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Kara Zor-El’s world ends twice.
The first time, she’s thirteen years-old, and her planet explodes around her. She loses everyone she loves in a single, devastating explosion.
The second time is quieter. She’s twenty-six. She loses the one person she loves with three little words.
This isn’t working.
Alex brings her donuts and tells her that everyone feels like their world has fallen apart after a breakup. She waits for Alex to leave before she defies her steel stomach and throws up. This happens for a week, after anyone says the word ‘breakup’.
She keeps a list of broken things:
Planet.
Arm.
Window.
Heart.
By week three, Kara has stopped dry-retching, and has even managed to wash her hair. Gossip columns have started to comment on Supergirl’s dishevelled image, and she doesn’t want to make greasy hair and nacho crumbs “this summer’s trendiest look” for kids who already seem to revel in hobo-chic. After realising that this is something Cat would say, she cries for almost half an hour, until a bank robbery demands her attention.
Alex says, “I’m worried about you,” and Kara says, “I’ll be okay.”
Winn says, “Is there anything you need?” and Kara says, “I’m good, Winn. Really.”
James doesn’t say anything. He averts his eyes and gives her space. She likes his method best.
She finds a job at the Tribune. She takes it because unlike CatCo Magazine, the newspaper offices are across town. She’s supposed to give two weeks’ notice, but Cat lets her leave after one. They don’t talk about why she’s leaving. They don’t talk about anything much at all. She hands Cat her resignation letter on a Friday. By the following Thursday, she’s packing up her desk.
They throw her a party. The entire floor shows up. Even Valerie in fashion, who once sneered at Kara’s skirt in the elevator, gives her a heartfelt goodbye and tells her she’ll be missed. They get her a cake that says “Congratulations!” and she can’t tell if it refers to her new job, or simply to the fact that she’s escaping her old one.
Cat doesn’t come to the party.
It’s an easy enough adjustment. After years under Cat’s tutelage, she finds copyediting a breeze. She has her own little desk. It’s smaller than the one at CatCo, but it’s cosy and she’s allowed to pin photographs on one side of her cubicle. She puts up a picture of herself and Alex, taken at the aquarium when she was fifteen. Beside it, she pins a selfie of herself, Winn, and James, at the company baseball game the year before. James’s face is half cut-off and Winn has a mustard stain on his cheek. Kara loves it. Below it, she puts up another picture, and the rips it off again after three minutes, tearing the edge and shoving it back into her purse. She should probably take it out of her wallet completely, but the thought of throwing it away makes her feel panicky, and so it stays hidden.
It’s nearly two months since the break-up, when Hank turns to her and says, “Glad you’re looking better,” and she realises that she’s gone almost an entire day without thinking about Cat. Granted, they had spent most of it fighting off a gang of toxin-spewing alien spiders, but the fact remains. She’s so proud of herself that she flies a little too close to CatCo. Close enough to see a figure on the balcony, close enough to focus in and hear the specific cadence that she recognises as Cat’s heartbeat.
For the first time since she was in college, Kara wishes she could get drunk.
______
One of the worst things about losing everyone you’ve ever loved, all at once, is that there’s no-one left to share your stories. Kara first realised this at thirteen, on a trip to the zoo with her class when she had pointed out how much the lion looked like a small Dramonicus. And it really did – same ears, same tail, same furry mane. Alex, who had been her constant, exasperated shadow back then, had rolled her eyes and told Kara to stop making up words.
Losing Cat is sort of like trying to describe a Dramonicus to people who’d never seen it.
The intervention happens soon after her little balcony relapse. They don’t call it an intervention. They say they’re worried about her. They say she hasn’t been herself since it happened. All she hears is them telling her to get over it.
