Chapter Text
Kara opened her eyes and looked around. She was at the DEO, but nobody was around. She was sitting in her pod, looking down she noticed that her super-suit was gone, a stark white gown in its place, the same as the one she’d come to earth in. She was running her fingers over her family crest when somebody spoke behind her.
“Taking a trip, little one?”
“Only if you’ll come with.” She grinned, watching as her mother came to stand in front of the ship.
“And where would we go?” Alura asked softly, eyes shining as she took in her daughter.
“Somewhere warm, with a star so bright that you’d always feel the sun on your skin. Somewhere quiet, where nobody needed my help. We could just sit on a beach all day and listen to the ocean.” She closed her eyes, imagining such a paradise.
“Sounds lovely.”
“Mmhmm.” Kara agreed.
“It also sounds lonely.”
“How could I be lonely? You’d be there.” Kara replied, eyes popping open. The DEO had faded away and she was left standing next to her mother, nothing but a warm yellow glow surrounding them.
“You wouldn’t miss your family? Your friends?” Alura asked.
“I miss you. And Dad.”
“We miss you too.” Alura said simply.
“But?” Kara asked, sensing there was more.
“Nothing.” She promised. “We do miss you Kara, more than you could ever know. I’m not here to convince you to stay or to go. You didn’t have a choice when you were a child, and perhaps that was unfair, but you have one now, and it is yours alone to make.”
“I’m so tired.” Kara admitted.
“I know.”
“I feel like nothing I do lately is right. They’re all so disappointed in me.”
“They’re not disappointed, they’re worried. Not about your ability, about you, my love. Lighting yourself on fire to keep others warm is not helping.”
“What else can I do? There’s nothing else left! I worked so hard to build a place for myself, with people I love, but now that’s gone and they don’t see me anymore!” Kara was getting worked up now.
“You don’t let them see you, Kara.” Alura corrected.
Kara scoffed, ready to defend herself but Alura continued. “You’ve been hiding yourself away in empty spaces, trying so hard not to need them. You say they don’t see you, but they’ve been trying so hard to find you and you keep running away.”
Kara hung her head, knowing it was true.
“You don’t want to be sent away again, so you’ve been trying to preempt it, hoping it’d hurt less. Does it?” She asked, knowing the answer.
“No.” Kara admitted painfully.
There was a short period where neither spoke, just letting the heaviness settle around them, before Alura reached for her daughter’s hand, taking it in her own and dipping her head to get Kara’s attention once more.
“I think if you asked, she’d let you come back.”
Kara’s eyes met her mother’s, trying to determine just how much she knew.
“I didn’t like her at first.” Alura admitted. “Your father and I have always been so proud of your name, the way she purposefully mispronounces it made me very irritated.”
Despite her surprise, Kara couldn’t help but laugh.
“I don’t know what she was thinking when she asked you to leave,” Alura continued, a pensive look on her face, “but I do think that she cares about you a great deal. Perhaps that’s something you could ask her, if you go back.”
“Are you sure you can’t just tell me what to do?” Kara asked hopefully.
“You know I can’t. This is your decision to make.”
They stood in silence for a long moment, Kara turned and looked around them, feeling so at peace in this place. In the distance, she could see her father and Jerimiah standing together, smiling brightly at her. She glanced between them and her mother a few times.
“I don’t want to leave you again.” She said firmly.
“I know.” Alura’s voice was understanding.
“But,” Kara started, “I’m not ready to say goodbye to them yet either.”
“I know.” She repeated, eyes shining with pride.
“I have to go back.” Her decision was made now, as much as it hurt, she knew it was the right thing for her to do.
“My brave girl.” She reached up and cupped her daughter’s face, Kara gasped at the contact and fell into her mother’s embrace, soaking up the contact she’d been yearning for since the second she climbed in the pod the first time. “We’ll be right here, when the time is right for you.” She whispered into Kara’s hair, an unwavering promise.
Kara’s only response was to cling tighter, trying to memorize ever detail that she was ashamed to have forgotten since she was a child.
“Kara.”
“Do you think she can hear us?”
“Yes.”
“Kara?”
“You’re safe now.”
“We’re all here. It’s okay.”
“Rest for as long as you need, we’re here whenever you’re ready.”
“We love you.”
“Hospital Couture does not suit you, dear.”
“I picked you up the newest Buffy.”
“Hey K, James and I DVR’d every episode of The Great British Bake Off, we’ll marathon it when you get up.”
“Don’t worry, Little One, the humans are more adapt than I gave them credit for, everything is alright here. Just focus on healing.”
“We love you.”
“We love you.”
“We love you.”
“Kara?”
All of their voices flooded her ears at once, she finally pulled away from her mother’s embrace, their hands lingering together for one last moment, before her mother gave her a light squeeze, punctuated with a smile. She stepped back and watched her mother walk away to join the two men who’d raised her.
She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. The voices were getting stronger, after one more deep breath, she opened them, expecting to see the people she loved, but all she saw was black.
