Nineteen ninety-two. Cat is twenty-eight years old and her son, Adam, is the most beautiful thing she has ever laid eyes on. He squalls and Cat loves him and her husband so much – but they are distractions. She's working, working to get her company to the highest tier of the media industry and her family are slipping away from her. Harold starts to file for a divorce and brings her to court about full custody of Adam.
Nineteen ninety-three. Cat is twenty-nine years old and CatCo is lifting off the ground and it needs her, needs the Queen of All Media. She can win the custody battle for Adam, but CatCo needs her and she gives up and gives in. She lets Harold take Adam and doesn't even try to get holidays and weekends, knowing that she's in the wrong and she should make time for her son so they can have those things – but CatCo is just as much her baby as he is. Her mother supports her when she cries and snipes only about the company, never about Adam, pushing Cat to get the hardest things over with and keep that reputation, that crown of modern royals resting on her beautiful blonde head.
Nineteen ninety-seven. "Adam's five, Grant. I've got a new wife and Adam calls her his mom. No, I'm not letting you see him, not even a picture. All the hard stuff is over, for now, society and rules are taking charge over him. Try again when he turns sixteen and is looking for college money, when he's scraping grades and looking for more support than you have the ability to give alone. Then you see how it feels to be a parent. But not before then, do you hear me, Grant? You gave him up of your own volition, now deal with the consequences."
Nineteen ninety-eight. Cat walks through National City Park, CatCo building shining in the distance, new logo gleaming. She feels alone. So very, very alone. She yearns for Adam, for his soft skin and all the things she's missed out on-
She gets crashed into by a man on a bicycle, falling to the ground and hitting her wrist. In another universe, she breaks it badly and the biker takes her to the emergency room. That doesn't happen here. Instead, the man helps her to her feet and apologises profusely, sister offering her spare sunglasses when it turns out Cat's are cracked and she – unlike her brother – recognises the Media Mogul.
Wearing borrowed sunglasses and ignoring the pained twinge in her wrist, Cat continues her walk and comes across a bench overlooking a popular picnicking destination, by the pond. A group of children with minders – carers, carers looking after children without parents, with terrible parents, with no homes to follow their parents into – play and muck about, tripping into the pond and swimming about, the life-guard sighing as he unlocks the cabin that has spare towels and a freezer-cooler, a casually suited woman chatting to him as he works.
A boy joins her on the bench. Cat glances at him, wondering if Adam has Harold's dark hair or her soft blonde, if he plays video games or soccer. The boy glances at her too, briefly, before starting to play on one of the older models of Nintendo. For a while, they sit in silence and then some older boys come over, grabbing the Nintendo.
"Hey," Cat snaps, "Give that back." She looks them down over her sunglasses with a glare that has scared far older men in far more expensive clothes. The boys back off, chucking the Nintendo back. The boy mumbles a thank-you and something in Cat pangs. "If you want to go somewhere in life, you need to speak up and straighten your spine."
"What?" The boy frowns at her and Cat repeats herself, not slowing down or treating him like a young child. He can't be older than eleven, eight at youngest – he's not a toddler. After she finishes, he nods shakily, swallowing. "Okay."
"Higher shoulders," Cat advises, shifting herself straighter as an example. He copies, immediately looking more grown-up and less afraid. "There you go." Cat smiles, feeling distantly proud. He smiles back at her and the difference is blinding, his eyes lighting up.
"Winn!" Someone shouts, attracting his attention, the smile fading slightly as he twists his head, Cat following his gaze to one of the adults who sits on a blanket, the boys who had been bothering him standing beside them. Cat knows how it looks and is intimately aware of why the boy's face fills with dread, thoughts only made more concrete as the call is repeated in an angrier tone, the boy – this Winn – rushing over, leaving behind his Nintendo on the bench. Cat waits for a few moments before picking it up delicately, standing and making her way over leisurely, catching the tail end of the conversation about speaking to strangers.
"Maybe you should keep a better eye on your charges," Cat interrupts, unimpressed by their attitude. "If you weren't so lazy and inept, you would have noticed beforehand that Winn wasn't near and wouldn't have had to be told by said child's bullies that he's sat next to a strange woman who dares tell them off when they abscond with another's property, like petty thieves."
As she predicts, the minder pays no attention to the part about the teens being bullies, only standing up to defend their own honour. Cat ignores their drivel, glancing at Winn, who she hands back the Nintendo to.
"Thank-you," he says quietly. Cat gives him an expectant look over her sunglasses and straightens his back and repeating louder, "Thank-you."
"Your welcome," Cat replies, still ignoring the other adult, who by now has caught the attention of their co-workers. Joined by another of the children's carers, the adult in question is quieted by a few stern orders, the – in Cat's eyes – more mature one turning to Cat.
"If you don't mind, who are you and what happened?"
Cat relays the events of the last few minutes, chuckling when the new adult narrows her eyes and notes that she still hasn't introduced herself. In answer, Cat takes off her borrowed sunglasses with a flourish, raising her chin in a semi-haughty expression.
"Cat Grant, of CatCo Worldwide Media. That's my building, over there, if you have a worthwhile story." She points to the skyscraper without looking, feeling a thrill of smug satisfaction as Winn whispers a quiet, awe-filled wow and the arrogant care-worker twists, eyes widening in horror before they whisper, a reporter! "So, where do all these small people come from, then?"
"Arthurs Home for Young Boys," the reasonable carer replies, "We take in boys from age six to seventeen on a case-by-case basis."
