Chapter 5
Carter swings by after lacrosse that afternoon finally to open his package. Present, Mr Olsen had called it when she had called him up and into her office. Not that she doesn’t trust Kara—she grimaces to herself when she realises that whatever distance they have between them, she does still trust the woman to look after Carter—but Mr Olsen had heard it from Supergirl and she wanted to hear the hero’s words verbatim because Carter remained very much her son, thank you very much.
“It’s a gift,” he had told her, forehead crinkling a little as he tried to remember Kara’s exact words when she’d shoved the parcel into his hands. “For Carter, Miss Grant’s son. She said it was safe and he’s expecting it.”
“Hmm.” Cat had touched the arm of her sunglasses to her lips. “Alright.”
She’s been itching to open it all day but Carter would never forgive her if she did, and so it had remained unopened and untouched in the chair opposite her all day. A huge distraction, if she was honest.
She would have to draw up a bill of compensation for Supergirl. Precious time wasted.
And if she’s a little more honest, she takes it out on Kara. An extra coffee run when her drink isn’t hot enough—Kara returns quickly with a steaming cup and Cat is almost positive that she just heated it in the microwave instead of ducking down to Noonan’s to have one made fresh—and up and down the elevator so many times to archives and the art department and to fashion, the horrid twits had decided that carnations were a fashion statement of all things, and twice to HR to pick up warning notices for several employees who had displeased her. Kara takes all of it in her stride with that pleasant little smile, a little distance in her eyes, and Cat continues to push her because it doesn’t bother her. She’s her boss and far too busy to worry about her assistant, and it’s all very professional and emotionless and simple.
Finally, Carter arrives, and he has his thumbs tucked under the straps of his backpack and he stops at Kara’s desk first and talks with her for a few moments and Kara’s eyes flash nervously over to Cat. When she sees her watching them, Kara drops her eyes and her smile falters and she hands Carter a snack and waves him into his mother’s office.
“Hi mom.”
“Carter.” Cat gives him a fond smile and leans back in her chair. He hesitates, face scrunching up worriedly.
“You look really pleased. Like, snatched a new reporter out from under Lane’s nose happy.” He narrows his eyes. “What happened?”
“You have a gift.” She stands and lifts the package—it’s light, she already knew that because perhaps she had looked over every inch of it and perhaps she had tried to peek inside but it was double wrapped and she couldn’t tear it or unwrap it without Kara seeing and she was being particularly watchful, annoyingly enough (though, Cat admits to herself far far in the depths of her brain where she doesn’t have to acknowledge it, Kara’s attention is something that she has been missing). When she hands it over to Carter, he frowns harder and carries it a little awkwardly over to the couch.
“Who is it from? Is it from Dad?” His voice is a little small. His father has done that before—given him a gift instead of keeping to their agreed dates—and Cat rushes to reassure him.
“No. Your father has told me he still plans to be here next week.” Relief and cool anger mix in her chest when Carter sags and smiles at that. “No, this is from someone else.” Cat sits down on the couch opposite and positions herself, leaning forward just a tad. She wants to see Carter’s face when he realises. He’s looking over the package carefully and she’s been staring at it all day and can’t stand to wait a second longer so she carefully suggests, purposefully casual, “Why don’t you read the note?”
He looks a little bemused by her sharp attention but nods and slips the note out from underneath the twine.
The card is heavy and almost warm, a thick card stock courtesy of CatCo, and the writing on it is neat and sharp and impersonal in block letters and black ink. Like someone might do if they didn’t want their writing to be recognised, Cat thinks, but dismisses the idea. If they really didn’t want to be recognised, that was what computers and printers were for. The sentimentality of writing a card by hand surely wouldn’t outweigh protecting an identity.
Though, if there were a person who would do something like that, their first name would start with a K and their last name would be Danvers.
Carter’s eyes open impossibly wide and when he’s done reading the note, he flings it at his mother, grabs the top of the brown wrapping paper, and tears it open. His fingers scrabble at the edges of the tear and rip it open further to either side and, when his gift is revealed, he lifts it from the remnants of its wrapping with tender, shaking fingers and looks down at it in awe.
It’s a painting, Cat realises.
It’s a painting of the clouds and the sun and she remembers him mentioning that Supergirl had promised him a photo of the sunset from her point of view but this? This was not a photo, this was a painting. On canvas, with thick paints, a canvas as large as a television screen. This was effort and dedication and affection.
Cat looks down at the card and reads it.
