Author's Notes: It begins, the much-requested sequel to "Tick, Tick..."! It is DEFINITELY recommended that you read that fic first (or this one isn't going to make a whole lot of sense). I know the description of "Tick, Tick..." makes it sound very Christmas-y (and that people are super over the Christmas season now) so it's a bit of a turn-off, but it really has very little to do with Christmas, so you should absolutely give it a go if you haven't already!

Anyway, onward! Hope you enjoy.

It was the New Year and Alex's resolution? To stop feeling like crap and to figure out just who in the hell had put a bomb in her sister's apartment. Problem was, she had been blown up, impaled, and had fallen through the floor into the neighbor's apartment below Kara's (a neighbor who had at the time thankfully been in Central City for Christmas) not eleven days ago and resultant injuries had seen to it that she be banned from work until she, according to Hank (J'onn), "possessed the ability to move without wincing" and could "stand without aid or the need to sit down every ten minutes". Apparently she was no use to him only "halfway functional" (again, his words). So yes, she was finding her resolution a rather difficult one to accomplish at the moment and she did not like it one bit.

"What precisely are you doing?" a voice rang out.

Alex whipped her head around toward the front door to see her sister standing there with her hands on her hips. Busted. "I am… resting?" she offered.

Kara raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. "Out of your bed, at the table, with an open laptop in front of you?"

"Yes, precisely." Kara looked thoroughly unimpressed so Alex rolled her eyes and gestured vaguely around the kitchen. "WiFi signal is better over here…"

"You're not even supposed to be on your laptop, Alex. You're supposed to be in bed," the younger sister sighed. "Do I need to call your mother and have her come back to watch you?"

Alex's eyes widened, alarmed. "God, no. Do you know how long it took me to convince her to leave in the first place?" Since Christmas had been ruined by Kara's apartment getting blown up followed by Alex being stuck in the DEO infirmary for the five days after, New Years had ended up being their day for celebrating with Eliza… not that very much celebrating had actually occurred. With Alex high on painkillers and sleeping most of the time, her mom fretting about every little thing, and Kara doing her 'I'm trying to be peppy to keep everyone happy, but I'm not-so-secretly feeling incredibly guilty for circumstances I had no control of' thing… well, it hadn't been the best holiday. At least though they had been alive to (somewhat) celebrate it together.

"Actually, no, because I was at work, getting sniped at for wearing the same pair of pants two days in a row." Kara flopped onto the nearby couch, wiggling down into the soft brown leather, a displeased expression on her face.

"You told her your apartment blew up, yes?" Alex questioned, turning in her chair the best she could to face her sister. "That all your clothes pretty much burned?"

"I did."

"And…?"

"And… she made a dismissive noise and said something along the lines of, 'Well, I suppose that's what happens when you live on that side of town'."

"That woman is a menace."

Kara looked conflicted for a moment before shaking her head. "No, she's—"

"Mean? Manipulative? Degrading? Self-absorbed?"

"Cat," Kara finished. "She's just... Cat."

Alex shook her head, but inwardly smiled. Her mom had been right when she said that Kara still believed that deep down everyone was a good as she was. It wasn't true, of course, some people were just monsters, but she still loved that sister tried to see the light in every person.

She leaned back a little more in the hardwood chair, mindful not to pull the freshly-mended scar from the surgery she'd had to remove the kryptonite shard and fix the damage to her spleen. She'd only just had the outer layer of stitches removed (the internal ones, being dissolvable, were left alone, of course) and did not want to somehow reopen the wound. "Well, I did tell you that you could borrow some of my clothes," she pointed out.

"Which I do appreciate," Kara said, "but something like ninety-eight percent of your clothing is black and it's just… a bit much."

"Says the girl who flies around in blue, red, and gold."

"Hush, you."

Alex blew an amused soft puff of air out of her nose and smirked.

Kara pushed herself back up off of the couch and crossed to Alex. "Have you eaten?" she asked, glancing inside the fridge. "Did you take your antibiotics? Did you manage to take a shower?"

"Uh-uh." Alex held up hand, belaying further questions from her sister. "You're fussing. You're not allowed to do that. I am the older sister. Only I get to fuss."

"Says who?"

"Me. The older sister. The one who makes the rules."

Kara rolled her eyes. "You know, technically—"

"Nope! I know what you're going to say and it's not going to work. Time in the Phantom Zone does not count because there is no time in the Phantom Zone. Or at least, time doesn't pass there." Whatever. It was still a bit of a mind-boggling thing to fully understand even for her.

"You're feisty today," Kara observed, eyeing Alex as she slipped into one of the free chairs at the table. "You must be feeling better."