///
She drifted around a lot from there. Shifting from a cold black nothing to vivid dreams. Every once in a while, the blackness would shift to an overwhelming brightness, it was the only time the voices ever really left, but after a spot of time, it would fade back out and the voices would fade back in.
It was the only thing keeping her from going insane, hearing them, talking to her about nonsensical things. Most of the time she couldn’t focus enough to get the meaning, but their tones were familiar and soothing.
She’d been floating around in the darkness listening to one of them rattle away Travel mugs! Awake…hot…all day!
Suddenly the words shifted, no longer in English.
Shovvuh…inah…shahrrehth…urvish…nahvruht.
It took her a minute to start to put it together, she focused harder, it was so familiar. She realized that she was no longer being spoken to but rather somebody was singing. It was an old Kryptonian lullaby that her mother had sung to her when she was sick.
She wondered if she’d taken too long. She hadn’t been able to pull herself back so now the decision that she made was being revoked, she was being pulled away, back toward her waiting parents. She forced herself to concentrate. Open your eyes, Kara. Wake-up. Open your damn eyes! She kept repeating the words to herself, until finally there was a crack in the blackness, a small sliver of something new.
It lasted less than a second before they slammed shut again, but she kept trying. Each time, making it a little longer. After a good five minutes, she managed to get them half-way open and keep them there. Her body felt heavy, and there was some pain that was trying to push its way in from the edges of her consciousness, but she was awake.
She could still hear the singing, and it was making her anxious. What did she need to do to ground herself? She glanced down and saw a hand resting on the edge of her bed. Probably Alex. If she could just get her attention, maybe her sister would be able to anchor her back to reality.
It took more effort than should have been necessary, but she managed to creep her fingertips down until they ghosted over her sister’s.
The singing stopped, it’d worked. If the small action hadn’t exhausted her so much she’d smile.
“Kara?”
Wait, that wasn’t her sister’s voice.
“Kara?”
It sounded more like...her mother?
Suddenly a face appeared right overtop of hers.
“My Brave Girl.”
Kara took everything in, suddenly noticing the streak of white in her hair. Astra. Astra had been the one singing.
“Ah-wha-ugh-Ale-” The words made sense in her head but as soon as she tried to vocalize them, they became a garbled mess.
“Shh, Kara, it’s alright.” Astra reached over top of Kara’s head and hit a button on the wall. “Alexandra will be here soon.” She promised. “Hush, Little One, everything is alright.”
Astra kept reassuring her, and even though she was thrown by her presence, she wasn’t afraid like she probably should have been.
Suddenly, a vivid memory of her childhood popped into her head, she’d gotten sick, as she occasionally did before coming to Earth, nothing her parents did would soothe her. Finally, Alura called her sister, panicking that something more serious was wrong. She arrived almost immediately, quickly moving to scoop Kara up, rocking her in a tight embrace and singing silly made-up songs to her until she finally fell asleep.
Kara was starting to feel her eyes droop once more, but was determined not to pass back out until she saw her sister. As though granting a wish, Kara heard the swoosh of the sliding glass doors, and half a second later, Alex’s face came into view next to Astra’s.
As soon as their eyes met, Alex began to sob. She could feel somebody else on her other side, somebody moving her arm, messing around with some wires. She paid them no mind, keeping her eyes locked on her sister. She could still feel Astra’s hand in hers, she concentrated once more, trying to bring the hand up to get Alex’s attention, anything to get her to stop crying.
She was still only getting small twitches, but Astra noticed, moving her free hand to Alex’s shoulder. “Alexandra.” She spoke softly to get her attention. Alex reluctantly broke eye contact with Kara to follow Astra’s gaze, down to Kara’s hand that was still twitching trying to reach for her.
Alex wasted no time, grabbing her hand gently, like she expected Kara to break under the contact. Kara wondered how bad it had been for her sister to be having such a visceral reaction.
She and Alex just continued to watch one another, until suddenly her eyes were painfully flooded with light, snapping shut involuntarily, her head pushing back as far as it could into the pillow under her. She could feel Alex holding onto her just a little tighter, and she could hear her own voice mumbling out incomprehensible pleas.
“Shh, Kara, it’s okay. We just need to check your eyes, to make sure everything is working the right way.” Alex spoke, her voice both hoarse and nasally from crying.
Kara reluctantly opened her eyes again, still only making it about half-way. She saw Alex reach her hand across, and watched as the stranger on her other side dropped the penlight into it.
“Okay, Kara, this might sting your eyes but I’ll try to be quick.” She promised, pulling her left hand from Kara’s and bringing it to her face, to lightly hold her eyelids open, while she quickly flashed the light into them to check for a pupil response. Kara felt Astra slip one of her hands back into Kara’s now empty one.
Alex was right, the exam wasn’t fun, but she kept true to her word and made if fast. After her eyes, she listened to Kara’s heart and lungs, moving the stethoscope expertly, which told Kara that this had become routine in the time she’d been out. It suddenly made her wonder how long that’d been. When she first woke up, she was sure it’d only been a day or two, but between Alex’s extreme reaction and her guided precision in this exam, she wondered if maybe it had been longer.