'Case by case' is interesting enough that Cat doesn't forget the name of the orphanage-slash-foster home. However, typing in the name plus Winn brings to her mind the return an entirely different kind of scandal.
TOYMAN MURDERS COWORKER WITH EXPLOSIVE TEDDYBEAR
Winslow Schott Senior had attempted to murder his employer, Chester Dunholtz, but instead caused the deaths of Dunholtz's secretary and a total of five others, those others being employees, visiting consultants and a single investor that had been in the room at the time. Sent to Van Kull Maximum Security Prison, he'd left behind his son, Winslow Schott Junior, his wife having died from a terminal disease when Winn – Cat's Winn, the young boy she'd taught to sit up straight in a park – was four.
Cat had covered the story when it came out, only four months previous, but she hadn't paid attention to the details. It had been a morbid highlight the new year, with a high amount of papers sold and an increased revenue that lasted a few months before it dipped down to what would have been normal levels, if not for the credit crunch. Only in the last couple of weeks had Cat finally found a way to make up for their losses, the Greek and Italian branches of CatCo gaining popularity after the hire of a prominent fashion director from France.
"He's barely nine," Cat discovers when digging up a few other articles about the dreaded 'Toyman'. "The son of a murderer. God, I hope they have him seeing a therapist."
Nineteen ninety-nine. "No, Cat, I'm not letting you see him. Just- just go and adopt a girl or something, one you can play dress-up with and groom to be your stupid, rad feminist successor! Adam is my son and Karen's son and he's happy with us, he's happy without you in his life! I'm not letting you get your fucking hands on him if I have anything to do with it! Christmas and birthday cards are the only stupid things I want to see him have of you for the next ten years! Do you get that? Christmas and birthday cards!"
Cat gets so angry. She gets so angry she can't even think. She screams and throws her landline at the mirror, causing it to smash and she has to ask her building caretaker to help clean it up when she slices her hand open. The doctor who lives on his lonesome the floor below stitches up her hand before going to work and maybe Cat goes on a mini rant, bitterness practically seeping from her pores.
"You're very brave," he says carefully, when he's tying up the thread in her hand, swabbing it with an alcoholic wipe. "Brave and respectful."
"He's happy, apparently, happy without me. I want to see him, but I don't want to disrupt his life. I don't…I don't want to have to explain."
The doctor shrugs, before tying a bandage around her hand. "I'll take those out next week some time, unless you want to go see your normal GP about it. I'd also recommend speaking to Lisa about this."
"'This' is the one thing I refuse to talk to my therapist about," Cat grumps. "Adam is no-one's business but mine and Harold's. And Karen's. I wish she wasn't so nice."
"I agree with you on that – I know my daughter spends weekends with me because her step-father's an ass about private space. The fact that I willingly abide her having both two locks and a bolt on her bedroom door speaks wonders, in her head."
Cat chuckles as he pats her hand lightly, done. "Thank-you, Owen."
Harold's words echo in her head though. They're difficult to weed out, especially considering how it's what she wants to do, in general. Having a successor is all well and good, but their behaviour and opinions have to agree or at least align with hers. Cat's only human – she won't live forever. Adam could have been her successor and probably will be, just because he's her son. Because I have no-one else to choose from, her mind whispers traitorously.
Cat is scared for CatCo, scared of the prospect of leaving all that she has dedicated her life to in the hands of a boy she's never met, who has been raised by Harold Foster.
"You have valid issues," Lisa says, when she finally opens up about Adam and the future CatCo. "Your logic of priority would seem strange to others, but the issues surrounding the subjects we've discussed today are valid. You've poured your blood, sweat and tears into the foundation of your company and you don't have a close enough relationship with its successor to trust him to hold the weight of it all, when the time comes."
"I'm Atlas and CatCo is the sky," Cat mutters metaphors, arms crossed and her eyes focused on a wall, covered in inane purple spirals on white. "Adam is…is not Hercules."
"Hercules couldn't hold up the sky for very long, either, Cat. You need a new metaphor."
"Perhaps."
Cat goes to the park again. Coincidentally, the boys of Arthurs Home are there again. Winn is failing to play baseball, looking barely any different from the year before, but this time, his trousers are an inch too short and his shoulders go from hunched to strong in a matter of moments, whenever the main pitcher glares at him for fumbling the ball and letting the other teams players get past his cone. The group of children seem strange to Cat somehow, however and it's with a strange feeling that she realises all but Winn are new children.
What happened? Surely they weren't all adopted? Do foster-homes have rotations? Do children go from home to home in a matter of months?
It's with a stark clarity that she recognises another aspect of the scene – one that, unlike the new children, is similar to the year previous. Like how the lifeguard from the year before tends the cabin with the freezer-cooler, selling ice-cream and offering out towels to swimmers, a suited woman leans against the wooden beams, eyes hidden by dark sunglasses.
She's Government, Cat realises, looking to Winn slowly, the only child that still stays in Arthurs Home from last year. He's being watched.
Shortly afterwards, Winn is told to go away and it's another lucky coincidence that, like last year, he comes over to sit on the bench, this time without his Nintendo to keep him occupied.
"I didn't expect to see you here again," Cat says, attracting his attention briefly before he looks away, shoulders slumped. Cat hums disapprovingly. "As I said the first time we met: if you want to go somewhere in life, you need to speak up and straighten your spine."
He stiffens, naturally sitting up as he turns his head, looking at her with wide eyes. "You're Cat Grant."
"Yes, I am. Though, I don't believe I caught your name last time. William, or something or other?"
"Winn," he mutters, before coughing, speaking louder. "Winslow Schott Junior. People call me Winn."
