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It takes nine months to bring Cat Grant back to National City. Officially, at least. There have been fleeting visits at Carter’s request, but nobody has had a verified Cat Grant encounter since she walked out of CatCo’s doors, intent on diving.
Which is why she’s the last person Kara expects to see waiting behind the police tape. There’s alien goo on Kara’s suit, and her hair is plastered to one side of her head, but Cat is a vision as always. She could almost pass for a beat reporter, if Kara didn’t look too closely at the thousand-dollar belted mac and hair so perfectly styled that even the drizzle of a humid evening couldn’t disturb it.
“Cat,” Kara approaches with her most Supergirl posture, projecting confidence in her voice to cover the exhaustion from a long fight. “You’re back.”
“Clearly,” Cat snaps, but her heart isn’t in it. “A friend needs me, so here I am.”
Kara tamps down the taste of jealousy, bitter like dark chocolate at the back of her throat.
“Lucky friend.”
“Yes, you are. You’ll clean that mess off before coming to CatCo?”
“Why would I-”
“Don’t keep me waiting,” Cat finishes, disappearing back into the small crowd that parts for her like a miniature Red Sea. She hasn’t lost her flair for the dramatic, at least.
Kara nods to the eager autograph hunters and scans the crowd for anyone getting close footage. A minute later and she’s in the air, detouring only long enough for a superspeed shower and scrubbing of her suit. By the time she lands on the rarely-used balcony at CatCo, Cat is only just entering her own office. Kara watches in the half-light how Cat steps around the furniture, keeping her bearings perfectly as she sheds the coat, kicks off her heels, and pours a large glass of Scotch. Only when she settles in her desk chair does Cat click a lamp on, and Kara takes that as her cue.
“Punctual,” Cat observes. “At least that hasn’t changed.”
“You want to talk about what changed?” Kara can’t help getting defensive when she hears the sneer in Cat’s voice. That’s the Cat of two years ago, exhausted by how idiotic everyone around her is. Kara has missed Cat so much, but less so this part of her. “Because the only big change I remember is you leaving.”
“How did you ever keep it from me?” Cat muses, pressing a button on her desk and making the screens spring to life. With the return of Cat Grant comes what her mother calls visual noise, and Kara suppresses a smile at the familiar sight. “Supergirl has no reason to be angry at me for that. It’s all Kara Danvers. It’s so obvious, once you accept it.”
“Miss Grant, I-“
“I believe in baseball that’s called strike two.”
“Is that why you came back?” Kara flicks her cape out behind her and takes a seat on one of the couches. “Because if you know, it’s not like you don’t have my number. You’ve had it this whole time.”
Cat gets up to refill her glass. Kara scrunches her nose out of habit. Cat chasing one liberally poured drink with another has never been a good sign. It’s been one of Kara’s idle worries these past months, whether there’s been someone around to take an audible, slightly disapproving breath that diverts Cat to the M&Ms instead.
“So what have you been up to?” Cat asks, settling back into her chair, the one that James so rarely sits in, the one that he knows can’t ever truly belong to him. It should be perfectly conversational, but Kara knows a loaded question when she hears it. Cat kicks her feet up on the desk, crossing her legs at the ankles, and for a moment it’s like she never went anywhere at all. “Anything interesting? Oh, not the fighting. I see all that on the news. What do you do after? I’ve always wondered.”
“Go home, mostly.” Kara still doesn’t feel inclined to share. “Are we off the record?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes. Snapper taught you that much at least.”
“I’ve missed you.” Kara can’t take the adversarial tone much more. It’s all she’s had for months: wrangling Mon-El into decent behavior before handing him over to the planet he wronged; Snapper criticizing her every move; even Hank has been exceptionally gruff lately. Kara is tired, and not just from the fight that took up half her evening. “I don’t think I realized how much until right now.”
“Oh, Kara,” Cat sighs, and she softens just a little. “I’m trying not to get sentimental.”
“Why?”
“Watch,” Cat instructs, tapping at something else on the desk. The other screens go black but the largest one in the center switches to pre-recorded news footage. Story after story about Supergirl, starting not long after Cat left. The parasite exploding in the street begins the reel, then there’s monster after criminal after alien, expertly cut with no sound playing throughout. Kara watches, but all she can hear is them both quietly breathing.
“You had the news division do this?” Kara asks.
“If I ever lose the ability to splice together a few clips by myself, you have my permission to shoot me. Who do you think ushered FCP into existence in the first place? To think Steve was just going to let editing keep being done on Windows...” Cat shudders at the thought. “I pointed Apple in a better direction.”
“Wait, what?”
“Never mind,” Cat groans. “You millennials think it’s always been this easy to make things, to communicate with the world. Anyway, you’ve always had an eye for detail,” she continues. “So tell me what that footage showed.”
“Supergirl. Me.”
“I said detail.”
Kara stands and moves closer to the screens, skirting Cat’s desk until her hip brushes Cat’s toes as Kara leans against the desk to watch. Getting closer is no help to her perfect vision, but the moment she has proximity and the smoky notes of Cat’s signature perfume, a part of Kara relaxes for the first time in nine months.
“I don’t know what you want me to see,” Kara admits, although there’s the nagging sensation of a half-thought itching at her. “You know I don’t do well under the pressure of reading your mind.”
“Shame that’s not one of your powers,” Cat agrees. “I could use that.”
“Use?” Kara folds her arms over her family crest.