After another minute, Alex sat on the edge of Kara’s bed, resting her hand on one of Kara’s knees that was hidden under a quilt that Kara recognized from her apartment.
“Everything looks good, Kara.” Alex told her, finally flashing her a smile. “We’ll have to run some more tests, but they can wait.”
Kara’s mind was racing with questions, she vaguely remembered what happened, but she wanted to know what else they’d found out. What had Lord been planning? How long was she asleep for? What was happening with her powers?
However, the rest of her body was not willing to put up with her curiosity, she could feel herself being pulled back under, so tired after only being awake for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. She could already feel the fear building in her chest, not wanting to risk not being able to wake herself up again.
“It’s okay, it’s okay.” Alex reached up to wipe the tears away from her face, that Kara hadn’t even realized had begun to fall. “You can rest, your body knows what it needs, Kara. Shh, I’ll be right here when you wake-up. Sleep sweet girl.”
With one last glance between her aunt and her sister, she did as she was told.
///
The next few days seemed to pass in a similar manner, and if it weren’t for the fact that Alex’s outfits were marginally different every time she woke she wouldn’t have even realized that time was passing much.
The biggest and most surprising change was the glimpse of blonde hair in the corner of the room. She hadn’t had the energy to really focus on the new person until the fourth time she awoke. She’d completely missed her at first, and then she’d mistakenly thought her to be Eliza. It wasn’t until the fourth time, after Alex had once again checked her vitals, something Kara was getting more used to, and stepped back that Kara took note of the shorter curls that were definitely not her foster mother’s. Her eyes were closed, one arm was strewn across her abdomen, the other was keeping her head propped up as she slept. She looked uncomfortable and exhausted, but there was no doubt that that was Cat Grant.
Her confusion must have been apparent because suddenly Alex was answering her unasked question. “She’s been here since you woke up the first time. I can’t wait to tell you about how stubborn she’s been with all of this. Seriously Kara, she’s insane! I literally had to pull her off of Hank last week, if it weren’t for the whole Martian Manhunter thing, I think she would have done some real damage.” Her voice was soft, not wanting to wake the woman in question.
Alex’s words did not provide any clarity, if anything it only made her more bewildered. There were so many questions swarming around her head, settling just on the tip of her tongue, but she was still too tired to really get her mouth to cooperate. Instead she just reached for Alex’s hand once more and after a moment of hard concentration she managed to croak out a “Love…you.” The first real words she’d said since waking up a few days ago.
The last thing she saw before drifting off again was an earth shattering smile on her sister’s face.
///
It seemed that had been the real turning point. She’d started to wake up more, the tiredness that usually pulled her back under after fifteen minutes was starting to fade away, she was able to keep herself awake for almost five hours, she was talking a lot more too. At first it’d been long drawn out sentences, but after her brain and her mouth got used to working together again it got easier; today she’d managed to hold a normal, non-stunted conversation with Lucy about her time prosecuting war crimes in Bahrain.
Cat was still a pretty permanent fixture. She wasn’t sleeping there anymore, after the first week when they’d run their next panel of tests and confirmed that Kara didn’t have any lasting brain damage, she’d relaxed a little. Still, she spent any non-critical working hours sitting with her laptop in the corner of Kara’s room.
They hadn’t spoken. At least not beyond the requisite greetings, and Kara’s occasional request for water (something that she was now capable of getting on her own, but still asked for just to have Cat’s eyes meet hers for a moment). Cat always waited until Kara was asleep before she left, not wanting to deal with the hassle of saying goodbye. Kara had tried hard to keep herself awake for longer periods of time, just to see if she could force Cat to acknowledge her departure, but so far she’d failed. It was frustrating.
What frustrated her more though, was that she was still being kept in the dark about the specifics of what had happened. Most of what she knew was based on her own observations and memory.
She knew that Maxwell Lord had set a trap for her, that they’d fought, that Kara had lost her powers and been badly injured, that somehow they’d found her, and that Lord had been killed.
She knew that her powers still hadn’t returned, and she knew from the concerned looks Alex, Astra, and Hank exchanged at least once a day that her hope that they would soon may be fruitless.
Every time she asked them to fill in any of the other blanks, they told her to rest, focus on getting better, they’d tell her everything soon.
She was sick of waiting around for soon, even the way they were interacting with each other told her that a lot had changed in the time she’d been asleep. What the hell was Astra even doing there to begin with?
She and Lucy had just finished an episode of The Great British Bake Off and the other woman was packing her bag back up to get back to work when the door slid open and Alex entered.
She and Lucy exchanged a glance and Alex nodded. It was obvious that some kind of conversation had been had earlier, without Kara. After another moment Lucy turned back to her, hiking her bag up onto her shoulder. She leaned over and pressed a kiss to Kara’s forehead, brushing her hair back, giving her a playful smile.
“Alright K, I need to get back before Cat causes another intern to need lifelong therapy, you know how she gets when left unattended.” Lucy winked.