Dear Carter,
It was a delight to speak with you these last few nights. I cannot tell you the last time I have been given the chance to speak on many of those topics, and talking of my home especially can be difficult at times. You made it a joy to tell you of its beauty and of the people who matter to me, so I thank you for that.
I know I promised you a photo of the sky and sun, but I thought perhaps you may enjoy seeing what I see, rather than just the sun captured on film.
All my best,
El.
“El?” Cat murmurs to herself. She hasn’t had access to Carter’s transcripts yet—she wants them, now more than ever—but if he has discovered Supergirl’s real name it’s something that he has kept close to his chest. Out of habit, Cat turns the card over and her lips twitch when she sees the small post script.
P.S. I have included a photo as well, in case that is what you were after.
Kara knocks lightly on the door to Cat’s office a decent half hour later and enters when Cat looks up and waves her in. Kara spares Carter a glance—he’s sitting still, not having shifted at all, staring down at his gift in his lap, hands are loosely curled around the edges of it and occasionally he blinks but other than that, utterly still—but she doesn’t stop, or touch him, or even look at him oddly. Just an appraising glance, thoughtful, and she carries on until she’s standing next to Cat.
“Miss Grant, the contract you were after.” She lays it down and points to the first tab for Cat to sign, flicks to the next page so Cat doesn’t have to touch it, points out the second tab, and they continue on until each of the seventeen required signatures are in place and Kara bundles up the contract and clips it together.
“Is he alright?” Kara asks Cat quietly, nodding ever so slightly toward the boy.
Cat glares at her sharply—her son is perfect—but Kara isn’t looking at her. She’s watching Carter with curious and curiously tender eyes and Cat sighs.
“He’s somewhat overwhelmed. He just needs a little time to work through it.”
“Sensory overload?” Kara asks. Cat blinks. It’s not an uncommon condition, but Cat has found that people only know about it when they experience it themselves, or family or a friend.
She allows herself to wonder who Kara knows, then squashes the thought.
“Something like that, yes. He’ll be just fine, thank you. Kiera,” she adds, and she sees the sly little sideways look that Kara gives her like she knows that she slipped up. But too professional to point it out, Cat notes with a touch of bitter laced humour.
“Is there anything else I can get for you, Miss Grant?”
“No. You may go.”
But she doesn’t. She crosses the room to Carter’s side and she kneels on the floor next to the couch and Carter doesn’t look at her but she gets the feeling that he’s listening.
“I guess I was right, hey Carter?” she teases softly. “She does have a soft spot for you.” She waits for a moment and when she’s absolutely sure that his lips turn up the tiniest, tiniest amount—supervision does come in handy, sometimes—she smiles gently back at him. “Good night, Carter.”
//
It’s much, much later when Kara’s phone lights up with a text. Her eyes catch the time first—11:53—and she groans because she’s only just stumbled into bed a half hour before and she had hoped that she would get to sleep right through the night. Then she sees Cat’s name and she sits bolt upright.
“No, no, no,” she mumbles to herself, the very tips of her fingers feeling clumsy and numb and she enters her passcode wrong twice before finally getting it. Cat has never messaged her this late before, something has to be wrong, she thinks.
Her worry rushes out of her instantly when she sees the message waiting for her is from Carter and the worry is replaced with a faint glow of affection—no. It runs deeper than that. More than affection, it’s something more concrete than that. Kara is good at defining warmth, Kara loves being warm, she loves the sun and candles and fireplaces, she loves warm pie and all things that bring her closer to heat and light and that buoyant weightlessness she gets from the sun.
This feeling in her chest feels like, is identical to, that morning six years ago as winter had threatened its approach and autumn was clinging to the trees with fragile gold and she had walked down to the park with her sister to take advantage of the last sunny day of the season. They had laid down on a blanket on the grass and Kara had tilted her head up toward the sun and they had been in shorts and light shirts, cardigans tucked away in their bags, and Alex had worn a sunhat and complained bitterly about how easy it was to burn and she suggested the hill beneath a tall tree that dappled everything with pretty shadows, and as the memory comes back to her in a rush, Kara realises that she probably loves Carter.
Good night, Kara—Carter :)
Carter arrives after school the following day—he’s been around a lot lately, and Cat’s mood improves every time, which doesn’t help her cold Queen of All Media reputation but certainly makes her employees look at her like she might even be human instead of terror in human form—and after a short conversation with his mother, he exits her office and sits at Kara’s desk. He looks entirely immersed in something on his phone. Only the red tips of his ears show that he’s a little embarrassed and Kara smiles down at her computer and pushes her snacks over to the middle of her desk so that he can reach them. She’s sure that when he wants to talk to her he will.
