stolen and maybe broken (supergirl tv | alex & cat, alex & kara, cat & kara)

[fiachairecht]

stolen and maybe broken. supergirl tv, alex & cat, alex & kara, cat & kara. alex lets cat break the project cadmus story and it means everything neither of them expected. 3.7k words, rated t.

Cat Grant has, over the years, learned the benefits of having multiple cell phones. Not just the simple one for business use, one for personal use that others in her position might have chosen: no, that was useless when her business was her personal life for the most part. Cat preferred a more subtle system.

She has a phone for her mother, a cheap one that she doesn't mind replacing when she inevitably smashes it after a too-long call that all the therapy in the world can't erase from her memory. She has a phone for work, one that she can turn off for rare quiet nights in with Carter. And she has one for her sources, one that can't be traced back to her or to them.

It's the last phone that Cat guards with everything she has, that she holds on to when she thinks of the sacrifices each story is built on. She knows every single person who has its number, no matter how many times their numbers change.

The day she gets a text from an unknown number, she feels her heart skip in a way it hasn't since she returned from the Gulf.

I have a story. I want you to tell it.

"Kiera," she says quietly, and doesn't blink when the girl is at her desk inhumanly fast. This secret, too, she will keep.

"Yes Ms. Gr— oh." She falls silent as she recognises the phone sitting on Cat's otherwise empty desk, fingers tensing minutely.

"How many people know this number, Kiera?"

Kara doesn't even have to think. "Five. Currently." They both wince a little bit at that, the outcome of last year's Carey investigation a little too close still.

Cat gives her a small smile. "Well. I see whatever is going on in your ... other life isn't affecting the office. However." She spins the phone around, message stark on its screen, and pushes it across the desk. "Explain this, then, please."

I have a story. I want you to tell it.

She watches Kara's eyes flicker, half-readable sentences forming as she decides what to say.

"You know," she says, before Kara can come up with anything.

"No!" Kara gasps, but it's instinctive, and Cat can see her working through the ramifications of that lie before she can do more than raise an eyebrow. "I mean, I'm sure that whatever, whoever, it is, they must have a reason for asking you. A-And for wanting to remain anonymous. But they must know, you know, that you're the best..."

Kara trails off, and Cat sighs. She needs to know more, Kara must know that. She frowns, taps her fingertips on the desk. "Find out who sent me this, Kiera. Immediately."

"Y-Yes Ms. Grant," Kara says, and Cat's proud she only stutters the once. "Right away."

*

The rest of the day passes in an eerie silence. Cat brings out her tablet, brings out layouts to mark, but neither her stylus nor her ink pens want to obey her restless fingers. Through the glass, she watches Kara drop at least three pens and break four more. She's relieved to see night fall and the office empty out for the first time in months.

She pours herself a glass of scotch and brings it to the balcony more out of habit than any real hope -- surely Kara would spend the night trying to come up with a story? -- but her reporter's instinct is pulling at her, and she's long since learned not to ignore it.

Alone and hidden forty floors up, Cat kicks off her shoes and watches the lights of National City click on below her. She thinks about the stories Kara sees behind those windows, the stories she half-told on a night when any words at all seemed close to unbearable.

It takes her a moment, in the early-summer air, to sepate the sound of Supergirl's cape from that of the wind. She looks less comfortable hovering before Cat than Cat has ever seen her, more like Kara in a costume than ever before.

"Supergirl," Cat greets her, but doesn't stand up. She's still not sure where they stand, not sure what Kara wants to tell her. For all she has tried to mentor other women, this is new, and painfully so: she's broken too many of her own rules staying with Kara, Supergirl, everything they're trying to build for National City this long.

Supergirl lifts her hair with ink-stained fingers that make Cat ache for far-past days in the print newsroom when she still believed utterly in her stories. "You know," is all she says.

Cat sets her glass down and tries to keep her face blank. Like this, Kara makes her want to be strong in a way she hasn't ever had to be. "Well. You didn't want me to. I realised I shouldn't take that from you."

"I thought..." Her voice is small, and Cat is struck again by how young she is. Too young, almost, but she's proved herself so many times over. "I thought you were going to send me away." Like you did the first time, she doesn't say. but Cat hears it anyway, and pushes away the guilt. It had made sense, at the time, before she really knew Kara, and the only way she can apologise is by doing better.

"Not now," she says firmly. "Not until you want to leave. You will always have a job with me, even if we need to have a talk about what exactly that's going to mean going forward."

