Chapter Text
Lena Luthor, CEO of L-Corp, sat at her desk pondering the problem. The thing was she owed Supergirl – and not just a little either. Supergirl had not only saved her life multiple times but the hero had made a conscientious effort to support her publicly, and that was no small thing given the family history between the Luthors and Supers.
The CEO sighed, feeling like she didn't know where to start, and decided that she probably needed to bring in some expert opinions so she set up a meeting on her calendar. When she called her PR Manager Patty Sakamoto to tell her about the idea for the meeting, Patty was ecstatic. The manager felt that thanking Supergirl publicly could be great for L-Corp's reputation and she promised to “bring the big guns”, as she put it, to the meeting. Lena thanked her and hung up.
The next day, Lena walked into the big conference room on the floor right below hers and was surprised to find leads from nearly every major division of L-Corp – if not the managers, then someone relatively highly placed in that division. The youngest Luthor kicked off the meeting with a short introduction to the basic idea of what they wanted to do, and then let them dive right in.
It was surprisingly fruitful. All the different brains put together gave them a large list of possible ideas, even if it wasn’t on something they normally dealt with, ranging from a charity fundraiser in Supergirl’s name, to new defensive tech or supersuit improvements the Girl of Steel could use in her duties, to symbolic gifts that didn’t really provide a functional benefit but would symbolically represent L-Corp’s gratitude – plaques, jewelry, statues, or similar.
Lena actually wasn’t much for the symbolic gifts idea, but she had to admit that it would probably be the easiest one to do on short notice. Her favorite by far was the idea about giving Supergirl some new tech to help her in her job, but even she had to admit that it would likely take months if not years of effort, and would probably also require Supergirl’s pre-approval so they could get the current specs of her suit. Lena sighed and shook her head, forced to veto that idea.
Her one concession, however, was to tell the heads of her developmental tech divisions to keep an eye on any R&D that could potentially be applied to defensive suit improvements and flag them for extra funding and personnel. If Lena couldn’t give something that valuable to Supergirl now, at least she could plan to do that in the future.
So that left the other ideas. The division heads generally agreed that the gift idea like a plaque or similar wasn’t really adequate to express the gratitude of an entire company, and they all had been saved in one form or another by Supergirl at least once – the entire city had been – so everyone present wanted to get it right. Besides, Lena was definitely leaning more towards a charity event – which then lead of course to the question of which charity or charities should benefit. After some time bouncing ideas around, they had generally picked charities focused on alien benefit, and the one that seemed most promising to Lena was the alien clinic.
Lena hadn’t even realized that there was a clinic specializing in alien medicine, but now that she thought about it, it made sense. Probably not many aliens could just walk into a human medical facility and get treated. This of course prompted her to ask the room if L-Corp had any research ongoing in alien medicine, and when she realized that there were no biomedical R&D heads present, they called up the current head researcher on the conference desk phone, Dr. Tomaz.
The doctor confirmed what Lena had expected – not only was there nothing currently being researched, but there weren’t even any researchers at L-Corp who had experience in alien biomed or physiology. The CEO thanked the doctor for her help and informed her that Lena would be in touch within the next two weeks to work on rectifying that – and asked if she could please provide names of researchers they could bring on board and/or company acquisitions in that area.
After the short tangent, they returned to the topic at hand and finally settled on a list of major charities that benefited aliens, subject to a review of the charity finances and approval from Supergirl herself. Although Lena agreed with her senior staff that Supergirl might not know which ones to choose since she mostly worked with more heroic and physical tasks, so they would probably need to vet and compile a list prior to asking the hero for her feedback.
Right as they were wrapping up the meeting, Jess, Lena’s personal assistant, suggested that they could also give Supergirl some small gift in addition to the charity event – maybe even present her with the gift at the event. This would both give the charity event a more personal touch and yet not be as inadequate as a symbolic gift by itself.
Lena immediately liked this idea, but since she had another important appointment right then and didn’t want the meeting to run over, she asked everyone to please think on this symbolic gift idea and they’d reconvene in a few days to go over and tacitly approve the final plan. Of course the final approval would fall to the board of directors, but Lena liked to have input from her division heads as well on major company direction changes – and this, once Lena looked at the list of planned changes coming out of the meeting, seemed like a significant new direction for L-Corp.
The CEO walked through the door to her office after ending the meeting, and sighed in satisfaction. This was how she wanted the company to move forward again – this was how they could make L-Corp a force for good. Lena felt very pleased with herself.
Glancing back down again at her list of proposed company changes, she realized that she had a lot of alien-related items. Lena pursed her lips, musing that she probably should hire or promote someone to be in charge of Alien Relations. She scribbled a quick note to herself to set up a personnel review with Jess before she forgot. It would be awesome if L-Corp had an actual alien for that job, but Lena wasn’t exactly sure how likely that would be. She was very aware of the troubled history of her company, not to mention her family, had with aliens and she was pretty sure aliens would be aware of that history, too.
