The worst day of Kara Danvers life was the day that Kat Grant decided to let her go.
Things had already started off terribly. Despite their optimistic beginnings, going public with their relationship – any aspect of it – turned out to be nigh impossible. And that secrecy put a real damper on things. The few select individuals who were allowed to know all seemed to think that Kara was making the biggest mistake of her life. Alex, James, Hank, they all seemed to agree that getting so close to her boss was the worst idea imaginable. And she damn sure wasn't going to tell them about the more intimate details,which would no doubt lead to a proper argument. For all that Supergirl loved a fight, Kara hated confrontation with her loved ones.
Despite promises made, Cat always looked this strange combination of sad and angry whenever Kara had to disappear from work to take care of some super villain or, quite literally, put out another fire. All the stuff with Hank's story about himself and her adoptive father, and Alex's troubled love-life were just the added spice to a really nasty situation that left her feeling constantly on edge.
She was a perfect mix of terrible emotions when Cat Grant called her in to her office at the end of a long Friday. There was none of the usual gentle greetings or sweet nothings. She was very formal, very detached. "Kara, there is no easy way to bring this up, so I'm simply going to lay it out there. I'm leaving."
She was stunned, paralyzed, standing there like a complete moron. Obviously she wasn't just talking about taking off for the evening. This was meant to be a big announcement, but... but... Cat couldn't just leave! Could she? Well, yeah, she could, but... how? "Wh- Come again?" The older woman sighed and sank onto one of her couches. Kara wasn't really ready to sit down next to her, not until this made sense. She just stayed where she was, arms crossed, as serious as she could make herself look – more Supergirl than Kara at the moment.
"I'm too old to constantly be a damsel, and too young to let myself die a slow death here in one single location. I used to be so hungry and desperate and mobile and I need to do that again. And I can't as long as I'm here, dragging you down. I'm going to be walking the world for a while, do some philanthropy, make a change in the world. You might say I was... inspired by recent events..."
She wanted to be touched, or honored, or whatever. Really, she did. But she was also still furious and confused and probably a bunch of other things too. "Okay, so then we just... We're... I-I mean what does that... make... us?"
Cat sighed softly and shook her head. "I will always care about you, but I just don't know if I can continue being the significant other of either Supergirl or Kara Danvers. But I wouldn't leave without making sure that you're okay without me, either in your love life or your professional career. I'd like you to trust me just one last time, and when all is said and done and you still hate me, I'll understand."
"Ugh, I don't hate you, Cat. That's, like, pretty much impossible after everything that's happened. I'm just feeling confused." Kara groaned and finally settled next to her on the couch. It seemed like a bad plan to share any kind of physical affection or anything. That would complicate stuff way too much. "But you've earned a chance to let me see what the newest trick you have up your sleeve is."
The weekend was silent. Normally that was awesome, but this time it was pure anxiety and terror. She heard nothing from Cat, her sister was busy getting over stuff with Lucy by cavorting with some new girl – Margaret something-or-other. James was getting ready to take over CatCo. Hank had discovered that there was another Martian in the city. Winn was lost in some new game or whatever. Everything was painfully quiet, which meant all she could do was huddle up on her couch, stuffing her face with potstickers and wait for the other shoe to drop.
The shoe came in the form of a new job at CatCo as an investigative reporter, just like her big famous cousin's not-so-famous alter ego. Go figure. Her new boss, Snapper, was a total ass and did nothing to soften her mood. But the cherry on top of it all was her first assignment. The gruff jerkface passed her a tiny dossier. "Luthor Corp has officially been handed down from baldy to his baby half-sister Lena. She's been incredibly silent about the entire affair, but somehow Cat pulled every string and favor she had and got you a very, very exclusive interview with this woman. Craft your questions, go in strong, get your story, and get back to me. You screw this up, and not even all the fury that blonde she-demon can summon will convince me to not fire you."
A Luthor. Kara had to do a job she was barely prepared for, and her first task was to interview a freaking Luthor? Kara no longer had a single clue what Cat was thinking, and she wanted desperately to charge upstairs and tell the woman to forget her waning trust, this was too much. But still... Cat really did have a way of working every single situation to its best possible outcome, even when super villains and maniacs were involved. But if this did blow up in her face, there would be hell to pay.
