At six years old, Catherine Grant didn't understand dream sharing.
Well that wasn't quite right.
She knew it was a special kind of dreaming that helped people find their soulmate. The person who would love them most in the whole world.
She just didn't know why those dreams were supposed to be better than the dreams she already had. Dreams about marshmallow dragons and firefly stars were pretty great.
Her papa was very certain that it was only because she hadn't dream shared yet. He said that once she'd shared a dream with her person, she would understand exactly why everyone said it was so wonderful. For now she just had to wait for her person to start dreaming louder.
At fourteen years old, Catherine Grant still did not understand dream sharing. Or rather she didn't understand why everyone was so obsessed with experiencing it.
Well that wasn't quite right.
She understood, as much as such things could be understood, that dream sharing was a psychic event that would take place between two people when one or both parties was having a particularly vivid dream.
She understood, that people only ever shared dreams with one, seemingly random person somewhere around the globe, throughout their lifetimes, and that was what made people soulmates.
She understood, that after sharing even just one dream people who had never met before could identify in person someone they had shared a dream with, and that the science on the subject, as speculative as it was, seemed to believe this was because the dreams somehow altered people's brains on a level that they had not yet discovered how to detect.
What she didn't understand was why everybody ignored the fact that a vivid dream didn't mean a good dream. She had waited her whole life for her soulmate to start dreaming louder, as her papa used to call it. Now she'd give anything for them to be quiet again.
Her papa had always told her that dream sharing would be a wonderful experience. Her papa had been wrong.
There was nothing wonderful about the dreams she had begun experiencing.
She could never manage to make out any details. Only the overwhelming combination of pain, sadness, and loss that made her chest tighten until it felt like she couldn't breathe. That, and the distinct sense that what she was experiencing was somehow separate from herself. Like she was the first and loudest echo to ring out after clapping her hands over a well.
Every night for the past week she had woken up with an anguished scream on her lips, drenched in sweat, and fighting her way out from under the oppressive feeling of her blankets.
Which was how she'd ended up sitting in the office of her mother's therapist. Her mother didn't appreciate being woken by her daughter's screams, just because her soulmate was apparently leaving their subconscious to deal with their problems instead of facing them head on. Her mother's therapist, was exactly that. Her mother's therapist, and addressed Cat, and her feelings on the situation all of once, and only to tell her how people should feel about the situation she found herself in. Which was apparently to be wary and judgemental of her soulmates apparent inability to work through their emotions in their waking hours.
That night in her bedroom Cat had three things she hadn't had in the days before.
A dream journal, to record both her shared dreams, and her personal dreams, in order to deconstruct them later, so that she might learn to lessen their intensity.
A prescription for sleeping pills, that would supposedly disrupt the signals in her brain and lessen or maybe even put a stop to the dreams when taken.
And finally the knowledge that she would never be able to trust in anyone to look out for her, but herself.
At eighteen years old, Catherine Grant did not understand how her soulmate could have been having the same nightmare every night for the last four years.
After scouring every academic text on the subject however, she was determined to change this.
It had taken four long years of practice but Cat was now quite sure she understood how to manipulate her dreams. Not that she could be sure this would let her help her soulmate. At the bare minimum however it would let her get a full night's sleep, instead of being projected into wakefulness by grief that wasn't her own.
That at least she had grown sure of.
When she went to bed each night she followed a fastidious routine. Recreating the same conditions she went to sleep under each and every night seemed to help her find her focus when she began to enter her soulmates nightmare. Which was important. Her dreamself would never be able to reach out to her soulmate if she allowed herself to be overwhelmed by their grief.
Tonight was no different. She brushed her teeth. She washed her face. She set a glass of water by her bedside table, next to her dream journal. She double checked the temperature on the thermostat, and then double checked her alarm for the morning. Finally she would dim the lights to their lowest setting without turning them off, and she slip into bed at exactly nine o'clock.
After that she would take slow measured breaths, counting them out carefully to keep other thoughts from intruding. Every fourth breath she would remind herself. She'd know when she was dreaming. Sleep would follow soon enough.
As always the first thing Cat noticed was the just how confined she was. The small space made even the air feel heavier, which always came in stark contrast to the purposefully light blanket Cat slept under. Her awareness would extend from there.
She was confined because she was in some kind of pod that looked like something out of a science fiction novel. The pods appearance and her presence in it never felt unfamiliar, but it did feel strange. As if she had been in one before but never for this purpose. This makes her feel scared.
It was usually around this time that the sound of the pods engines would reach their loudest, which meant the pod was about to launch. Every time just as the momentum would hit, she would try to turn in the too small a space to catch one last glimpse of the people outside of the pod. She never saw them.
Instead she would see the view of a city, even more fantastical than the interior of her pod. A city of intricate spires of glass and metal, their twisty design sparkling in the red light, that was bright enough to make her squint. As she watched the ground at the base of the spires would split with a crack loud enough to be heard over the hum of the pods engines. Fractures would spread, along the ground, and up the side of the buildings. The first spire begins to crumble just as the pod enters a layer of smog. She never sees it hit the ground but she knows it must and that knowledge pains her.
