Chapter Text
The CatCo newsroom had its usual atmosphere of barely restrained collapse.
Phones rang. Assistants hurried past with coffees that were either too hot, too cold, or destined to be thrown away on principle. Somewhere near the lifestyle desk, two editors were arguing over whether “effortless” was a banned word yet. Screens flashed with breaking news banners, traffic updates, celebrity scandals, and at least three live feeds of Supergirl hovering above downtown National City with a crumpled construction crane held safely away from a crowd of stunned pedestrians.
Kara Danvers moved through it all with a stack of folders pressed to her chest and the focused determination of someone trying very hard not to look like she was listening to three conversations at once. Which, unfortunately, she was.
One conversation was about Supergirl’s latest save downtown. Another was about the photographs already circulating online. The third, coming from behind the frosted glass doors of Cat Grant’s office, was much worse.
“Find out who got the first quote,” Cat’s voice cut through the newsroom, sharp enough to make half the bullpen sit straighter. “And then find out why it wasn’t us.”
Kara stopped walking. That was always a mistake.
“Kiera!”
Kara closed her eyes for half a second. Then she turned, adjusted her glasses, and tried to look like a woman who had not, less than twenty minutes ago, caught a collapsing crane with both hands.
“Yes, Ms. Grant?”
Cat stood in the doorway of her office, immaculate in white silk and irritation. Her heels were high enough to qualify as a structural threat. Her expression suggested that someone, somewhere, had disappointed her deeply, and she had chosen Kara as the nearest available representative of humanity.
“Why are you standing in the middle of my newsroom like a woodland creature waiting to be painted onto a commemorative plate?”
Kara blinked. “I was bringing you the advertiser reports.”
“How thrilling. Bring them faster.”
Kara hurried forward and nearly collided with Winn, who made a sympathetic face before wisely retreating behind his monitor. She stepped into Cat’s office, where the air felt cooler, quieter, and somehow more expensive. Cat swept back behind her desk, already reaching for her tablet.
Kara placed the folders down with care. Cat did not look at them.
“Kiera,” she said, “what do you know about Supergirl?”
Kara’s hand froze on the top folder. It was only for a second. Barely that. To anyone else, it would have been nothing.
Cat Grant was not anyone else.
Kara straightened too quickly. “Um. She saves people?”
Cat’s eyes lifted.
Kara smiled. It was not one of her better smiles.
“She flies,” Kara added, because apparently her mouth had decided the best defense was making everything worse. “And she has a cape.”
“Astute,” Cat said. “Remind me to nominate you for a Pulitzer in fabric recognition.”
Kara swallowed. “Is there something specific you wanted to know?”
“Yes.” Cat leaned back in her chair, studying her with that unsettling, laser-focused attention that always made Kara feel as though Cat could peel back her cardigan, her glasses, her skin, and find the truth humming beneath. “I want to know why every second-rate news outlet in National City seems to have more direct access to Supergirl than I do.”
Kara tried very hard not to look guilty.
She had not meant to give that quote to Channel Six. The reporter had been there. There had been smoke and sirens and a little girl crying into her cape, and Kara had answered one question because it seemed rude not to.
Apparently, rudeness would have been preferable.
“I’m sure she wasn’t thinking about media strategy,” Kara said carefully. “She was probably just trying to help.”
Cat’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. “There it is.”
Kara’s stomach dropped. “There what is?”
“That tone.” Cat tapped one perfectly manicured nail against the arm of her chair. “Defensive. Earnest. Slightly breathless. You use it whenever someone criticizes Supergirl.”
“I do not.”
“You do.”
“I just think she’s doing her best.”
“How moving.”
“She is.”
“Kiera.”
Kara pressed her lips together.
Cat stood, slow and deliberate, and moved around the side of her desk. Kara had seen Cat command boardrooms, politicians, celebrities, billionaires, and at least one senator who had left this office looking close to tears. None of that made it easier to remain calm when Cat Grant looked directly at her.
There was a particular kind of danger in Cat’s attention.
Not the sort that made Kara want to step in front of bullets or lift collapsing bridges. That was easier, somehow. Cleaner. There was a problem, and Kara solved it. There was danger, and Kara moved toward it. She knew how to be brave when bravery came with sirens.
Cat Grant’s attention was different. It was quiet. Precise. Intimate in a way that did not ask permission.
It made Kara feel twelve years old and newly arrived on Earth again, all wrong angles and strange customs and too much strength trapped under skin no one could know was different. It made her want to stand up straighter. It made her want to disappear.
Sometimes, horribly, it made her want to be seen.
