Chapter Text
“So how was school today?” Cat asked casually, twirling zucchini pasta around her fork. It wasn’t a question she usually asked; if Carter had something to tell her about school, he would do so without prompting. He wasn’t fond of being asked purposeless questions - that was a trait they shared. But he was being unusually silent tonight, staring deeply into his dinner plate as though it contained answers to all the mysteries on his 12 year old mind, and Cat wanted to know why.
Carter remained silent for a few moments, processing the question and considering his answer, before he mirrored her casual tone. “It was nice - I made a friend in class today.”
He didn’t glance at her as he said it, but Cat was still careful to contain any expression of surprise or pleasure. Carter had been at his new school for four weeks, and this was the first he’d mentioned of bonding with any of his classmates. She knew he was tensed for her reaction.
“That’s nice.” she murmured approvingly, and made herself eat a few more forkfuls before she prompted, “what’s his name?”
“It’s a girl, her name is Kara.” With that the floodgates opened. “She’s really great, Mom - we did all the reading together for History Book Club, and she said she thought my opinions were very insightful. She has blonde hair. It’s really long and she wears it pulled back in a ponytail. And she has glasses like you and she smiles all the time, I think she’s the nicest person I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, I see! Is she pretty, Carter?” Cat asked with a little parental smirk - apparently he’d decided to skip making friends and gone straight for middle school romance. Well, he’d always been precocious.
“Mom!!” He looked shocked. “It’s not like that at all. Although she is very pretty. And she’s good at science.”
The rest of dinner might as well have been the Kara News Hour, and Cat listened with the patience that she had only for her son and juicy interviews. Finally she had to interrupt, sending him off to do his homework while she cleared the dishes into the sink, where the housekeeper would take care of them first thing in the morning. That taken care of, she settled into the leather chair in her study with a set of layouts and tried to put her mind to the task.
The price of dinner at home every night with her son was that the work had to come home with her, and it was a price she paid gladly, but she found that she was struggling to focus, her mind drifting back to Carter and his excitement. She wanted to be thrilled that he had a new friend, but part of her stayed uneasy. It was so rare - unheard of, really - for him to feel connected to someone at school. If it went awry, the letdown would be equally consuming for him, she was sure.
And why was this girl suddenly popping up now, a month into the school year? There were only 14 students in Carter’s class, and Cat didn’t remember a Kara amongst them. Perhaps the girl had recently moved to town, or had just transferred schools? It would be nice to know the lay of the land, so to speak - it was hard to predict what kind of emotional roller coaster might be coming with so little information.
At 12, Carter was a bit too old for Cat to set up playdates anymore, but that didn’t mean there was no room for motherly intervention at all. She would call the school tomorrow, see what information she could get on the child, and perhaps suggest to Carter that he could invite his new friend over after school one afternoon.
Thus resolved, she put the matter aside and focused on her layouts, determined to get them done before she went to say goodnight to her son.
~
“What do you mean, there’s no Kara in his class?” Cat demanded. Her latest assistant had just started to enter her office, but upon hearing the murderous tone to his boss’ voice, he wisely backed out again. Cat watched him go and resolved to fire him anyways - her latte had been room temperature this morning, and she couldn’t stand people who flinched from her as though she might at any moment go for their eyes. Not that she could fault their survival instincts.
“I’m very sorry ma’am, but we don’t have any Kara registered in the 7th grade.” the long-suffering secretary on the phone repeated. “In fact, I don’t think there’s a Kara anywhere in the school - we have a 5th grade Karoline, but that’s the closest... oh! Could you mean our new student teacher? She’s working with a 7th grade class, I believe her name is Kara Danvers.”
“A student teacher.” Cat repeated flatly. “Kara Danvers.” She abruptly flashbacked to Carter’s description of how “Kara” had helped him with the school reading and had a brief urge to smack her head against her desk.
Or to eviscerate the woman on the other end of the phone line. It was healthy to find an outlet for these emotions, wasn't that what her therapist kept telling her?
