Chapter Text
Before they could say something more, Kara’s phone rang. She took a moment to check the text. It’s James, a reminder that the editorial meeting is starting in five, and asking why she’s still nowhere to be seen.
Ops. Not good. She has missed the one yesterday, miss another one today and Snapper will have a good cause to get her out of his department, permanently.
Apologetically, she put away the phone and look back at Oliver. Bad timing. These are the times she’d wish for Kyptonian superpower to include cloning herself.
Oliver, on the other hand, is being surprisingly understanding and took the words right out of her mouth. “I appreciate your help, Kara. We can talk later when you are available.”
“Yes, sorry, meeting at work.” She quickly uttered the words and handed him a name card. “Here, my number. Catch up with you later, probably noon. We’ll get you a way back!” She gave him one last confident smile and flee to her office.
Right on time with five seconds to spare. Thank Rao.
Turns out that was one of the few good things happening today.
James and Snapper had a fight during the morning meeting. Technically it wasn’t even a fight, because Snapper has totally got the upper hand, leaving James behind doubting his capability as the new CatCo CEO. She got assigned the interview with Lena instead of the president, not that she dislike Lena. Well, looking at the positive side, she’s still got her chance to meet the president as Supergirl, twice. That’s at least something.
Then it all went straight downhill.
She was about to tell Alex about Oliver when the Kryptonian escaped from DEO last night shows up out of nowhere and abruptly decided to attack the president. The president! What is wrong with him! She didn’t attack the president, or anyone, when she first came to earth! And neither did her cousin!
What’s worse, he got away. They didn’t even get to get an eye on him.
One thing at a time. Alex has got enough on her plate as it is. She decided to leave that talk to some time later, maybe in the evening, over dinner. Hopefully, if she’s still got time for dinner.
Meeting the president in DEO was the nicest moment of the day. She was exactly the person Kara has known her to be. She is an egalitarian, who believes in equal right and that aliens should be treated the same way as human. She stands firmly on her ground of issuing the , and made a beautiful mini-speech when J’onn casted his doubt. Oh, how she wishes she could quote that for the article. She would have quoted that if she was assigned that interview.
Then there was hers interview. To be fair, Lena was nice. Unlike her notorious brother who adamantly set out to destroy Superman at all cost, she seems a lot less hostile to aliens and actually wanted to do some good with the company’s resources.
That was until she pulled out the prototype machine that was designed to distinguish between human and alien with one single skin test, the plain definition of discrimination.
Guess the Luthors are not that different after all. No, that was mean. Lex is a distinct domain of evil, even Lena doesn’t deserve that.
Luckily the device didn’t work when she was forced to try. Huh, so much for Luthor high tech. She sincerely wishes for it to stay that way.
Despite her annoyance, Supergirl is an American who believes in fair and justice. And that means doing things the right way. So she composed all her passion into words, and delivered a satisfactory piece of article that she was so certain Snapper would be impressed. Which, worked the exact opposite way. He bashed her article, called it bias, and told her to rewrite.
Then did she realize it was already sunset. Oh Rao, Oliver! She’s totally forgot about it with all the mess she’s went through during the day. Scrolling in her inbox, she found his one message, sent to her half day ago (Ops), politely asking her for a suitable time to meet. Right, she glanced at her desktop, a blank word doc awaiting her input. Kara sighed in frustration and decides to leave it aside for a while. A chat with Barry’s friend suddenly becomes much more tempting. Time for Supergirl to enjoy a moment away from all the mess and meet some new friend.
A few minutes later, they are sitting on the balcony, enjoying pizza deliveries – very considerate of Oliver to bring extra portion.
“Sorry Oliver, today was so busy, with the president visiting and my first official interview…”
Her apology was soon cut off by Oliver’s reassuring smile. “Hey, Kara, I understand. Living a double life can be hard, even with superpower. I heard about the attack today morning, I hope everything is alright?”
Rao it feels good to talk to someone who understands.
“Yes, thanks. We are still tracking the attacker, luckily no one was injured so, that’s a win. We just have to find him before the president makes her next public speech.”