She wants to explain to them what it felt like to be loved by Cat. What it felt like to make her laugh so hard, she clutched her stomach and wiped tears from her eyes. What it felt like to make breakfast with her on Sunday mornings, to hear her sing show tunes in the shower and deny knowing all of the words to Spamalot. What it felt like to make love at 3am, with the windows open, while the city slept around them. She thinks maybe, if they understood these things, they’d see why getting over it isn’t an option.
All she says is, “I’ve basically eradicated petty crime in the city. I’ve put in more hours at the DEO than ever before, and Supergirl was on the cover of last months’ TIME.”
“It’s not Supergirl we’re worried about,” James replies, and Kara thinks she liked it better when he was avoiding her.
“Look, I know you’re hurting, Kara.” Alex’s voice is soft and gentle – the voice she’d use when they were young and Kara did something weird and wrong, like pour ketchup over her pancakes or wash her hair with laundry detergent. “But you can’t go on like this forever.” Alex looks at James and Winn and they nod like the good co-conspirators they are. “We miss you.”
She knows they care. She knows all of this pining is unhealthy. She knows it and has no idea how to stop it. Extensive internet research tells her that Alex was right, that everyone feels like their pain, their misery is unique. The internet tells her that there is nothing unique about heartbreak. That doesn’t make it hurt less.
But she nods, and then, to seal the deal, she smiles. “I know I’ve been sort of a buzzkill. All dramatic and doom-and-gloomy. And you’re right. You’re all absolutely right. I’m sorry. I’m, I’m feeling better already.”
The boys accept the lie much easier than Alex, who nudges Kara with her shoulder and says, “I’m always here. If you need to talk.”
______
It takes her three months before she can walk into Noonan’s without feeling queasy.
She brings her date there – the guy Alex set her up with. Her “back in the saddle” guy. He’s sweet. A little goofy, but she sort of likes it. She knows from the beginning that it isn’t going to go anywhere, but it’s fun being out with someone who doesn’t look at her like she’s about to break. They talk about the latest season of House of Cards. He shows her a picture of his dog. She’s having such a good time that she barely notices the young woman at the counter. It’s only when the woman says, “Ms Grant wants the Kenyan beans. She was very explicit,” that Kara turns around.
She’s tall, slender and gorgeous in a tight-fitting dress and 6-inch heels. She is nothing like Kara.
“You want the dark roast?” The barrister is new. Clive, who must have finally gone off to pursue his dream of wreck diving in the Indian Ocean, knew exactly how to make Cat’s 6pm cold brew. It comforts Kara somewhat to know that the world she’s left behind is moving on as well.
She tells herself that she’s saving two jobs with one good deed as she abandons her date and hops off the barstool.
“Dark roast if it’s Kenyan beans, medium if you have Cartagena Colombian. Although with the latter, you want to go with the almond milk, not the fat-free.”
“Excuse me, could you wait your – ” The girl turns to her with annoyance and then her eyebrows shoot up. “Oh. Oh, it’s you”
There’s a moment of panic when Kara wonders if this stranger has seen what countless others have not, and her hand moves up to fix her glasses. “No, it’s not. I mean, have we met?”
“You’re her.” The mean girl persona falls away and she looks almost shy. “You’re Kara Danvers.”
“That’s me. Kara Danvers.” Kara smiles despite her confusion.
“They talk about you, at the office.”
“They do?” She’s irrationally, absurdly happy that she’s remembered.
“You’re the only assistant to ever make it a full year. They call you the Girl Who Lived.”
Kara snort-laughs and quickly covers her mouth, trying to maintain a semblance of dignity. “Well, I guess that’s something.”
“There’s a picture of you in Ms Grant’s desk.” Kara’s smile vanishes, and the girl is quick to say, “I wasn’t snooping; I was looking for her prescription and it was buried under a ton of files. I can’t imagine being so good at my job that my old boss actually kept a photo of me.” She shrugs, “I guess it’s to remember the standard you set.”
“I guess.”
Twelve weeks of progress, unravelled by one stupid comment. And she’s drowning again, with The Sound of Silence playing on a loop in her head.