When the pod breaks through the smog, all she can see is the sky. Dark space, interspersed with thousands of stars, creating constellations Cat would never have dreamt up on her own. Out of all the things she's seen up to this point, this moment is always the first time she realises that she is sharing in her soulmates dream instead of having a dream of her own. Cat only gets a few moments of this almost peace to prepare herself for what is about to happen.
The planet behind her exploding.
Hearing the ground crack apart hundreds of meters below her had been loud in the way that was like hearing a fireworks display from across town. Hearing the entire planet explode was more like a clap of thunder ringing out at the exact same time lightning struck. It was a terribly overwhelming sound that sent a shockwave through your whole body.
Cat clung hard to her sense of self when the shock wave struck. She focused hard on imagining that it sent her flying, just as surely as it pushed the pod she occupied. Willing the impact to help her subconscious push beyond the boundary of her soulmates point of view and allow her gain control of her dream body.
It worked. She was always a little surprised when it did. During months of attempts she'd had a very small margin of success.
When the energy of the shock wave wore off, and the pod began to drift by its own power, Cat was on the outside looking in. In some ways she wasn't sure this was better. The only things that existed now, were Cat, the sleek silver pod, and the small figure huddled inside of it, made barely visible from the light of the pods display. Everything else was nothingness. Literal nothingness. As if they were so deep in the black spaces between the stars that the stars had become hidden from view.
The first time Cat had made it this far she wasn't quite as in control as she had thought. Her mind had told her she was in the vacuum of space, and she had woken up choking from trying to take in too much air to save herself.
The second time Cat had managed to remind herself that it was only a dream and that she could breathe in space if she wanted to. However it had taken up entirely too much effort to do anything other than drift alongside the pod and stare at the person inside. As best as she could tell that person was the dream form of her soulmate. A girl maybe twelve or thirteen years old, heaving sobs into her hands, so violently that Cat was sure she was also hyperventilating. Cat wanted to hug her, to offer her any comfort at all really. But she had no idea how to push herself toward the pod, never mind open the alien contraption. Her own frustration had woken her.
The third time hadn't gone much better, but it had been better. Cat had taken the time to examine her surroundings, not that there were any, and to try to help the girl in the pod by practicing the same measured breathing she would use before bed. The hope had been that it would take care of making sure her mind knew she was breathing, as well as help the girl find some calm. She liked to think that this had been something of a success. The girls sobbing had lessened in intensity. She still cried hard, but at the very least it looked like she was able to take in air between each heart rending sound. Cat had stayed floating and breathing by her side until her alarm had dragged her back into the waking world.
There had been many times after that, where all Cat could do was breathe, and float there. No matter how hard she tried she couldn't seem to just will herself to move forward. Not without an experience to liken it to.
This time however, Cat had a plan to try and get the damn pod open so that she could try talking to the girl for once. It had taken a week of researching how astronauts prepared for life in zero gravity, and then another three of working a few trips to the pool into her weekly routine, but Cat was determined. If she could convince her brain that it was possible to breathe in nothingness, she could convince it that she could move through the nothingness like swimming too.
All she had to do was get close enough to the pod to grab on and find a latch. Or at least tap on the glass, and hope her soulmate would notice the intrusion. Anything would be better than nothing.
She took a minute to hang there, and be sure that both she and the girl had some control over their breathing before she tried. She swung her arms as if she were pulling herself through the water in a lazy breaststroke form. For a panicky moment her brain took the metaphor to far, and space flooded her lungs as if it were water during her inhale. Cat dropped her arms instantly and slammed her eyes shut. Forcing herself to remember the easy, oxygenated, weightlessness she had been experiencing just a few seconds earlier, and then exhaling.
It felt like breathing out underwater. Like there were bubbles rising over her face. When she tried inhaling again however, she found it just as easy as before. Reopening her eyes, Cat felt a surge of satisfaction.
She was closer to the pod. Reaching out she could just barely find purchase with her fingertips. That was all she needed.
Cat pulled herself forward until she was practically hugging the nose of the pod. Then she pushed herself up the nose until her face was level with the girl still crying inside. The effort left her panting like she had just climbed the rockwall at the gym. It was annoying to Cat that her dream form wasn't much more athletic than her real form, but she suppressed that annoyance in order to once again even out her breathing.
Now that she was closer she could see much more clearly how her own breathing was helping to ease the girl's own laboured breaths through her tears. It was comforting to get confirmation that she had been managing to help, at least a little.
After a few minutes, when she had gotten the girl as calm as she thought she could manage through breathing alone, Cat finally tried knocking on the glass.
The girl in the pod flinched but didn't look up. Perhaps she thought it was debris, Cat thought. After all she had never seen the girl look up to find out that there wasn't debris around to hit her.
