#soulswitch

Emotional trauma isn't the only trigger for a Switch. Alex and Maggie live very stressful lives, and sometimes.... Well, they're Ride or Die before they even meet.

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Alex grit her teeth, and tried to think of anything else besides what her mother was telling her. This was so stupid. She didn’t understand what the big deal was, why it mattered, or why her mother was so upset about it. But, then again, her mother was got angry at what felt like everything these days. Alex should have known better than to think that Eliza wouldn’t have found something wrong with what she was doing. It was what Alex was best at lately.

Disappointing her mother.

“Are you listening to me, Alex?” Eliza demanded angrily.

Alex grit her teeth and rolled her eyes. “No,” she snarked back, growing more frustrated by the moment.

Her mother’s nostrils flared. “Kara is looking for you as an example, and you’re—”

“Dying my hair?” Alex shot back. “First of all, Kara would probably be immune to the stupid hair dye! Second, I don’t see why it even matters!”

“Acting out to get attention is exactly the wrong thing we need right now. We’re supposed to be hiding Kara.”

Alex threw her hands up. “What does that have to do with anything? I dyed my hair black with some pink streaks. Yeah. That’s going to get the government knocking on our door. ‘Mrs. Danvers, are we noticed you have an alien in your house after your daughter decided to go punk. This is a very serious matter,’” Alex said mockingly.

“I do not appreciate your attitude, Alexandra,” Eliza said harshly. “The government is not the only thing we need to worry about. Other people can and will notice that Kara is not human if you keep up with this temper tantrum you’re throwing. Dying your hair is not what I’m talking about, and you know it. In order for Kara to be protected and hidden, we have to act as normally as possible.”

“So, I can’t do anything then? Gotta act like a Stepford family or something, right? All so that no one notices that Kara can act like a real weirdo sometimes.”

She didn’t know what Eliza wanted from her. It was just some hair dye. Plenty of kids from school did it. The box cost only seven dollars at the store. Alex had no idea what stick in the mud would think that a teenager dying their hair was the sign of ‘alien activity,’ but she really just thought her mother was freaking out over nothing.

“You have got to stop thinking only of yourself, Alexandra. If you would have thought of your actions in the first place, Kara wouldn’t have been noticed at all. Your father—” Eliza almost seemed to clamp her mouth shut, but it was too late.

Alex heard what she wanted to say.

And she couldn’t believe it.

“I—Are you saying Dad dying is my fault?” Alex asked, voice entirely breaking as she reached the end of the question.

She had no idea what her mother was talking about. Jeremiah had died in a plane crash. That was what they were told. Was it something else? Or was her mother putting this on Alex’s shoulders just like she was doing everything else?

Either way, Eliza blamed Alex. Sure, she blamed Alex for everything lately, but this felt like a punch to the gut. Was this why Alex was suddenly a constant failure? Alex’s eyes started to fill up with tears, but that only made her feel more upset. Because now she was going to cry in front of her mother. Who apparently blamed her for her father’s death. As if this couldn’t get any worse.

Alex hadn’t been able to handle her own grief over her father’s death since they had gotten the news. Not in any real way. Suddenly, she had to take care of the house, and feed a never ending pit of an alien, and get them to school, and make sure her mother was getting out of bed in the morning, and reminding her mother that they needed groceries. Again. And then actually getting said groceries because, ‘I need you to take some responsibility around here, Alexandra, I can’t do this all by myself.’

Except, it seemed an awful lot like Alex was doing everything instead.

But, regardless, Alex hadn’t had the time to sit down and manage just how upset and lost she was feeling since learning that her father had gone on a work trip and was never coming back. She’d been too busy and too exhausted to do anything else but live day to day for the past two weeks. And then as soon as she decides to do anything for herself, to just change one thing about her appearance.

Her mother drops this bomb on her.

Was it Alex’s fault? She tried to think back on the morning her father had left for that last time. Alex had kept him from leaving to ask him about a surfing trip she wanted to go on when he got back. They hadn’t been able to get out much since Kara had joined their family. Was it possible that she’d made him late? Did he miss his original flight and had to take another? One that ended up crashing instead of getting him to his conference safely?

Alex didn’t know.

And her mother refused to talk about anything regarding Jeremiah with them since his funeral.

And it was killing her.

She clenched her eyes shut against those traitorous tears threatening to fall.

And then found herself in a very different, but all the same all too familiar, room.

PSA Announcement that I am still a card carrying member of the Eliza Danvers Defense Force(TM). Eliza is being a huge dick in this chapter, and there’s a great many mistakes that she’s made and is making here that aren’t excusable.

But there is a reason Alex and her mother weren’t on good terms in Season 1, and I am here exploring them. I think the Eliza that we see in Seasons 2 and 3 is a very different character, but this Eliza is grief stricken, under a massive amount of pressure to keep both her daughters safe from ending up like her husband, and isn’t handling that stress well at all, whatsoever. These are not excuses for her behavior. But they are reasons. And they do, I believe, give her enough rope to pull herself up out of the pit she digs herself in during Alex’s childhood. (Which I believe she successfully does. Largely through actively making the exact opposite decisions from her earlier mistakes. See her behavior in the Thanksgiving episodes, especially her expressions when noticing Alex is fucking drunk off her rocker in both episodes. Night and day difference.)

Also, as per the Midvale episode, Eliza does seem much less hostile and demanding than she is acting here. Somewhere in between Jeremiah’s death, and that episode, Alex and Eliza have their relationship strained. It’s not unreasonable to assume that she does not initially react and deal with Jeremiah’s death in her immediate grief. Or that Eliza doesn’t occasionally fuck up they way she talks to Alex after that episode takes place.

Either way, Alex somehow develops both an inferiority and perfectionist complex as well as an obsession with being normal. This chapter will be dealing with how that came to be.

And how Maggie is going to attempt to talk some sense into Eliza for her.

Also, does anyone else remember that Eliza exists? You know, she was noticeably absent during Kara’s fucking coma as well as Kara wanting to leave earth. Also, remember when Eliza and Alex Danvers were considered the top experts of all things Kryptonian? And were pretty much the only two living, non-brainwashed, non-imprisoned humans on the planet considered educated enough to work on something as complex as separating Kryptonian World Killer DNA from whatever Sam is?

Remember that? Because I do. And I’m wondering where the fuck Dr. Eliza Top-of-her-field, Alien-bio-engineer, Literally-separated-the-DNA-between-a-green-and-white-Martian-from-each-other-to-keep-a-character-from-turning-in-to-a-literal-fucking-monster-and-dying, Wow-doesn’t-that-sound-relevant-to-current-events-on-the-show Danvers is at.