"More like I'm feeling stir-crazy," Alex corrected with a sigh. "Please tell me you've come here with word from Hank saying I can come back into work?"

"No…" Kara said, raising an eyebrow. "And wouldn't he just talk you himself if he wanted you to come in?"

Alex averted her eyes for a moment and fingered a chip in the wood of the table they were sitting at. "He's stopped answering my calls two days ago," she muttered, "and now even if I leave a message he won't even call me back."

Kara snorted and ducked her head, avoiding most of Alex's glare. "So he just stopped talking to you?" she asked, biting back a grin.

"Well… no," Alex admitted slowly. "When I last spoke to him, he grumbled something about how if I didn't stop molesting his phone, he would never get any work done and that if they found anything, he would let me know. He ended the call with, 'So I'm going to ignore you now,' and hung up."

"Wow," Kara said. "The last person to actively ignore you was Ralph Villegas in tenth grade. You really must have been driving Hank insane." She finished the sentence with a teasing grin.

Alex narrowed her eyes at her sister and pointed an accusing finger at her. "Firstly, that harassment was done on your behalf and secondly, if you remember, two weeks later Ralph was your date to the spring formal. Persistence pays off."

"What I remember is walking down the stairs in my pretty cornflower blue dress, hoping to see at the very least a look of awe if not adoration on his face, but instead all I saw was terror as he watched you glaring at him from across the room."

Alex shrugged. "Sometimes people need a bit of the fear of God put into them in order for them to fully be able to appreciate the world around them."

"Uh...huh." Kara crossed her arms and pursed her lips.

"What?" Alex threw up her hands. "Look, Ralph Villegas was a self-centered mama's boy. Cute, but still an ass. But you," she softened slightly, "you were just so in love with him."

"I wouldn't say so in love…" Kara said, blushing.

"Well, my point is, I just want you to be happy and if that involves molesting phones or threatening to expose the deep, dark, homoerotic secrets of teenage boys, I will do it."

Kara smiled. "Awww, Alex…" Then she paused and frowned. "What? Wait. Homoerotic?"

Alex bit back a grin and shrugged. "I believe she goes by Regina Villegas now."

Kara just stared at Alex for a good 30 seconds before she seemed to fully process the statement, then she gave a slow nod and said, "Good for her." She smiled again. "Dinner. We should eat it." She popped back up onto her feet and not for the first time (or even the hundredth), Alex envied her sister's healing abilities.

"That would require actually having dinner to eat," Alex replied dryly.

"You make an excellent point." Kara rocked back on her heels slightly, swinging her arms. "So what do you want? Cripple's choice tonight."

Alex arched a very precise 'Excuse me?' eyebrow at her blonde sibling. "Cripple? Really?" Yes, she'd managed a partial tear to a ligament in her knee when she'd fallen through the floor, but she wasn't crippled. Kara just laughed and Alex felt a sudden need to treat her sister to a bit of reprisal, if only to shut her up for a moment. "Well, for that, I want Vittoria's."

Kara stopped laughing and blinked. "In Philadelphia?"

"Yep," Alex confirmed, "and you're buying."

"But that's—"

"Uh-uh," she cut off. "Cripple's choice, remember?"

Kara's open mouth shut with an audible click. She seemed to consider it for a second before she narrowed an eye and pointed a finger at Alex, saying, "Fine, but it's just because you almost died. Any other time—"

"You would still go."

A beat and then Kara's bravado morphed back into a sweet girl smile. "I would still go," she conceded.

Alex smirked.

"Okay, I'll be back!" Kara said as she headed for the door. If she had been at her own apartment, Alex knew, she would have just jumped out the window and flown off, but unlike Kara, Alex didn't live on the top floor, so her sister always had to use the door and go down to the alley to fly off just to limit the chance of anyone seeing her using her powers. "Won't be long. Love you!" And she was out the door.

"Love you, too," Alex called after her, knowing full well that Kara could still hear her even down the hall.

It was twenty minutes later when Alex had finally given up attempting to get any work done on her computer and had retired to the couch. She tried to take in some of the book she had bought months ago, but had never had the time to read. Her mind though was just so chaotic, so tormented about trying to figure out who had tried to kill her sister that she couldn't focus. She turned on the TV instead, but didn't pay attention. She was just too lost in her own thoughts.

So when the knock at the door came out of nowhere, she was rather startled. Her instinct was to reach for her DEO-issued sidearm that always seemed to be strapped to her thigh, but then her brain caught up with the situation and she realized she didn't actually have it with her.

