without Alex. But by then Alex had already driven her away, already made it so Kara had to live in the world without her, or as good as.

“I’d take you with me,” Kara says, pulling back, eyes damp but jaw set. “If I were going to Argo, you would be my… diplomatic escort. If… if you would come.”

She sounds so uncertain with the last, and Alex feels like her ears are ringing, like she’s been struck by an explosion in the field. “You’d get a diplomatic escort?” she says, forces a laugh. “There’s that Kryptonian modesty.”

Kara sticks her tongue out at her.

Kara wouldn’t take Alex, though. Alex knows that because Kara almost went already, and it’s too much, having Kara without her memories looking at Alex like she’s something special, holding her mother to Alex’s standard. But Kara is holding onto her, hands clenched tightly in Alex’s shirt, and Alex can’t move, can’t escape.

She takes a deep breath, forces herself to meet Kara’s eyes, forces herself to say something honest. “I know it seems like a lot has changed, in the years you’ve missed, but I still couldn’t be happy without you, Kara. In this world or any other.”

And it’s true. Since Alex got her memories back, she’s felt like she’s been living in a haze, everything not right, just out of reach. With Kara back, she feels good again, like this is where she’s supposed to be. Before she got her memories back isn’t worth thinking about.

“Good,” Kara says, eyes wet but with a stern look on her face. “Because you’re not getting rid of me.” She sniffles, then reaches out her arms for another hug. Alex buries her face in Kara’s neck, breathes in the smell of her. Alex has gotten rid of her. Alex did.

But the thing about Kara having no world to go back to, to being Alex’s Kara still, just without some of her memories, is that when they get Kara’s memories back, Kara will still remember this too. She’ll remember Alex telling her the one truth she can, that she doesn’t want to let go.

She’ll remember being here on this couch, having trapped Alex against her body with all her alien strength, like she’s not ever letting go either, and how Alex holds her back with all the puny human strength she has. It’s enough to make Alex think that maybe they will be okay. Maybe she can keep this. The warmth of being held, the fond exasperation the next minute when Kara asks very seriously if Alex can restart their show, because she wants to see if Nicole and Viola are really going to kill Viola’s father, who is also Nicole’s husband… all of it.

*

Game night got cancelled last week due to amnesia, and Alex had been planning to cancel it this week too, time had just gotten away from her. But on Tuesday morning, J’onn mentions in their group chat that he-as-Kara keeps getting asked about it, and Kara says,

“We should do it! It’ll be fine, we can just tell everyone I’ve temporarily lost my memories and nothing about the alternate universe thing!”

Alex thinks it will most definitely not be fine. Telling everyone Kara has lost her memories sounds like a great way to open the door to questions about what she does remember—which is still different than what everyone else in this universe does—and also, having a game night means that Kara-without-her-memories would be in the same room as Kelly for the first time. 

Of course, when Alex tells Kara she thinks it’s a bad idea to do games night, Kara makes a sad face at her, and tells Alex she really wants to see what everyone else is like ‘in the future’. She promises she’ll be careful with what she says about what she remembers.

She looks so disappointed and hopeful that Alex gives in, before she can remind herself again of all of the reasons she had for not wanting to do this.

They come back as soon as she’s composing a text to send to the group that carefully doesn’t include either Kelly or Kara: Games at Kara’s at 7, Kara has partial amnesia, she doesn’t know that I’m gay or that Kelly and I are together, don’t say anything. Like that has any chance of going well.

But, by then it’s done.

That’s how Alex finds herself in Kara’s kitchen on Tuesday night, unpacking cheetos, tortilla chips, and bottles of store brand soda from six huge grocery bags Kara had come up with, still wondering if it’s not too late to call this whole thing off. Kara seems thrilled, though. She’s humming to herself, dumping snacks into bowls and mixing the soda together in a punch bowl Alex forgot she owned. There’s pizza coming too, but Romano’s is backed up with orders and super speed won’t actually help in this situation—Kara did offer—because it won’t actually make pizza cook faster. (The offer of laser vision was kindly turned down.)

“Do you think this is enough food?” Kara asks for the second time, and Alex rolls her eyes, fond even through her worry.

“The only other aliens coming are J’onn, Brainy, and Nia, and none of them have your stomach,” Alex says. And honestly, she’s not sure who all will be interested in the cheetos and Kara’s mystery punch, which is now a deep red colour and has sherbet mixed in and gummy bears floating in it. The transition from game nights involving cheap snacks, thick crust pizza and maybe beer, to wine, thin-crust pizza with walnuts and arugula and the occasional cheese plate has been gradual to the point where Alex didn’t realize there had been a shift until she was staring down a bag of cheetos feeling the dissonance of it. She’s kind of excited for the return to casual fare, at least.

And to see if Lena Luthor, the source of the Scott-Zweisel wine glasses which Kara has forgotten and replaced with her old mason jars, will actually drink a gummy bear. It’s a good distraction from worrying about all the rest of it.

There’s a knock on the door, and Kara gives Alex a half-panicked, half-excited look as she speeds over to get it. Alex starts moving dining room chairs over to the living room so everyone will have somewhere to sit.

“Winn, James!”

Kara grabs Winn in a big bear hug, and Winn does his best to look like he can still breathe with all the air being squeezed out of his lungs.

“You still remember us!” he says, delighted, when Kara pulls away to give James a hug too—after only a moment’s hesitation. Alex had almost forgotten about their ‘almost’ that year. Kara had told her later it was going into space that made her realize her and James weren’t going to work, and it looks like that still holds true.

“Of course I still remember you,” Kara says, confused. “It’s only the last four years I can’t remember.”

“Alex was not specific,” Winn says, giving her a mock glare, which, whoops. When she checks her phone there are… more texts asking for clarification than she realized.

Winn: ????
Winn: ?????????? WHAT?
Nia: when did Kara get amnesia?? thanks for the heads-up about not being out! <3
James: … I have a lot of questions, but I’ll be there
Lena: Is this a joke?
Brainy: Do you think your homosexual status is related to Kara’s amnesia?

Oh well. Everyone else will be here soon enough anyway.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” James tells Kara, warm. “J’onn’s gotten a lot better at playing you, but I thought something was up.”

He and Winn start telling her about something she missed at CatCo, where they both still work in this universe, this past week. The telling detail that Kara might not have been Kara was when she didn’t immediately agree to get ice cream on their lunch break one day—Winn says he should have known it was J’onn then. Kara laughs and agrees he should have.

Alex feels… strange watching this, without quite knowing why.

It occurs to her a moment later. Alex has been focused on how her and Kara’s relationship has changed over the years, how far they’ve been from each other since Alex pushed Kara away, but watching Kara with Winn and James now, Alex realizes: Kara’s relationship with her friends has changed too. 

Kara-with-her-memories would have been friendly, still hosts game nights, after all, but isn’t open like this, wouldn’t be gesticulating wildly, grinning as she relays an abbreviated version of her recent adventures with Alex, including her delight at finding the alien bar.

When Kara first lost her memories, when she had asked if they should call Winn and James to help, Alex had told her no, because she didn’t want to tell them about the other universes, but also because they didn’t really do that anymore as a group—the superfriends that all used to band together to deal with whatever threat was facing National City have all started fighting their own battles over the past few years or so. Alex didn’t even know if they would have come.

Now, she wonders how much of that was just… that Kara-with-her-memories wouldn’t have asked, either.

Despite her own worry, Alex is happy to see Kara like this, happy to see her be joyful with other people too. She hopes it’s something else Kara will remember, when she gets the rest of her memories back. El Mayarah.

And then there’s another knock at the door, and just like that, the party gets going.

Kara joke-introduces herself to Kelly, Nia, Brainy and Lena, who take it with amusement, delight, confusion and polite discomfort respectively. J’onn gets a tight hug when he shows up last with two boxes of doughnuts.

Alex helps pass the punch around, and it’s actually great, if sweet. Alex can vaguely remember Eliza making something similar for a high school graduation party with their friends. It could do without the gummy bears, but they’re definitely worth it for the slightly pinched expression on Lena’s face as she carefully keeps hold of her mason jar but makes no move to try any.

Everyone ends up clustered around the kitchen table, going through the tortilla chips and cheetos while Kara answers questions about her amnesia: just the last four years, Alex and I are figuring it out, and, I’m still going to kick your butt at games! and after a while, Alex realizes things are… actually going well. More than that, she’s having fun, and it seems like everyone else is too.

At the last game night before Alex got her memories back (the ones since are sort of a blur), everyone sat on the couches, still dressed up from work, drinking wine and talking about their days. There was a brief mention of pictionary that was never picked up again. James hadn’t been there, and neither had Nia—there was a big deadline at CatCo. She and Kelly had left early and gone to bed at a reasonable hour.

