Chapter Text
Epilogue
Before they know it, an entire year has passed.
One year of childish giggles and tantrums, of toys strewn across their floor.
One year of making up voices for bedtime stories and cutting crusts off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
And Alex has experienced many pivotal moments in her life.
When she was fourteen, she gained an alien sister only to lose her father. In college, she hit rock bottom and was offered a way out through the same organization that took her father’s life. She was twenty-seven when she came out to herself and her family after meeting a woman that shook her foundation to its core.
This year made all of the hardships of her past worth it. This year, all of her dreams came true. Now she gets to wake up to the love of her life every morning. She gets to sit down with her daughter to do a puzzle in the evenings. She gets to live in the house in the suburbs she always pictured when she was a girl.
As with most things, her happiness came with a price— the lives of the alternate Alex and Maggie. Those women knew that they would never get to enjoy any more relaxing Sundays spent in the garden, but they wanted their daughter to have that chance.
Alex and Maggie can’t openly mourn their other selves, but they can commemorate their sacrifice.
One year after Alex found Jamie in that smoking crater, they plan to pack up their car and drive to Midvale.
Agent Cavanaugh moves into her line of sight, the tablet in his hands displaying an inventory checklist. “Director Danvers, would you like to give final approval on these objects before we move them for long-term storage?”
Following him deeper into the DEO storage area, they pass older research projects and confiscated alien technology piled high on metal racks. She takes the tablet from him, and then meanders down the rows, checking off each item in turn, humming a little tune Jamie had been singing in the car. Spring cleaning at the DEO is always tedious, but the knowledge that she’ll be beach bound in just a few hours is keeping her spirits high.
She reaches the end of the list, lingering by the last item. Jamie’s pod. It’ll be sent to the desert base for storage alongside Kara’s pod— appropriate for the crafts that brought her two of her favorite people.
She runs her fingers around the runes on the side, tracing each loop and line, when it begins to hum, emitting a soft blue light. Startled, she swipes her hand away and watches in wonder as a compartment opens.
She peers inside, seeing two letters. The lights die down, the humming fading away, and then she’s left again with the loaded silence of the storage facility. She shifts the tablet, and then reaches inside the compartment to retrieve the letters. One is addressed to Alex , the other to Maggie .
She recognizes the handwriting. Loopy and scribbled on one, a doctor’s handwriting. Stiff, quick and crooked on the other - a cop’s.
She turns to Agent Cavanaugh, handing him back the tablet. “I thought this was completely scanned and checked?”
“It was, Ma’am.” He stands there, befuddled. “It must have been missed.”
She nods and dismisses Cavanaugh, clenching the letters in her fist as she strides back to her office. She pops them in a drawer for safekeeping, but automatically remembers to take them with her when she leaves work. It isn’t really until she’s picking Jamie up from Kindergarten that she becomes aware of their presence in her jacket.
Jamie leaps out of the car when they pull up to the precinct, buzzing with pre-vacation excitement. The only stop on the way to the bullpen is the receptionist holding out a glass jar for Jamie to pick a lollypop out of.
“I like the orange ones!” Jamie says, rooting around for one. With a crinkle of plastic, she holds one up in victory.
“Just like Detective Sawyer,” the receptionist muses.
“She’s my mom!” Jamie chirps, bouncing on her toes.
Alex grins, holding out her hand and taking the plastic off the lollypop and then handing it back.
Maggie is still in a meeting with her captain, so Alex hoists Jamie up to sit on her desk where she can hold court with the other detectives. Ever since the first visit, she’s been a celebrity, lapping up the attention she gets from the bullpen.
“I used to be this tall.” Jamie exaggerates her small height, her palm hovering near her shoulder. “And soon I’ll be this tall.” She stretches her arm high above her head.
“Wow!” Sergeant Hopper marvels on his way past. “You gonna be taller than your mom?”
Jamie nods and swings her legs back and forth.
“Not like that’s hard,” Alex jokes, sitting beside her, “You ready for a roadtrip, munchkin?”
