Chapter 38
After Kara found out that Cat was still sending money to Adam, trying to connect with him, she was torn as to what to do. She knew that Adam was an ass, but her mother still loved him. Kara found one of the unsent letters Cat had written and finished it for her before sending it to the man. Then she had to stop a massive spaceship from being ejected out into space with hundreds of hostages, so she completely forgot about the letter when dealing with the stress from that situation.
It wasn’t until a week later when Adam Foster walked up to her desk asking to see Cat Grant that she remembered she had sent the letter. She stared stupidly at him for a moment before shaking her head. “Ah, um, she’s in a meeting right now, you can wait for her out here…” Kara replied, her mind whirling. Her mother was going to kill her.
“So how is it working for Cat Grant?” Adam asked, sitting down next to her desk. “I’ve heard she can be a bit of a hard ass to work for.”
“She’s just passionate about what she does,” Kara defended. She didn’t like anyone speaking ill of her mother; she couldn’t do anything about their thoughts, but she could keep them from speaking and eventually change their minds. “She wants the best from all of us because she gives her best all the time. She demands 110% from us because she always gives 150%. I’ve never met anyone as dedicated as she is.”
Adam was taken aback that his mother, the one that had basically abandoned him for her career, was defended so strongly by this girl, her assistant. His father always told him that she was a nightmare to work for, always barking out orders and making demands of her employees. “She must be difficult to work for though, or at least put up with all of those insults all the time? You can’t tell me those don’t happen, they’ve been plastered all over the news.”
“Those are a little difficult,” Kara said, remembering some of the more vicious names she’s heard hurled at her coworkers on their way out of Cat’s office. The woman occasionally forgot herself and picked at her during intensely frustrating moments, but Kara just endured it and waited out the storm. She knew she would eventually have to talk to her mother about that, but she decided to leave it to the woman’s therapist for now. “Honestly though,” Kara continued, “It’s just a coping technique. She can’t get mad here, she can’t throw things like most male CEOs of powerful companies can, so she makes do with words, which are her speciality. Words tend to hold more power than actions, so she’s always very deliberate with them. Yes, I’ve heard all of the rumors, but she is still the best person I have ever known, and I’ve known some amazing people.”
The man glanced away from penetrating blue eyes, mulling over her words. “I’ll think about what you said,” he promised.
Kara was alerted to Cat’s return by the impatient foot tapping in her private elevator, and she stood, facing the doors. The older blonde strutted through the doors, the majority of the worker bees averting their gaze, but her gate faltered when she caught sight of Adam standing near Kara’s desk. “Adam?” Cat whispered, her eyes wide with hope. Kara had never felt more invisible than she did watching as her mother approached her oldest son, guiding him into her office with her. Part of her had always wondered, ever since she could really understand the concept, if she was just a replacement for her older son, someone Cat took in out of pity and the need to fill that hole in her life.
The blonde shook her head to rid herself of those thoughts, her mother loved her, she knew that she did, she has proved it time and time again over the years. As she glanced in the office, she couldn’t help the sinking feeling in her stomach that everything was going to change. She stayed outside of the office at her desk for the entire time Adam was in Cat’s office, leaving the distant sirens she heard in the city to the police and other first responders. About half an hour after Adam arrived, he left, nodding slightly to the request for dinner that evening from Cat.
“Kei-Ra!” Cat bellowed as soon as Adam left and Kara gulped before scurrying into her mother’s office, closing the door behind her as she went.
“Yes Ms. Grant,” Kara said, her eyes trailed on the floor.
Cat tapped her hands against the glass of her desk for a moment before looking up at her assistant, “What gives you the right to send a letter to my son, to presume to make such decisions for me?”
“You’ve been wanting to talk to him but you’ve been scared,” Kara defended. “If I had known that you were sending money to him, I would’ve done it sooner.”
“So you presume to take one of my letters-”
“One of the letters you launched at my head, yes, I just finished it for you, and sent it. You clearly have wanted to talk to him, so why don’t you just try.” Kara moved closer to the desk and looked up to meet her mother’s gaze, “This is your chance to get to know him the way that you want, to repair your relationship.” Cat glanced away for a moment, her mind whirling, fixated on the fact that this was her chance to get to know her eldest child. “So do you want me to make reservations for dinner or am I fired?” The woman just waved her out of her office and Kara breathed a sigh of relief, though the uneasy feeling never left.