Snapper, predictably, hadn't given Kara long to get a handle on the situation over at Luthor Corp before she would need to get this interview done and have her article submitted. So she spent her lunch break cramming food down her gullet and looking the dossier over and over again before checking some websites on her phone for any scraps of information she could find on the Luthor family and what had happened to them since Lex's imprisonment. There was, predictably, almost nothing.
Armed with a pathetic list of questions, Kara approached the building, already noticing the first inconsistency. No longer Luthor Corp, the sign out front merely said in fancy lettering 'L-Corp'. That was... strange. But it didn't change the sheer terrifying facade of a monolith built on the backs of wage-slaves and the blood of actual slaves, probably. The girl behind the first desk was cheery but otherwise kind of robotic. "I'm sorry, but Miss Luthor isn't tak- Oh my god, I've gotten so used to saying that, but... But yeah, you're right here. Um, please, go on up Miss Danvers. It's the top floor, you quite literally cannot miss it."
That was an understatement, there wasn't anything on the entire floor except for the office of Lena Luthor. It was guarded by a much more natural and welcoming woman named Jess who offered to help her with anything she might need. The decorations here were the most comforting she had seen in the whole place, wall hangings and colors and soft textures. It was seriously throwing Kara off her game, and she wasn't particularly on her game to begin with. Kara eventually relented and accepted the offer of a bottle of water before being ushered into the office.
Looking at photos of Lena Luthor online, what little she could locate, the woman really did look like she was an obvious blood relative to her more notorious sibling. Piercing eyes and a pursed mouth that showed little to no emotion. As it turned out, Lena simply didn't like being photographed. Because the moment Kara entered the room, her host flashed her the most amazing smile she had ever seen, clearing the room in just a few steps and offering a hand to shake. "Kara Danvers! My god, I don't think Cat could have spoken any more highly of you if she tried. I can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to this. It's become obvious that no one out there could do a better job of telling this story."
Kara shook her hand, feeling... good? Those eyes she thought were nothing but steel and ice were more like stars. The lips pressed so tightly together in still images were vibrant and red and wide and inviting and... wait... No. No, it wasn't like she and Cat had... Well, they had, but not... It would be bad form anyway! To go crushing on another woman so soon, a woman she was meant to be writing an objective article about. Right? The point was that Lena seemed nice. That was all.
"Well, uh... She obviously forgot to mention that I'm also awkward and weird. Or that this is my first time writing like this for CatCo." Kara laughed nervously and adjusted her glasses. It was a tell, she knew that, but tells generally got that way by being habits that were tough to break.
Lena returned to her chair and Kara took a seat across from her, crossing her legs and getting her notepad ready while they continued the small-talk. "Quite the opposite, she was very clear what kind of person you were, and she spoke more in terms of potential than pure talent. But it was very... Well, it was filled with adoration. One might almost think she was nursing a crush or something," she continued before erupting in bright laughter. Kara was somewhere between dying of embarrassment and falling in love with that laugh.
"If I'm not mistaken, you're the one being interviewed, not me. Speaking of which, if you don't mind, I'd like to start by addressing the elephant in the room. Or, rather, the L-ephant in the room?" She loved terrible jokes, she loved them so much, and no matter how much everyone responded with groans and even outright animosity, she kept right on making them. So when Lena grinned, biting on her lip just so, Kara felt as though she had been practicing all her life for this very moment right here. Had it actually worked? Did someone really find her dorky humor amusing? Ohhhh, by the almighty Rao, what was happening here?
Answering the question meant Lena was no longer biting her lip. But there was still time, still another chance to make her do that again, if she was lucky. True to her word, Lena actually did begin to answer, talking about her decision to re-brand the company and perhaps even the family itself. And she continued to talk, earnestly and honestly and warmly, for far longer than their scheduled meeting time. She shoo'd Jess away multiple times, telling her to reschedule things and make the necessary calls. "This is an important interview and I want to make sure that Miss Danvers has all the material she needs to write her article."
A knowing look passed between the two women and Jess quickly showed herself out. Kara missed it entirely and was already in the process of closing up her notebook. It was definitely far later than she'd planned on staying and she didn't want to go and steal all of this woman's time. No doubt she had better things she could be doing. "I think I'm actually pretty much all set. You've given me more than enough to write a really amazing story about this place."
"Nope!"
