Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Of course Kara knows who she is.  You can’t be a woman in America, let alone a feminist, and *not* know who she is.  That goes double if you care about or studied law or journalism or politics (so probably triple for Kara).  Funny thing, the first time Kara heard her name was before any of these things loomed large in her life on Earth, when she was still struggling to adapt to an impossibly new life and just beginning to hope that the Danvers might become a true family to her.  It had been a conversation between Eliza and Jeremiah, he’d made some throwaway comment about women leaving the field because of the wage gap and Eliza had responded ‘not if Alison McBeal has anything to say about it’.

At the time it had been one more reference Kara didn’t get, and her understanding of Earth culture was barely reaching a point where she had a good sense of what she needed to know to blend in (favourite band, favourite tv show, where did you get that t-shirt, nickels, then dimes, then quarters and the base ten number system) and what she didn’t.  She was able to grasp that their conversation wasn’t anything an early adolescent would be expected to take an interest in and dismissed it as one less data point she had to keep track of, when she was struggling with so many already.

In her last year of high school, sufficiently comfortable with Earth culture that she could spare the energy to indulge her own curiosity, Kara had encountered the name again in her current events class and had one of those ‘oh, that’s what that was about’ moments that were already familiar to her.  Alison McBeal, a civil rights lawyer famous for her involvement in several precedent setting cases, most recently ‘March vs Ingersoll’ when she’d represented a lab technician who’d discovered she was earning three quarters as much as her less qualified male colleague.  Kara realises this must have been the case Eliza had been referring too and her attention is caught.  Reading about this woman fighting for justice is an echo of home, and however arbitrary the association Kara finds comfort in it.  More so when her name crops up at odd moments in Kara’s studies – an interview with Cat Grant, an impassioned rant directed at some idiot who’d questioned if Superman could legally have a relationship with a human – and her name becomes a sort of talisman for Kara, not unlike Cat Grant’s. 

Kara certainly never expected to actually meet her.

And definitely not like this.

Three months into Cat’s triumphant return things are finally starting to feel settled.  Kara’s spending more time at CatCo these days and more time writing features and think pieces.  She’d been resistant to the move at first, despite Cat’s not so subtle nudging.  Kara had suspected the suggestion that her unique perspective was arguably more valuable in that role was Cat’s way – subtle by her standards – of suggesting she wasn’t cut out for investigative work, but to her surprise she’s enjoying the change.  And so are CatCo’s readers judging by some of the responses she’s getting.  Kara’s on her way to discuss responses to her latest piece – it’s sparked ideas for a follow up article that she knows Cat will be interested in – and seeing her alone and apparently unoccupied in her office she doesn’t hesitate to step in.

Ordinarily it might have registered that Cat’s dress is atypical, the skirt and blazer combination exactly the sort of ‘professional’ outfit Cat would roll her eyes at if Kara wore something similar (although hers is somewhat nicer than what Kara’s budget mostly allows), or that it’s unusual for Cat to be standing on the far side of the office, but she’s already deep in thoughts of the article she wants to write.

“I was thinking it might be really interesting to interview some of these women about their experiences . .  .”

The laughter is her first clue that something is wrong.

Cat doesn’t laugh like that.

“You know, it’s nice to be on the other end of this for a change,” the strange woman muses.

That’s when everything comes crashing to a grinding halt, because that is not Cat’s voice.

It’s a little higher, a little lighter, a little softer than Cat’s voice (even at her kindest Cat tends to sound slightly like she’s growling – an observation Kara has had the good sense never to share with her) and Kara turns, freezing in place.

That’s not Cat.  It’s the same face, same eyes, same build – same amazing legs an entirely unhelpful corner of her mind notes - only Cat has never looked at her like that, inquisitive and wryly amused, or dressed like that and now that she’s paying attention that sleek bob is definitely not Cat’s hair . . .

“Ah.  Kara, I see you’ve met my cousin Ally.  Ally, this is Kara Danvers.  Normally she’s a little more together than this.”

There’s Cat, framed in the doorway in one of her more casual outfits (Carter has a half day at school and Cat is taking him to a talk at the NC Institute of Science and Technology later).

