Congratulations on the impending release! That's so exciting. Also so excited to see you're taking prompts - 27, if you're so inspired!
27. “I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”
Cat thinks she’s dreaming, when she sees a cape flutter outside her balcony.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time she’d dreamt of red and blue and a sunny smile. Probably wouldn’t even be the hundredth, if she counts her daydreams, the one allowance she’d made, for when the itch under her skin, the desire to reach out and touch had almost become too much to bear.
Had become too much to bear, in the end. Had sent her fleeing across the country to another coast entirely, separating herself from any temptations, from blue, blue eyes and the traitorous voice in the back of her head wondering would it really be so bad, if you told her?
Yes, she’d always answered. Yes, because I can’t ruin her, too.
Not like she had every other relationship she’s ever had. Couldn’t bear to see the light in her eyes dim, for her to become bitter and jaded, and look at Cat like she despised her.
That’s something she knew she’d never be able to handle, no matter how many times Kara had pressed close beside her on the couch, staying long after her work hours had ended. No matter how often she’d looked at Cat like she held the world in her hands, her gaze had lingering when Cat had dared to undo an extra button, knowing she was playing a dangerous game.
The cape flutters again, propelling Cat out of bed, feet sinking into the plush carpet of her bedroom. Her new home isn’t quite as nice as the penthouse she’d left behind in National City, but it’s a decent replacement, she thinks. Carter had taken some convincing, but she knows D.C. has grown on him.
“Aren’t you a little far from home?” She asks the superhero slouched over her balcony railing, pushing open the doors with the palm of her hand.
Kara doesn’t move, and Cat thinks something must be deeply wrong. Why else would she be here, after so long? Why else, after years of silence stretched thin, would she have come to her?
“What’s wrong?” She asks, a silence of a different kind pressing into her ears. This high, the city traffic is quiet, the low hum of the people milling on the sidewalks below snatched away by the wind.
Cat grabs her robe off the back of the chair by the door, steps into stupidly fuzzy slippers Carter had bought her last Christmas. The ones she will never, ever publicly admit to owning, but that she adores slipping on at the end of a long day, and joins Kara on the balcony.
She doesn’t move, remains still and silent, and Cat wonders if she’s finally gone mad. If something in her has cracked, and she’s conjured an image of Kara, a ghostly mirage that will disappear as soon as she’s within arms’ reach.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she says, when Cat steps close, in a voice suggesting the opposite is true. “Not really.”
“And yet here you are, on my balcony in the middle of the night, for...what? An interview? A catch up? How long has it been, Kara? Four years?”
She doesn’t react to her name, and Cat thinks that might be the most worrying thing of all. A secret she’d guarded so closely, so fiercely, terrified of Cat finding out the truth, and now she doesn’t care? Doesn’t acknowledge it, even?
No, this isn’t the Kara she knows.
But then, it’s been years since Cat last touched her life.
Years, for her to grow and change.
Years, where Cat didn’t know her at all, aside from brief glimpses of news footage, from the articles she’d read, written by Kara’s hand.
The woman standing before her may as well be a stranger.
One she has no idea how to help.
“You were always...like a port in a storm. A safe space to land, a voice of reason when I needed it. You were never afraid of telling me the truth, even if it was painful to hear, and you always knew exactly the right thing to say. And I think I need that, now, because I...I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”
She doesn’t look at Cat when she talks, her jaw clenched tight, her fingers wrapped around the bar of Cat’s balcony railing, leaving indents in the metal.
It’s then Cat notices the blood. It’s caked under her nails, smeared across her knuckles, and Cat’s gaze darts over her body, searching for other signs of damage.
Maybe it’s not hers.
Maybe that’s why, when she turns to face Cat, her eyes are dark and haunted, so lost within herself Cat struggles to find a trace of the woman she once knew so well staring back at her.
“Feel what way?” Cat asks, and her voice is hoarse, because, different though she may be, it’s still Kara looking at her for the first time in years, and Cat had known it was naive, moving away to run from her ever-growing feelings, known it was unlikely to work, but it’s only now, four years down the line and feeling like not a single day has passed, that she realises just how naive.
Can Kara hear the uptick in her heartbeat, as their eyes meet? Has she heard it before? Does she have any idea, how a single glance from her can knock Cat breathless?
“Like the weight of the world is on my shoulders.” Her eyes close, and Cat lets her gaze settle on her face, how though she is physically unchanged—something about those Kryptonian genes, she suspects—she looks so much older.
