Chapter Text
Kara hums softly to herself as she makes her way to the basement of the CatCo building. She didn't have to come down here often, but when Cat decided that something should "never dare exist within my sight" there was only one thing to do.
File it in the basement where Cat would never go.
Cat usually meant 'destroy this before I light it on fire and anger the building safety team' but Kara knew better than that. More than once, stashing something in the basement had paid off. Cat would change her mind or get inspired where before she'd been stuck, and Kara could make a trip down to where she'd stashed it with all the others. Cat had never commented on it before, never done more than give Kara a searching glance as she hands the file or print over, so Kara kept doing it.
Most of the time that didn't happen, of course. A good number of the items relegated to basement storage were half-baked ideas Cat started hoping for inspiration to strike. And when it did, it was usually on something else entirely.
With a new and improved idea in front of her, the original nonsense had to go.
Which is why Kara had a sorting system, even down here. There were three bookshelves with boxes on them, with the things Kara knew would likely never see the light of day again in the very back, and the ones she knew Cat would eventually want back stored in the front.
Most things went on the middle bookshelf, possibilities without any definite promise. Usually there were only two or three things in the boxes on the front shelf, and rarely was anything so terrible it earned the back shelf.
Today was an exception.
The file in Kara's hands was, she could tell, inspired by a night of drinking while Carter was with his father. Usually Cat had something to distract herself on those weekends, rare as they're becoming these days, but when a planned conference fell through due to sickness in the entirety of the planning staff, she'd been stuck.
And probably slept on her office couch, but Kara was politely ignoring that fact. After all, she couldn't prove it, hadn't swung by CatCo on her patrol the night before, and Cat was as put together as ever when she came in to start the day. Having a shower and closet tucked away behind a false wall in her office certainly made plausible deniability easier.
And that led to the file Kara was currently holding. Half legible scribbles, a few scratched out areas that Kara's fairly certain are supposed to be drawings underneath the copious amounts of ink hiding them, and a diagram that Kara can't quite make out but is fairly certain attempts to connect the Queen of England to Kevin Bacon via Superman.
Whatever it was, Kara was very, very certain that it would never be needed again. Not certain enough to destroy it the way Cat no doubt wanted, but certain enough to shove it in the very last box, the one she'd never had reason to use before.
Perched on the bottom shelf of the last bookshelf, tucked in the back corner of the basement archives, the box in question is so deeply in shadow that without Kryptonian vision Kara doesn’t think she’d realize it was there. She’d grabbed the dingy banker box when she’d first set up this alcove, not expecting to need it but always preferring to be prepared. And there it had stayed, tucked in the most ignored and forgotten corner of CatCo, ever since.
Pulling the box from where it’s tucked, Kara frowns at the difference in weight from what she’d expected. Being mindful of her strength at all times gave Kara a very strong ability to measure the weight of something quickly and accurately. The calculations run through her head in microseconds, every second she interacts with something. Its weight, the strength of the material, the force her body exerts on it, everything is measured and calculated to stay safely within tolerances.
Which means she immediately notices the added weight.
She already knows she’s alone in the basement, so Kara doesn’t hesitate to walk back out into the main room and a table sitting there. Sure, she can see perfectly fine in the darkness, but a table makes sorting through whatever was in the box easier. As far as she knew, no one visited the basement archives willingly, and definitely never went further than the section near the front. It’s what made this hidden corner so effective for her needs.
Lifting the lid off, Kara's not sure what she was expecting, but an old and battered copy of a Dungeons and Dragons rule book definitely wasn't on the list. Even the mention of the game is practically banned at CatCo after the last time someone uttered it in Cat's presence. That might be why it's hidden in the back of the archives, but Kara doesn't know who else might be aware of this hidden corner. She'd barely found it herself, tucked behind a much larger series of shelves as it is.
Under the book, which Kara sets aside, she sees a notebook with several loose sheets of paper sticking out of the sides. It looks like on of the standard CatCo purchased supplies that you can get in any supply closet, so that doesn't give any hints.
It's not until she flips it open that she gets her first clue. And by clue, she means concrete proof of who the notebook belongs to.
Now if only her mind would wrap around that fact.
Even recognizing the careful print within the notebook, Kara's brain refuses to process what she already knows. All of her Kryptonian intelligence, primed over generations for increased cognitive processes and problem solving, all of it fails her in that moment.
Because she recognizes the handwriting just as well as she recognizes her own. This is Cat's handwriting.
And not just her handwriting. Cat has at least three styles of writing, with minor variations on each. There's the hurried scribbles that belong to meetings and late night ramblings, familiar to Kara from hours spent transcribing them into something coherent for Cat to review.
Then there's the everyday handwriting, belonging to layouts and article reviews. Neater than the quick scrawl of thoughts, but with no particular attention paid to more than basic legibility. That comprised of most of Cat's written communication, and was the most familiar to Kara.
The handwriting in front of her now is neither of those. The entire notebook in front of her is filled, front to back, with the careful and precise script that Cat uses when she's particularly invested in something. Checking the rule book, Kara sees more notes and annotations on almost every page. There are sections circled or crossed out, commentary added, or entire replacement paragraphs tucked into the margins.
It was both completely at odds with Cat’s reaction to any mention of DnD, and completely in line with it. The level of detail and attention indicated a deep knowledge and interest, more than could be explained away for a story. But the amount of editing, crossed out sections, and criticism fit perfectly with Cat’s seeming dislike.
It’s not until Kara flips to the back half of the notebook that she gets the first bit of an idea of how to reconcile the two seeming opposites. Because the last half of the notebook isn’t more critiques, it’s an incredibly detailed outline for a new tabletop game. One that, from the quick glance Kara gives through the pages, brings aspects of DnD and Catan together into something completely new. She’s not familiar enough with TTRPGs as a whole to know if there’s anything similar out there, her game nights sticking more to card and guessing games, but somehow Kara doubts it. The entire thing has Cat’s particular brand of thought stamped all over it, and that’s not something you can find just anywhere.
But what is it doing tucked away in the basement of CatCo? Not just in the basement, but in the darkest, most hidden part? The layer of dust on the top of the box tells Kara it’s been here for a while, perhaps from just after she’d claimed the alcove for her own sorting needs.
It’s a mystery, but Kara has no time to figure it out. She can hear Cat on the edge of her awareness, muttering about how her assistant always seemed to disappear at the worst times. At least this wasn’t for a Supergirl emergency, but Kara is definitely pressing her luck being down here this long.
Tucking her original pile of papers into the box, Kara gathers up Cat’s notes and the rule book, deciding to hide them somehow to take them home with her. Her curiosity has definitely gotten the better of her, but something about the glimpse into Cat’s creative mind won’t let her hide things back away in the shadows.