Chapter 8
They’re on the same couch with less than two feet between them. It’s a comfortable distance—close enough to feel the other when they shift a little, or to pass something between them, but not too close that Cat is aware of Kara’s too hot skin.
Kara can’t help but be aware—Cat’s perfume is subtle and intoxicating, just a hint, and Kara knows exactly where she touched it to one point on either wrist, that she smudged it against the underside of her jaw. She hears every sigh, every small small noise that Cat makes when she’s displeased with what she’s reading, the way the paper crinkles slightly under her hand. It’s distracting, but an undercurrent of distracting that is almost warm—she blocks it out, a little, and focuses on speed reading through the proposed articles.
“It’s five o’clock,” Kara murmurs, hearing the clock hand tick into place.
Five is officially, contractually, the end of her work day. Since Cat had changed what they were, she had started going home on the dot unless she was needed and Cat hadn’t said anything about it. Neither had Kara, other than asking if there was anything else Cat needed her to do before she left.
Cat hums. “I know.”
“Was there anything else that you needed, Miss Grant?”
Cat pauses, then settles her papers down on her lap. “No, Kara,” she says slowly. “Thank you.” Kara nods and leans forward to place the corrected articles on the coffee table. As she is straightening, Cat’s hand comes down into the space between them, firmly planted on the cushion exactly halfway. “However, if you would like to stay, I have some choices to make for the fashion section and I…” She pauses. “I would appreciate your assistance.”
“I—” It’s the offer she’s been waiting for—a sign, a hint of a sign, that she’s right. That they’re changing yet again. Because Cat has phrased this as a suggestion not an order, which means she’s not asking as Kara’s boss, which means this is something more. Something else, not just work.
Naturally, when she goes to finish her sentence—and she’s not sure exactly what she’s going to say but it would have been a yes—her phone beeps quietly in her ear. Kara feels her face fall into familiar stern lines. She shifts a little until she is nearer to the end of the couch and she turns away to answer the call, pulling her phone from her pocket.
“Alex?”
“You have to get home,” her sister says in lieu of a greeting. She sounds serious and guarded and not a small bit angry. “Now.”
“What is it? What’s wrong? I’m at the office—“
“Your uncle is here.”
“Are you hurt?” Kara asks, fury ripping through her at the idea. Her phone creaks in her hand. She will tear Non into shreds if he has broken the peace, broken Astra’s passage. She will leave nothing behind to be laid to rest. “Alex,” she insists, and that ready fury bleeds into her voice. Cat hears it—Kara knows she has because in the reflection of the glass, she sees Cat’s head lift and the woman stares at her back. “What is going on? Talk to me.”
“I’m alright. I’m okay. He says he’s come back because you,” Alex clears her throat. She doesn’t sound in pain or afraid, but she’s always been good at hiding that. “You have to pray with him. Help Astra move onto the second half of her journey.”
“Oh.” It’s a very small, sad noise and Kara’s shoulders fall along with her ire. With that gone, she’s left cold and she shivers a little. “Yeah. I… Okay. I’ll be there soon.”
She stares down at her phone for a moment before she slips it into her pocket. Not quite up to facing Cat just yet, she smoothes shaking fingers over her pants and then adjusts her glasses, touches a hand to her hair. When her heart rate has steadied, she turns back to Cat, who is watching her with something close to concern.
Cat lifts her hand. “That will be all today, then, Kiera.”
She looks like she understands—she’s not going to hold this against Kara, at least—and if she’s disappointed she’s hiding it well this time. But she has made a gesture for them, has let her guard down, and Kara isn’t leaving without answering it in kind. She dredges up her Supergirl courage and sets her shoulders.
“I was going to stay,” she says, and watching Cat’s eyes widen ever so slightly is wonderfully satisfying. “But I have to deal with this.”
Cat nods. “Is everything alright?”
“Nothing I can’t handle, Miss Grant.”
“Mm. I dare say there isn’t much you can’t handle.”
Kara smiles at her and Cat smiles back and it’s a few long moments before she remembers—Non, she jerks back to herself, shakes her head, and takes a step backwards. There is something fond about the set of Cat’s lips and Kara can feel her eyes on her until she steps into the elevator.
//
Alex is leaning against her fridge, scowling at Non, when Kara steps in.
“Kara,” Alex starts when she sees her little sister but Kara shakes her head.
“I have to.”
Alex stares at her for a long time and then she says, “I’ll be here when you’re done.”
