She's a coward for running, she supposes.

A coward for not wanting to give an inch, a coward for texting Alex to send her passport instead of walking the ten blocks it'd take to get there, and a coward for fleeing National City, for fleeing the United States entirely, jumping at the opportunity for an undercover mission that she probably never should have been on.

A coward maybe…

The former detective stares into the remnants of a burning fire, inhaling the oddly reminiscent aroma of charring wood and dried earth, as she takes a swig of what remains of the bitter tanginess in the cool Budweiser in her hand.

It's her only bottle for tonight. Barely enough to feel anything, only enough for appearances. But it doesn't mean she isn't yearning for that loose jittery feeling of detachment, but it does mean she's on the clock.

Maggie pushes up from the hollowed remains of the tree stump with calloused hands and into the night, eager to stretch stiffened muscles and blink away the tenderness of regret.

Malinalco, México was a mystical little municipality about seventy miles southwest of Mexico City. It had a lengthy history of local agriculture, of rich culture, or what had stood out in the manila folder she'd been handed, legends of magic and untold glory.

And what had stood out as magic to the ancestors, had more than likely been extraterrestrial in nature. Seemed ironic now that the humble town had become one of several strongholds the Sinaloa cartel, an infamous drug syndicate with largely antialien attitudes.

Her companion Diego, a dark skinned twenty something who wore anger on his sleeves, barely spares her glance, too busy nursing his own beer as he pokes a stick futility at dwindling flames. His pistol, a Browning High Power, is tucked haphazardly in the loop of his belt, in plain view like many of the cartel members whose egos were lifted by their firepower.

She'd been stationed here for the last six months, trying to infiltrate the cartel. Though she's sure that she was perhaps the worst choice for the mission. Sure, she was fluent in Spanish, despite being born and raised Italian, but it'd years since she'd used it conversationally. But as the weeks passed, Maggie became painfully aware that the cartel had a penchant for being testosterone driven. So while no one noticed her Spanish was a bit rough around the edges, it was going to take considerable efforts to rise in the ranks without arousing suspicion as a female.

Something she's sure her boss should have warned her about before she accepted the job.

Too little too late though and it's how the detective found herself frivolously monitoring the borders of one of many properties. Even when this one hadn't been used in next to forever.

About ten acres of woodland, sloping down gently to bramble filled ditches overgrown with cow parsley and nettles, hawthorn hedge and dying wheat, scattered clusters of rabbit droppings half-choked by weeds to round it out, because god forbid someone maintained the land here.

It reminded of her of Nebraska, before Nebraska turned into a irrefutable nightmare.

"What are you doing, dama?"

Diego spouts lazily from his lounge chair.

What does it matter what I'm doing, she wants to ask, but no… maintain the cover.

"I…"

Her response trails off as the hackles of her spine raise suddenly, accompanying an insidious upturn of goosebumps that have peppered her skin and the strange sinking feeling in her gut. Something's off.

Maggie's fingers twitch toward her gun as she turns around, squinting into the dark at what she can see in the illuminated grassy terrain.

Nothing, but the palpable unease hasn't gone unnoticed because Diego straightens up as well.

One hand going straight for the radio, the other unabashedly on the butt of his weapon.

"Julio? Edward? Informe!"

Julio and Edward are the other two men typically on guard, they're usually on the other end of the long expanse. Maggie rarely, if ever sees them, only hears them joke crudely over the radio or relay blasé status reports. However, upon release of the return button, neither of those responses are given. Nothing but static answers them. That has never happened before.

Diego clicks the return button again, this time his message doesn't even go through.

Ice trickles through Maggie's veins, but she forces her demeanor into a mode of casual indifference, as their eyes meet, solidifying the fact that something is indeed wrong.

They always answer.

Something's wro-

A gunshot rings out, piercing the heavy silence that had come wrapped in tension. It is immediately followed by more shots in rapid succession. Even in the distance, the echoes carry and Maggie has a sickening feeling of where they're coming from.

Shortly after, bone-rattling screams begin shaking the air, cementing a vibrating chill through her bones. The screams are everywhere, pervading the very corners of her thoughts and Maggie realizes she's is running, before she can even form a coherent thought.