Alex’s mind was whirling as she sat in her dark apartment, slowing demolishing the bottle of whiskey sitting in front of her. She had asked J’onn for a few days of leave after she spoke with her father and the director immediately granted them, wanting to help ease the chaotic mindset that was now bombarding her with its turmoil. Jeremiah had told her that she was married, that he had seen the marriage license in front of him with his own eyes, Cadmus had somehow obtained a copy. Alex wanted to believe it was another Alexandra Danvers, wanted to believe that it was a mistake, someone else had gotten married, but he had seen pictures, he saw proof that she had gotten married. Years ago. In Vegas. When she was drunk.
When did she become the plot for a bad comedy?
Her father admitted that he couldn’t remember who it was that she was married to because all he was thinking about was that his little girl was married. He never mentioned a divorce or annulment, and she reasoned that she would have been contacted for either one of those options so she reasoned that she was still married. She hoped her drunk self at least managed to pick up a woman in Vegas or else things were going to be really awkward.
She knew she was gay in high school, her first kiss was with her best friend Vicky Donahue, and Alex was immediately enthralled with the softness of girls, women. Once she got to college, away from her mother, she decided to fully embrace her sexuality. When Alex got back to her apartment, she did a search for the license to see who it was that she married, but it had been removed from the internet along with all of her other personal data when she started working for the DEO.
That’s how she ended up days later curled up on her floor with a bottle of whiskey. Everything was getting to her, her father being part of Cadmus, Kara being Supergirl, her marriage, it was all too much. Part of her wondered if Kara being Supergirl should bother her as much as it did, she didn’t know why she was upset, at Kara for not telling her or herself for not noticing. Her logical mind would reason that Kara had no reason to tell her, especially since she worked for a government agency that tried to shoot her out of the sky, but her logical mind had abandoned her at the moment for anger and hurt.
Staring at the amber liquid in her glass, Alex was overcome with frustration and hurled it against the wall, watching in satisfaction as the thick, clear pieces clattered on the ground and whiskey trail down the bricks. She needed information, her information, the information that was scrubbed from the internet, and she knew who she needed to talk to in order to get it. Stumbling to her feet, Alex wobbled to the door before deciding it would be better to wait until she was sober, and she wavered back to the couch and fell on the sofa face first, instantly falling asleep.
Twelve hours later, freshly showered, fed and rested, Agent Alexandra Danvers stalked into the DEO, her body angled towards one particular department in the building. No one made eye contact with her as she cut through the floor, agents actually moving out of her way for fear of eliciting her wrath. Alex quickly located her target in the IT offices and her focus narrowed on the agent seated behind a large computer. He was working for the DEO before she was, and was in charge of monitoring their online presence, scrubbing information before people found it and inventing cover stories to spread around. The information she wanted, she needed, she knew that he had locked up somewhere on his server for safe keeping.
“Jackson,” Alex said, drawing the older agent’s attention.
The man looked up when he heard his name and his eyes widened at the sight of the director’s second in command. “Danvers, ma’am,” he said, slowly easing himself out of his chair. A leg injury had permanently benched him from field work, and he still had trouble standing up without the help of his cane.
“Don’t stand on my account Jackson, and don’t call me ma’am, I just need some information, and you’re in the game of having information.”
Jackson eased his back into his seat and steepled his fingers together, “How can I be of help Assistant Director Danvers?”
“Before I started working here, you were in charge of scrubbing my information off of the internet correct?” At his nod, Alex continued, “I need to see all of the information you found.”
The man’s brow nearly disappeared in his hairline, “I can pull it up for you, but may I ask why you need to see it? You’re the first agent who has asked.”
“No offense, but that’s my business Jackson,” Alex replied. “I just need to confirm a few things.”
Jackson nodded again and rolled over to another one of the computers nearby and ran through a few programs before clicking on the file labeled Alexandra Danvers and pulled up an iris scanner. “With the security installed, only the full files are available to the person they concern, so you’ll have to scan your eye. If I were to do it, it would pull up redacted files. We may be a secret government agency, but privacy is still privacy.”