Cat knocked again, this time trying a patterned knock instead of a plain one.
The first wrap of her knuckles on the glass made the girl flinch again, but Cat saw the way her head tilted ever so slightly when she discerned that the sound wasn't entirely random. Cat repeated the pattern twice more and finally the girl looked up.
Out of all of the ways Cat had been left feeling breathless in this dream reality, none of them could compare to the dizzying feeling of looking her soulmate straight in the eye. Everything about these dreams existed in shades of red, and silver, and black. Her soulmate's eyes however were the deepest, bright blue of the sky on a summer afternoon. They shone, not just with tears, but with wonderment, as she stared at Cat and realised she wasn't alone.
Cat felt frozen watching as the girl reached out to press her own hand on the glass underneath Cat's own. She saw the girl's lips move, but couldn't make out the words. Then just before their hands could align, the dream began to fade. One of them was waking up, and for once it didn't seem to be Cat.
In the end she followed her soulmate into wakefulness, trying in vain to connect their hands through the glass, even as their minds pulled them further apart.
When Cat woke up, she was sitting in bed, one hand outstretched towards someone who wasn't there. She mumbled out a curse for having come so close only to have her progress halted at the last possible moment.
She heaved a sigh, and then reached for her dream journal. At the very least, she had a lot to write about.
At nineteen years old, Catherine Grant finally understood what made her dream sharing so different to the experiences of everyone else she knew.
Her soulmate was an alien.
It was absurd, and impossible, and made entirely too much sense for her to deny.
It had taken months after Cat had made that first attempt at reaching out to the girl before they managed to interact without accidentally jolting one another into wakefulness. Every time they went through the process the girl was calmer. The planet still exploded, and Cat still felt her heartbreak every time, but when she floated, or swam, herself to the pods window afterward she found that it took less and less time to ease the poor girl's tears.
Cat couldn't be sure, but she thought that perhaps her soulmate was making efforts to try and reach out to her too.
Then one night, almost a year to the day since Cat had first tapped a now customary rhythmic knock against the pods window, she discovered the girl was waiting for her. Those beautifully blue eyes of hers still glittered with tears, but she wasn't crying the way she had done in the past.
Cat had beamed, proud of the girls progress. Eagerly she had pressed her hand against the cool glass that separated them. There was a moment where the girl hesitated. Cat waited. She watched fascinated as the girl gathered herself. The rise and fall of her shoulders cluing Cat into the way she was breathing. She was using the same timing Cat used before bed. The same timing she used when trying to calm the girl. Warmth swirled in Cat's chest that her soulmate had learned the technique for calming herself just by watching.
Finally, looking marginally more content, the girl brought her hand up to rest opposite Cat's, and look of intense focus causing a small crinkle in her brow. Without warning the cold of the glass melted away and their hands touched.
Cat gasped in delight.
Her soulmate meanwhile looked panicked. Her other hand flew to her neck, and Cat, having experienced it before, instantly understood. Adjusting to having air in space took getting used to.
The edges of the dream had begun to fragment but Cat wasn't about to give up. She interlocked her fingers with her soulmates and squeezed hard.
"Breathe, okay?" She said, drawing the girl into a floaty standing position with her. "Just breathe like before."
The girl squeezed her hand in return, but there was confusion in her eyes, like she couldn't understand what Cat was saying.
"Here like this," Cat said, even though she was quite certain the girl couldn't understand her.
She took and exaggeratedly deep breath and then gestured for the girl to do the same. Around them the dream seemed on the brink of disintegrating, but Cat forced herself to breathe to their normally calming timing.
It was just when she'd thought they'd have to try again another night, that the girl finally took a large gulping breath of air. It took another couple before the dream began to stabilize again, and another half dozen after that, with Cat carefully dictating the pace, before the girl's posture began to relax.
When she did relax, she looked around the nothingness. Her brow crinkled again at the lack of any kind of view, and she mumbled something under her breath.
Cat frowned at that. She was close enough to the girl that she had still been able to hear the sounds she had made clearly. The problem was they didn't sound like any words she had ever heard before.
"What was that?" Cat asked, hoping that if the girl said something again that she might be able to pick up something familiar.
The girl had mirrored her own confused frown right back at her, and repeated what she had mumbled before, but louder.
Repetition didn't make the words anymore recognizable. If anything it just made the words sound even stranger. The cadence, and the breathy way she rolled her R's were like music, but not anything Cat had ever heard before.
The girl spoke again, saying something different. There was a questioning upward lilt to her voice, and even though Cat couldn't recognize any of the words, she knew what was being asked. She knew the girl was asking her name.
It was disconcerting to know something without knowing it, but then over the years Cat had learned to accept that there was very little about dream sharing that wasn't disconcerting at the end of the day. So she answered.
"Cat." She gestured to herself just in case, but from the understanding in the girl's eyes she needn't have bothered. "Cat Grant."