Following Diego into the underbrush, pistol in hand, feet sinking against fresh, warm dirt. Dried wheat stalks whip at her well-worn jeans, crunching in half, as they push forward. And all the time the screams grow louder.

Until they stop.

Abruptly.

And as they near the clearing, stumbling along in the dark, Maggie can already smell the acridness of stale gunpowder and coppery blood. Can hear next to nothing, except for their own heaving breaths as they burst into the opening, guns pointed straight ahead, and it's then she knows it's already over.

One of the men lay prone on the ground before them. Eyes fixed and vacant, head tilted at an unnatural angle, throat almost torn from him. It's a ghastly scene. But at least he went fast.

"Julio."

Maggie hears Diego murmur with deadened shock. Out of the corner eye, she sees him straighten up, knuckles turning white from the ferocity of his grip on his gun, and she must force her eyes away from the corpse on the ground to see what he sees.

The assailant has the other man, Edward, held in front of them, hoisted up in the air as if a full-grown adult weighed nothing more than a feather. The small pale hand glints in the moonlight, as it grips tightly around his neck and Maggie knows where this is going before the deed is done.

Edward struggles futility, letting out small choking whimpers, then his head twists sideways with a snap, before being dropped unceremoniously to the ground.

And when the assailant is revealed… time slows down.

In moments of fasts-not-so-fasts, Maggie's can barely catch the details.

She sees the blonde hair, what's left of a red sweep of fabric, and the burnt crusty blue of what used to be the one of the most recognizable signs in the modern world.

Fuck.

Kara.

Kara?

The silence is thick and dusty, as dry as coffin wood. The air doesn't seem to move, cold grey flakes hanging still, but her image, though rough and torn around the edges, is unmistakable.

Kara. Kara. Kara. Kara.

And in the second her mind collapses, Maggie finds herself furiously racking her mind for what possibly could have brought Supergirl here.

Six months.

Six months ago, the world was ending, or at least in National City, and as time passed, in the entirety of the west coast.

Six months ago, beings aptly called World Killers decided that it was just about the right time to fulfill their goddamn destiny of fucking up the planet.

Six months ago, Maggie had noped the hell out of National City, because certain things were above her paygrade, certain things were too fucking uncontrollable, and maybe because she was running from Alex...

Four months ago, she had read in the newspaper that the World Killers and Supergirl had disappeared. A representative of the Department of Extranormal Operations stating something vaguely about something called Project Argo and that the situation was being contained.

After being regulated to field patrol by the cartel, Maggie hadn't heard anything much after that.

The sound of Diego's safety clicking off yanks back to the present.

"Don't shoot."

She whispers. Words trembling. Heart caught somewhere in her throat. Mind still spinning. But still careful, oh so careful, not to look away from the blonde.

Diego barely spares her a glance, but she out of the corner of her eye, she sees his brow crinkle in confusion, then realization, and she knows her cover's gone, but if it's going to keep them alive...

Around the same moment, Kara sways backward a bit, catching herself with her right foot, like she's off balance, unsteady on her feet.

"Don't shoot."

Maggie affirms again in a whisper of a breath.

Diego doesn't shoot.

It doesn't matter.

Because before the detective can even say anything else, the shape of Kara has blurred, and then Maggie's feet are touching air.

That new position provides horrifying perspective and it's clear to see now that though the blonde is here, she's not really here.

Even in the darkness Maggie can see Kara's eyes are glassy and her teeth are bared. Can see that something must have happened, because her friend's body is ravaged yet recognizable still, lines and shapes vaguely familiar even when the angular distortions of bones and scrawny muscle push against lifeless white skin as if they longed to escape the burnt remains of her supersuit.

The detective struggles, spasms to rid herself of Kara's choke hold, but the blonde could easily bench-press a freight train and the detective has yet to see where the line of her incredible strength stops. So, no matter how hard she flails the blonde's just tightening her grip, lifting the detective higher into the night.

And she can't breathe. Can't breathe. Can't breathe. Can't breathe and the echo of Edward's neck snapping still resonates in her ears.

"Stop! It's me, Kara! It's me!"

The detective chokes out in a wheeze, close to panicking because she can't die here, she won't die here. Not here. Never here. Not like this.

