Chapter Text
Open shutter.
He wasn’t used to life in motion. He was used to looking through the lens of a camera and observing the world in stillness, frame by frame.
But such a view was governed by bias. Everything from the lighting to the angle to the tone of the shot could be manipulated, constructed to perfection. And if it lacked in any such manner, discarded or reshaped. He was used to shaping the image, framing it in just the right way to encompass what it was he precisely wanted to express.
So much could be expressed in the depths of a picture. It was what first had attracted him to photography. Such intricate details coming together to form the perfect image. Not only was the image itself beautiful, but the process behind it was something to behold as well.
Then there were the candid shots. A moment of plucked from the infinite expanse of time to be revisited countless times. Some of his favorite shots were the candid ones—unedited, capturing the purity of the moment. And such a moment could be studied on end and still be interpreted differently each time.
But that was the luxury of still frame. It allowed for correction and alteration in its taking, and time for consideration and postulation in its viewing.
Life in motion was undoubtedly more complicated.
Time unfolded too quickly, imperfectly. Moments could be captured but briefly in the mind, before they were replaced with a wave of new ones, each carrying new data to be processed, new angles to be considered. The beauty of the moment could not be stopped to appreciate it, nor consider it.
Yes, life in motion certainly proved a challenge.
Train wrecks were allowed to play out without pause for consideration or adjustment.
Just like the one he was currently privy to observing.
Most of the employees of CatCo knew better than to eavesdrop on Cat or become distracted by the happenings within her office. Several employees had been scolded for such, before a floor wide memo kindly (read: threateningly) reminded staff that focus and diligence were prized characteristics of CatCo’s employees, and that their focus should remain on things of their own business.
But he had a personal investment within the confines of those walls, unlike most of the other employees of the floor. Clark charged him with looking out for his cousin, from the extraterrestrial or angry bosses alike.
And so, his gaze remained steadfast on the scene in Cat’s office.
He can’t make out what they’re saying.
But sound is not where his perception of the world around him flourishes.
Capture: Profile view. The stiff set to Cat’s form. Her hands on her hips, spine straight, as she looks down at Kara seated on the sofa in front of her. Light from the chandelier above shades her form. Diamond necklace catches the light. Shines bright. News stories glowing on TV screens serve as a blurred backdrop. The maroon of her dress complements her paleness of her skin. Nice contrast.
Kara perched on the sofa, hands resting atop of gray slacks. Shoulders hunched forward. Cream cardigan, navy blue shirt. Colors blended perfectly. Lamp off to the side shades her face with a slight shadow. Head tilted downward, angle of the jaw highlighted, strong.
Coffee table between them. Papers stacked, not littered about.
Clean lines throughout the frame.
Clean lines give way to the messy situation as motion continues forward, life un-paused.
If only the stillness of a photograph in the mind’s eye was allowed to prevail.
They were arguing about something, he could tell by their body language, and from the looks of it, Cat had the upper hand.
Cat threw her hands up in the air in exasperation, and then she raised her voice as her argument appeared to come to a head.
It was so rare of an occurrence for Cat to raise her voice. He had, in fact only seen it once.
...And the person who had compared her to a dried up, more decrepit looking Lois Lane was escorted from the building minutes later after a verbal lashing that would have even the most steely of minds cowering for cover.
He’s seen Kara angry before—knows there’s an anger that runs just below the surface of her veins and when how she feels emotional, at loss of control mostly, it bubbles up to the surface.
Just as it seemed to be now.
Capture: Kara on her feet. The flush coloring Kara’s cheeks. Rosy contrast to the half of her face seen. Profile view flatters the sharp angle of her nose and jaw. Slope of the neck rigid, neck muscles prominent. More clean lines. Shoulders tilted back. Hands curled by her side. Coiled tension throughout her form.
She’s angry.
Kara didn’t back down from whatever the argument was. The loud exclamation on “That’s not fair!” from her drew the attention of a few onlookers, before Cat lowered her voice to continue the argument.
And whatever she said next seemed to jar Kara.
Capture: Close up on face. Profile. Eyebrow arched high. Eye wide, lashes catching the light. Lips open in a gasp.
Surprise.
He observed Cat continuing to talk, hammering the blow, as Kara appeared to crumple in on herself. It was few moments more, and then Kara turned swiftly about her heel as she headed to the door.
Capture: Close up on face. Eyebrows tilted down, two lines between the brows where they’re scrunched. Eyes cast in shadow. A reflection off of the lens of her glasses from the lights above. Brown rims fit her face well. Head downcast, shadow from her glasses on her cheek. Whites of her eyes shiny, glossy. Blue pops against it, look of devastation in her eyes. Lips parted. Chin tilted down.