It occurs to Kara that the way her head is swiveling between the two of them as she stands frozen in shock probably looks ridiculous, but there’s no helping it.  Too many competing thoughts are crashing into each other for any kind of coherency to be possible.

The other woman raises a hand to her mouth and giggles – yes, really giggles.  It’s surreal to hear that sound coming out of her mouth.

“Cat, you never told me she was this adorable.”

“I avoided telling you much about her at all, and this is why,” Cat grumps, coming into the room and passing Kara to sit on the couch.

“Kara, meet my cousin, Ally McBeal.”

“You’re Alison McBeal!” Kara blurts as she realises why the other woman is so confusing to her.  Apart from the remarkable similarity to Cat she recognizes Ms Mcbeal from youtube clips and news reports.  Trying to reconcile the different ways in which the woman is familiar was what threw her off.

A moment later she cringes as it occurs to her how obtuse she’s being – and the full implications of what Cat just said.

“Wait, you’re related to – Miss Grant never mentioned -”

“Oh god, you’re a fan.  Of course you are.  Please tell me you’re not going to follow her around like those smitten little groupies she has at NYU – and you, don’t say anything,” Cat adds with a snap, pointing at Ms McBeal, who’s still laughing a little.

Kara is feeling a little overwhelmed, caught between two women she admires, and while she’s grown a lot more comfortable around Cat over the years this new discovery is a lot to take in.  Not to mention meeting Ms McBeal so unexpectedly, in these circumstances, is more than a little overwhelming.  Fortunately, Cat decides to be merciful – or possibly she doesn’t want Kara in the room while she has a private conversation with her cousin (cousin!  How did Kara not know that two of her role models are related to each other).

“Whatever you wanted to show me Kara, can it wait until after lunch?  You know my schedule.”

“I, um, yes certainly Cat – Miss Grant – that will be fine.”

Kara generally tries not to eavesdrop using her powers, or at least not for purely personal reasons.  Not only does it feel wrong, she often hears things she wishes she hadn’t.  This is one of the times she can’t resist the impulse.

“This explains a lot.  Now I understand why you’re so taken with her.”

Ms McBeal sounds utterly delighted and deeply amused.  Cat’s response is dismissive, although to Kara’s sensitive ear she sounds stressed.

“You exaggerate wildly, as usual.”

“I do not.  You weren’t this smitten with any of your husbands.”

“She works for me, Ally.  You might act like the line between professional and personal is written in chalk on a wet sidewalk, but not all of us treat our workplaces as hookup joints.  Even if I wanted to . . .”

“Which you absolutely do.  Besides, she doesn’t work for you directly anymore.  I seem to remember you crowing about her choosing journalism.  And even if she did, pretending the feelings aren’t there never works.”

Kara’s never heard anyone be so blithely unconcerned when Cat is being this cutting.

“For some of us repression works perfectly well.”

“Really?” Ally asks throatily.  “Because if you’re not going to do anything -”

“Alison McBeal,” Cat snaps, “if you start making passes at my staff I will hire Georgia or Ling or Nell just to sue you.”

“For what?  She doesn’t work for me.”

With a gulp Kara determinedly focuses her hearing elsewhere and hurries to the elevator.  She has no idea how she’s going to handle this, or if there will even be anything to handle, or if she wants there to be.

Unless Kara has gone completely insane (not impossible) Cat actually sounded jealous.

The idea is crazy.  She’s got to be imagining things, right?

Kara’s been telling herself that for a while now, and at this point even she doesn’t believe it.  And it sounds like Alison freaking McBeal is going to flirt with her to try and make Cat jealous.

This is nuts.  When did her life become a sitcom?

But underneath the self-defensive disbelief and the nerves is a little voice telling her that this is real, this is happening.

And this voice is telling Kara something else – this could be a *lot* of fun.

With a private smile, Kara decides that tomorrow she’s going to dress up a little – and if Ally McBeal decides to flirt unsubtly with her in front of Cat, she’s going to flirt right back.

Chapter Text

“Let me get this straight.”

Kara always snickers when Alex uses that expression.  She’d feel bad about it, except she knows full well that her sister does it deliberately.

“You met Alison ‘freakin’ Mcbeal yesterday -”

“You know that’s not her real middle name, right?”