“Is she coming today?” It was a question Kara asked every day, even if the answer was always the same, she couldn’t help the uncertainty that sat heavy on her shoulders, always waiting for the day that she was well enough that Cat would drift away again.
“Yep!” Lucy said in an overly cheerful tone, trying to counteract the smallness in Kara’s voice. “She’ll probably be a little late tonight, Nathan is taking Carter for the weekend, but he can’t pick him up until 7 tonight so she’s going to come right after.”
“Okay.” Kara replied, relieved.
“Okay.” Lucy repeated with a smile, giving Kara’s good foot a squeeze on her way out.
Once the doors had slid shut again, Alex pulled a chair up to the side of Kara’s bed.
“How ya feeling today?”
“Pretty good, leg’s sore.” She replied.
“Hmm.” Alex nodded, Kara’s leg was always sore, they’d been pulling back on the pain killers too, not wanting Kara to become dependent on them or for them to have an adverse effect on her system in the long run.
“Tired?” Alex asked.
“No, Lucy had to write out a few briefs so I took a short nap about an hour ago.”
“Mmhmm.” Alex responded, looking down, and twisting at her fingers in her lap.
Kara looked at her curiously. Alex didn’t do fidgety nervousness, that was more her thing. When Alex was nervous she grumped around and hit things.
Kara really wanted to ask her what was going on, but she didn’t want to scare her away from whatever it was she was preparing herself to say. She wondered if it was about Astra, the two had seemed to have built a tenuous friendship since Kara got hurt, which was almost more confusing than Astra’s presence all together.
“I was thinking we could talk about what happened to you.” Alex finally said.
Kara felt her breath catch in her throat, this was the last thing she expected Alex to say. Suddenly, the weird exchange between Alex and Lucy made sense, she knew that the group had little meetings, that she was not invited to, to talk about her, which was beyond annoying but understandable. They must have decided that it was time for her to know.
“Really?” She didn’t want her sister to backtrack, but she couldn’t contain her surprise.
“You’re healing better than we expected. Hank and I both think you’ll be ready to go home soon, maybe early next week. You should know before you leave, so if you have any questions we can address them here. Is that alright?” Alex asked.
“Yeah! Yes! Yes.” She said the last yes a little slower, not wanting to seem overeager. “I was honestly starting to think you guys were never going to tell me.” She said, her tone was joking but the words were true.
“Sorry,” Alex apologized honestly, “we just didn’t want to overwhelm you. We wanted you to just focus on getting better.”
Kara just nodded, the truth was she still resented the decision a little bit but she didn’t want to put this conversation off to have that one.
“Okay.” Alex said firmly.
“Okay.” Kara agreed.
“After you left CatCo, we were all worried.” Alex started, and Kara resisted cringing at the memory of their fight that day.
“We tried your comm. but something was blocking our signal. Hank and I were getting frustrated, but Cat was on it. She grabbed Winn from the bullpen and had him remote into the DEO’s network. He was able to track you through the GPS signal in your phone. That house was the closest to the last cell tower you pinged. Cat let us use her helicopter to get there faster, otherwise…” She trailed off, eyes far away for a moment.
“When we got there, you were already down, Lord was standing over you, there was no reason to hesitate.”
“You shot him?” Kara asked. She knew Alex had had to kill before, but she always hated thinking about it, knowing how hard it was on her sister.
“Hank did, he was first through the door.” She explained, knowing that she would have done it herself if he hadn’t beat her to it.
“You were really out of it, you kept saying “They’re here now.” and something about my dad. You lost a lot of blood.”
“I saw them,” Kara explained, “my parents, and your dad. They were waiting for me.”
Alex bit her lip, she didn’t really believe in the whole afterlife thing, but she wouldn’t say anything, knowing the comfort Kara derived from it was important. More than anything, it just scared her how close her sister had gotten to not being able to tell her about it.
“They told me I had to choose, I could stay with them or come back here. I chose here.” She said, glad when Alex finally looked at her again. “It was weird though, I kept trying to wake-up and I couldn’t.”
“We had you in a medically induced coma.” Alex told her. “You hit your head pretty hard when you fell. Between that and the blood loss, you needed time the time to heal, uninterrupted.”
“How long?” Kara asked. It was the question she asked the most, the one that bothered her the most. Nobody would tell her how long she slept for, just saying it didn’t matter and they were just glad she was awake.
“A month.” Alex replied, “We stopped the propofol drip after three weeks, but it took a month before you woke up for the first time. We needed to give the other treatments time to work.” She explained, wanting Kara to understand that it was necessary and hoping she wouldn’t be upset that she’d been out for so long.
“Other treatments?” Kara asked.
“Some drug therapy to bring the swelling down, time in your sunbed, and a lot of blood transfusions at the beginning, granted that was slow going, since none of us except Astra could donate.”
“Astra?” That was another gaping hole she had been wondering about.
“She’d been keeping tabs on you since the hostage exchange. She was worried you were spreading yourself a little thin.”
Kara once again dipped her head down, that was still something she was having a hard time coming to terms with.
