696. Chapter 696

If she knew how to make it stop, she would.

Not even the feelings – she knows that plenty of liquor will make those stop – but the world itself.

That’s the part that needs to stop.

Because everything – every. single. thing. – she tries to think about sends her into yet another tailspin.

If she tries to think about work, she winds up thinking about the things she has yet to do, the catch up she still has to play, from her time relaxing with Maggie this weekend.

The price of what Maggie calls taking care of herself.

If she tries to think, then, of Maggie, she can only think about the fact that she’ll probably leave, eventually, because Alex is too new at all this and besides, who wants to be with someone who can’t handle life when nothing’s even wrong, except everything’s wrong, except nothing’s wrong, except absolutely everything is falling apart?

If she tries to think of Kara, she only hears Eliza’s voice. That she’s not taking good enough care of her. She only thinks of Kara’s voice, under the influence of Red K, telling her they’re not sisters, that she doesn’t have a life of her own.

True. She really doesn’t.

Or, she didn’t, until Maggie.

How pathetic does that make her?

And on and on.

Everything she tries to land her thoughts on, her brain convinces her to focus only on negatives, only on terrifying what-ifs, only on things that are going to make her stomach flip and her chest contract and her heart feel like it’s going to explode.

She starts slamming her fists into Maggie’s punching bag before she processes what she’s doing.

Because she hasn’t put wraps on her hands.

And she’s fought with bare hands before. Of course she has.

She’s taken lives with her bare hands.

The thought, the memory, of life leaving another being’s eyes – her fault, her responsibility, her doing – makes her punch harder.

Yet another thing that’s falling apart.

Her very sense of who she is. Or who she’d always thought she was.

She’s fought with bare hands before, and she knows what it does to her knuckles.

The blood it leaves, the pain.

The way the skin of her knuckles will crackle and then open, small at first, but then she’ll keep punching, she’ll keep slamming.

When blood starts transferring from her hands to the bag, then the release will be worth it. Will be complete.

Because it’ll sting and it’ll last, and the scabs and the scars will remind her.

Of everything.

Everything, which is precisely what’s making her punch, and punch, and punch, harder and harder and harder.

The more her knuckles split, the more she hisses in pain, the better it feels.

And the worse it feels.

But worse is better, sometimes.

Because then she doesn’t have to worry about solutions. She doesn’t have to worry about anything except the sensations she’s creating for herself. The ones she’s controlling.

Because everything is falling down, and everything is drowning her, and everything is off balance; but god, at least her punches aren’t.

Until something warm covers both of her fists.

Until something warm, something soft, presses against her sweaty back.

“Let go,” she begs Maggie, and she doesn’t know why she hasn’t realized until this moment that she’s sobbing.

“No,” Maggie whispers, and Alex can’t, won’t, turn to see her face, but she knows that Maggie, now, is crying, too.

She doesn’t know when she got home, and she doesn’t know how long she hesitated – if she hesitated at all – before she put her own hands over Alex’s, willing to take the punches on her own knuckles to protect her girlfriend’s.

“Maggie,” she practically growls, her throat thick with tears and with rage and with swelling anxiety.

“No,” Maggie insists again, and that’s when the gravity of Maggie’s protection hits her.

Because Maggie never insists on touching Alex when Alex doesn’t want to be touched; Maggie never so much as kisses Alex without her enthusiastic endorsement.

But she won’t let her go right now, practically koala-ed around her body, because Alex’s knuckles are cracked and bloody and the sight is making much the same of Maggie’s heart.

“I love you,” she trembles, and Alex can’t do it anymore.

Can’t stand, can’t move, can’t… can’t.

She lets her body collapse, and she knows that Maggie will just… have her.

And, sure enough, Maggie slows her fall with her own body, gathering Alex’s now limp form into her lap and kissing her face.

“May I?” Maggie asks after Alex stops sobbing, after her chest stops wracking involuntarily – the only part of her body that’s moving at all.

Alex blinks for a moment, unsure what Maggie’s asking for, until she follows her gaze to her own hands.

“What do you want to do?” Alex asks, her voice hoarse and broken.

“Treat your hands the way they deserve to be treated,” Maggie tells her, but without any trace of judgment in her voice, in her loving eyes.

“And how’s that?” Alex asks, because she thinks she forgot a long time ago.

“With love,” Maggie blinks out tears. “May I?” she asks again, and this time, Alex nods.

Maggie kisses her pain, so gentle, so tender, that it makes Alex weep again.

And she weeps when Maggie brings her to the bathroom and cleans her wounds for her.

She gets numb again by the time Maggie has her bandaged up, and she only has two words in her vocabulary.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she mutters, over and over and over again, but Maggie just shakes her head each time.

“No apologies, sweetie,” she tells her, just as often as Alex apologizes. “Just let me take care of you,” she whispers.

So Alex does. Because Maggie keeps insisting that she deserves it – deserves to be cared for – and she keeps insisting that she’ll be alright. That everything will be alright.

She keeps promising.

She promises so much – and she holds Alex so close – that, slowly, she starts to believe it.