Work Text:
After it was all over, the Daxamites gone, Lena and Mon-El safe and Lillian and Henshaw vanished again to whatever dark corner they called home, Kara, feeling an odd, restless sense of some kind of lacking closure, took to the sky to make a few spiraling laps around the city before she called it a night.
On her fourth circuit over the blistered and broken buildings and shattered roads, she passed over CatCo, and there was Cat, sitting on her balcony with a glass of champagne, looking up .
Like an iron filing to a magnet, Kara descended.
“Supergirl,” said Cat, with a knowing smile.
“Miss Grant.”
“I know I've told you to call me Cat.”
“Cat,” allowed Kara, with a dip of her head. She lighted on the balcony, surveying the damage inside; it looked terrible, rubble and scorch marks and shattered glass, but the structure was still solid, the walls standing stable and firm. “Thank you again. For your advice.” She leaned back on the balcony, letting the memories wash over her. “All of it.”
“Oh, don't be so grateful, Supergirl.” Cat waved a hand dismissively, took a final sip of her champagne, and set the fluted glass down on the miraculously untouched glass table to her left. “I only ever remind you of what you already know.”
“If you do,” said Kara, unconvinced, “it's because I need that reminder. I couldn't do any of this alone. I need my friends.” She met Cat's eyes. “I need their faith, and their guidance.”
“Well.” Cat gentled, a little. “For whatever my guidance is worth, you're always welcome to it. And...” She looked away, but there was no hedging or hesitation in her voice. “There's no one who has more of my faith.”
For a moment, they stayed like that, quiet and comfortable, and Kara finally let it all wash over her, the adrenaline and fear and stress of fighting Kal, the desperate victory, the devastated city... and the soothing presence of Cat, her familiar shampoo and perfume and fabric softener, the subtle scrape of her silk blouse over her skin, the unique cadence of her breathing, all the reassuring sensory cues she'd missed so much all this time, and she relaxed into it, finally letting the anxious energy of the battle recede.
“So you really didn't know?” Kara finally asked, once it became obvious that Cat had no distracting observations to make, no more sage advice to impart, was in fact willing to sit there quietly all night, if Kara wanted. “About the President?”
Cat smiled. “Olivia always had a few quirks, but when we were in college, as far as the average human knew, Superman was the only alien on the planet. Even the best reporter can't find a truth she doesn't even know to look for.”
“Are...” Kara swallowed. “Are you mad at her?”
“For ordering the DEO to shoot you down? She's made better decisions, but I suppose she has the whole free world to worry about. And you did make it out alive.”
“No, I meant – for lying to you about being an alien.”
Cat gave Kara a brief, piercing look.
“No,” she said, not sternly exactly, but with a firmness and conviction that was clearly not to be questioned. Then she laughed. “She made me a party to a constitutional crime, I'm actually a little grateful. I think that's the most exciting thing that's happened to me since the day you showed up.”
“But, she was your friend. You trusted her.”
“It's a dangerous secret. Perhaps I gave her reason to believe I wasn't a safe person to tell.” Her voice was slow, layered with meaning. “But her motives don't really matter, do they? If I'm truly her friend, I should respect them, whether or not I understand them. Though I suspect I do now, at least much better than I did then.”
“But you're a reporter, the truth is everything to you.”
“Oh, Supergirl. There is no 'truth,' that's the first thing one really learns as a reporter. Everyone has a different perspective, a different story. Our job is to figure out which perspective, which version of the story will do the most good in the world, and make sure it's the one that people hear. And the story of the refugee who fell to Earth and made her way as a human... It's a compelling story, important, but it's hers to tell, in her own time. There's no good in the world to be had from trying to force her. And all too much harm,” she added, soft, eyes meeting Kara's, an apology if Kara wanted to hear it.
Kara looked up at the stars, bright and clear tonight, the normal orange light pollution of National City dimmed by the destructive wrath of the Daxamite fleet.
“When did you know?”
“Truthfully?” Cat sounded wry. “When you pulled that trick with the double, I was suspicious again by the end of the day. When that Bizarro Supergirl showed up and the first thing out of your mouth was to insist that a woman who looked exactly like Supergirl wasn't her, I was sure. But I suppose the final proof was Kara Danvers' whole family showing up to support you during the Myriad crisis.”