“Roadtrip, roadtrip!” Jamie singsongs, but then rolls her eyes, “Mommy is taking so long.”
Alex tucks Jamie’s hair behind her ear and then moves around to sit in Maggie’s desk chair, listening as the girl spins a yarn about Officer Pickles’s latest exploits.
It’s clear from the desk how much Maggie loves her family. The birthday card from her daughter is still shedding glitter on its surface and next to the old computer monitor is a framed photograph. Alex inwardly lauds at the capture of her, Maggie, and Jamie at Kara’s holiday party last December. All three of them are wearing oversized sweaters that her mother had knit. She runs her fingers over the macaroni pasted to the frame. Jamie had made it at school and was so proud to give it to Maggie.
“Have you been distracting these guys from their work?” Maggie calls out as she makes her way across the precinct.
Alex cracks a smile, tickling Jamie lightly in the side, just enough to make the girl squirm. “Yeah, she’s been a little rabble rouser.”
Jamie rolls her eyes again and hops off the desk, Alex steadying her landing with a knee. “Finally!”
She stomps off towards the doors, light-up sneakers flashing with each step, and Maggie grins at her colleagues. “That’s goodbye, then.”
The roomful of hardened detectives is amused by this stroppy kid marching between their desks towards the exit, stuffed otter tucked under her arm.
Maggie kisses Alex on the cheek. “She got this bossy streak from you, you know.”
After quick goodbyes, to Maggie’s partners, they follow their daughter out to the car.
Still, Alex doesn’t mention the letters in her jacket. She’s not sure when to bring it up in the process of transition to vacation. Before or after Maggie slips off her windbreaker and rolls up her shirt sleeves? Perhaps the best time to do it is when she finishes buckling Jamie in and the back door closes, leaving them sectioned off outside the vehicle for a few precious seconds. Maybe as she’s sliding on her sunglasses, or as Alex is putting the keys in the ignition?
But, she waits, she hesitates. And the miles start to pass.
Jamie falls asleep almost as soon as they hit the road, snoozing until the grumbling of her stomach stirs her awake. Alex and Maggie exchange a glance in the front seat as she starts to fuss. They’ve still got about two hours until they reach Midvale and the Goldfish crackers they packed for the ride won’t be enough to satiate a girl with an appetite growing to rival Kara’s.
They pull off the highway and into the McDonald’s parking lot, Jamie dancing as soon as she sees the golden arches. They don’t order fast food very much anymore, so it’s a special treat for her to have McNuggets and a McFlurry. Jamie attacks the shake with a spoon, getting it all over her face; without skipping a beat, Maggie reaches for her bag and pulls out some baby wipes.
Alex loves how being a mom comes so easily to them now. They may not have raised Jamie from birth— haven’t suffered those sleepless nights or terrible twos— but they’re her parents. They’re her mothers as much as the other Alex and Maggie were.
Her fingers skim the edges of the letters still tucked in her jacket. She had intended to wait until they got to Midvale to read it, but her curiosity leads her to excuse herself to the bathroom in the back of the restaurant.
She hasn’t told Maggie about her letter yet. She grips the sink, then thinks better off it as a dried stain scratches her palm. She watches her hands in hot soapy water, and avoiding the rattling dryer to wring her wrists and pace.
With still-damp fingertips sticking to the envelope, she unfolds her letter over the sink, leaving Maggie’s in her pocket.
Alex,
I know there’s a DEO on your Earth, I’ve checked our database for the portal registration. I know you’re an agent there, because I sifted through a dozen until I found one with our name. I know your world is stable, it’s human-inhabited, it’s American soil. I know it’ll be 2019, because that’s the required time-space unit we need to balance the distance and not corrupt the timelines with a wormhole in crossing.
But I don’t know if you’re happy, if you’re married, if you even know you’re gay. I don’t know if you already have kids, or if you have Supergirl. I don’t know if you have a house in the suburbs, I don’t know if you wake up with someone beside you every day.