She reminded herself that, 5 figure tuition or no, it could do no harm for her to stay on good terms with her son’s school administration, and put on the sweet voice that she usually saved for sexist board members. “Well, thank you very much for your time, Ms Daly, I appreciate the information.”
Hearing the difference in her tone, her assistant dared to poke his head back around the glass partition as she hung up the phone, manila folder in hand, and Cat let a predatory smile cross her face.
“Aaron.”
“Actually, it’s Eric, ma’am.”
“Is it?” She tilted her head at him and widened her eyes. He looked terrified.
“Aaron’s fine.”
“Come in, Aaron. Let’s chat.”
~
Cat didn't actually meet Kara until parent teacher conferences, but she heard about her every night over dinner. It was the most she’d ever heard from Carter about school, the fastest he had ever adjusted to a new environment. Cat had pulled him out of his last school because of bullying, and although she privately credited the smaller class sizes more than the teaching assistant for Carter’s improved experience, it was nice to see him light up as he spoke, instead of shrinking into himself like he so often had the year before.
Conferences were scheduled 8 weeks into the new semester. Cat walked in on a Thursday night, coming straight from CatCo, and let Carter lead her to his home room. Green Gardens Middle School was a new age building, with glass ceilings at odd angles to let in the light, and open wall-less classrooms sprouting off the hallway to reveal other teachers sitting casually on cushions as they met with parents. Cat had liked that when she and Carter toured the school last summer - in such an open space, nothing was happening outside a teacher’s eye.
Carter’s classroom was down a ramp and around a corner. Another family was exiting as they arrived. The father looked grim as he strode out, and the dark haired boy muttered a quiet, “good luck, man - she’s not pulling her punches.” to Carter as he walked by. Carter didn't respond verbally, but he smiled an acknowledgment at the floor and his classmate seemed to take that in stride, hurrying after his father without further conversation.
A tall woman with gray hair and tired creases around her eyes looked up as they entered the space and stood from behind her desk to greet them. “Good evening, Miss Grant - I’m Ms Lieman, please have a seat and we’ll get started.” She didn't acknowledge Carter at all and he didn't acknowledge her either, staring fixedly at the floor. Hackles already starting to rise, Cat took one of the hard seats that had been lined up in front of the desk and Carter followed suit, settling quietly into the other one.
“As I'm sure you’re aware, Miss Grant, Carter is a very intelligent child, more than capable of the work we set in this class.” Ms Lieman started off, still apparently unaware that Carter was in the room listening.
Cat smiled and answered in her silkiest tone - the one that would have had employees scrambling to get out of her line of sight. “Yes, of course - Carter has always been very academically gifted, haven't you Carter?” He shot her a startled look, or maybe a pleading one. Ms Lieman did not appear to comprehend the danger, pushing relentlessly forward.
“My concern is that despite his intelligence, Carter consistently fails to complete his classwork in a timely manner. He is often unfocused in class, or even unwilling to do the work - and he is at times extremely disrespectful towards me and towards his classmates. In short, Miss Grant, Carter has an attitude problem, and unless he begins to address it, it is going to hinder his academic progress.”
She paused triumphantly, waiting for Cat’s response to this dire pronouncement. Cat looked at her fixedly and let the silence hold until Ms Lieman grew uncomfortable in it, fidgeting in her chair like an overgrown child.
“What I mean,” she started again, and Cat cut her off by holding up her hand.
“I was not inviting you to continue, Ms Lieman.” She assured the other woman softly. “I am merely considering how to respond to such a show of incompetence, in light of what Green Gardens promises me in return for my tuition money.”
“Is Kara going to be here tonight?” Carter spoke suddenly, and louder than he usually managed in front of anyone other than his mother - clearly in a desperate bid to divert her attention before she went in for the kill.
Ms Lieman didn't seem to appreciate his rescue tactics, judging by the way her lips thinned as she glanced at him. Even in direct response to his question, she spoke to Cat, not to Carter, as she explained, “we have a student teacher with us four days a week, Kara Danvers. Unfortunately she has her graduate class on Thursday evenings, and I don't think she’ll make it back here before I must move on to my next student. It's a lengthy train commute."
