They stand shoulder to shoulder as the elevator doors close on Carter's beaming face. They both smile and continue to return his wave right up until the last moment, and it's nice. Natural. It gives an illusion of togetherness; as if they're a little family unit. It's foolish even to think it, and wholly addictive. The thought is almost pleasant enough for Cat to forget she's supposed to be furious with Kara.
Almost.
A second passes after the doors close both of them still wearing their smiles for Carter. A heartbeat. Then like glass illusion shatters, and the reality of their roles as boss and employee is reestablished.
Kara instantly begins apologising. As well she should, the overprotective mother in Cat thinks. Listen to how guilt ridden she sounds, how pained, whispers the softer part of her. The part she pretends she doesn't have. The part of her that truly cares for people beyond her son's, and for none more than Kara.
Kara who almost lost you your son, the overprotective mother growls.
Kara who chose saving your son over an airport full of people, the softness points out.
"Balcony. Now." Cat says sharply, cutting Kara's apologies short. Without even glancing at Kara's no doubt terrified expression Cat turns and begins striding towards the privacy of her balcony. She can hear Kara stumble as she rushes to follow.
It's the knowledge that she is supposed to be angry more than anything else that makes Cat roll her eyes at Kara's clumsiness even if no one sees her do it.
Because she is angry at Kara for losing her son. For allowing him to end up on that damn train with a mad bomber.
She has not just moved on to relief that both Carter and Kara are now safe. And she most certainly doesn't find it endearing that the strong confident alien superhero is actually a complete klutz when she isn't in tights and a cape.
She repeats these thoughts to herself on a loop as she walks to the railing of her balcony. Resting her hands wide on the railing and drawing in a cleansing breath as she stares out over National City. With one final repetition of what she is supposed to be feeling she drops her hands to her sides and turns to look back at Kara.
Kara stands in the middle of the balcony wringing her hands together, head bowed, waiting for Cat to speak. No. Waiting for Cat to rage. Waiting for Cat to fire her.
Seconds pass as Cat quietly stares at the woman before her. At the curled in shoulders so distant from Supergirl's self assured stance, and worlds away from Kara Danvers meek slouch. Right now she is not the maiden of steel, nor the personification of sunshine that Cat was familiar with. She just looks like a little girl about to lose her world.
Cat must have been quiet for too long because Kara chances a glance up at her. Their eyes still don't quite meet. Kara's gaze not making it higher than Cat's lips. Lips that Cat has been studiously keeping pressed in a thin line that betray nothing.
The movement allows Cat a glimpse of Kara's eyes even if Kara won't look at hers. Sky blue turned electric by the gloss of unshed tears. Tears that Cat knows Kara won't allow to fall. Because she's standing here as Cat's assistant, not as the city's hero. Because it's rule one. No crying at the office.
Even standing there expecting to be fired Kara doesn't break rule one. It's that hint of steel, keeping her composure, that reminds Cat that no matter how young and fragile Kara seems, she is still a fighter, a survivor.
A girl that has survived the unimaginable. Who has been forged in the fires of a dying planet. Who is made of steel, and yet bends before Cat as if Cat could be what finally breaks her. Or who saves her.
It's empowering. Intoxicating even. And most definitely the kind of power Cat should have. Cat knows that even with the best intentions she could ruin the woman standing before her. She's too bitter, too closed off, too cowardly to treat Kara how she deserves, and in the end would only keep Kara from shining her light on a world that desperately needs it.
She can't be selfish. She must play her role. The role of the angry employer speaking to an employee who just failed spectacularly.
She can't be selfish, but she is.
"How many people were at the airport do you think?"
It isn't what she was going say. Not what she was going to ask. Not what she should be asking. The furrow of Kara's brow tells her that Kara knows this too.
"Th-the airport, Miss Grant?" Kara asks in return. Her voice is cautious and controlled, just barely shaking. Curious as to where Cat is going with this. Cat is curious herself.
"A thousand? More? Certainly more than the two hundred odd people on Max Lord's toy train," Cat says, taking a half step closer to Kara. And oh, that is where she's going with this.
