Chapter 3
With Supergirl sitting right in front of him, Carter isn’t sure exactly where to start and he panics internally. What if she has to leave? What if she thinks he’s too nosy? What if she doesn’t like him—he knows that the other kids in his class thinks he’s weird and a nerd and though his mum says it’s alright to be a nerd and he trusts her, sometimes he wonders if it’s actually okay, and Supergirl can punch a guy through a brick wall so maybe she doesn’t care so much about mental prowess as physically prowess, though she is also kind and good and—
“Carter?” Supergirl leans forward, an oddly familiar and comforting smile on her face. “I have a lot of powers, but I don’t know CPR.”
“What?”
“Breathe,” she laughs.
“Oh.” He sucks in a deep breath and his lungs ache a little with a reminder that he should do that on a more frequent basis, like he’s supposed to.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just never thought you’d actually agree to this. I guess it’s kind of stupid, huh? Writing essays and all of that. To someone like you, I mean.”
“Not at all. I quite liked school.” She lifts a hand, pauses for a moment at her face before continuing to brush her hair back. “It was hard, but it was interesting. I’ve always loved to learn.”
“Me too. My favourite is Science. And I like writing, but not like mum likes it.”
Supergirl nods and she doesn’t really smile, but Carter thinks he can make out a touch of fondness in the way her eyes run over everything in his mother’s office. “She is very talented,” is all she says, and then she’s focusing those eyes back on Carter. “I’ve known a lot of scientists. Many of them are incredibly warm, bright people who are doing wonderful things for the world. I think you will fit in very well, Carter.” His face lights up like a minor star and she nods gently down to his notebook. “You have some questions for me?”
“Yeah, but first we should go over some stuff. I had a contract drawn up,” he says, plucking it from the table in front of him with a small frown and Kara—because she is Kara then, just for a moment she lets herself be Kara—feels a wave of fondness wash over at seeing just how alike to Cat he is.
Which is, like, super confusing because she’s supposed to be staying away from Cat, she’s supposed to be distancing herself, Cat told her to…
But then Cat Grant asks for Supergirl and she smiles at Supergirl and invites Supergirl to spend time with her son, asks her to spend time with Carter, and it’s, Rao, it’s so confusing and unsettling because Kara knows. Kara knows that if Cat Grant knew who she was, she wouldn’t be here. The deception makes Kara feel slimy and faintly ill, like the way her insides twist when she’s around Kryptonite, without any loss of power perhaps but just as sick.
Kara doesn’t realise that she’s floating until Carter does—he gasps and she looks from him to where his eyes are, looking wide-eyed at the gap where she’s floating a good few inches above the couch—and then she lets herself drop back down to the couch with a slight thump and gives him a sheepish smile.
“Sorry. I was thinking about something.”
“That’s alright.” He gulps a bit but then hands the page over. “It’s actually really cool.”
“Thanks!” She speed reads the document—a handy skill—and Cat had already told her that whatever Carter wrote would be confidential so she has no hesitation in signing it. She wonders what the legitimacy of it would be, signing with an X in place of her name, and then she realises that Carter would be thrilled if she were to sign her name in Kryptonian, so she does.
She actually thinks he faints for two seconds when he sees it but he actually just breathes out and nods and slips it into his folder. “Do you mind if I record this?” he asks, setting a device between them.
With a touch of amusement, Supergirl replies, “I suppose not.”
She flicks her eyes over to Cat, too quick for the other woman to notice, but she sees that the other woman is pretending to work but is watching their every move, and so she tries to make herself as unthreatening as possible. She picks up a pillow and holds it in her lap, curls her shoulders in a little to make herself look smaller, smiles so that Carter knows she’s friendly, that it’s all alright.
It doesn’t really occur to her that a good hunch is an integral part to her disguise until a moment later but Carter hasn’t noticed, still too in awe that Supergirl—Supergirl!—is sitting opposite him. She forces her shoulders back and hopes that Cat hadn’t noticed.
What had she been thinking? Coming to the belly of the beast and agreeing to an interview—with Carter. And Cat, hovering just around the corner, instinctive and too clever Cat. What on earth had she been thinking? She was going to get found out, she was going to get exposed, Hank was going to kill her.
“What’s your name?” Carter asks. “What does your signature mean?”
Supergirl hesitates. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that.”
“Oh. I understand.” He makes a note on his page. If she tried, she could make out what it said, but she doesn’t look. “Is there something I can call you, though? Supergirl is a bit much to say all the time.”
She thinks, for a while, about what she might be able to tell him. Supergirl touches her fingers to the coat of arms on her chest, follows the S with her fingers. “This is the emblem of my family,” she tells him, and it’s hard to think about and she’s not quiet sure why she’s telling him but she thinks, maybe, it might be nice for one other person to understand. “The House of El.”