She’s crushed.
Kara looked so lost in that moment, as she padded over to her desk, head down, before she plopped in her chair. Her head immediately found the cover of her hands, seeking refuge there, as her shoulder shook with the weight of the breath she blew out.
James gave her a moment to compose herself. A pang resounded in his chest at the pain he could sense about her, before he made his approach, his hand seeking out her shoulder as he gave it a gentle squeeze. He lowered his voice, gently, “Are you alright, Kara?”
After receiving no response, he placed his other hand on the desk to steady himself as he bent lower, his knees bending to bring him down to her seated level.
“Kara?”
Her hands released their hold on her head as she turned her face to greet James. If possible, her eyes looked even more troubled than moments before. "I don't know,” she muttered, shaking her head.
James straightened to stand, his hand squeezing Kara’s shoulder in support once more before it fell to rest back at his side. “What happened?” he questioned.
Kara struggled to find the right words for a moment, before she replied “I don’t know,” sounding now less lost, but both parts distressed and angry.
She turned in her seat, her gaze fixing on Cat’s office, Cat now typing away at her computer as if the exchange before held no weight on her conscious. “She’s angry,” Kara shrugged, throwing her hands up incredulously.
James turned his head to follow her gaze, before they flickered back to Kara. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Kara repeated, the incense in her tone rising.
“Is she angry at you, or—?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t do anything wrong!” Kara cut in sharply.
“Ok,” James said, hands raised in defense as he took a step back. Kara’s anger fell away at she seemed to remember herself, recognizing her emotions gaining the higher ground on her ability to reason rationally. She blew out a puff of air, apologizing contritely, before her posture folded in on itself once more.
James moved closer to lean a hip against the desk, before he tried again, “Maybe start from the beginning, then?”
Kara’s eyes fluttered closed briefly, before she tilted her face up to look at him. “It started yesterday morning,” she sighed. “I wasn’t late, her latte was perfect,” she said, before her eyes brightened slightly, “it even had the extra shot of caramel that she refuses to admit that she likes.”
She paused a moment, before James nodded his head for her to continue. “From the second she got here yesterday she’s just been—” Kara trailed off, her eyes clouded in distress as she turned her head back to the office.
And James knew exactly what she meant. Since yesterday morning, things had been...terse between them. Cold, even. Cat was quick to dismiss her. Each encounter he witnessed between them had Cat stiffened, whereas she normally more relaxed in Kara’s presence.
Kara was perhaps the only one in the office that could elicit such a feat.
James knew that Cat could be cutting, brutal in her critique, but rarely was such a manner unprovoked, or demonstrated without a particular goal in mind. He was more likened to believe that her brusque behavior of the past few days was more than simple misplaced anger, the anger a shield to what lie further beneath—of what, he did not yet know, but perhaps Kara’s insight would hold the key.
James was removed from his pondering at the distraught and dejected tone to Kara’s voice. “She called me useless,” she despaired, her eyes still on the subject of her current quandary.
Kara’s eyes fell shut briefly to reign herself in, before she continued emboldened by her anger returned, “I even apologized to her for missing the meeting three days ago,” she went on, “but she has no right to be mad about that.”
Three days ago. Now that struck a cord. Three days ago... what was so specific about three days ago? What was he missing?
“Three days ago?” he voiced the question mulling about his mind.
Kara puzzled a moment at the inquest, her eyebrows scrunching together, before she elaborated, “After the building collapse, when we took the latest Fort Rozz escapee back to the DEO?” Her puzzlement was replaced one more with annoyance as she went on “It’s not my fault that his debriefing took a full day and a half!”
Kara stood up, the brevity of the movement startling James as his mind started to come to clarity. “She tells me that its ok to be,” Kara went on, glancing quickly around before she lowered her voice and continued, “Supergirl, and she knows that those duties might call me away for a while, and,”
“—Kara.” James cut her off, his features twisted up in memory.
Three Days Ago.
Captured: Wide shot. Broad shoulders stood side by side with more slender ones. Reds, blues, whites, blacks, and greens of office attire. Suits, dress shirts, and dresses. A nice blend of colors. Back of heads upturned to the televisions. 3 lined up in a row. Symmetry. Headline reads: “Supergirl in Building As it Explodes. Whereabouts Unknown.” On screen picture blurred.
At the edge of the frame: Cat Grant. Angled half in profile. Black blazer, black shirt underneath. Cream pants. Black heels. Blue gem hanging lose from the silver chain around her neck.
Captured: Close up on face. Pale. Face shadowed from the TV blocking the light. Neck strained. Mouth parted. Brows lifted. Eyes wide.
She was...scared. Afraid.
It all made sense now.