“After what happened with Lord she showed up outside of the DEO bunkers. How she knew the location…she was taken in, but she didn’t have anything on her. She kept demanding to see you, to know you were okay. We didn’t have many options. You needed blood and despite your looking human, a blood transfusion from one of us would have done more harm than good. So, we put some kryptonite cuffs on her to keep the needle from breaking and for the next few days she was our walking blood bank.”
“She saved me?”
Alex nodded. “We started closing the ward off to let her see you, Kryptonite strips at the end of the hallways so she couldn’t escape but far enough away so you wouldn’t be harmed by it. She was grateful,” Alex paused for a minute and shook her head, “she risked her life coming here to save my baby sister, and she was grateful to us for letting her do it.” She had a far-way look for a moment, and Kara wondered again what exactly was happening between her sister and her aunt.
“After we stopped the propofol drip, she started to give us names of her own agents and their locations. We’ve rounded most of them up.”
“Why?”
“I think,” She started, but paused to get her words right, “I think she saw what we do here, from outside of a cell, and it helped her realize that we’re not the enemy she thought we were.” She paused for another moment, wanting to be careful with this next part. “I think she was also afraid that you would send her away when you woke up and she wanted something to show for herself, to prove to you that she could be trusted.”
Kara nodded, it hurt but it made sense.
“What about Cat?” She asked after a minute.
“Cat?”
“You said she was insane.” Kara reminded her.
Alex laughed. “I honestly didn’t think you’d remember that, although I shouldn’t be surprised, you don’t forget much when it comes to her, huh?”
Kara blushed but didn’t respond. Alex just laughed again, knowing there was definitely something going on between her little sister and her boss – ex-boss.
“Hank returned her helicopter as soon as you were stable. She demanded to see you, not trusting our word that you were okay. Obviously, bringing the city’s most notorious reporter into a classified government building wasn’t high on our list of good ideas so he said no. She was pissed, so she spent the next three days camped outside of my apartment door, threatening to expose various government secrets if we didn’t do as she asked.”
“She spent three days outside of your apartment?!” Kara couldn’t even imagine Cat stepping foot on their side of town, let alone sleeping up against Alex’s door.
“Yes, my neighbors hate me now.” She replied with an annoyed eye roll.
“What kind of government secrets?” Kara asked, hoping her identity wasn’t on the list.
“Big ones, at least two that even I don’t have clearance for. She’s a little scary.” Alex replied, still bitter Hank wouldn’t tell her the full contents of the list. “Don’t worry, we didn’t find your name anywhere on it.”
Kara couldn’t help but smile.
“Once we finally conceded, she was here a lot. I have no idea how she kept CatCo running.” Alex paused again, not sure if the next part was hers to share. “I don’t think she’d admit it but she was scared out of her mind.”
Kara scoffed, “Probably worried what the city would do without their hero.”
“Hey.” Alex scolded, “I get that you’re still pissed about her making you quit, and I still can’t give you a good reason why, but you don’t get to say things like that. It’s been hard Kara. For all of us. Seeing you like this,” She shook her head, “we didn’t even know if you’d make it past that first night. And maybe she hasn’t said it but she cares about you, probably more than even she knows. And it’s not because you’re Supergirl, it’s because you’re you.”
Kara felt the shame settle around her heart, she knew Cat wasn’t heartless, that she cared but after everything that’d happened before Lord’s attack, she just had a hard time understanding her.
“What happened between her and Hank?” Kara asked, trying to lighten the mood. “You said you had to pull her off of him.”
“There was a disagreement about your treatment.” She said simply.
Kara raised her eyebrows, obviously not satisfied.
Finally, Alex sighed and continued. “There was a treatment that was suggested to see if we could kick start your powers but it was experimental, and we had no way of knowing what kind of side effects it would have. Hank wanted us to go for it but Cat lost her mind, she said it wasn’t worth risking your life again even if it worked. She said we needed you more than Supergirl.”
Kara was floored. Cat Grant was willing to sacrifice the hero she created for Kara Danvers? “She really said that?”
Alex nodded, “I told you she cares.”
Kara just nodded dumbly, still taking it in.
“Do you have any other questions?” Alex asked.
She did, a lot of them. But none of them were coming to mind. “Not right now.” She said after a minute. “I should probably take a nap before Cat gets here.”
“Okay.”
“You want to stay?” Kara asked. “I have all the Mary Berry you could ever want.” She pointed to the TV in the corner.
“Sure.” She replied, turning her chair so she could see the screen, knowing that Kara slept better when she wasn’t alone. “I’ll wake you up when she gets here.” She promised, but Kara was already snoring.
///
“Kiera,” Cat nodded as she walked into her room, “you’re looking slightly less awful today.”
“Kara.”
Cat turned, surprised. She’d been expecting the usual “Good evening Miss Grant.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Not Kiera. Kara. Which I know you know. So, from now on, no more Kiera.” Her voice was firm and she raised an eyebrow, daring Cat to challenge her.
