Alright folks, that wraps it up for this series! I hope you enjoyed!

I'm going to get back to working on I Didn't Know You were Into Girls on here and on Ao3 (same username), and I've started to post my Sanvers minifics on Ao3 in a collection called The Girls We Wanna Kiss.

Thank you so much to the folks who suggested and supported this collection: it was a wonderful way for me to explore my Jewish side (raised both Jewish and Catholic), and a great way to honor the Jewish history of Superman/Supergirl! Also, it was reallllly fun writing backstory for Alex - I think I need to do more of that... but without further ado!

Jeremiah's first Chanukah back with the family since he was taken by Cadmus, ft. heavy Maggie and Eliza bonding time and Jeremiah walking in on Alex and Maggie.

The blessings had been said – Alex had nearly broken Maggie's fingers with how hard she squeezed them to keep control, to keep from sobbing, to keep from breaking, as her trembling voice rose with Jeremiah's as she helped him light for the first time in over a decade – and the latkes had been demolished (mostly by Kara).

Maggie had stepped into the hall to take a work call – she had a court date in the morning to testify on behalf of a kid who'd been unjustly profiled – and when she slipped back inside, she found Jeremiah on the couch with his girls, Eliza standing behind them, distantly, by the table, her shoulders shaking, her face contorted slightly with the effort of not breaking down.

"Dr. Danvers?" Maggie asked, her fingers trembling only slightly on her wine glass.

Alex had told her a lot about her mom – first that she'd taken her coming out better than Alex had, but later, that Alex rarely ever felt enough for her, that she valued Kara's safety, Kara's health, Kara's happiness, above Alex's, that it had had a strange and difficult and unfamiliar and afterthought type feeling the one time her mother had told her to take care of herself – and it left Maggie halfway between feeling rage toward the woman and a sense of affection, a deep knowledge that for all the grief she'd caused Alex, their love for each other also ran deeply; that if Eliza didn't show Alex how intensely she loved her, it wasn't because she didn't – it was because she didn't know how.

And here the woman was, standing next to the menorah with one hand delicately resting on the table – one hand delicately, subtly, holding her up, keeping her steady, holding her balance – as she stared across the room at her long lost husband; at her adopted daughter, laughing and smiling and shaking her head as Jeremiah teased her; at her eldest daughter, shoulders shaking with laughter and, they both suspected, with tears.

At her eldest daughter, who had at 15 assumed the role of both father and sister in the house, never explicitly, never intentionally, but by default, because Alex was Alex, and – Kara had told Maggie that Jeremiah had said this – she had always been too strong for her own good.

Eliza didn't hear Maggie the first time, so absorbed she was in staring at her reunited family, at the man she had said was dead so many times she almost started to believe it herself. Only to discover a year later that he was dead; only to discover a decade later that he wasn't; at the man who had been her ghost, her invisible confidant, her measuring stick upon which she judged her relationship with Alex (and always failed) and her commitment to Kara (and succeeded, albeit at Alex's expense, because god damn it all if Eliza was going to let Jeremiah's sacrifice for Kara go to waste. She wondered, sometimes, if she had simply told Alex that Jeremiah had left for Kara, had essentially given his life for Kara, if Alex would have understood why Eliza put so much pressure on her to take care of Kara, to honor Jeremiah's sacrifice. She wondered, knowing what she knew now, whether and when Alex would put those pieces together on her own, and if it would lead her to understand Eliza just a little bit better).

"Dr. Danvers?" Maggie tried again.

Eliza started and turned toward Maggie with a genuine but distant smile on her face.

"It's Eliza, dear. You helped save my long dead husband's life: I daresay you've earned it."

Maggie smiled lopsidedly. "Yes ma'am."

Eliza chuckled softly, wondering if it had ever been possible that Alex wouldn't fall in love with this woman.

"I just… are you alright?" Maggie asked, and Eliza's smile wavered. She regarded Maggie, considered her, for a long, long moment. Maggie held her gaze unwaveringly.

"You know, Maggie, Alexandra… Alexandra became the rock of the family after Jeremiah was taken by Cadmus – after Jeremiah sacrificed himself to Cadmus – she… she cared for Kara and she… she cared for me. She was angry. Oh lord, she was angry."