But Kara doesn't stop and there's this aura of desperation that is entirely unlike anything she's ever felt radiating from the blonde.

Someone hurt you… she thinks, but it's getting too fuzzy to focus. And she can't concentrate when she can't-

"It's, me. It's Maggie! The detective! Alex's-"

Kara stops, but the glassiness hasn't gone away, and for a flickering moment Maggie wonders why she did.

Then she hears it, gunfire. Diego's shooting.

And while the bullets don't ricochet like they normally would, they really only distract her.

It's futile. It's a suicide mission.

Having evaluated priorities, Kara hurls her to the side. Until Maggie's falling, landing, skidding into clumping dirt and dead wheat.

At first, there is no pain.

Just oxygen as she breathes, lungs pinching and shivering in the struggle to inhale air, her nose crying protest at each indrawn breath, her body in agony with each movement. But she must breathe.

In. Out.

Her lungs heave, pinch and freeze. Her eyes see stars. Her thoughts struggle to collect themselves.

In. Out.

She must have landed wrong. Something warm and runny, slides down her face. The metallic copper saturating her upper lip, melding with the metallic taste of the air to create something fake and golden.

In. Out.

Then there is pain.

Sharp and piercing in the arm she used to break her fall. Throbbing in her face that absorbed some of the impact. Agonizingly present around her neck. But it isn't enough to distract her from the realization that the shooting has stopped. From the realization that Kara hasn't come back.

The detective winces as she pushes herself up, slowly, stretching out limbs and muscles, until she's wavering in a standing position.

Deep breathes are completely out of the question for now and her left arm is most definitely broken, she realizes dully, cradling it close to her chest. It's painful to even wiggle her fingers. but she does bring her right hand up to staunch the flow of blood from her nose.

A game plan… She needs a game plan she realizes as her thoughts finally stop spinning.

Just feet away from her, she sees the blonde standing as well, back turned toward her, arms outstretched in front of her, as if she doesn't know quite what to do with them.

Maggie has no interest in getting choked into submission again, she has half the mind to place her bets on running the hell away. But no….

Don't be a coward…

It's highly unlikely she is getting out of there without confronting Kara again, regardless.

The detective's becoming acutely aware that the blonde probably wasn't in the right state of mind right now.

"Kara?"

Maggie's voice is hoarse when she speaks, approaching slowly as if getting close to a wounded animal, but she received no answer.

"Kara. It's me… Maggie. Remember?"

The words grate out of her throat like a chainsaw, negating her effort to keep her voice steady as she drifts closer. Nothing.

"It's me… Maggie..."

The detective circles around until she's in front of the blonde… and Diego's corpse, but she does her best not to look at him. But perhaps, it's even harder to look at her.

A colorful artwork of pale skin, yellowing bruises and one of a million cuts, wounds, and crimson-crusted lacerations adorning her body like latticework.

Someone hurt you…

Yet, there's no evidence of bullet wounds. What does that mean for the healing factor that usually accompanied the blonde's grab bag of superpowers?

"Kara?"

Kara won't even look at her, staring at her hands instead, trembling.

"I could have killed you."

Her words are slurred. Long awkward gaps between them, as if she's struggling to find the words to say, but the detective revels in the fact that Kara has at least made the connection that she was no longer the enemy.

"You didn't."

She says firmly, as patiently as she can. But time is a factor now, because now that her mind's cleared, Maggie realizes there's only a matter of time before one of the hire ups realizes when three corpses don't check in.

"I would… w-would have stopped, if you would have stopped trying to… kill everyone. I warned you… but you wouldn't stop… N-none of you would. No one ever… -"

Halfway through the blonde's slurred tirade, Maggie becomes aware that Kara isn't talking about her.

"Kara-"

"No! No… Sam. I don't wanna…. I can't kill you again…"

Sam? And now Maggie's completely lost on the blonde's train of thought.

Kara's hands are visibly shaking now and Maggie straightens a little, wincing at the stiffness in her bones

"Kara. Look at me. At me! It's Maggie Sawyer. Not Sam."

She interrupts with a finality.