“Hmm, I think I preferred it when you were too exhausted to talk, but whatever, if that’s what you want.” She acquiesced with an eye roll and a dismissive wave. Already moving toward the corner of the room that hardly anybody else ever used to set up her things.
“You’ve made quite the impression on my sister.” Kara continued.
Cat stopped and turned back to her, she’d partially been expecting this, knowing that the older Danvers sister was going to talk with Kara earlier that day. “You’re very talkative tonight.”
“I’m making up for lost time.” She replied. “Plus, I think this is a conversation we should stop putting off.”
Cat just gave her a light glare and continued to fish through her bag for the power cord to her laptop.
“Cat.” Her voice was sharp.
That got her attention, Kara had never called her by her first name, it was always Miss Grant. She reluctantly walked over and sat in the chair that Alex had left by Kara’s bed, turning it so they were facing each other.
For a long moment, they just stared at each other. It was obvious that Cat was not going to be the one to break first. If Kara wanted this conversation, then she’d have to step up. Kara took one more minute just to look at her, it wasn’t every day she had an opportunity to do so. To the untrained eye, she looked like the same Cat Grant that presented herself to the world every day but Kara knew. As her eyes skirted across Cat’s face she could see every change the last few months had brought with it.
“You look tired.” Kara said at last.
“I’m not the one who napped for a month.” Cat threw back, offended.
“I didn’t mean that as an insult,” She promised, “just an observation.”
“That doesn’t make it less insulting.” Cat rolled her eyes. “Is this honestly what you have to say to me? Because I fired another assistant today and I have ten pages to reformat before the deadline at two tomorrow.”
“Why don’t you ever talk to me?” Kara asked.
Cat was a little taken aback, out of all the things she expected Kara to ask, that was not on the list. She’d expected “Why are you here? Why did you fire me? How much do you hate yourself now that your actions put me in this bed?” It always was like Kara to surprise her.
“I’m talking to you right now.” Cat pointed out, trying to play dumb.
“You know that’s not what I mean. You’re here every day, you sat in that chair for four days straight when I first woke up, you threatened to expose government secrets just to get here.”
“Your sister is worse at keeping things to herself than you are.” Cat scoffed.
“Why does everybody think I’m bad at keeping secrets?” Kara asked, pulling what Lucy called the ‘hurt puppy’ look.
“You were a superhero for less than a year before half the city knew your secret identity.” Cat said as though it were obvious.
Kara didn’t bite, knowing Cat was trying to redirect the conversation. If she could just get Kara angry, then they might be able to avoid the hurt that was sitting like a brick between them.
“I’ve been awake for a month now, and you can barely acknowledge me. You weren’t always pleasant when I was your assistant, but at least you saw me.” Kara’s fingers toyed nervously with her quilt. “If you’re mad at me, I’d rather you just say so.”
The guilt and shame that had been hanging around her since that day in her office two months ago flooded Cat’s lungs like smoke, making it hard to breath. She looked away from Kara, bringing a hand up to rest over her chest.
“I’m not mad at you.” She mumbled after a few deep breaths.
“Then what is it?” Kara pleaded, “Because you talk to them.” Her hand gestured toward the door. “You guys have your little meetings that I’m not allowed in on, and I’ve heard that you’re very vocal for those. So, if you’re not mad, then what is it?”
Cat looked down, biting the inside of her cheek. “I see you Kara.” She promised, her voice suddenly hoarse. “And that’s the problem. I can’t stop seeing you.”
The hurt puppy look was back and Kara wondered if she would have been better off just leaving it alone and moving on.
“I see you on my balcony, trying to laugh away my effort to unmask you. I see you in my office telling me how much it meant to you to keep your job. I see you, dejected, quitting because I gave you no choice. I see you, jumping off that ledge and right into Maxwell’s trap. I see you in this bed, pale and lifeless, having uncontrollable seizures. I see you, as your destiny slips through your fingers because I pushed you too hard. You are all I see anymore Kara.”
The words hit Kara squarely in her chest. She’d thought Cat was disappointed in her, not the other way around. “You feel guilty?” She asked.
Cat pulled a face, obviously not pleased at the insinuation that her feelings were so easily definable like some everyday plebe, but she didn’t respond.
“Because, if you do, you shouldn’t.” Kara continued after it became obvious Cat wasn’t going to say more. “None of this is on you.”
Cat looked up then, meeting her eyes. “How can you say that? You may be the most forgiving person on this planet or any other but even you should take issue with the way I pushed you.”
“It was still my choice.” Kara said. “I could have gone to work for any other company after four years of being your assistant. Even before I quit,” Kara stressed the word, “I had headhunters after me.”
“You were offered other jobs?” She wondered who was brave enough to try to steal her assistant away from her.
Kara couldn’t help but smile at Cat getting sidetracked. “At least three times a month.”
“Why did you stay then?”
“I didn’t want to work with them, I wanted to work with you.” Kara said simply.
“Then how can you not resent that I sent you away?” Cat knew if the roles were reversed, she’d very likely blame Kara.
“Why did you do it?” Kara asked instead.
Cat was once again thrown for a loop. “Does it matter? The outcome is the same regardless.”