A light smile touched his lips, "She's not mad at you," he began, turning his gaze from Kara to where Cat sat in the office beyond. Kara’s eyes trailed behind his. As if sense an intruding gaze, Cat looked up from her computer, a piercing, icy look directed back at Kara, the abrasiveness of the look causing Kara to recoil.
At the brazen hostility, both James and Kara diverted their gazes back toward each other, Kara’s brow raised in annoyance as she leaned a hip against the desk.
"Ok, she's mad at you," James amended, a wince flickering over his features at the harshness of Cat’s look, "but wasn't she the one who taught you about the 'anger behind the anger?'"
Kara’s brow furrowed, her face twisted in questioning before James spoke again, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Did you ever let her know that you were ok?”
Winn had been privy to the comm’s relay, and had informed James of the outcome of the mission when he returned back to the floor from their office of operations at CatCo. And while both he and Winn relaxed in the knowledge of her safety, perhaps the same relief was not afforded to all of the concerned parties.
One in particular.
Kara’s face recoiled at the query, her brain struggling to understand. “If I was—” she began, her eyes blinking in surprise before she shook her head, “Why would—,”
“It’s not like this is the first time I was involved in a building collapse,” she finished with a low, depreciating chuckle.
James tilted his head closer, as his hands left the fold of his chest to take up residence over his hips, “And what happened the last time you were involved in one?”
The Kryptonite poisoning.
Lying on a bed in the DEO while Cat vehemently insisted she be allowed to see Kara.
The weird sort of...bond... that had developed between her sister and her boss since then.
“...Oh,” Kara muttered in a low grumble, appreciating now her misstep.
She flopped down heavily into the fold of her chair and breathed out a long sigh, understanding coloring her features at last.
Her eyes gravitated back to Cat’s form, and such a look of desperate longing passed over her face, causing James pause.
He would be remiss to say that he hadn’t been considering Lucy’s assertion about what lie between Cat and Kara. But Lucy had always been rather quick in judging. His mind was more considerate, taking the time to analyze and dissect single moments captured with precision, no matter how fast Lucy wanted him to jump to the same conclusion.
Moments such as these, however, tickled his thoughts, and gave him further reason to question it.
“You know, every time you’re out there,” he began again, the timbre of his voice washing over Kara, “she’s never far from the T.V.”
Kara’s eyes flickered from her observation of Cat, her face a mixture of surprise and doubt when her gaze landed on James’s profile as he leaned his back against the edge of the desk, facing forward.
“It’s hard, being left behind,” he went on slowly, carefully contemplating his words. His eyes took on a faraway look for a brief moment, as if trapped in memory. “It’s a little easier on Winn and I, because, you give us the opportunity to feel like we’re helping.”
“But it’s hard not to feel helpless just watching,” he finished.
Of that, he was certain. Though it was true that he and Winn had their troubled minds soothed a bit by being able to communicate with Kara while she was out in the field, it was still difficult for him every time to feel shackled by the confines of inertness, helpless as he stood on the sidelines.
“You can take care of yourself, there’s no doubting that,” he said, sparing one last look through the glass walls of the office, before turning to take in Kara, her face open and earnest in listening.
“But the ones who love you are always going to be here waiting until you come back,” the assertion was strengthened by the wistfulness shining through his tone.
His features morphed into a more serious setting, his eyes clouded in memory as he pushed off the desk and walked over to the window, as if the bright light of the day could offer some clarity to the thoughts swirling about raucously his mind as he tried to organize them.
Sunlight fell upon his face, and he briefly wondered what it would be like to feel the same strength Kara had explained rejuvenated her—if it felt as warm as the touch of its rays felt to him now.
“There was a time when he didn’t come back,” James cleared his throat to swallow the lump that seemed to have formed. He heard Kara push up from her chair and felt the shift in the air as she came to stand beside him. “Your cousin,” he elaborated, throwing a sideways glance in her direction.
He turned about, resting his back against the cool glass as his arms came up to cross over his chest and his gaze drew upward toward the television broadcasting the innateness of the day. He crossed his ankles over each other, leaning his eight against the window as he began in remembrance.
“Lois and I saw watched on TV as he entered a building, and whatever happened in there,” he trailed off in pause, a painful look crossing his eyes that piqued Kara’s interest.
It had been a botched bank robbery. The assailants had nicked the gas pipe drilling into the vault. Clark had disarmed them and managed to clear the building of civilians before the building went up in a blaze of fire and smoke.
No one from the bank had been injured. But the building next door that had been engulfed by the widespread reach of the explosion—there had been a child.
Neither the television crew nor standby witness had seen Clark take exit from the building. And after its destruction, his absence remained a question of his fate.