Kara finally looks up from her hands, eyes glassy, red-rimmed, and fever-bright with exhaustion, the bone deep kind of exhaustion, the kind that builds over months and years of constant over-thinking, and worrying, and fearing, but eventually, the cobalt eyes flicker with recognition.

"Maggie?"

Slow and petulant, like she's waking up from some eternal rest.

"Yeah…"

The blonde stares for her a long moment.

"You're hurt… I hurt you..."

She slurs.

Maggie feels herself drowning when she hears how broken she sounds.

"Kara, no. It wasn't you. It's not your fault."

The blonde opens her mouth again, but nothing comes out. Instead, her throat only dry clicks, the noise echoing like funeral bells in the empty silence. It's clear Kara doesn't believe her.

Maggie grimaces, wiping the blood seeping from her nose with the end of her jacket, eyes darting silently over the dead men, then back to the trembling blonde. She doesn't have time to argue.

They need to get out of here before backup arrived.

"Are you hurt anywhere else?"

There's another lengthy silence as Kara concentrates, like she's intoxicated, but without the exuberance.

"I... don't know."

Goddamnit.

"But you can walk?"

A nod.

"And you can see?"

Another nod, but Kara's glassy cobalt eyes are drifting from her amber ones, to the clearing around them.

"Then we have to go. Come on."

They couldn't go back to Malinalco. It would be a death wish to return to the anitalien stronghold with one of the most recognizable aliens of the modern world, without any of the three gang members she left with. But Malinalco was seventy miles south of Mexico City. If they headed north... there had to be another town somewhere in between that.

And where there was a town, there was a phone.

Landlines had been her only source of communication to the outside world for the last two months. It certainly wasn't coming into her favor now.

"But… they're dead… We… We s-should bury them…"

Kara hiccups tearfully.

"We'll bury them later."

Short, succinct and a lie she must tell.

Maggie scoops up her pistol, cursing as residual pain spikes up her arm, and gently nudges Kara out of the clearing and into the fields.

The moment they begin walking, it becomes muscle memory, one step in front of another, crunching stiff stalks of wheat into the ground, leaving footprints in the crumbling dirt. Her left arm remains curled firmly to her chest, while the other grips tightly to the remnants of Kara's cape, scared that if she lets go the blonde would disappear.

With every movement, her muscles begin to tighten and the heat from her feet increases, at odds with the sharp air, reminding her stubbornly that she'd been sitting still for entirely to long before that altercation.

One step after another, time passes...

Kara ambles along beside her, really only being pulled by the detective's grip. She's mumbling something under her breath for a large duration of the time they'd been walking. The slurred, discombobulated words are in a language that Maggie doesn't understand, but it's a soothing reassurance that the blonde is at least, alive.

One step after another, time passes...

Maggie eventually starts talking to Kara. She's not quite sure why she hasn't been, maybe it's because she's always been quiet, preferring to think, speculate, and work in silence. But it dawns on her after however long they've been walking, that maybe she should have been keeping a record of her mental status, to have something anything to give the Alex when she calls, other than the fact the blonde looked like death warmed over, but it's too late to dwell on that.

"Kara."

Maggie says hoarsely, interrupting the blonde's slurred mumbles.

"Kara. How did you get here?"

It's a question that's been bothering her for some time, that even when the detective runs from National City, all its drama still seems to follow her.

The superhero, though wavering in her steps, isn't slow to answer.

"I'm… from Mid...vale… L-leaving houses can't make t-them… not real…"

The detective's eyes burn as she grinds her teeth together, that sure as hell wasn't a coherent answer.

"Do you know where we are right now?"

A moment of silence.

"Ph… Phantom Z..zone..."

Maggie forces herself to keep looking forward.

She's heard a bit about that from Alex when they were engaged. Knows that Kara doesn't talk about it often, refuses to talk about it at all really. But that the gist is it being dark, and cold, and slowly suffocating. A floating feeling with a complete lack of control, of being completely stuck.

And it tells more about Kara's state of mind than Maggie feels she's qualified to root through.

"Okay, Kara, Okay."

Then she changes the subject, if only to make things easier.

One step after another, time passes...