“Wouldn’t know it growing up in our house,” Alex observes.  She’d already been at college when Kara’s interest in Ms McBeal (Or ‘raging powerful older woman crush’ in Alex’s words) had first spiked, but Kara may have gushed a time or two when they’d spoken on the phone or Alex had been home for the holidays.

“So, you met Alison McBeal.  In Cat Grant’s office.  Because she and Cat Grant are related.  And look enough alike that even you couldn’t tell them apart at first,” she continues gleefully.  Alex isn’t even trying to hide how hilarious she thinks all this is.

“I think you’re enjoying this a bit too much,” Kara complains over the phone as she continues to root through her wardrobe, looking for an outfit that she purchased a few months back and then had second thoughts about wearing.

“I’d say I’m enjoying this an entirely appropriate amount,” Alex shoots back gleefully.

“It’s killing you that there’s no-one around you can gossip about this with, isn’t it?”

“I talk to Vasquez sometimes.  I’m definitely telling her about this.”

“Oh great – hah!  Found it!”

Pushed somewhat to the back of her wardrobe, mostly because whenever Kara looks at it she’s reminded of what she was thinking when she bought it, is the outfit she’s tentatively considering for today.  She studies herself in the mirror with the outfit held up against her.

It’s a two piece number, similar to one she wore when the red kryptonite was influencing her, although that’s not the reason it makes her slightly nervous to look at.  It fits a little closer than what she’d usually wear to the office (pants don’t count, everyone knows that, no matter what Alex says) and if she twists or bends a fine line of skin briefly materialises between skirt and top.

The rich crimson is several shades darker than her cape, although Kara’s found that blue is the colour people associate most strongly with her alter ego, and even then only if she wears a particular shade of royal blue, or mixes red and blue in one outfit.  Despite Alex’s scoffing, Kara knows better than that.  Teamed with a pair of black suede pumps and subtle accessories the effect is professional but a little flashier than what Kara usually wears, straddling the line between important meeting office wear and sexy nice date outfit.

She pictures herself walking into CatCo dressed like this, Cat’s eyes widening as she sees what Kara is wearing, Cat's heated gaze lingering on Kara as she crosses the room, and the rush of it is irresistible.

Cat’s not going to know what hit her.

“Why not just sleep with her?  Unless she’s ugly.  Is she ugly?  I doubt Grant would have an assistant who was ugly.”

“Trust me, she’s not ugly.”

“How do you know?” Ling asks, idly curious.

“I’m looking at the CatCo facebook page right now.  She is adorable.  And built.  Seriously built.  In a good way.  If you won’t use your connections to wrangle an introduction to Supergirl this girl’s a close second.  And she’s got a crush on you?  Go Ally!”

So far as Ally knows Elaine is very, very straight, but she embraced Ally’s own low key coming out with a fervency equal parts disturbing and endearing.  It’s the attitude that has always marked her over-investment in the things she cares about, which includes Ally’s love life.  Ally would like to say she finds this inexplicable.  The truth is she knows exactly why Elaine is so concerned with her romantic ups and downs. 

It’s for the entertainment value.

Ally’s not totally sure how she ended up on a conference call with Ling and Elaine, or how one idle comment about flirting with the ex-assistant Cat has a crush on led to Elaine cyber-stalking the poor girl while Ling strategises the optimum course of action for irritating Cat to the greatest degree possible.

Okay, that’s a lie.  With the benefit of short term hindsight Ally can see that asking Elaine for advice about any of this was a mistake.  Superficially, Elaine would seem to be just the person to talk to if you’re planning to get your cousin to finally act on her unrequited feelings by flirting with the very cute object of her affections, thereby making her jealous enough to finally do something.

Except involving Elaine in anything is like inviting a pyromaniac to help you set up a fireworks display.  In this case she got Ling on the line the moment cat’s name was mentioned.  And of course Ling was going to suggest massive escalation if an opportunity to mess with Cat presents itself, even by proxy.  It’s the first law of Elaine: Any action that generates drama is correct (corollary: unless there’s a different action that would have generated greater drama).

