150. Chapter 150

Maggie doesn’t answer her phone and she doesn’t answer her texts, because she’s thrown it across the room and shattered the damn thing against the wall, and she doesn’t even give a damn because fuck him, fuck them, fuck this, fuck everything.

Alex calls the precinct and Maggie’s cop partner tells her that Maggie already left for the day, and when she doesn’t find her at the bar, Alex rushes home.

Rushes, because she knows.

She opens the door slowly, quietly, and Maggie is working at her heavy bag, hair tied up in a messy bun, wrists wrapped but roughly, quickly, carelessly.

Shattered plastic and her phone battery lay dead and broken under a small dent in the wall, and Alex sighs, because she knows.

She switches Nas and Usher off of the blasting speaker, and Maggie’s punches still, her shoulders tense. She turns and she wipes her forehead with the back of her hand.

“You heard?” she asks, because Alex is pale, because Alex’s face is almost as broken as Maggie’s insides feel.

“The ban?” Alex confirms, and Maggie nods and throws another punch.

Alex slips off her bag, shrugs off her jacket, and takes her gun out of her waistband. She crosses the room and braces the bag in front of Maggie, who nods in appreciation and throws a cross-jab-kick combo that makes Alex brace her abs to hold the bag steady, that makes Alex’s heart break because of the rage behind it.

“Does he not get that he’s the motherfucking terrorist?”

Uppercut, jab, jab, uppercut.

“That he’s destroying families, that he’s using motherfucking Nazi rhetoric against Muslims and anyone his motherfucker xenophobia doesn’t know what to do with.”

Jab, cross, jab, jab, cross, kick.

“Told my captain I’m not working tonight. They wanted me to patrol the airport, but I’m gonna be protesting instead. You can come if you want. James is gonna pick me up in an hour. I can’t be on duty, I can’t, I’d lose my job. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t enforce anything. Not tonight, not like this.”

Front kick, roundhouse kick, jab, cross, front kick.

“Of course I’m coming with you, babe. Of course I’m coming with you.”

Maggie’s lips twitch upward for the first time since Alex walked in, and she reaches around the heavy bag to touch Alex’s cheek.

It’s almost jarring, how gentle her touch to Alex’s skin is compared with the rage, the power, she’s been slamming the bag with.

“And you know what, I wish it were just the orange hemorrhoid bastard. But it’s the whole damn system, it’s the whole damn country, this whole fucking place was built on this kind of blood, on this kind of hate, and I just…”

Roundhouse kick, front kick, jab, jab, cross, uppercut.

“I fucking hate everything.”

Alex nods and braces the bag harder, and Maggie catches a glimpse of the love on her face, the rage that she’s suppressing for Maggie’s sake, so Maggie has the space to process, to cope, to grieve, to rage, on her own.

“Well, no,” she corrects herself, crossing behind the bag the sink into Alex’s arms. “Not quite everything.”

“We’ll fight it, Mags. Together.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Good then.”

“Maggie. I’ve got you.”

Maggie sighs deeply and lets Alex hold her, lets Alex kiss her forehead, unwrap her hands and kiss her knuckles and sooth her raging soul.

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”