The land switches over. Away from wheat, to some other food crop. Then again. Too forest. Coniferous trees, hooting owls, fluttering bats, instead of field mice, cows, and field after field of man made plantations. Lifeless and deathless, looming monstrosities unaffected by the sickly shimmer of the moon above them and unbothered of the atrocities that occured only hours before.

One step after another, time passes...

It feels like miles, marathons, trails of tears. Like her feet blistering, leaking blood into the stitching in her shoes.

They don't stop.

They're not going to stop until they reach a town.

One step after another, time passes...

Kara stops.

Goes completely rigid out of nowhere, hands sliding up to grip the sides of her head.

Maggie isn't prepared for it, doesn't even realize what's happened, until the cape pulls taught in the middle of her mindless stream of small talk.

"Hey? What's wrong?"

The detective asks reaching for her, trying to find a place that isn't burnt fabric or a tapestry of raised scars, and suddenly Kara was alert again, withdrawing sharply, like a frightened animal. The movement forces Maggie to stumble forward roughly, having not let go of the cape, a violent stab of pain rocketing up her left arm as she does so, but still she focuses on the blonde.

"I'm not going to hurt you!"

She says, a little too loudly.

Someone hurt you… but it isn't going to be her.

Then again, in a lower tone,

"I'm not going to hurt you. I promise. Alright? Just tell me what's wrong."

Kara's still twisting away, arching over, until her elbows are inverted, pressing into her abdomen.

"He's in my head. He won't get out of my head!"

Kara wheezes, raw, guttural, and distinctly off-kilter, eyes scrunching tight.

"Who?"

"The… bluman. The blue man. Brainy. Get out of m-my head!"

Kara screams at no one in particular.

"Hey! Hey look at me!"

Maggie yells back, stepping directly into the blonde's line of sight.

"You're imagining it. No one's here. No one's in your head. What ever happened, it's just getting to you okay. You're fine. You're fine."

The detective attempts to reassure, but she's never been good with emotions, has only ever been good at running from them… But Maggie knows little good is going to come out of Kara having a breakdown in the middle of this desolate part of Mexico, not in their current states.

So it's up to her to de-escalate this fear and control her emotions, not hide in cowardness and let Kara lose herself in her mind.

"Breathe, Kara. I can't drag you across Mexico by myself. So please, you need to breathe."

Kara chokes back a gasp, scream stifled deep somewhere in her throat, but her glassy eyes are still wide, still panicked and she looks like she's about two seconds from digging into her skull with her own fingers.

Fuck.

Fuckfuckfuckfuck-

"You're fine… You're fine. Okay?"

Moments pass with Maggie stuttering out reassurances while Kara twitches spastically and rubs at her temples, until finally she agrees. The detective waits for a moment for Kara to nod in reaffirmation, waits until the battered hero will let Maggie hold her cape without flinching, before the detective urges her forward once more.

Getting to a phone sooner rather than later would be preferable.

One step after another, time passes...

Until distantly, detective recognizes the sound of car engines.

It's subtle at first, the rumble of vehicles disguising themselves with the rumble of the moving forest.

At first it offers distant hope. Cars means a city and a city means a phone. That hope is extremely short lived.

Because then bright fluorescent flood lights are swarming in from the trees, blinding her line of sight, sending everything out of focus as she's forced to move her right-hand way from Kara's cape to shield her eyes.

The blinding glare is a stark contrast to the moonlit midnight she and Kara had been staggering around in, and she can barely see around the glaring white. But the black combat boots, silhouettes of men in bulletproof vests, and shadows of guns, not like her pistol, but of the heavy artillery variety, barely visible in the glare, tell her that all she needs to know.

Those aren't trademarks of the Sinaloa Cartel, but there's too much firepower for them to be the local police, and as safeties click off and the men move to surround them, she realizes that they must have walked into an entirely different mess.

She hears them yelling, something about standing down, but it sounds somewhat incoherent over her struggle to adjust to the light. It shouldn't be taking this long to adjust… what else did they have? It usually isn't this hard to think...

Maggie vaguely remembers letting go of Kara, and however unadvisable it might be, she turns away from the light toward her friend, because she knows if it's disorienting to her, then it must be hell for Kara.