“El,” he repeats. “Can I call you that?”
“Technically,” she says, drawing herself up with pride, and she can’t help the slight regal edge her voice takes on because she was just this person, just a few days ago, and it was real, it was real to her at the very least and it crushes her all over again to remember that everyone and everything she has loved so recently, completely, honestly, is gone again, but that Kara, that version of her, stays with her like a shadow, lingers, the same as the black had that one time she had tried to dye her hair to match her sister when she was young. “My title is Lady El, First of the House of El, Daughter of Krypton. But yes,” she says with a quick smile, “you can call me El.”
“Awesome,” he breathes out. Then, reminding himself that he’s performing a serious interview, he shakes himself back into focus. “What’s it like being bulletproof?”
“Helpful, in my line of work.”
He grins but then elaborates on his question. “Does it affect other stuff, though? You can’t get cut but can you feel stuff?”
She pauses. Then, slowly, “What do you mean?”
“Can you feel pain at all?”
“Not many human things can hurt me at all,” she says, “so until I started using my—until I started helping National City, I had never felt pain.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Okay, what about the cold?”
“I don’t really notice it. My—“ Supergirl pauses again and Carter wonders what that is about, wonders what she’s trying not to tell him. “I’ve been told that I’m warm, though.” Told, by whom? he wonders. And then it occurs to him that it might not be what she’s trying to hide, but who.
“Okay. Can you feel it when you get hit by a bullet?”
It’s a question bordering on dark, she thinks, but barely, so she answers him. “Kind of?” She scrunches her nose up in thought. “I just block it out.”
“Do you block it consciously?" He presses on when she shakes her head no. "So you do it all the time. What about if someone hugged you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you block that? Can you feel it? Do you notice? Do you even know if you block stuff like that?”
“Oh. Well, yeah. Yes, I can feel that. I...can't really explain,” she says. "It's classified."
“Hmm.” Carter makes a note on his page and then nods. “Okay, cool. And I know about your super strength and speed and you can fly, of course. And you’ve got heat vision and freeze breath.” She nods. “Do you have any other powers?”
She tilts her head to the side, considering. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that she’s so different, that she can do these things, that’s she’s special, because they just are and she just is. She isn’t anything remarkable in her own mind.“Oh,” she remembers. “I can see through most objects. And I have really good hearing.”
“How good?”
She shrugs. “I’m not sure. If I try to listen without a goal in mind, it gets pretty loud. What do you want me to listen for?”
He turns a little devious smile on her and asks, “Can you hear if anyone is at my school still?”
“Let’s find out.” After a moment, she asks softly, “Umm, Carter? Where do you go to school?” Because that is something that Supergirl wouldn’t know, she reminds herself.
“St. Edmund Hall.”
“Alright. St. Edmund Hall.” She closes her eyes and focuses, breathes in through her nose and tries to pinpoint those sounds. Sweeps past the bars and the chatting of dinner—hi, table for two thanks?—Check please—Hey babe, wanna get out of here?—Shut up, Dad—Did you hear about the old man, the young man, and the baby who walked into a bar?—This was so nice, Daniel, I love you, this was perfect—Get off me, get off me, someone please help! Someone help me!—to the mostly empty halls of the school. “There’s a janitor on the third floor,” she says. “And a teachers meeting. And your principal is there as well,” she rushes out before she stands. “I’m sorry, Carter, I’ll be right back.”
Cat looks up from her computer when she sees a blur out of the corner of her eye and then the hero is nowhere to be seen and Carter is kind of just…gaping at the place she used to be. She hurries to join him, worried, but he turns to her with bright, bright eyes and a grin.
“She’s so cool,” he says.
Cat nods slowly, glancing around. “Are you done? That was a quick interview.”
“No. I asked her about her super hearing and I think she heard someone getting attacked. She’s coming back,” he tells his mother confidently, and Cat nods again. She’d better be. “She can hear all the way to my school, mom. Do you know how far that is?”
“Yes, Carter.”
“It’s seven point two kilometres, mom. And I bet she could hear further. But that’s, like, even with all the skyscrapers and the city is still really busy, it’s only six thirty, it must be really loud, so it’s not only seven point two kilometres, it’s also with wind and obstacles in the way and all of that,” he says all in a rush, face flushing a tinge.
“Breathe, Carter.”
He does, and then he smiles at her again, and Cat lays her hands on his shoulders. She squeezes them gently. “I hope you’re getting some good information for me,” she teases, and he rolls his eyes.
Supergirl is back then, only a few minutes after she had sped out of the office, alighting one foot then the other, and she holds her hands a little stiffly. “Miss Grant, is there somewhere I could wash my hands?” She tucks them behind her back when Carter looks but, for a hero with super speed, she doesn’t do it fast enough.
“Is that blood?”