They sit in companionable silence for the most part—he pulls his laptop out after a while and she rearranges a few things on her desk so that he has space—and then, without looking up, he says, “Can I interview you?”
“Sure, Carter,” Kara says breezily. “What for?”
“About my essay.”
“Your essay,” Kara repeats, nodding, and then she freezes. Her smiles feels suddenly too large, too forced, and she clears her throat and touches her fingers to her glasses. “Me? For your, your essay?” she laughs. “The one you’re doing about people you admire?” Her voice rises embarrassingly high at the end there and he peers over at her with the very slightest amount of distaste. Clearly, Carter shares his mother’s dislike for rambling.
“Yes.”
“But thats, that’s Supergirl. And your mom,” Kara argues.
“Yes.”
“And…you want to interview me? Really?” He just nods and Kara gapes. “I…have you asked your mother? I don’t think she would like that very much.” Kara is intensely aware of the open door to her left but keeps her eyes on Carter.
“She said it would be fine. So?”
“Oh. Well.” Kara adjusts her glasses again. “I, okay then. Sure. Of course I will.” Once she’s agreed, it’s easy to go back to being helpful. “Any questions you need. And if you need help proofreading anything, or coming up with some great words or anything like that, let me know.”
He rolls his eyes at her—she grins at the gesture, takes it as a confirmation of affection and ease, and it is but he’s too much of a teenager to admit to that—and shrugs. “Thanks, Kara.”
“Of course, Carter. When would you like to interview me?”
He frowns and pulls out his phone again to look at his calendar. “I have a science project I need to work on so I have to go home now, all my stuff for it is there. But you can come over to my house if you want.”
“I don’t think that’s appropriate.” Kara can just imagine the look Cat would give her if she were to misstep with Carter—one son, an estranged son at that, was bad enough. Clearly. That had taken her and Cat and brought them together in a way that had been nerve wracking but kind of fun, Kara had soaked in Cat's attention and approval, and then everything they were had broken in what felt like the blink of an eye. But Carter? Literally Cat Grant’s whole heart? She fights a shudder. “I don’t think your mom would like that.”
“She’s not as mean as people think she is,” Carter says, and he looks disappointed. In her.
“Oh no, Carter, no. I know that. I just," Kara touches her fingers to her glasses. "I think that your mom works really hard to keep her home life separate from her work life and I don’t want to intrude on that.” Which is true. But also Kara has no doubt that Cat could be so far beyond mean if Kara screwed up again.
“Oh.” He nods at that and falls silent.
Kara is a little disappointed that he's given up. She was kind of, well, she was thrilled at the idea that he would want to interview her. She’s just Kara Danvers, but he wants to interview her—even with Supergirl and Cat Grant.
She puts some files away in a cabinet two floors down and takes the stairs back up because it’s faster than waiting for the elevator and she likes sitting with Carter. And also, Cat is making that clicking sound with her tongue which means that she’s infuriated with someone’s incompetence and Kara can count down to the second when Cat is going to call for her.
She does it when Kara sits down, calling out a sharp “Kiera”, and Kara knows it’s one more calculated move Cat has made to dig at her. Professionalism was just a cover for making Kara’s life hell—extra effort, extra attention, extra focus, and far fewer emotions were Cat’s demands.
It’s a phone call this time, and a very carefully worded insult that Kara does her best to circumvent but she makes it very clear to “Jerry?” down in Financing that if they didn’t cut down on staplers, someone was going to lose their job. The fact that his name actually is Jerry doesn’t escape either of them and Jerry gulps heavily and promises to fix it.
“What if I come over to your place?” Carter asks as she hangs up and she makes a note on her notebook and hums agreeably.
She would like that, she loves having friends around, and she’s three seconds from nodding when her mind makes that tiny leap to all the things she would have to hide—her art, all of that, anything that even hinted at art. She would have to hide her supersuit, of course, her computer, her sisters weapons stash. Sure, her place is nice and comfortable and he would have fun, but there’s no denying that it would be a lot of effort and she can’t look at her place with unbiased eyes and see what could possibly give her away.
She presses her lips together into a flat line and readies herself to tell him no, when Cat steps in.
“Carter, leave her one small safe haven from CatCo. And I’m sure that it is small. I doubt you would even be able to fit in her shoebox apartment, darling.” Carter rolls his eyes to meet Kara’s gaze and Kara fights to keep her expression calm—from the way Carter smirks, she must have failed. “Kiera.” A sharp tone. “You have been to my city apartment before. I know, because of that disastrous example of child minding that you exhibited when you let Carter get on that train.”