Tonight, Kara and Winn are facing Brainy and Nia in a snack tower building competition to solve the very serious question of whether cheetos or tortilla chips are better for engineering. Kelly and James are deep in a conversation Alex can’t quite make out, James’ hand on Kelly’s arm, his 'concerned brother' expression on his face. J’onn and Lena are having an involved discussion about Martian agriculture technology, and J’onn has started drawing diagrams of what looks like an irrigation system on one of the paper towels Kara brought out as napkins.

It’s so far from that other ‘game’ night it doesn’t feel like the same event, and Alex is surprised at how much she’s missed this kind of gathering, the one that feels like it belongs more to her post-college years than her professional ones. Everyone is here, she and Kara are in jeans and hoodies, they’re eating cheap food because it’s to feed a bunch of people, and… it doesn’t feel like anyone’s performing. Especially not with chip dust or ink stains all over their hands.

When Kara turns to her, big grin on her face, Alex can’t help but grin back, brush the chip dust off her nose… and then help improve the structure of her and Winn’s cheeto palace.

By the time the doorbell rings with pizza, both snack towers have collapsed (to much theatrical groaning) and Alex has migrated to the living room. She’s in the middle of a debate with Brainy about what the criteria for healthiness in a snack food is, including how that definition might change depending on the species eating it—and also what planet they’re on and what dietary deficiencies they might have to make up for. Brainy is making a case for pickles being more important than raw vegetables for Thalyns on Earth, because of the increased sodium—Alex thinks there are better ways to get extra sodium—when Kara shoves a piece of pizza in her face.

“If you don’t eat some of this now, I will not be responsible for how much is left,” she says, gravely serious, and Alex laughs, swats at her shoulder but dutifully takes the slice. Brainy reaches out to get his own, and then they’re talking about what species pizza might be healthy for, with Kara chiming in about the Kryptonian diet, until Nia calls out that they should play Taboo, which Kara has apparently dug out of storage and laid out on the coffee table along with an actual mountain of pizza boxes.

Taboo is also something they haven’t played in a while, and Alex is hit with another wave of nostalgia along with excitement.

“I call Alex as a teammate,” Kara is saying as she grabs herself another slice of pizza and sits down between Alex’s legs on the floor—probably because there aren’t any more seats, but also to be closer to the pizza. Kara is nothing if not a never-ending stomach.

“You always call Alex as a teammate,” Winn says. “And then you always win!”

“Hey, I need our shared history to make up for four years of missing world events and inside jokes,” Kara says, and most of the occupants of the living room look only a little stricken at the reminder. Winn groans and waves his hand at her—clearly throwing in the towel, and Alex grins. She and Kara are more likely to win on the same team, and Alex wants to win.

“Then I call Kelly,” James says. “Siblings versus siblings.” The two of them are sitting together on the padded chairs on the other side of the table.

“Does this game involve inside jokes?” Brainy asks. He and Nia are reading the rulebook—they really haven’t played this at game night in a while, Alex realizes. Has it not been since that first year, the second?

“It does not,” James says, at the same time Winn says,

“It can!”

“Cat Grant didn’t come to these, did she?” Lena asks, voice hesitant and a little stilted.

Winn laughs and explains she definitely did not, but also, Miss Grant does play games—she once funded an entire Settlers of Catan tournament so she and her son could play at it…

Alex reaches out for another slice of pizza but she can’t reach the boxes past Kara, who is snug between her legs with her back leaning up against the couch. She taps Kara on the head instead, lightly at first and then more insistently, gesturing to the pizza boxes with her other hand, and eventually Kara realizes what she wants and passes back a slice—and then another, unasked for. Kara is always trying to get her to eat more. Alex rolls her eyes at her but takes the food. It is good pizza.

Kara grins back at her, all innocence, and Alex mimes flicking her on the nose, but there’s a warm feeling in her chest. Kara looks like she’s having fun, too. Alex didn’t realize how worried she had been until there was nothing to worry about anymore.

Kara grabs herself two more slices of pizza—at least half of the boxes are empty now—and then prods everyone else to sort themselves into teams so they can start the game.

Her and Kara’s team absolutely dominates at Taboo, to the point where Winn starts complaining that the memory loss thing was clearly a ruse to lower everyone’s guards. That turns into a game of: ask Kara questions about things about the last four years that she doesn’t know and have fun shocking her with the answers. As well as occasionally making them up.

“Cat Grant has never been the president,” Alex says, which earns her boos from Winn, James and Nia, who have also gotten in on this game.

“What does Miss Grant do now?” Kara asks, frowning. “Alex just said she left CatCo to find herself.” She nearly chokes when Brainy informs her that Catherine Grant is the White House Press Secretary. Alex thumps her on the back—unnecessary, but it makes Kara turn and mime hitting her back, smiling.

Alex ruffles her hair, fond, and Kara gasps in mock outrage.

“What was the name of the first woman Alex—” James starts.

“Worked for at the DEO?” Nia finishes, pointedly. Alex’s rush of relief and gratitude is cut short by Kara pinching her on the side. Alex half-leaps out of her seat and then tries to get Kara back.  

They’re on the verge of a very slow tickle fight—watching each other with squinty eyes and looking for openings in defences—as the conversation around them ( I don’t think Kara’s listening anymore, Winn says with a laugh) moves on to alien politics, and then to did you hear Lucy’s been tapped for ambassador to Thanagar and is on Argo City right now doing an intensive course in alien languages?

The last distracts Kara enough so Alex finally gets an opening to get at her side, and then Kara straight up picks her up over her shoulder and says she’s very sorry, she needs Alex’s help with something in the kitchen.

“Kara, put me down!” Alex squawks, beet red from embarrassment—their friends are staring!—as well as all the blood rushing to her face. Kara pretends to struggle with her weight, and as soon as she’s taken the few steps to the kitchen area she puts Alex down and very seriously asks if Alex can help her carry out more drinks. Alex snaps a kitchen towel at her and Kara laughs as she dodges it. Brat.

When they get back, Kara with more punch for Nia and Winn, Lena’s mason jar is empty, and Kara asks, voice bright, “did you like the punch?”

“It was lovely,” Lena says, completely straight-faced. Alex muffles a laugh in her sleeve as Kara beams and rushes off to get more for Lena too, and Lena gives Alex a look that just makes her laugh harder. Nia is setting up another game of Taboo, and Alex eventually gets herself under control enough to grab another slice of pizza. She settles back into her spot on the couch, struck with the strange feeling that even if she didn’t really want to do this in the first place, there’s nowhere else she’d rather be right now.

Everyone eventually staggers out in ones and twos, thanking Kara for hosting and telling her they hope she gets her memories back soon—and that Kara should tell them sooner next time, too. All of the punch glasses are empty, or nearly so, Alex notices as she collects them. She wonders if Lena actually was drinking hers or just found someone else to drink it for her.

Brainy stops Alex in the kitchen while she’s putting glasses in the sink and Kara is talking to Lena and Nia at the door. “National City has five species of psychic aliens,” he says. “Have you located all of them? While I’m not sure any psionic powers could accomplish something of this complexity this quickly, Kara missing her memories does suggest that one of them may be to blame. I would suggest locating the Rrutan or Kyosaa to start with.”

“We’ve been looking for the Rrutan,” Alex says, shocked, but of course Brainy would know this too. She’s gotten so used to not working with him in this world—and if she’s honest, to not thinking her friends are the people she remembers them as—that it didn’t occur to her to ask. “We haven’t been able to find them.”

Brainy nods solemnly and takes something out of his pocket.

“This is a psionic energy tracker,” he tells her as he hands it to her. “It should help.”

Maybe Kara was right when she suggested asking the superfriends for help after all—at least some of them. Brainy isn’t the Brainy Alex spent years working with on Earth-38, but he’s still Brainy, and all of the Earth-Prime memories she can dredge up tell her he’s been a good friend to her here too. Which is better than Alex has been since she remembered things.

“Thank you,” she tells him, even though the words feel completely insufficient. Brainy nods seriously and gives Alex an earnest-yet-awkward hug that she hadn’t realized she’d missed until this moment.

“That’s what friends are for,” he says.

For giving you leads when you thought you’d run out of them. The device is entirely glass, about double the size of a cellphone, and warm in Alex’s hands. On the screen, menu options flash in Traders’—how much psionic energy to search for, radius… it looks great. Alex is seized with the sudden urge to give Brainy another hug, this could help them find the aliens they’re looking for, but when she looks up he’s already gone.

Which just leaves Kelly, chatting with Kara at the door and probably waiting for Alex. Shit.

Alex is just thinking through how she can talk to Kelly without letting Kara know they’re together when Kelly turns to her, says, “Alex, I have an alien brain biology question I wanted to ask you about, would you walk me home?”

Alex had planned to stay and help Kara clean up. It was the principle of the thing, even though Kara has super speed, and also a chance to pay her back for picking her up in front of their friends earlier. But the look on Kelly’s face says she wants to talk about something, and she did offer a good excuse. It would look weirder to refuse.