"You may call me Cat, Winn, if you want to," Cat allows, before looking over at the other children. "You don't get on with them?"
"Not when it comes to sports. I prefer video-games. They like to steal my games, though and the younger kids break them. It's not fair."
"Life's not fair," Cat muses, "People aren't fair, either. You've got to make your own path and make sure they can't break you. People are mean, callous, rude and as always – human."
"What if they're aliens?" Winn questions, catching Cat slightly off-guard. A familiar face flashes past her eyes and instantly amused, Cat flashes a small grin, bringing up a different tidbit for the sake of Superman's secret identity.
"I once thought my RA at Radcliffe was E.T., but I think that was just the-" Cat stops herself, remembering how old he is. "…I think that was just my imagination." It wasn't pot-brownies. Not at all. I was not a stoner in college, definitely not.
He's just nine, after all. She has to keep it child-friendly.
Cat makes a physical visit to Arthurs Home, a couple of days after. She sits in her car for more than an hour, looking out of the dark windows across the road occasionally, reading a novella on the wheel. She visits again, not leaving her vehicle until the third time, when she finally gains the courage to knock and see the staff.
"So, are you looking to foster or adopt, Ms Grant?" The worker questions her, one she's happily unfamiliar with.
"Foster, for now," she replies. She can't adopt – she won't. Not until she's talked through her Adam issues with her therapist. It wouldn't be right to adopt a child while still dealing with those issues – at least with fostering, as bad as it sounds, as bad as it is, the child can be returned.
"There's a lot of paper-work you'll have to go through," the worker explains, going into detail. At some point, another worker joins the conversation before casually leaving, the door opening enough for Cat to get a glimpse of a modified walkie-talkie being pulled up to the second floor of the building by a long bungee cord. "Would you like to meet the boys?"
"Is it odd that I already know the name of the boy I'd like to foster?" Cat instead asks before explaining how she knew to come to Arthurs Home to see Winn.
"Winn…there are special circumstances," the worker frowns, "We have a set of neighbours who volunteer here – ones that work for the government, keeping an eye on him."
Yes, I know, I saw the Suit. Cat doesn't say that out loud.
A few months later, she's filled out the paperwork required to foster Winn, but she waits. She meets with him, takes him out to the arcade and on a tour of CatCo – they even take a trip to the local observatory, getting a private lecture from one of the astronomers that work there, courtesy of Cat's connections throughout the city.
"Why are you being so nice?" Winn asks over greasy Chinese take-away his first time sleeping over in her penthouse, using the spare bedroom with specially-bought Power Rangers covers and a specially-ordered lamp that has three settings, the lowest perfect for Winn's fear of the dark.
"What do you mean?" Cat pokes her kung-po chicken warily, untrusting that it's fully cooked through. "I'm not nice."
"Yes, you're nice – but you're like Mister Warbucks from Annie! You've got lots of money and you take me cool places, but you're nice. You made sure no-one takes my picture, whenever photographers and reporters try to speak to you randomly on the street and you make sure I know stuff, like- like how people aren't fair and that I have to stand straight and speak to be heard!"
"Winslow," Cat begins, pointing her chopsticks at him calmly, eyes glued to his, "First of all, never compare me to Oliver Warbucks again. If anyone I know is an Oliver Warbucks, it is my own mother, but I very much doubt she would love her adoptee by the end of the movie. Secondly, I have multiple reasons that do not pertain to your mental health and popularity in media, that give me reasons not to have you photographed or talked about by terrible scraps of paper that call themselves newspapers and magazines. Thirdly, I am not nice, so the fact that you say I am is frankly concerning."
"You are nice," Winn mutters under his breath, trying and failing to use his chopsticks. "Can I have a fork, please?"
"I don't know, can you?"
"May I have a fork, please?"
"You may," Cat gets up, padding over to her kitchen to retrieve one from the drawer. "Would you like a plate, as well?"
"I'm good."
Cat's relationship with Winn is strange yet natural. It's not what Cat would imagine her relationship with Adam might be. Winn is an easy child to care for and the only thing she has to worry about is him playing video-games under his covers and whether or not his lunch money gets stolen.
On Winn's eleventh birthday, Winn's behaviour is cause for concern. The care worker supervising the handover to Cat after school tells her he's been rather withdrawn the past couple of days, ever since he came back to Arthurs Home. Originally, they thought something had gone drastically wrong, but Winn was quick to correct them – it was nothing that Cat had done or anything that had happened.
Still, Cat frets and worries.
"Are you sure you want to go to the arcade? We can go somewhere more fun for your birthday."
"The arcade is good, Cat," Winn says, looking out of the car window. "I've just been thinking a lot."
"About what?" Cat keeps her eyes on the road, bracing him to drop a bombshell – and what a bombshell it is.
What a bombshell.
"If you- if you wanted to, do you want-" Winn falls silent for a few seconds before finally asking, calm and slow: "Would you adopt me?"
Cat, to her respect, doesn't immediately drive the car off the road.
"Ah," she replies, the onomatopoeic word as much an answer as it is a stalling technique.
"You don't, do you? God, I'm so stupid-"
"No! Yes!" Cat interrupts, before internally letting out a swear and indicating left, pulling over onto the side of the freeway in the empty lane, turning her hazard lights on. Twisting in her seat, she struggles to find the right words as Winn holds himself tightly, the tension high. "Okay. Okay, storytime. I've told you about Adam before, yes?"