“So,” Shiny New Assistant seems oblivious to Kara’s internal meltdown. “Any advice?”
“Advice?”
“You know, tips from The Kara Danvers Survival Guide.”
“Oh. Um.” She’s flailing. This is not a conversation she wants to have. Ever. “Make sure her latte is always hot. And, uh, keep her candy bowl filled. Only chocolate M&Ms. Never the peanut ones. I used to change them up according to the season, so you know, for Halloween, they’d be orange and brown and…” she trails off. Shrugs. “I’m sure you’ll do great.”
“Thanks.” The girl is smiling, and Kara is back at square one.
_____
“Am I supposed to feel like everything inside of me is broken?”
Alex strokes Kara’s hair and doesn’t mention the dark tear stain on her jeans. Sadness in saltwater.
"You’re grieving, Kara. You’re allowed to miss her.”
“It’s not that she’s gone, Alex. It’s that she’s everywhere. Every song I listen to, every book I read, every time I pick up my paintbrush. She’s infiltrated everything, like, like a virus. And I can’t fight it. Not with my strength, or my speed. I can’t heat-vision my way out of this. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know how to…” She swallows down the ocean that wells up in her throat.
“It’ll get better.” Alex’s thumb is soft on her cheek, wiping away tears before they trickle down her nose.
“How do you know?”
“Because it has to.”
______
It does get better. Not all at once, and not right away, but days become weeks, and weeks become months and by the end of the year, she can’t recall the smell of Cat’s perfume, or remember the name of the song they danced to, the night the power went off and Cat filled her living room with candles.
Grief is replaced with nostalgia and fondness, and most of the time, when people ask how she is, she can say “I’m good,” without it feeling like a lie.
The CatCo Christmas Charity benefit is a necessary evil. Kara would much rather spend her Friday night in sweats, eating ice cream out of the tub, while watching reruns of Law and Order. Instead, she’s wearing Alex’s cocktail dress and schmoozing with journalists.
Part of her – a very, very small part – wishes for a little earthquake, or a small hurricane – nothing life-threatening, of course, but something that would require Supergirl to the rescue, something that would give her an excuse to leave early.
She liberates a flute of champagne from a waiter’s tray and makes for the balcony, where the music is muted and the city lights twinkle.
“I wondered if you’d be here.”
The sound of Cat’s voice is familiar, sort of like a song that she hadn’t heard for years and still knew all of the words to.
Kara doesn’t have to turn around. Cat comes up next to her, and mimics Kara’s pose, staring at the city laid out before them.
Kara brings her glass to her lips. Buying time and courage. “I didn’t want to seem anti-social. New job and all.”
Cat hums, and for a moment, Kara wonders if she’s really there at all, or if she’s conjured her up, the way she sometimes did in those moments just before waking when everything seemed possible.
She tilts her head and there Cat stands.
Her hair is longer. It’s the first stray thought that enters Kara’s mind. The next few blur into each other. All at once, she remembers the sweet-spicy smell of Cat’s perfume, and the song they danced to was “A Sunday Kind of Love” by Etta James. She remembers everything she so valiantly tried to forget. Then Kara forgets to breathe altogether, and it’s okay because there are advantages to being the last surviving daughter of a dead planet, and oxygen is overrated anyway.
Cat doesn’t look at her and Kara is only allowed her profile. She knows it by heart, but appreciates it more when it’s right there, and there’s that freckle on the side of Cat’s jaw that she had closed her mouth over again and again. She can’t believe she forgot about that freckle.
Cat takes a sip of her martini. Buying time and courage. “How is life at the Tribune?”
“It’s um,” Kara surprises herself with the truth. “It’s really great, actually.”
Cat’s lips turn up for the briefest moment. “I imagine it must be more stimulating than getting my coffee and fetching layouts.”
