Work Text:
The letter arrived on a Tuesday.
It was typed rather than handwritten, which Cat would later note — if anyone ever asked, which she intended to ensure they did not — lent it a certain chilling anonymity. The font was clean and classical. The language was urgent but not overwrought. It warned, in measured terms, that a disgruntled former CatCo employee — name withheld, threat level unspecified but implied to be significant — had recently come into possession of what sources described as "low-level telekinetic capability" and harbored a documented grievance against Cat personally.
It concluded with a recommendation that Cat seek protection immediately.
It was, if one were paying attention — and Kara was always paying attention — typed in Garamond.
Cat Grant's preferred font. Used exclusively in Cat's office, on Cat's personal stationery, on the quarterly memos that came down from the top floor and made junior editors cry quietly in the break room.
Kara read the letter twice in the DEO briefing room while Alex cross-referenced threat databases and Winn ran a trace and James leaned against the wall with his arms folded looking appropriately concerned.
She noted the font. She noted the faint, distinctive fragrance of the paper — Maison Margiela Replica, Beach Walk, the candle that burned year-round on Cat's credenza.
She set the letter down.
"This is very alarming," she said, with great sincerity.
✦
The DEO found nothing.
This surprised Alex considerably and Winn slightly and Kara not at all.
"No record of the individual," Alex said, frowning at her tablet. "No known metahumans with telekinetic ability matching this description. The threat trail just — stops."
"Sophisticated," Kara said.
"Or nonexistent," Alex said, in the tone of someone whose instincts were excellent and who would, Kara dearly hoped, not pursue them too aggressively in the next forty-eight hours.
"Cat Grant has a lot of enemies," Kara said. "We can't be too careful."
Alex looked at her. Alex had the same look she'd had at age fourteen when Kara had claimed not to know how the garage door got bent — technically a look of assessment, functionally a look of absolute knowledge held temporarily in reserve.
"Right," Alex said slowly.
"I think Supergirl should handle this personally," Kara said. "Close protection detail. Cat has a property outside the city. Remote, secure. We get her out of National City until the threat is assessed."
"Her cabin," Alex said.
"She mentioned it, yes."
"The one she bought eight months ago."
"I think so."
"And had fully stocked and winterised last week."
"Mm."
"Kara."
"We really can't take chances with civilian safety," Kara said serenely. "I'll keep you updated." She paused at the door. "Oh — and Winn, Cat mentioned there's a CatCo server vulnerability she needs assessed this weekend? She said you're the only one qualified. There's a car waiting."
Winn blinked. "I didn't hear anything about —"
"Gift card," Kara said. "Significant one. I'm told."
Winn left within the hour.
✦
James was a slightly longer conversation, but Cat had, Kara had to admit, done excellent work there. The photography subject was a genuine get — the kind of access James had been angling toward for two years — and the window being this weekend only was just plausible enough to override his suspicion. He texted Kara twice from the car on the way to the shoot.
MESSAGES-JAMES OLSEN:
JAMES: This feels weird. Does this feel weird to you?
JAMES: Kara.
JAMES: Why does Cat Grant know who my dream photography subject is
KARA: Have a great shoot!! 📷
JAMES: That's not an answer
JAMES: Kara
JAMES: KARA
Kara set her phone face-down and finished packing her bag.
Alex was the last call, and the most impressive piece of the operation, honestly. Kara didn't know exactly what Cat had arranged, only that at eleven-fifteen that morning Hank Henshaw had personally briefed Alex on a classified atmospheric anomaly requiring immediate field response in a direction that was, Kara estimated, approximately two hundred miles from a certain cabin in the San Bernardino mountains.
Alex called Kara on her way out.
"Atmospheric anomaly," Alex said, in the tone of someone reading from a script they found deeply suspicious.
"Sounds serious," Kara said.
"Kara, did Cat Grant somehow get J'onn J'onzz to —"
"You should probably go," Kara said. "Atmospheric anomalies wait for no one."
A long pause.
"I want a full debrief," Alex said. "Everything."
"Of course."
"And Kara? If you let her get away with this without making her work for it, I will be so disappointed in you."
Kara grinned at her ceiling. "Bye, Alex."
✦
The cabin was, predictably, beautiful.
It sat at the edge of a pine forest three hours from the city, the kind of place that appeared in architectural magazines with captions like rustic luxury and intentional retreat. Wide windows, stone fireplace, a porch that looked out over a valley going gold and green in the late afternoon light. The kitchen was stocked with things Cat actually liked, which Kara clocked immediately and filed away. There was, she noticed, only one spare bedroom and one very large primary suite.