Supergirl's landing is clumsy, is Kara, and Cat's teeth ache with a name she still doesn't have the right to. "Not tonight, please." She doesn't quite meet Cat's eyes. "You wanted Kie— me to find out who texted you."

"Mm," Cat hums, and takes a sip of her drink. "I would like to think our relationship is such that you could come to me directly, but I don't want to presume..."

"No." Supergirl tips her head back, fingers clenched around the balcony railings. Half-shadowed between the clouds and the thin light spilling through the doors, she looks trapped. "No, Ms. Grant I would come to you."

This alone is warm. "Then?" She tries not to sound overly impatient, but Kara knows her too well.

"It's my sister."

And Cat can see the tears start to fall.

*

"I have an idea," Kara whispered to Alex. Well, to the shoulder of her jacket. The same shoulder she cried on nights when there was nothing in the black but her exploding planet. "But please don't hate me for it."

Alex's cheek was so, so cold where it was pressed against Kara's. Kara could hear her sister's heartbeat, loud enough to block out the rest of the world. "Tell me." She's holding Kara so hard that Kara can feel her fingers pressing into her skin without even trying.

Kara took a breath, shut her eyes. "Tell Cat."

"Tell ..." Alex pulled back in shock. "Kara, you can't."

"Not everything," Kara said miserably. Cat had always been a touchy subject between them, but Kara refused to let the last things she said to Alex for maybe months be part of a fight. "But this is what she lives for, you know, exposing awful government secrets."

Alex raised her chin defiantly. "Exposing your secret. No."

Kara hesitated. No more secrets between them, they'd tried to promise. "I'm pretty sure she already knows. And I'm going to tell her anyway. She ... I trust her. She believed in me when I had given her every reason not to, and she'll help. It's better than always wondering, it has to be."

Alex's eyes darkened, but Lucy stepped up beside them, her hand on Kara's wrist. "Kara's right," she said, and Kara's heart flipped with the unexpected support, Lucy's touch electric against her. "I trust Cat. With this."

"It's your decision," Kara said, fishing a pen and paper from her pocket and scribbling a number she knew by heart without ever losing Alex's gaze. "But I'm telling her about Supergirl. And I believe in her. She's good, Alex, she really is." Not always nice, Kara reflected, but good. She'd never doubted that about Cat, not for a moment.

"I'll..." Alex looked at the paper, at J'onn waiting a respectful distance away. "I'll think about it." She took the number, tucked it away and wrapped Kara in another hug. "God, Kar, please be careful."

Kara had made and broken too many promises to say anything in reply but "I love you."

*

Kara is a gifted storyteller, when she wants to be. Cat has always known Supergirl had the potential, talking about her homes past and present, and over the past few months she has seen flashes of Kara's own talent, the girl growing bolder in suggesting editorial changes.

Cat has broken her fair share of government conspiracy stories in her time — more than her fair share, if you asked some of her editors, old white men who wouldn't know how to make a source trust them if the source were their sibling. But none of that prepared her for this story, in Kara's words.

"So," Kara finishes quietly, after she's spoken for nearly half an hour. "I know you understand what this means for me and my sister. But if you betray her trust, then I am going to leave, and you won't talk to Supergirl again."

It stings, a little, that Kara feels the need to make such a threat. A sibling thing, Cat supposes, but god, above it all she's still proud. "Your negotiation skills are going to take you far if you stay in journalism, Kiera," she says. "But you don't need them with me."

Kara's smile is lopsided. "Alex thought I wasn't being careful enough. I keep thinking, now, if I just—" She sighs, props her chin in her hand as she gazes out over the city. "I miss her already." Her voice is very, very small in the night, and Cat isn't even sure she was supposed to have heard her.

She reaches out, hand hovering uselessly above Kara's shoulder before dropping back to her side. "Your sister's proud of you," she says, even though she knows it's not enough. Anything else is a cliche, or so uncertain as to be a lie. I'm proud of you, she thinks, and that's right there with Kara in things she doesn't know how to say outright.

"I know," Kara says, and her voice is thick with more tears than she'll allow herself to cry tonight. She stands up, squares her shoulders. Even with her back to Cat, the transformation to Supergirl is obvious. "I should go. Do one more patrol before... I'll see you tomorrow, Ms Grant."

And then there isn't anything to say to that except, "We have a lot of work ahead of us, Supergirl."

Supergirl takes off with the barest flex of her knees, and when she turns to smile at Cat, her face is so open, so genuine, that Cat closes her eyes against an attachment she no longer knows what to do with.

*

Cat writes about the FBI agent who isn't an FBI agent. She writes as much as Alex will tell her.

