Chapter 4
“Kiera.”
One thing Cat absolutely despises about their new arrangement—purely professional, everything flat and quiet and cool between them—is that Kara is no longer four steps into her office as soon as she breathes in to call for her.
No. Now, she’s almost about to call her for a second time when Kara gets up out of her chair and she observes the other woman as she moves in. It’s not passive aggressive. Whatever Kara is, at least she’s mature enough that dawdling to annoy her boss, to get back at her, had probably never even occurred to her. No. She’s just being slow. And the truth of the matter, Cat realises, is that Kara had cared. Before. She had cared enough to think ahead. To anticipate. She had known enough to anticipate what she needed, because Cat had let her get close enough to figure those things out. And now, it’s almost as though Kara has wiped all of that from her memory and she stands in front of Cat with a pleasant enough smile.
“Miss Grant?”
Cat blinks and then she’s back in business. “I need the layouts for the Tribune. I was promised them two hours ago.”
“Yes, Miss Grant.”
"And you can tell the digital team that if they want to keep their jobs," she says silkily, touching an arm of her glasses to her lips as she thinks out the insult she wants to use today, "then those tumefied toads had better get their minds out of their squallid little day dreams and back into reality. Tell them," she continues, rather pleased with what she's threatening, "they had best produce something within the next, mm, two hours that doesn't encourage me to regurgitate my breakfast and feed it to them, since I must assume they're as incompetent in every aspect of their lives as they are here."
"I will tell them exactly that," Kara comments quietly, and when she taps at her tablet she swallows hard and Cat allows herself to imagine, just for a moment, that her purposefully professional assistant is trying very hard not to smile.
"Hmm. Good."
Kara's eyes flash up to meet hers at the hum of approval but then the shock is gone.
"Was there anything else, Miss Grant?" she asks, and she doesn't move in the slightest as though she knows that there is one more thing, and Cat hates that she feels relieved that Kara hasn't forgotten everything.
"Get my art director up here. I want to speak with him."
“About Carter’s essay?” Kara asks, and there’s a spark of something in her eyes finally and Cat is surprised to realise that she’s missed it. She hums non-committedly and Kara ducks her head. She slipped up with that question. To recover, Kara makes a quick note on her tablet and then looks up again with that utterly pleasant, utterly meaningless smile. “I’ll get right on that, Miss Grant.”
She waits but Cat waves her hand and then she’s gone with a little nod.
James Olsen fights with her again about Supergirl—“it doesn’t work like that, Miss Grant, I can’t just call her up whenever I feel like it” and his righteous indignation when she suggested he pretend to be in trouble to get her here possibly gave her an ulcer—and Carter had not so gently suggested that she stay at work late because he’s ‘working on his essay’ and ‘is not to be disturbed’ and here she is, at the end of a long day.
Alone.
It's nine o'clock at night and she's failed to get another interview with Supergirl and thus failed her son, failed at scaring her art direction into line, failed at scaring the Tribune team—that, she thinks, she can blame on Kara who absolutely did not tell the digital team her insult word for word, though she must have told them something because within two hours she had something in her hands she didn't actively despise.
When she looks out her office to her assistant, who could have left hours ago—should have, perhaps, given that Cat has taken to dropping sly digs at her work ethic that she needs to stay behind so late—she feels like she may also have failed something very important, something important and nameless and huge and she sucks in a deep breath and her eyes linger on the other woman and she clicks her tongue.
She should have left. What on earth was she still doing here?
“Kiera,” she says quietly, almost a sigh. She's not quite sure what she wants but that doesn’t matter because there’s no way that Kara had heard her.
Only, when she looks up a few seconds later, Kara is standing in front of her desk with that unflappable pleasant smile. Oh, how Cat loathes pleasant. Kara flinches and Cat wonders why on earth she would do that—until she feels the way her face has dropped into an icy glare. She turns her eyes to the side and works to soften her expression. Not wholly, but enough that Kara, hopefully, won’t look like she’s just been thoroughly and viciously scolded. “I need a drink.”
“Yes, Miss Grant.”
Kara makes her way over to the bar and Cat picks up her computer and her proofs and makes her way over to the couch. It's late, she's tired and her feet hurt, and she rests her eyes for a moment by looking out her window to the city. The noises of Kara pouring her drink and, Cat realises with a slight upturn of her lips, filling a half glass of m'n'ms for her, are soothing.
Kara hands her the drink, places the second glass down on the coffee table. Everything about it is perfect, of course, and she’s perfectly courteous.