Cat had arrived first and was standing on the porch when the car pulled up, holding a glass of white wine and looking out at the view with the composure of someone who had definitely not spent the last three hours wondering if this had been a catastrophic overreach.
"Supergirl," she said, as Kara came up the steps in her civilian clothes, bag over one shoulder. "Glad you could make it."
"Ms. Grant," Kara said pleasantly. "How are you feeling? Given the threat."
A very small pause. "Cautious," Cat said. "But safer, now that you're here."
"Great." Kara set her bag down, pulled out a small notepad — she had bought a notepad specifically for this, which she felt was a good investment — and clicked her pen. "I'll want to do a full perimeter assessment before sundown. Review all entry points. We should also establish communication protocols in case of a breach." She looked up. "Does the cabin have a panic room?"
Cat stared at her. "A panic room."
"Standard procedure for close protection."
"I —" Cat recovered admirably, Kara would give her that. "No. No panic room."
"We'll identify a safe room, then. Preferably interior, no windows." Kara made a note. "Also I'll need the full case file on the former employee. Everything you have. Any prior incidents, communication history, dates of employment —"
"There's wine," Cat said.
"I'm on duty."
"Kara —"
"Ms. Grant," Kara said, with enormous professionalism, "I take your safety very seriously."
Cat looked at her for a long moment. Her expression was difficult to read, which meant it was saying a great deal.
"Fine," she said. "Do your perimeter assessment."
Kara did a very thorough perimeter assessment. It took forty-five minutes. She used the notepad.
By the time the sun went down, Cat had moved inside to the living room and the fire was going and the wine bottle was down by a third. Kara had completed her assessment, identified two suboptimal entry points on the north side of the property, noted them both in the pad, and was sitting across from Cat in a posture that could only be described as alert.
"You can relax," Cat said.
"Vigilance is part of the job."
"You're sitting like you're about to take a deposition."
"I want to be ready to move if necessary."
"Move." Cat set her wine down. "Kara. We're in a cabin in the mountains. There is no one for forty minutes in any direction. You could hear a threat coming from three counties away and be there before it arrived and you know it."
"Protocols exist for a reason —"
"You wrote the protocols in my kitchen twenty minutes ago."
"Best practices —"
"Kara."
Kara looked at her. Cat looked back. The fire crackled between them.
"I'm just saying," Kara said mildly, "that a telekinetic threat is unpredictable. By nature. Things could be moved. Thrown. Without warning." She paused. "Almost like — someone wrote a letter. And moved it. Across a desk. Without touching it."
A silence.
"The threat is credible," Cat said, but something in her voice had shifted, the faintest note of someone standing at the edge of a thing.
"The letter was in Garamond," Kara said.
"It's a common font."
"It's your font."
"Many people use —"
"It smelled like your candle, Cat."
The fire popped. Outside, wind moved through the pines with a sound like something breathing.
Cat picked up her wine. She took a measured sip. She looked at the fire with the expression of a woman calculating variables and finding that several of them had, without her permission, resolved.
"I have no idea," she said finally, "what you're implying."
"I've been here for four hours," Kara said. "I did a perimeter check. I made a protocol document. I asked you seven questions about the threat and every single answer was vague in a very specific way." She tilted her head. "You sent Winn across the city with a gift card."
"Server vulnerability —"
"You gave James the one assignment he couldn't say no to."
"Timing was —"
"You got J'onn to invent an atmospheric anomaly to get Alex out of town." Kara paused. "You got J'onn, Cat. He doesn't do favors."
"I made a donation to the —"
"How much?"
A pause. "That's not relevant."
"How much did you donate to the DEO to get my sister sent on a fake mission so you could get me alone in a cabin you bought eight months ago?"
Cat set her wine glass down with great precision. She folded her hands in her lap. She looked, for just a moment, like someone who had planned an extraordinarily elaborate operation and had not fully accounted for the possibility that the target would be paying attention.
"The donation," she said, "was significant."
Kara burst out laughing.
It was not a polite laugh. It was a real one — the kind that took over, bright and helpless, and she pressed her hand over her mouth but it didn't help much, and when she looked at Cat's expression — caught between dignity and the absolute inability to maintain it — she laughed harder.
"This isn't —" Cat started.
"You wrote yourself a threatening letter," Kara managed. "In your own font."
"I was under considerable time pressure —"
"The candle, Cat —"
"I was in my office when I wrote — " Cat stopped. The room went very still. "That is not what I said."
"It's exactly what you said."
"I want you to know," Cat said, with great composure, "that I have never in my professional life been more misquoted."