A second knock rang out and it made her tense. Her eyes moved from the door to the side table next to it where she kept her keys before she gingerly pushed herself off of the couch and limped over to it. She pulled the drawer out slowly so that it made no sound and reached inside, pulling out her personal weapon. M1911 pistol in hand, she inched to the door and very slowly peered through the peephole… only to see a very familiar face.

The breath she hadn't even realized she had been holding whooshed out of her lungs and she immediately pulled the door open. "Sir?"

J'onn (as Hank, of course) stood there, same stoic expression on his face that was always there… until he saw the gun in her hand, then he raised an eyebrow. "Expecting someone?"

She glanced down at it in her hand, then without missing a beat, replied, "I've been told aliens are real. Can't be too careful." She put the gun back into the side table drawer.

After she and Kara had made the decision to go back to stay at Alex's apartment after the bombing instead of going to a safe house, the director had assigned them a security detail until they could figure out who had targeted Kara, but even with knowing that they were protected around the clock, Alex was still on edge.

J'onn blinked mildly at her. "I don't think aliens use front doors," he said in perfectly plain manner.

Alex pursed her lips. Said the alien.

"I'm sorry to just drop by," he continued, "but I thought it would be easier than having you come into work. May I?" He motioned toward the inside of the apartment.

"Oh, uh, yes, Sir, come in." She made a small welcoming motion with her hand and watched as the alien from Mars who was her boss (something she was still trying to wrap her mind around) stepped over the threshold. He glanced around and then turned to face her once more as she shut the door. "Your sister here?" he questioned.

She shook her head. "No, she's out getting dinner." J'onn gave a nod, though he returned to silently surveying the apartment from where he stood as if he was either still looking for Kara or something else… Something dangerous? She noticed his more-serious-than-usual face and frowned slightly. "Why? Is there something wrong?"

He looked back at her, but seemed almost reluctant to speak. "I need to show you something," he replied after a beat.

Her brow furrowed even deeper. "And you don't want Kara to see?" she asked warily.

"I thought you'd want to see it first."

Alex felt a tingle of dread snake down her spine and settle like a twisting weight in her stomach. Whatever he wanted to show her, it was bad enough that he wanted to give her the option of when (and even if) to tell Kara. That did not bode well. "Okay…"

He held up a flash drive and then nodded toward the laptop that was still on the kitchen table. She realized he was asking for her permission, so she gave a nod in return. "Go ahead," she replied and limped behind him as he made his way across her apartment to the kitchen.

"Have a seat," he instructed and while her instinct was to protest, to prove that she was better, that she was capable, the tightness around his eyes compelled her to follow his order. He plugged the flash drive into the USB port on the side. "We pulled security footage from your sister's building and the ones around it to see if we could find anything," he began.

Alex nodded. Pulling security footage was standard procedure in these sorts of situations and she'd actually had them, much to Kara's dismay ("You're meant to be resting, Alex!" she'd chastised), send her what they'd found. "Yes, I viewed the footage myself. There wasn't anything there."

"Well, I had them pull footage from three blocks over as well."

"Three blocks over? Why?"

The man regarded her with a searching look, as if he were trying to figure out something very important. Finally though, he spoke. "That's where we found your car."

Alex frowned. Where they'd found her car? She silently asked herself the question in hopes of knocking loose some answers in her mind, some memories of doing such a thing, but it was all blank. She knew it made sense —she often had to park further away than she normally would during the holidays for the sole fact that there were so many more people in the city visiting family and friends— but she had no memory of it this year.

She took a breath and focused her eyes on the computer screen. "Show me."

J'onn pulled up the video file and pressed play.

Alex watched silently, watched as she parked, as she got out of the car, as she moved to the back and popped the trunk. She could feel her pulse beginning to speed up and she felt a little bit sick to her stomach. It was like watching another person with her face doing these things and for the briefest of seconds she considered that as a possibility, but then why didn't she remember anything and how had she ended up at Kara's apartment that evening if the person in the footage was someone else?

"There are two other angles, but this one shows it the clearest," J'onn said, drawing Alex's full attention back to the screen.

For a moment, she wondered why this was important, there didn't seem to be anything suspicious or interesting happening, but then… then she saw it — the red and gold present. The sick feeling in her stomach swelled to full-blown nausea.

She watched herself as she picked up the present and put it into a cardboard box before she covered it with the rest of the gifts she'd gotten for Kara and her mom. Then she picked up the box, locked the car, and headed in the direction of Kara's apartment.

The video froze just before she walked out of frame and Alex just sat there staring at it, staring at the box in her hands.

