i. Shut up and Dance
Contrary to popular belief, Kara Danvers could get drunk. Her Kryptonian constitution countered most of alcohol's effects, meaning she could drink an entire bar full of people under the table before feeling a buzz. She and Alex had tested it once, when she'd done exactly that, and got all the drinks for free by winning the bet they'd made with the other patrons.
So it was possible to make her tipsy, but it was very expensive.
Something told her that wouldn't be an issue for the woman across from her.
She'd been to this club before. Back when she was… not herself. Kara fought the urge to hunch her shoulders and curl in on herself, letting the steady thump of the music relax her nerves. The margarita in front of her was doing nothing, but she didn't make that obvious.
They were seated along a row of stools about thirty feet from the actual bar, with a long counter just wide enough to place a few drinks on running alongside them. The club had not been designed with many proper sitting areas, considering the primary activity here was dancing. Still, they had this little corner to themselves, and even with her super hearing she had to concentrate to make out conversations across the room, so she could be reasonably certain that their conversation was private.
She failed to stifle a jitter when she smiled and opened her mouth to talk, while the woman in the other chair remained poised as a Persian cat, staring at her with a coy smile that had been there the whole night.
"Well, um, thank you for agreeing to this interview, Miss Luthor."
The smile grew. "Please, call me Lena. This is as much a social engagement as a professional one."
Kara's smile turned bashful as she dug out her phone. "Very well, Lena. Is it okay with you if I record this?"
"Anything I say sober is on the record," Lena Luthor promised. Her eyes were hungry, but not threatening. Kara knew enough about Luthors to understand that they looked at everybody like that. "I figure I've got two more drinks in me before that becomes null and void."
Sandalwood. That was what she smelled like. Kara bristled slightly before shooing out the random thought that popped into her head as she realized she had been trying to identify the other woman's perfume for the last twenty minutes. It did strike her as strange that a Luthor would choose such a common scent. She would have figured her for some thousand dollar French perfume made from poor children's tears, not something Kara could buy herself at the local drugstore.
Okay, that was being unfair.
The scent was at odds with the rest of Lena's outfit, too. Free of her business wear like a snake shedding its skin, she had clad herself in a stunning black number with a modest collar but a decidedly un-modest hem. Her jewelry was clearly designer, and while Kara was confident that Ms. Grant could perfectly recite every detail of them, she had never concerned herself with luxuries she couldn't afford.
Best she could figure, the perfume was sentimental. Something she'd been wearing for a long time. Kara wasn't sure what to make of that.
"You gonna ask a question?"
Kara jolted in her seat as it dawned on her that she'd been staring up and down at Lena Luthor for the last minute, stopping just short of x-raying her. Lena didn't seem to mind, though, and playfully leaned forward.
"I'm almost due for a refill, Miss Danvers," she said, downing a sip of her gin. "Ask away."
"Call me Kara, please," she said with a great deal more confidence than she usually employed in this identity.
Lena's smile only widened.
"After the multiple attempts on your life in just a few short days, how would you say you're dealing with the fact that your brother wants you dead?"
The other woman laughed. "Wow. You've been a reporter for one week and already you're going with the hard hitting questions right out of the gate. And here I thought CatCo was just a fashion magazine."
"We're full of surprises."
"Well, to give you an honest answer, I'm disappointed in my brother. I never thought he'd be so petty as to try and kill his own family over rebranding the company. Then again, this is a man who started a rivalry with Superman just because he thought he should be the most powerful man on the planet."
"So you believe the attacks were motivated by your brother's ego?"
"Was there ever anything else that motivated him? I suspect we won't know the full reason any time soon, but that would be my best guess."
"Before all this happened, did you think Lex Luthor would be capable of this?"
Lena's smile turned somber for a moment, and she looked down in quiet reflection. The gesture was clearly practiced, but most likely genuine. "I didn't. I loved him, you know. Growing up. But I guess I never really knew him at all."
Kara's expression softened as well. She'd spent the last several days, with Clark's help, practicing how to conduct an interview. Stay focused, probe until you find something to latch on to, and don't let go. She couldn't act like she had been all night, bashfully responding to Lena Luthor's far more refined presence. She had to act like Supergirl.