I don’t know if you have a Maggie, but I hope you do. She’s my rock. I never realized how much of life I was missing out on before I met her. Honestly, sometimes I don’t know what I did to deserve a woman like her, but I’m so thankful to call her my wife. She’s the love of my life, there for me through thick and thin. Ride or die, even when I decided to send our daughter away.
I’m going to die by her side and that’s okay. It’s not something we can fight. As long as she’s by my side, I’m content.
I know it’s a lot to ask, but please, take care of Jamie. Fill her days with love and care and happiness, just as she filled ours.
And if you’re unsure if you’re up to the task, if you’ve never thought of yourself as a mother, all I ask is for you to try. The minute I held her, heard those giggles, I was in love. I hope that you’ll feel the same.
You can do more than you think you can.
Alex
PS: I’ve made sure that Jamie has a piece of us with her in her pod. The stuffed otter goes by Officer Pickles. She can’t sleep without him.
Take care of him for me too.
Fat, hot tears spill over her cheeks and into the sink, rolling down the filthy, porcelain sides. She’s kept it together all these months. She’s had to be strong for Jamie, for Maggie, for herself. But reading those words, the pleas from that other Alex, the confidence she had in her… she’s overcome with emotion.
When Alex returns to her family, Maggie is bent over the table, her tongue poking out as she examines Jamie’s Happy Meal toy as if it were a key piece of evidence.
She spots Alex weaving through the tables and hands the toy back to Jamie. “Hey, you okay?”
“Happy tears,” she assures her wife, even knowing her eyes must be red rimmed.
Maggie tilts her head to the side, scanning for any other sign of distress. “Sure?”
“Yeah.” Alex kisses her cheek and they let the matter rest. She’ll give Maggie her letter when they arrive.
They pull up to the Midvale house in the early evening and Jamie darts out of the car, running headlong into her grandmother’s waiting arms.
As Eliza enlists Jamie’s help with a task in the kitchen, Maggie and Alex carry their bags upstairs. In the dim bedroom, lit only with the glowing orange sunset, Alex produces Maggie’s letter. Maggie twitches, frowns, then twitches a second time into realisation, not yet taking it.
Alex sees their shadows on the wall, their outlines; alive enough to be real, but not quite. She sees her outstretched arm, watches as the other silhouette takes it. Maggie places the letter on the bed, and then looks at the point on the wall that seems to have her wife’s attention.
Together they gaze at the shadows. It seems like a dark mirror, their reflections gazing back at them. Then Eliza calls on Maggie, and she moves, her silhouettes going with her. It walks across the wall, and disappears.
Alex stands in that spot, observing her outline as if it would move on its own, become sentient in its own right.
Then the sun ducks below the tree line, the shadow growing fuzzy and fading into the rest of the dusky blue. She flicks on the bedside lamp, as if to bring it back, but the angle is wrong.
And the shadow is gone.
~
The next day, they all gather in the kitchen for breakfast. Pots and pans rattle around as Eliza whips up a batch of pancakes and Alex yawns as she shuffles in. Jamie had woken up bright and early, and Maggie had been kind enough to let her sleep in a little, taking Jamie downstairs and setting her up with a pad of paper and some crayons at the table.
She sits down next to her wife and warms her hands on the coffee mug already sitting at her place. Maggie pecks her on the cheek before turning back to the sports section of the newspaper.
Eliza sets down a plate in front of Jamie, who chirps a thanks in between bites. She offers a forkful to the stuffed otter sitting next to her, shrugging and eating the blueberry pancake herself, as if Pickles had politely refused.
"Remember last time when Pickles stole my blueberries?" she asks through a mouthful of food.
Alex and Maggie share a glance, but Jamie is already focused on her drawing again. Still, it’s a reminder that while they’ve grown accustomed to Jamie’s idiosyncrasies, there are things they are still learning. Stories they’ve never heard. Memories Jamie shares with an Alex and Maggie that aren’t them.
Outside, the morning sun is casting long shadows on the patios, bold and black. Again, she lets herself fall into their shapes, lets her mind go to a place with thoughts she can’t quite fathom into words because they don’t translate to language.