"You gave him up-"
"Yes, I gave him up. I wasn't ready and CatCo was the most important thing in my life. I had Adam at the completely wrong time in my life and I let his father take him. I let him take Adam, Winn. My own flesh and blood, in the hands of his progenitor, who won't let me see him until he turns sixteen, which is practically a decade away." Cat swallows, trying to think up sentences in advance, but the words just keep pouring out of her mouth. "I want to adopt you, Winslow. I very much want to adopt you, but I am seeing my therapist twice bimonthly for a reason. I am absolutely terrified to be a parent."
"You're my foster-mom," Winn says, voice trembling.
"I know. I know that," Cat shuts her eyes, rubbing her forehead hard enough for it to ache. "Dammit. Dammit all." There's a long silence, before Winn speaks up.
"You're a good mom. I- I can't remember what my biological mom was like, but…but you're my mother. When I think of my mom, I think of you, not her."
"I'm not fit to be a parent-"
"Don't say that!" Winn shouts, sitting forwards, hand clutching the headrest of the passengers seat as he stretches his seatbelt. "You're a really good mom! You look after me when I come over for the week and you make me packed lunches on Friday's. You started keeping batteries in your study drawer so I knew where to find them when my batteries ran out and you don't yell or shout when I'm in trouble-"
Cat lets out a slight laugh. "You're never in trouble."
"-and you help me with my homework and make sure I've had a shower in the last two days. You look after me really well and I love you very much, mom."
Cat cracks her eyes open, looking at her foster-child who is actually glaring at her. "I love you too, Winn," she replies quietly, her shoulders immediately feeling a hundred and ten times lighter.
Winn sits back, unbuckling his seatbelt and leaning forwards again, reaching around the seats to lie as only children and young adults can, without a care in the world for the things in the way as he wraps his arms around her at odd angles. Cat chuckles, making the most of it as she hugs him back, curling her head to rest on top of his hair.
"You need a hair-cut," she mutters, before flashing lights make her aware of a police car coming up behind them. "Alright, back in your seat, belt on."
"Yes, mom," Winn sits back, Cat's heart thudding in a strange, elated way as an officer walks up to her door. Putting down her window, she flashes a smile and gets out her ID.
"Hello, ma'am. Why're you sitting your car here this afternoon?"
Cat shows her ID. "Winn startled me with some news. I felt like I shouldn't be driving while we spoke and it was that urgent a conversation."
The officer looks back to where Winn sits in the backseat. "The side of the freeway isn't a proper place to talk, Ms Grant. I'll half to ask you to move on and find somewhere that isn't the freeway to talk."
"Apologies. We'll move on."
"Good. Have a nice day," she tips her cap, walking back to the patrol car. Cat turns off her hazards, putting her ID away in the glovebox before turning back onto the freeway, the patrol car not far behind as they slip back into traffic.
Talking to the workers at Arthurs Home, the new paperwork starts to get filled out. It will take Cat weeks to get it processed, but before the YES comes through from the government, Winn's picture finally gets leaked onto the internet alongside a full article in the Daily Planet about Cat's previous relationship with Harold, the custody court-battle surrounding Adam and Winslow Senior's criminal background.
"Miss Jones, I won't be able to take Winn this weekend – I need to completely lambast the people who wrote and authorised the article floating around."
"Yeah, I think that would be best, though Winn's pretty set on coming. He's here in the room on speaker."
"Mom, I want to still come over, I don't care about some stupid paper."
"Winn, it's not possible," Cat argues, eyes trying to track down the name of the reporter- "Oh, oh that bitch."
"Miss Grant, language!" Jones admonishes, but Cat is already hanging up, phoning a long memorised phone-number. It rings and rings and then finally-
"Lois Lane, who is this?"
"You conniving, wretched, life-ruining slag!" Cat shouts, attracting many looks from the bullpen as she stands, pacing behind her desk. "How dare you? How absolutely dare you? Trying to ruin CatCo, I understand, trying to bring me down, I understand, but bringing my son, my children into this? You have crossed a line, Lois."
"It's called revenge for the article you wrote about Clark sleeping his way up the food-chain. The reverse-sexism, I liked, but he's still my partner, who I love."
Cat scoffs, "You got your revenge for that one last September when you published the piece on my sexual orientation, which wasn't much of a revenge."
"None of our rivalry can't be spun into gold, pussycat, you know that all too well."
"I do know that, I know that very well – playing off against each other has raised a lot of issues that needed to be discussed in mainstream media; but Lois, you attacked me and included my sons in your bitchy little article."
"Winslow Junior's only a foster-kid, if my research holds true."
"I'm in the process of adopting him, but that's not something I want to see in any other paper but the Tribune, Lois. But that point doesn't even matter, because he is a child, Winn is a child and Adam- I'm actually shocked, Lois. I am shocked to the core that you would dare to include him in anything you wrote."
"It was saved for a special occasion."
"We had an agreement," Cat snaps back. "We had an agreement that I'll still honour for Clark's sake, not yours – even if you won't honour it. I'm going to sue this time. I am suing your ass, Lane and don't expect me to be the only one – you infringed on the rights of a child still under government protection living in a government establishment while being watched by the FBI."
"…shit."
"Yes, shit." Cat can't revel in it. She literally can't. Her anger on Winn's behalf, on Adam's behalf, dammit even on Harold's behalf, is too strong. "I don't even care about the retraction. I don't give an actual damn about it. I just care about the fact that Harold had no idea I was adopting and that Adam is old enough to read and that Harold wasn't going to let me see him while he had the power and he definitely won't let me see him now. I just care that people are once more bringing up how Winslow Schott Senior murdered people where his son can see them talking about it. I just care because you have singlehandedly destabilised what peace I and my family have achieved in this godforsaken world."
