The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Springtime in National City held one simple truth for Kara Danvers: New Beginnings. It meant that her new job, in her new office, with her new responsibilities had been the start of something wonderful. But it also had meant the end of something equally as remarkable. While the days that she was no longer Cat’s assistant numbered on, she couldn’t help but miss the small things that seemed to make them, them. The quiet yell of her semi-correct name when the woman was in a good mood. The boisterous scream of it when she was upset. The midday coffee runs where Kara would do a brief flyover of the city, soaking up some much needed sun before returning to work.
With certainty Kara knew…she missed Cat. She missed that she used to be able to look over and see the woman with ease. But now, walls and hallways separated them and their distance seemed too long to conquer, even if it was just a few hundred feet. She was no longer there. But she was still here, and albeit their emotional closeness growing over the past few weeks. The physical distance was killing her.
X-ray vision just wasn’t the same as stealing glances through clean glass, only to find Cat stealing glimpses in return. But this new job, it was good for them. Cat treated her with ever growing respect. Even if, after the first week without her, she had asked Kara if she’d be willing to continue getting her latte for her. Microwave hot wasn’t quite the same as heat vision hot, and it gave both of them an excuse to see each other at least once a day.
But ever since their unplanned separation, she found herself finding pieces of the woman in everything she did. In the beauty of the sunrise above the clouds. In the dress on the mannequin in the expensive stores her and Alex would pass on their Saturday shopping trips. In the colors of the brushstrokes from the beautiful works of art covering the walls of the museum. Everything Kara did, now reminded her of Cat.
It was bittersweet. She no longer had to deal with Cats yelling on an hourly basis. But at times like this, she wished her desk wasn’t quite so far away.
Right now Kara was reading a line in a book that so purely reminded her of Cat that she couldn’t help but tune her hearing to the heartbeat of the other woman. It was strong, but calm. It was the heartbeat Cat had when her morning caffeine fix wore out and her body was calming itself. No doubt within the next half hour, Cat would be sending her assistant for another latte.
Kara shook her head. This book had nothing to do with Cat. Nothing. She shouldn’t be finding something so distinctly Cat, in a book that was so clearly not.
The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn is the first book on Kara’s summer reading list. With her new position, she had found that she had more time to herself and had decided that maybe broadening her literary horizons wouldn’t be a bad way to spend the summer. So with the help of Alex, Lucy, James and Winn she had a fairly impressive list of books she has to have completed by the end of the summer.
Kara put the book down on her desk and ran a hand through her hair as she let of a sigh. She had thought reading during her lunch break would be a nice distraction to keep her from wandering into Cats office. But it seems Cat had still managed to wander into her mind.
She picked the book back up, and read the quote again, willing her mind to leap to any other conclusion. But she couldn’t. It was then, that Alex’s words from the previous night rang clearly in her head. “Mark down anything that makes you think, or feel something Kara. That’s what you’re supposed to do.” Followed directly by, “How did you make it through college without ever annotating a book?”
So Kara picked up her black pen and underlined the passage.
She stared at the stark contrast of fresh black ink against the faded brown paper of the copy Alex had given her. Something seemed missing. Underlining just didn’t seem enough. So Kara picked up the pen one last time and wrote, “Cat” in the margin next to it, followed by a lopsided smiley face.
Kara glanced at the clock, realizing her lunch break was almost over; she grabbed a pink sticky note from the pile on her desk and marked her page.
She quickly cleaned up the contents of her lunch from her desk, and threw the scraps in the trash before getting up and heading to the bathroom to wash up.
Cat Grant was not a patient woman. But Kara had a way of changing everything about her. Which is why she hasn’t sent her new, and incompetent, assistant scurrying off to the girl’s new office in search of the layouts and proofs she was supposed to have completed an hour ago.
Well that, and she knew this was right around the time Kara usually took her lunch break. But now, it was officially 1:02 and she needed those layouts.
Cat begrudgingly got up from her chair and ran her hands over her skirt to smooth it out before walking directly out the doors of her office.
“Miss Grant do you need something?” Sylvia, her new assistant, asked eagerly.
Cat said nothing, just dismissed the young woman with a wave of her hand as she strode towards the elevators, taking a sharp right in the direction of Kara’s office.
Cat didn’t bother to knock as she walked right in, finding the office void of her old assistant. She walked further into the room and spotted the proofs on the corner of the desk, the layouts neatly stacked on top.
At least she’s organized. Cat thought, as she walked up to the desk and grabbed the items.
Cat was about to leave when the bright pink sticky note, poking out of a well-aged book caught her eye. She gingerly set the layouts back down and picked up the book.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Kara why on earth are you reading a book usually assigned to high-schoolers. Cat thought as she started thumbing through the pages of the book.
Cat smirked as she pictured Kara, hunched over her desk, glasses falling off her face, completely engrossed in a novel. The story playing out with picturesque detail in Kara’s beautiful, imaginative mind.
Just as she was about to put the book back down, she got to the marked page. Her breath caught when she saw the “Cat”, with a smiley face, written in Kara’s distinct scrawl, next to the underlined passage:
“I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.”
Cat smiled to herself then, reveling in the knowledge that Kara was thinking about her, even when reading a novel that couldn’t be farther from either of their lives.
Cat couldn’t help herself as she grabbed the pile of sticky notes and a pen before writing, “As accurate as this quote is Kara, you could try to pick something a tad nicer next time. – C”
Cat stuck the sticky note to the cover of the book and put it back down where she found it, before picking the layouts up and walking out of the room.
Kara returned to her office less than five minutes later only to find the proofs missing, and a post it note added.
Kara read the note and blushed, never intending for Cat to see the book, or the quote. The only thing that made her feel at least slightly better was that she didn’t seem mad, or upset. Simply intrigued.
So with that, Kara decided. It would be her mission this summer, to find a little piece of Cat Grant in every book she read.