“Ah…” Supergirl shoots a panicked look across to Cat, who lifts an eyebrow. “No?”
“He’s thirteen, Supergirl. He knows what blood is.”
“Oh. Then yes.” Cat points to a door behind her desk and Supergirl speeds into the next room and she’s back in a split second. She dries her hands on her cape—really, Cat thinks, on your cape?—and Carter is back in business, firing questions at her.
“Did someone get hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Badly?”
Supergirl grins, then, and the Grant’s both feel their hearts skip at the expression. It’s pleased and exhilarated and utterly enchanting.
“No. I got there in time.”
“Who was it? Did you take them to the hospital? Did you stop the bad person? What was happening?”
“I don’t know their name,” she says. “But yes, I took them to the hospital. I incapacitated the attacker, he was trying to hurt a lady.”
“Cool.” Carter nods. Then, his smile slips slowly off his face and he ducks his head low, chin almost pressing against his chest, and he says, “You can go, if you want. I didn’t mean to take up all your time.”
When Supergirl steps close to him and kneels in front of him, lays a gentle hand on his shoulder with infinite care like she’s not sure exactly how much power she can use, Cat wants to whisk him away.
“I want to be here. I’m very happy to help you.”
“But there are people out there,” Carter says, pointing out the window, “who actually need help.”
Supergirl doesn’t say anything for a long moment and then she nods. “Yes. There are.”
“So you shouldn’t waste time with me, you should go and save them.”
“Carter,” Supergirl says again, and she sounds sad and very tired. “One thing I’ve learned since I started doing this,” she taps the S on her chest, “is that I cannot save everyone. I try. But I can’t.”
“But if you’re here with us you aren’t trying at all,” he argues.
“As much as I might like to think it, I’m not invincible. And I ran into a bit of trouble this week,” she admits, drawing back and standing up tall once again. “I’m supposed to be resting, if I’m honest,” she says quietly, like she’s letting them in on a big secret.
And she might well be, Cat thinks, and her fingers itch for want of a pen.
Supergirl notices the movement, must identify the want, because her face cements over, utterly impassive.
“Did you have more questions for me, Carter?”
She emphasizes his name and meets Cat’s eyes and Cat doesn’t understand the why, but she does understand that it is clearly a dismissal. She offers the hero a smile and squeezes Carter’s shoulders again.
“I’ll be—“
“Right outside,” he says. “I know, mom.”
//
“What’s the hardest thing about being a superhero?” he asks her later. They’ve gone over a few topics by now—if she has any heroes of her own, who her inspirations are, what she values in other people, because he does have a topic in mind for his essay after all—but they come to this one and he thinks, maybe, she isn’t going to answer him.
She looks over at him with dark, dark eyes and then, finally, she says, “Do you remember how I said I can’t save everyone?”
He nods.
“That’s hard.” She turns her head a little, staring off into the distance, and Carter realises that she’s probably actually looking at something. Not just zoning out. Something he can’t see. Something far in the distance, beyond the buildings that stab up into the sky. “I lost someone this week.” Her voice is soft and calm and incredibly sad. “Someone that I loved.”
“I’m really sorry.”
She smiles—she’s so sad, he can practically feel it rolling off her like waves, and she still smiles at him a small curl of the lips that manages to be reassuring and a thank you and he smiles back.
“Thanks, Carter. That’s really nice of you.”
“Who was it?”
He breezes by about seven layers of tact, but Su—but Kara knows that Carter doesn’t always see tact or the social conventions in the same way most kids do, that he has to learn each one as he comes up to them, and even then he sometimes sweeps right past them.
“I can’t tell you that,” she says. It’s true. Partially. Supergirl can’t tell a citizen, a child, that. But Kara hasn’t been able to say her aunts name all week, not since it happened, so there’s that too.
“Oh.”
He lowers his notebook and, looking from her to the recording device, he leans forward impulsively to switch it off. “I won’t write about it. But you can tell me, if you want to.”
Supergirl’s breath catches. Carter looks at her so earnestly, so ready to help her, that her heart thuds painfully in her chest and a tiny, tiny sob works its way up into her throat. She swallows it down hard and shakes her head, just once, firmly.
“No, Carter. I can’t tell you. But thank you for offering.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t look disappointed, just sad, and he hops up off the couch and moves around to join her, sitting next to her. “We can stop, if you want?”
“No, that’s alright.” She pulls off her gloves, though, and her cape, and crosses her feet underneath her on the couch. “What’s next?”
Carter mimics her, hugging a pillow and crossing his legs but no sooner as he had, Cat taps on the glass of the office walls and says loudly to them, “No shoes on the couch, Carter,” seemingly without even looking up from her computer and the two of them share the wide-eyed look of shared nerves that comes with being told off by Cat Grant. Supergirl drops him a slow wink and lifts herself off the couch, hovering a few inches above it. Cat lets out a very unimpressed hum but technically her boots weren’t on her couch so technically Cat can’t fault the hero.