“Sure,” she says. She gives Kara a hug and a promise to text her later, and Kara squeezes her arm, smiles at her with eyes crinkling. This was good. Alex is glad they did this.

*

“We need to talk,” Kelly says as soon as the door to the apartment has closed behind them, and Alex stops in her tracks. Nothing good ever follows those words.

“About what?” Alex asks.

Kelly is just inside the door, staring at the ground, arms wrapped around herself with her nails digging in. Alex recognizes the posture from when she and Kelly were first talking about her switching jobs—how worried Kelly had been about her working at the DEO. An Earth-Prime memory.

“Tonight,” Kelly says. She lets go of her arms with obvious effort and starts taking her coat off, like everything is normal. “I know we talked about you not coming out to Kara again right away Alex, and I understand where you’re coming from—my family was not great when I told them, other than Jimmy. But tonight felt awful.”

Alex tries to think back to what Kelly had been doing at the game night, to evidence that she hadn’t been having a good time. Her mind comes up blank. Kelly had spent most of the night talking to James—she’d seemed fine.

“You’re supposed to be my partner, and it’s the first time I’ve actually seen you in about a week straight,” Kelly says, “and—”

“I’ve been helping Kara,” Alex says.

“You didn’t even look at me,” Kelly says, and Alex is stunned silent. She… hadn’t she? She was focused on Kara, and she didn’t want to be couple-y because she didn’t want to come out to Kara, but…

Kelly is turned away from Alex, in the middle of hanging her coat, shoulders rising and falling with quick breathing. “You didn’t look at me, and you weren’t acting like yourself,” she says. “Letting Kara feed you pizza, and pick you up… I’ve never seen you like that. It was like you were a different person.”

Alex’s heart is in her stomach. She had been acting like herself. Maybe she and Kara weren’t usually that touchy around other people, but, that was her, had been on Earth-Prime too, not just on Earth-38. Alex had been having a good time. She’d felt relaxed, and comfortable, and…

“I’m sorry,” Alex manages. “I… I fucked up. I was worried about the game night going well. I was distracted.”

Kelly laughs a little, and when she turns back to face Alex, her eyes are glassy.

“It’s not just tonight, Alex, or even or since Kara lost her memories. You haven’t been here for weeks before that. I thought it was just you getting involved in things at work at first—” The project she was supposed to have started the day she got her memories back. “—I thought things would get better, but they haven’t. I should have said something earlier, I’m sorry, but… I can’t keep going like this right now. I think I need some space.”

This can’t be happening. Alex has just gotten a lead, she’s so close to figuring this out—for Kara, and for herself, and for Kelly too. Kelly who is saying she needs space but is looking at Alex like this is it, like she’s going to leave her. Like they’re done. They’ve just gotten home to the apartment they share together, and Alex feels the world cracking around her again.

This is the same problem—the problem in all of her failed college and high school relationships: not paying enough attention. The thing she let happen with Kara, and while she was trying to fix it she’s let it happen with Kelly too.

“I’m sorry,” Alex says, voice cracking on it. “I know I’ve been distant lately, and I can explain. I just need a little more time.” She has the tracker, she’s so close, she can taste it—

“I think you should explain now,” Kelly says, and the look in her eyes says if Alex doesn’t, she won’t have any more time.

So Alex tells her everything. About the morning she woke up and suddenly got memories of another universe—how it was the universe she grew up in, that they all did. How there used to be multiple universes, hundreds or thousands of them, and some of them were merged into this one when Kara and J’onn and Earth’s other mightiest heroes banded together to create it.

How Kara only remembered Earth-38, because she was one of the only survivors of its destruction, and how since Alex got her memories back she’s been helping Kara with things about this world she doesn’t know. How Kara has been trying to help Alex figure out how she got her memories back.

“I didn’t tell you because I hadn’t figured out how to get your memories back,” Alex says at the end of it. “I didn’t want you to feel like you were missing anything. But I’ve been trying, and I’m getting close—I’m going to make things okay between us again.”

There are tears in Kelly’s eyes, but she doesn’t say anything, and the silence stretches out between them. Alex is suddenly aware that she still has her coat on. She isn’t sure if she should take it off now. She waits for the disbelief, the concern, the questions about Earth-38 and what was different. The devastation she felt on realizing, the feeling that she hadn’t wanted to burden Kelly with.

“Alex, we talked about this,” is what Kelly says eventually instead. “The one thing I asked when we started dating was for you to tell me what was going on. Instead you have purposefully been keeping me in the dark about this for weeks. I’m sorry about what’s happened to your memories, and Kara’s, and I hope you figure it out. But I need you to find somewhere else to stay tonight.”

Alex stares, frozen. She can remember that conversation with Kelly. It started when they were talking about Alex’s job and Kara’s superheroing—Kelly had said she didn’t want Alex to keep things like that from her if they were going to do this, that communication was important to her in a relationship. Alex had agreed. Not communicating had been what had driven a rift between her and Kara when Kara had first come out as Supergirl and discovered what Alex really did for work.

After a moment, the memory splits into two, and Alex realizes with a sick feeling that it belongs to both of the worlds in her mind. Both Alexes had promised Kelly, and both of them had broken that promise. It was because I didn’t want to hurt you is what she’d told Kara about working at the DEO too—it hadn’t worked then either.

“Is this a break, or are you breaking up with me?” Alex asks. She should be apologizing, should be begging for forgiveness. But Alex fucked up, and she will take the punishment.

“I’m not sure yet,” Kelly says, and Alex nods.

“I’m going to get a bag,” she says, starting down to the bedroom—their bedroom, that might not be theirs anymore because Alex can’t keep herself from fucking up.

“Alex,” Kelly says, stopping her on the way. “I think you should talk to Kara.”

Alex laughs. “You think I should talk to her now?” When she feels like collapsing into a heap on a couch that isn’t hers anymore, when Kelly has just told her she needs to take a break, or maybe break up, so there would be no point in telling Kara about all of it anyway, just even more of Alex’s problems to burden her with when Alex has… fuck. When Alex has nowhere else to go, because she’s going to have to go to Kara’s now and ask if she can stay. She doesn’t have another apartment to go back to.

Kelly sighs. “I’ve seen plenty of other adults with foster siblings when I had my practice, and it’s unusual for their lives to revolve around each other’s like yours do. And I’ve never seen any of them act like the two of you did tonight.”

Alex frowns, wrongfooted. “What does that have to do with anything?” she asks. “I mean, I know that, the way the foster care system is set up means foster siblings usually don’t have relationships as close as mine and Kara’s is.” It’s something she’d realized in college, the first time she’d met other people with a more usual experience of the practice. And she knows she and Kara are—used to be—very close in general. “What does this have to do with talking to Kara?”

“The two of you act like a couple,” Kelly says. “And you both look at each other with stars in your eyes. That’s probably something you should talk about, Alex. I think it would help.”

Oh.

Alex’s heart is hammering in her chest, and she feels like she’s going to throw up. She thought this evening couldn’t get any worse. She was obviously wrong.

Kelly says something about how she’s going to call James to come over, that he’s been worried, but Alex barely hears her. 

She packs her bag without consciously realizing what she’s doing, other than a vague awareness that Kelly is waiting outside by the door, or maybe on the living room couch by now. This is the awful thing about dating a psychologist, the way Kelly knows just the right questions to ask to cut through Alex’s walls and look at all of her scabbed over, hidden pieces. Worse than that is that she’s always doing it to help, out of concern.

Alex can’t handle Kelly’s concern right now, is barely holding herself back from snapping, so maybe it’s a good thing she’s leaving the apartment after all. What Kelly said about her and Kara… she and Kara aren’t… Alex can’t think that. Their relationship had been wrong before. Wrong for her and Kara meant the distance, not talking. Being close again, spending more time together, touching more, like they used to… that’s right for them.

Alex can’t think about what Kelly said because it isn’t true, and her and Kara have just gotten back to a good place with each other, and Alex needs to hold onto that even more than she needs a place to stay right now.

Kelly is on the couch when Alex gets back out, holding a glass of wine, staring off into the middle distance in a way that Alex knows means she’s trying not to cry.

“I’m sorry,” Alex manages. It’s not nearly enough, but it’s all she has.

*

One of the lights in the hallway of Kara’s apartment building is broken, and it flickers between the warm glow of the building and the blackness of the night outside while Alex stands in front of Kara’s door, working up her courage to knock.

It opens before she gets a chance, revealing Kara, in Alex’s Stanford hoodie and a pair of fuzzy pajama pants, face creased in concern.

“Alex?” she asks. “What’s wrong?”

Alex steps forward, and there are arms around her before she gets a chance to answer. She hugs back, clutching at Kara’s back, burying her face in her neck.

“What happened?” Kara asks softly, after long minutes of the two of them just swaying in the doorway, and Alex does her best to pull herself together.

