Chapter Text
She had failed. She had been on earth for less than a day and, already, she’d had the opportunity to fulfill her parents’ dying wish taken away from her.
Kal-el didn’t need her. He didn’t even want her. He flew around with their family crest - stronger together - on his chest, but he was the one who kept them apart.
Kara had spent years floating in the Phantom Zone, focused on only one goal: protect Kal-el. But it wasn’t until she landed on earth and met her adult cousin that she truly felt adrift.
Even though Kara was eventually able to settle in with the Danvers and feel a sense of family and belonging, she didn’t really have a sense of purpose until years later when she was able to choose electives for the first time in school.
Kara may not have been able to fulfill her parents’ dying request, but she could make sure she fulfilled the one they had before that.
Her parents had wanted her to be a diplomat and on Krypton: applicants to the diplomatic corps had to pass a test proving their ability to speak in a wide variety of languages.
When Kara saw the list of available elective courses, she knew that language classes could be a first step for Kara toward fulfilling her parents’ wishes.
“I want to take Spanish and Mandarin,” Kara told Eliza.
“Two languages, Kara? That sounds like a lot. Are you sure?”
Eliza had never before seen a look quite like that in Kara’s eyes before as the girl nodded her head.
“Yes,” Kara said. “I’m sure.”
Twenty Years Later:
Cat Grant was waiting in the meeting room with a blonde woman - Kiera? - who'd introduced herself as the ambassador’s secretary or assistant, well she was his something anyway.
The meeting of the UN'S Security Council had run longer than expected and Ambassador Kenchi Aragaki was running late. He was only three minutes late, but still - Cat Grant was not used to waiting.
She wasn't used to what happened when the Ambassador strode into the conference room either. He was halfway to her, apologizing for his lateness in stilted English, when he noticed the girl in the corner and abruptly turned away from Cat.
He embraced her and started chattering away in Japanese.
The two excitedly talked for a few minutes before Cat cleared her throat. The blonde girl blushed while the ambassador began to apologize again, this time in Japanese.
"The ambassador extends his apologies," Kara said one Aragaki had finished speaking. "I spent several months working with his family a number of years ago when he was stationed in France and he hasn't seen me since.The ambassador says he meant no offence to you or your great company. He is ready to answer your questions."
Cat pursed her lips. A translator could make this interview more difficult for her.
"I was led to believe the Ambassador speaks English," Cat said.
Kara relayed Cat’s statement to the Ambassador and relayed his response to Cat.
“The Ambassador does speak some English, but he prefers to speak in his native tongue to avoid any difficulties in making himself understood.”
Cat’s interview continued that way for the next hour: she spoke in English, the interpreter translated Cat’s words, the Ambassador responded and the interpreter translated his words.
The three talked for about an hour before the Ambassador had to conclude the interview so he could take a call in the hallway. Cat was packing up her notebook, recorder and pen when the translator asked her a question.
"Would you like me to send you a transcript, Ms. Grant? I'll be writing one up for the Ambassador’s records," Kara said. "I can have an English copy to you by this evening if you’d like one."
Well perhaps the interpreter did have some use after all.
"You can send the copy to my assistant Margaret,” Cat replied, already on her way out the door.
There was no one employed at CatCo named Margaret. Cat's assistant was named Mary.
So the arrival of a word-perfect transcript in Cat's inbox, delivered to her personal email address no less, came as something of a surprise.
That was one upset too many for Cat: first the Ambassador was late, then he ignored her for the translator and now - somehow - the girl had managed to find her personal email address and had the audacity to use it.
Now Cat was intrigued - this merited a Google Search: "Kara Danvers" "Kenchi Aragaki " "France.”
She set the parameters to encompass the time frame referenced by the ambassador earlier that day and hit search.
Dozens of articles appeared - nearly all of them were about the plucky translator who somehow saved the ambassador's daughter during a kidnapping incident.
"She says she got lucky," a source close to the family was quoted as saying in one article.
Several of the articles mentioned a key piece of evidence police collected from the scene: locks that looked as if they had been torn right out of door frames.
None of the articles had a decent picture of the translator. At best, they captured a third of her face.
Buried toward the bottom of a single article was a sentence referencing Kara's work as a translator in Monaco, a clear attempt on the reporter's part to flesh out the story, woefully lacking in clear detail as it was, in the name of search engine optimization.
That might have been the end of Cat's interest in the young translator were it not for Lois Lane's involvement in that particular incident in Monaco.
It was her story on the attempted coup that landed her the Pulitzer for Breaking News Reporting that year despite Cat's best efforts.
Kara Danvers’ sunny smile was just at the edge of a photo of Prince Albert II’s relieved family taken just moments after the attempted coup was stopped in its tracks.
Two other articles about the incident, neither of which ran the photo, referenced a mysterious blur knocking out the enemy combatants.
Most government officials assumed the blur was some sort of story cooked up by the rebels. They had no idea how the rebels’ guns ended up in a twisted heap near the compound’s gate.
Cat noted down the woman’s professional translation services website from the header on the transcript she had emailed. The translator claimed proficiency with 68 languages and listed experience as a translator around the globe on her ‘About Me’ page.
Cat cross-referenced every bit of experience listed on the other woman’s website with news stories.
There was a woman who claimed an angel saved her in Turkey. A man in Argentina swore up and down that he had seen a woman take on a massive drug ring, armed only with her fists, and come out without a scratch on her. Newspapers chronicled a strange flying creature in Egypt. A Korean blog chronicled paranormal events the author attributed to a single woman. The list went on and on and only one thread seemed to tie all the strange occurrences together: Kara Danvers’ resume.