“Thanks Jackson,” she said, placing her eye in the range of the scanner.
Waving his hand, Jackson rolled back to his own computer, “Pull up a chair and look through the files as much as you want. Just close everything down when you’re done, I’m going for a lunch break anyway.” Retrieving his cane, Jackson limped out of his office, leaving Alex alone with the humming computers.
Alex clicked through the files, her brow furrowing as she found things even she didn’t think were on the internet. Grade school report cards, pictures with friends, information about her prom date, it was all vary invasive and made her hyper aware about what was present on the internet. The files were arranged in chronological order, so she clicked through and located the files from a few years ago when she was on break in Vegas. The cursor hovered over the marriage license document, and she sucked in a deep breath before clicking on the file.
The license popped up on the screen, her eyes flitting over the name of the chapel in Vegas and the date before locating her own name and right across from it read Kara Catherine Grant.
Kara Grant, she thought before anger raced through her system again, Kara Danvers.
“Hey Kara,” Adam greeted, a bright grin on his face as he walked up to the blonde’s desk.
“Hey Adam,” Kara replied, forcing a smile on her face. “Are you here to see your mom?”
“No, I saw her at breakfast, I’m actually here to see you,” he said, shifting a little on his feet as his nerves started to get to him. “I wanted to know if you were free for dinner tonight?”
Kara knew what he was asking, knew where this was going, it was obvious since he had been flirting with her since he should up the previous day and when she ran into him at Noonan’s last night as she got her takeout order. She opened her mouth to turn him down when Cat piped up from behind her. “She’s free,” the older woman replied, a wide grin on her face as she slid between them. “She’s completely free, she’s free every night in fact, what could Keira have to possibly do at night?” Kara’s heart started to ache at her mother’s words, but she pushed it down, refocusing on the situation at hand.
“Ah, um, great, so would you like to get dinner with me?” Adam asked. He rubbed the back of his neck shyly as he continued to look at her, his heart beating loudly. He had never seen anyone as beautiful as his mother’s blonde assistant, nor someone as passionate and willing to defend others and he wanted the chance to get to know her better.
“She would love too,” Cat replied instead and Kara just looked at her mother sharply.
“Ms. Grant,” she whispered, trying to snap her out of whatever haze had come over her mind, but Cat just tightened her grip on her arm. Sighing slightly, Kara looked back at Adam, “I would love to.”
“Great, um, I noticed there’s a nice restaurant down the street from Noonan’s, they have an outdoor terrace, I’ve already made reservations for 7:00 if you said yes. Should I pick you up?”
“I’ll meet you there instead,” Kara countered. “That way you don’t have to come all the way to my apartment. Traffic at night is crazy.” She really, really didn’t want him to know where she lived, she really didn’t.
Adam smiled, “Great, I’ll see you there.” He bid the two women goodbye before striding jauntily out of the office.
“Ms. Grant,” Kara sighed, turning to look at the older woman. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Nonsense Keira,” Cat waved, walking back into her office. “Adam, my son, is interested in you, might encourage him to stay here longer. I do expect you to be a good date for him though.”
“Cat,” Kara hissed, “Shutting the door, I don’t think this is a good idea, did you forget that I’m your child too, don’t I get a say in this?”
Cat faltered for a moment, as if she had actually forgotten that Kara was her daughter as well when she was around her oldest son, and Kara felt a tiny piece of her heart break at that thought. “No, Kara, no, I-” The older woman stopped, but Kara had already slipped back into her role as assistant to CatCo’s CEO, media mogul Cat Grant.
“Will that be all Ms. Grant?”
“No Keira,” Cat said finally, dismissing the young woman. “You can go do, whatever it is that you do.”
Kara scrubbed at her face as she sat down at her desk, ignoring the concerned look that Winn shot her way. She finished the rest of the afternoon without any distractions or looking in at her mother before leaving promptly at five o’clock. The woman had obviously lost her mind and put her in a terrible situation, she already had enough to deal with with the whole Alex situation. She knew she needed to tell her, and soon, Kara didn’t think she could keep the secret from her any longer.