She watches the tempest of emotion on Kara's face. The guilt, the fear, the confusion, and something else. Something knowing and brazen. Something that challenges Cat to keep talking. So she does.
"A thousand lives, and Supergirl choses to save the train that just so happens to carry my son."
"Perhaps she knew the bomb at the airport was just a smokescreen" Kara says quietly. The shaking in her voice gone, a hint of something harder shining through. Yet still tempered by an expression that is all Kara Danvers. Nervous, lips thinned, trying to appear serious and sure when she's anything but. Normally it means Kara is covering for the incompetence of someone who deserves to be fired. Now it means something far more important.
Cat hums noncommittally in response. That hint of steel, that brazen spark in Kara's eyes is still there and it's becoming impossible for Cat not to take the challenge and make her ignite.
"And how could she have known that?" Cat asks extending the delusion that they're still talking about Supergirl as a separate individual. "No there was more to it, she made a choice, one that many would consider the wrong one. So why would she chose the train? There had to be something personal. There had to have been something personal about it for her to have chosen the few over the many."
"And if it was personal, how could you possibly know who she was there for?"
Kara's spine straightens slightly when she speaks. Supergirl's strength and Kara Danvers vulnerability merging before Cat's eyes. She changes from a lost little girl to a determined young woman. Yet still her eyes shine with unshed tears waiting for Cat to tear her apart.
"Well I could investigate each and every person who was on the train, dig all of the skeletons out of the closets," Cat says carefully. "But I think it would just be easier to give up this little charade, don't you Supergirl?"
Kara blinks slowly at her and for a second Cat wonders of she misread something. If Kara was really challenging her to reveal this truth. If it is in fact the truth at all.
"And if we did give it up?" Kara asks, a hand coming up to fiddle with her glasses. "What would happen to us."
It's not a denial. In fact it's practically a confirmation. It's also a fair question.
There is so much to consider. The morality of keeping a superhero chained at a desk for hours a day. Whether she should expose Kara. Can she continue treating her as Keira knowing she was talking to Supergirl.
"I don't know," Cat says finally. "But before we get into all that let me say, thank you, Kara. Thank you for saving The Tribune. Thank you for saving me from Leslie. And thank you so much for choosing Carter."
A smile begins to play about the corners of Kara's lips, the tears in her eyes blinking away rapidly. The smile doesn't grow into one of her usual Sunny-D grins. There is a bleakness revealed behind the sheen of tears.
"If it wasn't for me then he might never have been in trouble."
There is a tiredness in Kara's voice that Cat is unused to hearing from her. It's the tone of voice Cat has heard in interviews with soldiers and veterans. Men and women who have seen terrible things. Who survived horrors, and when they finally get home are faced with hardship after hardship that they never anticipated. PTSD. Spouses that found others to warm their beds while they were away. Home foreclosures from the ever changing economy.
Only a few short months ago if she had seen this look in her assistants eye, knowing only what history was on her CV Cat would have scoffed. Would have assumed it was something other than what it was. That it was some show of millennial over sensitivity, but now? Knowing who Kara really is, what she's lost, what she's faced down. Now Cat simply wanted to comfort her. To let her know she didn't have to struggle alone.
"Perhaps," Cat says trying to keep her tone light. "But then again, maybe it was a little demanding of me to enlist a superhero as a babysitter, you have an entire city to watch over afterall."
"You didn't know," Kara says, always quick to defend Cat even from herself.
"I had an idea" Cat says with a shrug. It's not a lie. Not really. It had been less an idea and more a desperate fantasy that the two gorgeous blondes in her life were one in the same, so that Cat didn't have to choose. As if she'd ever be given the chance to choose either to begin with, whispered the cynical part of her mind. "On paper a superhero babysitter does sound safe, but it doesn't account for the reality of how busy a superheros schedule can be."
Kara doesn't seem to have a response for her. She just watches, as if sensing Cat still has more to say. She's right of course. She's always been good at anticipating Cat's behaviour. Even when Cat is being particularly erratic.