"We checked the cameras all along the street and used the footage to track your progression to your sister's building," the director said quietly. "The package never left your hands…"

"I didn't..." But she had. She'd just watched herself. She'd been the one who had brought it over. The bomb. She was the one who had planted the bomb that had almost killed her sister.

"I know," he said.

Alex shook her head, pain lancing behind her eyes as she tried to make sense of it all. "But I— I don't remember, Sir. I-I... I wouldn't."

"Alex, I know."

She felt a clawing panic scrape its way up her throat. She couldn't have done it. But you did, a burning voice in the back of her mind hissed. The security footage clearly showed it. "She's my sister. I would never hurt her, not on purpose." She needed to convince him, needed to convince herself. She knew she wouldn't, but she had...

"Alex. I know."

His emphatic tone drew her attention to his face and she noticed behind his usual stoicism, a glimpse of concern and pain… for her. She suddenly found it very difficult to keep it together, to not just break down right there and then. "How?" she asked, voice hoarse. How could he know when even she didn't? "How is this possible? How could I do something like that and not remember?"

"You've seen firsthand what some of these aliens can do," he pointed out. "Jemm… Myself."

"And you know I didn't do this on purpose because… you read my mind?"

"Yes, when I told you about where we found your car," he replied, "But I also know this wasn't your doing because I know you, Alex, and I know how much you care for your sister."

Alex moved past the part where he'd gone into her mind without permission and after sucking in a grounding breath, asked, "So if you read my mind, what did you learn?"

A slight crease appeared between J'onn's brows, a look of unease slipping across his features. "There are no memories there. It's as if something was placed in your mind, a block of some sort, that prevented you from even making the memories. Or if that's not the case, they were forced so far down that they're shrouded in blackness, as that is all I can detect."

Alex grit her teeth. What was the use of having a telepath for a boss when his powers were useless during the time when they were needed most? "So, what? I just won't ever remember?"

"I'm not sure," he told her, "and I won't be until we figure out what exactly caused the block. It could very well be that you won't remember, or over time the memories could return. If it's the latter, it's likely the memories that will surface first will be the ones closest to when you became aware of yourself and your surroundings again."

"Well, that doesn't help us much," she sighed. "We already know what happened right before then. I drove to my sister's, got the bomb out of my car, and put it under my sister's tree." She drew a hand harshly through her hair and blew out a breath of frustration.

"I'm sorry I don't have more answers for you right now, Alex," J'onn said, tone sincere. "But we will figure it out. On that, you have my word."

Alex nodded, thankful to work for and be friends with a man (alien) who possessed both honor and as much doggedness as she did. "Thank you, Sir," she said, suddenly feeling incredibly weary. "Do you mind if I keep this?" She made motion at the flash drive. "So I can show Kara." Otherwise she knew no matter what she said, her sister wouldn't believe that she had been the one.

J'onn nodded. "Of course." He took a step back from the table. "I will let you know when we find out more."

"Sir?"

He was turning toward the front door, but paused to look back at her.

"I can't sit here anymore," she told him, exhausted, but full of raw determination. "I don't need to go into the field or anything, but I need to do something. I need to come back to work. I need to—" She needed figure out who had wiped her mind. She needed to figure out who had forced her to almost kill her sister.

She needed to make them pay.

He seemed to consider her words for a few moments before he finally inclined his head to her. "I'll see you tomorrow, Agent Danvers."

Alex felt a brief wave of relief swell, glad that he wasn't going to fight her anymore about her needing to stay home and heal, but almost as immediately as it had risen, the relief receded back into the ocean of fear, uncertainty, and anger. There were far too many unknowns right now and it made her feel sick with worry. Far worse though, it made her feel powerless.

Pushing herself to her feet, she moved stiffly across the apartment behind J'onn and offered him a wan smile by way of a goodbye before shutting the door behind his retreating form. She flipped the lock and turned around, leaning back against the door. She stared across the room at the frozen image of herself on the computer.

Dread, cold and consuming, surged and she felt suddenly breathless. How could this have happened? What had happened?

She closed her eyes. She just wished she didn't have to tell Kara.

A/N's: TBC! So fair warning, with the holidays over I have a lot less time to work on my fics, so the chapters for this one will not be coming out quite as quickly as "Tick, Tick..."'s did. I will try my best, however, to get them to you as timely as possible.

Also, as you likely noticed, while I've always written from Kara's POV in every other Supergirl story I've done, I decided to take on the challenge of writing this one from Alex's. I might, however, end up flip-flopping back and forth between Alex and Kara (simply because I find Kara much easier to write). So it may be one chapter from Alex and one from Kara, etc, etc. It will all depend on what the muse demands of me. I promise I won't make it too difficult to figure out!