Alura couldn't help but laugh when she heard the news, laugh with delight and joy and sheer, pure relief, because Sam wasn't becoming Reign again, and now they knew that.
Sam was just Sam. Superpowered, maybe, but just wonderfully, unquestionably Sam.
The smile was still lingering around her lips when she landed at in Sam's apartment, where she'd been staying for the last few weeks, and it broadened into a wide grin at the sight of Sam sitting on the couch. The thin, glowing green cuffs were still around her wrists, and she dashed forwards. Silently, she reached out, taking Sam's hands in her own, and removed them.
'It's been confirmed', she said, her voice trembling faintly with excitement, 'it's not Reign'. She laughed, unable to keep the joy from bubbling up. 'You're free, Sam'.
And then she took her face in her hands, and leaned in to kiss her.
It wasn’t until the guy pulled out a picture of his girlfriend that Alex bothered paying attention to what he was saying. Or tried to pay attention, anyway. Her head was pleasantly fuzzy and the music was loud and all she could think was that while the guy was okay and all, his girlfriend was gorgeous.
“I know she’d like you,” he was saying too close to her ear, his fingers stroking the inch of bare skin between her jeans and her top. “Just imagine how hot that would be. Her kissing you while I...”
Alex didn’t bother to listen to what he said next, too busy staring down at the picture. In any other context, being with another woman would be so wrong, but this was okay. This was something people did. As long as a guy was there, this wasn’t gay.
She stumbled to his car and he drove her back to his place, one of his hands starting at her knee and gradually working its way up to her thigh. But all she could think about was the girlfriend. What would it be like to kiss her? To touch her? Before long he had her out of the car and was guiding her towards the door. He unlocked the door and led her inside, whispering loudly. “Sammy, baby? I brought you a special friend.”
There she was. Sitting on the couch, looking up at them, her face so serious that Alex couldn’t help a nervous laugh. Her picture hadn’t quite done her justice. And Alex, her, Alex Danvers, was going to get to do who knows what with someone who looked like she might be a model.
“This is Alex,” he said, taking his guest by the wrist and leading her to stand in front of his girlfriend. “She’s going to play with us tonight.”
It didn’t take much urging for Alex to join the woman - Sammy? - on the couch. She put one knee on each side of her and sat straddling her lap, wrapping her arms around the girlfriend’s neck. “Hi,” she whispered, the several tequila shots the guy had bought her evident on her breath.
That wasn’t new. She’d grown up a Luthor and all the legacy that came with it an, honestly, Lena would rather feel guilty about that over the alternative; that arrogant certainty that whatever a Luthor did, it was the right choice no matter who or what got hurt as a result or haw many laws it broke.
No, what was new was that this time Lena felt guilty about doing her job and doing it well, something she normally took great pride in because unlike the rest of her family, Lena held herself to a moral code. Or tried to, anyway, which was more than could be said for her adoptive mother or her brother. But Lena’s problem didn’t come from her criminal relatives, it came from the reason why she was working to being with. When she’d handed Sam the reigns of L Corp, it had been with some regret, true, but with confidence that she was making the right decision; both in stepping back from L Corp so that questions of her morality wouldn’t overshadow all she’d done to undo the damage Lex had done in his mad quest to ‘save earth from alien invaders’ and in her choice of replacement.
Sam was more than capable of filling her shoes and more over she deserved the chance to sit in the big chair. At least... she had been. Hence Lena’s guilt. She’d forgotten how much she loved running L corp in the heady rush of stepping into the new challenge of overseeing Cat Co and now that she was back at L Corp a part of her was thrilled to be back. But the only reason she was back was because Sam was- Because Sam wasn’t-
Because Sam was sick. Sam was sick and no one knew what was wrong with her. And yes, that might have been part of the reason why Lena was glad to be back at L Corp because it helped keep her mind off the subject of her oldest friend’s health but that only added to her guilt.
So Lena felt guilty... and she had no idea what to do about it. None of Sam’s test had lead anywhere, none of her exams had provided any clue what was affecting her, what was behind her lost time. Nothing. Lena had nothing to go on. Nothing she could research. Nothing she could do to make things better, to make Sam better. She had the combined resources of one of the largest corporations on the planet and all of its various and numerous subsidiaries to draw on and absolutely no idea what to do with any of it.
Except feel guilty. And she couldn’t share any of this with anyone because the only people she was close enough to share it with were Sam herself, who really didn’t need all of this dumped on her, and Kara who had enough to deal with with her ex back in town and married no less. And historically that wouldn’t be a problem because Lena was used to carrying all of her issues alone; even with Sam there had been a strict separation between personal and personal until Kara entered her life and now she missed having that outlet which, you guessed it, left her feeling guiltier.
It was a vicious cycle, really. But just because Lena couldn’t do anything to fix Sam, didn’t mean she couldn’t do anything to alleviate some of her guilt. Like, say, show up at Sam’s apartment with ingredients for a full five course meal and a pair of master chefs to make it.
Alex wasn’t entirely sure how many days it had been. There’d been the fighting, and then patching up Kara until J’onn ordered Alex to go deal with her own injuries, some sleep despite desperately wanting not to, phone calls to make sure Ruby was okay, a little bit of food, a shower, and more fussing over Kara until her sister pointedly told her that maybe there was someone else she should be checking in on.
As if Alex knew what to do with this whole Sam/Reign situation. She really, really liked Sam, but finally realizing that the same person she’d been thinking about had nearly killed Kara and had actually killed hundreds of people had been a shock. Even if it wasn’t really Sam in charge, it was her face, her body.
Alex turned the corner towards the containment cell and looked at the woman curled up on the cot, looking so very small and lost.
There was no Worldkiller in that cell. Just Sam.
Alex punched in her code and stepped into the cell, not caring that it was off limits. What was J’onn going to do, fire her?
“Ruby’s safe,” she said immediately, knowing that would be Sam’s first question. “She’s staying with a friend and I’m going to go see her as soon as they decide I’m healed enough to leave.”
Alex had no idea where to start, but she couldn’t exactly say no. Not to Lena, because saying no would mean admitting that she wasn’t FBI, and then Lena would have questions. And not to Ruby, who was sitting across the kitchen counter and watching the two women, so worried and hopeful.
“I’ll find her,” she promised. Not that she knew the first thing about finding humans. But Sam had been missing for almost a week, her daughter was panicking, her boss had no idea where she might be...
Maggie probably would have been the better choice for this job, Alex knew, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t be the one to call, the one to break the silence. So she pulled out her computer and started running Sam’s information in every database she had access to. But there was nothing - no hits on her credit cards, no sightings of her car, not even a signal from her phone in several days.
She thought it was a mistake at first, when she entered Sam’s address and got a match in one of the DEO databases. A scan had picked up a Kryptonian signal there several days ago, probably from one of Kara’s visits.
Except it couldn’t be, because Kara hadn’t been there the day Sam left. Alex looked closer, and it seemed that whatever had been putting out the signal had been on the move, right towards the desert. Right past the place where Sam’s phone signal had last recorded.
That was how Alex found herself driving into the desert, the path of the Kryptonian signal programmed into her GPS up until the point where it had vanished several days ago. She was already a few hours in when she saw something by the side of the road and pulled over. She got out cautiously, one hand on her gun, hoping that she wasn’t going to have to bring terrible news back to Ruby. “Sam?” she asked cautiously, letting go of her weapon once it was clear that the body slumped over in the sand was the person she was looking for. Alex got down onto her knees next to Sam and rolled her over.