"…I'm sorry."
"Sorry isn't good enough. I want you to fix this as much as you can. I want you to spin your own words to gold, Lane, because this is not a game, this kind of personal attack is not part of our back and forth. You will fix this and you will be the one to phone Harold and tell him how it's your fault – and you will do it today, this morning. Not this evening or this afternoon, this morning. Harold still has his old number. Goodbye, Lane."
Cat hangs up the phone and she leaves work early, not answering a single phone call she receives.
Two thousand, the grand new millennium. Winslow Grant goes to St Edmunds private school, combing his hair to the side five days a week in the morning and skipping a grade. Cat rearranges her schedule as if she were a normal nine to five mother – she's an eight to half five mother – and makes it a personal policy to have two PA's who can work together to take over the handling of CatCo and certain appointments in the case that Winn needs her.
Harold phones on Adam's birthday that January. "He wants to spend the March holidays with you and his brother." The fact that he uses that as a starter is less surprising than how he doesn't even pause before referring to Winn as Adam's brother. "Two weeks. Can you fit it in your busy schedule?"
"I've learnt to prioritise over the years," she replies, before debating with Harold over whether she should bring Adam with them abroad or stay in National City while he stays with them. Eventually, they decide to let Adam spend the weekend after next with her, getting to know her and ask him if he'd like to go with them abroad when the holiday comes closer.
Adam and Winn are, respectively, eight and eleven – though Winn is close to turning twelve. Meeting each other, Adam is predictably jealous, but once Cat makes it clear that he's just as important – she's spoken to Winn beforehand, Winn accepting that Adam will be vaguely more important while he visits and because he's mature for his age, Cat believes him – he warms up to them both easier. Adam forgives Cat easily.
In another universe, it's not as easy, but Adam isn't as young, either.
By the time the March holidays come around, both Cat and Karen are amusedly confused when together, as Adam says out for 'mom' and can mean either of them. Winn gets to call Karen 'Aunt Karen', though Harold is just 'Adam's dad'. Going to France impresses Adam, because of how both Cat and Winn are fluent – and Cat herself gets a small surprise when Winn speaks Spanish to another tourist asking for directions to the police station, translating for a local who actually knows the way.
"I'm good with languages," is his reply when Cat questions him. She makes sure his school know and they tell him, they do. With her permission, he takes various practice SATs meant for people five or six years older than him.
"He could go to college in two or three years if he worked hard," an advisor states – one of the reasons Cat likes St Edmunds is because they're so upfront and encouraging of their students. Winn, upon hearing this, flushes but keeps his grades at a hundred percent, claiming he wants to stay with his friends. Cat doesn't blame him, but worries. St Edmunds sets all their homework on Friday, to be handed in on Monday, so during the week he has nothing to do.
'My sons a genius and I don't know what to do' would have been a saved search in Cat's computer, had Google been ten years ahead of its time.
Adam comes over once a month for the weekend for the next couple of years. He occasionally goes on long holidays with them and when Harold and Karen begin going on an annual Winter cruise for three weeks, Adam starts having Christmas with them.
Two thousand and ten. Winn finishes his last year in college getting his Masters in IT and Business Management. Adam celebrates his eighteenth birthday with Cat in Greece where she's tanning before flying to Opal City to see Harold and Karen, then swanning off abroad once again, gap year going pretty well, apparently. Cat stalks his Facebook a few times a month, seeing what he's up to.
Olivia Marsdin leaves her amicably, after four years of happy, gay bliss. Cat doesn't blame her – the world is barely ready for a female president, let alone a bisexual female president.
Alone, but not quite, but still alone because everyone she loves don't inhabit National City like she does, Cat starts to see the signs of the Tribune losing its will to live. It's another blow that she does not want and because of it she sacrifices her dual PA's, sending them off onto a horizon of leadership within CatCo, should they make the plunge. Lois makes sure the world knows of her steady stream of crying assistants that follow her old assistants' recruitment to better places within her empire and it's with a shark-like grin that Cat poaches Jimmy Olsen from her nemesis who has still to fully make up for her blunder over ten years before.
"Hey mom?" Winn approaches her one day, frowning as her newest assistant rushes out of her office, tears in his eyes. "Uh, I need to tell you something."
"Please don't say you knocked up a girl," Cat pleads, cringing at the thought.
Winn's eyes widen. "I wasn't here about tha-" Cat locks eyes with him as he squeaks, hands coming up to cover his mouth. "About nothing! I have not knocked up any human being on this planet that I know of."
"…good. Tell me what you're hiding," she says calmly, levelling a narrow-eyed Look at her son. Winn cringes before shaking his head.
"I'm not talking about that. I am here to talk about my unemployment, which has been rectified."
"Oh, that's brilliant, Winn!" Cat immediately lights up, smiling brightly, putting aside his earlier-hidden topic of conversation for a later date. "Where? What as?"
"That's the thing, uh, well…it's with the government and I wanted to tell you that tomorrow I'm going to be, well, disappearing for a…long time. I'm not quite sure if I'll be able to see you for a while in person."
Cat's smile drops. "Oh. Well, that is quite the dilemma. Have you told everyone else?"
"Uh, no – but I've told Lorol. I'll call Adam tonight-"
"Who's Lorol?" Cat interrupts.
"…they're the reason I'm joining the DEO," Winn admits, before wincing and then squeezing his eyes shut in consternation for seemingly different reason. He never could keep his mouth shut, Cat shakes her head, sighing at his accidental reveal of the truth.