Cat breathed out deeply once through her nostrils, and reminded herself firmly that there were more satisfying ways to take revenge upon this stupid useless woman than outright murder.
“Carter, I wonder why Ms. Lieman addressed her answer to me, when you're the one who asked the question.” She mused lightly instead. "It seems rude to talk around someone like that, doesn't it?"
Before she could take her point any further, a tousled blonde woman came rushing into the room at too breakneck a pace for dignity, jerking to a halt by the desk and beaming at the three of them. “Carter! I'm so glad I made it in time for your meeting, I raced here from class, I've been dying to meet your mother.”
She turned that enormous goofy smile onto Cat, holding out her hand in greeting. “It's a pleasure, Miss Grant - I feel like I already know you, Carter is always sharing your good advice with me when I need it.”
“Mom, this is Kara. Kara, this is my mother, Miss Grant.” Carter announced politely, though Cat had somehow come to that conclusion on her own.
It was hard to believe that this bouncy perky girl was the superhero Carter had been describing over and over and over again - if she'd ever walked through the doors of CatCo, Cat was sure she would have chewed her up and spit her out again by mid-morning.
Still. She had addressed Carter directly, which already put her well ahead of the other moron in the room, and it was clear that Kara, at least, understood that Carter was the furthest from having an attitude problem that it was possible to be.
“Nice to meet you, Ms Danvers.” Cat said, and out of respect for her son and for the long hours that she had already lost to hearing about Kara’s homespun classroom wisdom, she made an effort to sound sincere. The girl’s eyes lit up with ludicrously genuine delight, so she must have been successful.
“Carter is such a wonderful student to have, Miss Grant.” she gushed. “He’s so kind and thoughtful, he comes out with the most amazing insights about the books we read - honestly, I hope every class I ever teach has someone like him!”
“Yes, he’s always been a thoughtful person.” Cat agreed beatifically. “Do you find that he sometimes struggles to complete his work?” Her sharp eyes did not miss the nervous way that Kara glanced over at Ms. Lieman before answering.
“Carter and I have talked about that. Carter, do you want to share what we talked about with your mother and Ms Lieman?” Kara asked encouragingly.
“I don’t mind if you do.” Carter answered quietly, and Ms Lieman gave a little snort, as though he was living down to her expectations. With ferocious amounts of self control, Cat ignored her and focused her attention on Kara.
“Alright, but feel free to step in if I’m not saying it right, OK?” Kara snagged a chair and pulled it up to the side, settling in. “Carter and I were talking about how sometimes when he has a long list of things to do - like, say, a set of math problems - and a limited amount of time in which to do them, he gets so anxious about completing the work that it’s hard for him to focus on one thing and get started. We’ve been working on solutions - one thing Carter does sometimes is cover the rest of his page with a blank sheet of paper, and try to set himself a specific goal - ‘in 5 minutes, I will have this math problem done.’ We’ve also talked about how if he doesn’t finish the work on time, it’s OK if he has to take some of it home and finish it for homework. Reminding himself of that can be a way to take some of the pressure off.”
“And holding a parent-teacher conference about how unfinished work makes him an objectively bad person might be a way to load some of the pressure right back on?” Cat suggested, raising one sculpted eyebrow. She wasn’t sure who looked more uncomfortable - Ms Lieman, Kara, or Carter.
“It was not my intention to give offense, Ms Grant.” Ms Lieman said, recovering after a pause. “We’re all on the same team here, and that’s Carter’s team. Since Carter is unwilling to speak to me, I can only give you my observations about his classroom performance. Since Kara has seen a different side of him, it’s fortunate that she was here to share her observations as well. Now, I’m afraid our 20 minutes are up and I must meet with my next student…”
Cat was distracted on the way out, but not so distracted that she forgot to ask, “who was that boy on the way in? He seemed to like you.”
Carter smiled at the ground in response. “That’s Jamie, we do math together. Kara asked me to help him stay focused, he gets distracted a lot.”
