164. Chapter 164

Eliza keeps trying to tell her she’s beautiful, keeps trying to tell her that her body is perfect just as it is, but Eliza doesn’t understand.

Because she can train – and god, does she train – and she can prepare and she can strap herself into armor and she can strut into a war zone with a kind of calm composure no human being should ever have to possess.

But she can’t control what happens, then.

It doesn’t matter how much she trains – though she keeps training harder, of course – her body still has been out of her control. Her body has still not been hers.

Has never been hers, really, not since she was a girl, because her body was Kara’s, her body was Eliza’s, her body was Jeremiah’s; her body was to protect one and make the other, for once, proud, and honor the other’s memory, which she couldn’t even do, now, because he was alive, alive, alive, but she can’t find him and she can’t do anything right because Eliza says she’s beautiful, but she doesn’t mean it, not really, because that pinching behind Eliza’s eyes means she’s frustrated and that slight strain underneath her voice means she wants to call her Alexandra and that small twitch of her left ring finger means that she wishes Jeremiah were here because he was the only one who could stand a chance at talking some sense into the headstrong girl but he isn’t, he isn’t, he isn’t, and before, it was out of Alex’s control, but now it’s just Alex’s fault.

And it hurts, but it feels good, because Kara can remind her that she forgets to eat when she’s stressed and she can tempt her with all the Chicago food truck goodies in the world, but no one – not Kara, not Eliza, not Jeremiah’s not-quite-dead ghost, not the DEO, not Cadmus, hell, not Maggie – can make her open her lips.

Feels good because she can pass it off as being busy, as being stressed, and she’ll force down what she needs, once in a while, Winn’s trying-to-be-subtle concerned squint and J’onn’s furrowed brow can’t make her not bring it back up, because this? This she can be perfect at. This? This she can control.

Until she can’t.

Until her knees buckle on a mission and her world goes black and she wakes up back at the DEO with an IV in her arm that she immediately tries to tear out, because how dare they, how dare they, how dare they, but Maggie’s hand is soft and Maggie’s lips are soft and Maggie’s eyes are wet but they’re not angry, and Kara’s smiling is trembling and Kara’s voice is shaking but her eyes are clear and her body holds no anger, no frustration, no irritation, no sign that she thinks Alex has failed.

And Alex looks for the signs, she searches for them, because she knows, she knows, that she has failed.

But when Maggie asks how she’s feeling, she can’t detect a lecture on the horizon, and when Kara says how scared she was when Alex collapsed, she can’t detect a hint of accusation, a hint of blame.

She doesn’t want to ask because she doesn’t want to concede that anything’s wrong, but she needs to ask like she needs oxygen because if she can’t have the control she needs all alone, maybe she can get it by surrendering some of it – gifting some of it – to the people who hold her like this, who love her like this.

“Stay?”

“Got nowhere better to be, Danvers,” Maggie kisses her forehead, and her broken, relieved eyes swivel to Kara.

“Always,” her sister tells her, and Alex knows – for reasons she can’t understand, not now, not yet, but she thinks maybe she will someday – that she means it.