The Shape of Things to Come

5

In the year since Kara's trip back from the future, she'd mostly avoided dating. She hadn't done it at all the first month or so, but Eliza had kept hounding her. Finally, during Thanksgiving Dinner, she'd just told Eliza she didn't want to be set up on a blind date with her old college roommate's son because she didn't want to date men at all. That had gotten Eliza to back off for exactly two weeks.

It wasn't terrible, but Kara always felt a little guilty since the dates weren't going anywhere. She wasn't really over Sara and the Supergirl thing was coming up. She knew what that would do to any potential relationship. She dated mostly to humor Eliza, and to help Alex by keeping Eliza off her back. She'd actually made a handful of casual friends she hung out with every now and then and she'd managed to talk Cat into adding an LGBTQ+ focused section to the CatCo website and to the magazine, which had done so well Cat was considering launching three topic-focused print magazines, and five topic-focused websites.

Maggie. though, had been one of the few good things that had come out of the dating thing. She knew the woman from the previous timeline of course and never would have agreed to a date with her, because dating your sister's future wife was surely against some rule somewhere. But she'd been sitting in a bar, nursing her third virgin strawberry daiquiri after one of her Eliza- arranged blind dates had failed to show, when Maggie had sat down next to her and ordered a whiskey.

Kara couldn't believe her luck. She'd struck up a conversation and for the last four months, she'd spent almost as much time with Maggie as she did with Winn. There wasn't anything romantic about it, mostly because of the future Kara had lived through, but also because Maggie had been going through a long and nasty break-up with a girl named Darla. So Kara had spent a lot of time being a shoulder to cry on.

It hadn't even really been much of a decision to bring Maggie into the fold earlier than before, because Maggie was amazing.

Tonight though, was something Kara had arranged carefully. She'd checked to make sure the bar had TVs that ran local stations so she'd get the news. She'd also set up news alerts for flight 237 Geneva and National City Airlines and directed them to her burner phone. The driver's license in her purse was a duplicate, and the glasses she was wearing were a pair of cheap reading glasses she'd picked up at Walgreens. The purse had a few other odds and ends in it. A spare lipstick, and a tube of lip gloss, a half empty tin of breath mints, and a couple of tampons, an expired can of pepper spray left over from her college days. A couple of Noonan's receipts, a bit of loose change, 62 dollars in cash, and a prepaid debit card. Nothing she couldn't afford to lose, on the off-chance Maggie reacted poorly to finding out she was an alien without almost a year of history as Supergirl under her belt, but enough that it looked like it was Kara's actual purse.

The whole thing would look careless to Maggie, like she was in a blind panic. Maggie, being Maggie, would try to return the purse and that would give Kara a way to induct her into team Supergirl.

She spotted the woman sitting at a table, checking her watch. When she looked up, her eyes fell on Kara, and Kara waved as she walked over.

"Hey, Maggie," she said as she dropped into the seat across from her.

"Hey," she said. "You look great."

"Thanks," Kara replied. "Not too bad yourself."

"How's Cat treating you?"

"Oh, you know. Same old, same old. It's a good week though. She's only fired me twice."

Maggie laughed. "Only you would consider that a good week."

Kara shrugged. "It's not like it ever sticks."

"What's the count up to?" Maggie asked.

"One hundred and ninety-eight. Looks like Kelly from fashion is going to win the pool."