She pulled out her phone and dialed Lena’s number and listen to it ring for a while before sending her to voicemail. Kara frowned and sent her friend a quick text before heading home. “Hey Krypto,” Kara greeted when she walked through her door and he walked over and snuffled a greeting on her stomach. She poured him some food before collapsing on her couch, wondering what she was going to do about the mess Cat had gotten her into. “Mom set me up on a date with her son,” she said to the dog. Peeking over the couch, she spotted the odd look on Krypto’s face as he munched on his food and quickly deduced the reason. “Not Carter,” she said quickly, “Adam.”
Krypto crossed his eyes and woofed at her before returning to his food. “I know, I know,” she replied, “You don’t really like Adam.” She sighed again before pushing herself off the couch and too her bedroom to dig through her closet. Not wanting to send the wrong vibes about what this meant, Kara pulled out a pair of dark jeans and a t-shirt to pair with her calf-high boots. “I’ll be back later Krypto,” Kara patted the dog on his head. “If you hear something suspicious make sure you come and get me rather than handling it yourself, even Superdog needs backup.” The dog gave her a wide grin and Kara slipped out of the apartment.
After the fight with altercation with Cadmus, Cat ran a full article on Krypto’s appearance as Superdog and convinced her to have enough pictures taken to fill a full spread. Superdog was a hit, and had ended up helping with problems around National City, mostly keeping track of the city’s animals. She hasn’t had to rescue a wayward pet in a tree or tracked down lost dogs in a week.
She decided against taking her truck back towards CatCo with street parking being virtually non-existent, and hopped on the bus. It was times like this that she wished she had gotten the motorcycle that she wanted, and resolved to check her funds to see how doable it was. Since Kara owned the apartment outright, it was saving her a lot of money on rent, but with her food bill she had to be careful. It was a little before seven when she finally arrived as Jazz, the restaurant Adam had mentioned, and spotted the man sitting out on the terrace. “Adam, hey,” Kara greeted, walking up to the table. She could tell that he was surprised by her choice in clothing, but she didn't let it show on her face.
“Hi Kara,” Adam stuttered out a bit. He stood up to pull her chair out but she just waved him away and sat down across from him.
“Have you ordered yet?” The blonde asked, gesturing towards the menus on the table. “They have excellent burgers here, and really good craft beer.”
Adam’s eyebrow rose as he stared at the girl questioningly before shaking his head, “No, I just got here a few minutes ago myself, though I ordered some water and was about to order wine though if you say the beer is good…”
“Much better than the wine selection here,” Kara nodded, pulling the drink menu out for him. “This is actually one of my favorite places, one of my many favorite places really. I don’t really drink all that much, but I do like the flavor of the beer here, it’s… Interesting.”
“Well I’ll take your word for it,” Adam replied with an easy smile. “I’m glad I picked this place then if it’s one of your favorites.” The waitress came over and the two ordered, though Kara toned down her normal order to only two orders of their sliders instead of four.
The man across from her seemed to take it in stride and placed his own order of food before handing the waitress his menu as she left. They sat for a minute in silence, not really knowing what to say to each other before Adam decided on a relatively safe topic. “So you went to National City University?” He asked, gesturing towards her shirt that had the mascot and logo printed on the front, and the name down the long sleeves.
Kara nodded as she sipped at her beer, “Yeah, I was in the Fine Arts school, made a lot of friends, and it was a really great experience overall.”
“Fine Arts? How did you end up working for Cat Grant?”
“I minored in journalism, and I needed a job to pay for my art without being a starving artist.” It was a tiny white lie, her trust fund that Cat set up for her pays for her art materials while the majority of her paycheck goes to feeding herself and Krypto. She technically didn’t need to work, not really, especially with some of the art she makes being picked up by a few galleries around town, but she enjoys it and someone needs to keep Cat in line.
They talked about random subjects for the rest of dinner, Kara steering the conversation away from anything remotely romantic and trying to imply that this was a dinner between two people that would maybe become friends. She insisted on paying for her own food, and a couple hours after they arrived, the two left the restaurant. “So I had a great time tonight,” Adam started. They were standing to the side of Jazz in a low traffic area, and Kara debated if she wanted to walk home or catch the bus again.
“Yeah it was fun,” the blonde replied with a slight smile on her face. Adam wasn’t so bad, though she still carried a grudge on the way that he treated her mother, their mother. She wasn’t fully paying attention, so she didn’t notice when he leaned closer and pressed his lips into hers. “Whoa,” Kara said, backing up, “What are you doing?”