"And you have been busy lately haven't you? Coming out as a hero, Reactron, and now a train bomber. It makes me wonder how you could have time to be my assistant, never mind look after Carter."
At this Kara opens her mouth to respond, clearly able to tell where Cat is going with this. Cat doesn't give her the chance to interrupt, steamrolling forward with her words. She may want to comfort Kara, but how much comfort can she really afford to offer? There was always going to be something that needed Supergirl's attention, how soft could she afford to be?
"Even now, how many people could use Supergirl's help while we're standing here talking? What are you doing here Kara?"
Kara's mouth opens and closes twice. As if she knows the immediate reasons that sprung to her mind wouldn't be argument enough for Cat. Even if she doesn't know what Kara will say when she does finally answer, she can see the argument being pieced together in Kara's body language. The way her spine stiffens and her chin lifts as conviction takes the place of her doubts.
"Do you remember when I first interviewed to be your assistant?" Cat nods slowly. Curious. Whatever she expected Kara to say she hadn't expected her to begin like this. It seemed they were both surprising one another this afternoon. "I told you that I was ordinary, that I hadn't done anything to prove I was worthwhile. Working at Catco, working with you, everyday has made me feel like I've done something. Achieved something. That I've helped make a difference."
Cat raised an eyebrow at that. They both knew Cat had Kara run some pretty pointless errands over the years.
"Maybe I didn't do things directly, but making your life easier? Helping others around the office? Helping others to make a difference, it was important to me. It gave me a way to help without revealing myself."
"And why didn't you? How could fetching my lattes ever come close to comparing to what you're capable of. You could be out saving lives."
"Because even I can't be everywhere at once," Kara says firmly. "Last night's incident proves that."
"Maybe not, but how much more could you be doing if you weren't chained to your desk?" Cat asks, frustration entering her tone.
"I don't know," Kara readjusts her glasses, "but I'd hardly say I'm chained to my desk. How often have you noticed me disappear these past months?"
"What does that matter?" Cat asks frowning.
"It matters, because if I thought I could be doing more, I would be. If I thought I had to chose between being Kara Danvers and being Supergirl, then I would have done it," Kara says. Her tone suggesting it should be obvious. "And right now if I had to choose. Well, I'd choose to be Kara Danvers, because I'm not sure I'm strong enough to be Supergirl all the time. Not without being able to come back to Catco. Come back to you."
"Kara I know what I'm like to work for," Cat says her frown still firmly in place. "I don't see why you'd miss it."
"Because you make me feel normal."
Again Kara speaks as if the answer should have obvious to Cat. Cat feels her frown deepen and Kara rushes to continue.
"Could you run Catco as well as you do if you didn't get to go home to Carter? If you couldn't see him, or hold him? If you couldn't settle in at the end of the day and do something normal like play Settlers of Catan?"
"I don't- I-"
Cat pauses. Lost for words. When framed like that she can understand why Kara would need part of her life to be something other than Supergirl. There's another part of the parallel that makes Cat's blood pound in her ears. The implication that Kara cares for Cat, that Cat is someone important to her. She dismisses the thought quickly. She is Kara's boss and that is all she has ever been.
"I still don't think coming to work to get yelled at by me is quite the same as going home to the support of a loved one," she says finally. Kara shakes her head.
"But you do support me, as Kara and as Supergirl." There's that implication again. Kara continues to elaborate before Cat can try and qualify the statement. "Whenever I'm struggling, you call me into your office and you give me advice. Whenever I make a mistake, you help me find a way to fix it. If it wasn't for you I'd still need a new cardigan whenever I had to change the toner in the printer, and Supergirl would still be causing oil spills whenever something went wrong by the docks."
There's another pause. One that Cat would fill if Kara's flickering eyes and rising blush didn't indicate the girl had something else she wanted to add. So instead she waits, keeping her expression carefully neutral until Kara breaks.
