Chapter 5
Maggie Sawyer came out at twelve years old in small town Nebraska; and by small town, she means population of three hundred something, mostly white, except for her extended family.
Maggie Sawyer beat up her first boy at thirteen years old, when he was seventeen, because he told her cousin that she was asking for it when she went out looking like that.
Maggie Sawyer was the only girl in her high school graduating class – her high school that featured her getting shoved into lockers, her enduring endless racial slurs and just as many offers to help her find the right guy – who left Blue Springs, who went to college, who made a life for herself outside of the place where everyone knew her name, third grade teacher, and which bedroom window was hers.
Maggie Sawyer joined a racist, homophobic police force to try to make it better from within.
Maggie Sawyer made detective within four years.
Maggie Sawyer battled aliens alongside the DEO; and protected them from it, too.
Maggie Sawyer was, in a word, tough.
Maggie Sawyer was also shaking like a leaf, pacing the hallway outside her the door of her girlfriend’s little sister. Because Maggie had never celebrated Chanukah, and she’d certainly never celebrated Chanukah with her new girlfriend’s mother.
It was Kara who noticed. Of course it was Kara who noticed; no one else could see straight through the wall. No one else could hear Maggie sighing, Maggie muttering to herself that she could do this, that this was nothing, that Eliza was nice, that Alex’s friends liked her, that Alex was… perfect. That it wouldn’t turn out like it always did. And that yes, her fly was zipped and her breath suitably minty.
Kara smiled slightly and touched Eliza’s shoulders as she passed behind her and Winn to softly pad to the door, glad Alex was distracted by her animated conversation with James about DEO policy.
“Maggie?” she said softly, slipping outside the apartment and half closing the door behind her. Maggie jumped, bringing her left hand under her lower lip.
“Kara! Hey. I was just about to – ”
“It’s okay if you’re nervous, Maggie.”
Maggie stopped pacing and leveled her gaze at Alex’s kid sister, who was regarding her with compassionate concern and an overflowing of a certain emotion that Maggie couldn’t quite identify, but she thought might be gratitude.
“Eliza’s really excited to meet you, you know. And Alex can’t stop talking about how happy she is that you agreed to come. I’ve never seen her like this, Maggie. Especially around a holiday. She always… since her dad… she’s always been pretty withdrawn around holidays, since we were teenagers. But now…”
Kara glanced back over her shoulder, squinting slightly to see Alex through the door, checking her phone and all but bouncing on the balls of her feet, waiting for Maggie to knock on the door.
“I just want to make her happy, Little Danvers.”
“You do, Maggie. Now come on. It’s almost sunset. Alex told you that’s when we light the menorah?”
Maggie nodded, breathing in deeply, her knuckles starting to ache with how tightly she was gripping the bag of goodies she brought.
“Wait!” she told Kara before she opened the door. From her bag, she withdrew one bouquet of roses and another arrangement, a wild mix of colors and textures and flowers Kara couldn’t identify. Kara beamed, and Maggie nodded, looking slightly like she was going to be sick.
Kara grasped her forearm briefly and opened the door.
“Look who I found!” she announced.
“Eeeeyyyy!” Winn and James shouted, raising their beers at Maggie from their sprawls on and against the couch.
Alex beamed and strode over, pulling Maggie into a much more chaste hug than she would have if Eliza weren’t over, if she wasn’t shaking at the idea of touching her girlfriend, having a girlfriend, under her mother’s watchful eyes. James and Winn snickered, and Kara grinned at the ground.
“For you,” Maggie told her softly, holding the roses out for Alex.
“Maggie,” Alex breathed, her eyes stinging and a lump suddenly flaring up in her throat. Maggie beamed at her, took a deep, steadying breath, and turned to a waiting Eliza.
“Maggie Sawyer, Dr. Danvers.” She held out the hand that wasn’t occupied with the other bouquet and bag, but Eliza ignored it, pulling her into a hug.
“It’s a true pleasure to meet you when you aren’t lying in a bio bed in need of stitches, Maggie,” Eliza told her, and Kara tugged a teary-eyed Alex into her side.
“Um, happy Chanukah,” Maggie said, holding out the bouquet when Eliza pulled back.
Eliza beamed over Maggie’s head at Alex, and Maggie gulped. “They’re beautiful, dear, thank you.”
“Thank you for having me,” Maggie answered with a slight bow of her head, and Kara bounced forward.
“Technically I’m the hostess,” she announced, and Maggie laughed.
“And I didn’t forget it.” She dove into her bag and pulled out a large tray covered in foil.
Kara squealed. “What is it, what is it!?”
“Well, Alex told me something about jelly donuts, so… I made you some.”
“Oh my god,” Kara said, grabbing the tray and darting into the kitchen with it. James and Winn shot up, eager to get at Maggie’s cooking before Kara could shove it all in her mouth.