Weary.
Defeated.
“I can’t...I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to. The world needs a hero, but that isn’t me.” She shakes her head so violently she lurches to the side, and Cat steadies her—futile though the gesture may be—with a hand on her elbow, her suit rough beneath her fingertips. “I’m not a leader. I’m not...I’m not cut out for this.”
Cat casts her mind back, tries to remember any mention of Supergirl in the news, recently, that might make her feel this way. Smear campaigns against superheroes are nothing new—Cat could almost understand it, because who was going to stop them if they decided this whole being good thing just wasn’t for them?
But not Kara. Never Kara—red Kryptonite aside.
“They deserve better than me.” She sags when she says it, falling into Cat so suddenly she barely manages to catch her, face pressed into the side of Cat’s neck, and her tears hot on her skin.
“You are the strongest person I know,” Cat says, cheek pressing against Kara’s head, a hand settling at the small of her back, nothing but certainty in her voice, in her gentle grip. “The strongest person I’ve ever met, in fact—and let me tell you, Kara, I have met a lot of people. None of them could hold a candle to you.”
She sobs harder, and Cat breaks, because what is it that’s brought this beautiful, selfless woman to her knees?
“There is no one better than you,” she continues, because she thinks these are words Kara desperately needs to hear. “But you’re right about one thing—they don’t deserve you. And no one is entitled to you. What you do, Kara, putting yourself on the line, day after day, forfeiting your rights to a normal life, risking losing it all every time you charge into battle—that’s incredible. But it’s not sustainable. You keep doing it, and sooner or later, something’s going to break.”
If she’s being honest with herself, Cat is surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. Just goes to show, then, how strong she really is.
“You’ve endured so much. So much pain, so much loss.” The likes of which Cat can’t possibly comprehend, the likes of which she will never even fully know. “It’s okay to have days where you can barely even drag yourself out of the bed in the morning. Hell, I feel like that at least once a month, and I don’t have to cope with anything like you do.” Cat doesn’t know what she’d do, if their situations were reversed. Doesn’t know if she’d be able to cope. “Kara, what...what happened?”
Something triggered this. Something to send Kara flying a thousand miles across the country, to seek out the embrace of a woman she hasn’t spoken to in years. The why, Cat thinks she understands, now. Certainly, there have been a dozen other conversations on a balcony just like this one, though the view had been a little different. And Kara had been different, too, buoyed with the feeling of something new and exciting, invincibility in its most naive form, drawing strength from Cat’s imparted wisdom, which she’d never been truly qualified to give.
She definitely doesn’t feel qualified to deal with this, with Kara breaking in her arms. Doesn’t know what to say to make her feel better, not without all of the pieces of the story.
“There was a fight,” she says, and she doesn’t lift her head, the words muffled against the silk of Cat’s robe. “Nothing special. No really. But he...he was strong, and he tossed a car at me, and I...I pushed it off. Didn’t look where, until...until I heard a scream.”
Kara shifts, leans away, like she thinks Cat is about to be repulsed by her, swipes at damp cheeks with a bloodied sleeve.
“I didn’t notice her.” Kara’s bottom lip wobbles, and Cat has never seen someone look so broken. “I didn’t know she was there, but she...it crushed her.” She clenches her jaw, clenches her fists, like she can change the story by sheer force of will alone. “She’s six years old, and she’ll never walk away.”
“Kara…”
“Don’t,” she says, so viciously Cat flinches. “If you’re about to tell me it’s not my fault, don’t. Because it is. I did that to her, not him.”
“You can’t save them all.”
“She wasn’t even in any danger though, was she?” Kara’s laugh is bitter, and not one Cat has ever heard come from her lips before. “That’s the irony of it. If I’d never been there, she’d have been fine.”
“But someone else might not have been.”
Kara scoffs, takes a step back, and for one horrifying moment, Cat thinks she’s going to launch over the balcony and flee, leave her standing out here with an ache in her heart.
“No one ever talks about the collateral damage,” she says, eyes focused on the horizon. “How many people’s lives have been ruined, because of me? How many buildings destroyed, how many people in hospital?”
