Sister?

nerdsbianhokie:

Small convo between Kara and a recently come out as agender Alex

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Alex toyed with the tips of their fingers. They pulled their hands off of the counter, and set them in their lap, rubbing their palm with their thumb.

They glanced up at Kara as she gestured wildly, nearly throwing her slice of pizza across the room.

The cheese on the slice, however, slid free and hit the wall.

Kara froze. She stared at the cheese, then turned to Alex.

“Oops.”

Alex snorted. They stood, only to have Kara wave them back.

“I got it,” Kara said.

Alex shrugged, sitting again.

They watched Kara clean, their shoulders growing heavy as the doubts crept up again.

Kara turned. She frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

Alex shook their head. “Nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing.”

Alex sighed.

“See,” Kara said. “You can talk to me, Alex.”

Alex ran a hand through their hair.

“Are you sure?” they asked. “That you’re alright with…it.”

It.

Alex’s most recent stop on this journey of self realization they’d stumbled into.

Well, maybe two self realizations didn’t necessarily make it an entire journey, but everything was different. The way they thought about themself was different. The way the people closest to them viewed them was different.

This one hadn’t hit them with a leather jacket and dimples, but had crept up on them through research.

The idea of gender being an actual thing, for them, at least, was one that had slowly lost merit as they thought about it. Until they had come around to the idea that maybe they just didn’t have a gender.

Agender.

A term they had found on a list online.

A term that had just clicked.

Kara tossed the cheese and napkins then stepped up to Alex.

“I’m sure, Alex.”

Alex looked down, playing with their fingers again.

Kara let out a light sigh.

“Alex, you’re my…”

Kara paused.

“You can still use sister,” Alex said.

“Are you sure? I can use sibling or anything you want.”

Alex sucked in a deep breath.

Sister…sister was hard, but didn’t grind against them the way woman or her or ma’am did.

Sister was a them and Kara thing.

Kara was their sister.

They were Kara’s sister.

The Danvers’ sisters.

As wrong as it sounded in their head some days, as wrong as it sounded to their ears on occasion, they could deal with sister.

Because it was Kara.

“I’m sure,” they said.

Kara narrowed her eyes, then grinned.

“Alright. But if it changes?”

“You will be the first to know, promise.”

---

That’s it. I’ve been thinking about this for ages, basically since the idea of nb!Alex first started, just never actually got around to writing it.

As much as I love all the nb!Alex stuff, it often kind of glosses over Alex’s choice to go from ‘sister’ to ‘sibling’ with Kara, and Alex’s hesitance is almost always shown as being about how Kara would react. Which, fair, Alex would very much be worried about how Kara would react, but it’s no small thing for Alex to make that mental switch herself.

From a personal standpoint, as an agender person who kinda wants to talk to their siblings about it, that’s not an easy thing. It also took me a while to realize that sticking with ‘sister’ was mostly for their comfort and cause it is what I’m used to. For Alex, so much has been defined by being Kara’s sister, so much weight is put into it. It’s something that will take time for them to figure out.

I may eventually add a second part with Alex deciding to go from ‘sister’ to ‘sibling’ but we’ll see.

Also, I went with agender instead of non-binary simply because I’m agender, and never see it in fics. If you have a nb!Alex tag you want to use, that’s fine, but otherwise, please stick with agender.