Eliza stared down into the flickering menorah candles, remembering all the years Alex had raged through Chanukah, had drank through Chanukah, had scorned and glared and kicked and screamed her way through Chanukah, because it had always been Jeremiah's holiday and Jeremiah was gone and Alex was angry.

"But she also… did you know that there were days, entire days, that I would lock myself in my room after they took him, after I had to pretend to my children that my husband was dead – meanwhile knowing that he wasn't dead, but was perhaps enduring a worse fate, all for the sake of his family; and then of course I was told he actually was dead, but I couldn't tell anyone, I couldn't mourn, because they had done their fresh mourning a year earlier… I would lock myself in my room and tell the girls that I was working on my dissertation. But Alex would always know, somehow, always, when I wasn't truly working. When I was laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering where he was, wondering if he was suffering, wondering what kinds of god-awful experiments they were making him do, they were doing to him."

Maggie lowered her eyes. When they rescued him, they'd rescued others, too, humans and aliens alike that they'd found along the way to him, and those experiments… Maggie was still waking up with nightmares.

Eliza swallowed, and continued.

"There were days when I couldn't move at all. And Alexandra… Alex somehow, always knew. Always, every time. And she would pick the lock on my door and she would crawl into bed with me and she would hold me. She would wrap her arms around my waist – she was getting so strong even by then, all that surfing – and she would just lay there with me. Or sometimes she would just read, you know, she'd bring one of her massive textbooks into my room and just prop it open on my pillow and read next to me, muttering to herself in that way that she does when she's thinking hard."

Maggie smiled, picturing it. She could see it easily: Alex still had the same exact habit, her knees bent, feet in the air, swinging absently as she absorbed herself in genetics, in astrophysics, in Murakami's latest novel.

"Until I found the strength to get up, until I siphoned hers off and took it in as my own. And neither of us would say anything about it, and she would go back to being her raging, angry teenage self like it never happened, like she didn't know I was depressed, but she… she would get me through those days, Maggie. And now, now that Jeremiah's back, now that she, and you, got him back, I… it occurs to me that I never thanked her. That I spent most of her life not appreciating her, not thanking her enough. And I don't… I don't think I know how."

But Eliza hadn't noticed that Alex had frozen halfway into their conversation; that Jeremiah had stilled, that Kara had stiffened and put her hand on Alex's thigh. Eliza hadn't noticed that Alex had heard nearly every word.

Maggie backed away quietly, smilingly, as Alex stood from the couch as if in a daze; as Alex walked toward her mother as though moving through molasses; as Alex clinked down her bottle of beer and pulled her mother into a long, teary, shuddering hug.

Maggie padded softly toward the couch and perched on the edge of it, Kara extending a hand to her knee and squeezing.

"Thank you, Maggie," she whispered, and Maggie shrugged.

"I didn't do anything."

"Eliza doesn't open up like that to just anyone. You must have made quite an impression on her, young lady," Jeremiah told her, a faint smile on his face, but he wasn't looking at her; he was looking at his wife and at his daughter, at his too strong daughter letting herself cry in her mommy's arms, and he knew without having to ask that it was long overdue.

Maggie's jeans vibrated and she slipped off the couch, grimacing an apology at Kara and Jeremiah, casting another glance at Alex, still shaking in Eliza's arms.

"It's work, I'm sorry – " Maggie apologized.

But Kara just smiled and nodded toward her bedroom, and Maggie slipped inside and closed the door behind her.

"Sawyer."

Twenty minutes later, Maggie was still on the phone.

Perched on the edge of Kara's bed, elbows resting between wide spread knees, she listened patiently as the boy she was testifying for tomorrow nearly hyperventilated through his fears, through his terrors, through his anxieties; she talked him down from the worst of them and she helped him, again, practice everything he would need to say, reminded him of exactly what his lawyer had, of every single thing that would happen, that would be said, so he would know, so he wouldn't be thrown off guard.

She had him laughing, now, talking about some cute thing his little sister had done that day, and she could tell he'd be calmer, now, that he'd be able to get the good night's sleep he needed, now.