“Yes, Miss Grant.” It’s Kara’s turn to sneak a look over to Carter. “We had fun though,” she murmurs, and Carter hides his face in his phone. “No lasting effects.”
“Negligence is no laughing matter, Kiera. The apartment. Be there tonight, seven o’clock. Do not be late."
“Oh. But I…” This was so out of left field, Kara feels like Non has punched her in the face and sent her spiralling through the air again. “What?”
Cat’s eyes narrow. “City apartment. Seven pm. If you make me repeat myself again…” she trails off, warning implicit and frightening.
“No, Miss Grant, I understand now.” She doesn’t. What happened to professionalism? She’s floundering—she’s angry at the way Cat gets to switch between “professional” and whatever this is, because Cat is the boss, Cat gets her way, and Kara gets nothing, Kara gets left behind confused and off balance. But she hides all of that behind her pleasant smile and makes a note of her appointment with Carter.
Cat’s eyes flash with something—anger?—but she steps back into her office and shuts the door.
“Text me if you can make it,” Carter says, and he reaches over to scrawl his number on Kara’s notebook. “Or if you can't. Or just, if you want to." She smiles a smile that bunches up her cheeks, anger dissipating swiftly because Carter is sincere and sweet and he tugs awkwardly at the sleeves of his cardigan and bobs his head in a nod and flicks his hand in a wave. "Okay, bye."
“What was that all about?” Winn asks, and Kara turns to Cat’s private elevator where the doors are closing in front of Carter and she waves goodbye when he looks up for a second.
“He likes me,” Kara tells her best friend happily. “He admires me. He wants to interview me for his essay.”
“Wow, that’s, that’s really something,” Winn says and Kara frowns because that did not sound supportive. “No, it is really, just, uh,” he scratches his neck with slight discomfort and lowers his voice so only Kara and her super hearing can catch the words. “Have you thought about how similar your cover story is to the very famous ‘my home planet exploded and now I’m an undercover alien doing good deeds wherever possible’?”
“Oh.” Kara snaps her pen in her hand. “Oh no. Oh crap. Oh no.”
“Yeah…” Winn grimaces with shared concern, pats her shoulder, and wheels back to his desk.
There’s that to think about. Kara is sure that she can manage it. After all, she’s mild-mannered, nothing special Kara Danvers. And she won’t underestimate Carter—he’s smart, he’s really, really smart—so she’ll be careful.
A question occurs to her and she asks it when the clock ticks over to five. Her shift has ended so, well, there's no way that she'll get away completely with questioning Cat's orders but at least she's not doing it on the clock. Right?
She steps into Cat's office and looks at the other woman until Cat rolls her eyes.
"What do you want, Kiera? To cry again and tell me your goldfish died and you need a week off?"
Kara ignores her. She turns over several hundred different wordings, different ways of saying it, and settles on, “Why are you letting me do this?”
Cat sighs. “Excuse you?”
“Why are you letting me go to your apartment? Why are you letting me talk to Carter?" Kara steps closer. She hears her tablet creak under the pressure of her hands and hurriedly makes herself calm down. It's hard, though, when she remembers the way Cat cuts through everyone and turns everything to her own advantage, and when she thinks about how she used to be excited and almost relieved to be called into Cat's office and how it's all ruined. "You can't keep pushing for professional and sweep it aside whenever it suits you.You can’t keep doing this to me, Miss Grant,” Kara says, face flushing, and she pulls back a little when she's finished.
“I’m doing nothing,” Cat snaps. “Carter wishes to interview you, so he will. There is nothing more to this." Cat meets her eyes, purposeful and firm. "Is that clear?”
The fact that Cat has to say it at all makes it clear that there is something going on, but her gaze tells Kara there is no leeway concerning this. None. She’s more than toeing the line now, she’s hovering over it and she’s about to crash to the ground and it’s her choice which way she falls but she has to be careful and choose correctly.
As much as she wants to press, that would be the end of Kara Danvers, assistant. Cat would fire her, she would lose CatCo, and she would be Supergirl. That would be the end of that.
So she clenches her jaw shut firmly, even though she feels like she’s about to burst into flame. She swallows and nods once, sharply.
“Crystal clear, Miss Grant,” she grits out and Cat watches her turn, grab her bag, and leave.
Don’t be late, Cat sends her ten minutes later and Kara’s answer is the epitome of professional and somehow feels anything but. Cat’s stupid, stupid demand is splintering around her and she’s frustrated and Kara is furious and nothing has been fixed by the distance she has demanded.
Of course, Miss Grant.