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Kara nearly breaks the balcony in her haste to land, desperate to get inside. She’d been part way through her patrol when the distant sounds caught her attention, and she’d only barely managed to keep from breaking the sound barrier on the way home. Only the knowledge that would be far too risky for her identity kept her in check. There’s too much at stake now to ever take that chance.
“Cat?” Kara calls as soon as she’s inside, not bothering to change from her suit. She knows the rules, but this is an extenuating circumstance. She needs to hurry. “Cat, where are you?”
“In here.”
There’s no panic in Cat’s voice to match Kara’s, but that’s not reassuring. Not when Kara can still hear the rasping breaths in the background.
In a flash she’s standing in the door of the nursery. Cat is sitting comfortably in the rocking chair, little Mia in her arms. But where Cat is calm, rocking slowly as she holds their daughter, Mia is red faced and fussy. Her breathing sounds off, raspy and uneven, loud enough for Kara to hear without her super hearing.
“What happened?” Kara asks, holding herself back to human speed as she crosses the room to kneel by Cat’s side.
As expected Cat levels a mild glare at the suit, but Kara is too focused on the baby in her wife’s arms. Six months old, and the light of her mothers’ lives.
Right now that light is whimpering softly, and Kara raises a gentle hand to trace along her daughter’s brow, brushing a lock of sweat soaked hair back from her eyes.
“Kara, she’s fine,” Cat promises, shifting her hold on Mia just enough to bring a free hand up to meet Kara’s. “She’s got a little cold, nothing serious. I gave her a little children’s Tylenol and sent Carter off for some Pedialyte about ten minutes ago, we’re just waiting for it to kick in.”
Kara tries to remind herself that Cat’s been through this before, has raised two sons through the tumultuous time of infancy and into toddlerhood. She knows what a cold looks like, and what to do for one.
But it isn’t as easy to believe that when she’s staring down at their sick child, listening to the way each breath catches in Mia’s lungs. This is her little girl, so tiny and vulnerable in Cat’s arms. Their little girl, who in six months hasn’t had so much as a runny nose.
“Are we sure this is normal?” Kara says quickly, trying to seem concerned but not panicked and knowing she’s failed when Cat smiles knowingly. “I mean, she’s half-Kryptonian. And she hasn’t been sick before, even though you hear all the time about how often babies catch something. Maybe her Kryptonian half has been protecting her and something’s gone wrong.”
“Breathe, darling,” Cat says soothingly, directing their joined hands to rest over Mia’s chest as it rises and falls. “I promise, this is completely normal. We’ve kept her mostly isolated or disinfected everyone coming within twenty feet of her for the past few months, remember? Until last week, when we took her to CatCo to introduce Mia to her future empire.”
Kara remembers that trip, how happy she’d been to show off her beautiful daughter to her coworkers as Cat only half pretended she wasn’t loving every second of it. It had been their first real outing as a family, with Carter alternating between standing near Cat and holding Mia as he whispered every fun fact he could think of about CatCo and what their mother had accomplished.
“Are you saying someone at CatCo got her sick?” Kara asks, thinking back to everyone they’d met that day. They’d passed around hand sanitizer, but maybe that hadn’t been enough…
“I’m saying she’s a baby, and her immune system is about where yours is when you blow out your powers.” Cat’s voice is pointed, bringing back memories of every time Kara pushes too hard and solar flares. Most of the time, unless she’s stuck in the med bay with serious injuries, she catches at least one cold before her powers return.
Kara nods her understanding as she remembers the little details she’d forgotten until now. The little boy on the sidewalk in front of CatCo that had sneezed without quite managing to cover his mouth. The security guard with slightly glassy eyes and a nasal tone. Even the CatCo employees that hadn’t immediately flocked to see the baby could have coughed and spread their germs around. And what wasn’t a big deal to adults with fully functioning immune systems might be an entirely different story to an infant.
Even a half-Kryptonian infant.
“I wish we knew more about how her Kryptonian side would affect her.” It’s a common refrain, one they’ve both voiced many times since the surprise discovery of Kara’s pregnancy.
Clark hasn’t had children yet, he and Lois both not sure they want to take that particular step just yet, if ever. But Kara and Cat hadn’t seen any reason to think pregnancy was possible for them, and hadn’t taken any precautions to lessen the chances of conception. There was just too much about Kryptonian physiology on Earth that they didn’t know, a lack that extends to how Mia will react to the yellow sun.
Cat nods in agreement, but there’s a smile on her face rather than a frown to match Kara’s. “We’ve known there would be challenges from the beginning. I don’t know about you, but I’m glad our first big one is a little cold, not Mia suddenly floating out of her crib in the middle of the night.”
“That reminds me, Alex finally finished work on that red sun nursery lamp, so she shouldn’t start that even if she does get powers.”
Alex had taken her role of aunt and godmother extremely seriously since they’d announced Kara’s pregnancy. From ensuring Kara’s medical needs were met to coming up with dozens of helpful tools for dealing with a potentially superpowered toddler, she’d worked nonstop to prepare for every possible contingency. The red sun night light was only the latest invention.
“Tell her we’ll pick it up tomorrow when we visit the DEO,” Cat says quietly, looking down at Mia. Her smile doesn’t fade in the slightest, but Kara still tenses up.
“The DEO? I thought you said everything is fine, why do we need to go to the DEO?” Extending her hearing and carefully X-raying Mia for any sign of trauma, Kara is near panic until Cat reaches out with a calming hand.
“She’s fine, Kara. I promise. But I also know you’ll want confirmation of that, and I can’t handle more than one night of you sleeping next to her crib listening to every breath. So we’ll go in tomorrow morning and let Alex give her a check up.”
Since Kara has to admit Cat has a point, all she does is nod sheepishly. She’d already been planning on spending the night in the nursery, ready to spring into action if Mia so much as coughed. Having scientific proof that their daughter is fine would go a long way towards settling her lingering unease.
“You get used to the panic eventually,” Cat offers as Kara settles into a more comfortable position, leaning her head against Cat’s leg where she can look up at both her wife and daughter. “It won’t go away, but after a while you’ll be able to hold her when she’s sick and not think of the worst things that could happen. And years after that, you’ll even be willing to let her out of your sight for hours and days at a time.”
That seems impossible at the moment, but Kara knows it’s the truth. She knows, because she’s seen Cat do it. Seen her send Carter off to a friend’s for the weekend, felt the tension in her shoulders for a moment as the door closed behind him only to see it fade with the next breath.
Not for the first time, Kara is grateful that of all the people in the world she could be doing this with, she’s lucky enough to have Cat by her side. It’s almost impossible to consider it ever being someone else, not when Cat always knows exactly what to say when Kara needs someone to lean on.
Slowly the rocking and medicine start to help, as to the constant presences of her mothers, and Mia slowly drifts off to sleep in Cat’s arms. Her breathing sounds better, and Kara feels the cold panic in her chest start to relax, finding it easier to draw her own breaths in turn.
“Do you want me to take her?” she asks quietly, having learned the hard way that their daughter is a very light sleeper. If not for the lack of evidence while she’s awake Kara would be certain super hearing was one power she did have.
“No, I’ve got her.” The words are quiet, but spoken quickly enough that Kara looks up in surprise.
Where Cat had looked so calm and in control earlier, now that Mia is asleep Kara can see the edges of worry in her eyes, and is reminded of the earlier warning that the feelings never go away. And while Cat has done this before, that doesn’t make it any easier.
So Kara leaves mother and daughter be, content to sit on the floor beside them and listen as Mia’s breathing gradually eases. Even if they can’t do anything more to help, they can still be there for their little girl. Their little girl, and each other.