"And I know that maybe to you I'm just another employee, but." Kara trails off for a moment before taking a deep breath and continuing. Making eye contact so intense that Cat wonders if she'll drown in those blue eyes or be melted by them. "But coming here, even if you just yell at me, is coming back to a loved one for me."
Cat's breath catches in her throat. She had thought that if the question of what they were to one another was ever brought up, that Kara would describe her as a mentor, at best. For Kara to describe her as a loved one, whether she meant familial, platonic, or something more, was more than Cat could have asked for.
"It's probably silly," Kara says quickly. Her eyes once again downcast, though they flicker up when she nervously readjusts her glasses yet again. "I don't expect you to share my feelings. I'm just the girl that gets your lattes after all. But you've come to mean so much to me, and everytime I see you I just want to hold you and never let you go. I want to make you smile that way you do when Carter gets an A, or when I get a cheeseburger on top of your salad after a board meeting, and."
Kara is rambling now and Cat isn't quite listening. Too caught up in her own spinning thoughts.
Kara cares. About her. Kara wants to hold her. That's still a romantic thing right? Not some new touchy feely millennial friendship thing? Then again it could also be a familial thing. Cat herself has days when all she wants to to curl up in a blanket fort her son and watch movies like they did when he was younger.
Cat tunes back in to Kara's rambling hoping to find some clarification.
"And I know, I know, how crazy it sounds, saying I'm falling for you, when I'm just your assistant, but."
Cat's brain short circuits.
All that she can see is Kara. Blushing to her roots. Her hands playing with the edges of her not entirely terrible blue cardigan. A nervous smile playing around her lips as she continues to ramble.
By the time self awareness comes back to Cat she's already moving. Her arms coming up around Kara's neck in a hug.
"You've never been just anything to me Kara." Cat whispers. Her lips grazing the shell of Kara's ear.
It seems it's Kara's turn to short circuit. Whatever else she was saying dying in her throat with a squeak. Even in her shock, her arms are quick to circle Cat's waist, holding her as if that was what they were made for.
They stay like that for a few long moments, hearts pounding in their chests, before Cat leans back. Not separating them, but allowing the to make eye contact.
"It seems we have more to talk about than I thought," Cat says. She looks from Kara's eyes to the soft pink or her lips and then back up again. "Perhaps it would be better to do it over dinner?"
"I- That- Dinner? Yes dinner sounds good." Kara manages to stutter out. Her expression shifting from wide eyed shock, to confusion, to the beginnings of a high powered Sunny Danvers grin.
"Good, does tonight work for you" Cat asks, feeling a grin start to stretch across her own face. Kara nods vigorously, not trusting herself not to squeal out a yes.
Cat steps out of Kara's arms, but not without pressing a kiss to Kara's cheek. One that maybe a little too close to the corner of her mouth than would be considered innocent.
"Perfect. Well then, I think we should get back to work before the IT hobbit and Olsen send a search party. They're going to think I murdered you."
"Right. Work. Murdered." Kara says absently. It pleases Cat for more than she'll ever admit to know she can cause Kara to become so distracted. "Wait. So I still have a job?" She snaps back into the present giving Cat a wide eyed look.
"No matter what my happen Kara you will always have a job with me should you want one" Cat says seriously. "Now come on, I need to sign off on the expenditure reports for the broadcasting department by lunch if we're going to have dinner tonight."
She slips back into boss mode easily. Equal parts professional experience and honed defensive instincts. She's a little surprised when Kara adopts her professional persona again just as quickly with a bright, "Yes Miss Grant."
Kara is halfway to the door when Cat calls out to her.
"And Keira, you will address me as Cat when we're not working."
The bright smile Kara flashes her when she turns could not doubt power the entire west coast if only there were a way to harness it.
"Of course Miss Grant."
And then she's off again, looking as if she could be floating. Which Cat thinks with both amusement and a twinge of concern she might actually be doing.
It should worry her. She's just asked out a superhero. Who is half her age. And her assistant. But when she looks over and sees Kara sitting at her own tapping away at her desktop computer, still smiling like the sun. A smile that Cat caused. She can't bring herself to feel anything but excitement for what the future might bring.