Chapter 5
She doesn’t spare that night a thought.
She washes the blood off – not all hers, not just theirs – nurses the wounds she sustained as best she can, throws her torn and burnt clothes away and is back at work the following day.
The building exploded shortly after her exit. The police couldn’t find much in the wreckage, she’s told, and the built-in surveillance system wasn’t functional. If foul play is suspected, no one’s too interested in investigating it.
Haley introduces a mandatory medical check-up for all personnel. And Haley being Haley, it consists of both a consultation with a general practitioner and one with a psychologist.Alex misses the first appointment and ignores the second.
She sorts through Vasquez’ drawer and locker instead, packs everything neatly away in a box for her parents: a family photo, two spare changes of clothes, a notebook, a set of keys. She lingers on the photograph. A gawky Vasquez with long hair stares back at her, while her younger brother strikes a silly pose and her parents look on proudly. The family resemblance between them all is striking. It must’ve been taken years ago, for Vasquez looks much younger in it. It’s strange to put a face to the two voices she spoke with on the phone. A roll of 4 photo booth pictures of Vasquez kissing someone – is that… she’s pretty sure it’s a woman – falls out of the notebook. She wonders whether Vasquez was out to her parents and not for the first time, regrets shying away from a more personal connection with her all these years. She tucks the roll back in and closes the notebook with care. She returns Vasquez’ access card to HR, her computer to IT – her service firearm she keeps. She speaks to her parents again: they’re still stuck in Venezuela, unable to make the trip. Alex commits to helping with the repatriation of Vasquez’ body.
The Tracksuit Mafia continues, unperturbed. Their tactics, however, change once more: now they shoot first, at anything that moves, anything in sight. No questions asked.
She loses four more agents.
Haley suggests she start looking for a right hand, someone to replace J’onn. The thought is so preposterous, she doesn’t understand at first. Haley’s all nice about it, too: she knows he recruited her, mentored her, acknowledges he must be an incredible loss. Alex balks and fakes an emergency to get out of the call. What. The. Fuck.
She plans her next move this time around, meticulously so. This has to stop. Whatever it takes, whatever it costs. It simply can’t be that good people continue to die, while bad people are allowed to roam free and terrorise. Her target’s their HQ, a one storey building downtown. It takes her two weeks to formulate a plan that looks somewhat airtight – in her head at least. She’s not taking any chances: she brings enough explosives to level the entire building, all purchased on the dark web, nothing that can be traced back to the DEO.
She barely makes it out alive.
The media speculates on a gang war and counts fifty dead. (She reckons that sounds about right.)
The attacks on convoys stop after that. National City breathes a collective sigh of relief.
For the first time in months, she feels a certain sense of accomplishment.
She hands in her resignation. Haley refuses to acknowledge it. Alex shrugs and walks out. She can’t expect her to understand.
What good is she, if she can’t keep her men safe? She doesn’t deserve this position, never did, really. And as much as she’d like to kid herself into believing her actions are compatible with the DEO, with its mandate of serving and protecting, they’re not. The two are simply unreconcilable. Best she accept that and move on.
The Governor calls – Haley’s doing, no doubt. He keeps it short, doesn’t pry, doesn’t try to change her mind: he thanks her for her service and stresses it’s a shame to see her go. Maggie too, calls. She let’s it go to voice mail and listens to the message: “Hey Alex, it’s Maggie. I hope it’s ok that I’m calling. Texting felt too… impersonal, I guess. Listen, I saw the clashes with the Tracksuit Mafia in the news. I assume the DEO’s involved, what with your questions, the other day.” Her ex sounds tired, or maybe stressed. And yet, she also sounds… beautiful, for lack of a better word. “Iwanted to call earlier, but I didn’t know… It looks like things have turned quite ugly over there – and that’s saying something, considering the stuff I’m seeing here in Gotham on a daily basis. I hope you and your team are safe. You can call or text, whenever you get the chance, no pressure. Alright. Bye.” She doesn’t call nor text.
She breaks into Kara’s locker and empties it, her vision blurry. She also downloads the DEO’s entire casefile library and all other agencies’ files it has privileged access to. The DEO sends over the paperwork for an extended leave of absence. Whatever one may say about Haley: she is tenacious. She grits her teeth and promises herself she won’t tear up at the sight of the long guard of honour that sees her off on her last day. This is where she forged her bond with J’onn, where she rebuilt a new – a stronger – relationship with Kara. Where she grew fond of Winn (despite the younger man’s many quirks) and had her patience so often tested by Brainy. This is where she found a purpose. And yet, she feels oddly detached from it all.
She packs a bag with a vague sense of what her next move could be, withdraws all the cash she can and hands her flat owner her notice. She looked into storage units, but in the end, doesn’t even need any: she offers her furniture up for free on the web (it’s gone within a day), donates most of her clothes to goodwill, sells her bike to a motorbike lover and fills trash bag after trash bag of bauble and reminders of another life.
Mr G agrees to look after her mother’s house for free, in exchange for putting up his children there: they fled the city after the Snap and may stick around for a while. He also knows someone who could maintain the garden. She calls ten agencies and entrusts the sub-rental of Kara’s flat to the only one that doesn’t suggest within the first 10 minutes she empty it and terminate the contract. They want to know if she’ll participate in the selection of the new tenants. She declines: she doesn’t want to have anything to do with them, with that. She puts monthly bank transfers in place and drops her only copy of Kara’s flat keys off.
She checks in with Vasquez’ parents. The package she sent hasn’t reached them yet. She recommends a couple of agencies to help with Vasquez’ apartment and offers to cover part of the cost (they refuse, but she’ll still do it). Like clockwork, Vasquez’ mother breaks down midway through and hands the phone over to her husband. These calls don’t get any easier.
She doesn’t tell anyone she’s leaving (there’s no one left to tell). She closes her flat door for good, returns her keys and leaves National City behind.