"Cat," she said slowly. As if she were tasting the way the word sounded on her tongue. Cat just nodded. The girl smiled seeming pleased that she had gotten it right.
"Kara," the girl said next, gesturing to herself as Cat had done before. "Kara Zor-El." She punctuated the 'El' by tapping on the glyph stitched into her white dress, an 'S' inside a diamond.
"Kara," Cat said, experimentally, deciding for the moment to focus on the first part of her name as Kara had done with her. She could ask about the second part, and the glyph on her chest later. The beaming smile she received in return let her know she had gotten it right. "It's nice to meet you Kara."
Kara laughed, the sound so pure and light compared to the sadness Cat could still feel throbbing in her chest, and returned the sentiment in her own language. Once again Cat took a moment to marvel at the way they seemed to understand one another even while they couldn't understand the words themselves.
Then the dream wobbled, for lack of a better word. Like everything Cat could see, and even Cat herself were made of jelly and someone had nudged the plate. Kara looked alarmed by the sensation, but Cat knew what it was.
"I'm being woken up," she explained, giving Kara's hand a comforting squeeze on reflex. "But I'll come back eventually okay?"
If the crinkle on Kara's brow meant anything, if most certainly wasn't ok, but she nodded as if it were any way.
The world wobbled again.
The last thing Cat heard before she woke up, was Kara telling her they would see each other again, in that language like music.
The first thing Cat did after silencing her alarm clock, was write Kara Zor-El in large lettering on the cover of her dream journal.
That she stood in the office of Perry White, the hand she had extended to hand him his coffee frozen as both she and Mr White paused their usual exchange to stare in awe at the television in the corner. Watching as a man in a blue, with a cape of red, lowered a damaged plane to the ground near Metropolis' busy airport. It's not the seemingly impossible feat that ultimately results in Cat dropping coffee all over her bosses desk. It's the golden glyph emblazoned on his chest.
An 'S' inside a diamond.
Cat is twenty four and filled with self loathing, because she feels, for the first time, like she understands how Kara's parents could have put their daughter into a tiny tin can and launched into the void with no guarantee she'd be safe.
For the past five years Cat and Kara have been sharing their dreams, and using them to talk to one another. Not everyday like they did when Cat was a child. Not since Kara had started practicing a technique her aunt had taught her called Tarukor. Whatever it was it didn't really translate, but Cat gathered it was some Kryptonian method of lucid dreaming. It hadn't taken Kara long to get a grip on it after the first time they had spoken.
Cat's dreamself has aged with her physical body. Kara's had remained the same thirteen year old she had always been. Only her ever developing abilities with Tarukor marked her growth.
This meant that their meetings didn't always start with an exploding planet. They still did occasionally, if Cat and Kara went without sharing a dream for too long, but mostly Cat would find herself being pulled into recreations of places on Krypton. Once or twice Kara even managed to recreate a market place she had visited on a world called Starhaven.
It also meant that Cat and Kara had learned a great deal about one another. They still didn't really speak the same language. They had both picked up words here and there that didn't really translate but still came up regularly enough, but mostly they relied on the dream logic that whatever they said would be understood by the other and it worked for them. Cat was able to talk about life on Earth, about her mother's grouching, about Lois Lane stealing her articles, about Clark, or as Kara always referred to him as, Kal-El. She had done ever since Cat had told her that a man at her work had started flying around with the same glyph on his chest as the one Kara wore.
In return Kara would share stories of growing up on Krypton, which had of course meant they had eventually confronted the exploding planet in the room. How Kara's parents had put her in a pod meant to arrive at the same time as Kal-El's, and how her later launch had been disrupted by the force of the planet dying behind her. They talked about how Kara was trapped floating in the Phantom Zone. Then they had both cried, knowing there was nothing either of them could do to try and get her out of there.
They had cried about it more than once in fact. Cat had lost count really, but there was one moment other than that first time that Cat could recall. They had been in a recreation of Kara's aunt's kitchen, and Kara was staring fiercely at a illuminated panel on the wall, trying to remember the exact code her aunt used to enter into the machine to make it produce a special treat that wasn't on the list of available options. Cat had been recalling to Kara the latest interview her cousin had given to Lois Lane, in which he had spoken of his Fortress of Solitude.
Cat wasn't sure how the words translated to Kara, but she had giggled when Kara had let out a small snort at name of her younger cousins stronghold. Apparently it was as ridiculous in Kryptonian as it was in English.
She hadn't really planned to say it, or even thought of it before, but as she told Kara what Kal-El had said about keeping remnants of Kryptonian technology in his fortress, the question had popped to mind.
"What if I told Kal-El we were soulmates and that you were here in the Phantom Zone?"
The dream had rippled, the homeliness of the kitchen temporarily becoming the weightless black of the Phantom Zone before right itself as Kara turned to look at her.
"It's not as if we have better options." Had been Kara's reply. It was a yes of a sort. Cat could sense as much. She could also sense what Kara was too afraid to give voice to. The fear that telling her cousin would make no difference in their situation.