“What?” Adam questioned, a confused look on his face. “We both had a good time, I just though…”
“That doesn’t mean you can kiss me suddenly like that,” she replied. “Look Adam, you seem nice, but I’m not really interested in you, it would be too complicated.”
Confusion continued to flit across his face before finally settling on rage, and Kara was struck by how much he looked like Cat in that moment. “So what, you were just leading me on this whole time?”
Kara could barely contain her eye roll, “I wasn’t leading you on, I never gave you any indication that I was interested in you, I kept things very clear during dinner that this was between friends, nothing more.”
Adam just scoffed, “Sure, right, I see how this is. When I first met you, I thought no way could someone so kind work for Cat, I guess now I see that you’re not so kind after all.” He turned and stormed away, leaving Kara standing by herself, downtown by herself at night.
“I knew this would be a bad idea,” she muttered to herself as she started towards her apartment, disappearing down an alley to take off through the sky. She landed on her balcony and opened the door, Krypto coming out to greet her. “Hey boy,” Kara cooed, scratching him behind the ears. “Why don’t you go fly some patrols for a little while, nothing drastic, just stretch your legs a little.”
Krypto woofed and ran around quickly in a circle to shift into his Great Pyrenees form and red cape If he hadn’t been able to shapeshift, Kara worried that Winn and Lena would have designed a little mask for him to cover the top of his face and fit over his ears. He strutted out the balcony door and took off in a blur of white, up over the city to watch over the residents of National City and their animal friends. It was like something out of a comic book, but Kara just let it go, realizing that her life was basically like a comic book.
Her cell phone started ringing from where she abandoned it on the dining room table, her mother’s ringtone echoing out of the device. Kara let out a sigh, this wasn’t going to be good. “Hey Mom,” she greeted, her voice quiet.
“What did you do?”
“Look Mom-”
“Adam is leaving,” Cat’s voice cut through her own. “Said there’s nothing worth staying here for.”
Kara sucked in a deep breath, “That’s not on me Cat, that’s on him. I didn’t want to go on a date with him, you basically forced me to go out with him, do you know how creepy that is? And you know I’m still married-”
“To a woman who doesn’t even know who you are,” Cat scoffed. “Some marriage, at least with Adam you would’ve had more hope.”
“I didn’t want to date Adam though!” Kara continued, “I don’t like him, you know I don’t like him, I don’t like how he treats you and Carter.” The Kryptonian rubbed at her face, feeling irritation seep into her bones, “I mean, he basically said that since I turned him down, that there was no reason for him to stay, he didn’t even think about you and Carter.”
“Well if you had just held out a little longer then maybe he would’ve gotten to know us a little better and had a reason to stay.”
“I’m not-” she breathed out, trying to stay calm. “I shouldn’t be responsible for him staying here Cat, and I don’t know why you would want me to do that, he is a grown man, he can make his own choices, and if he decides to be immature about this, then that is his problem.”
“How dare you ruin this for me Keira!” Cat barked out and Kara felt her heart shatter at her words, she promised, she promised she wouldn’t call her that when she wasn’t at work. “I won’t forget this.”
The older woman hung up before Kara could say anything else, and the girl just stared resolutely out the window. “Guess you had no problem forgetting me Mom,” she whispered, wiping away a stray tear before it had the chance to trickle down her face.
Before she could set her phone down and return her gaze to the inside of her fridge, a loud pounding sounded on her door and Kara turned her attention on it. “Oh what now,” she muttered, yanking open the door. “Alex?” She muttered, startled at seeing the brunette leaning against the wall, her manner clearly indicating that she was well on her way to being drunk.
“How dare you,” Alex slurred out, pushing her way into Kara’s apartment. “How dare you do this to me?”
“Do what?” Kara questioned, shutting the door. “I haven’t done anything to you.”
Alex let out a humorless chuckle, “You haven’t done anything to me, sure, right, I guess you haven’t, after all, you didn’t bother to tell me that we were married.”
Kara sucked in another breath as she let out a gasp, “How-”
“How did I find out?” Alex interrupted, “My dead father told me, or better, my father who’s supposed to be dead but is actually an alien hating psychopath told me I was married. Was a shock to the system.”