On so many things, she bites her tongue, for now. Years later and it still leaves an awful taste in her mouth, even though the experienced journalist in her knows that publishing anything without named sources, without corroboration, could be just as bad. But she's older now. She knows better, she's going to know, when it's time, and no one else is going to die because of her.

She believes it. She has to.

Kara brightens just a little bit more every time Cat tells her she's heard from Alex, and that makes it easier.

Cat's not a stranger to the power of words: she chose her profession for a reason. Even as CatCo grew around her she never stopped writing daily, even if none of what she wrote was for anyone but herself, and occasionally her sons. But returning to writing news daily, for Kara and for Alex, it's ... different. Better.

Talking with Alex is better. Cat hasn't seen and replied to so many of her own messages in over two decades, and for once it's just part of her job, not something that makes her want to curl in on herself and vanish. Alex's texts are short and encoded, all business, but Cat smiles at some of the ciphers. She doesn't have Cat's gift with words, or even Kara's, but she's clever.

Cat is starting to understand how Kara can miss her so much. She almost feels guilty, sometimes, being in touch with Alex while Kara has to wait and hear secondhand even that her sister is still alive, but it has to be like this. For the story, but for Alex and Kara as well.

She'd started her research on Alex Danvers the night Supergirl had come to her, the first text still echoing in her mind: I have a story. The DEO had — wisely, in Cat's opinion — opted for a cover story rather than trying to make Alex disappear outright when they recruited her, and even Cat has to admit that they did a good job of it. Someone without Cat's resources and intellect would find it absolutely believable.

I have a story. Alex has many, many stories. Cat understands that the fact that she's been allowed to write even one is a privilege, and she knows she has Kara to thank for it. But the more she writes, and the more Kara helps her prepare for the coming storm, the more she wonders what it would be like to know Alex after this is all over.

*

CatCo Magazine's July issue is the shortest in the magazine's history. It's bound entirely in black, the entire issue all black-on-white text with the exception of one page given over to Kara's family crest. Kara had argued against the inclusion, but Cat had deemed it necessary to remind people what Project Cadmus wanted to destroy.

Kara's story is there, too, the last quarter of the issue after her family crest devoted to her history, told in full for the first time. It's not an interview, just a biography piece, but Kara has an additional reporting by credit — her first in print. Apart from her and Cat, the only personnel credited in the issue are Lucy, as general counsel and for additional reporting on the Cadmus article, and Alex, credited an anonymous FBI agent (Kara did manage to talk Cat out of crediting her as "Agent Scully" throughout the piece).

"You do realise," Cat says as they review the final proofs, tapping a perfectly manicured fingernail against Kara and Lucy's credits on the first page, "that this is going to give the people who notice such things a very good idea of who you really are."

"I don't mind," Kara mumbles from the couch. She's resting her head on Lucy's shoulder, looking more tired than Cat has ever seen her without having blown out her powers. "Not if you meant it, about me always having a job here."

Lucy runs her fingers absentmindedly through Kara's hair, and behind her desk Cat smiles at them and doesn't wish for such easy affection, she doesn't. "Silly girl," she says, but the warmth in her voice is genuine. "As long as you want it. I don't break my promises."

"No," Kara says thoughtfully. "You never lie to me. You lie for me, though. That's why I knew Alex and I could tell you for real."

Cat drops her pen. Lucy's fingers still in Kara's hair. Kara sits up, aware a moment too late that her words have landed entirely wrong.

"There are three things in journalism, Kiera," Cat says quietly, and she holds Kara's gaze despite the temptation to close her eyes against the ghosts rising in her mind again. "The story, the truth, and lives. It is our job to decide which combination of the story and the truth will save lives. And it is nowhere near as easy as I make it seem."

Kara blushes. "I'm ... sorry, Ms Grant, I didn't mean—"

Cat softens just slightly. "You're young, Supergirl. You can still learn these lessons much more kindly than I did." Suddenly she's not in the mood to review proofs anymore. "Lucy." She stands up, tilts her head towards the empty office. "Take our girl home."

Lucy hesitates, glancing between the two of them, clearly torn. "Cat, are you...?"

"Go, brighter Lane," Cat sighs. "Staying isn't going to do any of us more good tonight. I promise I won't do anything stupider than your sister would were she in my place."

Lucy manages a smile at that. "Come on, Kar," she tugs gently at her hand. "We can stop for doughnuts on the way back, okay?"

Kara stands up, but she, too, hesitates. "Ms Grant, I'm sorry, I really didn't mean..."