They had cried again that night curled up together on a kitchen floor that no longer existed, and Cat had listened as Kara had unravelled, raging at the unfairness of being forced to pin her hopes on the grown man who was supposed to have grown up relying on her. Raging at the parents that had sent her to care for him in the first place only for her to end up trapped, while he got exactly the kind of life they'd all hoped he would, with no idea that she was supposed to have been there.
By the time Cat's alarm had woken her that morning Kara's anger had been depleted, and Cat had even managed to coax a laugh out of her, telling her about the antics of clumsy Clark, menace of The Daily Planet, cleaning crew.
Kara's anger at being sent away, even if she vaguely understood it had been her parents attempt to do what was best for her, was something Cat had never forgotten. Cat had been angry too. She could never have imagined what it would be like to give away a child for the child's own good.
Now she understood, and she had no idea how she could face Kara, with her new found empathy for Kara's parents.
She supposed that In a horrible way it both helped and weighed her down that Kara didn't know Cat was a mother now. She was too ashamed to admit to her now much younger soulmate that she had found some physical comfort with another person. It had been a doomed alcohol driven affair, that had started when Clark had told her that finding Kara in the Phantom Zone might take decades, if it was even possible at all, that had ended with Cat taking a year long break from Metropolis under the guise of scouting sources of income for the empire she planned to create. In reality Cat had hidden away in her father's old hunting cabin in Virginia, so that she could go through her pregnancy without needing to face Clark's disapproving stare.
She hadn't planned on Adam, but she loved him with everything she was. Being ashamed of him, wasn't the reason she kept him from Clark and Kara. It was fear that telling the Kryptonians about him would make them reject her. She had just been coming around to the idea that it would be worth it if it meant getting to spend more time with her precious boy, when his father had sued her for full custody.
She had fought it at first, thinking it was only about how few people she had shared his existence with. Then his father had slapped down a piece of paper outlining how many hours she was working a week in order to get her budding company off the ground. She had signed the custody deal right then and there. As much as she loved Adam, she didn't want to be a workaholic ghost of a mother like her own had been. Adam deserved a parent that would be there for him, without business deals and long hours constantly taking time away from him, and that was his father.
So Cat had given him up.
And now she sat only a picture and his first baby blanket for comfort as the only proof he had ever lived in her house. She clutched the baby blanket in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other. On the table sat a framed photo of Adam, standing holding the sides of his cot, and small bottle of prescription pills.
For the first time since she was fourteen, Cat took the pills that would block her dreams.
She knew she'd have to face Kara again eventually, but tonight couldn't be that night.
Cat is thirty six years old, and for the first time in twenty two years of dream sharing, it is her nightmare that brings her and Kara together in the dream realm.
The old fashioned, but extremely basic and plain nursery room, that Cat's mind has conjured based on faded memories of pictures she had once seen of her very first bedroom, is a lot more understated than Kara's exploding planet. That doesn't make the panic attack she's having in the middle of it feel any less intense. The more she panics the more the room degrades. Cobwebs, dust, mould, and paint cracks, all multiplying with each gasped sob.
Cat had told Kara of her pregnancy from the very beginning this time, unable, and unwilling to re-live the fears and doubts she had felt with Adam. Kara much to her surprise had been ecstatic. She was of the opinion that the ability to create and nurture life without the help of something like the assurances of perfection given by the Kryptonian Codex and Birth Matrix was a mark of great strength and bravery that bordered on sacred. Cat had redoubled her resolve to never tell Kara about Adam if she could avoid it.
Kara has been her rock throughout the pregnancy. This time around the father of her child was far less involved and Cat was glad for it. Her empire was still young, but it was stable enough that she could be the kind of involved mother a child deserved, and she wasn't going to let anyone stand in the way of her being just that. However it helped a lot to know that there was someone willing to be there to give her emotional support throughout. Even if Kara couldn't be there to visit the doctor with her, or rub her swollen feet at the end of a long day, Kara was very much involved in the pregnancy.
She would have Cat spend entire dream meetings, attempting to materialise copies of real world items. Like the printed copy she had been given of her sonogram. Or the two bassinets Cat was trying to chose between for the nursery, so that she could offer up opinions to help Cat decide. Normally they both agreed whichever choice Cat had an easier time materialising was probably the one she should go for, but there had been some disagreement over what colour onesies Cat should buy.
Kara liked the green ones, mostly because the whole colour was a novelty to her. Green had been kind of scarce on Krypton, and didn't come in many different shades. Cat had prefered the yellow, mostly because yellow things had duckies, while green things had frogs. Duckies might not have conjured the most hygienic picture in Cat's mind, but they were orders about the slimy pictures that would come to mind when she thought of frogs.
A nursery that looked nothing like the one, she was sitting in the middle of.