She leans into Maggie’s side and thinks about her handwriting on that folded letter yesterday. Investigating Officer Pickles’s blueberry theft would have to wait another day. Today is for introspection; memorializing the other Alex and Maggie. They just need to iron out a plan.
“How would you wanna be honoured?” Maggie murmurs, leaning close so Jamie can’t overhear, thumbing the paper.
"Well, you know I've been getting back into some old traditions," Alex says, adding, "And you too."
Maggie tucks some hair behind her ears self consciously, falling silent.
She’s thinking of that shooting on 17th and Schuster, Alex knows it. A few weeks ago, one of Maggie’s colleagues had been shot, a young rookie by the name of Ramirez. She’d been at the scene, had seen his body crumple to the ground. Maggie hadn’t attended Mass since the Christmas before that fateful Valentine’s Day when she was fourteen, but she’d found herself wandering from his hospital room to the chapel by the precinct.
Alex picks at a chip in the brim of her coffee cup, then, "There is… one thing I'd like to do. What about you?"
Maggie bites her lip. "I don’t know…" She closes over the paper, watching Eliza move through the doorway into the living room. "You know, I think they were wiser than us."
“Oh, for sure.”
Ever since they first broke the ice, they’ve talked about the other Alex and Maggie. They seemed like they had everything figured out. They’d seen the destruction of their Earth coming and instead of panicking, they’d made a plan. They’d saved their daughter.
Maggie steals a piece of notepaper and a blue crayon, doodles mindlessly. “We can’t make it too obvious, with her…”
They both glance over to where Jamie swings her legs as she draws, completely oblivious to her parents’ conversation. Alex watches the careful strokes of her crayon, how she chooses the colour and switches if she doesn’t see it’s right. They often marvel at her creativity. To Jamie, a simple Amazon box could become anything: a spaceship, a fort, and even— with her Aunt Kara’s assistance— a dinosaur costume.
Today though, she’s doodling something that resembles a butterfly. Or maybe a dragon?
A dragon which hunches back and snaps its jaws, flaps its wings and roars - she has an idea.
After breakfast, they head to the craft store, purchasing stacks of colored paper and extra pairs of scissors and glue. Under the guise of an arts and crafts project, Maggie patiently shows Jamie how to make each cut and fold, turning the paper into a colorful lantern.
They spend the whole afternoon making them, not stopping until both the entire kitchen table and bench are covered with a rainbow of paper crafts. Alex will happily tolerate her hectic job when she gets to spend a sunny afternoon with her kid making paper lanterns.
Later, she stands out in the dunes, watching the sun sink lower in the sky. Jamie is with Eliza at the house and Kara should be here to join her any minute—
With a soft whoosh Kara flies over, dropping two volcanic rocks at the top of the dunes with a double-thud. She leans down, kisses each rock, and then prays in Kryptonian. Alex observes, her hands in her pockets, as Kara steps back and heat-visions symbols onto each of the rocks in turn. The fresh edges of the indent catch the sunset, facing into its dying rays.
“It’s what I think your names would translate to in Kryptonian,” she says, frowning in concentration like she isn’t sure she’s spelt them right. She reaches out a fingertip and cleans away some loose rock.
Alex nods— the other Alex and Maggie won’t have headstones in their world, but maybe this will suffice— and they head back to the house together.
As she and Eliza set up the yahrzeit candle, the red hues of the sunset filter in, filling the space with shadows once more. She thinks of her wife, currently on the other side of Midvale at the local chapel. There’s a Saturday night service for those who don’t make it on Sunday mornings, and while she didn’t join her, she can imagine from what Maggie has explained: the coloured light from the stained glass panels shimmering on her face as she kneels in reverence, the bread placed on her tongue, the taking of the wine from the brass goblet, the sacrament rich in taste. How her gentle touch reaches her forehead, chest, shoulders, in a cross. The quiet, unpractised Latin whispered under her breath.