Well, uh... that was interesting. There was no one quite like Cat Grant, and there was no possible way one could really draw an immediate comparison between Lena and her boss/girlfriend/whatever. Except for that one very brief moment. The tone may have been different, the word choice wasn't nearly as clipped, but something in the confidence caused a familiar shiver to travel along her spine. "...nope?"
"Nope! I have no doubt you're starving right about now, and I know I am. So! I'm going to be treating you to dinner, and I shan't be taking no for an answer~" Lena moved around the desk and linked arms with Kara, leading her out of the office past a completely unphased Jess.
"Mmm, shan't..." Kara was stumbling a little bit considering the fact that Lena should have been completely physically unable to pull her off-balance. That was a bad sign, and she knew precisely what that meant. Lena wasn't making it any easier on her by being so crushingly charming. "But... I'm... You... Why?"
The other woman's confident, peppy attitude dropped somewhat as they stepped into the elevator and it closed shut after them. "Well, because, I haven't been in town too long, and my name is basically a curse to, oh I-I don't know, the whole world? A-And you've been nice to me and I could use a friend. Okay?"
"O-Okay..." Kara really hadn't been expecting that. Until now, Lena had seemed like the most confident person she'd ever met, Cat included. But clearly she buried a lot of stuff deep down, and that made her want Kara dig down and get to see what else lay hiding there.
Conversation remained mostly light as the two young women made their way down to the street and a few blocks away to find a nice, tiny restaurant where they could get some good old-fashioned italian food. Lena had basically just kind of decided that they were buddies now, and Kara was both too enamored and too kind to tell her otherwise. And that was how they found themselves laughing brightly at silly puns and jokes over wine and ravioli. What had started as a terrible Friday had somehow became the greatest Monday known to mankind.
So it should have come as absolutely no shock at all that something had to ruin it – in this case, the sound of someone in distress. She immediately replaced her smile with a hangdog expression and looked toward the door. "Um, Lena, I'm about to pull like three social faux-pas all in one fell swoop here but I-"
"You have to go. I know, it's okay." The other woman's face was shockingly unchanged.
Kara was already standing up and reaching for her coat and bag. "I-I'm not ditching you and I can totally pay you back for my half of the bill and I actually do want to hang out again sometime so we can swap stupid stories and-"
"Kara. It's. O. K." Lena was looking at her more seriously now, perhaps trying to communicate some kind of coded message through thought. And while telepathy wasn't among her long list of abilities, she was almost starting to get a hang on that whole empathy thing. "I had a super-good time today. I hope you did too."
Well then. "Yeah. Um, super... Jeez, I-I'll see you soon!" It took a good deal of concentration to keep herself moving at normal speed until she was away from everyone's line of sight.
Even with super speed, Kara didn't reach the scene of the chaos until after everything was more or less over. There was already police tape up and flashing lights and everything. And perhaps most notable and precious of all, her dear sweet sister flashing those silly doe-eyes at Whosit Sawsomething. At least with Lana Lane she never ended up getting truly hurt, just sad for a little while. But Kara knew nothing about this mystery woman, who could very easily crush her poor sister's heart without a second thought.
She landed gracefully and looked back and forth between the two of them, noticing some awkward blushing and shuffling of feet. Great, so she was too late to stop crime from happening and too late to stop her sister from falling for another terrible human being. If she managed to screw up her own friendship as well as this article she was writing, she could officially change her moniker to Supertrash.
"Did I seriously miss everything?" Kara pouted, looking around the place and only able to see a few officers gathered around one particular scene on the ground.
"Unless you're feeling a desperate need to look long and hard at a murdered... God, what did you call it Sawyer, I swear I've never even heard of that race before."
"Bitharin. Seriously, Danvers, get it together. Don't tell me I'm that much of a distraction!" The two shared some very obviously flirtatious glances – and Kara wasn't even that good at reading flirtation in the first place!
Kara pinched the bridge of her nose, coughing in order to stop them before they took things any further. "Okay, can you please just...? Do. You. Need. Me? Because I was kinda in the middle of something and I'm going to feel like a massive jerkface idiot if I came out here for nothing."