“Yes. It matters.” Kara was boring holes into her now, watching for any tell.
Cat sighed, she could lie, but her inability to explain herself was what led them here in the first place. She wouldn’t let Kara get hurt again, going off halfcocked because of some twisted desire for her approval.
“You have the capability to save the world.” Cat started, seemingly awed. “I thought being at CatCo. was distracting you from that. All I could think about was how hard it must be to hear them, calling for you, and not being able to help them because I was demanding you hunt down the head of legal. You shouldn’t have to choose between saving the world and making sure I get layouts every Monday. I thought if I let you go; it would be less stressful for you because you wouldn’t have to make that choice anymore.”
Kara saw nothing but sincerity. “You should have said that.” Kara said softly, feeling like a weight had finally been lifted.
Cat hung her head, closing her eyes, bringing a hand to her face as though trying to create a shield between herself and everything that had been said.
“There was never a choice, if they really needed me, I was there. Really Cat, nobody makes that many coffee runs.” She joked.
Cat wasn’t having it. She looked up finally, her eyes were glossy, her face a little pale. “These past two months,” She shook her head like she was trying to clear away the memories, “the only time I’ve been that scared before was when Carter was born, two months early. He was so small, and the oddest shade of blue. It took five minutes to get him to cry. Those were the longest minutes of my life.” Her eyes were fixed on the wall across from her, lost in the memory. After a few seconds she turned back to Kara. “Since the second you stepped off of that balcony, that fear, I can’t get rid of it.”
Kara sucked in a breath and realized it was probably time to stop assuming she knew where this conversation was going.
“I-uh,” She wondered if she should really bring it up, “I heard you got into it with Hank.” Her voice was soft, her eyes avoiding Cat’s.
“Well, the D in Danvers certainly isn’t for discretion is it?” Cat asked rhetorically, though after everything she had already said, there really wasn’t a point in denying it. “He was being an idiot, panicking because you weren’t waking up the very minute they stopped the propofol.”
“Would you really be okay with Supergirl never returning?” Kara asked.
“If it meant that you were safe, then yes. Would you?” Cat asked the question back.
Kara sighed. It was something she thought about a lot in the last month. Obviously something had to give, there was no way she could have kept going the way she had been, even if it weren’t for the attack. She wasn’t sure if she could handle that kind of power, that kind of responsibility again.
“I don’t know.” She finally said, part of feeling guilty for even considering the possibility of being normal for the rest of her life.
“If I don’t get them back, could I have my job back?” She asked playfully, but she still wanted an answer.
“No.” Cat said firmly, Kara looked crushed, but she continued. “You can’t be my assistant anymore. I selfishly kept you there too long, when you come back to CatCo. there’s a position for a Junior Editor that I think would be a better fit.”
“Junior Editor?” Kara asked shocked.
“It’s not a huge step up,” Cat insisted, “you’ve always done a decent job editing for me, this way you would have the chance to do so in a more official capacity. You’d still report to the senior editors, and me of course, but you’d have more responsibility with the writing staff, and maybe a chance to write a few of your own pieces. Unless you’d like something different?”
“No! No, that- that sounds great! I – thank you.” She couldn’t contain her smile.
“You’ve earned it.” Cat replied simply.
The conversation lulled again, but there was one more thing Kara needed to know. “If…if I do get my powers back…what, um, what happens then?”
“Then you speed read your assignments.” Cat said dryly.
Kara smiled, glad to know she was being welcomed back, but there was still a little uncertainty that hung around her.
After a moment, Cat reached out and took her hand. If she was being honest, if felt a little weird with Kara awake and aware she was doing it, but she pushed forward. “Whatever happens next, we’ll figure it out.” She promised sincerely.
Kara smiled again. “Did you want some help with that reformatting?” She offered, deciding they’d had enough of the heaviness, Cat was right, they’d figure it out.
“Well, I suppose you have nothing better to do.” She said airily.
Kara only lasted through the first three pages before drifting off. Cat just pulled the blanket up tighter around her and kept working. It was nearing one in the morning before she finished, carefully replacing her work in her bag. She briefly considered asking an agent to bring a cot down, but ultimately decided to head home, hoping to get the paperwork for Kara’s new job drafted in the morning.
She took one more moment to watch Kara sleep, finally reaching out to run her fingers over Kara’s forehead. She placed a light kiss on the younger woman’s temple before pulling back.
“Goodnight Kara.” She whispered.
“’night Cat.” She heard mumbled back and she couldn’t help but smile, before turning to leave.
///
Cat had been right. They did figure it out.
Kara was released from the DEO infirmary just under a week later. Alex all but moved into her guest bedroom for the next month. The rest of the group took turns being there too; CatCo. was close enough to her place that either Winn, James, or Lucy or some combination of the three had lunch with her every day. Astra had been given permission to leave the DEO with agent supervision (which meant Alex) and also became a frequent visitor.
