The Shape of Things to Come

14

Cat Grant was many things. Smart, attractive, rich, powerful, funny, moody, given to whimsy, more than a little vindictive, a borderline alcoholic, and suffering from a rather severe case of PTSD that rendered her incapable of making it through a day of working without having a panic attack unless she had her regular doses of Lexapro.

What she was not, and never had been, was dumb.

Oh, plenty of people had assumed she was. Some of them had gone to great pains to make their disdain for her, and her intellect, very clear. She had given them polite and insincere smiles as they walked all over her. She had also remembered. There were no small number of men who found their careers completely destroyed because of the things Car Grant remembered and because Cat Grant wanted to make sure that women who followed in her footsteps had an easier time on the trial she had blazed.

That did not mean that she would coddle anyone. She had never been coddled when she fought her way to the top. If someone was doing something stupid, she told them. She also, contrary to what many thought, told them when they were doing something well. She rewarded success, and excellence doubly so. She mentored, she guided, and if she used the stick more than the carrot, it was because she hated wielding a tool with which she felt unskilled and when it came to kindness, Cat felt very unskilled indeed. The only people she ever felt a natural inclination towards kindness with were her sons. At least, until Sunny Danvers had walked into her office at 10:15 one September morning.

The girl had surprised her, right from the start. Her protestations that she was not special had caught Cat's attention, because it meant she had at least one skill that most of the applicants and most of Cat's former assistant had lacked. Kara Danvers knew how to listen. That, in and of itself would have gotten her the job, but she wasn't done. Oh, no. Not Kara "perfectly normal" Danvers. She'd given that stupid speech about wanting to help, wanting to be worthwhile. It had sparked something in Cat. A small, faint little fire of hope.

Cat knew she was aging. She was coming up on fifty, and she would be damned if she left her legacy in the hands of some walking personification of white privilege. She took one look at Kara, and saw hope that she might have found the woman she'd been looking for since the day she bought the Tribune. A protégé, a successor. Everything she'd once hoped Leslie Willis might become, before Cat had made so many mistakes with her.

Cat had known from just a few moments into the interview that Kara was special, that she had potential to be something far more than an assistant. She had, at the very least, the makings of a stellar reporter. One to put Lois Lane and Vicki Vale to shame. The backbone the girl had demonstrated in the interview had come as a bit of a surprise. Not as much as the fact that the girl had produced an invitation to a notoriously hard to get into event. Oh, Cat would have hired her, even without that. Would have even taken her as a potential protégé without that. But she had expected to have to put some temper and some steel into the girl herself, instead of finding it already there.

The invitation, though- that had made Cat pay attention to Kara as something more than some long-term project, and over the last year, Kara had done that time and time again. Kara kept finding ways to reach into places Cat herself couldn't, and the girl had become an enigma to her, a puzzle she was determined to solve. Everything from the fact that her lattes were actually hot, to the way she made suggestions that Cat would have expected from someone with years of experience in journalism, to the ease and comfort with which Kara wielded power, almost as if she'd been doing it for years. The girl was a leader, but more than that, she felt like a seasoned leader, not a gifted amateur. Cat had seen generals on the battlefield with less grace under pressure than Kara Danvers.

Which brought Cat back to the whole 'not dumb' thing.

Because she wasn't. She was not dumb enough to believe that a twenty-four-year-old girl would just call Diana Prince out of the blue and end the call with an invitation to one of the most exclusive social events of the year. She was not dumb enough to believe the same girl just a year later just happened to have Diana Prince and Bruce Wayne on speed dial, or that she had somehow managed to get dozens of pictures of Supergirl, all in stunningly high quality. Even if she was, apparently, sleeping with a detective over at the NCPD.