“I forgot my building is being fumigated early tomorrow morning,” she says. “Is it okay if I stay with you until I can go back?” Until she either figures things out with Kelly or finds somewhere else to go.

“Your building is being fumigated?” Kara asks, brow furrowed.

“They let us know in advance, but I messed up the dates,” Alex says, turning to find her bag, as if this will be any easier if she’s not looking at Kara’s face as she lies to it. You look at her with stars in your eyes, Kelly said—Alex doesn’t know if she can look at her at all right now. “I—”

“Stop,” Kara says, voice quiet. When Alex turns, Kara’s face is stone. “I may not have all of my memories but I’m not an idiot, Alex. And I still have my hearing.”

Oh. Oh no.

Kara picks up Alex’s bag from where she’d dropped it on the floor, puts it down inside of the apartment and steers Alex in too, shutting the door behind them. Alex can’t move.

“Were you really not going to tell me that you might have broken up with your partner who you were serious enough about to be living with? Or that you had a partner in the first place, or even that you were gay?”

“You were listening?” Alex asks, and then remembers, all of a sudden, what Kelly told her at the end, about her and Kara. “How long were you listening?”

She feels like she’s falling. She should have known Kara would find out, because Kara’s always found out things she shouldn’t using her powers, especially when she was young and didn’t have great control, and then since she became Supergirl and started listening on purpose. Probably the only reason Kara was surprised by Alex coming out the first time around was that she and Maggie hadn’t actually done anything, it was just Alex’s feelings bleeding all over the place.

“I know you’ve been keeping things from me since I got here, Alex. And I get it, if you don’t want to talk about your relationship. But you don’t have to tell me your building is being fumigated if you need a place to stay. Do you have that little faith in me?”

The words are like knives in her heart.

“You’re missing four years of your memories, Kara,” Alex manages. “You have enough problems without adding mine.”

“What have I ever done to make you think you couldn’t tell me about your problems?” Kara asks. “We take care of each other. That’s what we do.”

They take care of each other. That’s what Alex told Kara, only days from what Kara remembers, when Kara was going to leave for Metropolis. She laughs, and it comes out more like a sob.

“Do you want to know what this timeline is really like?” she asks. “What our universe was like too, before it ended? We’re not close anymore, Kara. We still work together, and have game nights with all of your friends, but I can’t remember the last time we had a sister night, in either universe.”

“What?” Kara is frozen.

“Do you want to know when they stopped?” Alex asks. “When I came out, and started dating Maggie, and started dumping all of my stuff on you. I kept crying on you over being gay, and about how Maggie didn’t want me, and then when we started dating I forgot your Earth birthday, and then asked you for dating advice because there was a concert I wanted to go to with Maggie that night.” These aren’t just Alex’s issues now, they’re things she’s done to Kara too, all of the sins she’s kept close to her chest, laid out to make Kara believe her. “And… when you asked me if we still had sister nights, I had to tell you yes. I had to help you get your memories back. I couldn’t drive you away again.”

What she doesn’t say is: I couldn’t bear it. Alex is crying now, and she still has her coat on. Everything is burning down around her and she keeps lighting matches.

Kara is so still, single tear running down her face. “I’ve been listening to you go home all week,” she says. “I wanted to make sure you got there safe because I couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to you. I don’t care that you… have things going on in your life, Alex, everyone has that. I care that you’re happy, whatever that means, and I can’t believe there’s anything out there that would drive me away, other than you lying to me again. We’re supposed to be partners.”

Alex laughs, because there’s nothing else she can do that’s not sobbing. She’s certainly not happy right now. Kara had left her, for all intents and purposes, and she’s in the middle of running this version of her off too. They certainly weren’t partners.

And the awful thing about it was, none of that meant Kara wasn’t still everything to her.

Kara can’t believe there’s anything out there that would make her leave Alex, and Alex remembers not being able to believe there was anything that would make her damage their relationship either, after finally repairing the fracture she’d caused by keeping things from Kara, by not telling her about the DEO.

But she had.

Just because Kara doesn’t remember it right now doesn’t make it less true, doesn’t make Alex any less of the selfish person who had ‘found herself’ and driven away the most important person in the world to her.

“That’s because I haven’t done it yet,” Alex tells Kara, Kara who’s looking at her like she just lost her in an explosion. “You’re not… her yet. Kara, two nights ago you told me you would take me with you, to Argo City. When we first found it, two years ago, when you were planning to go live there… you didn’t ask.”

Alex had buried that hurt, hid it so far down she could almost forget it was there, but since they talked about it the other night, it’s been just below the surface, bubbling up. It’s what always was going to happen. Who could she have been to Kara? Not a real sister, not whatever Kelly was suggesting. Just some human. No one.

“I don’t believe you,” Kara says, voice cracking, and Alex can’t be here anymore.

“I’m sorry you had to hear our fight,” she says. Maybe it doesn’t matter if Kara heard the last part of it too—it’s not like Alex is going to be able to fix this, regardless of Kara wondering if Alex wants to… wants. “If you don’t want me to stay with you I can find a hotel. But Brainy gave me a lead earlier, so I’m going to go… chase it.” She turns to go, and Kara stops her with a hand on her arm.

“Alex,” she says, looking scared. “I don’t want you to stay somewhere else. I just—if it’s been that long, why haven’t we fixed it?”

Because the world always needed saving. Because Kara always seemed fine, always flew higher without Alex weighing her down. She didn’t need her anymore.

Because Alex had thought they were fine too, hadn’t realized how far apart they’d fallen until Kara was right there beside her, like she used to be, hugging Alex and bringing her takeout, and Alex never wanted to let her go.

Alex had to let go. Alex had to fix this.

“I don’t know,” Alex says, manages a teary smile. “I’m sorry.”

*

Kara doesn’t follow her.

Alex waits around for a few minutes to be sure, pulling the pieces of her armour that she’s stashed in her bike on before she sets up the tracker on its handlebars and starts driving.

It’s better this way.

Once Alex finds the aliens and makes them give Kara’s memories back, then things will go back to normal. Kara will remember all of this, and she’ll be grateful to Alex for helping her when she didn’t have her memories, and maybe mildly embarrassed about going back to something resembling their old relationship. She’ll go back to her job, and to being Supergirl. Alex will go figure out how to get Kelly’s memories back, and then beg her for forgiveness.

They’ll both be happy.

The tracker takes Alex to the outskirts of the warehouse district. Wide empty streets with no one on them, rain-damp from the thunderstorm earlier, a few streetlights flickering. She parks the bike when she gets close enough, retrieves the tracker, and has another moment of gratitude for Brainy, helping her with no provocation.

This, going on missions, is what Alex is supposed to be doing, and even if her body is still throwing off its softness from months (years?) of not doing it on Earth-Prime, training the last couple of months has helped, and her mind remembers.

She creeps between buildings following the signal, getting further from the meagre sources of light, closer to the hissing of the nearby ocean. It’s almost peaceful here—with less streetlights, she can almost see the stars over the bay.

The quiet is broken by a high-pitched screech.

There are four of them, tall vaguely-humanoid dark-clad figures, and they came out of nowhere, and Alex is suddenly fighting for her life. She blocks hits with her battered forearms, fires off shots with her blaster. They’re too fast, and she has just enough time to curse herself for not bringing backup—she could have asked J’onn, or even Brainy if she didn’t want to bring Kara—before a clawed hand closes around her throat and lifts her up in the air.

There is a mind in hers, suddenly, and she can feel it rooting through all of her many memories. Somehow she can feel its fear too. Fear of this alien who’s been hunting them, even here, where they’ve hidden their young.

She knows, all of a sudden, that these aliens didn’t do anything to Kara’s memory. Or hers.

Alex tries to think at the alien that she isn’t looking for its young, she made a mistake, but the hand around her throat doesn’t loosen, and everything has started to go dark.

Alex!

It’s Kara’s voice. Alex relaxes into the black. Kara is who she wants to see, always, and maybe she’ll get to be with Kara now, and she won’t keep fucking up, and… maybe Kara will forgive her.

Alex hits the ground and gasps for breath. Her sluggish thoughts speed up again.

Kara is actually here. Kara is fighting the aliens. She throws the one that was choking Alex into the side of a building and hits another with her laser vision, deep, guttural scream ripping from her chest.

“Kara, don’t hurt them!” Alex shouts. “They didn’t do it!” 

Kara falters, confused, laser vision flickering out. Alex realizes all of a sudden this is another thing Kara’s not used to, fighting aliens she can’t go all out on. That first year all of the aliens were from Fort Rozz. 

And then one of the aliens leaps forward and—

It’s a punch Kara should have been able to dodge. Alex knows it, instinct from years of working together. But that’s the problem. It hasn’t been years for Kara anymore. And Alex had distracted her.

Alex watches, heart in her throat, as Kara falls. 

Alex scrambles to her feet. 

“Supergirl,” one of the aliens shouts at the other in what sounds like panic, gesturing to its chest where Kara’s crest is. They’ve started to flee as Alex is already running, as Kara hits the ground in a crumpled heap.