The blonde's curled in on herself again, hands covering her ears, eyes tightly shut, orange lit power building up behind her lids.

Fuck.

Another massacre couldn't happen. One is enough to explain to her superiors.

The detective opens her mouth, wanting to tell Kara it was going to fine, ready to say something, anything, but instead she coughs when it chokes her.

Fear.

Because is it really going to be okay?

And nothing comes out, drowned out by the shouts of the men still yelling them to stand down.

Panic continues to flood her stance, or what was left of it she isn't too sure at the time as she felt and saw nothing. It's too disorienting. The panic only making her lose her focus on keeping it together.

She blinks rapidly, keeping a hand on Kara's cape, as she finally starts to acquiesce to their shouts, slowly lowering to her knees.

"What the hell do you think you're doing? Stand down!"

And if that voice didn't sound the damndest bit familiar.

"This isn't your jurisdiction, Danvers."

Comes the reply, low and authoritative, but Maggie's heart flutters with hope, because only so many people had the last name Danvers. And the people on that shortlist didn't tend to live in Mexico.

"It's my jurisdiction when it comes to my family. Now stand down, before I make you stand down."

There's a moment of silence.

Then the flashlights shut off, along with the order to stand down.

Maggie tries to stifle her anger at the disappointed grumbles that come from the order.

Instead, she blinks rapidly to adjust to the ever-fluctuating change of lighting, and when her vision clears… it is Alex.

Her ex-fiancé is in uniform, exuding all parts of concern, authority, and the slightest bit of confusion and for a moment when their eyes meet amber on amber, understanding, worry, and overwhelming gratitude. It reminds her of everything she tries so hard to forget.

Then Alex's eyes are flitting toward Kara, hands trembling as they fight the urge to gather her sister, clenching with that familiar protectiveness that always flares up in situations like these.

It's clear she's analyzing the situation, considering the scene before she acts.

She's always been like that.

Next to Alex is a blue man she's never seen before.

A small, lanky fellow who wastes no time crossing the clearing, as the men in vests return to whatever hole they've crawled out from.

He shows no fear as he approaches and no sense of apprehension as he extends a cyan palm towards the blonde's forehead, pressing forward before Kara can flinch away.

The orange heat behind Kara's eyes fades immediately, and as the blonde begins to tip forward, it becomes apparent the strength in her stance was taken as well. Until the blonde's eyes are half- lidded and her form limp against the man struggling supporting her, as if he had clicked an off switch somewhere in the blonde's mind

"Was that really necessary?"

Alex hisses, suddenly closer than before, but the annoyance in her ex-fiancé's voice is offset by the raw tone of held back tears as she helped lift Kara up.

"Significant sections of temporal lobe and cerebellum were damaged indicated by deficits in motor skills, rational thought, and detail oriented perception. Her psychological state of mind is frayed at best, it was imperative to shut it down before any more harm could be caused. "

He sounds like a computer, pulling words from a database on a hard drive somewhere, relaying them with finality and little to no emotion. But if his response is good enough for Alex, it's good enough for her.

Alex pauses as she shrugs under Kara's shoulder.

"Are you… good to walk?"

It takes Maggie a moment to realize that the question is directed at her.

"Yeah… Yeah… I'm good to walk."

The detective nods, stumbling to her feet.

Alex's eyes linger on her for a moment more, before nodding back, then gestures for her to follow them, maneuvering past the men in the black vests, who stand like dogs with their tails tucked in between their legs.

A spaceship or something like it sits on the edge of the dirt road.

And one of the many interior rooms Alex and the blue man lead her to is something akin to a medical ward. Ward is a misrepresentation, of course. This isn't a hospital. The reception area isn't so much reception and admission as surveillance and security. Sleek surfaces, metallic objects, multiple cameras, and enough medical equipment to make Johns Hopkins himself teem with jealousy.

As soon as Kara, a shell of a broken, emaciated being, is deposited gently onto one of the tables, the blue man disappears, and for the first time, Maggie connects him to the blue man the blonde had been yelling about earlier.

"Who was he?"

Maggie asks quietly, watching him walk away as she presses her nose into the cold cloth that Alex had handed her before busying herself with hooking up equipment to her unconscious sister. The chilliness of the fabric to her bloodied face was sharp and tingling at first, then burning, but it didn't hurt as much as she thought it would.

