Chapter 12
Kara is leaning against the wall outside her guest bedroom. She is barefoot, dressed in her sweatpants and her favourite plain t-shirt. There is a towel wrapped around her neck to catch the drops from her wet hair and she grips the end of the the towel in nervous hands.
She looks soft. Small.
Cat is thankful, just a little, that Kara won’t meet her eyes. She keeps trying to imagine the super crest over Kara’s chest, trying to super impose a hero over that folded frame.
She considers making them both a drink but the way Kara wavers in place makes her think that the woman wouldn’t be able to hold it, much less muster the effort it will take to drink.
So. Just to talk then.
“Kara,” she calls. Then again when Kara doesn’t react. “Kara,” she says, and holds her bedroom door open. “Come along.”
She leads them into her bedroom and smiles when she hears the faint gasp behind her. Cat wonders what it is that has caught Kara’s attention—when she turns, Kara is dragging a curious hand over the beautiful, warm wood of her desk. The woman walks further into the room, trails her fingers over the end of the bedcover. But her eyes are fixed on the window and on some point far, far away.
“I confess,” Cat says, coming up behind her. “Carter might be the reason I bought the place but this is the reason I haven’t look anywhere else.”
“Do you ever get tired of having a penthouse apartment in the loveliest part of town?” Kara teases with the tiniest smile.
“No.”
Kara walks to the window. One splayed hand lifts presses against the cool glass there—her other hand cling the ends of her towel still, even as she rests her forehead on the window frame.
The penthouse isn’t on the edge of the city, not quite, but it is one of the last tall apartment buildings in the area. It has an unobstructed view out to the wide, wide desert—all dark now, of course, but perhaps not to Kara. Cat wonders if she can see the colours Cat has seen, oranges and deep blues and purples and red settling over the land and sweeping up to the mountains. Or maybe she just sees a hundreds of blacks slipping and sliding shadows and shapes in the dark night and finds that as magical as the colours of the sun. Or maybe, Cat considers, she is staring at the stars.
“Carter knows about this?” she asks, twisting a little to find Cat standing a short way away. She steps up closer, by her side.
“We have sleepovers sometimes.” She smiles her fond Carter smile. “He’s very good at making stable pillow forts.”
“I’ll bet.” Kara returns her gaze to the view and stares.
Cat checks her phone—messages have been flooding in about Supergirl’s brave rescue and about a second, unnamed person who was there—a man dressed all in black who had taunted SUpergirl in their own shared language and threw a car over the edge of a ravine. Photos, too—some useable, some not—of Supergirl lowering the car to the ground, of her sweeping a woman into her arms and showing off into the sky, of agents in black swarming the area.
When she looks up again, Kara’s eyes are closed. Hand loosely curled, shoulders slumped, Kara looks tired. More—she looks exhausted.
Cat whispers her fingers ever so lightly against Kara’s arm and then presses lightly. “Bed, Kara,” she tells her.
“No,” Kara sighs. “No, we have to talk.”
Cat purses her lips, feelings for Kara warring with logic. She nods. “Alright.”
Kara turns away from the view, leans back against the wall. She lifts her towel and rubs at the ends of her hair. “They figured out what Myriad is. Sort of.”
“Oh?”
“That USB Lord gave me? He had sifted this, I don’t know, data I guess that he hadn’t coded. We decrypted it—well, Winn did. And Max, and some other agents from the DEO—”
“DEO?” Kara frowns. “No, you’re right. It can wait. Please, continue.”
“He thinks, they think,” Kara corrects herself, and there is a flash of something darker and angrier that Cat recognises as how Kara feels about Lord. “They think that it’s some kind of wave length…I don’t know the word. Amplifier.”
“To what purpose?”
“Hypothetically? Mind control.”
“Mind…control,” Cat repeats, slowly. She taps her fingers against the case of her phone thoughtfully. “Really?”
“I don’t know the details. I can ask Alex for you?”
“No, I believe you. It sounds far-fetched but then again,” she lifts her eyebrows, “you are an alien. Besides,” she wriggles her phone in Kara’s direction, Agent Scully brightly displayed. “I have my own contact. I can ask your Alex myself.”
Kara blinks, then reaches out for the phone. “Alex gave you her number?”
“She did.”
“Why? She hates—“ Kara stops. “Uh. Hates reporters? She’s an agent, she has to be secretive so,”
“Relax, Kiera, I’m sure you’ve had years worth of quibbles to relate to your sister. It’s not like we’re going to be friends.” Cat turns and stalks away, clicks her phone down onto her bedside table.
“So why did she give it to you then?”
Cat looks back over her shoulder and just raises her eyebrows. “I imagine because she cares very much for you.”
“But,”
“The number is for me to call if you need help.”
“Oh.” Kara’s eyes soften and she twists the towels in her hands. “Well, I,” she takes a step forward, eyes flashing with purpose. “Speaking of help. I think you should leave. You and Carter, get out of the city before it all goes down and—”
“No.”
“Cat,”
“I’m staying.”
“Cat, think about it. He will only have control over National City—Max’s satellites only have so much reach. If you leave, you can go and give everyone else a head start on figuring out how to beat him.”
“A nice touch, trying to appeal to my heroics. But you forget that I have Madame President on speed dial. Telling people what is going on is somewhat of a strength of mine, wouldn’t you agree?”
“This isn’t about who you have on speed dial or who you take Sunday brunch with, Cat.” Cat bristles, a retort barbed behind her lips. Her job is more than brunches and events. “This is about actual real danger that you are in—he threatened your life,” Kara says, voice on the edge of a growl.
Cat blinks. She hadn’t known that. “Who did?”
“Non.” This time, her voice is a growl.
“I assume he’s the leader of these…extremists?”
“Yes.”
Cat watches her a moment longer, journalistic senses tingling. “Who is he to you? Why is he attacking you?”
Kara frowns. “It’s not enough that I’m Supergirl?”
Cat laughs. “Please. Two Kryptonians in the same city, one hell bent on some kind of vendetta and one tragically torn between anger and some warped kind of hurt and you want me to think that you don’t have any kind of connection? Kiera, please.” Cat notices the way Kara looks away when she says hurt and how she crosses her arms Supergirl strong across her chest. The two motions don’t add up—one secretive, anxious…ashamed? And the other proud and strong. No. There’s something going on. She presses a little further. “Well, I certainly won’t be leaving my city and the people who depend on me just because someone threatened me. If I ran away every time I was threatened, I’d never get any work done.” She sits on the end of the bed, smoothes her hands down her skirt. “Carter, on the other hand…”
“Yes. Yes, send Carter away, please.”
“Tell me who he is,” Cat counters.
Kara shakes her head slowly, lets her arms fall from their defensive guard. “He’s my uncle,” she admits, and she won’t meet Cat’s eyes.
“Your uncle,” Cat breathes. So it’s not just that he’s her race. It’s not just the fact that it’s another planet on the brink of destruction. It’s her uncle. And knowing Kara, that and all the rest is tearing her up inside.
“He was married to my aunt. Astra.” Kara’s lips turn up the tiniest bit. “The woman floating in CatCo plaza.”
“The one you punched three feet into the concrete?”
“Yes,” Kara grins, a little more genuinely when she hears Cat’s reluctant awe regarding her powers. “That was Astra.”
“You’ve said that twice. Was.”
Kara’s smile fades and then drops entirely. “She died.” Cat just looks at her and Kara closes her eyes. “Was killed.”
“I’m sorry,” Cat relents. “I’m sorry. This isn’t,” she sighs, bows her head for a moment. When she looks up, she holds her hand out, palm up, and waits until Kara comes to join her sitting on the bed. “This isn’t an interrogation,” she promises, and holds Kara’s hand in hers. “I appreciate you telling me this. I’ll make sure that Carter is well on his way to his fathers tomorrow morning.”
Kara blows out a breath of relief. “Good. Thank Rao. I…I don’t suppose I could convince you to take him personally?” she tries.
Cat smiles. “No. I would say nice try but that was barely mediocre at best.”
Kara shrugs.
They sit still for a moment. Cat looks down at their joined hands—it’s not something she usually does, and she wonders if it’s a bit too tender, a bit too much, but this is Kara whom she has known for years, Kara whose smile has always been welcoming, who has always helped her, her guardian angel, her good, good hearted shadow, and Cat has held her so this, this shouldn’t be too much. Kara doesn’t seem to mind. She seems to enjoy the contact, leaning and turning a little closer to Cat so their shoulders brush and not really seeming to notice that she’s doing it. Cat wonders if she’ll notice something else—she begins to trace Kara’s hands, guided by her wonder at the fact that these delicate fingers tore into the metal of a plane and stop bullets in their barrels.
Kara shifts in place and Cat smiles. Oh yes. She strokes each of Kara’s fingers. Yes, Kara notices this.
“Why did he threaten me?” Cat asks softly. She keeps her voice low and soft and gentle. “And Carter?”
Kara’s knee nudges against Cat’s, settles with a warm heavy weight against her. “Astra. She knew who I was, I think she must have watched me for a while. I don’t know…” she sighs. “I don’t know whether that was her spying on me for intel or, or just Astra being concerned. Maybe she missed me. Maybe both. But Non knows that I’m Kara Danvers, that I work for you, that Alex is my sister. He knows who I am, who I care about.” Kara’s hand folds into a fist and Cat’s fingers find more to work with, to wonder over—the strength in these hands is more obvious now that it’s given purpose. Cat drags her finger over the rise and fall of the knuckles—the bone is sharp, skin whitening where it pulls tight over them, and she thinks of bones and grave yards and exposed ruins and the white ash of a burned planet and they are images of a world she’s put behind her of war and fire and so many screams and there are years and miles between them but they still frighten her and Cat wraps her hand around Kara’s wrist. To keep her, still or here Cat isn’t sure. “He promised to come after everyone I care about.”
“But he didn’t mention me personally?”
“No.”
Cat strokes her thumb over the knob in Kara’s wrist. “Then why? Why send me and Carter away? How could he know I exist?”
“I doubt there is a person alive who doesn’t know you exist, Cat.” Kara turns a little more toward her, dips her head low to try and catch Cat’s eyes. “Please,” she says quietly, “just because he didn’t mention you by name, it doesn’t mean he isn’t going kill you. Hurt you. Please Cat, I care, I don’t want to be the reason that you get hurt.”
“Why are you so insistent about this?” Cat asks, eyes narrowed. Her curious fingers stop. “Is this because of the kiss? Because Kara, we kissed, yes, but that does not mean that I am interested in being told what to do and how to parent my son so—”
“This isn’t about the kiss,” Kara snaps, and she pulls her hand away, quickly but ever so gently. She walks to the door in quick strides. Cat shoots to her feet.
“Oh no, don’t you dare! You came back here to talk to me so talk. Explain yourself. Explain why it is that we are in so much more danger than anyone else.”
“Because I care,” Kara says, wheeling around to face her. “I care about you!”
“So it is about the kiss!” Cat says. She props her hands on her hips. “Honestly, you millennials, getting so hung up on a k—“
“It’s not about the kiss! It’s about the fact that Non could literally rip you to pieces with his bare hands if he wanted to!” Kara’s own hands come up then—she shakes her open hands in Cat’s direction. Look, she’s saying, these hands, this power, this is what he has, and Cat knows in theory that she’s right, that this Non has the same power and strength as she does, but in actually no one has Kara’s hands—artists hands, hands that hold and work and carry and build, hands that hold buildings up and curl metal and hands, a pair of the only hands she trusts to touch and care for her son—and isn’t that the difference between them? All written right there, plain as anything, into the gentle purpose of her careful, caring hands.
“He could kill you in a hundred, a thousand different ways and he might do that to anyone who has ever even spoken to me! Anyone I have saved. Anyone on the street, he could snatch them up and kill them faster than you can even blink and I might not be able to stop him. So forgive me,” Kara says, voice cracking with the urgency, the care, the fear behind it, “for caring about you. Forgive me for, yes, thinking that the kiss meant something. Ignore it for all I care but do not,” she snarls, taking a step forward, “do not ignore the fact that you are in actual danger.”
Cat lifts her chin a touch, taking in this Kara. There’s nothing new in this Kara, nothing that Cat hasn’t seen before—caring, fear, anger, grief, and this impeccable restraint born of years of practice and years of fear and years of love that means she is solid and angry, yes, but Cat is not afraid—but she is utterly magnified and utterly magnificent and Cat doesn’t know if that is new or if she’s finally able to see it.
“Just, please Cat,” she says, sagging into the silence that is all Cat gives her. “I just want you to be safe.”
After a time, Cat says quietly, “You can’t save everyone, Supergirl.”
“Obviously.” Kara mutters the words. She turns her head away and sighs, leans back against the wall and rubs at her shoulder.
Cat thinks over her words and, though she doesn’t regret what she says—because it’s true—she does regret saying it now. Images of that dead woman surely flooding Kara's mind and that's not what Cat wanted, that's the furthest from what she wanted. “That’s not what I meant, Kara. It’s not the same,” she tells her quietly and Kara nods. “Does it hurt?”
Kara blinks. Looks down at her hand. “No. Not really.”
“Not really?”
“It’s just an ache. Exertion.” She digs her fingers into the muscle there and sighs, rolls her shoulder out. “There’s nothing I can say to convince you to leave?”
“Nothing. I may not be a superhero but I have a place here. I have a job to do and it is important.” Kara nods, resigned.
“I just…there’s no way this ends well, Cat. He’s powerful, he has an army, he has,” she jerks her chin toward the window, “Myriad. And I have just me.”
“You are never just you, Kara. And there is a third way this could turn out. Where you win and save us all.”
Kara’s lips turn up a little and she shoots Cat a sweet smile. “Cat Grant, an optimist?”
“Supergirl has changed more than just the conversation of media,” Cat tells her firmly. “She—you—have changed people. You’ve changed,” Cat presses her lips together, licks them quickly, before she admits softly, “You’ve changed me. And so yes, I do believe that so long as we have faith and people who are willing to stand up and fight, people who look to their better angels and have hope, who keep trying when they fail, then they can do anything. And you?” Cat fixes her eyes on Kara. “You have always been able to do anything you set your mind to, Kara. Always.”
Kara’s smile falters for a moment—from shock, Cat thinks—and then it returns ten fold and blinding. “Thank you, Cat. That means a lot.”
“Of course.”
//
Cat busies herself for a little while, giving Kara some space. She changes into her nightclothes—a shirt and leggings, to match Kara a little, well aware of how clothes can be used as armour or weapon and wanting very much to be on an equal footing with the other woman for the time being.
When she comes out of her en suite, Kara has sat herself on her desk and in her hands is the little hand mirror she gave Cat. She turns it over and over between her fingers.
“Kara?”
“That woman,” she says very softly. “She had a husband and kids. A whole life. Gone. Just like that.”
Cat nods.
“I didn’t know her at all.” Kara flips the hand mirror one last time before she places it down with a quiet click. “It hurts to lose her. Knowing that if I had been a little faster, a little more gentle maybe I could have saved her.”
“That’s not knowing, Kara. That’s torturing yourself.”
Kara shrugs. “My point is that I know your job is important and I’m glad to have you by my side when, when this happens. I still had to try though. To know that I at least tried to keep you safe.” Cat crosses the distance between them and, after a moment of thought, places her hands on Kara’s knees. Kara stares down at the contact and, after drawing in a struggling breath, she continues. “I’m so afraid, Cat. There’s, there’s so much for me to lose.” She moves her hand so fast it blurs and Cat’s fingers tighten on Kara’s knees. She relaxes when Kara curls a hand around Cat’s wrist. “I haven’t—I haven’t done all that I want to do. I haven’t,” she looks up with wide, sad eyes. “I haven’t been to Egypt. I’ve always wanted to go. I can fly but I’ve never been.” Kara snorts, lifts watering eyes up to the ceiling. “And I want to see Uluru and taste star fruit and Rao, I want to see a whale in the wild. I want to spend seven lifetimes in the Louvre.”
“Kara,” Cat presses down a little more firmly to draw Kara’s attention. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s not fair,” she tells Cat quietly. Kara’s eyes squeeze shut and Cat lifts her hands up to her cheeks when the tears start. Just a few, and Kara holds her whole body still in an effort to stop them. Cat wipes them away with her thumbs.
“What isn’t?” she asks her softly.
“He wants to kill me,” Kara says, and her voice cracks. “I’m finally happy and he wants to kill me and I haven’t done anything, Cat, I’ve held myself back my whole life and I’m finally starting to actually live and now I’m going to die.”
The word strikes out between them and settles, like smog, dark and heavy. It tastes sour in Cat’s mouth—real, like Kara believes it. Fully. Inescapable.
She thinks of mind control and alien powers and a girl with soft skin and a bright smile and she thinks of every single story she’s ever heard where that girl is the first to die. There is no room for innocents in this world, no space for girls who are in love with the sun and their friends and who believe in second chances and who believe that people, despite the sum of their actions, are inherently good.
But.
Kara is a girl who got a man to hand over his gun—no powers, just a trembling hand and her own unshakeable faith.
An unshakeable faith shaken right down to its ruins, and Cat frowns. She peels herself away and begins to pace, short lines across the width of her room, central to the desk. Kara watches her quietly and just lets her pace, and think, and pace.
Finally, she comes to a brisk stop in front of Kara and props her hands on her hips.
“Be selfish.”
Kara blinks, then squints over at Cat. “What?”
Cat clicks her tongue. She understands that the girl is as pure as fallen snow, impossibly good, but surely she understands what it means to be selfish.
Her confusion indicates that she doesn’t, not really, or at least not what Cat means by it so Cat purses her lips and, though her eyelashes flutter with annoyance, she continues. “You go out there,” waves a hand to the window, “every day to fight increasingly competent villains for people who, honestly, most of the time don’t deserve it.” She holds up a hand to stop the expected slew of denial. “Yes, I know. The people of the city all deserve it, you care for all of them, please. Save it for the papers. My point is, and you will listen,” she says, sharpening her voice because she can see Kara’s eyes shifting to the window and beyond and she guesses that, if she let her, Kara would fade away from their conversation, ears searching for any sign of danger. Pleas for help. “My point is that if you truly think you’re going to die, you should have something you want to come back to.”
“Like a bucket list?” Kara laughs.
Cat rolls her eyes so hard she thinks she might have strained a muscle. “Like a memory. Or a promise.”
“I have my family,” Kara shrugs. “I have Alex. I’ll always try to come home to her.”
“That’s…good,” Cat admits. She assumes heroes always have those important people. “But I was thinking something rather less pure and more hedonistic. If anyone has the right to be a hedonist, it’s you.”
“What?”
“Enjoy yourself. Enjoy everything.” Cat smirks. “You’re more likely to save the world if you actually like the world, don’t you think?”
Kara shrugs again, still too withdrawn for Cat’s liking. “The world and everything in it is my pleasure,” she tells her. “That’s all I want. For everyone to be safe from him.” She says it, so convinced that it’s all about to be taken from her, and Cat swallows the cold curl of fear when she realises again just how possible it is.
She dismisses it with a scoff and a toss of her hair. “You must be the most impossible person in the world.”
“Thank you?” Kara guesses, even though Cat’s tone is not complimentary.
“No. It’s a problem. You had this problem when you started and it’s still a problem now, though I thought I had taught you better.” Kara frowns. “You think too big.”
“Says you, massive multi-million dollar international media mogul.”
“Flattery won’t get you out of this discussion, Kiera,” Cat says, though a pleased smile curves her lips. She doubts she’ll ever get tired of hearing her accomplishments listed like that. “Besides, you’re proving my point. I have told you before,” she narrows her eyes, “I had to start somewhere. Start small. Worked hard and fostered networks and connections and worked harder still and I made myself what I am today.”
“I—don’t understand,” Kara admits. “I practised. I’ve done better—I’m Supergirl. Are you saying I’m doing something wrong?”
“No, Kara. I’m saying that instead of focusing on everyone else, instead of focusing on the world, think instead of your place in it. That’s all you can really control. You. So be selfish. Put yourself first. Carve out a place for yourself that, when all this is over, when your job is done, you can come back to it and be you. Think about what you really want and just,” Cat pauses long enough for Kara to look at her—really look at her when she smiles, eyes glittering with something like promise, something like intent, and she bares perfect white teeth and says, “take it.”
She can see the exact moment Kara understands what she’s saying—at least a part of what she’s saying, because it undoubtedly has a sexual edge to it but that’s not wholly what Cat means.
Kara’s eyes darken in mere moments, pupils rushing to take over, and she licks her lips and leans forward, locking her hands around the edge of Cat’s desk. Which, if history is to repeat itself, just won’t do. Cat is very fond of her desk.
“Miss Grant,” Kara scolds, eyes wide. There’s the faintest hint of a smile, though, in the way she can’t keep the corners of her lips from turning up, can’t stop the skin around her eyes from crinkling, can’t stop her laugh lines from deepening just a touch. “Are you taking advantage of me in my weakened state?”
“Yes, I am. And I expect you to take advantage right back.” They pause for a moment—they can’t help it, the reason for all of this still fresh still present causing doubt and hesitation and demanding to be felt. Kara…Kara feels it so keenly that cold ice shudders out from between her lips and she looks back down at her hands, where they curl around smooth wood. She peels them away and wipes her hands down her thighs. It’s too much—this is her first chance, most likely her last, to have something with someone. More, with Cat. And she wants it, she wants it so much, wants Cat so much, but she wants even more to be wholly present in the moment as Cat deserves—as she deserves—and not to be listening for that inevitable attack, not to be driven by fear but by the impossibly sweet sensation of simply wanting to be close to someone in all ways.
“Cat. I—I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Cat watches her closely for a moment before she steps in, hands dropping from her hips. She hesitates before asking, “Do you trust me, Kara?”
“You know I do, Cat.”
“In other things, yes. But this?” Cat narrows her eyes. “I need you to tell me.”
Kara frowns before nodding slowly. “I do. Trust you.”
“Then trust me when I say I have no demands of you. This?” She waves between their bodies. “This is all you. What do you want?” Kara’s face twists with uncertainty. “There is no wrong answer. Just tell me the truth.”
“I—I want to have sex with you,” she says in a rush, and her hand whips up to cover her mouth. A red blush heats her neck—she hadn’t meant to say it quite so indelicately as that, evidently. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that, I’m just so tired and—”
“You don’t want to have sex with me?”
“No! I do! I do want that,” she says, but it isn’t sexy at all when Kara sounds miserable. “But I just, I really want to…I don’t know. I want to kiss you, mostly.” Kara’s eyes dart away and then back to her. “And…like we did that first night,” she says more quietly, eyes slipping away again.
“You want to be held,” Cat says for her, because apparently Kara is still incapable of asking for anything for herself. It’s worth it, and forgivable, when Kara blushes and smiles, shoulders drooping free of tension when she nods, relieved.
“Yeah. I know it’s probably not what you want, I,”
Cat sighs a sharp sigh to stop her from talking—it works too, and Kara grins and gives her a small reproving look because that sigh was all Cat Grant, CEO. “When the world renowned mentalist Patrick Jane attempted to read my mind,” she tells Kara briskly, ignoring her look, “he told me that I have mind like a fortress. No one knows my mind but me, Kara, so I will forgive you that incorrect guess and I will tell you again,” she says with a little and ineffective glare that means ‘I don’t like repeating myself’, “that all I want is what you want. No more than that.”
A fond, very fond smile, softens Kara’s face. She reaches up and falters a moment when her fingers don’t encounter her glasses. Instead, she flattens her hand against her cheek—hot, with a faint blush still—and skips her fingers back, tucking her hair behind her ear. Still a little wet, a few strands stay clinging to her cheek and her neck.
Cat swallows and reaches over, slowly, to guide the last of the tendrils back. An extra stroke of her fingers, then, because Kara’s skin is very soft and she doesn’t have half the control she should have around Kara. She follows with her eyes the line that her fingers draw, down behind Kara’s ear, a swirl at the edge of her jaw, continues a little ways down her neck under the disguise of shifting the hair that clings there too—it prompts a sigh, her fingers stroking Kara’s neck, and Kara’s eyes flutter and her head tilts to the side to give Cat more room, a gesture that has Cat swallowing again—and she draws her fingers back up to her original path, stroking ever so lightly back up to Kara’s jaw and down underneath her chin. She considers Kara’s dark, hooded eyes and those lips parted slightly and, on a whim, Cat twists her hand to cup Kara’s chin and drags her thumb across her lower lip.
She pulls her hand away slowly and is pleased when Kara follows, leaning forward. Then Cat’s lips are at Kara’s ear and she hears the way Kara sucks in a deep breath and feels her thigh tense under her other hand.
“What do you want, Kara?” she murmurs, and pulls back so she can see Kara’s face when she answers.
“I just want to be close to you,” Kara whispers, and the words—admitted so hesitantly, so softly, as she looks up from under demure lashes—send an electric thrill right through her. She stares at Cat and her blue eyes burn with all kinds of intent before the heat simmers and slows and banks to a low, low heat. “Can we just,” she flicks her eyes to the bed behind Cat. “Feel? I just,” The words stop in her throat and she sighs, shakes her head quickly. Pushing Cat away, a little, Kara slides off the top of the desk and hooks her thumbs in the waist of her pants. Before Cat can connect the dots, Kara is pulling her sweatpants down those long, perfect legs—she hops in place, yanking them from each foot and Cat laughs. Kara peeks up, swaying on one foot, holding the other in her hands and Cat’s laugh stops when Kara suddenly begins to float.
“Oh.” Cat looks from the decent six, eight inches between Kara’s feet and the floor and then up at the girl floating above her. “Oh. It’s so,” she blinks and reaches out for Kara and feels her adjust, lower herself back down to the floor and fit her body expertly against Cat’s. “It’s so different when you’re you,” she tells Kara.
“Instead of Supergirl?”
Cat nods.
Kara shrugs. “I’m still me,” she says, but she doesn’t sound wholly convinced of it.
“Yes.” She runs her eyes over the girl, appraisingly. “Yes you are.”
She looks vulnerable and a little uncomfortable under Cat’s curious examination and Cat knows it’s up to her to once again even the playing field. She steps back and around the bed to her side. Pulling down the covers, she pauses a moment before slipping in to pull off her leggings. A quick look to where she left Kara confirms who hurries—a little too fast to be human—to the other side of the bed and she slips in, purposefully not looking at Cat’s body.
“You wanted to feel, didn’t you Kara?” Cat asks and Kara’s face bursts into red at the light seduction. Cat laughs. “I think you’re allowed to look as well.”
Kara glances up at her face and nods. And then she looks. She looks like an artist, first, Cat thinks. A little impersonal, a little wondering yes but more colours and textures and shape. It takes a while before Kara’s lower lip finds a home between her teeth and she worries at it slightly, an artists eye giving way to that of a new lover and Cat thinks she can make out the ways Kara wants to touch her—she’s never been anything but utterly open, utterly readable, and this is no exception.
They settle into the bed together, side by side—and the mood seems to fizzle out. Neither of them know where to go from there, what the other really wants, and they lay uncomfortably still until Cat clicks her tongue.
“Come here,” she demands. “Come here, you insufferable hero.” She tugs on Kara’s arm until it’s awkwardly looped around her waist and, as she continues to talk she is pleased to note that Kara relaxes until she’s lightly holding her. “You and your utterly insufferable respectful, do-gooder, chaste and honest and true rubbish,” she grumbles, and Kara huffs a laugh onto her collarbone where she buries her face in Cat’s shoulder.
It should feel strange that they have become this close so fast, but it doesn’t. It feels like this should have happened earlier. Cat’s stomach swoops when she realises that she had put a stop to their closeness, that perhaps, if she had been braver, smarter, better, this may have happened earlier. Before the very end. She rubs a hand up from Kara’s elbow to her shoulder and down again.
They lay there for a time. Then,
“I’m not tired at all,” Kara tells her, laughing, and she pulls back a little to see Cat’s smile.
“No, neither am I.”
Kara shrugs and returns to her place. It’s a few more moments of near painful awareness of Kara’s body—her long, golden legs, her hair cascading like some Romantic princess, the warmth of their bodies together—before she realises that soft lips are beginning to press the tiniest, most gentle kisses against the skin of her neck.
“Kara.”
“Can we just,” she grazes her nose up Cat’s throat and Cat sighs, tilting her head back to give Kara access. One she doesn’t take advantage of, though she hesitates and lingers, lips close enough for Cat to not be sure whether or not she’s being touched. “Just go with it?”
“Anything you want,” Cat murmurs.
Kara freezes.
“What is it?” Cat looks to the window, sure she will see an enemy or some sickly light in the sky, something to suggest danger. But it’s just Kara looking back at her. “What’s wrong?”
“Is this—is this just because I might die? Is that why you’re doing this?”
Die.
She’s said it again.
Cat knows that it’s possible and the idea of the invincible girl dying seems so much more plausible when she can feel her heart beating, dig her fingers into the soft of her arm. She shivers.
“Is that why you’re doing this?” she returns.
“No!” She frowns. “A little. No, just…the speed. I’m not really a sex on the first date kind of girl. Not that I don’t think people should do that, if that’s what they want, I totally respect everyone’s desire to have sex at any point in their relationships or not at all!” Cat lifts her eyebrows. “I might never get another chance!” Kara blurts out. She shuffles away and pushes up until she's sitting back on her heels and her hands twist in her lap. “You said be selfish and I’m, I don’t, I don’t really do that. I like helping other people, I like putting them first, that’s what makes me happy. But I’m—I might die, Cat, and I, I maybe I want something! Just for me!” she snaps, not at Cat but out toward the window, and her eyes are dark and turbulent and she’s restless. “I wasn't something thats just for me—is, it is wrong to want that?”
“No.”
“But it is selfish.”
Cat rolls her eyes and pushes up as well, settles herself back against her headboard. “Kara, selfish isn’t wrong. You are allowed to want. You are allowed, even, to have things. And you are most certainly allowed to put yourself first.”
Kara stares at her for a long time. She sits so still, so very very still, and Cat waits.
Finally, Kara murmurs, “I don’t want to die. And…” her voice cracks and, softly, she says, “I don’t want to feel alone anymore.” Very slowly, she moves closer until her knees are pressed against Cat’s thigh. Still slowly—so slowly—she swings a leg over both of Cat’s and waits there patiently for Cat to look up at her face. Which takes some time, when Cat’s gaze catches on her beautiful legs and then on the arms that form a bracket around her. Kara dips her head. “Cat?”
“Hmm?”
“Can I kiss you? That’s all I really want.”
Cat reaches up for Kara, curls a hand around the back of her neck.
“You deserve everything, Kara. You are good,” she presses a kiss to her cheek, “and kind,” and onto her other cheek, “and brave.” She presses a chaste kiss to Kara’s lips and lingers, hearing the small sob that works its way out of Kara. She places her hand over Kara’s heart and smiles. “You say observation ends at twelve noon?”
Kara nods.
“You have ten hours. What do you want to do?”
Kara's fingers slip under Cat’s shirt as she kisses her slow and deep. They stroke up the sides of her ribs.
“When I first came to Earth, I was afraid to touch.” Her fingers play lightly over her skin, swirling tingling lines. “I was afraid that I would break things. Hurt someone.”
Cat swallows.
“My sister came home one day after our dad died. She was lonely a lot but that day was worse. I don’t remember why,” Kara tells her, distant, a little furrow between her eyebrows. Her nose skims Cat’s jaw. She sits back so she can focus and Cat blinks until she’s listening properly. “We weren’t very close then, not really. Not like we are now. Then, I watched Eliza hug her and Alex…her face… She relaxed. She sunk into Eliza’s arms and she looked so peaceful. I remember,” Kara’s fingers dig into Cat’s lower back and drag slow lines of pressure up. Cat arches, breath stuttering. “I remember being held by my mother back on Krypton. It’s hard to remember everything about a planet, its culture, food, the way it smells, the way they talked there. But,” Kara curls her open palms around Cat’s shoulders.
Cat is fixed in place—more than the hands holding her, more than the absolute power inside Kara, more than the words, the story, that intrigues Cat, more than all of that is the way that Kara is looking at her. Deep and thoughtful, and Cat is aware that she is working towards something—she recognises the way Kara is building her story towards some final point and though the steady stroking of Kara’s fingers makes her eyelids flutter, she wants very badly to hear what Kara has to say.
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget what it feels like to be at home with someone,” Kara murmurs.
“Kara,” Cat whispers, breath hitching as Kara’s fingers curl around her neck and those lips lower teasingly close to hers, brush a cool breath against her skin.
“When I touch you,” Kara tells her, a gentle secret caught between their bodies, “I feel like I have a whole world in my hands,” and she kisses her slowly, then, and thoroughly.
Cat winds her hand into her hair, exults in Kara’s whimper. She scrapes her nails down her neck, prompting a shuddering cry out of her, and that’s another secret Cat will treasure, as well as the sounds Kara makes when Cat claims patches of her throat as her own.
Kara is breathing heavily when she pulls away. She is dark, silhouetted, and the lights of the city outside illuminate her, fleck her hair with gold. Cat looks at her and she sees her: an angel—a girl; a hero—a girl; an alien with dark eyes and power written into every line of her body—a girl, with the sweetest lips and the most generous heart.
“I won’t let them take another world from me,” Kara promises her, and she settles her weight into Cat’s lap, and cups her cheek with a sure hand and kisses her, long into the morning.
When they slow and stop, Cat wraps the hero in her arms. They do not talk about Kara's heavy heart or that Cat holds tighter than she needs to, until her arms ache, because Kara needs to be held and Cat needs to believe that she is somehow helping.
The only other comfort they have is that Kara's phone doesn't ring once and they are allowed this time together. When the sun rises and spills blood red over the desert and over the city, they try not to read too much into it, try not to take it as an omen of things to come.