In spite of everything, there was part of Kara that was grateful for what had happened since it brought her aunt back into her life. She and a small handful of her soldiers who’d reformed had joined the DEO under very strict probation and supervision. They’d been doing a lot of good, and Kara felt a lot better about not having her powers back, knowing that at least the city was still being protected.
After another two months of what Kara liked to call “house arrest”, she’d been able to go back to work. She’d been having intensive physical therapy since being released, and was almost ready to have her casts removed. Astra assured her that her arm was healed, and her leg was getting better. She was still walking with a slight limp, and the DEO doctors insisted that she still wear one of those removable fabric casts once the plaster one came off, at least until they were sure the tissue wasn’t going to tear again. But they saw no reason to keep her at home any longer.
The first two weeks, Cat insisted she only come in for half a day to get used to being back. As far as the rest of her co-workers knew, she’d been in a bad car accident seven months earlier and was only now healed enough to return. Apparently, Cat had been very vague about the reason for her departure all those months ago so nobody really questioned it, especially with Kara limping around the office.
She was given a small office around the corner from Cat’s. It wasn’t really standard for a Junior Editor, but Cat wanted her close by so she knew she was safe. In fact, during her first month back she’d hardly even used the space because Cat would always make up an excuse about why Kara was better off just working in her office instead.
It had caused some whispers about them being involved but nothing had happened. At least not until one night, a month and a half after she’d returned. They were in Cat’s office, the only two left in the building, Cat was prepping some memos for legal concerning a new branch she wanted to launch in the coming year and Kara was sprawled out on one of the couches, the papers in front of her face more red than black and white at this point.
Cat let out a heavy sigh and pulled her glasses off, dropping them on her desk. “I need a drink.” She declared, getting up to grab the first bottle her hands landed on behind the bar. “C’mon.” She insisted, taking the bottle and a glass with her out to the balcony. They’d learned early on that Kara shouldn’t drink without her powers, she was a lightweight, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t keep Cat company so she got up and followed, glad for a moment away from the disaster she was editing.
Cat poured her scotch but left it sitting on the ledge in front of her, staring off into the city instead. “It’s beautiful.” She finally spoke, a content smile on her face.
“You should see it from above.”
“You’ll have to show me some day.” For whatever reason, Cat was insistent that Kara was going to get her powers back, going so far as to completely control the flow of information about Supergirl so that the city wouldn’t be in a sudden shock when she returned.
Kara just smiled, it felt nice, knowing somebody had such an unwavering faith in her.
For a minute they just watched each other before Cat stepped into Kara and pulled her down for a kiss. Maybe it should have been a big grand moment, but it just felt natural. They both knew that they’d end up here eventually, so instead of the shock Kara might have felt if the same thing had happened last year, all she felt instead was a sense of contentment that she hadn’t felt since embracing her powers the first time.
///
Two months later, Cat was proven right.
They were in the middle of a “Supersquad” dinner (“Yes we have to call it that Kara! Well I don’t care if your powers are still MIA that’s what we are! You said you liked the game I developed about it!”)
Cat insisted on hosting out on her balcony, since it was the first sunny day in nearly a week. They were just finishing, Kara and Carter were in the middle of staring contest that had Winn, James, and Lucy cheering for who they thought should be the victor. As soon as Kara blinked, Alex was corralling them to regain their attention.
“There’s something that we wanted to talk to you about.” She said nervously, eyeing Astra in her periphery.
After a moment, she spoke again. “Astra and I, are…kind of…dating.” She drew it out slowly, clearly uncomfortable with the attention being focused on her.
Kara literally flew out of her seat in surprise. Which created absolute pandemonium once they all realized what had happened. Cat was the only one that didn’t seem fazed, just sitting back in her seat smugly while everybody else freaked out.
///
Despite the panic that she’d felt initially when her powers returned, eventually it’d ebbed away. This time was different.
She gently took on her role as National City’s superhero again. Cat really had done a great job with handling all of her PR so that nobody was overly surprised at her sudden reappearance after nearly a year away.
She’d also kept to her promise that Kara’s job would be safe, not that Kara doubted that anymore after they’d begun seeing each other.
It actually all worked out as seamlessly as they could have expected. With Astra and her crew stepping up, the city didn’t need Supergirl to handle every little crime. Instead she only left during work hours if something major was happening.
///
It was exactly one year after Lord’s attack when Cat walked out onto her private balcony to find Kara, head thrown back stargazing.
“Are you alright?” She asked, Kara had been a little off all day.
“Just enjoying the fresh air.” She replied without moving.
Cat moved to stand next to her, tilting her own head to try to see what Kara was seeing. “You know,” She started after a minute, “you still owe me that tour of the city.”
Kara turned to look at her with a smile. “Yeah?”
“Mmhmm.” Cat just hummed.
A few minutes later, they were soaring right overtop CatCo. Towers. Kara looked down and saw the balcony she’d jumped off of a year ago today. She wondered what she’d tell her old self if she could. But as she felt Cat pull her arms tighter around her, she realized it didn’t matter. The last year had been hell, but at the end of the day, she was better for it.
With one last loop around the city, she pulled her cape tight around them, and flew home.