The blonde was quiet for a few minutes, “What do you want me to say?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Alex asked, “We’ve known each other for months, and you never said anything, not a word.”
“You were dating Maggie, or don’t you remember?”
“Even after we broke up, you didn’t say anything-”
“-It’s not like you were around a lot for me to tell you,” Kara retorted, “You basically went MIA for a while.”
Alex thought for a moment before snorting, “Oh yes, that’s because I found out that you were lying to me then too, so you’ve basically been lying to me about everything since I met you.”
“What do you mean?”
The agent stopped her frantic pacing and whirled on the blonde, “Other than the fact we’re married or that you’re actually Cat Grant’s adopted daughter, how about the fact that you’re an alien, that you’re Supergirl?”
“Why would I need to tell you that?”
“I thought we were friends!” Alex yelled, her voice covering Kara’s. “I thought we were friends.”
Kara let out her own mirthless laugh, “Right, that would’ve worked, if you don’t remember, you work for an organization that hunts down aliens and locks them up without proper authorization or due process of law.”
“That doesn’t have any bearing on me!”
“Oh yes it does!” Kara returned, “You don’t think I couldn’t tell how much you hated aliens when we first met, how you treated them with fear and suspicion, including me?” She shook her head, “Is it any wonder that I didn’t tell you that I was an alien, or that we were married?”
“So you judged me to be a narrow-minded xenophobe before you even knew me?”
“Your behavior identified who you were.”
“And you used that as an excuse not to tell me that we were married.”
“I was scared!” Kara cried, “I was scared okay, is that what you wanted to hear? I was scared to tell you the truth because I was scared that you would hate me.”
“Why not just get a divorce then, or an annulment? It was just a drunken night in Vegas that I barely remember.” That was a lie, Alex knew it was a lie because as soon as she saw the marriage certificate in that file, fragmented memories started flooding back to her about hard muscles, soft skin, and breathy cries. She didn’t know if the flush that covered her body and the heat that raced through her was from anger or…
“It’s against my culture,” Kara whispered, her voice low. “Marriage is sacred under Rao, divorce is unthinkable.”
“And you still didn’t think to tell me, knowing all of that?” Alex didn’t know what to think; she was attracted to Kara, crazy attracted to her, she would have to be blind not to see how beautiful the blonde was, but this… She wasn’t ready for any of this. “I’m going to get this annulled,” she stated, her eyes hard as she met the teary eyes of the blonde. “I can’t- You lied to me about this for the entire time that we’ve known each other, I can’t do this.”
“Alex please, I just, I can’t,” Kara replied, hating how desperate she sounded. This is what she needed after the day she had, her mother basically emotionally disowning her for her ‘son,’ and Alex finding out about them being married. She knew that the agent wasn’t going to take it well, she just wished she had worked up the nerve to tell the older woman herself.
“No,” the agent barked. “You don’t get to feel bad about this, you’ve known for months, you’ve withheld this information for months, and I can’t… I can’t trust you, I’m going to get this marriage annulled and so help me Kara…” She took a step towards the blonde but changed her mind and shook her head. “Look, just stay away from me, I can’t- I don’t want to talk to you or see you.”
“Alex-”
The woman just backed away from Kara and walked to the door, “Just don’t.”
Kara watched as Alex walked out of her apartment, and couldn’t help but think she had just walked out of her life without any chance for them to reconcile. She loved Alex, she hadn’t admitted to herself before in case something like this happened, but she had never been able to get her heart to listen to reason. She had somehow fallen in love with the beautiful, grouchy, over-protective, compassionate agent that hunted down rogue aliens, drank black coffee like water, and wore black every minute of every day.
A soft padding registered in her ears and Krypto snuffled into her chest, his warm, wet nose pushing against her cheek, softly lapping at her tears. “Oh Krypto, I’ve made a mess of things haven’t I?” She murmured, burying her face in his soft fur. “Mom is mad at me, Alex is furious with me, I don’t know what to do.” Tears continued to fall down her face as she sobbed, and Krypto stood there patiently while she clutched at him, trying to offer any comfort that he could. Kara didn’t know how she was going to fix the mess she had found herself in, she didn’t know if she would be able to fix it.