But would it stay that way? Or would Cat fall into old habits and let it fall into disrepair with her precious baby inside it? She was a workaholic after all. Hailed as a cold hearted bitch by all who knew her. What business did she have trying to raise a baby on her own? She was due to give birth any day now, and suddenly all of the ways she could fuck this up, felt very, very likely to happen.
She didn't notice when Kara arrived. In fact she didn't notice Kara at all until the girl took her hand and forced Cat to look her in the eye.
"You need to calm down :zrhueiao," she said softly. The whole sentence was of course in Kryptonian but :zrhueiao stood out, refusing to translate. "Breathe with me :zrhueiao. Breathe and then tell me what's worrying you."
Kara started breathing then. That same old pattern Cat used to use to calm her. The one Cat had never stopped using to fall asleep. She breathed and she held Cat's hands tightly enough to help ground Cat, her thumbs stroking over Cat's knuckles soothingly.
It took a while but finally Cat's panic started to become something more manageable. The deterioration the room had already gone through stopped but it didn't reverse. That didn't matter. What mattered is that Kara was there, and Cat could breathe again.
Kara was there, and Cat didn't have to do this alone.
"Talk to me :zrhueiao," Kara said, shifting from her crouched position in front of Cat, to sit on the floor beside her. "Tell me what all of this is about." She waved her hand to gesture at what could now best be described as a shell of a nursery.
"You know I'm due to give birth soon, I think I might have even had a contraction or two today," Cat said, her voice croaky from crying. "I realised tonight before I went to bed, just how many ways I could mess this up."
"Oh, Cat."
There isn't pity in Kara's voice. Only understanding. Guilt stabs at Cat's heart. Kara might understand her worries about not wanting to be like her mother. She doesn't understand that Cat has already messed this up once before.
"Cat you're the most loving person I've ever known," Kara says earnestly. "There's no way you could not love your child. They're going to grow up everyday knowing exactly how much you cherish them."
Cat doesn't say anything. She does indulge the smile Kara's faith in her summons to her lips, and when Kara sees it her face lights up in a smile as well.
"Now :zrhueiao, why don't you help me make this room look like something more fitting for your child?" Kara jumps to her feet, looking every bit the excited thirteen year old, even though her manner of speaking sounds so much older.
"For instance, what is that?" Kara gestures to the peeling drop side crib in the corner. "I thought we agreed on something more like this." She flicks her wrist at the nightmare crib is replaced with a beautiful carved sleigh style convertible crib.
Cat feels a delighted laugh bubble up, and hoists herself to her feet. She is, in this particular dream as heavily pregnant as in reality, but she's grown much more accustomed to traversing dream spaces than she once was, so it doesn't hinder her movements all that much.
"And see here, what colour are these walls," Kara asks, her confidence buoyed by Cat's laughter. "Are they even a colour?"
"You know, I'm not sure they are," Cat said, letting Kara's energy envelop her and raise her own.
Cat flicked her wrist and the walls changed from cracked and dusty beige to a light olive green. Kara claps, at the new colour.
"Much better :zrhueiao," she says, with a broad grin.
"What does that mean," Cat asks narrowing her eyes playfully. ":zrhueiao?" She knows her pronunciation isn't quite there. It has one of those funny 'R' sounds that sound breathier in Kryptonian than Cat has ever heard a human achieve, and has since learned from Kara, never will hear a human achieve. Something about lung capacities, and how Kryptonians have an extra muscle they can control when they exhale.
Kara blushes. Just enough that Cat's interest jumps from passing, to pointed.
"Kara," she says, dragging out the 'ah' sounds warningly.
"It's," Kara pauses and mumbles what Cat is sure is a Kryptonian curse word, "it's a term of endearment, it means something like dear one, or precious one. It's only used between partners. Like, romantic ones."
Cat feels her jaw drop. Kara for her part has turned the colour of her planet's soil.
"I know I'm stuck as a kid so it's not really right, but there it's the closest Kryptonian gets to that 'soulmate' word you use," Kara says hurriedly. "It's not like I think of us as being married or anything."
"Good," Cat says, and she hates how sharp her voice sounds. Hates how Kara flinches. "Not that I wouldn't be honoured, but for all you might have matured mentally over the years, you are still a child Kara."
"I know that," Kara says quickly.
"When your cousin finally finds a way to get you out of the Phantom Zone, you're going to have to wait at least ten years before it would be even acceptable for us to attempt a relationship like that," Cat continued. "Depending on how old I am when you arrive, we may even have to wait another five or ten years after that. There are laws here Kara, and social pressures that could ruin your life on Earth if we're not careful."
"I get it Cat, I do," Kara says, her tone a little moodier. Whether it's from the conditions Cat just laid out, or the melancholy Kara get's from time to time when they talk about her one day escaping the Phantom Zone. Like she doesn't think it will really happen. "I won't call you that again, until ten years after I leave then."
The dream wobbles.
Cat frowns. She isn't waking up.
