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“I’ve missed this,” Kara admits as she leans back in the balcony chair, looking out over the city.
Cat hums in agreement, taking another sip of her scotch. “The villains of the week were certainly competing for villain of the day for a bit there, weren’t they?”
Nodding ruefully, Kara thinks ‘of the day’ might be underselling it. At times over the past few weeks she’s felt like there was a new attacker every hour. She hasn’t gotten a solid night of sleep in over a month. Between her new duties at CatCo and the expected stress of merging her identities, the nonstop attacks took what little spare time she had.
Balcony chats were first to go, followed very shortly by game nights with her friends. Thankfully all non-essential meetings could be postponed or delegated once the attacks picked up, but over the past week even sister night had to go. If it weren’t for Alex needing time with Kelly after how hectic things got, a good balcony chat might have taken another week.
“Makes me grateful for how calm it is up here, looking out over the city,” she says instead.
Kara knows it’s just a surface-level calm, that if she let her powers unfurl a bit and listened to the specifics beneath the hum of humanity, she’d find plenty of drama. Even danger. But unless her watch goes off, it’s nothing that needs Supergirl. Not tonight. If she doesn’t get a break and a chance to recharge, she’ll be in real danger of burning out and leaving the city defenseless.
Not something she’s willing to do.
“You should let your cousin watch the city for a few days and take a vacation. I’ll get you the number of my dive instructor, a long weekend in the sun would do wonders for you.” Cat sounds completely serious, and honestly, it’s tempting.
A weekend away somewhere sunny, even if she’d definitely give diving out where there could be sharks a miss, sounds nice. But a few days on the beach, soaking up uninterrupted solar rays, Kara knows she’d love it. And probably could really use it.
And yet, she can’t bring herself to leave just yet. Not when she’s still half expecting an attack at any moment. And not when-
“Kal-El isn’t planning to visit National City any time soon, unless I really need the backup. He understands why I decided to be open about my identities, but he’d rather not have the press focus too closely on his for a while. It’s hard enough for him to avoid in Metropolis.” Kara doesn’t much like knowing she won’t see him any time soon unless they both sneak away to the Fortress of Solitude or something, but she’s used to that by now. It’s not like it’s the first time he’s stayed away to protect a secret identity.
Taking another sip, Kara can practically hear Cat roll her eyes. “Of course, we wouldn’t want anyone to put two and two together then carry the glasses, now would we?”
“But if you know-”
“Then why haven’t I revealed?” Cat interrupts, taking another sip of her drink. “The reason is simple enough, though I’m sure you wouldn’t be the only one shocked at it. Suffice to say, I learned an unfortunate but unspecified number of years ago that hiding the truth that mattered could hurt someone. I never wanted to find out that sharing the secret that mattered could do the same.”
It’s not what Kara expected to hear, but contrary to what Cat said, she isn’t surprised. Kara’s known for a long time that the fierce image she presented to the world was only part of who she was. Not a mask, precisely, but a chosen face. As much a deliberate act as anything else.
“Is that why you didn’t really push for who I was in that first interview?” Kara asks as the thought occurs to her. “You asked and then moved on. You never move on. And then you focused on where I’d been, why I hadn’t come forward earlier. That’s where you focused, not who I was.”
Cat nods, clearly remembering that interview just as well as Kara does. “Besides asking to keep up the pretenses, yes. There was no way a novice superhero would be ready to admit their secret identity to someone they didn’t trust to keep their secret, so it wasn’t important. What was important was discovering why you’d only just come out when I knew you’d been in National City for two years by that point. Two years spent sitting outside my office, pretending to be average.”
“My family wanted me to stay hidden, to stay safe,” Kara admits quietly. “I was young, inexperienced. I’d been on Earth since I was 13 and still felt so alien. It was easier for Kal-El. He grew up here; Earth is more his home than Krypton.”
Cat knows her story by now, shared over balcony chats just like this one. And it’s nice that she can talk about it without explaining. Without needing to rehash all of the painful details. It’s not something she can do with everyone, not even if they know the whole story. Sometimes the conversation feels too uncomfortable to have. But never with Cat.
“Young and inexperienced you might have been, but I believe no one could have been a better hero for National City,” Cat says after a moment of silence that let the weight of the past settle between them. Not too heavy, not a burden, but a weight shared. One that kept Kara grounded when it would be so easy to fly away and never come down. “I knew there was a proper hero somewhere under all the millennial attitude.”
Kara scoffs, not wanting to start up that old argument again. Instead, she focuses back on the interview and safer topics. She’s too tired to start a debate right now. Cat would win in a heartbeat if she tried.
“I’m glad you say so now, because for a first interview those were not easy questions. I don’t know if they were better or worse than Lois asking Kal-El what color her underwear were, but they definitely weren’t beginner level.”
The silence once she finishes talking is Kara’s first clue that she’d said something she shouldn’t, and then her brain catches up to her mouth. Oh, Clark is not going to be happy…
And as for Lois, well. Kara’s not looking forward to their next family dinner, that’s for sure.
A glance at Cat proves as much. She’s wiggling in her chair slightly with the contented happiness of someone who’s just been handed a major scoop, and Kara has to look away at near super speed to keep her traitorous powers from kicking in and giving her the answer to that particular question. Cat hadn’t asked; it would be a major invasion of her privacy.
Kara will just have to distract herself, and fast. Thankfully, she’s had plenty of practice over the years at ignoring or denying her growing attraction. She just needs to-
“Well, there’s always time for a repeat interview.”
Cat’s voice interrupts Kara’s attempts to regain control, completely short-circuiting any progress she’d made. Powers forgotten as her brain screeches to a halt, Kara’s head whips around in disbelief.
Sitting with a familiar smirk on her face, it takes Kara long moments to realize not only did she not mishear, but also that Cat is completely serious. There’s enough of a challenge behind the smirk for Kara to recognize that much.
And yet, it could still be teasing. If Kara didn’t know Cat as well as she does, the question could be waved aside as nothing more than teasing at how badly Lois chose her questions for that first interview. If Kara doesn’t want to take the step forward, they could play it off as exactly that.
It’s a hell of a risk, and if Kara wasn’t so tired of fighting, she might have talked herself out of it. But she is tired, and they’ve been circling this point for years. Mutual attraction and ‘not right now’ circumstances are a terrible combination. So maybe it’s time for different circumstances.
“I suppose I could offer another exclusive,” Kara says, heart pounding as she tries to play it cool. She knows Cat will spot all her tells, but she doesn’t mind. There isn’t much left she’d like to keep from Cat. Not even physically.
Later, Kara will never remember whether Cat actually got around to asking before Kara discovered the answer to that particular question. When she thinks back to that night, to them finally getting on the same page about their attraction and what to do about it, fake interview questions aren’t high on her list.
Most of what she remembers is the way Cat felt underneath her, muscles tense and flushed with sweat, skin to skin with nothing between them. How the wind made her shiver, and then Kara did the same with a delicately placed kiss. Then the way it felt after, curled up on what should probably have been a too small couch, covered with nothing more than her cape as they came back down from their high.
And how Kara’s never felt more like she was flying, not even when she made it to space.