A/N: This is my first Supergirl fanfiction. It is going to be light and fluffy and is set during my favourite time of year: Christmas! My goal here is to just have fun writing a holiday romance, and I'm open to suggestions :)
"Dear Ms Luthor,
I am Kara Danvers from the NCU newspaper. I was wondering if I could do an interview with you for our upcoming article on students with scholarships. We are interested in discovering the social situation of such students. Please let me know as soon as possible whether you would be able to participate. Thank you in advance.
Kindest regards,
Kara Danvers."
I sighed. Participating in such an interview was not exactly ideal for the social situation she was trying to discover. I wasn't secretive about the fact that I was a scholarship student; it meant that I had gotten in purely based on merit and that was nothing to be ashamed of. But appearing in an article about it so that the entire school knew about was something else. Still, I found the students newspaper quite amusing and had considered applying for a position myself, so I decided to help an aspiring journalist.
"Dear Ms Danvers,
I would be happy to answer any questions you may have on the topic. Please let me know when you are available, so that we can arrange a meeting.
Yours sincerely,
Lena Luthor."
I sent the email as soon as I'd written it so that I wouldn't back out. And who knew, maybe it would be good to have a contact within the newspaper. Since I had both a job and a full academic curriculum, I didn't have much time to go around meeting people. In fact, some days the only person I talked to where the people who lived in the unit of my dormitory, my fellow classmates, and the kids I was tutoring.
Suddenly, my laptop pinged. It seemed Ms Danvers was eagerly awaiting my response.
"Dear Ms Luthor,
I am very grateful for your timely reply. So far, I haven't heard anything from anyone else, so it seems you are my only participant. Would you be willing to meet Monday morning at 10:00 at the university café?
Best wishes,
Kara Danvers."
I grinned. There weren't many university students who were willing to get up before noon at a Monday morning, so it seemed Ms Danvers was taking her job quite seriously. Since I was also one of those select few, I was happy to oblige:
"Dear Ms Danvers,
I will see you on Monday morning. Best of luck to you during the rest of the week.
Kind regards,
Lena Luthor."
I checked my watch and was startled to find it was already 16:13. I had a tutoring session planned at 16:30, and I did not like being late. It seemed my communication with Ms Danvers had kept me so distracted I'd lost track of time.
For the rest of the week, I did not spend much thought on my meeting with the reporter. My schoolwork kept me busy, as usual, and since finals week was nearing for the high school students I was tutoring, I'd also been kept busy outside of school.
So when my alarm went off on Monday morning at 08:00, I'd forgotten for a second the reason for my early rise, before I saw the piece of paper lying on my desk that had "Reporter meeting" scrawled on it in big, blocky letters. My desk was full of reminders like that, since I was terrified to forget an important commitment or idea.
After my morning run and a quick smoothie for breakfast, I looked in my closet. But none of my clothes seemed right. My small closet at CSU meant I'd already grown tired of all of my clothes within the first two months. But my job didn't exactly pay enough to afford weekly shopping tips.
I spent way too much time in front of the mirror, before telling myself that it was just an interview for the school newspaper and there was really no reason for me to get so worked up about my choice of outfit. I went with a pair of dark skinny jeans, black boots with a slight heel and a cream blouse with some embroidery. It was sleek and elegant, but not too formal. And I had bought the blouse for the first year I had participated in Model UN, so it always made me feel a little bit like that time: nervous but confident I could do what I was supposed to do.
The student café was close to my dormitory building, luckily, since I'd wasted so much time deciding on an outfit. I knew a lot of students went there to study, but I couldn't understand why. If they really wanted to study, wouldn't a quiet place without distractions be much more suitable? And it wasn't like the student café was a nice place to be. The tables were always slightly grimy, which wasn't strange given the disgusting rag that was used to wipe them down, and the coffee tasted like river sludge.
As I walked into the café, I suddenly became aware of a sense of nervousness within myself. How was I going to know who the reporter was? And what if she asked difficult questions, questions about my family? I started to panic. Maybe this was not such a good idea after all. I should turn around.
But it was already too late. I hadn't realised that as I'd been panicking my feet had been carrying me forward, until I stood at the entrance of the café. As soon as I'd entered, a perky blonde from a table at the back started waving at me enthusiastically. Realising it was too late to back out now, I started walking towards her. She smiled at me, as if we'd known each other for a long time, and her smile put me at ease slightly.