"Kara, please don't wake yourself up, I don't want to end our conversation on such a serious note," Cat says reaching to take Kara's hand. Kara surprises her by lunging at her hand like it's a lifeline.
"Cat, I'm not waking myself up, something is waking me," Kara says her eyes wide with panic. "Cat there shouldn't be anything around to wake me up!"
Panic runs down Cat's spine and she holds both of Kara's hands in her own, as the dream wobbles again.
"Cat!"
"Kara!"
Cat jolted awake in a sitting position, clutching her swollen belly, biting back a scream.
Awkwardly, and cursing reality for being so much less accommodating of her desire to move, than the dream realm, Cat rolled out of bed and onto her feet. She snatched her phone off of the bedside and frantically tapped in the speed dial for Clark's emergency line. He answered on the second ring.
"Cat, it's 4am, what's going on?" He asked, sounding sleepy. Super hearing and speed was great for answering the phone at all hours, but it seemed to do little to actually wake him up. "Is it the baby?" His second question sounded much more alert.
As if his question was an invitation Cat felt a contraction begin.
"No, the baby is fine," Cat said, through gritted teeth. "Clark, something is wrong with Kara, something woke her up!"
"She's in space Cat, sometimes debris is gonna hit, the ship is made of a near unbreakable alloy, and it has sensors to move it out of the path of anything too big, I'm sure Kara is fine," Clark said, a condescending level of calm in his voice.
"She's not just in space, Kal-El," Cat spat out, through the jolt of another contraction. "She's in the Phantom Zone, there isn't anything to be debris, so swap into your flying pyjamas, get your ass to your stupid fortress, and don't come back until you find out my soulmate is safe."
Clark had learned long ago never to argue with Cat when she broke out his Kryptonian name. He sighed like a ten year old being told to go do their chores, but promised he was getting changed right then.
"Thank you, Clark," Cat said, right before hanging up. She was sure he'd complain about the abrupt end to the call later, but for now she had bigger problems.
Another contraction hit, and Cat felt her water break. She bit back the swear words that sprung to her tongue and dialled 9-1-1.
"I'm gonna need you to slow down a little sweetheart," she said to the baby in her belly. "I would much prefer to get somewhere they can give me an epidural before going through this again."
She didn't get there in time for the doctor to think an epidural would be safe. But amidst fears of the cord having ended up around the baby's neck, she did end up getting given a general anesthetic for her c-section.
The drug residue, and the interrupted of sleep from waking to feed Carter regularly, kept her from dreaming for the next few days. She was worried for Kara, but she knew that Kara would get mad at her if she prioritised trying to sleep long enough to check on Kara, over getting Carter onto a regular feeding schedule.
When Clark appeared in the doorway of her hospital room during one such feeding, Cat felt a twinge of bittersweet amusement that he turned as red as Kara had the night Cat had gone into labour. He stayed just long enough to tell her Kara had somehow made it to Earth safely, sometime that morning, and to offer his congratulations, before he claimed to hear a robbery taking place and left.
"Did you hear that, Carter?" She had asked him as he suckled at her breast. "Kara's finally home."
Cat was, well, Cat was old enough that she had officially stopped counting. She knew of course, but to admit it to herself even in the privacy of her own mind would give the horrid little voice in her head, the one that sounded far too much like her mother, the ammunition it needed to start tearing her down. So Cat had not given a number to her real age since she was forty, and she had sued the pants off of any publication that dared to print it.
At an age too unpalatable to speak, Catherine Grant didn't understand why it was so damn hard to find a competent assistant.
Well that wasn't quite right.
She knew why it was hard. She had developed some very high standards for the people under her direct employ. After all she had to make sure no one unseated her as queen of all media, and still be home in time to spend a reasonable amount of time with her son, and get enough sleep to share a dream with her soulmate at least once or twice a week, since they still hadn't met in real life. Something that was entirely Cat's fault. After spending so long trapped away from the rest of the world, Cat wanted to make sure she experienced as much of a normal life as it was possible for a superpowered alien refugee to experience before she got caught up in the media storm of being Cat Grant's soulmate.
However she had been meticulous about the rules she set for her assistants to make sure she didn't technically overwork anyone and hand them a lawsuit against her. She refused to consider it her fault when idiots that the human resources department sent her couldn't adhere to these rules.
Which was why she felt no sympathy towards the blubbering woman heading towards the elevators now.
"Where is my 10:15?!" She shouted into the bullpen. She had been planning to fire Glenda? Georgia? Whoever, since last night, and had lined up a few interviews for right after the firing. The first of which was going to be eliminated if they didn't show up within the next minute.
She was just gearing up to shout again when she caught sight of the young female figure entering her office. Pretty figure, but horrible fashion sense. She'd distract the rest of the staff on at least two levels and that was all Cat needed to know. She didn't give the girl a chance to say hello.
"For god's sake, I thought I told them no more millennials," she said, beginning to turn her chair to her wall of screens.
"You of all people should know I'm more mature than I look :zrhueiao."
