21. Chapter XXI

In the kitchen, Alex stood over the text messages from Lena on her phone and grinded her jaw in frustration. It was too early in the morning to be reminded of all the convoluted lies between the people she cared about, especially when she wasn’t allowed to drink caffeinated coffee. Lena and Kara weren’t a couple but they were pretending to be for her benefit. That was two coffees right there. Lena was the mysterious source of information concerning the bubbling trouble with Catmus, to which nobody else was aware of her double-agent status. Four coffees. Oh, and then there was the small fact she and Lena were now the only people besides the President of the United States in on the plan to bring down a radical terrorist cell. Fifty-eight coffees and a donut selection.

But still, Alex stared at her phone and found herself clutching at what was left of her sanity. There was no amount of coffee in the world that would help her brain stretch far-enough to wrap around the cluster-fuck they were all trapped together in.

Kara came home with me the night we came over for dinner. We’ve talked and we’re going to try and make it work again.

Alex rubbed her forehead and thumbed a reply.

And you thought right now was the time to get back together? Everything going on Lena and you went home with my sister Friday night? You couldn’t have waited a month to get back on that horse?

The replies were almost instantaneous.

I feel like I can’t breathe with all these lies. 

I accidentally told Kara she didn’t have to pull out and if she wasn’t suspicious before, she is now. 

I think you should come over tonight and we can all get everything out in the open and embrace a little honesty between us all.

Alex gagged.

You thought I needed to hear you let my sister nut in you again, Lena?

Ping.

Honesty. Embrace it, Alex.

Alex heard the flush in the bathroom and suddenly became aware of Maggie. Her thumbs became rapid and furious.

Don’t you dare drop me into this. I signed up for the plan to bait and switch the President, granted. But what Maggie doesn’t know doesn’t hurt her and I don’t even want to know if there’s stuff she’s been hiding from me. Keep us and our secrets out of this.

Ping.

I’m about to tell the invincible woman that I am pregnant with her child and I need support where I can get it. Woman up? Please?

The lock on the bathroom door fumbled and the wood creaked open. There was barely enough time for a reply but Alex worked quickly.

I hate you. Yes I will be your back-up tonight.

Ping.

Does this mean we’re friends now?

Footsteps finally padded out into the hallway. Alex sent her final reply.

Fuck off Lena.

“Who are you texting?” Maggie yawned and padded through into the kitchen.

A chaste kiss was planted on Alex’s temple and a hand smoothed around the small of her back. Alex weakly smiled and shoved her phone in her back pocket, “No one important,” she swallowed.

“Hmmm,” Maggie pulled away and looked her up and down, her eyebrows doing the thing. “That frown says different,” she said.

Alex sighed and found herself at a loss. The consistent need to lie was growing tiring, the need to hide things from that sweet little alpha especially. Maybe it was the knowledge deep down that Maggie was hiding things from her too that would serve to be better out in the open that Alex found herself worried about the most. Granted, those secrets were probably somehow connected to this enormous heap of a mess they were all somehow tangled in. Alex didn’t even want to begin about thinking of those ones though because their secrets were different from Kara and Lena’s. 

Their secrets were worse. 

Their secrets were deep and knotted and tightly wound around their ribs and stuck on the cusp of every breath. Their secrets were intrinsically and undeniably connected to a lost baby and all the unsaid words that went along with it and now there is not enough time to fix those wrongs before a new baby would be here. A new baby who would need them to be the best, unbroken, undamaged people they could possibly be.

Alex felt a flutter in her stomach as the thought crossed her mind. Four and a half months didn’t feel like much time at all to cross all those bridges and heal those old threshed out wounds they were both adamant were not wounds at all anymore but just simply scars now. Soon the baby would come and then all of those secrets and unsaid things would just… disappear. 

Not disappear. 

Secrets and unsaid things never disappear. 

They just carry on going unsaid, festering away.

“Babe,” Maggie waved her hand in front of Alex’s face and brought her back from the cliff edge of her thoughts.

“Sorry, sorry.” Alex shook her head and weakly smiled, “I lied. When you asked me who I was texting and I said no one important, I wasn’t telling the truth,” she said guiltily.

“Is this the part where you tell me you’re having an affair?”

“No, this is the part where I tell you I was texting Lena.”

“You’re having an affair with Lena?” Maggie’s brows lowered in utter confusion.

“Baby, no one is having an affair,” Alex chuckled and found herself grateful for an honest statement to give her wife. “I just, I hate lying to you. I hope you know that. I hate it so so much,Maggie.”

“Then don’t lie to me?” Maggie offered calmly and her lips lifted into that gleaming smile that made it feel so impossible to lie to her in the first place. “You trust me right? You know you can talk to me?”

Alex searched Maggie’s gentle brown eyes and sighed in concession. She looked to the ceiling, then the sofa, then at absolutely nothing at all. The words felt stuck in the back of her throat but they came slowly like a trickle, “I feel like I’ve gotten so good at lying to you and I hate that the most about myself,” Alex scratched her head awkwardly.

“It’s never too late to tell me whatever it is that’s going on,” Maggie gently took her wrist. “I need you to know that. I need you to know that you are my wife and there is nothing you could do, nothing you could say, that I couldn’t forgive. Okay?”

“Okay,” Alex nodded like a nervous child.