The way Alex rolled her eyes didn't go unnoticed, nor the sudden arching in Maggie's eyebrows. "Oh. I'm so terribly sorry, Supergirl. Did we drag you away from your sugar mama?" Maggie's face was now breaking out in a massive grin, apparently learning new information on the fly and utterly loving it. "Well, no need to worry, we have everything under control, no thanks to you. So fly on back to your lady-love and apologize profusely on my behalf."
This was quickly turning into a sibling quarrel and not even the other woman's presence could stop them now. "Hah! Shows what you know, Alex, because I've moved on and I was in the process of having dinner with Lena Luthor when-"
"Luthor as in Luthor? Kara!"
"Oh my god, Kara as in Kara? Danvers~"
Well, this day had gone from bad to good to really really bad, officially. Everything was weird and wrong and now someone else knew her secret identity. "Yes, she's a Luthor, but she's not a Luthor. And yes, I'm Kara. And frankly, I think at this point, I would rather just go home and climb in bed and never get out again." Before she could dig herself any deeper, Kara was gone again, with every intention of hiding from the world until something truly cataclysmic needed her.
Despite her intention to hide until doomsday, that only lasted until the next morning, signaled by knocking at her front door. It could have conceivably been anything – Cat wanting to know if she had written the article yet, Snapper wanting to know if she really was as big a disappointment as she seemed, Winn wanting to be completely oblivious to her needs, James wanting to be amazing at everything. As she wandered through her apartment in her pajamas looking like a hot mess, the last thing she expected was to hear Lena's voice on the other side of the door. "Kara? Kara, can I come in please?"
It didn't help to open the door and see Lena standing there in her A+ business clothes while she was so schlubby. But getting changed now seemed ridiculous, so she just stood there, burying her hands in her robe pockets, staring at the floor. "Well. Um. Hello."
Lena stepped inside, but still kept a respectable distance from her. "Kara, look, I just wanted to stop by and-"
"No, wait, before you do-"
"I need to apologize."
The words left both their mouths in sync and they stared at each other for a few silent seconds. Kara was the first to find her voice again. "Okay, color me intrigued. What in the world could you possibly have to be sorry for?"
Lena moved over to an empty chair and took a seat like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. "Cat told me everything before you ever walked in my office. Like... everything... And based on what she told me, I was so excited to meet you. But... I-I never could have imagined how much I would have enjoyed it. Enjoyed you."
"Like everything everything?" Kara sunk down onto the couch and attempted to burrow into her robe. "How much everything of the everything there is did she tell you?"
"Ummm, let me see... Born on Krypton, Superman is your cousin, you were trapped... somewhere? Raised by the Danvers, tried to be normal, finally decided to be Supergirl, you were working for Catco, the two of you got close, she gave you a kryptonite collar, et cetera et cetera?"
Kara buried her face in her hands and uttered a low groan. "If it wouldn't kill her, I would punch her... I am so mortified right now." Her brain, lost as it was in a sea of embarrassment and despair, was somewhat slow to catch up. "But you're okay with all that? That's a ton of stuff to take in..."
"Cat isn't just some distant business rival who pulled favors to get me to meet with you. She's something of a friend, one of the few contacts I made through my family that liked the fact that I wasn't like everyone else. She told me about her desire to go wandering for a while, thought I might be able to uh... take care of you. I was just humoring her until you actually walked in and started talking and... hot damn, Danvers." Lena capped her thoughts with that lip-bite, the one that made Kara's head go a little fuzzy.
"And you'd be okay with that? The other side of things, dating a Super? It can be a pretty harrowing life – villains threatening you, punks using you as bait, me constantly disappearing to go stop a meteor or whatever. It will never be normal. Plus, you're gonna have to be alright with the whole collar thing. I'd call that non-negotiable." Admittedly she was only kinda kidding, but still, Cat had corrupted her and she wasn't willing to lose that.
Lena crooked a finger and motioned her over, and Kara moved obediently closer and sat in her lap. Clearly not an issue after all. Lena ran her fingers through her hair, and Kara immediately tried to remember where her kryptonite jewelry was. She had a sudden desperate need to feel things. But that would happen soon enough. "From everything I've heard, I don't need to worry. You're a real hero, Kara, who always saves the day. Besides, a Luthor and a Super, together? I can't think of a better team-up."
Kara felt herself tugged gently down into a kiss. It wasn't exactly passionate, though the passion would come in time. But it was long and soft and it felt very meaningful and full of promises and potential.
A Luthor and a Super. Together.