“Supergirl may be powerful,” Cat said, “but power without narrative is chaos. She needs a voice. She needs control. She needs someone who understands that symbols do not simply appear in the sky fully formed. They are shaped. Refined. Protected.”
Kara softened despite herself.
Cat noticed that too. Of course she did.
“You admire her,” Kara said before she could stop herself.
Cat’s expression shifted. Only slightly. “I admire competence.”
Kara nodded. “Right.”
“And courage.”
Kara looked up.
Cat’s gaze was still sharp, but there was something quieter beneath it now. Something Kara did not know what to do with.
“And,” Cat continued, as if annoyed by her own sincerity, “I admire women who enter burning buildings without waiting for permission from mediocre men in uniforms.”
Kara’s throat tightened.
For a moment, she was back there again: heat rolling over her skin, concrete dust in her mouth, someone’s hand reaching out from under twisted metal. She remembered the way people looked at Supergirl after she pulled them out of danger. Like she was impossible. Like she was hope made visible.
“That seems fair,” she said softly.
Cat looked at her for a beat too long. Then the moment vanished.
“I want an exclusive interview.”
Kara’s heart kicked hard against her ribs. “With Supergirl?”
“No, with the cape. Yes, with Supergirl.”
“I’m not sure she—”
“You’re going to arrange it.”
Kara stared at her. “Me?”
“Yes, you. Try not to look as though I’ve asked you to personally move the moon. Though, given Supergirl’s current trajectory, I’m sure someone will ask her to do that eventually.”
Kara adjusted her glasses. “Ms. Grant, I don’t exactly have her number.”
“No, but you have a face that suggests lost puppies trust you implicitly, and Supergirl seems like the sort of person who rescues things on principle.” Cat returned to her chair, already dismissing every possible objection. “You’ll find a way.”
Kara opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
Cat arched an eyebrow. “Was there something else?”
“Yes,” Kara said, then immediately regretted it.
Cat waited.
Kara shifted on her feet. “I just mean, maybe Supergirl is… busy. She has a lot going on. Saving people. Stopping robberies. Carrying heavy things.”
“Riveting schedule.”
“And she might not want to be interviewed.”
“She gave Channel Six thirty-eight seconds of exclusive commentary next to an ambulance.”
“Maybe she was being polite.”
“Politeness is what people call poor strategy when they’re too Midwestern to admit they’ve been outmaneuvered.”
“I’m not Midwestern.”
“No, you’re from wherever people say ‘gosh’ with appalling sincerity.”
Kara made a small sound. “I don’t say gosh that much.”
Cat’s eyes flicked over her. “Kiera, you once said ‘golly’ in response to a hostile acquisition.”
“That was one time.” Kara looked down, cheeks warm. Cat’s ability to catalog every humiliating thing Kara had ever done should have been illegal. Or at least regulated.
Cat picked up a pen and began turning it between her fingers, the gesture casual enough to seem idle and controlled enough to be anything but. “Supergirl is new. She is powerful. She is beloved, which is useful, and feared, which is inevitable. The public does not know what to do with women who cannot be reduced to something manageable. So they will try.”
Kara went still.
Cat’s voice had changed again. Not softened, exactly. Cat Grant did not soften. She shifted angles, like light catching the edge of glass.
“They will make her a saint,” Cat said. “Or a threat. Or a girl. Or a weapon. They will project whatever nonsense they need onto her until there is nothing left of the actual person beneath it.” Her gaze lifted to Kara’s. “Unless someone gets there first.”
Kara forgot, briefly, how to breathe like a human. Because Cat was right. That was the terrible thing.
She had been so focused on saving people that she had not thought much about what happened afterward. Kara knew about headlines, obviously. She heard them everywhere. Saw them everywhere. “Supergirl Saves National City.” “Girl of Steel Defies Gravity.” “New Hero or Alien Menace?” She tried not to read the comments anymore because Alex had threatened to confiscate her laptop after the third time Kara had stress-baked through an entire comment section.
But Cat was talking about something deeper. She was talking about ownership. About the difference between being seen and being consumed.
Kara had not expected Cat to understand that. Maybe she should have.
“That sounds important,” Kara said, because anything else would have been too revealing.
Cat watched her for a long second, then gave a brisk nod, as though Kara had accidentally said something adequate. “It is.”
“And you think you’re the right person to tell her story?”
Cat’s brows rose. Kara realized, too late, how bold that sounded. But Cat did not look offended. If anything, she looked pleased.
“I’m the only person in this city capable of telling her story without turning it into either propaganda or perfume copy.”
Kara considered that. It was probably true.