Alex turns back to her own duties. She’s left alone with the candle now, the flame flickering as it will for the next twenty-four hours. The shadows are dancing now, movement across the walls and ceiling.
Outside, Eliza, Kara, and Jamie are playing out on the deck. She can hear their muffled glee. But she stays amongst the shadows, remembering.
~
She lights two votive candles and gives her thanks to the priest as she goes.
Her hand flies up to block the light as she opens the heavy chapel doors. The sun is lowering in the sky, not quite gone, a reminder that she should soon be headed back. She sinks into the driver’s seat, letting the emotion of the day settle in her chest. The chapel is visible through the rear view mirror, and behind it, the brilliant blue ocean.
She takes the letter from the glove compartment of the car, pulling it out of the envelope. She can’t put this off any longer.
Maggie.
I hope this finds you. If it does, it means she’s safe. I know this probably isn’t what you expected, and if you’re like me, maybe not what you wanted, and I’m sorry for that. If you decide this is a burden you can’t bear, all I ask is that you leave her with Alex and Kara Danvers, and if they aren’t in a position in your world to be her home, then please make sure she isn’t lost in the system on your Earth.
But if you do take her in, there’s some things I want you to know. Our world is bleak, I won’t sugar coat it. Each day I kiss my wife and daughter goodbye with the knowledge that one day I might not come home. I’ve had close calls. I’ve been shot at and stabbed, but being a police officer is the only way I can make sure that the world is a little safer for her.
Now that we’re all facing death, the days I spent away from them seem wasted. I wish I had more time.
We’ve tried to shield her from the harsh realities of this Earth. She’s so young, so innocent, and she deserves to live a long, happy life.
Alex was Jamie’s salvation. Instead of sticking her head in the sand in the face of death, she used her intelligence and dedication to find a way out for our daughter. Sometimes I’m blown away by her brilliance.
I’m not afraid to die, not when Alex is by my side. She was my salvation, too.
I don’t know how many of our experiences have been the same. I don’t know if we’ve dealt with the same pain, had the same good days or bad days. I don’t know if we’ve shared the triumphs or the losses. I don’t even know if you’re a cop. But I know you’ve got to have a good heart, and a good head on your shoulders.
Maybe I’m asking an impossible task, but please, love my girl.
All my hopes,
Another Maggie Sawyer.
She exhales, deflating back into the headrest. She remembers those early days, when she wasn’t sure if she could do this. Wasn’t sure she could be the mother that Jamie needed. Wasn’t sure if she even wanted to be a mother.
She couldn’t imagine making another choice now. Jamie was hers. Her daughter.
She offers one last prayer to the sun and the sea, then starts the car for home. Her heart swells with sorrow and gratitude. Jamie will have that happy life that the other Maggie and Alex died for. She would make sure of it.
Maggie comes home, shuffles her coat off, and joins Alex.
She sees the single flame dancing in Alex’s eyes, in her face.
“You read it,” Alex states, reading her.
Rather than answer, Maggie takes her hand and squeezes their knuckles together. They watch the candle’s mourning signal, commemorating the past. Then they turn away to face the future.
The kitchen table and counter are cluttered with at least two and a half dozen paper lanterns— each a different color, some a different shape. They take all the lanterns outside with Kara and Eliza’s help, but once the lanterns are laid across the sand on the beach, they leave the Sawyer-Danvers family to it. As Kara passes them on her way back to the house, Maggie catches her shoulder.
“That’s really nice,” she says, thumbing up towards the dunes. The rocks are merely part of the dark shape of the dunes at night time, but she knows they’re there from the quick explanation she got from Alex as they set up the lanterns.
Kara gives a wry smile, adjusting her glasses, and then moves on.
Jamie shifts back and forth, looking up at her moms. “Can I light them?”
“Sorry, you gotta let mommy do this part,” Alex says. “Careful, here.” She strikes a match, lighting up the lantern and handing it to Jamie.“Let it go.”
It wobbles as it floats upwards, disappearing into the sky. Maggie smiles at the joy on Jamie’s face.