A relieved smile breaks over Kara’s face and she nods. Then she turns to Non. “Well?” She doesn’t like the way he looks at Alex—calculating, grim, like she’s an obstacle—and she steps in between them. If anything, that set his face into sterner lines but he just hurls himself out her window and she follows.
She does what she must.
There are rites—most are spoken words that sit lightly in her mouth, the language of her home springing from her naturally feeling clean and fresh and smooth. There is no hesitation, and the realisation that she still carries this, at least, makes tears well in her eyes. She is crying for Astra, but she is crying for them all and for Krypton and for herself because they never got these rites, she hadn’t really even thought of it, and she was young and certainly not the Lady of the house and there was no one to witness but now…now there is.
Some of the rites are sung. The men hanging around her wait for her to begin before they softly join her, some voices low and some surprisingly high and sweet and soft. They are her enemies but they are also her blood and she holds no real hate for them, she realises. There is just a heavy, heavy sadness sitting cold and immovable in her gut because one of them—sooner, she thinks, rather than later—will lose. She swallows that back—that fear, that sorrow—and lifts her chin and pushes her voice up to the sky and it might just be her imagination but she hopes that the stars are shining that small part brighter.
Finally, they light the lanterns and send them high into the sky.
Non holds the last in his hands. He will fly it higher than the others and light it and he will say the final rites, as befits a bonded pair, and then Astra’s last journey begins and the last week of mourning begins with it.
Kara hesitates before she flies to his side. She joins him looking up at the lanterns scattered across the night sky, tiny tiny lights against that immense darkness, and she doesn’t touch him—she can’t bring herself to do that—but she allows herself to be gentle when she says, “Thank you for observing her passage, Non.”
“Did you think I would let her be lost?” he says back, barely holding back from snapping at her.
“No. I didn’t.”
He looks at her then and manages a stiff nod. “We may not have been a marriage for love as your humans do, but there was not a day that passed that she was not strong and brave and true to her cause. The world is less,” he tells her, with no small amount of pain, “for her loss.”
“I feel it too,” Kara says after a moment of considering his words.
“We have a gift for you.” His hands clench and his jaw works with discomfort but finally he nods and his second in command flies to his side. “Astra was adamant that this war should be won with honour. She would want you to have this.”
The dark haired Kryptonian hands a dark package over to her and, knowing what it is, Kara swallows hard against more tears.
“Thank you.”
“Astra was right. You are stronger than you seem. If it should be that you win,” Non says, “I would ask that you perform our rites. Should I not have killed you by that point. And I,” he presses his lip together then continues. “I am your family, if not by blood, and I will send off your coffin when you are dead.”
“My rites will be led by my cousin,” she corrects him and she sees neither relief nor disappointment in his eyes. “But I would ask that you be there.” Non bows his head. “And you’re wrong,” she says as she prepares to leave. “Blood binds us all.”
She’s tired when she leaves him there. There are prayers she must say alone, lift up to the endless sky and the stars and the stars beyond those stars and those in the furthest reaches too, and there will be a short period where she must talk to Astra and guide her through what is beyond—a kind voice to lead her home.
Trying to remember the words—she heard them twice, first when her mother’s mother had died but Kara had been very young then, and again when her eldest distant cousin had been killed—she lets her instincts fly her home.
She can barely keep her eyes open as well as free of tears so finally she doesn’t bother fighting it.
She’s so tired of fighting.
She can feel herself being pulled. In all these directions, all at once.
She’s Kara Danvers, with her duty to her sister—a sister who disapproves of her choices, who is acting so strangely, who has been her strength and comfort in the most confusing moments of her life and it hurts now, that she is making herself distant. And she’s Kiera too, keeping up this facade at work that gets harder and harder by the day because Cat keeps switching between impersonal (and a little mean) and this intensity that makes Kara feel like she is struggling through thick, sweet fog to get to her, and this third….thing. A third attitude, she supposes it could be called. It’s the rarest, very rare, but when Cat looks at her just so, Kara feels her skin burn. That one is the most terrifying—it’s a looming threat of burning down, the taste of ash in her mouth, a curling licking fear like that first gentle spark that starts the fire that burns it all, burns her, down to nothing at all.
When she dreams of fire, it is instant and red and blisters a whole world to nothing and as soon as it begins, it ends, taking everything with it.
If she is honest with herself, and she’s very good at being honest with others but not always with herself, it is that fire that she is afraid of.