“And how many people would be dead, if you’d never started using your powers, hm?” Cat has her counterattack ready, can’t let Kara keep going down this rabbit hole. “Thousands, I’d wager. Or the whole world, perhaps. You stopped Myriad, you stopped an alien invasion. And they’re just the ones I know about.” She steps closer, wraps her fingers around Kara’s wrist, squeezes hard so she feels it. “You will carry this in your heart for a long time, Kara, there’s no way around that. It will hurt, and it will ache, and it will make you not want to carry on, but it doesn’t erase all of the good you’ve done. All the lives you’ve touched, the people you’ve saved.”
“How can you look at me like that, knowing I’m a monster?”
“You are so many things, Kara, but monster isn’t one of them. You’ve made a mistake—a grave one—but it was an accident, and you give up because of it. What you do, is you put on the suit, and you grit your teeth, and you vow to do better next time. You carry on. You persevere.”
“How?” She asks, and her voice breaks over the word, over the plea, and Cat clenches her jaw so she doesn’t cry, because she knows that is the opposite of what Kara needs right now.
She came here because she needs someone to be strong for her, because she needs someone to tell her it’s going to be okay—and mean it.
“Only you can come up with the answer to that,” Cat says, and she wraps her fingers a little tighter around Kara’s wrist. “But I think a good start is, perhaps, a shower. Wash away the bad.” Wash away the blood, staining Kara’s skin. “Come inside.”
Kara digs in her heels. “I-I don’t...you don’t have to do that. I should go.”
“I don’t want you going anywhere like this.” Not on her own, not where there’s no one to keep an eye on her. “Please, Kara. Let me help you. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Why you came here?”
She nods, jerky and quick, and lets Cat pull her into her bedroom, all the fight seeping out of her.
“Wait here.” She leaves her hovering by the end of Cat’s bed, arms wrapped around her torso, and steps into her en-suite.
She turns on the shower, sets it to scalding, and waits until the room is full of steam, until the ends of her hair begins to curl.
When she returns to her bedroom and finds Kara stripped from her suit, she nearly has a heart attack.
“I didn’t want to wear it anymore,” she says, and she’s shivering but Cat doesn’t think it’s from the cold.
“I’ll find you something clean to wear.” Something not stained with dirt and regret. She digs out an old, worn Harvard T-shirt and some shorts, passes them over to Kara and politely averts her gaze as she does so before prodding her toward the bathroom. “Take as much time as you need.”
She folds the suit while she waits, puts it carefully on the chair by the balcony door along with her boots. When it starts buzzing, she jumps, worried she’s inadvertently pressed a button she shouldn’t have. Has she activated a GPS tracker? Self-destruct? Were a team of shady government agents on their way to her apartment to cart her off to a black site?
Thank God Carter is spending the night at his friends house. She has no idea how she’d explain any of this to him.
The buzzing doesn’t stop, so she ventures closer, finds a pocket and a phone with nearly thirty missed calls, and a dozen more texts.
Alex is a name she recognises, but Nia and Brainy are not. Another reminder things have changed, she thinks, setting the phone down on her vanity for when Kara re-emerges. Clearly, she hasn’t told anyone where she is.
“Thank you,” Kara says, when she opens the bathroom door, a cloud of steam enveloping her. On Cat, the shirt is baggy, but it clings to Kara, highlighting the muscle and strength hidden beneath her lithe frame, and Cat chastises herself for staring.
Not what she needs right now.
If Cat had ever had her doubts about Supergirl’s identity, if Kara had tried to argue when Cat had named her earlier, it would have soon come crashing down. Because now, standing in borrowed clothes, damp hair curling around her shoulders, hunched in on herself, the woman staring back at her was entirely Kara Danvers.
Cat can’t believe she’d ever doubted it.
“Kara, does anyone know you’re here?” She asks, makes sure her voice is gentle, and not condescending. The last thing she needs is her feeling attacked.
“Like they’d understand,” she says, voice soft, and that’s true, Cat thinks, because she finds it hard to understand herself. “I don’t want them to.”
“At least let someone know you’re safe? Your sister, perhaps? It’s either that, or toss your phone out of the window.” As if on cue, it begins to vibrate again. “She’s calling for the hundredth time.”
Kara sighs, but takes the call, resignation on her face as she lifts it to her ear. “Alex. I’m fine.”
A lie, Cat knows from one look at her face. She wonders if her sister can tell, too.
“I just needed some space,” Kara says then, and Cat wonders where her sister might think she is. “I’m somewhere safe.” She casts a glance toward Cat, whose heart thuds at the thought that Kara thinks of her as a safe space. Somewhere to land, when she feels like her whole world is falling apart.