"The DEO – I'll assume it's a super-secret branch of the government who want you for your marvellous technological skills."
"Yeah." Winn pauses then, face settling into a familiar expression of concentration and focus. "We need to go onto the balcony, now. I've already said enough as it is."
Cat gracefully allows her son to lead her onto the balcony. Once on it, she shuts the door, eyeing him as he paces, arms crossed, before he finally stops and turns to face her, face set.
"Lorol is an alien and technically my spouse."
"You got married?" Cat hisses. "What was it, a Vegas wedding?"
"No. Lorol and I were friends with benefits," Winn explains, "Also, I should probably mention that they belong to a one-gender race. Both male and female, until they have a child, then they sort of…regress their maleness, so different hormones can be produced to enhance the eggs."
Cat tries to breathe normally, mind quickly coming up with multiple scenarios.
"…which is why the DEO basically blackmailed me into joining them, but they didn't. Lorol's sort of got weird hybrid eggs that need an artificial container because they're going to be born without eggshell and the DEO offered when I was panicking and hacking their systems, trying to see if they had some tech I could borrow the plans for." He crosses his arms then, fingers fiddling with the ends of his sleeves obviously trying to keep his cool. "Lorol, they- Lorol needed help. They know the eggs didn't have shells."
"They're not eggs without shells," Cat mutters, crossing her own arms as she takes this all in – because it is completely ridiculous and something you'd only ever see on the second season a formerly-brilliant sci-fi television series that would shortly fail.
Winn raises his shoulders violently, arms still packed over his chest. "Would you rather I call them- call them embryos or something more- more clinical? Lorol calls them eggs without shells, so I call them eggs without shells. I- actually, no, not getting into my issues, back to the story. I hacked the DEO and I got caught. They brought me in and I offered my skills if they could help us and now I basically have a fish tank connected to monitoring equipment waiting for Lorol to- to put the eggs into, in their own time."
"So, long story short, I'm going to be a grandmother," Cat sums up, sitting down heavily. "And they'll be born in a secret government base after being monitored by scientists throughout gestation? And that doesn't sound at all dodgy."
"I know, I know, mom," Winn mutters. "The biggest part is that there's going to be two. Lorol was a bit surprised – they were born in a batch of sixty." He sits down beside her, nudging her knee. "Come on, think about it – sixty mini-me's running around."
Cat snorts. "You were the perfect child, but I haven't met this Lorol so I won't say anything more on that. So many bombshells, Winslow. Count them for me."
"I'm going to be a dad, you're going to be a grandmother, I'm going to be a super-secret agent and to be a super-secret agent I have to train twelve hours a day in a secret base for like, six months or more, depending on how good I need to be. I'm technical support, but apparently no DEO agent hasn't gone through physical."
"It's like joining the army," Cat murmurs, shock rather setting in now. "If you could get me a martini, I would be quite grateful, Winslow."
"Sure, mom, martini coming right up." Winn leaves, returning shortly. Cat takes it without a word.
Two thousand and eleven. Winn metaphorically returns from the war, a 'wife' in tow along with twins by the names of Laura and Winifred Grant. Cat believes he has replaced all his fat with muscle and is both proud and afraid to learn he has a poker face now – that he can lie and act as well as any actor on stage, providing their character doesn't have personality. Adam goes back to college, studying for his bachelors in Literature and Music History with a particular interest in spending his free time in the gym, inspired by his older brother to keep up his shape as he stops backpacking and walking everywhere that doesn't need a plane.
Cat makes it very, very clear to Adam that he will be banned from visiting her again if he shows up at her office smelling of sweat and Axe spray.
Winn at least has some decorum. He makes sure he's always handsome as can be in button-up shirts and slacks, mens cologne a faint scent on his wrists and his bow-tie perfect. Unfortunately, Cat has never been able to make him wear a tie, with the single exception of the funeral for one of his classmates, who was killed in a car crash along with her parents. Similarly, Lorol dresses smartly and carefully, too, when it comes out 'she' is married to the famous Cat Grant's genius son, Winslow. It helps that in their culture, showing anything other than your arms, hands, neck and face is practically illegal. The most shaming they've ever had over their appearance is for the olive tan of their skin, only slightly greener than any humans.
The Tribune is starting to slide down the totem pole. Cat can see it in numbers and figures, with lowered readership and fewer paper sales. It sets off a quiet despair inside her that grows into a dispassionate expectancy. There is nothing to be done. Only something big can save it. Her newest assistant – Kara Danvers – gives her something to focus on, a potential she wants to nurture. But the Tribune is still going down, a sinking ship that she only hesitates to call a Titanic because there's still time, still time for any big story to boost readership permanently and for that bit longer.
God, send me a saviour, send me someone like Superman.
Two thousand and twelve. Olivia Marsdin – her Olivia, her once-lover, a friend she can call friend among a pool of stingrays – becomes President of the United States when Barack Obama steps down. The Tribune sees a small jump in readership, a trickling flow that once again disappears as her reign goes on without scandal, without all-out war that people originally thought a female President would mean.
Winn and Lorol go on a two-day holiday during May, leaving Laura and Winifred in her care. Kara amuses them when she has to attend an emergency board meeting and Cat rewards her with free dinner that night with them at an Italian place, where they're mistaken for a married couple. Kara flushes and stammers out a we're not married, spending most of the night pink-cheeked, snatching glances at her when she's not playing with the twins.
Cat gets a flutter in her chest every time she catches her. Most of the night, she has that flutter.
"You should go out more," Lorol advises after retrieving the children. "You don't have anyone relying on you – you should have some fun."