CatCo’s coverage of Supergirl had been sharp, yes, occasionally infuriating, and sometimes accompanied by headlines that made Kara want to hide under her desk. But Cat had also defended her. Publicly. Repeatedly. She had named her. Given the city a word to hold onto.
Supergirl.
Kara had not realized then how much a name could matter. She knew now.
“I’ll do what I can,” Kara said finally.
Cat’s expression flattened.
Kara corrected herself quickly. “I’ll succeed.”
“See that you do.”
Kara turned toward the door, pulse racing.
“And Kiera?”
She stopped.
Cat’s voice eased just enough to be dangerous. “When you speak to her, tell her I’m not interested in the usual sanitized hero nonsense. I want the woman beneath the symbol.”
Kara’s fingers tightened around the folder in her hands.
Cat’s smile was small, knowing, and entirely unfair. “I suspect she’s far more interesting.”
Kara managed, somehow, not to float off the floor. “I’ll let her know,” she said.
“Do that.” Cat looked back down at her tablet, already queen of the room again.
Kara escaped into the newsroom with her heart still somewhere in Cat Grant’s office.
The bullpen seemed louder than it had before. Too bright. Too full of people who did not know that Kara Danvers had just been assigned to arrange an interview with herself by the most terrifying woman in media.
Winn looked up as she passed. “You okay?”
Kara clutched the folders to her chest. “Cat wants me to set up an interview with Supergirl.”
Winn blinked. Then, slowly, his face transformed into the expression of a man witnessing the beginning of a disaster and choosing, against all decency, to enjoy it.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s bad.”
Kara gave him a look.
He held up both hands. “Not bad bad. Just, you know. Logistically catastrophic.”
“That’s not better.”
“No, but it is accurate.”
Kara lowered her voice. “What am I supposed to do?”
Winn leaned closer, glancing toward Cat’s office. “I mean, technically, you already know Supergirl’s availability.”
“Winn.”
“What? I’m trying to be supportive.”
“You’re enjoying this.” Kara accused.
“A little,” he admitted. “But only because it’s objectively fascinating.”
Kara groaned quietly and pressed one hand over her eyes. “She wants the woman beneath the symbol.”
Winn’s amused expression faltered into something gentler. “That sounds very Cat Grant.”
“It sounds terrifying.”
“Also very Cat Grant.”
Kara looked back at Cat’s office. Through the glass, Cat Grant sat poised behind her desk, golden and untouchable, already building a story around Supergirl with the same ruthless precision she brought to everything else. She was speaking into her phone now, expression unimpressed, one hand lifted in a small, dismissive gesture that somehow conveyed global disappointment.
Kara should have been worried about the interview. She was worried about the interview. But beneath that, in a place she had not given anyone permission to touch, was something worse than worry.
Want.
Not simple want. Not even romantic want, though the thought arrived hot and unwelcome enough to make her adjust her glasses again.
It was the want to be known.
The want to walk back into Cat’s office without the folders, without the stammering, without the careful slouch and nervous smile. To stand in front of Cat Grant and say, Here. This is me. This is all of me. The assistant who gets your coffee. The alien who catches planes. The woman who hears your heartbeat change when you are angry and pretends she doesn’t. The girl who still wants you to be proud of her, even when she knows better.
Kara swallowed.
That was ridiculous. Dangerous. Impossible.
Cat looked up then, as if she had felt Kara staring. Their eyes met through the glass.
Kara froze.
Cat’s head tilted slightly. Her expression did not change, not really, but something in her gaze sharpened with quiet, terrible interest. It was the look she gave typos, weak headlines, and powerful people who thought they were better liars than they were.
Kara turned away first.
Winn was still watching her, far too knowingly for someone who spent half his lunch breaks arguing with vending machines.
“What?” Kara asked.
“Nothing.”
“That was not a nothing face.”
“I just think,” Winn said carefully, “that you might want to figure out what you’re going to say before Supergirl shows up for that interview.”
Kara exhaled.
Across the newsroom, someone shouted that another network had just posted a slow-motion clip of Supergirl catching the crane. Half the office surged toward the nearest screen.
Kara did not need to look. She already knew what she would see. The cape. The symbol. The impossible strength. A version of herself that everyone could look at because none of them knew where to find the human parts.
Except Cat, apparently, wanted those too.
Kara looked once more toward the office.
Cat had returned to her work, but there was the faintest curve at the corner of her mouth. Like she had already won something.
Kara’s heart gave an inconvenient, traitorous little jump.
“Yeah,” she said quietly.
But bad was not quite the word. Not when Cat had said woman beneath the symbol. Not when Kara had wanted, with a terrifying ache, to answer.