“Anything else, Miss Grant?”
It's the perfect opportunity. To say yes, stay. To say, I'm sorry. To say, I made a mistake.
But she doesn't.
She looks down at her drink for a moment and says, “No, Kiera. That’s all.” And then, slowly, “Thank you.”
Cat isn’t looking at Kara, but she feels her linger for a moment and then when Cat looks up next, Kara is gone and her bag isn’t sitting at her desk either. She’s gone for the night, then. Finally.
It feels like no time at all has passed—it’s an hour or more, actually—when Supergirl arrives. Cat looks up from her computer and smiles.
“I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Weren't you?” Supergirl raises her eyebrows. “James told me you were asking for me.”
“Shall I start expecting you every time Mr Olsen tells me I can’t have you?”
Supergirl’s eyebrows lift a little higher still at Cat’s phrasing. “No. I was, I came to talk with Carter,” she admits softly with a slight hesitation.
Cat sets her laptop to the side and stands. Supergirl’s eyes don’t stray from hers—disappointing, really, and she thinks that with all the careless effort she puts into the slow and purposeful way she walks, her hips deserve a look or two—though she does take a step back when Cat gets close.
“Why?” Cat drinks slowly from her glass and there, she sees that too-fast flicker of her eyes when Supergirl glances down at her lips. Cat can’t help a smug smile and Supergirl must notice it because in a split second, the hero’s arms are crossed over her chest and her face is impassive and distant again.
“I promised I would let him interview me. I had to leave early, I’d like to make it up to him.”
“Hmm. Yes,” Cat concedes, Supergirl wasn’t lying. “But why else?”
Supergirl hesitates. “I like him.”
Cat waits. She’s good at waiting, when there is a story involved. And, she admits, she has a feeling about this. About Supergirl. She named her for a reason—for more than just the fate of the Tribune. And she feels like she’s close to understanding.
But Supergirl doesn’t break. A minute, two minutes, pass and she shows no sign of discomfort. She looks almost…relaxed. Peaceful. And then, Cat shifts slightly and Supergirl’s eyes drag back to her and she stiffens and takes another step back.
“Does Carter have more questions?” she asks, and Cat nods. “I will be here at eight pm tomorrow. Will that suit?”
Oddly enough, it did fit into their schedule. Cat nods again, and then Supergirl is gone.
It was becoming something of a habit, she notes, slightly irked.
//
“I’m really glad you offered a second interview, El. Most of what we talked about last time was confirming what I already knew.” He’s a little shy, uncertain, about calling her El but she doesn’t say anything so he thinks it must be alright.
“I promised I would, Carter.”
He tilts his head to the side, frowns. “Are you alright?”
“Yes.”
“Really? You look really uncomfortable.”
Supergirl relaxes from her rigid pose and sighs. Her voice is softer when she speaks next, and he knows he was right. “I’ve been very busy lately. I’m feeling the effects.”
“You’re tired,” he translates, and she smiles. Just a little.
“Yes.”
“I’ll try and be quick about asking you questions. You—do you need sleep?” She nods and he makes a note of that. “Cool. What’s your favourite superpower?”
“You haven’t guessed?”
“Flying, right?” She nods. “Why?” He lifts a hand, stopping her before she can speak. “I totally get that it’s really cool to be able to fly, but I really do mean why is it your favourite?”
Supergirl thinks about it for a while, turning the question over in her head. She wants to give him something to write about, but more than that she wants to be honest with the young man she grew so quickly to adore. He made it easy.
“I think…because it’s freedom. It’s not defensive or aggressive. It’s something just for me.”
“But you use it when you’re fighting someone.”
“Yes,” she says, “but… How do I put this. Bulletproof skin is useful because no matter how hard someone tries to hurt me, they can’t. And my heat vision is helpful because it’s a weapon, as is my strength. But I don’t have to be fighting an enemy to fly. Any time I want, I can go. Anywhere I want.” Those words are tinged with a little sadness, but Carter doesn’t want to interrupt to ask why. “I like to fly up high above the city, sometimes. Up into the clouds and just above them so I can watch the sun come up. The colours are like nothing else on this planet.”
“Will you take a picture for me?”
Supergirl’s eyes widen and then she grins. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He grins and ducks his head in a nod and fires off his next questions, wanting to be true to his word at getting this over with fast, no matter how much he’s enjoying it. “Do you ever use your powers when you’re at home? Do you have a home? Or do you have, like, a cool lair of something? My mom wants to know if you have a day job too, but you don’t have to answer that one.”