"Fun?" Cat shakes her head. "I'm too busy to have fun."
"Liar," Winn tuts her, before tickling Laura's sensitive squared ears that she inherited from her off-worlder parent, getting giggles. "Your nana's a little liar, isn't she Laura? Isn't she?"
Lorol chuckles at Cat's put-out expression. "Do you have your eye on anyone, Cat? Wasn't Harrison Ford texting you?"
"I don't go for married men," Cat scoffs, before shaking her head. But even as she speaks further, denying any attachments or 'crushes' as Winn juvenilely calls them, she thinks of Kara with her grandchildren. No. She's got to be younger than Winslow. No.
To her mortification though, Winifred speaks up. "Kara, Kara a' Nana!" She repeats her sentence multiple times, sometimes including a lisped version of the word 'pasta'.
"Kara, as in your assistant?" Lorol lowly laughs. "Naughty."
"I do not like Kara like that," Cat denies, swallowing thickly. "Get your head of the gutter. I'm not sleeping with my assistant."
"I never said you were," Lorol grins, their lack of canines revealing how their tongue sweeps back and forwards over the backs of their teeth. "You came up with that one yourself, Cat."
Two thousand and thirteen. Adam is brought in on the gossip and he brings in Harold and Karen, who laugh and hound her about Kara when she least expects it. Karen regularly likes to ask for pictures, which Cat has to quickly snap and send.
Two thousand and fourteen. Karen's habit of asking for photos causes Cat to have an album of photos of her assistant, right between the ones of her grandchildren, with their bright smiles and sticky fingers and her sons and Lorol, whenever she sees them. Her grandchildren only barely take the lead in number. It's embarrassing – Olivia steals her phone at one point when Cat visits her and the President has an awful time using her bodyguards to her advantage while she scrolls through them. Then, of course, Cat has to actually keep her composure and force herself not to have grabby-hands when Miranda, of all the people, plucks it from her grasp while she visits Runway HQ.
To her surprise, however, it's Miranda who doesn't laugh, who quiets and stops in the middle of speaking. She scrolls through the pictures, silent – which is good, because Kara is with her, talking to Andrea outside the door and Cat swears that her assistant has super-hearing. If Miranda had reacted like Olivia, teasing her and gaily asking her what Kara's favourite colour is and what Kara looks like without clothes on, then Cat would have been mortified beyond belief. She'd have probably had to fire Kara as well, after Kara had blushed for a full week- no, a month and then approached her, knowing her behaviour is unacceptable.
On the twins' birthday, Adam visits CatCo for the first time in person for years and he mistakenly asks Kara out on a date. Kara says yes before the two finally get introductions over and done with, Adam only barely concealing his horrified look as Kara twists to answer her phone, Cat texting her, ordering her to get the layouts. As soon as she disappears to do as she's ordered, Adam comes into her office and apologises.
"I didn't realise that she was your Kara."
"It's fine and she's not my Kara," Cat replies airily, but Adam's well-aware he's screwed up. When they go on their date, Adam and Kara decide not to see each other again like that, but remain friends. It gives Cat anxiety, knowing her son's personality and Lisa doesn't manage to conceal her chuckle when she talks about it in her stupid purple and white spiral office.
"You don't understand – once he bounces back from his guilty little hole, he'll play this up, he'll- he'll probably try to find out if Kara has a thing for me in return, oh god, oh my god, this is Not. Good. At. All!"
Lisa, as she's good at doing, calms Cat down from her imminent panic-attack.
Two thousand and fourteen. Kara attends her first gala as Cat's assistant in New York, wearing a ravishing cocktail dress with her hair half-up half-down, curled and sprayed with some kind of silver sparkly hairspray that makes it glitter in the light. The gossip rags snap pictures of Cat when she looks at Kara, eyes following the open panels of her dress, heart pounding at the slips of skin and muscle, oh god I didn't know she worked out.
'Does the Cat want to climb her assistant-shaped tree?' is a title for one of said gossip-rags' articles. Cat, while angry that the article even exists, can't help but think, definitely.
It draws Cat's attention, however, to everything about Kara that she actually likes, that isn't the way her smile looks or the way her arms tense spectacularly. Kara is kind and her worst insult is most likely in a different language – Cat's heard Kara muttering under her breath in foreign dialects before, ones she doesn't recognise but can tell apart easily. That's another thing – Kara is clever, so clever and she's efficient. Her memory is spotless and on the twins' fourth birthday that year, Kara nervously presents Cat a small bundle of gifts for them.
Two thousand and fifteen. Cat brings Kara out onto her balcony, makes chitchat before abruptly telling Kara she would like to take her out for dinner in the capacity of a potential romantic interest, verbally disconnecting herself in that moment from Cat Grant, creator, founder and Queen of CatCo Worldwide Media.
"I.." Kara stares at her, mouth dropping open. "I don't know, Ms Grant."
"My name is Catherine."
"Catherine…do, do you mind if I take some time to think about it?"
Cat bites her tongue slightly, before nodding. "If you don't feel the same way…Kara, please tell me before the weekend."
"Of course, Ms- of course, Catherine. Truthfully, I do, but there are other things I need to think about that have nothing to do with you or CatCo."
"That's fine."
"Good. I'll just," and Kara motions back inside, before pausing. "Actually, do you mind, Ms Grant, if I take the rest of the day off?"
Cat straightens her shoulder, nodding. "That's fine, Keira."