"Hi! I'm Kara Danvers, I'm the reporter who's been emailing you. I'm so glad you showed up!" She said it all without taking a breath, her smile becoming impossibly bigger as she talked. "I'm so sorry, I ramble when I'm nervous. Not that I'm nervous because of you, of course not! You seem really nice, it's just-this is my first article, and I really want to do well-I want them to make me a reporter permanently." I laughed. "I'm Lena Luthor. It's nice to meet you." "Oh, yes, of course! It's so nice to meet you too, Ms Luthor." "Oh, you can call me Lena." I said. By this point, my nerves had vanished almost completely. It was impossible to think that this reporter would cause harm to even a fly.
"So about the article?" "Yes, of course!" She said, slightly embarrassed. "So I wanted to write about what it's like for scholarship students at NCU. I'm not going to focus on the academic side, since that's been researched extensively. I believe scholarship students on average get a GPA that is higher by 0.5 points?" I nodded at that, not sure what she wanted me to do. I'd heard this number many times during the acceptance procedure, but agreeing with her too enthusiastically would make it seem like I thought I was better than everyone else, when in fact I just worked hard because I had more to lose than the rest of them.
"Right." She continued. "Well, I'm interested in how being labelled as a scholarship students has affected your student life at NCU. So let's start with the basics. What year are you currently in, and what are you studying?" "I'm currently in my second year, and I'm majoring in psychology, with a minor in Ancient language and culture." I glimpsed a slight smile when I mentioned my minor, despite her trying to keep her face as neutral as possible. "And how do people react when you mention you are here on a scholarship?" "Well, being a scholarship student is not a large part of my identity, so I don't go around just telling people that I'm here on a scholarship." She nodded at that understandingly, while scribbling away on a notepad. "Whenever it does come up, I find that people generally respond very casually. It doesn't seem to matter to them, and they don't treat me any differently because of it. However, I did find that for some people it is an irreconcilable difference." She wrote for a while longer in her notebook, only looking up when she realised I had stopped talking.
She looked at me with a soft smile. "Would you perhaps care to elaborate? It's fine if you don't want to, I would understand. "No, it's okay. I got over it a long time ago. So in my first year, there was this girl who lived in my dormitory. She had some of the same interests as I did, and we became close friends quite quickly. She even invited me to go with her and her family to Greece during spring break. I told her that I couldn't afford to go, since I was here on a scholarship. I thought she knew. After that she suddenly stopped responding to my texts, and whenever I ran into her in our dormitory she would ignore me. That's when I realised that there are people for whom the fact that I don't have much money is more important than who I am."
I looked down at my hands as I finished my story. It had happened a while ago, but I still didn't like reliving it. Afterwards, I had felt ashamed. Mostly, I'd felt ashamed that I even felt any shame at all: after all, I had nothing to be ashamed of. A light touch brought me out of my thoughts. Kara had placed her hand on one of my hands. I looked up at her. "I'm so sorry." She said sincerely. I opened my mouth to say that it was fine, that nothing had happened, but she cut me off. "What that girl did to you was terrible. Of course you are more important than your money. You're a smart, talented person, and you deserve to be here at least as much as the other students. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise." I looked down at my hands again as she said that, but this time it was in gratitude and mild embarrassment. After she'd finished, I looked up at her again. I smiled to express my thanks, and she seemed to get it. She nodded as she took her hand away from mine. "Now, let's get back to those questions."
"Many scholarship students also have a job on the side to cover other expenses, such as food and clothes. Do you yourself have a job as well?" Clearly, she had gone back to an easier line of questioning, not wanting to ask any more difficult questions. "I do. I tutor high school kids in several subjects." "And how does your job influence your academic and social life?" "Well, I teach between eight and ten hours per week, so that does mean I'm usually very busy. I have to plan my time well in order to be able to keep up with both my courses and my job. It also means I don't often have time for social activities, sadly. I am a member of the classical literature committee on campus, but that is the only group I've been able to join. I was thinking of joining the newspaper, actually.' I said the last part impulsively. It's not that it wasn't true; I had been considering joining for a while. But there was something about this reporter that made me want to make her happy.
When I said it, she looked up, smiling. "We would be lucky to have you. Just don't be too good, or I'll you'll steal my job from me!" I laughed. "I wouldn't dream of it." We said there for a bit, smiling at each other, and I was suddenly glad I hadn't run away and missed the interview. "Well, that's all the questions I had so far. Thank you so much!" "It was my pleasure, Ms Danvers." "Oh please, call me Kara." "Very well, Kara. If you have any other questions, do feel free to contact me." I shook her hand and left the café, barely making it to my first class of the day.
A/N: Please let me know what you think! I promise it's going to get a whole lot more Christmassy in the upcoming chapters, and my writing will hopefully also improve as I get back into the rhythm.