"I know," Cat holds up a hand to stop any more apologies. "You've done very, very good work these past few months. It doesn't mean you still don't have much to learn."

It would be ridiculous, really, how much Kara brightened with her praise, if Cat didn't recognise too much of her younger self's hope in those smiles. "Good night, Ms Grant. And ... thank you."

*

Even so, Cat doesn't want to go home. Home is empty now, Carter safely in Opal City with Adam ahead of whatever fallout the Cadmus story is going to bring. So she brings a glass of scotch to the balcony, and tries not to think too much about the last time she did this, months ago.

Tries not to think too much about I have a story. I want you to tell it.

About how Alex hasn't responded to any of her texts in the past three days.

"So this is the famous Cat Grant."

Cat stiffens, sets down her drink. "Well, I'm not dead, so I can assume you're not one of Supergirl's little alien enemies. Nor are your hands in any uncomfortably intimate places, so you clearly don't work for Max." She spins on her heel, leans back against the balcony railing and takes in the woman in her doorway. "Alex Danvers, at last."

Alex doesn't smile. "Two more days," she says. "I wanted to be back for the release. In case Kara needs me."

Cat arches an eyebrow. "And breaking into my office doesn't seem like a step down from blowing up technically nonexistent government facilities?"

"Lucy gave me a key." Alex shoves her hands into her pockets. The suit fits her too well for her to pass as FBI for long, Cat thinks.

"Remind me to fire her."

Alex doesn't bother reminding her that she doesn't technically have that authority anymore. "You know, if I hadn't been working with you for three months, I'd wonder why my sister stayed."

It's a fair point, Cat thinks, she's never been easy to work with. But ... "Kiera's very good at holding on," she says. "It's one of her greatest strengths."

"That's not her name, you know." Alex's voice is sharp.

"Oh? And when was the last time someone called you Alexandra? Or me Catherine?"

Alex doesn't quite meet her eyes. "It's different."

"Not that different."

Alex gives her the barest of nods. Cat holds out the bottle. "Join me?" It isn't easy, but it's easier than anything else she wants to say. She knows how to be brave in print. It's so much harder like this.

There's a brief moment before Alex says, "Okay." It's an eternity. But, Cat thinks, it's an eternity that could hold a future.

The night is warm. Alex's fingers brushing against her own as she hands the bottle of scotch over are warm. "Thank you," Cat says quietly, and her voice, too, is warm.

It is enough.

*

The fallout, when it comes, claims two generals and a senator in the first day. Cat is swept up in the whirlwind of interviews immediately, her own and the ones she preps Kara for. She wants to get Alex in front of at least one camera, but Alex sets her jaw the same way Kara does when she's sending Cat home after one too many long nights and refuses.

"I know that look," Cat sighs. "It rarely works when your sister uses it, and I'm not going to let it work now. 'Anonymous source' is great for interest, but it loses credibility after a time."

Alex crosses her arms. "This isn't my world, Cat. I can't be doing interviews and god knows what else when I should be making sure everything at—" she glances uneasily out through the glass walls "—at work is stable."

"Hm. See, the way Kiera tells it, Lucy Lane has that well under control."

"There's no such thing as well under control right now," Alex says sharply. "I should be there, at least until things settle. Can't we revisit this in a couple days?"

"Oh, we could," Cat says, eyebrow arched. "But I guarantee you that Maxwell Lord has already found a camera to open his big mouth to. Think of all the things he could say in a couple days that you would then have to spend time rebutting, rather than telling our own story."

Cat watches Alex's fist clench at the mention of Lord's name, the lines around her eyes pulling tighter. Got you. "Alex, I don't know exactly what it meant to you to let me write this, but I can guess, and I am asking you, please, trust me just a little longer." More careful, now. So, so careful against the drumbeat of don't get her killed don't get her killed don't get either of them killed in the back of her head.

"Trust you," Alex echoes. For a moment, Cat almost thinks that she's lost her. And then Alex says, "Okay. But only with you. No one else doing cameras, makeup, sound, anything. And I'm not saying that Kara's my sister."

The relief is overwhelming. Cat smiles, and the answering spark in Alex's eyes is unbearably real. "I can work with that," she murmurs.

"Well," Alex cocks her head just slightly, and Cat feels rather like she just passed some sort of test. "Shall we?"

Cadmus is falling, falling and in the middle of the debris there is Cat and Alex and Kara and Lucy and Cat—

— Cat has so much experience with rewriting the shape of things to come, but not like this.

Never before like this.

Perhaps some day soon she will no longer be frightened that she thinks she could get used to this.