“I liked doing those things.” She’s unexpectedly defensive. She might have stayed Cat’s assistant forever if it meant she got to help Cat work, making a difference in a way Supergirl never could.
They’re quiet for the length of an entire song, and Kara wonders if Cat will ever speak again. When she does, it’s an accusation.
“But you left.”
“I couldn’t stay.”
“I know.” She nods and polishes off her drink. Kara waits, because she’s an expert at reading Cat, even after all of these months. Eventually Cat turns to her.
“Oscar says you’re doing well.”
“You asked about me?”
Cat shrugs, as if this were inconsequential, and Kara can’t help herself. “How are you?”
“Me?” Cat smiles. It’s a smile Kara first encountered on their three-month anniversary, when she missed dinner because she was being crushed by an intergalactic pro-wrestler twice her size, and Cat proclaimed, she wasn’t the least bit concerned. It’s the smile she gave Carter when he asked to spend his summer break with his dad, who promised they’d go sailing around Naples. It’s a smile that breaks Kara’s heart all over again, even as Cat says, “I’m terrific.”
Kara doesn’t contest this. Maybe she is terrific. And so she tortures herself further by asking, “And Carter?”
Cat’s smile is genuine this time. Kara knows because of that dimple just next to her mouth, and the way the corners of her eyes crinkle up. “He came first in the science fair.”
Kara brings her hands together excitedly. “I knew it! I knew that wind energy thing was gonna blow them all away! Did he get a cool, shiny medal?”
“He did.”
She doesn’t even realise she’s grinning until Cat says, “He talks about you.”
Kara’s face falls. “Does he… I mean… I wanted to tell him, before I left. I wanted to make sure he knew –”
“He doesn’t blame you, Kara.” Cat waits a beat, as if to make sure she’s really listening. “He understands.”
Kara’s heart is racing, because this is actually happening. She’s actually talking to Cat the way she’s imagined doing a thousand times in the last year. “Do you?”
“Do I understand?”
“Do you still blame me?”
Cat tuts and looks down at her empty glass as if Kara has disappointed her. “I never blamed you. I… Well, it wasn’t working.”
“Yeah, that’s what you said.” She knows she sounds petulant, and the last thing she wants is to sound like a child around Cat, but how is she supposed to respond when her eighteen-month relationship was essentially ended with a sentence.
Cat looks at Kara for a long time, worrying her lower lip between her teeth the way she does when she’s particularly troubled.
“I watched you save that passenger ferry last month.” Cat’s gaze is focused, as though she’s desperately trying to communicate something she can’t quite articulate. And it’s not often that Cat finds it difficult to articulate anything. “I was impressed. Proud.”
Kara’s heart skips a beat. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“I was just doing my job.”
Cat looks contemplative, deciding whether or not to speak. “A job you couldn’t do when you were constantly worrying about me.”
Kara frowns. “You’re upset because I was worried about you?”
Cat shakes her head, but remains silent.
“I never meant for you to get hurt.” Kara says everything she wishes she had said that day, after her fight with the bounty hunter demolished half the city, after she found Cat in that warehouse, half-broken and still so brave.
I’ll come back for you, after I finish this.
That was when Cat had told her no. No, she didn’t need Kara to come back to check on her. That she’d be fine. That she’d send Kara’s things to her apartment. That it just wasn’t working.
“If I had been better about protecting you when Lobo showed up –”
Cat exhales a tenuous breath. “Please, don’t.”
“He never would have hurt you. It’s my fault he knew you were close to me, that you were – ”
“Kara. Stop.” Cat holds her hand up between them. “This is exactly the conversation I didn’t want to have. This is exactly why I…”
“Broke my heart?” Kara’s voice is small.
“Ended it.” Cat corrects.
Footsteps approach, a throat is cleared and Kara turns around to see Shiny New Assistant, wearing an impossibly short dress, standing in impossibly high heels, looking as though she’d be anywhere but right there. “Ms Grant. Senator Lewis is asking for you.”