But when Cat looks at her…it’s white and so hot it barely feels like pain at all and there is no end in sight.
Kara thinks of Cat’s fingers curling around her wrist, touching ever so lightly on her elbow. Then, she forces herself to stop thinking about the way it feels, and those thoughts that come after, like what would it feel like if those fingers curled around her knee instead. Or her shoulder. Or her throat. She stops in the sky and sucks in a breath and, with the strength of a hero, forces herself to stop thinking of Cat.
She is Supergirl. Supergirl, with a heavier duty, perhaps, than everyone else that Kara manages to be combined. A duty to everyone in the city—to the DEO, too, and all those people who count on her and care for her. A duty to CatCo. To Carter. To Cat—
She is Kara Zor-el, with the memories of all her people, her planet, her family. With their name and legacy that she literally straps to her chest every day and it has never felt so heavy before, dragging at her. Kara Zor-el, whose chest opens up into a bottomless pit because Non may be overseeing the period of mourning but there are other duties, not necessary but ones that should be seen to nonetheless because it is right and good to protect your family. And those fall to Kara Zor-el, the last of her name.
All these parts of her are clashing, clamouring to be heard, demanding to be heard and each time she slips up, each time she reveals something of herself that someone isn’t used to seeing, each time these neatly placed tiles—this mosaic, she thinks, and nearly laughs because what a pretty picture she makes, all in shards—slip up and over one another, it gets worse.
Alex grows more distant each time she mentions that she misses her aunt.
Cat, who fluctuates wildly between hot and chilly—because Cat Grant doesn’t deal in cliches, not hot and cold not for her, she musters up a cool, cool chill, icy and so very purposeful—sharpens her gaze each and every time she slips, and whomever said that pen beat sword should meet Cat because she could prove that, Kara thinks.
And Kara, she’s just…
She’s so tired. All the time.
But it’s alright, because she sort of registers that she’s floating in through her window and her couch catches her when she falls and she pulls her knees up to her chest and buries her face into them, hands pressed hard against her ears—she can’t, she can’t bear to hear Non begin the rites, she can’t bear to hear the sounds of a city constantly in some flux of chaos, no more cries for help—and she cries hot, wretched tears for her aunt.
Alex is sleeping in her bed. She can hear her, even with her powers turned right down and her hands clamped over her ears she knows that Alex is there. She knows that steady heart.
For the first time in a long time, it doesn’t soothe her as well as it has and she continues to cry and she doesn’t move at all to wake Alex.
A voice Kara doesn’t recognise—soft and strong at the same time, and so incredibly gentle—speaks inside her head, in a small secret place in her mind.
El mayara, they say, voice laced with empathic pain. Kara, strong one, brave Kara, el mayara.
//
She has long since dried her tears when she finds herself hovering just off the balcony of Cat’s office.
The other woman should have gone home a long time ago—it is just pushing onto eleven and Kara wonders why she’s still there. She knows that Carter is with his dad, but she also knows that Cat likes being at home, surrounded by the things she likes and the home she has built. So Kara doesn’t know why Cat remains behind, only her office lit up—and Kara, a stupid stupid moth to the flame—and Cat, pouring over some paper or another.
It doesn’t take her long to notice her, and only a little longer for Cat to join her.
“Supergirl.”
Kara’s stomach twists with discomfort. She should have gone somewhere else—she should have gone to Alex or James or Winn or, hell, even Lucy, even though she is new and a little unsure she has a strong, good heart and Kara knows that Lucy is on her side.
But here she is and, with the little voice urging her on with a near constant repetition of el mayara and some other, fainter words she doesn’t quite recognise but their importance settles in her like the distant tolling of a bell, calling her. She has to trust that something inside her knows this is the right place.
“Supergirl?”
Still, Kara floats a little further away.
Cat tilts her face toward her and, as Kara watches, she holds her hand out and up to Supergirl. An offer.
Come here.
It’s a soft open palm, a welcoming and considered gesture, and Cat’s eyes are gentle. Kara can’t resist. Kara doesn’t want to resist.
She lands on the balcony with none of her usual grace. Landing well takes effort, apparently, and there isn’t much left in her. Her hero pose too, crossed arms and strong shoulders, doesn’t feel right. A little lacklustre, for one, but it’s also exhausting and a barrier—and she’s only protecting herself right now.
Kara lets her head fall forward after a beat in which they just look at one another.