“I have superspeed, but I can only answer questions so fast,” she says when he takes a break, but their first interview must’ve given him the confidence he needs because he just grins. “Uh, okay, I do use my powers, they make getting ready in the morning so much easier. I like to sleep in,” she confides with a sly wink.
Outside, Cat’s head pops up. Carter is laughing, and Supergirl is smiling and Cat can’t wait to get her hands on the transcript, hates having to wait.
“I do have a home and I have a lair as well, which is very cool.”
“And a day job?” Carter asks, just to see how far he can push. Supergirl just smiles. He rolls his eyes. “Okay. Well, that was basically all background stuff. I wanted to confirm because my teacher said I had to ask my own questions and do my own interview instead of talking information from other sources.” Supergirl nods. “But,” and he swallows and grips his notebook tightly in both hands, “you’re a hero, a real hero, which is why I want to write about you,” he tells her. “How do you do it?”
“I was gifted with superpowers—“
“No, not that.” Carter frowns down at his page thoughtfully. “Every hero,” he says, “is a hero because of a reason. What’s yours?”
Supergirl stares at this boy—young and bright and apparently capable of cutting right to the hardest question in the amount of time it took to run a hand through her hair—and then away. “I suppose a part of it is because of my home.”
“Because it was destroyed?”
“No, my,” she looks a little surprised. “No, my home here. On Earth. On Krypton, there was a saying. El mayara. It means ‘stronger together’. But on Krypton, I had everything I needed. The perfect life,” she says wistfully. “I was just a child. There were no fights to win, not really, but here,” she pauses. “I have put it to use every day. I’ve had to.”
He wants to ask more about that—what is your home like here? Who is your family? You only just came out, what fights have you had? Why do you need to be stronger?—but he decides to leave it.
“What was Krypton like?”
She looks unspeakably sad for the barest moment—the expression is gone so quickly that Carter thinks he must have imagined it—then she is smiling. “Oh Carter, it was beautiful. The spires rose so high into the sky, I was told that returning to it was like returning to a silver forest, that it felt like becoming whole again when my father stepped in amongst the spires because of the way the wind sings. And the spires, they were so beautiful, they twisted up and up. From my bedroom window, I could see all of the city laid out in front of me. It always looked like it was moving with the sun. And the shadows of the mountains, so far away, were so tall that when the red sun set they just touched the edge of the city. Everything was clean and bright and smooth, everything was beautiful.” This time, when she looks away, Carter is sure that she is looking at something that isn’t there. “The air was sweeter there. Like…” She grimaces, just a little. “You have no taste here that compares, but it was like the sugar mist they use in drama clubs,” she says, sounding abruptly very human. “To make fog, do you know the ones?” He nods. “It was sort of like that and nothing like that at all,” she laughs, corners of her eyes crinkling when she smiles.
“Did you have powers there?”
“No. Your yellow sun lets me do the things I do. Rao did not.”
“Rao?”
“Our sun. Our father.”
“You worshipped the sun,” Carter realises. “I guess that makes sense.”
“Not the sun,” she corrects him gently. “Rao. He was the first to be born, and he is the father of Krypton. Was.”
“Can you tell me about him?”
“I don’t remember all that much,” she admits. “He was the first to be born out of the void and he brought order to chaos. He ordered the stars first, because they were bright, and next he ordered the planets, because that was right. And finally, he ordered the waves and the orbits and turning of time. And when he was done, he was lonely, and he created Krypton and it’s people.”
“And the Kryptonians?”
“We began as young people do. Strong and fast and quick to fight. And Krypton, though the most beautiful of all, was vast and red all over and food grew sparse and the tribes warred over what little there was and protected their own fiercely. The earliest years in our histories are red—bloody and violent and the names of the dead were too many to recall—and so we laid down our weapons and we recognised our enemy as our own blood and embraced them. And together, we built and lived and shared what little there was and together, we shared our rewards and Krypton, in unity and peace, became strong and prosperous and lived as one.”
She says it, all of it, as though it were memorised, as though it was a story she had heard many times before. Carter is enthralled.
“So the families came from the original tribes?”
“Perhaps. I wasn’t old enough to memorise the entire histories,” she says, and her tense posture relaxes and her voice returns to normal.
“Not old—wait, weren’t you a baby? How do you remember anything from your planet?”
Supergirl hesitates for a long moment before she tells him, slowly, “I was thirteen when I was sent away. My cousin was a baby.”
“But he’s older than you are.”