“You’re doing all the lighting,” she mumbles to Alex, “We don’t want to encourage a pyromaniac.”
“Our little arsonist.” Alex gently pats Jamie’s head. “Ready to send up some more?”
They light them one by one at first, then Maggie steps in to start a second batch. The lanterns make a slow train upwards, speckling the night sky in blues, purples, reds, greens.
“They’re flying!” Jamie’s childish wonder is infectious as she helps the last lantern take flight.
Maggie pockets the matches and gazes up at the sky. “What a year.”
Alex’s eyes glaze over. “Yeah, what a year.”
“Do you think they’re watching over us, wherever they are?”
“Maybe.” Alex snakes an arm around Maggie’s waist, resting her head on her shoulder. “Do you?”
But Maggie isn’t listening. She’s staring up into the sky at the rising lights, at the spectrum of colour in each of the paths. They glimmer as her eyes fill with tears.
“Mom! Look at that one!”
She sniffs and crouches down, following Jamie’s finger towards one lantern, spinning slowly as it rises higher than the rest.
She feels Alex’s hand on her shoulder, grounding her in this moment; Jamie’s excitement, the warm sand, the ocean spray. And when she stands, her wife whispers in her ear. “Wherever the other Maggie is, she’d be proud of you.”
She turns to Alex then, wrapping her arms loosely around her waist, the whisky hues of her eyes just visible from the lantern light. Those warm tones draw her in, just as they had that day in her apartment. The day she’d make a commitment to be there for the girl dancing in the dunes. The girl who shared those eyes. Their daughter. She remembers the distance that had stretched between them, the agony of Alex’s presence in the space she’d carved out for herself in the city.
Now, as they stand together barefoot in the sand, Maggie has never felt more at ease. Those eyes no longer haunt her, a reminder of what she couldn’t have.
All her life, she has been trying to forge a home. Trying to find something tangible and concrete on which to base her world and grow a family she would chose, in whatever shape she wanted. She always sought something solid, something real, something she could point to and say this is my home .
Even with Alex, Maggie knew the perils of trying to find that within someone, rather than something.
But here, her search is over. She closes her eyes, lets the breeze lift her hair, lets the ocean command her senses. Jamie’s laughter peels between the rhythm of the waves. Her wife is there at her side, the ascending lanterns just flickering about her eyelids.
Those lanterns rise into the night, all the time guiding her home.
2024
The heat is scorching. Sweat drips down her neck. She’s surrounded by screaming.
Dread is a dead weight in her stomach. They’re running out of time.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she hisses under her breath, watching as the clock counts down. Beside her, her wife is tense, her fists balled at her sides, holding her breath—
The ball sails through the air and hits the back of the net. She springs up from her seat.
Jamie scores!
On the field, their daughter dances around in celebration, scanning the sideline for them, her dimples prominent on reddened cheeks. She hops up and down when she spots them and they cheer and wave back because yes, of course they saw!
Play resumes and Jamie is in high spirits, but disaster strikes just after kickoff. Charlie passes Jamie the ball, just for one of the opposing players to slide into her. She tumbles onto the ground, her arm taking the brunt of the fall.
The ref blows his whistle and Jamie’s coach hurries over to help her up. Alex stands along the sideline, not knowing whether to rush onto the field or hang back. It could be a bruise. Nothing to worry about.
Jamie’s teammate Hailey trots over to the sideline. “Um, Mrs Danvers? Mrs Sawyer?” Her eyes dart between them as she twists her jersey between her fists. “I think Jamie’s hurt real bad.”
Alex looks at Maggie, then at Jamie’s coach checking out her arm. The team knows her as a doctor, and she has helped with some injuries before; if she’s being summoned, it must be worse than she’d hoped.
She jogs over and kneels down by Jamie on the field, surrounded by players from both teams. Jamie’s chin wobbles and her eyes are filling up, but even at ten years old, she’s so brave and stubborn. There’s so much of both of them in her expression. So much determination. She won’t let the other players see her cry.