Her hair slips out from behind her ears and falls in a curtain in front of her and she unfolds her arms slowly and leans backwards against the railing. She keeps her arms crossed, though they droop somewhat until they’re across her stomach and she’s very aware, though from a distance like all her thoughts are crossing the fog in her mind as a light from a lighthouse, that Cat won’t—can’t—mistake this for anything other than nervous.
Scared.
Cat Grant could burn her hollow and Kara couldn’t stop her right now. Maybe she wouldn’t even try.
“Something has happened,” Cat says. Kara gives her some small shrug in place of a yes. “And you came here?” There is a slight twinge of discomfort in her right knee—that’s worrying, that she can feel that ache, she should be worried about that—and Kara shifts her weight more evenly on her legs. “Do you feel safe here?” Cat asks her.
Kara considers the question. She feels something for the place—she had made it her second home, once upon a time and for a long time. But lately, that had been shaken at the roots.
“Sometimes,” Kara tells her. She doesn’t have the energy to lie.
“Sometimes,” Cat repeats.
She takes a step forward and seems pleased when Kara doesn’t shift. At all. When she’s a foot away, Cat reaches out and lays a hand on Kara’s arm, just above her elbow. She does so slowly and Kara doesn’t startle. If anything, her eyes close a little more and she sags a little and lets her elbow rest more heavily into Cat’s hold, because the warm settles neatly and softly, then with more pressure, and it’s just…it’s nice. To be touched. To be held, even so slightly. “Will you stay?”
“For a while.”
“And then?”
Kara bares her teeth. She hopes it’s a smile. “Back to work.”
Cat hums and presses her hand against her and Kara follows the unspoken command, moving with it. She is escorted to one of the chairs on the balcony and she sits. When Cat takes her hand away, Kara hesitates for a moment but, realising that Cat knows she is weak and vulnerable at the moment she thinks she can do no more harm to her reputation if she brings her knees up to her chest. So she does, and Cat watches her and then settles into the chair opposite.
Cat doesn’t speak and Kara looks away, up at the moon—it’s a waning sickle and sickly wan—and it is a pleasant enough way to pass the time.
Eventually, Cat interrupts the silence.
“Would you like a drink?” She taps a finger lightly against her own glass and Kara drags her eyes there to the amber liquid that remains.
Kara tries to remember if that was one of the rites on Krypton, a drink for the dead. She decides she doesn’t care.
“Please,” Kara agrees with a nod, and Cat arches an eyebrow but she stands and moves inside and fills her own glass and one for Kara. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
Kara sips at it slowly. Cat watches her. She knows that the other woman sees the quick words—nourishment, company, peace—she sends to Astra, small prayers, but Kara can’t bring herself to care.
When their drinks are half gone, Kara is next to speak.
“Carter?”
“With his father.”
“Ah.”
“That doesn’t surprise you?”
Kara smiles. “I’ve been on earth long enough to know what shared custody is, Miss Grant.” It feels the height of normal to sit here with Cat, drinking and chatting.
“Exactly how long might that be? Any comment on your real age?” Cat says teasingly, smiling over the lip of her glass, and she looks faintly pleased when Kara laughs. “No? Your day job then. Celebrity crush?”
“Miss Grant,” Kara smiles. “No.”
“Hmm. A pity.” Cat lifts her shoulders in a delicate shrug. “Supergirl—may I call you El?” She remembers Carter telling her excitedly what Supergirl had said he could call her, how she had said the name with hesitation and something like reverence, and Cat’s breath almost blocks up in her chest with anticipation. It fades when she looks at Supergirl’s considering face—she’s going to say no, Cat realises.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” she says.
Cat knew she would say something like that. But… “Why?”
Cat looks away, down into her glass, and Kara registers that she’s hurt.
“Because it’s not my name,” she tells Cat. “When you call me something, I would like it to be my real name.” Cat looks up again and their eyes meet and Kara drops her chin onto her kneecap and blinks slowly over at her.
Cat nods. “I would like that as well.”
They fall into yet another silence and Kara’s eyes drift closed and she feels nothing but calm as she sits there with Cat. Her heart rate slows, her fingers loosen a little from where they are looped around her legs.
“What do you need?” Cat asks, so quietly, breathes out really, and Kara’s eyelids feel heavy as she forces them open. “Why did you come to me?”
Kara doesn’t have an answer for that. She doesn’t fully know.