He was pulled from the memory by the prompting look in Kara’s eyes. “We waited for 3 days, not knowing what happened to him.”
And when Clark had returned, after three days of the two of them staring endlessly at the scrolling headlines for any hint of what had befallen their friend, the only thing that had quelled the icy fury of Lois’s anger was the dejectedness that seemed pervasive throughout his form, the hint of a hollow look in his eyes.
“When he came back, he said that he had needed some time,” he said offhandedly.
He remembered the broken look on Clark’s face upon his eventual return. Clark had despaired at not being fast enough to save the child, something in him having been broken by it. He had taken off to the Fortress of Solitude for those three days, to settle his desolate mind and find himself and his strength once more.
No matter how fast he was, or how inhumane his strength or constitution may have been, he explained to James that a part of him would have to come to accept that these gifts would not always allow him to save everyone.
James’s heart clenched painfully at the thought that one day, Kara would have to learn the same lesson.
“But a piece of us will always go with you every time you go out there, Kara,” he concluded, angling to her face her.
“I think a bigger piece of her goes with you than she likes to admit,” a small smile overtook his lips at the thought, as he briefly glanced back to Cat seated at her desk, before his gaze returned to Kara.
Something swirled within her eyes then, apart from understanding.
“You should talk to her,” James muttered, placing a steadying hand of support on Kara’s shoulder.
Kara said nothing, instead settling for a nod. She was lost in consideration for a moment, before she straightened, James’s hand falling away as she tugged down the hem of her shirt, steeling herself for a return to the hostility that had sent her running just minutes before, of which she was sure still remained.
She offered him a smile in thanks, taking a step forward. She went but a few steps before a recess in her step. “Hey James,” she called, a small smile painted over her features.
“My cousin was lucky to have you,” she beamed, “We both are.”
He offered a wide smile in answer before she was encased within the glass walls of the office once more.
He watched the two a moment more—the look of annoyance on Cat’s face at Kara’s presence, before something caught his attention.
Capture: Close up on Kara’s hand. Brown rims. Perfect contrast to the pale skin of the hand wrapped around one of the arms. White background of the desk out of focus.
Trust
Kara only removed her glasses, apart from when she took on Supergirl’s persona, in moments swirling with depths of emotion. He had learned that when her glasses were removed, to brace himself for the seriousness of the situation. To reveal her true self—not the mask of the assistant that served as her cover or the superhero that served as her purpose, but rather the real Kara, the one in between—the moment resonated deeply within Kara, and the trust given at the gesture deserved rapt attention.
And he supposed that whatever was between Kara and Cat was something that required an air of seriousness. Kara had explained once how she felt that this place served to ground her. And James knew that a large part of that was the influence of both himself and Winn, but he couldn’t help but wonder if the woman sitting behind the desk on the other side of the glass had more of a steadying influence than he was initially led to believe.
He had been quite shocked in the beginning to learn that Cat had agreed to safeguard Kara’s secret. He couldn’t see how the action was self-serving, becasue after all, Cat Grant’s actions, particularly regarding a good scoop, were almost always self-serving. The motives behind the move proved perplexing, but perhaps he had been misgiving in not giving Cat the proper credit she deserved.
He had begun to see that, when it came to Kara at least, the edge of reserved hardness in the older woman softened in the slightest. He knew that she had come to care for Kara, although just how much was elusive to his understanding, despite Lucy’s continued assertion that there was something between them.
James lost track of how long he stood enraptured in his mussing, but at the sound of the office door pushing open, his eyes snapped up, pulling him from his thoughts. It appeared that their conversation reached a rather painless resolution—there had been no screaming that he had jarred him from his thoughts in the earlier moments, no crushing looks of devastation this time.
He thought, as Kara paused to glance back to Cat, that maybe he needed to give Lucy’s determined assertion some more thought.
Capture: Long range shot, depth. Kara’s hand on the door handle, arm stretched out. Body in side profile. Golden hair cascades down her back. Long slope of her neck, V shaped grove between the muscles, light shadowing the apex of the curve as her head is turned back to the interior of the room. Arm of the glasses blending in with her hair. The edge of a rim of the glasses frame peeks out from the profiled view.
The cream colored couch, the coffee table, papers still in place.
Cat’s desk. White. TV’s in backdrop.
Cat. Soft—smile, lighting, angle. Yellow glow from the lamp light from the corner of the room casts a shadow from the strap of her dress across her chest. Slight up turn to pink lips. Face relaxed, devoid of worry lines or crinkles. Chin casting a slight shadow on her neck. Eyes bright, soft.
Was there something there, between the two of them?
He’d make his own judgments.
After all, that is the beauty of a photograph, of captured moments.
...It’s up to you decide.
Close shutter.