“That’s so cool,” he says, and he feels a little silly because he must have said that a hundred times tonight already but it is cool and Supergirl grins.
“You want to try?”
“Me?”
“Sure. If your mom is okay with that, I mean,” Supergirl adds nervously, and Cat sighs and closes the lid of her computer and comes to join them.
“What trouble are you trying to get my son into now?”
“No trouble, Miss Grant. But,” Supergirl checks with Carter to make sure he’s okay with it and he nods so fast Cat wonders if he now has super speed too. “Can I show him what it’s like to fly? Just a little, I promise,” she assures her with wide eyes. “Just in this room.”
“Please, mom.”
“If you let him fall,” Cat threatens, and Supergirl beams.
“Oh no, I won’t, Miss Grant! I promise!” she says earnestly and Cat’s lips turn up before she can’t stop herself.
“Is that a yes, mom?”
“I suppose it is.” Cat narrows her eyes at the hero, but Supergirl doesn’t seem to notice. She whooshes to her feet and holds her hands out to Carter, who takes them without any hesitation at all. “You look awkward,” Cat comments, and Supergirl shrugs, frowning.
“I haven’t done this before. I mean, not like this. Usually I’m just carrying people. I’ve never tried to show them what it’s like to just fly,” she says, and Cat can’t help but wonder herself what it feels like. Supergirl looks and sounds like she's buzzing right off the ground at the mere thought of it.
“Carter, turn around,” Cat says, when Supergirl hesitates still. “Honestly, Supergirl, problem solving is a very important skill.”
“Yes, Miss Grant.”
“Now, put your hands under his arms. Will that work?”
“I don’t know,” Supergirl says cheerily. “Let’s find out!” And with that reckless announcement, she picks Carter up and slowly, slowly raises them until they’re three feet off the ground. “How’s that, Carter?”
She’s holding him with the lightest grip she possibly can, so that it feels almost like he’s hanging in the air by himself, and his heart feels like its leaping up and out of his throat he’s so afraid and so exhilarated and all he can do is beam down at his mother.
“Higher?”
“I think not, Supergirl,” Cat says, and though Carter would like very much to ask Supergirl to fly him around the city, high up into the clouds, they both know the best course of action is to obey. So he is lowered back down and Supergirl sets him down so gently he barely registers his feet touching the ground.
“Thank you.”
“Anytime, Carter. That, uh, that is, anytime that you need it, not that I would take you flying any time,” Supergirl scrambles to correct herself, catching the heated glare Cat sends her way. “Because you should be doing safe, human things, like, uh. Not flying.”
“Convincing,” Cat drawls. And again, Supergirl just smiles at her but doesn’t say anything and she looks away quickly from the woman and back to Carter.
He’s safe. He’s interviewing her and trying to figure out some secrets, there’s no doubt about that, but there’s some very firm rules in place where Carter in concerned and they more or less amount to Don’t Hurt Carter and Kara can follow those rules like she’s flying through a clear blue sky. Cat Grant, on the other hand, everything surrounding her is murkier and Kara doesn’t quite know where to go next.
She’s about to ask Carter if he has any other questions—she feels like she hasn’t answered anything, not really—but then there’s a quiet click in her ear and she turns away from the Grant’s and raises a hand to her ear.
“Yes?”
“There’s a fire on the docks, a big one. Doesn't look there are any aliens involved but we’ve dispatched a team to be in the area in case one turns up.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” she confirms, and turns back to Carter. “I’m sorry, Carter. I have to go.”
He nods. “Is something bad happening?”
“A fire. I hope I answered all your questions. Ask James to contact me if you need anything else.”
“Or you could give us your number,” Cat suggests, and she has no idea if the hero has heard her because she literally sprints to the balcony and throws herself up and off the side of it. “A goodbye would be polite,” she mutters, even as Carter sighs happily and throws himself back into the couch, relaxing now that it’s just him and his mother.
“She’s so cool,” he says, and Cat hums an agreement, already on her phone.
“Mr Olsen, I’ll need camera crews ready to go. There’s a fire, a big one—I don’t know yet, get your hands on a police scanner—do I sound like I care if that’s illegal, Mr Olsen? That’s right, now I want to scoop all the others, I want them to know I’m in touch with Supergirl and I want them to seethe with jealousy, can you make that happen Mr Olsen? Your answer had better be yes.” She listens to him talk for a moment before sighing and hanging up. Carter has packed up all his things and he smirks up at her when she turns.
“You could be nicer, you know?”
“They could all be more competent,” she disagrees, and he laughs. “Let me get my things. And in the car you can tell me what atrocious junk you want to eat for dinner. Chop chop.”