But Supergirl knew when to back off. At least, she did now.
"Moving on, what are L-Corp's plans going forward? You spoke of paying a debt back to the world, starting here in National City. What does that look like, in your mind?"
The other woman cocked her head to the side, and the smile returned. "You are a natural."
Actually, Clark had helped her write the questions. But she had to admit that part of the reason she'd taken the plunge to become a reporter was because the woman in front of her had expressed so much interest in the idea.
"That information is already public knowledge," she continued. "We released a press packet the other day detailing the next five years of projects in biomedical research, aerospace engineering, agricultural breakthroughs, and more. Anything more detailed is proprietary and confidential."
"I'm not talking about your projects," said Kara, with more of a backbone than she thought she had. "I'm talking about giving back. How does your company intend to atone for the sins of Lex Luthor?"
That wolfish grin kept getting wider, and her crystal blue eyes kept getting hungrier. She finished off the rest of her glass, without breaking eye contact.
"We already support a large number of charitable projects, and we still contribute heavily to the reconstruction effort in the area my brother razed to the ground when he caused that earthquake. We don't even take advantage of the tax breaks that would normally accompany such an endeavor."
She didn't have a follow up to that. Kara had to admit, Lena was genuinely committed to making up for what her brother did. Even if she hadn't believed so at first, it had been clear to her ever since the other woman moved from being a suspect to being a target.
Lena raised her hand at a waiter passing by, who took her empty glass and returned moments later with a fresh one. "You have until I finish this drink. I'm a bit of a lightweight, unfortunately."
"Really? Statistically, blue-eyed people have the highest alcohol tolerance."
Winn had informed her of that, before he knew the real reason it was a herculean effort to get her drunk.
"I'm Irish too, and yet somehow, if I have more than one drink I'm suddenly glad I have a chauffeur."
"Can I print that?"
For the first time, she laughed without any refinement behind it, even snorting a little. "Go right ahead. It'll be the scoop of the month."
"Do you normally drink during your interviews?"
Lena made a point of finishing a sip before she answered. "As I said, this isn't entirely an interview. You interest me, Kara Danvers."
Blood rushed to her cheeks and the journalistic poise she'd spent the last few days cultivating collapsed like a sand castle caught in high tide. "H-how so?"
"Well, you showed up to my office next to Clark Kent, for one thing. How do you know him?"
"I work with his best friend, James Olsen," she answered, deciding that the truth was best, even if it wasn't the whole story. It had worked on Cat, after all. "He introduced us."
"You must have made pretty fast friends with Clark, too, to be at his side like that."
She smiled sheepishly and began to stir the margarita she hadn't touched in minutes. The ice was starting to melt, and it tasted watered down when she took a sip. "I have that effect on people."
Lena grinned wider and adjusted so she was sitting up straighter. "I'd say so."
Clearing her throat, she put her phone between them again. "Final question. What legacy would you ultimately like for L-Corp to leave behind?"
She smirked, and took another long sip of her gin. "You can do better than that."
"Okay." Kara sat up straight and stared her in the eyes. "What legacy do you want to leave behind?"
"I want people to remember me for the things I did, not the things my brother did. I want them to see how I built where he destroyed. How I gave where he took. How I made friends… where he made enemies."
Before Kara could ask another question, Lena stood up, downed the rest of her gin in a single gulp, and exhaled while leaning over the table, her hands splayed in front of her. A new song began to play, and she couldn't help wondering how the other woman had timed that so perfectly.
She was staring again, but this time Kara didn't stop herself. Lena looked powerful, in a way that Supergirl wasn't. She had absolute command over any space she occupied, thanks to her deep, sultry voice and piercing cold blue eyes combined with an aura of natural authority that couldn't be learned in any self-help book. Her eyes were still hungry, and it dawned on Kara that the same hunger was in her eyes, too.
"Time's up. Dance with me, Kara Danvers?"
She stopped the record function and put away her phone, then stood up as well. "Absolutely."