Kara was still grinning — she couldn't stop, it kept breaking back through — but something had softened in it, something warmer underneath the laughter. She looked at Cat in the firelight, at the high color in her cheeks and the almost-smile she was refusing to let land and all that meticulous dignity she was holding together through sheer force of will, and felt something settle in her chest like something finally coming home.
"Why didn't you just ask?" Kara said. Gently now. "To spend the weekend. You could have just asked me."
"I," Cat said, "don't ask."
"You orchestrated a multipart covert operation involving a forged threatening letter, three separately managed diversions, and a financial contribution to a government agency —"
"It was a legitimate donation —"
"— rather than send me a text that said would you like to come to the cabin this weekend."
"That text," Cat said, "would have been —"
"What?"
A pause. And there it was — just for a second, behind all of it.
Something real and unguarded that Cat couldn't quite get back in the box in time.
"Vulnerable," she said. Very quietly.
The fire burned. The pines moved in the dark outside.
Kara stood up. She crossed and sat down on the sofa next to Cat — close, the way she hadn't let herself be for a long time — and Cat did not move away, which was its own kind of answer.
"I would have said yes," Kara said. "To the text. I would have said yes immediately."
"I know," Cat said. "That wasn't — it wasn't the yes I was unsure of."
Kara looked at her. At all of it — the planning, the letter. All of it for this — the two of them on a sofa by a fire, close enough that Cat's shoulder was almost against hers.
"Cat," she said. "What were you unsure of?"
Cat turned to look at her. And her expression was entirely, unexpectedly open — not unguarded by accident but by decision, Cat Grant choosing to let something be seen, which was, Kara understood, the bravest thing she knew how to do.
"Whether," Cat said, "once you were here. Once it was just us. Whether I'd —" She stopped. Tried again. "I know how to run a company. I know how to control a room and manage a narrative and make things happen on my terms." A pause. "I don't particularly know how to do this."
"This," Kara said softly.
"Whatever this is." Cat held her gaze. "Whatever you are, to me. I don't have a protocol for it."
Kara felt something in her chest pull so tight it was almost unbearable and then release — a warmth spreading out from it, all the way through.
"Okay," she said. "That's okay." She shifted on the sofa, just slightly, until her shoulder was against Cat's. "We don't need a protocol."
"I like protocols."
"I know you do."
"They're efficient."
"We'll figure it out as we go," Kara said. "Very inefficiently. You'll hate it."
Cat made a sound that was — against all odds — very close to a laugh. Small and private and entirely genuine, the kind Kara had been collecting for years the way other people collected rare things.
"I," Cat said, "already hate it."
"You love it."
"I really don't."
"You bought a cabin."
"That was an investment property —"
"Cat."
"— with very sound projected returns —"
Kara kissed her.
It was not a grand gesture. It was quiet and certain and it tasted like the wine Cat had been drinking and the last year of almost and the months of a cabin waiting and all the elaborate, exhausting, magnificent lengths Cat Grant would go to rather than simply say I want you here.
Cat went very still for exactly half a second. Then she kissed her back, and it turned out Cat Grant kissed the way she did everything — with complete commitment and zero half-measures — and Kara's hand found her jaw and Cat's hand found the front of Kara's shirt and the fire crackled on and the pines moved in the dark and none of the rest of it mattered at all.
When they broke apart, Cat's composure was, for once, genuinely gone — her eyes bright and her cheeks warm and a look on her face that Kara intended to spend a significant amount of time putting there as often as possible.
"So," Kara said.
"So," Cat said.
"For the record," Kara said, "I knew about the letter within the first ten minutes."
Cat closed her eyes briefly. "Of course you did."
"And the font."
"Noted."
"And I still came."
Cat opened her eyes. The look on her face was one Kara had never seen before — unguarded and unhurried, and something underneath it that would take a long time to name properly and Kara was very much looking forward to trying.
"Yes," Cat said. "You did."
Outside, the valley had gone fully dark, the pines black against a sky thick with stars. The fire was warm and the cabin was quiet and they had the entire weekend ahead of them and no one — not Alex, not Winn, not James, not one single person — was coming to find them.
Cat had made absolutely sure of that.
✦
MESSAGES · GROUP CHAT: THE ACTUAL SUPERFRIENDS
ALEX: There is no atmospheric anomaly
ALEX: There has never been an atmospheric anomaly
ALEX: I am sitting in a field
WINN: there's no server vulnerability either btw
WINN: I've been at a CatCo office eating free snacks for three hours
WINN: the gift card is real though so
JAMES: okay the shoot is genuinely incredible but I'm just saying
JAMES: Cat Grant knew who my dream subject was
JAMES: how did she know that
ALEX: Kara.
ALEX: KARA
ALEX: I know you can see these
Kara has left the conversation.