“Okay then,” Maggie slipped her arms around Alex’s back and leaned forward. She nuzzled with a hand against Alex’s belly and a nose resting between her collar bones. “I want you to tell me what you’ve got yourself tangled up over and not because you’re in trouble, not that. Tell me because I am your wife and I want to be the person you can come to with the scary secrets.”

“Lena and Kara aren’t together anymore, they were pretending. Well. They might be together now, it’s a long story,” Alex sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Up until yesterday night they were just pretending.”

Maggie grew very still and quiet.

“You’re mad. I knew you would be mad. I knew I should never have let her rope me into—”

“Kara told me and I kept that from you too...” Maggie admitted guiltily with a wince, “God Alex, I’m so sorry.”

“Wait. You kept that from me?” Alex leaned away and narrowed her eyes.

“I know it’s worst that I kept it from you because she’s your little sister but sometimes we have to keep fucked up things from the people we love to protect them. Can we please agree on that?”

“Oh you don’t have to give me that lecture! Trust me!” Alex simmered and thought about all the grief and guilt she had buried away for Maggie’s benefit.

Here it was. 

The fight.

The unwinnable, unconquerable, dreaded fight. 

The one they never seemed to move past. 

Alex felt the anger and grief swell against her ribcage like a breaking riverbank, it swirled and dragged and threatened to destroy them and everything right along with it. Maggie would tell her to let it out, to shout, to hate her, to let it hurt and hurt until she couldn’t breathe because of it, to let it burn their perfect lives apart so that they could finally clear away the char and rebuild together. But Alex never did that. Instead Alex always said her quiet apologies and buried that hateful fire beneath a mountain of kindling within herself.

“Sorry,” Alex whispered and blinked off thin tears, “I’m sorry I shouted it’s just pregnancy hormones, you know, the usual,” she said quietly and waved her hands.

“Sweetie I don’t think it is just that.” Maggie took her hands.

“Yeah, you’re right. It isn’t,” Alex said shamefully. She felt the overwhelming need for honesty wash over once again and closed her eyes, exhaling quietly for a moment. “We lost a pregnancy and we should talk about that sometime. I know that. But can that time not be right now? Please? Because there are other things I want to talk to you about. Less important things, granted. But I’m trying...”

“You know I don’t like it when you call it that. When you say, ‘we lost a pregnancy,’ like—”

“No, no, stop!” Alex said urgently, unwilling to talk about it. “If we get into this right now I don’t know if I will get myself back out again and right now I need to be able to own myself. I need to be able to be in control.”

“Okay,” Maggie said it so simply, “I’m on your team, Alex.”

“Maggie,” Alex hesitated and eyed her cautiously, “Lena is pregnant.”

Maggie’s eyes grew wide.

Her lips pursed.

Her expression ashen.

The hands around each of Alex’s wrists become suddenly undone.

“Lena is pregnant?” Maggie choked out the question.

Alex nodded and covered her mouth nervously, “She told me on Friday. I thought...I thought I could go along with it. She has this plan to get rid of her mother for good and Kara couldn’t find out otherwise the plan would fail and she said she needed mine and the DEOs help to make this plan work,” Alex grew exasperated and searched for the words. “She was right, Maggie, that’s the short version. Lena is on the right team,” Alex finally sighed and lowered her head, “But more than that I just didn’t want to be the one to tell Kara I mean she’s so young, you know? What if it isn’t what she wants? What if she’s scared? What if she felt like she couldn’t talk to me about it because…well...because...you know...what happened,” she said bleakley.

“You think Kara thinks you’re unqualified to give her advice because of what happened last time?”

Alex rolled her eyes in frustration, “She’s only twenty-four, Maggie. She’s bound to be scared.”

“Then she should have thought about that before she got a girl pregnant, Alex.” Maggie raised her chin until they were looking one another in the eyes, “It is not your job to fix everyone else’s problems. If you want to take on the big scary secrets then that is your decision sweetheart, but you have to trust me that you can talk to me about them when they get too big to bare? You have to know I am on your team, right?”

Alex breathed a sigh of relief, “Lena is planning on telling Kara tonight, I just wanted you to hear it from my mouth first. I wanted to be start being more honest with you and this felt like a good place to start.”

“Thank you for trying,” Maggie gave a doleful smile.

“I’m going to text Lena back and tell her we can’t come tonight. Kara should hear this in private. She’s probably going to feel scared, frustrated, helpless, happy hopefully, but either way she should get to feel those things without people watching.”

“Well,” Maggie did the thing with her eyebrows that signalled a contrary point. “Did Lena ask you to come over, or did Kara?”

“Yeah but—”

“She’s pregnant, Alex. She’s pregnant and she is alone and she is scared, and all of those things you’re so worried about Kara feeling? Lena has been feeling them. Does that not say something to you about how few people she must have to lean on that she asked you to be there? You thrive when people need you and I love that about you the most. I might not agree with it sometimes, hell, I definitely don’t like it when you get yourself caught up in other people’s crap, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are the woman who fixes problems. Lena asked for you to be there, she is the one who needs you right now.” Maggie took her hands again.

“You wanted me on bed rest,” Alex said quietly with a tiny smile.

“Well, that was just wishful thinking on my part. There isn’t a bed big enough to hold you down.”