“Thank you, Elaine.” Cat’s voice is clipped. “Your timing, as always, is impeccable.”
“You should go.” Kara turns away and looks back over the city.
______
She flies in circles. The city is quiet. The city is still. And Kara’s heart is racing. Again and again, Cat’s words in her head. The smell of Cat’s perfume, the freckle on her jaw, her smile, her eyes, again and again and again.
She hovers above the balcony of Cat’s penthouse. She hasn’t been here in months. Everything is the same. Nothing has changed. The windows are shut, the curtains drawn. Quiet and still.
Kara will fly away. She has to. There’s nothing left to say or salvage. But because she’s there, because she’s already failed a test she hadn’t realised she’d set for herself, she uses her x-ray vision, just once, just to check.
Cat is sitting at the edge of her bed. Waiting. Kara thinks that maybe, she knew Cat would be.
She flies to the large panelled windows that open to the balcony and knocks once. She doesn’t land, but hovers high enough to be taller, to be unreachable.
Cat opens them both at once, and she looks up. Her eyes immediately find Kara’s.
“A bit late for house calls, don’t you think?”
Kara swallows down her trepidation. Because this is going to happen here and now, or it’s never going to happen at all. “I don’t believe you.”
Cat has to come out to meet her, more than half-way. Kara regrets being so far out when Cat wraps her arms around herself, as her skin is exposed to the chilly air. She looks Kara up and down, unimpressed. A year ago, she would have swooned a little at the sight of Supergirl on her balcony, not that she’d ever have admitted it. Now, she’s tired, and a little annoyed.
“It’s 3am. I have a conference call in five hours. I do not have time for cryptic statements.”
“You said it wasn’t working,” Kara crosses her arms over her chest. Sometimes, remembering that she’s an alien with superhuman strength and speed makes it a little easier to face Cat when she’s looking at Kara with that expression. She lowers herself just a little, and Cat doesn’t have to look up anymore.
“But that was lie, wasn’t it? We were working. It was good. Sometimes, it was even perfect.”
Cat purses her lips, but doesn’t refute it. And so Kara goes on.
“I know that I messed up, that I failed you, that I let you get hurt – the one thing I promised never to do. You couldn’t be with me if I couldn’t keep you safe. I know that now.” And she does know it. She’s always understood that she was the reason they couldn’t last. “But you don’t get to devalue what we had. You don’t get to make it less somehow.”
“Is that really what you think? That you failed to protect me?” Cat looks so genuinely dumbfounded, that Kara’s confused. She lands on the balcony, toes first, just in front of Cat.
“I…I let him take you.” Kara says as if it were obvious. “I tried so hard to keep you safe and in the end – ”
“In the end you almost levelled a city trying to find me.” Cat looks past Kara, out into the boundless sea of flickering lights. When she speaks again, her voice is softer, laced with something undefinable that tugs at Kara’s insides. “I know you had to stop him, that you weren’t responsible for all that destruction. But your anger, that was because of me.”
Kara blinks, waits for Cat’s eyes to meet hers. “I don’t understand,” she says truthfully. “I thought you stopped seeing me because you didn’t feel safe.”
Cat closes her eyes for a moment, and this time, her frustration is directed at herself. Kara watches her struggle with her words until she finally says, “I was a liability, Kara. Enemies would use me to get to you and your priorities were skewed. It wasn’t just dangerous for you; it was dangerous for all those people you’re meant to be protecting. You can’t save a city of strangers when you’re worried about one woman. You can’t be the hero you need to be when you’re preoccupied with loving me.”
Kara shakes her head, incredulous. How could Cat not know? After all of this time, how could she not get it?