Cat spun her chair back to her desk so fast she almost overbalanced it. She caught herself by clutching the desk, and stared up at the girl standing before it. This time she brought her eyes all the way up to her face, to find a familiar teasing grin. Bringing her eyes up further she felt her breath leave her body, just the same way it did the very first time she had seen Kara's eyes in their shared dreams.
"You're early."
Of all the things she could say. Of all of the things she had planned to say when this moment finally came. You're early wasn't anywhere on the list. It had been a very long time since anything had ever happened to make Cat want to melt through the floor. Of course the only person that could make her feel this way again would be her soulmate.
"I thought we agreed ten years," she added, trying to make her previous statement less random sounding. It worked, kind of. She sounded dazed. A far cry from her usual confidence.
Kara laughed and rolled her eyes. The sound probably attracted the eyes of people outside the office. People didn't laugh in Cat's office. Not the way Kara did, with actual joy in their voices. Not unless you limited people to mean Cat, and Carter.
"That depends on where you measure from Cat," Kara said, her eyes sparkling playfully. "And besides I'm only like a month off, by the time anyone labels us as anything more than hashtag friendship goals, I'll be well over your ten year rule." Cat gave a half shrug of acknowledgement.
"Wait. No. Dammit stop confusing me. Why are you here now, why couldn't you wait another couple of months?" Kara raised an eyebrow at her.
"Confusing you?" She asked giving her best puppy dog head tilt. "What's confusing about me wanting to spend time with my soulmate now that we live in the same city Cat?"
Cat swallowed hard. She didn't know if she was swallowing back an angry remark, or forcing down attraction at the way the pose showed off Kara's neck and jaw. She decided it may have been both.
"Since when do you live in National City Kara?"
"Since Midvale isn't exactly overflowing with job opportunities for freshly graduated journalism and business majors," Kara answered, smartly.
"And you applied for a job here, as my assistant?" Cat's hard tone was meant to let Kara know exactly how foolish she considered that idea. Kara just laughed again.
"That was actually just a dare from Alex, neither of us thought my resume would make it through the screening process, she says hi by the way," Kara reached up fiddle with the corner of her glasses. Cat is didn't know if she wanted to kiss or kill Clark for encouraging Kara to keep the damn things after she stopped needing their lead lining. "Although."
Kara let the word trail off.
"Although what, Kara?"
"Well it's just Carter, did mention you'd been going through assistants pretty fast lately, and I do have a degree that covers administrative work."
"There are rules about soulmates working under one another, Kara," Cat said, frowning.
"Rules don't say we can't, just that we have to report our connection to human resources, and that you can only suggest promotions and raises that must get approval from a committee before being put into action."
Cat tilts her head, studying Kara with a deliberate intensity, looking for any sign of indecisiveness.
She doesn't find one.
"I'm not a nice boss Kara."
"I saw the crying woman, :zrhueiao, I kind of got that."
"And you wouldn't be able to keep calling me that while we're at work."
"Of course not, Miss Grant, I understand this would be a professional environment."
Cat found that she was quite glad to be sitting down at that statement. There was something in her that took great pleasure at being called Miss Grant by Kara, who had always been so strictly casual with her. She she herself back to the present when Kara cleared her throat lightly. She couldn't be sure exactly what look she had been giving Kara, but she had a pretty good idea, and the fact that she had let that side of herself out at work made her ears feel as hot as Kara's looked.
"You know I don't call people by their names until they do something particularly exceptional," Cat said, hoping to cover her slip to anyone who might be watching from the bullpen as a thoughtful pause instead.
"So long as it's only during office hours." Kara smiled, and Cat smiled back for a short moment before clearing her throat and pulling on her Queen of all Media mask.
"Very well then, report to the eighth floor and tell them you start tomorrow morning, Keira," she said in her bitchiest C.E.O tone. Kara's smile just widened. "And do be sure to tell them about that other detail."
"Of course Miss Grant, thank you for this opportunity." Kara held out a hand for a handshake. They both knew it wasn't really something Cat did, but it was an acceptable action within the context of their meeting.
Cat shook her hand, feeling the warmth of Kara's skin in the real world for the first time, and couldn't help the way her Queen of all Media mask was pushed away by her overwhelming need to smile. They both lingered with their hands joined just slightly too long, until the phone on the desk outside Cat's office began to ring.
"Well, chop, chop, Kiera off to human resources you go," Cat said slamming her walls back up.
"Of course Miss Grant," Kara said, with what Cat was sure was a measure of mock seriousness.
Cat pretended not to notice, and turned her chair away from the bullpen to stare up at her screens.
"And Kara?" She whispered, sure Kara would be listening. "Come by my apartment tonight? Carter would for you to be there for family board game night."
It was a needless excuse for what she really wanted to say, but wasn't going to tell Kara 'welcome home' anywhere that she couldn't also hold her soulmate close when she did.
A text alert came through a moment later.
"I'll see you at home Cat."