Ally’s not entirely sure what the deal is with Cat and Ling.  They’ve never met, so far as she knows they’ve never even spoken to each other, but there’s some weird, vaguely competitive aspirational thing going on between them, with Ally acting as involuntary intermediary.  Ling seems torn between admiration and burning envy where Cat is concerned and Ally suspects Cat harbours the odd daydream of sitting on the bench herself.  It’s probably a good thing they haven’t met.  They’d either kill each other or conquer the planet.

“Hmm.  Stealing Grant’s crush from right under her nose could be amusing.”

Ally groans.  You’d think she’d be used to this by now.

Turns out, not so much.

“I’m not sleeping with anyone!”

Dead silence for a second.

“Oh, Ally.”

“Elaine, don’t.”

Half her life they’ve been friends and she still walks into traps like that.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Why are you so opposed to the idea?  It’s not like you’ve never been with a younger woman.”

“Because Cat would never forgive me?  Also, I’d have to avoid the West Coast for the rest of my life, which would be slightly inconvenient.”

“She’s not really going to take a hit out on you.  Is she?”  Elaine asks, as though she honestly thinks that’s a thing that could happen.  Normally Ally would think she was trolling, but she understands how Cat can give that impression to people who only know her by reputation.  Elaine’s been intrigued by the idea of Cat ever since Ally let slip that they were related.  This had been back in the talkshow days and Elaine had derived a certain amount of pleasure from being able to claim a connection, however tenuous, with someone who appeared on afternoon television five days a week.

“Grant probably knows an assassin or two.  A woman as powerful as her would have to.”

For a moment Ally is overtaken by a vision of Cat leaning back in a leather office chair, white Persian held in her lap, as she gives orders to a group of exotically garbed thugs.  Cat commands them to assassinate Roger Ailes, Perry White and Donald Trump, while Ally watches helplessly from her position suspended over a pool filled with hundreds of mantis shrimp, because Cat would never use anything as cliché and predictable as sharks or piranha.  Her orders for world domination given, Cat rises from her throne and stalks toward Ally.

“Tell me, Ms McBeal, what made you think you could take what is mine and not suffer the . . . consequences.”

Ally gasps helplessly around the gag in her mouth as Cat reaches towards a conveniently placed lever that she’s sure wasn’t there a minute ago.  Her screams are muffled by the gag in her mouth as Cat pulls the lever and Ally begins to fall . . .

With an effort of will she shoves the vision aside.  She’s got to stop picturing Cat as a bond villain.  It’s not healthy.

“You have some very strange ideas about my cousin’s business practices.”

“Is it really that serious?  I mean, you’re making it sound like Cat would be heartbroken if you actually took this girl on a date.”

Ally thinks about the way Cat’s gaze had tracked Kara across the office, and the intensity with which she’d attempted to shut down Ally’s flicker of interest.  It’s been a long time since she’s seen Cat this invested in anything – even her stint as the press secretary was treated as more of a diversion and a nice garnish to her CV.  Kara, though, has always been an exception in Cat’s life, perhaps even more than Cat realises.

Ally remembers the first time she heard Cat mention Kara’s name.  The level of attention she lavished on listing the girl’s faults had stood out because normally Cat fired people before they irritated her this much.  Kara, for some reason, seemed to be sticking around.

‘So why haven’t you fired her yet?’ Ally had asked at the time, only to be greeted by unexpected silence.  She swears she could feel Cat’s shock radiating down the line (or over the telecommunications network, whatever).  That had been the first clue – the idea of firing Kara was complete anathema to Cat.

She’d spluttered some sort of justification, the flimsiness of which was clue number two, before quickly changing the subject.  After that Ally had kept an ear out for further mentions of this mysterious new assistant, who seemingly possessed magical powers that allowed her to flow with Cat’s steel edged whims and meet every demand.  A couple of years ago something had changed.  Cat spoke of Kara more often, with a new and uncharacteristic warmth.  Apparently National City had two residents with superpowers - and Ally considers Kara’s ability to charm Cat Grant more impressive than anything Supergirl can do.

Cat likes Kara.

“You know,” she says thoughtfully, “I really think it is.”

Yesterday’s teasing had been just that.  Now Ally’s beginning to think Cat really does need a push.

Well, she has a lunch date with Cat today.  If a certain pretty blonde crosses her path she’ll turn on the charm and see what transpires.