The Shape of Things to Come

16

The next morning was rough. Kara didn't really need sleep, but she and Alex had talked for hours and it had been emotionally exhausting. Kara had told her everything she could about Cadmus, leaving out only Lillian Luthor, Simon Tycho, and Hank Henshaw's involvement. She'd told her everything about Astra, too, but it was all hard. It was like draining an infected wound, only stopping before it was entirely clean, and bandaging it up with half the rot still inside. There was so much she couldn't tell her. She'd wanted to talk about the battle of CatCo plaza, about the Third Army and the war of light, about Darkseid and the anti-life equation.

She couldn't. Not yet. She couldn't tell Alex until she was ready to tell J'onn, and she couldn't tell J'onn until she could prove all of it, because it sounded insane. Sometimes, she wondered if she was insane. On the other hand, if she got to hug her sister in the morning before she went into work to see Winn and Cat, maybe insanity wasn't so bad.

Though today was the day Cat demanded an interview with her in the original timeline. She was wondering if that was still going to happen when the elevator door opened, and she saw Winn waiting for her, holding a large pink box.

"What's this?" she asked.

"Just a little something Maggie and I chipped in for," he said, lifting the lid. 

"Is that a brownie pizza?" she asked, her face splitting into an enormous smile.

"Yes," he said. "We wanted to do a cake, but we thought a 'Congratulations on your first big disaster' cake would be a little obvious."

"Oh!" she squealed as she threw her arms around Winn, hugging him as tightly as she dared. "Thank you," she said. "You have no idea how much I needed something like this this morning." She stepped back, still smiling at him as she picked up the envelope containing Cat's morning mail from the reception desk, before heading over to her own desk.

Winn sat the brownie pizza down on her desk. "You okay?" he asked.

"Rough weekend," she said. "Alex and I had a big fight. We sorted it out. And I saw my Aunt."

"Your Aunt?" Winn asked. "Like," he made a wavey motion with his hand Kara assumed was supposed to indicate flying, "that Aunt?"

"Yes. That probably went as well as could be expected," she said.

'Drunk, 9:00 AM. That's the last time I have breakfast with Ruth Bader Ginsberg.'

Kara shook her head as she reached for Cat's coffee. "She's here," she said as she lifted the lid and gave it a quick zap of heat vision.

"At least now I know how you do that," Winn said as he dropped into his seat and pulled up his goof-off spreadsheet so it looked like he was working.

The door to the elevator opened, and Cat strode out. Kara put the latte into her hand.

"Your latte, Ms. Grant," she said.

Cat took a sip and let out a small moan of satisfaction. "Hot, as always," she said. "Content meeting, two minutes. My office."

------------------------

" I assume we're all aware of Supergirl's latest act of derring-do," Cat said.

"Walking into a burning oil fire to cut off the fuel supply, then blowing the fire out," James said. "Pretty impressive for someone who's only been on the job a week."

"Hmmm, yes," Cat said. "Our girl has been making quite a showing of herself all over National City."

"Isn't that a good thing?" James asked.