“Are you sure of that, little human?” Supergirl asks of him in a voice changed, more than human. Carter’s eyes open wide and he holds his breath until she laughs and shakes her head. “Technically, I’m older. But in another way, I’m younger.”
“That doesn't make any sense. Just because you’re an alien doesn’t mean you can mess with ages.”
He sounds like he thoroughly disapproves—actually, he sounds like he’s telling her off, and Supergirl laughs again.
“I’m sorry.”
He glares at her for a while longer then looks back to his notebook. “You were saying something about your human family. You said you’re a hero because of them.”
“Do you remember what I said about el mayara?” He nods. “I am who I am because of the lessons I have learned from them. Not just the people who took me in, but the people who aligned themselves with me. I have been very lucky to have been surrounded by strong people who have taught me right from wrong, who have helped me to grow, inspired me to be better and do better. Who have shown through word and deed what it means to be strong, to put others ahead of yourself. To accept help when you need it without shame. To offer help freely, without malice.”
She knows she sounds formal, that she has sounded formal and a little archaic and distant throughout most of the interview, but she isn’t human and it feels right to put the distance between them. Besides, these are real lessons she was taught and if he’s writing an essay about people he admires, well…All those traits he admires, she learned from others.
“Your mother helped too,” she adds very quietly, and Carter looks up with wide eyes. He glances sideways at his mother, who taps away on her keyboard and has no clue that she has been mentioned. Supergirl is looking at her with careful eyes and Carter doesn’t quite know what he’s seeing.
“My mother?”
“She’s a very smart woman. She’s given me advice many times, inspired me to be a better hero. A better person.”
“My mother?” he repeats, only joking a little. He’s curious—he knows the kind of person that his mother is. But most people don’t. Most people don’t bother to know, don’t bother to look past the coldness and the drive.
But Supergirl looks back to him with a small smile like she knows that he’s trying to test her and she smiles down at him. “Do you have more questions?”
He looks down at his sheet and gnaws at his bottom lip worriedly. “No. I’m done. For now,” he adds, and she nods.
“When is this due? I’m sure I can manage another interview if you need it.”
“Really? Thank you so much!”
“Of course.”
“El?”
“Yes, Carter?”
“I just wanted to say,” his eyes are trained on the carpet and Supergirl can make out that the tips of his ears and the back of his neck are flushing hot. “You don't have to take a photo for me. If you don't want to. You're busy," he says, "I understand," he adds, and Kara feels her heart sink as she sees his head low, sees him kick a little at the leg of the coffee table and tug at the ends of his shirt sleeves and she thinks that he might be awkward because he thinks he's overstepped in some way, asked for too much.
"I would like to share it with you," is all she says to that, and she knows it was the right thing to say when he beams at her.
//
When Cat comes in to work the next morning, there is a plain package in the middle of her desk. She freezes in place—it’s not like she's never had to suffer through a bomb threat before—and waves her hand at Kara, who comes quickly to join her.
“Where did this come from?”
“Oh, umm,” Kara fiddles with her glasses for a moment. “James. Olsen. Mr Olsen came by, a few minutes ago. He dropped it off.” Cat turns to raise her eyebrows at the other woman—really, Kiera? her gaze seems to say, still with the crush?—and Kara drops her hand to her side and says, all in a rush, and quietly, “He said it’s from her. A gift.”
Cat turns her head very slowly to her desk. She examines the package again. It’s long and flat, rectangular, and wrapped in brown paper tied with twine. There is a white crisp envelope—a note—tucked underneath the twine. It takes her a moment but then she sees the CatCo embossed on the top left hand corner of it. Shock and a tiny drop of delight well up in her chest—the audacity of her hero, using Cat's own stationery to write her a note.
“Well lets see what it is, then,” she says, and her eyes widen with shock when Kara dares to put a hand on her wrist to stop her.
“No, Miss Grant. It’s for Carter.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s for Carter,” she repeats with a little frown. She points to the note where, indeed, her sons name is written ever so neatly on the front of the envelope.
Cat sighs and gives a delicate little shrug. She’ll have to refrain, then. When Kara doesn’t immediately take her hand away, Cat moves her eyes very purposefully to her hand and Kara gasps and rips her hand away, pushing both her hands tight behind her back, taking a few hurried steps back until she knocks into the couch and stumbles a little, apologizes breathlessly to the couch.
“Oh gosh, I’m sorry Miss Grant, I didn’t realize—"
Cat walks away, and she’s glad that with her back to her assistant, Kara can’t see that she’s smiling. That was anything but professional.
She had missed it.