Eliza laughed. “You certainly know how to charm the Danvers women,” she touched Maggie’s arm, and a deep blush rose in Maggie’s chest.
“Ey, ‘aggie,” Winn said through a mouthful of homemade donut. “Erargifs?”
“Say again?” Alex teased.
Winn took an almighty swallow and sighed. “Where’s our gifts?” he teased.
Maggie grinned and went into her bag one more time, lifting out two identical boxes.
“Wait, what?! I didn’t actually mean it!”
“Well, some of us are actually thoughtful, Schott,” Maggie laughed as she chucked the boxes over the counter at James, who caught them deftly with a smile and passed one to Winn.
“Are we lighting?” Eliza asked before Winn could tear into the blue wrapping – which, he would discover later, contained an ugly Chanukah sweater featuring dancing dreidels for him, and an ugly Christmas sweater containing dancing reindeers for James.
“Yeah!” Kara said, and Alex swallowed and looked at the ground with a deep, deep breath.
Maggie grimaced and took her hand. “You good, babe?”
“We’ll get him home soon,” Alex answered, and Maggie nodded grimly.
Alex led Maggie to the kitchen table, where an elegant blue and silver menorah glinted in the low lights of Kara’s apartment. James and Winn quieted and slipped over to the table, and Kara burrowed into Eliza’s side.
“So,” Winn leaned into Maggie softly. “You light a candle each night, and pray over them; three blessings the first night, but only the first.”
Maggie nodded gratefully and Winn smiled at her.
Alex’s hand shook on the book of matches James passed her, and Maggie tentatively took it from her. “My dad used to do this. I… I took over the year he… Let’s make this the last year we light without him, yeah?”
“Amen,” Eliza and Winn whispered, while Kara just nodded with closed eyes and James put a hand on Alex’s shoulder.
Maggie kissed her jawline softly, nervously, and Eliza beamed at her.
“Ready babe?”
Alex nodded, and – by unspoken agreement between them – Maggie struck the match for her. To her surprise, Alex held the bottom of the candle over it first, waiting until the wax started dripping so she could stick it securely into the menorah.
Maggie watched her slightly trembling fingers, otherwise always so steady, in awe, in admiration. Eliza watched Maggie watch Alex and exchanged a glance with Kara, who nodded a silent affirmation, a silent agreement, at her.
Alex took a deep breath, glanced at the sky, and used the shamash, the center candle, to kindle the other.
“Baruch atah, Adonoi Eloheinu, Melech haolam.” She paused as her voice trembled, threatened to break, threatened to spill over into the tears, the fresh grief, the fresh rage, of doing this, of leading this, with Jeremiah not dead, just captive, not dead, just an experiment; Maggie laced their fingers together as the candle sparked. “Asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tsivanu l’hadlik ner shel Chanukah.”
Her wavering voice broke completely on the very last syllable, and the look that Maggie was beginning to recognize as Alex’s ‘worrying about Jeremiah’ expression washed over her face so intensely that Maggie’s heart threatened to break.
She lifted gentle fingers to stroke Alex’s cheek, to brush back the strands of hair that had fallen forward into her face, and Winn whispered the translation. “Blessed are you, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who hallows us with mitzvoth – uh, commandments – commanding us to kindle the Chanukah lights.”
Maggie tilted her head at him, a fond but surprised smile on her face, brow slightly furrowed; she’d assumed his knowledge from earlier was from the last year of celebrating with the Danvers, nothing more.
He grinned softly at her impressed, curious face. “My mom raised a good Jewish boy before she left me with my Christian dad in prison.” He grimaced, and Kara shifted to lean into his chest; he tilted his cheek to rest on his best friend’s hair.
Alex’s voice grew stronger throughout the next two blessings; Kara translated the first while Eliza translated the third, and Maggie and James exchanged a warm glance at the way they were so utterly enveloped in the circle around them.
A silence settled amongst the family – family, Maggie thought, and Alex drew her close into her body as a shiver coursed through her veins – as the translation of the final blessing slipped past Eliza’s lips, and the flickering of the first night’s candles was the only sound in the apartment.
James thought about Kara, about his dad, about redemption and about freedom in an unfree place.
Winn prayed on his mother, thought about Kara, about forgiveness and about what it means to change the world.
Kara offered thanks to Rao, prayed on the warmth of the night, about flying and about her sister finally doing just that.
Eliza reflected on her daughters, on Alex, on healing and on the little surfer scientist becoming the soldier scientist, with a relaxed stance and sober smile for the first time in over a decade.
Alex meditated on her father, on Maggie, on the strength flowing into her veins from the fingers laced in hers, on mending and on fighting and on trust.
Maggie let her mind settle on Alex, on her niece, on the silence of the night, on the beauty of another language shaping the tongue of her beloved.
Each of them prayed on family, prayed on faith, prayed on belief, prayed on hope.
It took the candles hours to melt down into a memory, but the feelings they’d awoken would last much, much longer.