Adrenaline was a funny feeling.

"Him? That's Brainiac Five. He's one of the members of Mon-el's Legion of Superheroes."

It takes a moment to connect what Alex told her.

"Mon-el? He's back?"

The detective twists in her chair as she looks around, expecting him to suddenly materialize from one of the nooks and crannies. He's always been type who loved too fiercely, the overprotective one who wore his heart on his sleeve and would do just about anything to keep Kara safe.

Surely, he wouldn't be missing now.

"Was. Not anymore. He's dead now. Along with his wife."

Wife?

Huh.

Though Alex is turned away from her, attaching lead wires to bare skin, she must hear the unspoken question.

"It's a long story."

Her ex fiancé supplies, spoken in such a way that could only be defined as heavy.

But Alex isn't wrong...

A lot can happen in six months.

The floor begins to rumble beneath them as the ship turns on.

And the duo descend into silence as her ex continues to move around the medical unit, cutting away Kara's charred supersuit and replacing the tattered remains with DEO sweats. Recording vitals as she rubs healing slaves into her sister's deeper wounds.

It's handled with a softness that Alex has only ever had with her sister, but Maggie can see her ex-fiancé's hands shaking, and knows Alex doesn't completely have it together.

Can tell that she's had to do this before. And it hurts each and every time.

Finally, Alex steps away from Kara and the warm incandescent light offsets fluorescent white, as she turns the sunlamps on.

They both watch for a moment, breaths bated, and though the injuries don't disappear, some color does begin to gradually leak back into the blonde's pale form.

It isn't much, but it must be enough to keep her sister satisfied, because then Alex is turning to her.

"So… Mexico?"

The taller brunette murmurs, crossing the room with a first aid kit.

"It's a long story…"

The DEO agent hums her understanding, though Maggie isn't entirely sure Alex understands as she takes the detective's broken arm gingerly in her hands, fingers moving gently over her injury until they find they break.

"How'd you find us?"

Maggie asks, stifling a groan as the ends of her bones slide back into place with a sharp fluid movement.

"Kara has a tracker in her suit. It came back online after she re-entered orbit. Brainy helped after that. I had no idea he was talking about you, when he said gang member. He must of pulled one of the dummy files the NCPD had on you."

Alex mutters, focused on wrapping the detective's arms with gauze.

The detective distracts herself by watching her work.

"Does your neck still hurt?"

The bruising must make it look worse than it is for Alex to point it out so easily. Because aside from a little difficulty swallowing and residual hoarseness, Maggie barely feels a thing.

"Your sister could probably give Superman a run for his money in terms of grip strength."

Sarcasm probably isn't the best to bring out considering the circumstances. And judging by how Alex's shoulders tense, Maggie suddenly remembers that until now, Alex had had no idea her sister was pretty much responsible for the state the detective was in now.

Shit.

Trying to smooth the tension over, she quickly follows it up with,

"It's fine now. Barely hurts."

Alex scoffs in disbelief.

"She could have killed you."

The taller brunette whispers morosely, putting the finishing touches on the cast.

"She didn't. Someone hurt her… She thought I was that person. It worked out in the end."

Maggie hastens to reassure before her ex-fiancé can start beating herself up about it.

"Fucking world killers…"

The detective hears Alex mutter under her breath, as she moves to sit next to the detective.

Fucking world killers, Maggie agrees silently.

"Thank you, Mags… for helping her."

Alex whispers, after a moment.

"Wouldn't have it any other way."

Maggie says in reply, relief filling her as the sound of her abbreviated name displaces the empty iciness that has resided far too long in her chest.

There's a pause as her words echo throughout the room, resonating into a steady silence.

Until they're just listening each other breathe and the quiet hum of the machines.

"You didn't have to run, you know? After we broke up… There was plenty room in National City for the both of us."

Alex says after a minute.

"I know…"

Maggie replies, smiling sadly.

"Then stay a little this time?"

Maybe, she will.

Authors Note: Let me know what you thought? Also, as you can see I took liberties with Brainiac Five's abilities, but cut me some slack.