Jamie gets subbed off, but there’s only five minutes left. She sits between Alex and Maggie in her dirty jersey, swinging her cleats and cradling her arm as she watches her team carry on without her.
She looks up at Alex, eyes still glassy. “Mom, I still wanna go get pizza.”
“I know, sweetie,” Alex says, “But your arm-”
“But you promised!” A pout begins to form. “I scored and everything.”
Maggie is no nonsense. “Your arm, baby. It could be real bad.”
“It’s not even that b-” She swings her arm, and then hisses when the pain shocks through the entire limb. She lets out a whine, cradling her arm to her chest, and yeah— she’s their kid alright.
Maggie and Alex share a look. Alex loves how Maggie has developed hers over time, over these five years as a mother.
By now the game has ended and a gaggle of expectant kids in matching jerseys lingers back. It’s clear they’re all interested in whether there will be pizza as well, but they’re too polite to speak up.
Cindy, another mom who had been helping them organize the pizza trip, makes her way through the gathered crowd. She pushes her oversized sunglasses up onto her bleached bob. “Hi, Alex. Is Jamie okay? I saw her get hurt.”
“Yeah, she’s fine,” Alex confirms, “Just hurt her arm, right?”
“Not that bad.” Jamie pouts.
“We can postpone the pizza until next week,” Cindy offers.
Maggie shakes her head and thumbs at the group of kids behind them. “You wanna be the one to tell those faces no pizza?”
Cindy and Maggie smile as Alex hunches down with Jamie. “I’ll make you a deal,” she says. “You let me fix your arm up in the car with a sling, and come with me to work later so I can get you an x-ray…” She draws it out for dramatic effect. “And we can go for pizza now.”
Jamie beams, throwing her good arm around her mother for a hug. “Deal!”
Alex lifts her index finger in warning. “No taking your sling off when I’m not looking.”
Rolling her eyes at the stern look, Jamie hops off the bench and takes off to tell her teammates the good news.
“Mini Alex Danvers.” Maggie leans down and kisses Alex on the temple. “More like you every day.”
“Yeah, soccer mom Sawyer,” Alex teases.
They follow their daughter to the car, hand in hand.
Later, when they’re all gathered at Pizza Port, Jamie and her makeshift cast and sling are the center of attention— the pain quickly forgotten amidst the praise.
“Your goal was so good!”
“Yeah, wow!”
Alex squints at the glare from the sun filling the restaurant, watching Jamie grin around her straw. The heatwave has made for a string of good days out for them, and while she’s concerned about her daughter’s arm, she thinks the pride in Jamie’s voice as she retells the story of her goal for the sixth time might make it worth it.
Later, with Jamie’s arm in a proper cast, Kara joins them that evening for family movie night and she gets to tell the whole story over again. She gestures through the air with her casted arm, the details getting wilder with each retelling. She grins, her front tooth missing, and Alex marvels at how she’s grown.
Five years certainly had flown by.
The child she’d found in the pod clutching onto a stuffed otter is now ten years old. Their soccer star, spending her Saturday afternoons now tearing up and down the pitch in Belmont Park that had once been marred with a gaping crater.
She’s too old to bring Officer Pickles along with her everywhere, but just this morning Alex caught her talking to him on her dresser. She paced back and forth, rolling up her white socks, tying her hair back in a tight ponytail, telling him about the opposition from the other school, psyching herself up to score for the game.
Alex takes Jamie’s discarded soccer cleats and heads upstairs to put them away. It’s only when she turns to flick off the light that she sees it. Officer Pickles is still perched in his place of honor on the dresser, but he’s been given a makeshift cast out of paper towels. She reaches out to rub at his velveted ears, the material worn from love.
“Five years,” she says, snorting as she realises she expects him to answer.
When she returns back to the living room, Pickles tucked under her arm, the rest of her family is settled under blankets on the couch.
“Pickles wanted to see the movie too.” She holds the stuffed toy out, waving him around like she has seen Jamie do numerous times over the years.
Jamie shovels popcorn into her mouth with her good hand. “Careful! He has a broken paw, you know?”