Alex falls to her knees at Kara’s side. Checks for a pulse with her own heart hammering in her ears.

Kara’s face is slack in unconsciousness, and Alex traces a gloved hand over her cheek, the scar on her eyebrow. Her hand is shaking. “It’s okay, you’re going to be okay,” she says, fishing for her phone to call J’onn, and she doesn’t know, but—Kara has to be.

*

They get Kara set up on her bed at her apartment, pull the portable sunlamp out from under her bed where it’s stored in case of civilian visitors. Alex has some of her other equipment stashed there too, and she sets it up, vision blurring every once in a while but hands steady.

Kara’s just unconscious. Banged up from the fight, but otherwise fine.

Alex hooks her up to the heart monitor, calibrated for Kryptonians, and a few other machines that will let her know if anything changes too dramatically.

“Alex,” J’onn says, his voice unbearably gentle, when Alex is in the middle of recalibrating the sun lamp for the fourth time. She straightens.

“She should wake up in a couple of hours, she was just knocked out,” Alex tells him. “It was the Rrutan we found, but they didn’t do this.”

“Do you—” he starts, and Alex cuts him off.

“You should go home, J’onn. I’m… thank you for the help, but I’m just going to hang out here and monitor her for a while. I’ll call you if anything changes.”

J’onn nods and steps back. “I’m here if you need me,” he says.

He leaves through the window like Kara usually does, and Alex breathes out slowly.

Kara still keeps whisky on the top of one of her kitchen cabinets for Alex, even though Alex can’t remember the last time she’s had any, and Alex brings the whole bottle with her. Stands over the bed, watches Kara’s unconscious frame.

Kara is fine. Kara is fine, and Alex is so angry she’s shaking. She fumbles the top off of the bottle and takes a swig from it.

Kara got hurt because Kara-without-her-memories was Kara without her experience, hard won through battles she had fought and survived. Kara got hurt because she risked her life to save Alex’s—Alex who does have the experience, who should have known better than to go off on her own in the first place, who distracted Kara during a fight—and Alex isn’t fucking worth it. And this version of Kara can’t see it, even though Alex has just lied to her for weeks about her relationship with Kelly, and her relationship with Kara too.

Alex takes another swig of the whisky and paces around the apartment. She can’t look at the couch, where they’ve been sitting pressed close on sister nights.

Why had Kara leapt in front of the alien?

She’d told Alex why. She didn’t think she could be happy without Alex, that she could live in the world without Alex in it. It had been what Alex, selfish, had wanted to hear. It hadn’t been true.

Maybe Kara had felt like that once, after her first year of being Supergirl, before Mon-El, before Maggie, before everything else. But she didn’t anymore. Kara was happy without Alex, she was fine without her.

Maybe she shouldn’t have tried so hard not to drive this Kara away. If Alex had been honest from the start, maybe Kara would have known that Alex wasn’t worth getting hurt over.

Alex slows her pacing as she realizes: she needs to go when Kara wakes up. J’onn can help Kara live on Earth-Prime—he can use his telepathic abilities to find out things Kara should know and doesn’t from other people’s memories, and Alex can get Brainy to help her figure this out. She still has to figure this out, she can do that much.

But she can’t keep pretending Kara could still feel that way about her, let alone anything else, any other ridiculous thoughts Kelly was trying to put in her mind.

Kara-with-her-memories wouldn’t have saved Alex, wouldn’t have thought she was worth saving. Some weak, pathetic human who couldn’t even figure out how to fix things with Kara’s memories, even after she’d spent weeks trying and fucked up her relationship for it. She doesn’t even want to think about what her job will have to say about all the vacation days she’s used.

On the bed, under the sun lamp, Kara looks calm, peaceful. Her brow no longer creased with worry, all of her muscles relaxed—like she’s resting, finally. She’s beautiful, and untouchable, and Alex hurts just looking at her.

“I wish you could remember what a fuck up I am,” Alex whispers, voice cracking.

“I can help with that,” says a voice behind her.

*

Alex pulls her blaster as she turns, fires in one motion. The human-looking person with messy hair and a crisp white suit waves his hand in front of the blast. It dissipates instantly.

“Who are you?” Alex snaps. She’s between this alien—he has to be an alien—and Kara, but they’re too close, and her blaster not working is not a good sign. She shouldn’t have sent J’onn away; she shouldn’t have been drinking. Still having some armour on is a small favour. “What do you want?”

“Alex, you wound me,” the alien says, pulling an exaggerated pouting face. “I was almost your brother in law.”

Almost Alex’s brother in law? What?

“As to what I want—I just told you, I’m here to grant your wish.”

That makes it all come together. The alien is Mr. Mxyzptlk, the imp who caused chaos trying to get Kara to marry him years ago. Chaos Alex had only heard about, hadn’t been in the middle of trying to help fix, because she had been busy trying to plan a Valentine’s Day date for Maggie.

The reminder of a battle she wasn’t there for stings somewhere deep inside, pushed down by her focus on the battle in front of her.

“You’re here to grant my wish?” Alex asks. “What wish? That you would leave Kara the hell alone?”

Mxyzptlk grins, posture at ease despite Alex’s offensive stance like nothing about her is any threat to him. It probably isn’t. “I wish you could remember what a fuck up I am,” he says, a perfect imitation of Alex’s voice coming out of his lips. The hair stands up on the back of Alex’s neck. “I can do that.”

Alex’s breath catches in her throat. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be that easy. She hasn’t even figured out how Kara lost her memories in the first place, and here’s this trickster, showing up out of nowhere and offering to fix it.

“I don’t believe you,” she says, and he laughs.

“Alex, please! I am all-powerful, of course I can grant your wish. Didn’t Kara tell you of my power when I came here to woo her? Well,” he looks around, makes a tsk-ing noise. “Not exactly here, but you know what I mean.”

He snaps his fingers, and all at once, Kara’s apartment looks exactly like it did back then. Stools instead of chairs at the dining room table, the painting of the sunset in Argo City she’d been working on then, still on her easel, still in progress. And there’s something different about the light that Alex can’t place but it feels… like then. Like another home, once upon a time.

Mxyzptlk snaps his fingers again and it’s gone. Kara’s apartment is the Earth-Prime version of itself again—and Alex’s hand is empty.

“So?” he asks as she pulls her blaster back out of its thigh holster. “How about it? Want to make that wish?”

When things seem too good to be true, in Alex’s experience, they usually are.

“What’s the catch?” she asks. “Why are you doing this—what do you want?”

Mxyzptlk sighs. “So suspicious. I want to grant your wish, I told you. And there’s no catch—just a price.”

A price. Of course. Alex adjusts her grip on her weapon, stops herself from looking behind her to make sure Kara’s still there, still okay—not that it would make a difference. Alex is woefully outclassed here and she knows it.

“What’s the price?”

“That’s up to you,” he says, brushing imaginary dirt off his perfect suit. “What can you offer that’s of equal value, shall we say, to Kara remembering ‘what a fuck up I am’? What would seem like a price to you?” His smile turns sharp.

What would Alex give, to fix this for Kara, to make things okay again? Everything is the first thing that comes to mind, and she tamps down on that impulse. That’s not what he’s asking. And it’s probably a terrible idea to even be considering this, because Mxyzptlk is a trickster, as well as an all-powerful being, for all intents and purposes. There could be consequences to this that Alex hasn’t thought of.

But she doesn’t have any other ideas right now. And she can’t fail Kara.

What could she give?

“What about my memories of Earth-38?” Alex asks. “For Kara’s memories of the last four years.”

Part of Alex wants to take back the words as soon as they’re out of her mouth, but she holds her ground, keeps all of her doubts off her face. Maybe it would be better this way. If she can’t figure out how she got her memories back in the first place, can’t unlock the secret of the mechanism that would enable her to do the same thing for Kelly, for Winn, for her Mom, to make it so that Alex, Kara and J’onn weren’t the only people who remembered their world… maybe she should forget instead. 

She had been planning to leave anyway, to figure out how to get Kara’s memories back. This is the same thing but quicker. 

The Earth-Prime version of herself wouldn’t have lied so much and fucked things up with Kelly. She wouldn’t have avoided her research project for weeks, she wouldn’t have had a better time at game night by ignoring her partner and… she wouldn’t have lied to Kara, either, wouldn’t have hurt her like she did. Maybe it would be better for everyone, if Alex could be made into Earth-Prime Alex again instead. 

And Alex is tired. She’s lonely, and she’s sick of walking around hurting every time she remembers something that didn’t happen here, another person who doesn’t remember their relationship the way it happened for Alex. She doesn’t know how long she can keep living like this.

Kara will miss her, she knows, but Kara needs her memories back. She needs her experience, so she won’t get hurt again as easily as she did today, and… she deserves to remember the life she’s lived. Kara will be fine without Alex remembering, and Alex has enough memories. Maybe if she puts some of them down, they’ll stop hurting so much.