Cat had a pad full of notes by the time she went home to Carter later that night. She was determined to solve the Kara Danvers mystery when she barreled into the office the next morning,
“Margaret, get Kara Danvers in here this morning,” Cat said as she took her disappointingly lukewarm latte from her assistant. “And have her bring me a hot latte since you can’t seem to manage it.”
“Um, it’s Mary, but yes, right away, Ms. Grant,” Cat’s assistant said, before turning to her computer to try and figure out who on earth Kara Danvers was meant to be.
Mary walked into Cat’s office 10 minutes later. She looked nervous.
“Ms. Grant, Ms. Danvers says she can’t possibly come today because,” Mary trailed off as Cat stiffened and narrowed her eyes.
“Because?”
“Well, she asked that I remind you that she is currently contracted to Ambassador Aragaki,” Mary said, wincing at the look on Cat’s face. “But, but she did say that she’ll try and squeeze you into her schedule at her earliest convenience. So that’s good, right?”
Cat glared at her assistant and released a pent up breath.
“Very well,” she eventually said. “Get her in here as soon as her schedule allows it. And get me a latte - hot this time.”
XXXXXXX
Nine days - Kara Danvers made Cat Grant wait for nine days. Cat made the most of the time; she delved into the translator’s background in her spare moments.
She started with the obvious: LinkedIn. The woman’s portfolio gave Cat a high school - Midvale High - and graduation date to work with. The Midvale Express online archives only extended back to 2012, so Cat had Mary drive up the coast to Midvale and get physical copies of the town’s weekly paper.
Her assistant showed some surprising initiative and photographed the entirety of the Midvale High Yearbook from Kara’s year of graduation and provided Cat with a collated PDF of the entire book - this might even merit the occasional usage of her assistant’s actual name.
A yearbook photo captioned “The Danvers sisters” gave Cat another avenue of research.
Cat had everything she could possibly get compiled in a notebook by the time Kara Danvers called to schedule an appointment. But she didn’t have a plan.
Kara was obviously smart. Cat wouldn’t just be able to ask her for an explanation and expect a straightforward answer; Kara would just laugh off Cat’s evidence. A blur? An angel? CatCo’s CEO knew she needed hard proof instead of second-hand sources. She needed Kara Danvers staying in one city, under her watch.
It wasn’t until Kara walked through her office doors at 10:15 on a Tuesday morning that Cat knew what she needed to do.
“I want to offer you a job.”
Kara laughed.
“You know, usually you wait for people to apply for jobs before offering them,” Kara said as she took a seat on one of Cat’s couches. “What kind of work did you have in mind?”
Well, fuck - What kind of job did Cat have in mind? Job responsibilities include: telling me every single thing about yourself and letting me write one of the biggest stories of my life? Probably not going to cut it.
Cat walked over to her bar, poured herself a drink and offered one to Kara as a way to stall for time while her mind searched for a job that would not only fit Kara’s obvious talents and be a worthwhile and enticing opportunity for her, but would also give Cat unparalleled access to the girl.
After Kara shot down the proffered drink - it was only 10:17 now, after all - Cat went for plan b: also known as, Cat continuing to fly by the seat of her exceptionally well-tailored pants.
“Yes, well, as you may know,” Cat said before stopping to take a sip of her scotch. “CatCo has outlets worldwide and the only thing tying each of the branches together is me.”
Cat took another sip and set her drink down on her desk as a fully formed job description came to mind.
“I’m looking for someone who can act as a manager between all of my various enterprises. You’d work out of National City, but you’d be involved in CatCo London, Paris, Hong Kong, Moscow and Buenos Aires. I want to make sure all of my satellite offices are each up to the standards of CatCo.”
The job offer was not what Kara had been expecting. She’d come prepared to apologize for her use of Cat’s personal email address. Kara had gotten it from Lois, her cousin’s girlfriend, and not thought much of it until she began receiving desperate emails from Cat’s assistant.
The job Cat was offering, it wasn’t what her parents had wanted from her. Her current work wasn’t exactly working for the Kryptonian Diplomatic Corps either, but it was the closest Kara had been able to get with her forged birth certificate and Social Security number. Besides, she’d begun to come to terms with Krypton’s end in recent years and realize that desperately chasing her parents’ wishes for her wasn’t particularly healthy.
And National City had Alex. It had Eliza just a short flight away. Cat’s job offer was extremely tempting for Kara, but she wasn’t sure she was even qualified - this sounded like an intense role and Kara had never even gone to college.
“Ms. Grant, I really appreciate the offer, but I’m not sure I’m really what you’re looking for,” Kara said. “Yes, I speak all the relevant languages and have experience in all of those cities, but I have absolutely no business or journalism experience. I just, as great as it sounds, I don’t feel I’m qualified and you deserve to have the right person for the job.”
Cat leveled Kara with a measuring look for a moment before leaving her perch on the desk to take a seat on the couch opposite Kara. She took a moment to consider the right words to sway Kara to her way of thinking.
“Are you aware that the President of Greece credits you with saving a trade deal with Turkey,” Cat asked, referring to an incident she’d learned of during her research.
“Wha -”
“Shh,” Cat held up a hand to Kara. “I’m not done. I’ve done my research. I know who you are and precisely what you are capable of. You’re extraordinary and I can think of no one better to take on this new role.”
Kara fiddled with her glasses while she considered Cat’s words. She had been missing Alex an awful lot…
“Alright, I’ll take it,” Kara said with a smile.
Her new boss stood up and began smoothing out her skirt, smiling like the, well, like the cat who got the canary. Kara gulped - what had she gotten herself into?
“Excellent,” Cat said. “You start tomorrow.”