“We?” Oliver prompted. “You’ve got a team or something?”
“Initially it was Winn, James and me, only for a while though. Now I’m working with the DEO to fight alien criminals.” Oliver raised an eyebrow and Kara could see the curiosity in his look. Ops, Alex is so gonna lecture her on revealing DEO without authorization. “DEO stands for Department of Extranormal Operations, basically, we deal with abnormal threats, mostly aliens. Speaking of which, I should go visit Winn later, see if he can come up with a path to get you home.”
“So, a federal agency? Extranormal, I could fit into that.” Oliver said, jokingly.
“Technically, a secret federal agency, so…” Kara added for precaution’s sake, finishing her last piece of pizza.
“Confidential information, I get it.” Oliver pondered for a moment, before he speaks again with a careful tone. “When you tell Winn, or the DEO about my case, would you mind leaving out the part about my vigilante-ing? Government organizations don’t usually react well to that, and I don’t plan on picking up that role here anyways.”
Kara is not keen on keeping secrets from her friends, but it's a reasonable request and it is his double identity. Plus, with any luck Oliver should be back to his world in a day or two, withholding that piece of info wouldn’t do any harm, so she nodded. “Sure. I’ll say you’re a friend of Barry.”
The slight tension in Oliver’s voice visibly dissolved. “Thank you, Kara.”
Kara grinned. “What are friends for?”
She caught a blink of surprise rushing through Oliver’s eyes, before he holds up the glass of whiskey with a smile more genuine than before. “To friendship.”
“To friendship.” She agreed, sipping her whiskey, does Oliver know that alcohol does not work on Kryptonians when he brought it?
They looked down at the night scene of National City from the balcony, lights shining brightly around CatCo, until they reach the poor area of the city where everything suddenly turns dark. Kara wondered if the view has reminded Oliver of his home.
Finally, it was Oliver who broke the silence. “Why did you choose journalism? Being a reporter does help with investigation, but DEO is clearly a better source of information.”
“No!” Kara almost jumped at Oliver’s theory, she’s got to admit, this particular reason has hardly crossed her mind when she made the decision. “I didn’t become a report for that.” She paused, remembering the day she stood in Ms. Grant’s office, announcing her career decision. “Being a reporter is about connecting with people, serving the public by finding the hidden truth and telling stories the public has a right to know about. It is my calling.”
Finishing her speech Kara realizes Oliver almost seems stunned.
“That’s not what you have expected.” She teased.
“No, it’s not.” He admitted.
“What did you do aside from being vigilante then?” Barry is a CSI, she wonders if Oliver’s job is also somehow related to his other identity.
“I owned a bar.” Now that’s an interesting choice of work. Before she could raise her questions, Oliver continued his explanation.
“I used it as an alibi for my night-time activity. My friend and my sister were the ones actually running it.” Now that explains where his theory came from. A glimpse of nostalgia flashed through his expression, almost too quick to be seen.
“You also have a sister? You must miss her a lot.” She can totally relate to that from her own life.
“Her name is Thea.” It looks like Oliver is flashed with warmth and proud, well, that is what family does.
“Alex is my sister. Before you ask, she’s not Kryptonian, me and my cousin are the only two on earth, uh, and there is one more who came to this planet last week and decided to go after the president right after he wakes up and we still have no idea why he’s doing that. Anyways, I was adopted by the Danvers when I was 13, she helped me a lot adapting to living on Earth and blending in.”
“Are you sure he just came here?” Oliver frowned.
“We saw him crash-landing with a Kryptonian pod, so, Yes.” Indeed the things do not add up, but that’s for them to find out. “What is it?”
“Supposing he does know the meaning of president on earth, why would he want to assassinate her? From what I heard, the attack seemed carefully planned. When did he wake up?”
Valid questions, but the burning marks in the airport wouldn’t lie.
“Last night. We know it’s him because the attacker used heat vision.” Seeing the look of confusion on Oliver’s face, she added. “It’s a Kryptonian ability.”
Oliver nodded but didn’t say anything.
And that is when Winn called. They have located the Kryptonian in the Mount Pride Observatory.