Mxyzptlk smiles. “Yes, Alex Danvers, that is a fair price,” he says. “Poetic, too, trading back.”

“Trading back?” Alex asks. “What do you mean trading back?” 

And then she realizes, and Alex’s world falls out from under her for the third time in as many months.

*

“You need to say it as a wish,” Mxyzptlk says, but Alex is frozen in place.

Trading back. Because that’s how Alex got her Earth-38 memories back in the first place: Kara wished for them.

It all makes a horrifying sort of sense—except it doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would Kara have wished for Alex’s memories back? Because she didn’t know enough about Earth-Prime to pass as being from here is the obvious answer, but if that was it, why hadn’t she told Alex? Alex had spent all that time trying to figure out what had happened, and Kara had helped her—and she’d known the whole time.

But why would Kara have traded Alex’s memories for her own?

 Maybe Kara hadn’t intended to make that trade at all.

“ I wish Kara remembered the last four—” Mxyzptlk says in another awful, realistic recreation of Alex’s voice, and Alex has him up against the wall of Kara’s bedroom by the neck before he can say another word.

“What price did Kara agree to?” she asks.

“Any price,” Mxyzptlk says easily, like being threatened by her is nothing. Alex bares her teeth and tightens her grip around his neck. He may be an all-powerful alien, but she can still feel his quickening pulse against her fingertips.

“What were her words exactly?” Alex presses. There’s no way Kara can have said that, that she would agree to forget her own memories for Alex to remember Earth-38. Alex already had Earth-Prime memories, she was fine.

Mxyzptlk snaps his fingers and he’s not up against the wall anymore. Alex has one brief panicked moment of thinking he’s gone, vanished, she missed her chance, and then she hears Kara’s voice to her right:

“I wish Alex remembered our world.”

Alex whirls around, terror clawing up her throat, but Kara is still in the bed, still unconscious.

And Kara is in the living room, arms crossed, standing tall, stubborn look on her face. Alex knows instantly: this is what happened.

“Not just that it existed, but all of her memories. I wish Alex had all of her memories of our world, Earth-38, back.”

Mxyzptlk stands across from her, in the same white suit. He turns and winks at Alex when he notices her looking, and then goes back to nodding seriously at Kara—at the memory of Kara. Alex walks toward her slowly, afraid to break the spell but unable to stay away.

Kara’s wearing that huge, soft white sweater of hers, some loose jeans, and her hair is a little mussed, eyes are red around the edges. From crying? This is after that game night, Alex realizes, the one right before she got her memory back. She remembers Kara wearing that sweater.

“There will be a price,” Mxyzptlk tells Kara, and Alex steps forward so she’s right in front of her, less than a breath away, close enough so she can see the slight crinkle in her brow, the way her eyes start to water again as they look right past, through Alex.

“I don’t care,” she says. “As long as it doesn’t do anything to hurt her. I need…”

Kara looks down for a moment, takes one quick, staccato breath, stealing herself, and then she looks back up, all determination. The Girl of Steel. Alex reaches out one trembling hand for Kara’s face just as Kara says:

“I wish Alex had all of her memories of Earth-38 back.”

Alex’s fingers brush her cheek—it’s there, her skin soft, warm—but unyielding. Because this isn’t really Kara, and Alex isn’t part of this memory.

Behind them, Mxyzptlk snaps his fingers.

Alex is back in Kara’s bedroom, her hand around Mxyzptlk’s throat. The alien smiles at her, and Alex lets go, staggers back.

He steps away from the wall and straightens his collar, still smiling. “So, Alex Danvers, are you ready to make your wish?”

It was true. Kara had wished for Alex’s memories back, and she hadn’t known about the cost, but… she hadn’t cared. Why had she done that? That was… Kara going into space, all over again.

That’s what she had done then. She had been willing to give, to sacrifice whatever it took, for the world, for Alex. She had used what she thought were her last words to get Alex to promise her that she would be happy.

Alex steps over to the bed, staring down at Kara’s unconscious face.

Kara has always been willing to pay whatever price it would take to save the world, but this, wishing for Alex’s memories back, whatever the cost… there was no world to save like this. The world didn’t need Alex to remember Earth-38, didn’t need her to be a vigilante in this universe again, like Kara was. If it had, Kara would have told her.

The only thing Alex getting her memories back changed was… Alex’s world. And Kara’s.

“I changed my mind,” Alex tells Mxyzptlk, turning to face him again. She crosses her arms, tries to channel the DEO director she’s never been in this world that was created only months ago. “I want you to give Kara her memories back. I don’t want to lose mine. What’s the price for that?”

Mxyzptlk grins at her. “What do you think?”

Alex thinks she’s tired of playing this game. She had been willing to give herself, all of herself, to make things alright for Kara again, but if it’s true, if there is even a chance that Mxyzptlk is telling the truth about what Kara said, then Kara wanted this for Alex. So Alex has to fight. And she has to talk to Kara, Kara who remembers everything.

“I think you’re going to do it because you broke the terms of your last deal with Kara,” she says. “And that means you owe her.”

The smile slips of Mxyzptlk’s face. “I don’t break my word,” he says.

“As long as it doesn’t do anything to hurt her.” Alex’s imitation of Kara’s voice isn’t as good as Mxyzptlk’s, without magic (or whatever it is) to help her, but she does alright. “If you’re so all-powerful, you know Kara losing her memories has hurt me.”

Mxyzptlk stares at her for a moment, and Alex wonders if he’s looking into her thoughts, her feelings, what a creature who can take away and grant memories from destroyed universes might see there.

Alex thinks about all of the things Kara no longer remembers and the burn of their absence. Coming up into space to save Alex, when Alex had been taken in by her father’s lies, how she’d held Alex, when Alex had been crying over Maggie the first time, and then when they broke up… how Kara doesn’t remember going to Argo City, and seeing her mother, alive after all of this time. How Alex hurts for Kara, too.

Eventually, the alien smiles, straightens his suit collar again.

“I suppose I owe Kara, for my… misguided attempts at proposing marriage all those years ago, before we’d gotten to know each other. And getting her memories back is its own kind of price, after all. Very well, Alex Danvers. Make your wish.”

Alex does.

Mxyzptlk snaps his fingers, and on the bed, Kara wakes up with a gasp.

A second later she’s floating, eyes glowing.

“We had a deal,” she says to Mxyzptlk, voice full of terrible rage, and grief, and Alex knows, all at once, that Kara has her memories back.

“I made a new deal,” he says, gesturing to Alex with a smile.

Kara looks at her for a moment, expression obscured by the glow of her eyes, and Alex stares back. This is what Kara was hiding from her, when she got her memories back, what she hadn’t wanted to let Alex see. Her pain.

“Kara,” Alex says, taking a step forward.

Kara grabs Mxyzptlk by the collar and launches out the window.

Half an hour later she still hasn’t come back, and Alex goes down to her motorcycle.

*

“I’m so sorry,” Kara says as Alex steps out onto the roof, before Alex realizes Kara is there, and Alex exhales in shaky relief, grabs hold of the doorframe to steady herself before she goes out to meet her. Kara is sitting on the edge of the building, feet over the side, and with her memories returned, she looks Kryptonian in a way Alex isn’t used to seeing her anymore: drawn, cold, tired, the weight of her human disguise falling down around her.

It’s the last place Alex had thought to check, after hours of frantic searching. She had been so worried Mxyzptlk had hurt Kara, or taken her memories back, or… worse, that Kara would just be gone—but of course Kara would be here, just on top of the apartment she’d supersped out of hours before. She’d always used to go out onto the Danvers’ roof to watch the stars too.

“You were happy here, without remembering,” Kara says, as Alex gets closer. “I didn’t realize until I saw you with your memories back, and then… I didn’t know how to tell you it was me who had taken that away from you.”

Alex sits down beside Kara on the edge. She’s not afraid of the drop—Kara would catch her.

“Kara,” Alex says. Kara doesn’t turn to look at her, and Alex reaches out for her face, tries to make her. Kara is immovable. “Why did you do it?”

“I was selfish and scared,” Kara says. “And I asked Mxyzptlk if he would change things back, but he said he couldn’t because you’d already wished to keep your memories, and—”

“Stop,” Alex says, suddenly cold. That isn’t what she wants at all. “Kara, I’m glad I remember, I don’t want to forget.”

That gets Kara to turn, face creased in anguish. Looking at her now, Alex thinks she knows what Mxyzptlk meant when he said that Kara having her memories back was its own kind of price. Kara has lost so much. World after world, over and over again. Sometimes it’s easier to just forget, like Alex had been willing to, too. But now, she wouldn’t give up her memories for anything. She holds Kara’s face in place, and Kara lets her.