“Loving you, Cat? Makes it possible for me to be a hero. Knowing I can come home to you, knowing you’re in my corner? It’s everything. For you to just, just make that choice on my behalf – ”
“Oh, no. Believe me, I am no martyr. I’m selfish.” Cat’s voice has lost its tremor. She’s pitching her case now. Cool, hard facts. “If I can’t have all of you, then I don’t want you. And that’s really what it comes down to. I don’t want to share you with the two million people of this city. So no, it wasn’t working. You need to accept that.”
Kara doesn’t buy it. Not when Cat won’t even look in the eye. “You knew going into this who I was. You were my biggest fan.”
“I still am.” Kara knows she admits it because silence would be a denial, and Cat has never, not even at their worst, denied her faith in Kara.
“Then why did you stop loving me?” It’s a whisper so low that if it wasn’t a still night, Kara’s voice would have been carried away with the wind and held safe among the clouds.
“Oh, Kara.” Even now, with a throat full of tears, Cat won’t cry and Kara wipes away the tear on her own cheek, with a rough palm, angry at herself, at Cat, at the universe.
“I have to go.”
Cat frowns at her. “Go where?”
“There’s an emergency. A fire.”
“Your lying hasn’t improved.”
She shrugs, shoulders up to her ears. “What do you want me to say?”
“Perhaps, that you understand.”
“I don’t.”
“Then there is nothing left to say.”
Kara looks down and exhales, trying to be still, trying not to fall apart. “I feel like you’re breaking up with me all over again.”
“I wanted this to work, Kara.” Cat swallows. “I really wanted this.”
“I know.” Kara sniffs, hates herself, and wipes at her wet cheeks.
Cat looks at her with an expression Kara’s never seen before. It’s something like resignation, and something like regret. “Stay the night.”
Krypton is still gone. Her parents are still dead. And Kara will not survive having to leave in the morning.
Cat walks away from her, into the darkness of her bedroom and Kara follows.
______
Smooth, soft, delicate, warm, wet. There is a language of fragile words she can use to intellectualise this experience. But, she doesn’t try to shape it and make sense of it. Kara closes her eyes and forgets language completely. She loses herself in taste and smell and narrows her world to this single moment. Warm breath against her inner thighs, silky slickness on her fingertips, the frayed whisper of her name pushing out between Cat’s lips.
In darkness, they speak with sticky limbs and broken cries, entangled like they might have been before the Titans came down to tear them apart. Cat pulls her closer and closer until Kara, trembling and diaphanous, is almost lost completely.
The night sky changes hue. Blue, black, purple, pink – a slow-healing bruise.
Truth comes easier when you’re naked. Kara says, “I don’t know how to do this without you.”
An age of silence before Cat replies. “That’s not true. You’ve been thriving.”
“I’m drowning.” The first hint of sunlight makes Kara bold. “I think you are too.”
No quippy comeback or sarcastic retort. Cat turns to face her and all pretence is gone.
“What do you propose we do?”
“Trust me. The way I trusted you.”
Now, Cat does roll her eyes. “Yes, you were very forthcoming.”
“I was learning.” Kara shrugs and Cat runs her fingers down Kara’s exposed shoulder. “I still am. But what I do know, is that I need you.”
“Every time you put me first, you risk someone else’s life.”
“You’re my family,” Kara whispers fiercely. “I will do anything to keep my family safe. I can’t apologise for that. But I understand what that symbol on my chest means. I understand my duty, my responsibility to this city. I know who I am, Cat. And I know that being with you makes me better.”
“Kara…”
“You have to trust me.”
Cat reaches up and brushes Kara’s hair off her forehead. Kara closes her eyes, feeling safe for the first time in months.
Cat’s reply is a whisper against her lips. “Okay.”
“Really?”
Cat kisses her softly, thoroughly, as if to prove a point, not just to Kara, but to herself. Kara responds with a breathless sort of elation, that she’s terrified to trust. But Cat is beneath her now, warm and solid and sighing her name in a way that suggests that maybe Kara is not the only one whose world had fallen apart. And maybe, Kara thinks as Cat moves against her, just maybe, not all things stay broken.