“You know what I mean.” Cat rolls her eyes, hits play on the footage again. “You don’t see it, do you?”
“What?” Kara whines. They’re out of sync after a long absence, and she doesn’t know how to force them back into a rhythm. “Can you just once dispense with the grand story to illustrate a point, and just tell me?”
“Cranky?” Cat asks. “Or just another symptom? I wonder...”
“Symptom of what?” Kara resists the urge to laser the screen where the footage is now looping. “You think I’m hopped up on Red K again?”
“Hopped up?” Cat snorts. “What, after doing malts at the five-and-dime? Honestly, Kara. Sometimes you make your cousin sound edgy. And no, not that stuff.” Cat glances towards the balcony, and Kara swallows hard around her guilt. “Something far more insidious.”
“If you just came back to insult me…”
“Quite the opposite, you’ve impressed me in a way.” Cat finally shuts the damn thing off, getting out of her chair and turning slightly to stand beside Kara.“You see, if I’d put a bet on it - and I almost did with Lois - I’d have said the mighty Supergirl couldn’t be corrupted. That there’s nothing on this Earth, apart from alien drugs, that could turn your head.”
“You think I’m corrupt?” Kara scoffs, leveraging herself away from Cat’s desk a little too hard and sending it flying into the couches. Objects scatter from it, some shattering as they fall. Cat doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t take even take half a step back from Kara, simply adjusting her stance to account for the lack of something to lean on.
“I see Supergirl has a media presence at last,” Cat begins to explain. “Do you want to get into the ethics of using yourself as a source while pretending to be objective?”
“Like you haven’t been rabidly pro-Supergirl since the first initial hatchet piece,” Kara counters. “Since you decided I was CatCo property, you’ve done nothing but protect the brand.”
“Except when those previously mentioned alien drugs happened,” Cat reminds her. “In a choice between my brand and public safety, there was no choice at all.”
“So Supergirl gets quoted,” Kara argues back, yanking the desk back to where it goes and superspeeding the broken items into the trash. “That’s a big enough deal to bring you back from exile?”
“No.” Cat fusses with the remaining items on the desk, gently nudging Kara aside. “Your problem is that you’ve bought into your own hype. Been seduced by fame, whatever you want to call it. And it shows in how you’re doing things now.”
“What does that even mean? Because people offer me a free pizza when I save their family restaurant from giant slime bugs, I’m selling out? It’s not like you’ve ever turned down a freebie, Cat.”
“And you know fine well that every time I’m gifted some ridiculous thing, I either donate it to charity or auction it off. Don’t deflect, it’s not becoming in a superhero.”
“It’s pretty becoming when I deflect bullets,” Kara grouses, and she’s pleased when Cat has to stifle a laugh. It throws her off her stride for all of five seconds.
“You’re going about it all wrong,” Cat picks up her thread. “If you want those crime scenes, those fights, you’ll see people holding back and waiting for Supergirl. They’re not trying to save themselves or protect each other. They’re looking to the skies and waiting for someone else to do it all for them.”
“I can do things that-”
“You’re making them weak. You’re making them depend on you.” Cat puts the damn footage back on and stabs a finger in the direction of the screen. “You’re supposed to inspire them, that’s what we were building together. You’ve made them think they can’t do it without you and… and…”
The words peter out, and Kara looks at Cat in wonder. It honestly looks as though Cat is fighting back tears. Kara has only ever seen her speechless once.
“I haven’t made them weak,” Kara promises. “I’ve been working with the police and the… well, let’s say FBI, to protect their people. To stop ten of them getting killed before I show up. If I ever couldn’t, they’d find a way. They always did before.”
“That’s not the point!” Cat all but shouts. “They’re not supposed to need you. You’re supposed to be this... this nice bonus! Good to have, but not essential. Life should go on without you. Nobody should lie awake at night waiting for you to just show up.”
“Cat?” Those tears aren’t being held back any more, and Cat is practically stamping her foot in frustration that they’ve escaped. “Is this… not about the people of National City so much as it’s about one person who went away from National City?”
“So perceptive,” Cat mocks, swiping the tears from her cheeks with shaking fingers. “I swore I wouldn’t do this. I haven’t been sleeping well, you see, and-”
Kara takes those trembling hands carefully in her own, and when they’re back at Cat’s side, Kara leans in for a daring, all-too-brief kiss. It’s the only thing she can think to do, the one idea that’s made sense for the best part of a year.
“You need me,” Kara summarizes. “And you wish you didn’t, but there it is.”
“Well, this is faintly mortifying,” Cat grumbles. But instead of pulling back, she goes up on her toes just a little to kiss Kara again. This time it’s anything but brief, and Cat’s hands roam much more than the first time out. “Oh, don’t look so smug.”
“Why?” Kara asks, for the second time that night. “Because the great Cat Grant can’t live without me? Pines for me? Edited an entire block of footage just to make me feel guilty for being so essential? I think I will be smug about that, thanks.”
“I should never have caved.” Cat feigns like she can walk away, like she can stop what they’ve started. Kara’s right there with more kisses, and the only place Cat ends up is flat on her back on her own damn desk.
“We really do need to talk about them depending on you,” Cat mutters as Kara kisses her neck. “There’s a valid point in all this madness.”
“I’m sure there is,” Kara teases. “But I’m kind of busy right now? You know, with how much you need me?”
“Oh, get on with it,” Cat moans, wrapping her arms around Kara’s defined back and pulling her closer. “We’ve already wasted enough time.”