Cat wonders when she’d earned the honor.
“I don’t know. Tomorrow, probably. I don’t want to fucking debrief, Alex.” It explodes out of her, so sudden it takes Cat by surprise, her back ramrod straight and her fingers holding the phone so tight it’s a wonder the plastic doesn’t crack. “You saw what happened. Don’t make me relive it.”
Cat crosses the room without thinking, pressing a hand to the small of Kara’s back. The effect is instantaneous, body relaxing beneath Cat’s fingertips, tension leaching out of her with every breath.
This close, Cat can hear Alex’s voice on the other end of the line, tight with worry. “Come home, Kara.”
“Not yet,” she says, her voice shaky. “I...I can’t yet.” She hangs up before Alex can argue, and Cat pretends not to notice her turn the phone off before tossing it onto the chair with her suit. She’d done what Cat asked—and she doesn’t think she wants the sister knowing her apartment is the place Kara chose to land.
Somehow, she doesn’t think that’ll go over well.
“You can stay here tonight, if you want.” Even if she felt about Kara the way she was supposed to—appropriately, for a woman double her age, and a former boss to boot—she wouldn’t have been able to turf her out when she looks so dejected. “You can stay as long as you want, even. If you want a place to hide away from the rest of the world, consider this your sanctuary.”
“Beside the Queen of all Media.”
“There’s a moniker I haven’t heard in a long time.”
“Do you have a new one? Or is it just Press Secretary, now?”
“Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?” If this is what Kara needs, idle small talk in the middle of Cat’s bedroom at a stupid hour in the morning, well.
Cat has never been able to deny her.
“It suits you, though.”
“And reporter suits you, Pulitzer Prize winner.” The flush that stains Kara’s cheeks is expected, but it makes Cat chuckle all the same. “You’ve been doing good work. I knew you had it in you.”
“You always saw the best in me.”
“You say that like it’s difficult to.” Seeing the best in Kara is one of the easiest things Cat has ever done. She’d seen something special in her that first fateful meeting—she’d just no idea how special. How this meek, bespectacled woman with the hideous fashion sense would tip her life on its head. “You should get some rest,” she says, when Kara yawns. “You’ve had a...difficult day.” Something of an understatement. “You can stay in here.”
Kara shakes her head. “I’m not kicking you out of bed, Cat.”
“You’re not—I’m offering it to you.”
“I can take the guest room.”
“There is no guest room.” Cat’s smile is wry when Kara frowns. “Not like I get a lot of visitors. It was three bedrooms, but I turned the third into an office.”
“The couch, then.”
Cat stops her with a hand on her arm when she makes for the door. “Stay here, Kara. It’s fine.”
“Will you...will you stay with me, then?” She asks, in a voice so small Cat feels like her heart is being squeezed in a vice.
“I…” Is there a polite way to say no? To say I can’t think of a more terrible, masochistic idea than that without breaking the poor girl’s spirit?
“Please? I...I don’t want to be alone.” It’s the sheen of tears in her eyes that does it, the wobble of her lip, the desperation in her voice, and Cat tells herself that it’s not specifically her that Kara wants. It’s the comfort, it’s the presence of another warm body, to ward off the chill of loneliness.
And yet, it was her that Kara had sought out.
And that has to mean something, even if it’s not what she so desperately wants to be.
“Okay, I’ll stay,” she says, knowing the memory of Kara wrapped up in her sheets will linger long after they’ve been washed, but knowing, also, that it’s worth it, for the way her face lights up when Cat pulls back the covers and climbs inside.
She has to be up in four hours, she thinks, wincing when she glances at the clock.
Worth it, she thinks, as Kara slips in beside her. Worth it, when she turns to Cat in the dark, and presses into her side, face in the crook of her neck, and tears once again damp on her skin.
Cat holds her, and she doesn’t sleep a wink, even when Kara’s breathing deepens, hot against her skin, fingers twitching where they’re gripping at Cat’s robe, still wrapped around her shoulders.
Cat holds her, and thinks they might not talk about it tomorrow—Kara might, perhaps, wake up mortified in her former boss’ bed, the light of morning bringing with it a sense of clarity that maybe the decision to come here was wrong. Kara might, perhaps, flee without saying goodbye, and Cat may never see her again.
And Cat would accept that decision without question, because for her, this is enough.Stitching the broken parts of Kara back together, being here for her, offering her the comfort she so desperately needed, means more to her than anything else ever could.