“I meant what I said the other night,” she says. “I couldn’t be happy without you. But… you promised him anything. He took your memories, you got hurt—” There’s this desperate aching feeling inside of her, and she needs Kara to tell her why. She needs Kara to be honest with her, even though Alex has spent the last week and a half lying.

Kara laughs wetly, disentangling herself from Alex’s hand and floating to her feet. “You were happy, Alex. I saw it. I was here for weeks and you were fine. You were… going on dates with Kelly, and having science lunches with your coworkers from your safe job, where you actually got to do xenobiology that they paid you for, instead of running experiments in your spare time. If that wasn’t you being happy you’re a much better actor than I thought you were.”

The words make Alex pause. She’s been thinking about her Earth-Prime memories the whole time, but not about how it felt, living here, before she got her memories back and nothing fit anymore. The satisfaction she felt at the applause for her presentation at Star City’s biotech convention, the swell in her heart at the crinkle in Kelly’s eyes when Alex asked her to get an apartment with her. Maybe she had been happy here, without her memories.

Kara isn’t done. “Giving you your memories back wrecked your life here, Alex,” she says. “You stopped going to work so you could figure out how it happened, and you’ve been fighting with Kelly, I’ve heard you, and now the two of you are…” Kara gestures in the air, unable to make herself say the words broken up, even if that’s probably what she’s thinking. “I ruined everything for you, and I didn’t even realize it because my ‘price’ let me escape responsibility for my actions.”

Maybe Alex had been happier here.

Maybe that’s not what matters, after all.

“You’re right,” Alex says, standing. “I can remember the feeling of being happy here. I had a job I liked and a partner who loved me, and… I’m not sure about either of those things right now. But I wasn’t me, Kara. I couldn’t be happy, wouldn’t be me, without you.”

Kara is tied so tightly into Alex’s history that she can’t extricate her—the sad, lost alien Alex wanted nothing to do with who became the most important person in her life. The reason Alex pursued xenobiology, the reason she joined the DEO, the reason she fought, every day, to make the world better—for Kara. Alex had resented it at first, but now she doesn’t know who she would be without that connection. The Alex on Earth-38 had been losing it for years, and when Earth-Prime spun up she had been losing it here too, but somehow this universe had made her fine with it, and Alex wasn’t. She couldn’t be.

When Kara had taken Myriad up, all of those years ago, and Alex had flown up into space to get her—Alex hadn’t been happy then, she had been angry, and terrified. But it was the most at peace she’d ever felt too because she was where she was supposed to be: giving all of herself to save Kara, when no one else could. That was who Alex wanted to be.

“Even if we’re not close anymore,” she tells Kara, “even if you go off into space tomorrow and never come back, remembering my life with you, my real life, matters to me. You’re part of me, Kara. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”

Kara stares at her, face creased in pain, tears in her eyes, and Alex is suddenly overwhelmed by all of the things they haven’t said to each other, all of the things she still doesn’t know. This is the first honest conversation they’ve had since their last battle on Earth-38, when Kara had pulled her in for a brief, tight hug that made Alex’s ribs creak, whispered good luck into her hair. And then Alex had died in that explosion. Her body, her memories, all of her.

Until Kara brought all of her back, piece by piece.

And Kara still hasn’t answered her question, is just staring at Alex like she’s a galaxy Kara hasn’t seen before.

“Why did you do it, Kara?” she asks, voice breaking. “Why were you willing to give Mxyzptlk anything to get my memories back? I drove you away, and I was selfish, weighing you down with all of my problems, and even here I’ve been lying to you.”

That snaps Kara out of it. “You telling me about the things going on in your life isn’t selfish, Alex,” she says, looking pained. “And us not being close anymore isn’t because you drove me away. You were preoccupied with Maggie, but I was spending all of my time with Mon-El then too. We both just made less time for each other, and by the time I realized…” Kara makes a helpless sound in the back of her throat. “I thought it was too late.”

“It wasn’t,” Alex manages, heart in her throat, and Kara smiles, teary.

“That’s why I didn’t ask you to come to Argo with me. You had your own life here. I thought you would say no, and that would hurt worse than leaving would.”

Alex feels the world tilt underneath her.

Alex had still been with Maggie then, and they had been getting more serious—it was weeks before Alex asked Maggie to marry her. If Kara had asked, if she had thought Kara needed her, Alex thinks she still would have gone.

“I was so lonely without you, Alex,” Kara says, her voice small. “That’s why I made the wish. I couldn’t bear you not remembering our world because that would be like none of it happened, none of it mattered, and… I wouldn’t be me without you either.”

She looks up at Alex, soft, private smile on her face, the sad one she only shows Alex, that looks like home.

Alex lurches forward, and Kara’s arms are around her, holding her so tightly it’s painful, and Alex can hardly get air in her lungs but it still feels like she can breathe again.

Kara feels the same way Alex does, Kara wants what Alex does. Alex isn’t going to let her go again.

“That was a fucking stupid thing to do,” Alex tells her. She’s shaking a little, all of the adrenaline, the fear from the evening finally gone and leaving her crashing in the aftermath. Kara has her memories back, Kara is safe, Kara is holding her… “He could have taken anything, Kara.”

Kara just hugs her tighter, and Alex can feel her trembling too. “I would have let him, if he gave you back to me,” she says.

Alex wants to tell her she shouldn’t have, that Alex isn’t worth it, how could she be? What is one human to the rest of the world, to a god who could crush mountains in her hands? But those hands are clutching at Alex’s back, those arms are holding her tight, and… Alex would give Kara anything. If what Kara wants is Alex, how could she not give herself too?

“It’s a good thing he didn’t take away my memory of being Supergirl, though,” Kara says. “That would have sucked.”

Alex laughs until she’s crying again, big ugly sobs that wrack her frame, snot running out of her nose. Kara is there, buoying her up, saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

“I missed you,” Alex manages, and she doesn’t know how to say that she’s not just talking about when Kara didn’t have her memories but all the years before that too, when they were slowly orbiting away from each other. When Alex was getting colder and colder away from the sun, so gradually she didn’t realize it until she was warm again.

“I missed you too,” Kara says, voice thick, and Alex thinks she knows.

*

They end up back on Kara’s couch, all of the lights off so they can watch the stars, pressed close with no space between them. Kara has draped her comfiest throw blanket over their tangled knees, and between it and Kara’s alien warmth, Alex thinks she’s going to start sweating soon—or fall asleep. Right now, she doesn’t care.

“I missed this too,” Kara says, hand rubbing Alex’s knee absently, and Alex thrills at the return of the casual touch, from Kara who remembers all that’s been between them and wants to be close to her anyway. “Losing my memories was… inconvenient, but I’m glad I forgot we didn’t cuddle anymore so I could remember again.”

Alex winces. “I am sorry for lying to you,” she says, and Kara laughs.

“I didn’t tell you I had made a deal with an alien to get your memories back so I think we’re even,” she says, and, fair.

“I’m glad too,” Alex says. “I don’t want to think about how long we could have gone without…” This moment that they’re living in, where they’re both pressed close, where they both want this from each other, and can say so.

“It was so weird seeing Earth-Prime from that perspective, though,” Kara says, dropping her head onto Alex’s shoulder. “The alien bar again, the market… game night!” She pops up and glares at Alex. “I can’t believe you let me serve cheetos at game night!”

Alex laughs, swats at her. “In my opinion, game night was missing cheetos,” she says. “Taboo, too. I liked it.”

“I did too,” Kara admits, and then grimaces. “Lena is going to bug me about it, though. It’s like that one time when we went to this restaurant and…” she trails off. “Actually, that was on Earth-38, so nevermind,” she says eventually, forced casual, like it’s fine even though Alex can tell it’s really not. “It’s hard to live here sometimes,” she adds, quietly.

“Yeah,” Alex says. Talking about this with Kara reminds Alex of conversations they’ve had before, when Alex first got her Earth-38 memories back—but different, too. Now Kara isn’t hiding the pain in her voice when she talks about it, the thing she used to show Alex but stopped somewhere along the way.

Alex feels it too. Running through her conversations with Kelly, but also things like Eliza asking if she was still in touch with Kenny Li from high school, when they spoke on the phone last. All of the times her dissonant memories clash—and it must be worse for Kara, who’s missing her ‘history’ from this world, who wouldn’t know if she and Lena had that same experience in a restaurant unless she asked her, or unless J’onn read Lena’s mind.

“It’s easier with you,” Kara says, nosing into Alex’s hair. “I’m just really not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow and faking it again.”

Alex isn’t either. But on the couch, pressed close, with Kara confiding in her again, Alex feels a strange sort of hope start to kindle inside of her. Like maybe she does have a choice, after all.

“Let’s not,” she says, shifting on the couch so she’s facing Kara. Their knees knock together, blanket threatening to slip off, and Kara sits up too, frowning.

“Go to work? I don’t think J’onn wants to keep covering for me, Alex,” she says.