Cat has asked Kara on a date, made things clear that at work they are Ms Grant and Keira and dating, they are Catherine and Kara. Her romantic life is fragile though perhaps, maybe, coming together – but her life's work is fading, meaning nothing in the long run for CatCo Worldwide Media except loss of jobs and a lack of actual magazine. The Tribune is going down, on its last legs and while CatCo lives on in different ways – on the internet, on the radio and hell, even television, though the studio has long since made it's own little nook for itself within CatCo – the Tribune…it's the Tribune. Cat cries for the first time in a long, long time, in the privacy of her home, alone, over the Tribune.
She prays to a deity she doesn't believe in.
God, send me a saviour, send me someone like Superman.
And then a girl saves a plane.
Later – so, so much later, two thousand and seventeen – Cat's drinking a scotch and running her fingers through Winn's hair as he desperately tries to locate his partner and children. Phrases like space asthma and Earth has a new queen reverberate through her head as much as Supergirl's choked my sister and- and all the aliens that were captured, the spaceship set off and now they're gone, Cat.
Lorol, Laura and Winifred are missing.
Winn frantically ends his phone-call, hands shaking as he tries to dial a new number, but Cat reaches, taking the phone from him. He shouts, dragging himself up as she clenches it in her grip, but Winn is her son and she can deal with anger, when it's her child-in-law and grandchildren on the line. Eventually, Winn rushes off, slamming the door behind him and the tracker in his mobile – he'd been using her landline to call the DEO and his other allies – informs Cat that he's gone to Adam's. A text from her younger son makes sure Cat knows he safe, exhausted and on the verge of sleep.
Kara drifts in through her window.
"Cat, I'm sorry."
"I know. You've lost one of the most important people in your life, too," Cat downs her scotch, Kara stopping her from pouring a new glass as her arms wrap around her. Cat shudders before pressing her face into Kara's chest, soft, black cotton surprising her. "You're not in your supersuit."
"No. I've made some stupid mistakes and let things happen in the last couple of months as Supergirl that, before, I never would have condoned. I still can't believe it all, sometimes."
"I should have never left National City," Cat says, pulling Kara even closer as she sniffs. "I should have been here when Lorol signed that damn registry. That media crisis that followed…I don't trust James to handle this, now. I was ducking my head in the sand, not finding myself. Everything that makes me Cat Grant is in National City."
"I thought you liked the Himalayas?" Kara whispers, chin coming to rest on top of her head.
"You're too tall," Cat skips answering the question. "One of the few things I don't like about you, though it does make you seem very majestic. Superman is too tall for his own good."
"We're tracing the ship," Kara whispers again, though this time her voice wobbles. Cat shuts her eyes. Ignoring the situation isn't making anything better. "I saw them, with the others. Lorol and the girls. They recognised me. Alex recognised them, too. She'll take care of them."
"She'd better. I know Lorol will try taking care of her, too, once they realises how you're related. Lorol always liked you."
"Why?"
"I talked about you a lot."
Cat later thinks that maybe they should have waited – grief is a powerful thing, but it brings them together in a moment of time that can't be replicated, lips locking and salt slipping through the cracks. Kara sobs into her mouth and Cat holds onto her black cotton shirt that isn't a supersuit or a Forever 21 cardigan like a lifeline.
Two thousand and eighteen. Cat has a new normal that involves Adam and Winn sharing an apartment in downtown National City that used to be Kara's, Kara herself living with her penthouse in upper eastside. The reasons for the move number over a dozen, but a few of the main ones are the fact that Cat and Kara are in a romantic relationship and no-one can get around Cat's building's security to interrogate Kara Zor-El about being the newly rebranded Superwoman.
In more detail, Cat's new normal is going to CatCo every day, Kara bringing her lunch, no matter what disaster threatens, so her lunch might be an hour to three hours later, making her cranky until she returns home to find Kara with her favourite foods in a spread on the kitchen island table. Cat's new normal is pressing her lips to Kara's at random intervals and smiling when Kara giggles, because she trails her fingers up Kara's side and the super-powered alien is insanely ticklish.
Cat's new normal is Sunday dinners with Kara, Winn, Adam and Adam's new boyfriend, Jack Spheer – and then, halfway through the year, Jack's best friend, Lena Luthor, who everyone tries to treat fairly despite her family's history with the House of El, everyone but Kara, because Kara actually becomes Lena Luthor's best friend as well. Cat's new normal is good, steady and full of new arrivals, but the absence of Lorol, Laura, Winifred and even Alex Danvers is a constant, constant drain.
But then, Cat's new normal is disrupted by a being by the name of Mxyzptlk, who Kara despises. Cat holds onto her wine glass tightly as Mxyzptlk explains calmly that he's here on behalf of Alexa Skywalker. The moment of high tension is broken, then, when everyone but Cat makes noises of varying degrees of shock.
"I'm not trying to be funny, no matter how funny it is," Mxyzptlk says, still strangely calm. "Alexa Skywalker is a famous space pirate, over forty lightyears away. Her crew is made up of former-Earth residents and we made a deal that you are not privy to. Part of the deal was that I passed on a message from her detailing that you need to use the Guizhou Province's FAST single-aperture satellite to find the signal they're bouncing towards you."
Cat, obviously, has no idea what he means when he details what signal they're 'bouncing' at them, but Kara obviously does and she's quick to phone the DEO. It's only when Mxyzptlk disappears and Kara tells her son that Alex sent them a message, does she finally drop her glass and spill wine all over the kitchen. Winn is crying into Adam's arms and Lena and Jack are asking what the hell is going on, who is Alex and what and where is this Mxyzptlk guy?
Cat's only thought is thus: my grandchildren are coming home.