It starts with an uncomfortable feeling in her chest, sometime during the night and Cat can feel it constricting her so very, very tightly, but a dose of painkillers dulls it enough for her to return to sleep. But in the morning when she returns to CatCo, it burns incessantly. Cat knows that things have been stressful lately, what with Adam, however…
"I am not having a heart-attack," she makes herself clear to James, who she is using as a balance right now. Concern is all over his face and he helps her sit down. "I'm not having a heart-attack."
"I believe you," James says, worry in his voice. He crouches and if Cat weren't feeling so out of sorts she'd reprimand him.
She tries to distract herself. "Where's Keira?"
James looks over to where Winn stands just inside her office, exchanging a glance that has Cat narrowing her eyes before she sees double- no, somewhere else. The sky is orange and Kara is holding some small object, obviously confused, a dark-haired woman behind her with her hand on her back. Cat stares for a moment, before her office flickers back into being.
"There's something very wrong with me," she whispers, before realising her skin is itching. Letting go of James finally, she pulls up her sleeve, sucking in a pained gasp. Where her soulmate's Picture once rested was bare skin, the stencil of a face with red, blocked-in eyes gone. "What the hell? No, what's happening to her?"
James speaks to her, but it's as if he's underwater and the constriction around her chest aches sharply for a few seconds before Cat is in that room again with Kara. She watches her hug a tall, salt-and-pepper haired man in a dark blue suit of some kind that matches the red-haired woman's dress.
"Kara, what is happening?" Cat interrupts their little reunion, causing Kara to spin around, eyes wide.
"Ms Grant! How- how are you here?"
"First, tell me where here is," she looks around more, not quite deciding whether or not she appreciates the minimalist décor. "The sky is orange, so I'm going to assume this is not Earth, despite how I was in my office only a brief moment ago."
"This is Krypton," Kara says nervously, before the man and woman step in front of her.
"Who are you and how did you get in here?" The man questions, "This is a private set of apartments, reserved for the House of El."
Cat ignores him, looking at Kara, who presses past him. "Father, this is my- Cat, this is Cat Grant. She's from Earth. She's a friend."
"You know, Keira, both Superman and Supergirl are both insistent that Krypton exploded," Cat says in a reserved tone, causing Kara to nod shakily.
"I don't know what's going on. How are you even here?"
"I don't know, but I do know that something is going very, very wrong with me." She looks to her still rolled-up sleeve, Kara gasping at the lack of face. "Pictures don't just disappear, Kara…" and that's when Cat suddenly realises something very important about Kara's appearance.
When Kara had first come to her that Tuesday morning at ten fifteen, one of the first things she noticed after the bright purple sweater, glasses and golden blonde hair was the writing all over her body. The English alphabet was sewn over her skin, making hundreds of thousands of tiny, tiny words and sentences, quoting both classics and new novels, some that Cat had even read.
Here, Kara's skin is clear, completely Blank.
"What happened to you?" She almost reels back, but instead takes a step forwards as Kara's brows knit together, before her eyes trail to her hands, widening at the sight of them. She grips them, shoving up her sleeves and pulling up her floor-length skirt briefly, to the shocked noises of her father and – presumably – mother.
"Kara, do not be so undignified!" The woman orders, looking horrified on Kara's behalf, even as the blonde rushes over to Cat, taking her hands in an oddly close gesture. Like every time they touch, Cat can feel the heat of her, an omnipresent warmth that she knows she could take advantage of if ever reason called for it – though it never did.
"What's going on? What's happening to us?"
"I don't know, Kara, but this can't- isn't, real. If this is Krypton," Cat holds Kara's hands tightly, only loosening her grip when Kara makes a pained face, jerking in her hold slightly, "then it has to be fake. I don't know how you've done it, but you've got us stuck in this fake world-"
And then everything disappears, her office coming back into focus. Her employees are at the entrance to her office, Winn keeping them back as James speaks to her urgently.
"Cat, Cat, speak to me-"
"What happened?" Cat questions even as the tightness around her chest abates suddenly, leaving a kind of hole she can't explain. Looking to her arm in paranoia, Cat becomes boneless in her chair at the little stencil reappearing. "Thank god."
"Cat, are you okay?" James questions, the care in his voice only barely preventing Cat from snapping at him as she gets to her feet, plans swirling in her mind.
"Back to work," she orders her employees at the door, "I'm fine. Someone call my driver. James, you're in charge for the rest of the day." Picking up her phone and gathering the rest of her things into her handbag, she texts Kara. That had better been because of some alien superpower regarding soulmates rather than because something was trying to kill you. Again.
"Ms Grant, are you sure you don't need to go to a hospital?" James questions, causing Cat to wave him off.
"I'm fine. Make sure CatCo is running smoothly while I take the day off. Winn has my passwords." Leaving quickly, Cat looks to her phone, watching it the entire time down her elevator. Kara doesn't reply until she's well on her way to her penthouse.
Are you okay?
Cat replies quickly. Yes. Tell me what happened.
It was the black mercy. My uncle sent it to kill me. It puts you into a dream world and slowly sucks the life out of you. My sister said my Pictures had faded while under.
At that, Cat shivers. Pictures are sacred, Pictures- Cat doesn't reply via text, actually calling. Kara picks up immediately.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Cat shakes her head. "That little dream sequence revealed to me exactly who you are."
"…Ms Grant, I'm sorry I lied-"
"No, no, lie all you want, Keira, I just thought that you might have trusted me more, before this." Cat grips her phone tightly, shutting her eyes as theories flash through her head. "But that doesn't quite matter right now, I don't think. What does matter is how I was drawn in, in the first place. That white mercy-"
"Black mercy."
"-tried to kill you and your Pictures started fading, but so did mine and I was pulled into your dream."
There's a short silence before Kara replies. "We should talk about this in person."
"I agree, soulmate," Cat says, voice not as bitter as she wants it to be and far softer. She hears Kara suck in a breath on the other end of the line as she feels her marks start to fade, seeing them disappear on her arms and legs. Her neck itches and she takes her pocket-mirror out of her handbag, opening it in time to see the ink turn red. A diamond sits in her clavicle, full of little lines and squares, surrounded by a symmetrical border of curved lines and arrows.
"Oh."
"Do you have the same as me?" Cat murmurs.
"I felt it appear on my back. I think it's pretty big, but not a full portrait? More like…like lines."
"Mmm," Cat says before hanging up and taking a picture of her chest, easily visible due to the deep V of her shirt. Sending it to Kara seems strange and vaguely perverse – she's her assistant still, nothing has been properly organised so they can't call her incompetent and-
Kara's calling again. Cat picks up. "So?"
"We've got the location on my uncle. I'm going after him, but we'll talk later?"
Cat blinks in surprise, mouth opening in slightly shock. "What?"
"I have to go. I'll float in front of your penthouse window tonight." And then she hangs up. Cat looks at her phone in disbelief before glaring, clenching her jaw.
"Steven! Get me home, double-time!"
"Yes, ma'am."