CHAPTER 7: Story Time

"Damn I'm old," Carol decried with an exaggerated sigh. And just like that, the tension was mostly gone. "So I guess I should tell you about my family and see if anything sounds familiar huh?" Carol said as she took another drink from the mocktail. "Well as you can probably guess by choice of drink here," she tapped the vaguely orange drink with a mint leaf on the top, "I'm an alcoholic. And I guess that's also the first thing you should know about my father."

Alex internally winced. The tension was definitely back.

"I, we didn't have to come to a bar," Alex blurted out before Carol could continue.

Carol looked at Alex with a bemuse expression and shook her head lightly. "I'm able to go to bars, I just need to watch my temptations is all. Besides," Carol tapped her drink, "In terms of taste, this is fine."

"Alcoholism isn't about taste," Alex said.

"I know, but it's something I've been dealing with since I was a teenager. Besides, the quality of alcohol required to actually affect me to momentarily satiate my addiction cannot be found on this planet," Carol shrugged. "At least my Earth. And even in the bigger badder cosmos, there are still precious few drinks to find that even get me tipsy."

"You know because you tracked them down huh?" Alex concluded with a sad expression.

"I was separated from my daughter and her other mother, my ex-girlfriend/current best friend for over a decade because I had to atone for war crimes I committed while my humanity was suppressed. I saw them periodically after that, but I had an obligation. And I put that over my family. So yeah, I was definitely a dangerous and raging alcoholic after the first few months of exploring, when there was no light at the end of the tunnel. It took some years, and some relapses…" Carol shivered at the thought of when she found Maria's ashes in her bed. She tracked down Monica's last known location and found her dead too.

"Carol? Are you alright?" Alex asked. The blonde in front of her was wearing the exact same expression Kara had in the early years of her life in Midvale: the horror of incalculable loss.

"Something horrible happened a little while back in my universe and half of all life in the universe turned to ash. My family and few friends were among them. We fixed it, eventually. Brought most of the people back. But the trauma will live for as long as we will."

"I…I don't know what to say?" Alex said softly. She was trying to wrap her mind around such a level of destruction

"Wow, I sort of went on a dark tangent there. The point, is that I spent most of those five years as drunk as I could possibly be to keep myself numb. I fled Earth, told them I was needed elsewhere. And I was, sort of; but I think I left mostly out of shame. The way that they'd have looked at me if they knew the truth about me? Nope, did not want to deal with Natasha's puppy eyes." That thought brought Carol up short, and Alex could see some of the light leave the blonde's eyes. "She's dead too. Her team didn't even give enough of a fuck about her to have a memorial. Natasha Romanov was their fucking leader during the worst years of any of our lives, and they just couldn't be bothered. Not even her serial killer best friend." Carol growled.

Oh. Alex remembered what Carol had said a couple minutes ago, 'Brought most of the people back.' "Was she more than a friend?" Alex asked quietly. Carol flinched and let out a dark chuckle.

"Yes. And when she needed me, I wasn't there," Carol said softly. "I had to leave Earth after that. My daughter and her other mother were alive again, even if we were estranged before their deaths, it meant the world to me that they were back; even if they both wanted nothing to do with me…I can't blame them for that. I abandoned them when they needed me."

Carol took a moment to survey the other bar patrons while Alex tried to digest the wealth of information Carol was spouting. "If I stayed planet side I would've killed Natasha's best friend who had the audacity to return without her. He didn't even recover her body. And then I probably would've come down like an avalanche on the others who disposed of the Infinity Stones, the means with which Natasha could've been brought back. I'm not exactly a team player, if you've not noticed." Carol sighed as she finished her mocktail.

"I'm so sorry," Alex said in a voice that was much smaller than she was expecting. Carol looked at her and shook her head.

"I'm sorry I took a shit all over this bonding experience by going on about my demons. So you run an Alien Gestapo outfit? What's that like?" Carol said as she gestured to M'gann that she wanted a refill. Before Alex could respond, Carol hiccupped and put up a finger, "You know what, we can save that heavy shit for later...haha. I'm gonna go take a piss, I'll be right back."

"You want me to go with you?" Alex asked.

Carol smiled at her before her eyes lit up with a casual display of cosmic power, "Nah, I'll be alright red."

Carol made here way confidently across the establishment, weaving between the drunken impromptu dance competition and pool players alike before disappearing around the corner where Alex knew the restroom to be.

"She's an odd one." M'gann stated as she walked over to put down Carol's refill.

Alex looked up at M'gann's familiar face and smiled. "Odd?"

"I can't get into her head. It's like…it's not like Kryptonian minds. Kryptonians feel like there's an absence that should be there; doubtlessly centuries of carefully wiring their brains in such a way as to be able to sneak past us during wartimes. But that girl? She's something else." M'gann said with an air of awe.

"You seem impressed? Is it something I should be concerned about?" Alex asked lightly.

"I don't know. She's not an absence. Trying to look into her head is…blinding. It's like looking into the sun," M'gann continued with a soft smile.

"You got a crush on her?" Alex teased after a small gulp of whisky.

"You don't?" M'gann shot back with a very slight dusting of red across her brown cheeks. Alex noticed M'gann's failed redirection and her blush and laughed.

"I need to know some more things about her before I answer that," Alex said almost grudgingly.

"Like what?"

"Like if we're related," Alex groaned.

"Wait, what?" M'gann asked with a startled laugh. "What's going on?"

Alex shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose in consternation. "What isn't going on?" she muttered mostly to herself. To M'gann she replied, "She's a Danvers from another reality. So I don't know if she's somebody on my family tree I've never met."

"There's nothing wrong with kissing cousins, Alex," M'gann shrugged as she poured Alex a couple fingers more whiskey.

"What the fuck?"

"Like, as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult, what's the problem?" M'gann shrugged again. Alex just looked at her with a baffled expression. What isn't the problem?Alex practically screamed in her head. "Like, take you and your adorkabley sexy sister for example, she's not even from Earth, so how would that be incest?"

Alex was tomato red and said, "I'm gonna cut you off right there."

M'gann let out a laugh as she teased Alex. "I'm just playing with you. Though I wasn't joking about the consenting adults thing, it isn't our business to monitor their bedroom activities if it's all in–"

"The family?" Alex groaned.

"Good faith," M'gann finished with a cheeky grin.

"You little–"

"Sorry Alex, I have other customers," M'gann said as she danced away from the slightly enraged red head, having totally won that conversation.

"Did I miss much?" Carol asked as she sauntered up to the bar in a way that made Alex sure she had at least caught the tail end of that conversation.

"You fucker." Alex greeted the blonde, who burst out laughing.

"It's been a long while since anybody felt confident enough to give me lip. Don't ever stop with that." Carol sat back down and pulled out her L-Corp issued phone (given to her by the one and only Jessica Huang) and opened it to find a text from Lena.

"You're still my bodyguard?"

Carol raised her eyebrow, forgetting that deal she made with Lena for a moment. She texted back, "Yeah. Let me know where to meet you in the morning?" Carol thought for a moment, blowing out a sigh before typing, "I am sorry about how I arranged that thing earlier. How goes it?"

"You'll meet me at Kara's apartment tomorrow at 8:00 sharp. Don't be late."

Carol fist-pumped the air in victory. "Get it!"

Alex looked weary as she asked, "Do I even want to know?"

"Your sister might be walking a little funny tomorrow is all," Carol responded immediately.

Alex blushed red as a tomato and Carol clinked her glass with Alex's stationary one on the bar and cried out "Mozel Tov!"