255. Chapter 255

“I would have stopped,” she repeats over and over to Maggie – or to herself, Maggie can’t quite tell – as Maggie examines and ices her knuckles.

“I know, sweetie,” she whispers after something like the tenth time Alex says it, and Alex startles like she’s just now realizes Maggie is there, kneeling in front of her and caring for her lethal hands.

So she was repeating it to herself, after all.

Maggie didn’t know her heart could shred any more than it already has since she got the text from Winn – Alex went rogue on a Cadmus prisoner, I’ve got her for now, but I think she needs you – but it does.

“Al, look at me?”

Alex stares down at her with a mixture of defiance and desperate need for validation in her eyes. Maggie envelops the first and provides the second.

“Alex, you were trying to save lives. I know it…” She looks at Alex’s hands and wonders how much worse the prisoner must look, and her heart shreds just a little more. “But I know you would have stopped. Wanna know how?”

Alex gulps and blinks down tears and shakes her head. Maggie runs gentle fingers across her cheek.

“Because you’re so upset over it now. You wouldn’t be if there wasn’t something inside you setting your own lines that you will and won’t cross for the people you love.”

“But what if…” Alex’s voice cracks and she looks up to gather herself. “What if I’m just like him? Like my dad? He… He’s being used, he’s being manipulated, he’s… what if I’m like that? Doing more harm than good because I’m… trying to settle some sick equation in my head?”

“Are you like that, Alex?”

She thinks about her body count and how she’d made sure to set that alien weapon to stun.

She thinks about the mothers who’ve hugged her for saving their children and J’onn’s hand on her shoulder telling her that the world was a safer place because she was in it.

J’onn.

Alex trembles.

“I don’t think so? I don’t know.”

“Well, you know what the good thing about being part of a team is, Danvers? You get to lean on each other when you don’t know something. Come here.”

She reaches up and brings Alex into a long, close, quiet hug.

And Alex melts right into it, and she grabs at Maggie’s jacket and holds her closer and revels in the way her arms feel safe and strong and trusting around her, because she doesn’t usually do well with partners, either.

But they do make a pretty good team.