Kara, finally, laughed, short and helpless and relieved. “You know, Alex told me you knew, right after that, and I didn't believe her. I was sure you would have fired me.”
“Oh, I still wanted to, for quite a while. I couldn't imagine what you were doing wasting time fetching coffee when you could be doing... well, literally anything else, really. But you understood, didn't you, long before I did. It's not what you do...”
“It's who you love,” finished Kara.
“CatCo was where you could be with the people you love. James, Winslow, that useless gossip Susan from Legal, knowing you you probably even have some kind of strange grudging affection for that ass Snapper.”
“And you,” said Kara, quiet but firm. “James, Winn, and you.”
“And me,” allowed Cat, “although considering how I treated you, I can't say I understand why.”
It was surprising and even a little painful to hear, and Kara turned to Cat, speaking as earnestly as she could. “Cat, you are so good. You put yourself in danger over and over again to protect other people without a second thought. I mean, my boyfriend is an actual Daxamite with powers like mine and he took off from that ship the first minute he could, and you're just a human, not even a trained fighter like the agents at the DEO. Your courage...” She shook her head. “It leaves me in awe. It always has.”
“Well, we all know I'm amazing, but that particular comparison seems more like a slight on your boyfriend than a compliment to me. The Kara I know would never have settled for someone who wouldn't even try to help stop the megalomaniacal alien fleet.”
“I love him,” protested Kara.
“So you said,” said Cat dryly.
“I do!” She folded her arms, glared at Cat insistently, and repeated, “I do....”
But in the sharp heat of Cat's skeptical eyebrow tilt, it came out more like a question.
Kara slumped against the railing. “I just, I can't hurt him, accidentally, I can't say something that doesn't make sense to a human and scare him off, he's not going to leave me for a new girlfriend or a new superhero hobby or to dive, and I've just... I've been so lonely.”
Cat's eyebrow went up again slightly at the dive , but she just leaned next to Kara. “And has he made you feel less alone?”
“At first, a little,” said Kara miserably.
“Oh, Kara.”
“I guess you're wrong. I didn't have it all figured out, did I?”
Cat sighed. “You did, but as always, you're too damn selfless to follow through. If you miss your sister, tell her that and insist she spend more time with you. If you think Winn and James have gotten too into their vigilante nonsense to remember the whole reason they do it is you, go remind them. I left CatCo because I wasn't happy here, and I wasn't happy because I was trying to be above it all.” She rolled her eyes. “The Untouchable Cat Grant, surrounded by people she cared about but completely unwilling to actually connect with them. Don't make my mistake, Kara. You've given this city, and your friends, so much, you're allowed to ask for something back. To do something for yourself for once.”
She was so emphatic, so demanding and aggressive in her concern, her love and admiration manifesting as borderline insult and it was just so familiar, so Cat, it seeped into every cell of Kara like the light of the sun, renewing and energizing and like everything was just right again, for once –
– “If you say so,” said Kara, and for once, she yielded completely, gave in to that overwhelming warmth, and leaned down and kissed her.
She was gentle, careful, but Cat pushed back immediately, hard and fierce, one hand latching onto Kara's bicep to hold her close, the other sliding behind her head to tangle in her hair as they turned into each other, a year of building tension and another of hollow loss melting away in that needy, long-awaited embrace.
It was Kara who pulled back first, a helpless smile splitting her face, her hands wrapped gentle around Cat's hips. Cat, her own fingers still glued to Kara, looked down, her eyes drifting to the Crest of El, and her expression was actually almost shy, her own smile small and a little amazed.
But when she said, “I didn't come back for this,” an almost scolding tease, she sounded just as sure of herself as ever, and Kara laughed and bumped their foreheads gently together.
“You should have. I hate the idea of you feeling so alone when there are people here who care so much about you.”
Cat smirked. “Like Olivia.”
“And Carter,” agreed Kara.
“And we can't forget James, he risked his life for me after all.”
“No, of course not,” grinned Kara, joy bubbling over, and she tilted forward and kissed Cat again.