Despite herself, Cat smiled. If there was one thing that had always broken Carter out of his shell, it was his desire to help others. If Kara could read that and tap into it, then she might even be halfway competent. It was nice to think that someone in that overpriced hovel of a school was.
That night, she lulled herself to sleep planning the cutting email that Carter’s principal would receive from her in the morning.
~
Four days later, Carter’s principal had entirely failed to fire that idiotic woman who was meant to be an educator of children, and on top of that, Derek Patterson, the art director for CatCo’s highest selling magazine, broke his leg and decided that that somehow justified taking an entire two weeks off work.
Cat didn’t consider herself to be an unreasonable person. She not only allowed, but encouraged her employees to stay home when they were sick or otherwise unable to perform their jobs. What she did not encourage was for her employees to have delusions of grandeur and run their departments in a way that made them irreplaceable. It had already become very apparent that Patterson wasn’t bothering to keep any kind of second-in-command informed about his overarching plans or designs, and the result was that the draft layouts the art department had actually dared to lay upon her desk that morning were a jumbled, incoherent mess.
Which meant that it was 9 o’clock at night, Cat had just said goodnight to her son over the phone instead of in person, and there was no end to her workday in sight.
“Alicia!” she shouted without bothering to look up. “Draft an email to Patterson telling him not to bother coming back to work. And run and get me a latte before you leave for the evening.”
Nothing but silence greeted her, and after a beat she remembered that, 1 - the latest assistant’s name was actually Allison, not Alicia, and 2 - Allison had quit on the spot that morning after Cat had been a little impolite while she was frustrated with Patterson’s stand-in. The girl had no backbone.
Cat stood from her desk and took a moment to let her spine pop back into place, almost groaning at the sensation. The office was empty, and she abandoned the idea of surviving the night on that horrible brown pond-muck that the office kitchen tried to pass off as coffee. A walk down the block to get her own latte might clear her head and give her a chance to stretch her legs.
Riding the elevator down, and stepping out alone into the night air, it occurred to Cat suddenly that she was feeling discouraged - not a state of being with which she had a great deal of patience.
She was worried about her son, and about his wretched teacher who thought that the way he existed was somehow wrong, and about a world that might agree with her. She was worried about her own priorities, and about the nights she missed dinner and good-night because of magazine layouts.
She barely noticed the walk across the street into the small coffee shop that sat diagonal to CatCo’s offices, until her unhappy musings were cut short by the sight of a familiar face behind the counter: Kara Danvers, of all people, with her brow furrowed in concentration as she ran a highlighter through a low-quality printed scan of some academic looking article.
“Kiera, right?” Cat drawled, amused when Kara give a shocked little squeak as her head bolted up. It wouldn’t do to let Kara know that her name was a regular occurrence in Cat’s dinner conversation.
To her surprise, Kara didn’t correct her, just gave her a friendly smile. “Miss Grant! It’s wonderful to see you again, what can I get for you?”
“A latte, hotter than you’re legally allowed to serve it.” Cat said, and then regarded her consideringly. “And whatever you like to drink.”
Kara looked startled. “Are - are you offering to buy me a coffee, Miss Grant?”
“I am. At a price. I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes about my son.”
Kara looked hesitant, but Cat Grant hadn’t founded a multibillion dollar corporation by being easy to refuse, and within minutes she and Kara were seated at a small table near the door, drinks in hand.
“What did you want to talk about, Miss Grant?” Kara asked - she kept glancing at the door, ready to bounce up if another customer entered the shop. It made her look as though she had a nervous twitch.
“You and Ms Lieman offered me very different accounts of my son’s classroom performance the other night.” Cat said blandly, and then waited for Kara to fill the silence - one of her favorite interviewing tricks.
“Miss Grant, I’m really sorry about that. Ms Lieman let me know that I overstepped my bounds in your conference, and I want you to know that that was never my intention, really, it’s just that I know Carter has never really felt entirely comfortable around Ms Lieman, so I wanted to be sure that -”
“Kiera.” Cat cut off the fountain of words. “I’m not asking you for an apology. If I was unhappy with you about something, believe me,” she paused to put weight behind the words, “you’d know.” She took a sip of her latte - hot enough to burn through metal - and let Kara digest that for a moment before continuing. “We both know that what you were saying about Carter was right on the money, and that Ms Lieman is a bitter old hack whose pedagogical strategies reach back to before classrooms had electricity.”