“No, I mean… let’s not live here,” Alex says. Her heart is thrumming in her chest, full and aching with possibility. “Let’s just go. To another city, another country… another planet. Now that all of the universes have merged, National City has enough heroes. And I don’t want to fake it anymore either.”

The words feel true as soon as they’ve left her mouth, something she wants not just for Kara, but for herself. She doesn’t think they can be happy here like this, either of them, constantly out of step with the rest of the world, surrounded by the ghosts of people they once knew. The world can get by without them.

“What about Kelly?” Kara asks.

“You’re the most important person in the world to me,” Alex says, and she’s always known it was true, no time more than the past few weeks, hours, but saying it now, to Kara, feels like a choice she’s making. Like the right one. “I want to be wherever you are. Always.”

Kara’s eyes are bright, full of the lights of the city, the stars—shining with tears. Alex wonders again, for a brief moment, if Kara did overhear the last part of her conversation with Kelly. If it matters if she did. Kara is her person, being close like this is how they work, and sister is the word they’ve used for so long to mark that. But if they leave, go somewhere where no one knows them, it doesn’t have to be. Maybe they can choose that too.

Kara smiles, and on her face, Alex can see the beginnings of the sunrise outside. She leans forward, and Alex does too, and when their foreheads touch, Alex breathes out, leans in.

They stay like that, pressed together, for long moments past when Alex would have expected Kara to pull away, long enough that she can sink into it, relax. She can still smell Kara’s sherbet punch on her breath—she can’t believe games night was earlier this evening. It feels like it happened in a different universe from this one.

“Where do you want to go?” Kara asks, which is, of course, when both their phones ding.

It’s a text from J’onn in their group chat—M’gann has asked him to come to Mars, she’s found a new cell of renegade White Martians and needs his help.

“How about we start with Mars?” Alex asks. Kara grins back at her, and it feels like a new day after all.

*

It’s a busy week. The situation on Mars is semi-urgent, so as soon as they’ve decided to go, it’s a new task each day to get off-planet as quickly as possible. In the first half of the week, Alex quits her job, says goodbye to former coworkers, and takes a trip to Midvale with Kara and all of the things Eliza has asked for from Kara’s apartment, which is now on the rental market again for the first time since Alex moved to National City for school.

“It’s okay to grow up and have your own lives, Alex,” Eliza tells her as they’re leaving, after an hour of asking both of them for more details on alternate universes, and making all sorts of notes on the kitchen table amidst the boxes of Chinese takeout. “I moved to California, you can move to space. But whatever universe, you are still my child, and you still have to come visit me.” 

It startles a laugh out of Alex through her sudden tears, and she and Kara both promise. 

The next day they have a last games night, involving most of the superfriends, and Alex gets a chance to thank Brainy for his help amidst everyone else’s tearful goodbyes. She gets a tight, sharp hug and a seriously worded promise to visit her in space, like it’s the same as Alex moving to another country.

Maybe for Brainy it is comparable. When she tells him she looks forward to it she means it. Somehow, him being from the future and newer to her circle makes it easier—there’s not as much shared history missing in the first place. And he wanted to help, when Kara was missing her memories. That matters to Alex.

There are more tears from Kara later, just for Alex, because she hadn’t been able to really say goodbye to her friends from their universe, and… that’s part of why they’re leaving in the first place. They’re sprawled out on Kara’s bed, the last piece of furniture in an apartment that’s been quickly emptying out (they had the games night with boxes for tables and chairs, mostly), and Alex gathers her close, tangles their limbs together, gives Kara what comfort she can from herself—and then from the last of the ice cream left in the freezer, when Kara decides they definitely need that too.

Kelly wasn’t at the game night, understandably, but she agrees to meet Alex at Noonan’s on what ends up being a day before they leave. Alex is grateful—it’s not a conversation she wanted to have over the phone. Her bags are packed, after a couple of involved conversations with Kara and J’onn about what she might need in space, and this is the last thing Alex feels like she has to do.

Kelly is waiting at their usual table at the back in what Alex thinks of as her work outfit: crisp pantsuit and sharp-winged eyeliner. Alex feels a pang of painful memory seeing her. This was the woman Alex thought she was going to spend forever with, once.

Kelly’s eyes still crinkle in a smile when they see her, but it’s a hug, not a kiss, as Alex gets close. Alex wonders if she knows already.

“You look better,” Kelly tells her, sitting down again, as if Alex wasn’t the one who hurt her. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I’m leaving the city tomorrow,” Alex says, rubbing the back of her neck. “I’m leaving the planet tomorrow, actually,” she adds, in the spirit of actual honest communication, this time.

Then she tells Kelly everything.

She doesn’t even realize she hadn’t mentioned wanting to break up until Kelly raises her eyebrows at the end, asks, “this is going to be an indefinite break, then?”

Alex freezes, then flushes and covers her face with her hands. “Shit, I’m sorry,” she says.

Kelly laughs. “No, it’s okay. I can’t say I didn’t know it was coming, and off-planet long distance sounds awful anyway.”

It would be. Alex had done research, when she thought Kara was going to move to Argo City—which should maybe tell her something. Part of her is amazed that Kelly is taking this so well, but the rest of her is just glad. She didn’t want to hurt her, even though this isn’t the Kelly that Alex started dating. But though she’s still mourning Earth-38’s Kelly a little, Alex isn’t sure how long they could have made it work either, if she’s being honest with herself. She’s trying to be, these days. Her Kelly, the one Alex had started dating, had worried over Alex’s dangerous job at the DEO too, had made the occasional comment about what they could do if they both retired to safer work while they were still young, and… Alex doesn’t want to be safe. Alex wants to fly.

“I wanted to ask,” Kelly says, after a minute, and Alex braces herself for all sorts of painful questions she doesn’t know how to answer. 

What Kelly says though is: “Did you figure out the alternate universe thing? Is this one real? Stable?”

There’s something in her voice, a hint of worry, and Alex realizes maybe Kelly was more affected by Alex’s revelation the other night than Alex thought she was.

“This universe is fine,” Alex reassures her, reaching out on the table to take Kelly’s hand like she usually would in this kind of conversation. She tries not to be hurt when Kelly reaches for her coffee instead. They have just officially broken up, after all. “It’s stable, and it’s not going anywhere.”

Real, though. What makes the universe real or not?

“It’s real by all objective measurements,” Alex continues slowly. “Our bodies match up with what’s happened in this universe, not the other,” she adds, because knowing these specifics will probably help Kelly, would have helped Alex too, if not for… “The real universe for me is whatever one Kara remembers,” Alex says, a truth that she’s felt in her bones this whole time but didn’t have the words for until they were out of her mouth.

Whatever scars this body might be missing, the realness has been her joy in the past week, sleeping tangled with Kara in Kara’s bed, making travel plans with star charts, ribbing Kara for the barbecue sauce she got on the corner of her mouth in one of her attempts to eat as many of her favourite Earth foods as she could before they come back to visit.

Their relationship may not be what Kelly was implying, but it’s what they both need it to be again, it’s one where Alex can reach out and touch the person in the world she loves more than anything, where she can go wherever Kara goes and that’s what Kara wants too. As long as she has that, the future looks alright, whatever else that connection looks like.

“You look happy so I’m happy for you,” Kelly says, smiles. She finishes her coffee and stands up, adjusts her blazer. “I assume you don’t have a forwarding address, but I can pass your mail on to your mom for you if you want.”

“Thank you,” Alex says, a little overwhelmed. She doesn’t think anyone else she could have been dating would have reacted like this to the news that not only was her partner breaking up with her but she was leaving the planet tomorrow, but that’s Kelly Olsen. Too mature for Alex by half. “And I’m sorry, again.”

Kelly waves her hand, brushing off the apology. “I’ll be alright,” she says. “Send me a text if you’re ever back in our solar system.” She pauses before she walks away, and adds, “I’m glad you figured things out, Alex.”

The next morning, as Alex wakes up with a mouthful of blonde hair in her mouth for the last time in this apartment, as Kara flies them both over to where J’onn is waiting with his newly purchased ship near National City’s docks, all of their luggage and J’onn’s car already stowed on board, as she wraps around Kara while they stand in front of the window during takeoff, watching the sky shade into stars getting closer and closer—Alex thinks she really has.

“I packed a whole bunch of cheetos, if you want them,” Kara says seriously into Alex’s hair, and Alex snorts, pinches Kara in the side.

“I love you,” she says—words for the warmth welling up inside of her, the reckless joy she feels as Earth gets smaller and smaller behind them, knowing that unlike all the other times they’ve left the atmosphere, this time she and Kara are both safe—this time they’re going up together. With J’onn, and cheetos, and probably whatever other shelf-stable snack foods Kara could pack.

Kara’s answering smile is the sun. She twists in Alex’s embrace, presses a kiss to her forehead—hot like a brand, like Alex is something she’s going to keep. Alex leans in, holds Kara tighter, and watches their new life unfold before them.