"You're gonna be amazing, Danny, alright? Yeah. Of course, man. Yeah. Yeah, tell her the cop lady says hi. Yeah. Alright Dannny. I'll see you in the morning. Yeah. Anytime. Night."

Maggie clicked out of the call and she hung her head slightly, heaving a long, slow sigh.

"That the boy you're testifying for in the morning?" Alex's voice sounded softly, and Maggie jumped slightly.

Alex was hanging her head through the doorway, a small smile on her face, eyes wide and seeking permission to come into the room.

Maggie stood and smiled, tension dissipating almost immediately from her shoulders. "Yeah, he was just nervous, wanted to talk about it. Sorry I slipped away for so long, I – "

But Alex's eyes were soft and Alex's eyes were heady and Alex was closing Kara's bedroom door and she was striding slowly toward Maggie and she was running her fingers through her hair and she was hugging her hips close to hers and bringing her lips to her mouth.

"Did anyone ever tell you it's so fucking sexy when you help people like that? The way you just… my mom isn't an easy egg to crack, you know, and those kids you help at work… you think they call any other cops at all hours of the night for help?"

Alex was kissing, licking, and nipping her way up Maggie's neck, now, and Maggie had to bite her own lip to keep from moaning. Loudly.

"Alex," she managed to choke out raggedly, even as she arched her body into Alex's, even as she grabbed her ass to bring her closer to her. "Babe, your parents – "

"Are both alive and well and happy and admitting that I'm not a failure of a person, thanks to you – " A deeper bite, and Maggie grabbed at her waist, knees almost giving out.

"Kara – " she tried again to falsely protest, but Alex just laughed.

"Should know better than to use her super hearing when other people are behind closed doors, and my girlfriend should know better than to say another woman's name while I'm kissing her like this."

Maggie chuckled and ran her hand over Alex's neck, underneath her hair, and pulled her lips down to meet hers.

"I should, should I?"

"Mmhmmm."

"Alex, god," she breathed as Alex slipped her hand under Maggie's shirt, and it was Alex's turn to chuckle, deep in her throat.

"Getting in the Chanukah spirit now, are we?"

Alex's lips swallowed Maggie's wrecked laughter and Maggie tugged Alex closer to her, needing her, needing her warmth, her spirit, her, her, her, this woman who had been her family's rock for so long, and all Maggie wanted to do was be that for her, closer, closer, closer, and god did she love it when Alex gasped her name like that –

A slight bump and shuffling at the doorway had both Alex and Maggie instinctively reaching for their guns, and Maggie's stomach sank when she saw that the culprit was not an alien invader, not a Cadmus lackey, not a hit man – that would have been easy, that would have been simple, that would have been not quite so mortifying – no. Instead of being walked in on by someone they could fight, Maggie's stomach sank and her heart nearly flipped clean out of her chest: because they were walked in on by Alex's father.

"Sir, I – "

"Dad, what – "

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Jeremiah was standing with his hand in front of his eyes, only now peeking to discover that both girls were still – mostly – decent, if heavily disheveled.

"Last time I knocked on your door and you didn't answer, it was because you'd be so caught up in your reading or your music you'd forget to eat; I guess I need to update my Dad protocol, huh?"

Alex's face couldn't possibly be any redder, but she laughed even as she held Maggie's hand in hers in a vice-like grip.

The goofy smile stayed on Jeremiah's face as his eyes shifted from his blushing daughter to her terrified girlfriend.

"Hey, it's okay," he told her, tentatively crossing the room toward her, tentatively extending a hand to her shoulder. "One of the only thoughts that got me through all those years was the hope that Alex was happy. And you…" He glanced down at their connected hands, their interlinked fingers, their slightly heaving chests, their flushed faces. "You make her happy, Maggie. What better Chanukah gift could a father come home to?"

He kissed Maggie softly on the cheek, kissed Alex for a long, long moment on the forehead, and made his way back to the door of Kara's room.

He turned at the threshold and arched an amused eyebrow at his daughter.

"Next time, though, Alex, lock the door: no need to make up for lost time in the traumatizing your father with your sexual exploits department."

Alex groaned and covered her face in her hands and Maggie laughed, laughed, laughed, doubling over into Alex's chest, overcome with relief that she had a future full of holidays that would feel like this.