And, reading between the lines, the old cow had read Kara the riot act for daring to contradict her. Since Kara had apparently gotten in trouble for the sake of her son, Cat decided to offer her a piece of helpful advice. “I understand the instinct to avoid making waves when you’re at the bottom of the ladder, but it will never get you anywhere to apologize for being right. Stand behind your actions and take the consequences, good or bad - people will remember that.”
“Th-thank you, Miss Grant.” Kara answered. “But then, if that’s what you think, I’m not sure what it is you want to talk to me about.”
“I enrolled Carter in Green Gardens because he was being bullied at his last school.” Cat admitted frankly. “I personally count my blessings every day that Carter is quieter and more thoughtful than his neanderthal peers, and I would like to shield him for as long as possible from our cultural certainty that difference is inherently a deficit. If I have pulled him out of a place where he was receiving that message from the students, and instead dropped him into a school where he is receiving it from the staff , then I am somewhat concerned. What I am asking for from you, Kiera, is an inside scoop - what exactly is the situation between my son and his teacher?”
Kara looked deeply uncomfortable, but she visibly steeled herself to speak. “Miss Grant, Carter gets along very well at school with a classmate named Jamie, with his art teacher, and with me. He refuses to speak to Ms Lieman at all, and he has had the occasional brush at recess with one or two other students. When I asked him afterwards if he was alright, do you know what he said to me? He said, ‘my mother says that people like that are held in place by their own ignorance, and if I keep moving forward I’m going to leave them in the dust.’”
She leaned forward, catching Cat’s eyes in her earnest gaze. “Anywhere he goes, he is going to face situations where other people aren’t acting their best. I think you have to trust Carter to be the person you’ve raised him to be.”
“And I do.” Cat admitted, taken aback at hearing her own advice repeated back to her with such compassion and sincerity. She took a long sip of her cooling latte and regarded the girl across from her with new curiosity.
“What made you want to become a teacher, Kara?” she finally asked, and she wasn’t sure why, except that what she really wanted to know was why someone like Kara could look at her son and see the same things Cat saw, when so many others misunderstood him entirely.
“I’ve always wanted to help people.” Kara admitted with a little smile. “I guess it’s just that when I first started middle school on Earrr...ned scholarship, I felt so lost and confused. I’d have given anything for someone to reach out to me and make an effort to understand where I was coming from. I like the idea of being able to do that for someone else.” She looked tired, for a moment. “Childhood is a hard time to be alone.”
“What about your parents?” Cat asked, perhaps a bit more sharply than she intended. “Didn’t they make you feel understood?” Kara’s quiet reminiscence was hitting on exactly what Cat feared most - that the acceptance she could offer Carter at home was next to meaningless in the face of a wider, less accepting world.
“They died in an explosion when I was thirteen.” Kara answered, looking down at her coffee awkwardly for a moment, and Cat’s private worries were momentarily derailed as she stared in helpless consternation at the young woman across from her.
“I’m sorry.” she said finally, gentled by genuine sympathy.
“Don’t be. I mean, it was sad, I’m still sad about it sometimes. But my foster parents, the Danvers, were so amazing to me - they took me in and treated me like their own daughter, right from the start. In a way, that’s really what inspired me to become a teacher. I’ve been lucky to have so many people in my life who saw that I needed to be loved, and took that as a good enough reason to love me, no questions asked. It’s how I want to treat the rest of the world - the exact same way the Danvers treated me.”
Kara smiled at her, her eyes crinkling with warmth, and Cat admitted something to herself that she'd kind of already figured out - Kara’s kindness wasn't feigned, and it wasn't weak. Compassion and gentleness were Kara’s way of being strong.
“You’re an interesting person, Kiera.” she said honestly, and had the pleasure of watching Kara blush down to her roots.