Lena turned around at the sound of a knock on her door and smiled warmly as the door opened. Kara walked in with her usual sunny smile and a bag of takeout in one hand, just as they usually did on their lunch dates – although Lena internally sighed at the word ‘date’, and wished they were actually romantic dates. So far, the blonde reporter had not seemed to notice that a romantic interest was even an option, but it wasn't for want of trying on the part of the youngest Luthor. Not even if she was starting to accept the fact that Kara was probably straight.
Still, she enjoyed the reporter’s company, and told herself that even if Lena's advances hadn’t been noticed, that Kara had seemed to enjoy spending time with her also. As much as the CEO enjoyed productive business meetings, there was nothing that brightened her day more than seeing Kara and she always tried to make time to hang out with the blonde reporter.
Kara happily told Lena about her day, meeting various interesting people to interview for her stories and alternately griping about her boss Snapper. When Kara turned to ask the CEO how her day had gone, Lena smiled, saying that it was really productive and mentioning that they had a new charity event that they were starting to plan for.
The reporter was of course excited and interested – Lena privately wondered if there was anything the other girl didn’t get excited about – and the youngest Luthor asked her if she’d heard of any of the charities. Kara didn’t really know about them, but when Lena mentioned about whether the alien clinic had a charity associated with it, the blonde told her that she had heard something about them and would ask around with her contacts to find more.
Realizing that she had broken one of her personal rules about not doing work during lunch, Lena apologized to the blonde and dragged the conversation to something else – in this case, the latest Disney movie that had just come out. The CEO knew that Kara adored Disney movies and usually watched them on her sister nights or her friendly movie nights she hosted at her apartment. Lena had gone to a few of them and knew that Kara was just as effusive at home as she was at work.
Lena sighed as she watched Kara adorably explain the plot for the newest movie, completely smitten and wondering if it was even possible to fall harder for this woman than she already was.
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It was two days later when Jess emailed her an update on the Thank Supergirl Initiative – as a couple of her senior staff had taken to calling it – and passed her a list of some of the gift ideas they were thinking of. Lena frowned at a couple of the items, noting on her review sheet that they either were too impersonal (a plaque/engraving) or too romantic/personal (a necklace). She re-sorted the list in order of her preference, putting ‘bracelet’ and ‘statue (waterfront)’ at the top, and sent it back to Jess before returning to her quarterly financial report she had been reviewing.
Just then, her phone buzzed on the table, and Lena looked down. Seeing Kara’s name, she picked it up and answered the call smiling.
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When Lena finally got the ‘big guns’ back together again, her PR manager Patty was almost bouncing at all the good press potential they had come up with in the past week. The CEO found herself thinking privately that Patty and Kara would probably get along like a house on fire – wait, cancel that idea, otherwise something or someone might actually combust.
They dove right into the meeting and pulled up both the list of vetted charities and the symbolic gift ideas. Quickly giving everyone a chance to point out any problems with the charity list – there were none – they moved onto the gifts, which Lena had assumed would comprise the bulk of today’s discussion.
Soon enough, she was proved right when an energetic debate developed over the statue and bracelet, which had turned out to be the general consensus for the top two. In particular there were a handful of staunch supporters of each idea that went back and forth.
Lupe Rodriguez, one of her lead materials researchers, pointed out, “The bracelet would be something that Supergirl could personally get to have and use, whereas the statue wouldn’t. I think it’s a much more appropriate gift.”
Mel Ngoli, from her city relations department, argued, “If Supergirl has a secret identity then she might not able to wear it that much – especially if it got in the way of combat.” She gesticulated in her normal exaggerated style as she made her point. “But a statue would be visible all the time without regard to whether Supergirl was able to wear it. The entire city would also be able to appreciate it, so it was like a joint gift to the entire city.”
Lupe countered, “But this isn’t a gift to the people of National City – this is for Supergirl. Also, we can’t exactly present a statue at the charity event.”
Mel dismissed the concerns with a wave of her hand. “We could always just announce the statue at the event and then we’d even get a second PR event out of the deal when we unveil the statue.”
When there was a pause in the discourse, Lena decided to step in. “Alright, so I have two options for the gift then, we’re all decided on one of those two?” At the heads nodding around the table, she continued. “Excellent, I’ll pass on the pros and cons with the suggested idea to the board for final approval. Any more suggestions or questions before we wrap this up?”
A hand went up from Brad Alfords in finance, and she sighed inwardly – she still hadn’t gotten him to lighten up from his schoolboy habit of always wanting to raise his hand. Lena nodded for him to continue.
He cleared his throat. “About the new announced Alien Relations position – is that open to current employees only or will it be a public position?”
“If you have anyone to recommend for that position, please be sure to forward them to the designated hiring manager regardless, but it will be a public position – with a preference for alien heritage.”
There were some murmurs around the room at the mention of a preference for aliens, but when no one actually spoke up, Lena ended the meeting.