She’s old enough to be in on the joke, but she still wipes the salt and butter onto her pants and reaches out to take him from her mother.
Alex takes a seat on Jamie’s other side and the girl cuddles up between her parents, Pickles in her arms.
Belmont Park, now somewhere she attends so often she forgets that day with a red alert and a crowded area of civilians. She watches Jamie dart through the white lines, forgetting the silver pod in long-term DEO storage. She bounces up from the wooden benches, not thinking of sliding down the loose dirt into the crater. She hands out fresh cut oranges in the dug out, the sleeping girl with no home far from her mind.
She gets a nudge on her elbow, bringing her back to her living room, where the attention of the room is fixed on her.
“Earth to Danvers,” Maggie says, “You back with us?”
“Agent Danvers,” Kara adds, pretending to speak into a radio, “Have you arrived back on Earth?”
She’s home, physically yes. She knows each of these items, where they bought them, how they move for family gatherings. She dusts and cleans those shelves, tends to Maggie or Jamie when they’re sick on this couch, shouts at that TV on the wall. This is her house, her living room, that she has assembled bit by bit with those in this room.
But these people; her sister, her wife, her child. They’re her home.
She throws an arm around Jamie, tapping Maggie’s shoulder. She relaxes, content.
“Pickles says stop dreaming,” Jamie goads, grinning.
But it began with a dream, she remembers. Before the sunny park, before the tests in the DEO, before the videos, before telling Maggie, it had been a dream. That other Alex and Maggie, that premonition. A warning of the danger.
“Don’t be cynical,” she says, picking up the remote to press play on the movie, “A dream can come true, once in a while.”
She worries about the future, as they all do. She watches weather reports like a hawk, keeping the channel with NASA open to make sure no data is being missed, just in case. She isn’t sure how much time they could have if things do take a turn for the worst.
The fear is always there, lurking in the background, no matter what she tells herself.
~
But 2024 turns to 2025.
Alex kisses Maggie at midnight on New Years’ like it’s that first time in the bar; desperate, wanting, relieved.
Later, they celebrate six years of marriage. Jamie scores three more goals that season than the previous. Maggie takes her Sergeant exam, Alex breaks her ankle and finds that time may heal all wounds eventually, but being parked for constant reruns of Jamie’s favourite show definitely slows the process.
And they continue to send up lanterns every year in tradition.
And as for Pickles?
After two years with a sweet Ceptumite named Tom, Kara has a baby boy. They name him Evan, ( Van-El, Kara haughtily reminds them). Jamie smiles down at him with his bunched fists and blonde hair, and then scrunches her nose up at his continous squirming.
“You’re too small to come play with me yet,” she says, “But I have a friend who wants to meet you.”
She takes the decision very seriously but decides to gift her newborn cousin with his first companion.
“You aren’t getting him forever,” Jamie warns, gingerly setting the otter in the crib, “But you can borrow him for a little while, anyway.”
She steps away and trots over to Alex, leaning in the nursery doorway. “Are you sure you wanna give up Pickles?” she asks. She knows Jamie is eleven now, but they’d always been attached at the hip.
Jamie shrugs. “Evan needs him more than me.” She glances back, like she might change her mind and dart back for him, but shakes her head. “Besides, I promised to be the best big cousin, but I can’t watch him all the time, so Pickles can watch him for me when I’m not here.”
Just like that, Jamie binds herself into a covenant. When Alex is left alone in the nursery, she smiles down at her sleeping nephew and Pickles.
“You better look after him,” she warns the toy, “Jamie told you so.”
She plays with his velvety ears. He is testament to all of them fulfilling their promises, or being determined to. This seems fitting, to pass him along again.
It started with a dream, one she hopes will never end. She recalls that night on the couch after Jamie hurt her arm, when she was lost in her thoughts about Belmont Park.
Maggie and Jamie are singing along to something in the kitchen, Kara and Tom laughing in response, and she feels complete.
“Yeah, a dream can come true.”
~
Covenant - [kuhv-uh-nuhnt] noun:
an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified.