Chapter Text
The next morning, Cat woke up deliciously sore for the first time in her life. She had a face full of blonde hair and a well-muscled, naked superhero clinging tightly to her. It was, in so many ways, perfect. But Cat knew better than to trust perfect. She’d learned long ago that all perfect did was set people up to fall apart, set them up to ruin each other and be ruined in turn.
So when Kara woke up, stretching with a low groan and pressing sleepy kisses to Cat’s shoulder, Cat shrugged away.
“Not a morning person?” Kara asked around a yawn.
“This can’t happen again, Kara.” Cat was pleased with how steady her voice sounded even as her heart seemed to crack right down the middle.
All the sleepiness disappeared in an instant. “What?” Kara’s voice caught on the word.
“I’m your boss. This never should have happened in the first place.” It helped that all of it was true. Sure, the paperwork for Kara’s promotion had been sitting in Cat’s desk drawer for ages, but Kara had no way of knowing that. “You were lonely and confused, and it was a moment of weakness on my part.”
“Cat.” Kara propped herself up on her elbow and gently ran her fingertips along Cat’s temple, tucking a few loose strands of hair behind her ear. Cat shivered at the naked intimacy of the gesture. “I didn’t just show up because I was lonely or bored or whatever you’re thinking. We talked about this. I want to be around you because I…I’m falling for you, Cat. I lo—”
“No.” Cat ignored the traitorous thudding of her heart. “You don’t. You’re mistaking friendship and attraction and connection with a piece of your home for something bigger than it is.”
“I’m not a child, Cat. And you of all people should know that.” Kara shook her head, tears sparkling in blue eyes. “I was falling for you ages before I came out as Supergirl. But clearly it wasn’t mutual.” Kara was up and out of bed and dressed in a flash of speed, hurt etched so clearly in every one of her features.
Cat shot up, clutching the sheet around herself. “I didn’t say—”
“Save it. You don’t have to protect my feelings by pretending like this is for my benefit.”
“Kara, wait! Please!”
The words landed in an empty room, the gentle morning breeze floating in through the open balcony doors.
Cat let herself have a moment of weakness, a moment of regret, before forcing herself to change the sheets and order a new bedframe and pretend like her whole world hadn’t tilted on its axis.
---
The next week was painful. Gone were the late-night chats and family dinners, replaced with stilted, awkward interactions of the sort Cat hadn’t dealt with since Kara’s first few weeks working at CatCo.
On the second night with no Kara at dinner, Carter shot Cat pitying looks across the table and, after finishing his homework in record time, suggested they watch a movie together.
At work, playing at nonchalance, Cat decided she would give Kara her space to be angry and hurt, would pretend like the distance was exactly what she wanted, too.
If she spent her nights intently following any and all available coverage of Supergirl’s exploits, well, that was for her browser history alone to know.
Things seemed relatively quiet—almost too quiet—until Sunday night when the CatCo weather helicopter called the tip line to report an ongoing attack at Lord Technologies. Of course, Max being Max, the footage was absolute garbage—too many security measures in place to allow a good shot. But Cat spotted the blur of red and blue flying into the fray and a mass of black tactical gear that she had to assume was the mysterious DEO arriving on the scene moments later.
The battle seemed to stretch on and on, and Cat’s nerves were beyond frayed by the time another blur of movement registered in the fuzzy feed and the sounds of battle faded from the video. She waited nearly a full half an hour for Supergirl to appear on screen once more, offering a few vague comments to the CatCo reporter on scene before one of Max’s dozen lawyers cut her off, insisting that there would be no comments. And oh, there must be a story there…
Cat barely slept that night, thinking about Kara all alone in her apartment after having faced down dozens of well-trained soldiers, including her own uncle, without her sister by her side. Had they talked even once in the interim, Cat might have sent Kara a message to see if she were okay. As it was, their last text was from the previous Friday—little more than: “Got things all settled here faster than expected. Heading your way – can’t wait to see you!” Cat couldn’t quite bring herself to destroy the illusion, this little digital world where things between them had not yet imploded.
Still, the next morning, Cat found herself in the office a full hour early, desperately waiting for a glimpse of Kara, some assurance that she was fine.
Kara, of course, showed up late and with a lukewarm latte to boot.
And Cat, well, Cat had had enough.
“Keira!” Cat yelled, watching as Kara jumped and taking just a smidgen of satisfaction in it.
“Yes, Ms. Grant?”
“Advil. Those loud pants of yours have given me a headache.” (The headache was most certainly from clenching her jaw through the broadcast of the attack at Lord Technologies, but a woman deserves her secrets.)
“Yes, Ms. Grant.”
A minute later, Kara showed up in Cat’s doorway with a glass of water and small dish with her Advil. Only, somehow, she managed to trip—Cat wasn’t really sure how that worked when gravity wasn’t a factor—and the glass shattered on the ground between them.
Cat let out a loud sigh as Kara dropped to her knees to begin picking up the shards with her bare hands.
“For god’s sake, Kara, at least act human in the glass-walled office.” Cat headed over to her private restroom to get a dustpan and brush, but when she came back, she found Kara still kneeling on the ground staring open-mouthed at her hand. “What now?”
“I…I’m bleeding.”
The dustpan and brush clattered to the floor, and Cat rushed over to Kara. “Is it the glass? Is there something in it?”
Cat leaned down and grabbed a piece, easily grinding it to a fine powder between her fingertips.
“My powers,” Kara whispered. “I—I need to go.”
Cat wanted to chase after her but settled for listening to her conversation with James, who assured her that it happened to the “big guy” sometimes, too. Cat barely kept from rolling her eyes, but at least it assuaged her fears somewhat.
At least until an earthquake struck, knocking out power in most of National City.
At least until reports and photos appeared of a decidedly powerless Kara Danvers dressed up in a Supergirl suit standing in front of a loaded gun.
Cat practically tore through the bullpen, grabbing Winn and dragging him up to the office she’d let them keep as their little headquarters. “What in the hell is Kara doing out there?”
“Um, what?”
“Cut the crap, Witt. I know she’s powerless.”
“Look,” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I told her she didn’t have to, but Max Lord’s out there saying all this awful stuff about her, and people are tweeting and asking where she is when her city needs her, and, well, you know Kara. You know why that would get to her.”
Cat sighed, rubbing at her temples. No amount of human-grade painkillers were going to help this migraine-in-the-making. “Man the phones, and text me updates on her location. I’m off to get her back safely.”
Winn opened his mouth, then (wisely) shut it again, giving Cat a little nod before she headed back down to her office.
With a burst of speed, Cat changed out of her pencil skirt and into the pair of running leggings she kept in the office for her early morning Pilates classes. A bit of x-ray vision was enough to find that ratty old hoodie Carter kept tucked away in her office. And on her way out, she grabbed a pair of oversized sunglasses. It wasn’t perfect—she looked more hungover actress than vigilante—but she hoped it would be enough to keep her disguised as she slipped down the emergency exit stairs and into heat of the warm afternoon sun.
For the next hour, Cat tracked Kara and James across the city, waiting in the wings as Kara put her life on the line again and again, unaware that Cat was crouched close enough to throw herself between Kara and any bullets that might come her way.
As Kara and James headed off in a car once more after an attempted robbery in a pizza place, Cat looked down at her phone, waiting impatiently for the telltale text ding of Winn’s latest update. A few minutes later, it arrived: “Otto Binder Bridge. Total chaos.”
“Shit,” Cat muttered under her breath, taking off at a pace that might pass itself off as a particularly fast human sprint…sustained over miles.
By the time she made it to the bridge, two ambulances were already on their way to the hospital, and Kara was standing in the middle of traffic, helping to direct cars around a bad accident so that the EMTs could work in peace.
Of course, without any of her powers, Kara couldn’t hear the roar of an engine off in the distance, could only barely make out the blare of one more insistent horn over the dozens of others in a sea of frustrated drivers. Cat watched, horrified, as a middle-aged man revved his engine and sped around the long line of waiting cars, driving half up on the embankment as if no one else could possibly need to get anywhere as badly as he did.
“Supergirl! Out of the way!” Cat screamed, watching from the distance as the car sped at Kara, showing no signs of slowing.
Kara, idiot do-gooder that she was, held her hands up, trying for her most authoritative voice as she ordered, “Stop!”
The car did not stop.
Cat watched in what felt like slow motion as EMTs jumped back out of the way while Kara—fragile, all too human Kara—stood there like a kid playing make-believe in that Halloween costume of a suit, trusting this stranger to stop for her.
Without thinking, Cat drew her hood tighter around her face and sprinted forward, crashing into Kara and throwing the pair of them over the side of the bridge.
For a moment, there was nothing but the rush of air all around them as they plummeted towards the water. The sounds of the world fell away until it was nothing but her own heartbeat thudding in her ears. Her body seemed to come alive, and then suddenly she was swooping upwards against gravity, whooping in joy as she clutched Kara ever more tightly to her chest.
Cat felt like she could do this all day, weaving through the clouds and leaving the world behind her, and it was only the quiet, “Holy shit,” from Kara that drew her back to the present.
“Right. Yes, getting you back to safety.”
Cat landed them down by the docks and kept Kara out of sight while she made calls and ordered one of her trusted drivers to pick them both up far away from prying eyes.
After a hasty change in the car, Cat dragged a much less conspicuous looking Kara up to her apartment, waiting until they’d made it through the door to tear into her. “What in the hell were you thinking? You could have gotten yourself killed!”
Kara just stared at Cat, mouth still ajar. “You saved me.”
“But what if I hadn’t? What if I hadn’t gotten there on time? What if it turned out I couldn’t fly at all?”
“You saved me.”
“Dear god, Kara, I heard you the first time. It doesn’t excuse what you—”
“You saved me. You…you might have just given away your secret to the whole world. To save me.”
Cat frowned. “I…I wore a hood.”
“And threw yourself into oncoming traffic and off a bridge.”
They were speaking past each other, words bouncing off the walls and barely registering.
“And sunglasses,” Cat added, pulling them down and off her face at long last.
“You’re one of the most recognizable figures in the country!”
“You could have died. Do you get that?”
“You love me.” Kara said it so matter-of-factly that Cat had to pause for a moment to be sure she’d heard correctly.
“What?”
“You love me. You—you risked everything for me.”
Cat scoffed. “Little sure of yourself there…”
Kara just shook her head. “You asshole. Why did you… You let me think you didn’t care about me at all.”
“I think it’s more that you assumed that I didn’t—”
A hard kiss cut off the rest of Cat’s words, and she found, after spending a whole day terrified about losing Kara, that she didn’t have the willpower to push her away again.
“You’re getting promoted,” Cat managed between increasingly heated kisses. “And fired if you ever go out powerless again.”
“What?” Kara asked with a breathless huff of laughter.
“I won’t have CatCo employees behaving so recklessly.”
“No, no, that part I got. A promotion?”
“We can’t do this,” Cat said, gesturing between the two of them, “if you’re under my direct supervision.” She dared let those dreams of a future together flicker into existence once more, dared to let herself linger on them, claim them for herself.
“I mean, I just thought you’d have someone else become my direct supervisor.”
“And,” Cat added, stretching out the word, “you’ve deserved this promotion for longer than I care to admit.”
“Oh?”
“You’re smart and talented and astonishing, Kara. I’ve been…selfish in keeping you to myself all this time.”
“I—I’ve loved working for you.”
Cat let out a loud laugh at that.
“Fine, the job itself isn’t perfect. But I love working with you. Helping you. Making you happy.”
Cat stepped back just a hair, enough to create the distance she needed to hold Kara’s gaze. “Do you know what would make me happy, Kara?”
“What?”
“Seeing you do all the brilliant things I just know you could accomplish.” Images of Pulitzer Prizes and shared bylines for their groundbreaking investigations into Cadmus and Myriad flashed through Cat’s mind. “And you won’t get to do them—not all of them—as my assistant.”
“Wow.” Kara pinched at her own forearm, then winced. “You love me, and you’re sappy as hell.”
“I am not.”
“Are too.” Kara grinned, taking Cat by the hand and drawing her down the hallway and towards her bedroom. It looked less like a war zone these days, though the deep gouges in the brick had yet to be repaired. (After a third sleepless night surrounded by reminders of Kara, Cat had decided a full renovation might be in order.) “But it’s cool. I love you, too. Even when you named me Supergirl and insulted me on the front page of a national paper and told everyone on that talk show that my sense of fashion was terrible.”
“Now who’s sentimental?” Cat huffed, toeing off her shoes and dropping to the edge of her bed.
“I mean, I didn’t save a Post-It note left on a cheesy romcom DVD…”
“Just wait until Joelle’s done with renovations,” Cat grumbled. “Everything in this place is about to be lined with lead.
“But I haven’t even gotten through all your drawers yet!”
Cat let out a loud cackle as Kara frantically whipped her head back and forth, gaze tracking along all the closet doors and dresser drawers she’d yet to snoop through.
“How could I possibly live without knowing what’s in here?” Kara asked with a melodramatic sigh as she pulled one of Cat’s more…interesting drawers open. Cat barely bit back a smirk as Kara’s gaze stuttered over what she’d found. “Oh!”
“Don’t go looking for things you aren’t prepared to find…” Cat taunted, her voice lilting over the words.
She found herself with a lapful of decidedly more fragile than usual superhero a moment later. “Just you wait for my powers to come back.”
“Although,” Cat drawled, running a finger down Kara’s arm, “I might need to do my civic duty and make you wait. Can’t have you tied to my bed while the battle for National City rages on outside. An incentive, hmm?”
Kara’s teeth sunk into her lower lip as her gaze dropped to Cat’s mouth. “I’m holding you to that promise.” She seemed to shake herself out of it a moment later. “But, um, that whole battle thing? It might not be so far off.”
“Oh?” Cat leaned back far enough to see Kara in full.
“I got a kind of cryptic message from Alex. I think she and Astra are coming back.” She twisted her fingers in her lap. “They have a plan, something they’ve been working on, but I think…it’ll be risky.”
“Well, I’ll be right there with you,” Cat murmured, drawing Kara into her chest.
“Really?”
“I’m not putting on gaudy primary colors, if that’s what you’re asking,” Cat laughed. “But there are lots of ways to fight back, Kara. And if the world’s ending, I want to be right there by your side.”
“Together,” Kara whispered, squeezing Cat’s hand and pulling her into a kiss.