“What do you want?”
Kara is afraid that she will say something stupid. Something like, to be here. By your side. To be enough. To be good. To be, just for a little while, quiet and still and cared for.
Something of her thoughts must show on her face because Cat sends her a thoughtful, questioning look that lasts for a very long time and then she nods slowly.
“Well, Supergirl, you’ve been here long enough to know about shared custody. What else?”
Kara blinks. “What?”
“What else do you know about earth? Do you have a favourite film?”
“I—I, yes,” she says, thrown off balance. “I do.” Cat raises an impatient eyebrow. “Amelié.”
“Really.”
“It’s beautiful,” Kara argues—Cat didn’t seem dismissive, but neither did she seem particularly interested. “She’s beautiful, and it’s funny.”
“I wasn’t criticising, Supergirl. I just haven’t seen it.”
“Oh.” Kara’s hands loosen a little more and one of her knees drops down. The other remains upright, propping up her chin. “You should. Carter would like it, I think.”
“Hmm. And music?”
“All kinds.” Kara frowns. “Why are you asking me these things?”
“What about your hobbies?”
“I fight crime in my spare time.” Cat doesn’t look impressed. “I paint,” Kara whispers, and Cat’s expression lightens when she remembers the canvas that hangs in the pride of place in Carter’s bedroom.
“Favourite book?”
“These don’t feel like things that will go into your magazine, Miss Grant.”
“Is that a foreign book? I don’t recognise it,” Cat jokes in a flat tone and, when Kara smiles a little, Cat rolls her eyes. “Call it personal investigation. Maybe I’ll write an up close and personal with National City’s hero.”
“Another one?”
“The first was a little rushed.”
Kara shrugs. “They’ll want their money back.”
“It’ll be too late.” Cat’s grin is shark sharp and wicked and Kara is surprised enough by it that she laughs. “There’s my Supergirl,” the other woman murmurs, wholly affectionate, and Kara feels awareness slam back into her chest. It feels like she’s swallowed a Kryptonite rock and it got lodged somewhere on the way down to her stomach, just between her collarbones, and she unfolds her legs slowly and plants her feet on the ground and grips the edge of the chair cushion.
“I have to go.”
Cat frowns, shifts forward in her seat too. “Must you? You won’t stay?”
Kara stands. “I can’t.”
“Please?” Cat pushes quickly up onto her feet. She advances on Kara—not angry, or aggressive, but there is a power in her walk as always—and with the chair pressing against her back, it feels so much—too much—like the moment she had shared with Cat her Cat’s apartment.
Kara uses a touch of superspeed to stand, but then Cat’s hand is on her arm and she freezes.
There is a dark and greedy corner of her mind that swallows up great chucks of her at a time and spits it out again, drenched in thoughts like, Don’t you like the way she looks at you? Don’t you want her to look at you the way she looks at Supergirl, like she wants to feel those strong hands against her, like she wants to feel how much pressure she can use until you bend or break? And there are the softer thoughts like melted chocolate, sweet and dark and hard to resist, that whisper to her. Don’t you like it when she looks at you like you’re powerful? You’re her equal. You are powerful and lovely and good. Can’t you see that’s how she looks at you? And, lighter still, worship her, don’t you want to see her face when she realises the power she has over you, don’t you want to burn alive for her pleasure?
“Stay,” a voice insists, and it takes a moment for Kara to realise that it is Cat.
“I have to go,” she says again, and this time she says it as Kara. Not Kiera, not Supergirl.
There is something happening between them—it’s absolutely undeniable now—and Kara, rather than confused, feels settled by what has happened tonight.
Cat is going to realise who she is one of these days, and when it happens, Kara decides, she isn’t going to give in. It’ll be Cat’s turn, she thinks. It’ll be Cat’s turn to give. She’s very, very good at taking, which Kara doesn’t mind—she likes helping, she does, but she’s aware that she doesn’t have all that much left to give.
She can’t say any of that without giving it all away but she does what she can.
She lays her hand over Cat’s and peels it away slowly. Then, she says, “Give my best to Carter,” and, “I had a lovely time with him the other night.” Cat purses her lips, clearly disappointed. “Goodnight, Miss Grant.”
The urge to touch her increases the longer she stays, so she makes herself step away.
“Goodnight.” Cat hesitates and then Kara has propelled herself into the night. She is flying away when she hears Cat’s very quiet addition. “Supergirl.”