6

Cat Grant was bored by the latest news—nothing gripping, nothing that sparked, thus nothing that would sell. Nobody cared about Supergirl's continued PR campaign of minor nothings of heroics. A villain, a real dramatic bad guy for her to be victorious over was needed for her girl in the cape to start winning back people's support. Well, at least there was the ongoing scandal of Oliver Queen sleeping with yet another actress. Her attention was caught by a possibly more interesting happening of someone she didn't know, walking off the elevator and onto the top floor of Catco like she belonged there.

That was interesting. The plebian was a bit of a reformed goth or emo or whatever those gloomy, hormone-ridden, teenagers called themselves. But shockingly the woman was proof sometimes they grew up and learned what a well-cut pair of jeans was, moderation with eyeliner as a concept, and ungreasy hair was preferable. It still didn't explain the woman's presence. The bag of Big Belly Burger and confident beeline for Kiera's desk did.

Ah, yet another contender for Kiera's heart. That girl drew the loveless population like bees to honey. Not that the girl seemed fully aware of that.

Cat didn't do anything as gauche as to stare, but it was certainly something.

Interesting how Kiera lit up. Well, points for the new challenger.

There was a dry sort of amusement as an alerted James Olsen approached, all puffed up shoulders and face painted with concern at someone else entering 'his' territory. So pedantic. And Kiera was either living in denial or actually that dense. Cat was a bit irritated she wasn't sure which. Possibly a bit of both.

Oh, James was all gentle masculinity still, no doubt his voice just the same timber as usual. But his smile was forced, very, just drank pure vinegar as he tried to place himself ever so slightly between Kiera behind her desk and the new competitor.

The new girl had confidence, she didn't so much as take the faintest step back to establish a more normal amount of personal space at James' slight encroachment. Rather, her slightly sarcastic but fond expression had turned to look like a predator sizing up its prey.

Cat felt an eyebrow raise as Kiera either ignored the veiled hostility or did not register it as she got up and went around her desk before happily hugging the newbie.

The new contender easily allowed the contact, her entire attention sliding fully onto Kiera. Not that it wasn't clear the woman was still very aware of James Olsen. It was nothing so gauche as maintaining eye contact with him while hugging Kiera, perhaps more devastatingly it was utterly ignoring him outwardly while neatly adjusting her and Kiera so that the three of them were in a triangle when Kiera let go. The hand on Kiera's waist also lingered in a deliberate way for a half second too long.

James breathed in through his nose, a distinctly unhappy set to his jaw. And he had certainly noticed that Kiera's hand had fallen to the new woman's elbow with casual ease.

Amusing as all this was, Cat did not feel like allowing a tela-novela to play out in front of her office, it would suck the efficiency of the entire floor. And, entertaining as it was, she was irked by the unearned confidence of the stranger behaving as if the office was perfectly open to her person without question.

Well, she had some fools at the Tribune to lambast for the layouts she'd had delivered to her earlier. Their front-page story was not going to be Oliver Queen's flavor of the week. Front page of the society section obviously, but there had to be something more interesting for the actual front page. If there wasn't maybe they could kick the Troglodyte who'd thought to put Oliver Queen's dating life on the front page of the paper off the building. At least when Supergirl swooped in they could get a money shot for the cover.

With that in mind, Cat rose to her feet with all the dignity of the Queen she was, grabbed the layouts, and walked out of her office. "Kiera!" She took a smug thrill at the blanch as everyone who'd been caught up in the tela-novella playing out before them snapped to attention. She shoved the layouts into Kiera's spluttering arms. "I have people to fire, fires to light." Cat let her eyes pointedly fall on the newbie and James.

James had the decency to look chagrined. "Ms. Grant."

"Olsen." Her eyes cut fully to the newbie. The girl didn't shrink or fold at the attention, she was all dark eyes twinkling with amusement and the unearned confidence of a millennial. "And why, Kiera, is there a member of the unwashed masses in my bullpen?"

The woman replied before Kiera could stumble through an excuse. "Just dropping off your assistant's lunch, Ms. Grant. And I may be part of the masses, but I do shower. Even use soap."

"Oh, you think you're clever then, and I should tolerate your existence why? All you millennials and thinking just by existing you're worth something, have achieved anything at all." She scoffed, ready to move on.

The woman's face split into an actual grin. "Wild opinion to have, but I think the military medals I've got collecting dust count as some kind of accomplishment according to most standards." Her eyes flicked back to Kiera. "I'll see you after work. I'm making spaghetti, if I burn another one of your pans I'll order Greek." She took a step back. "Nice meeting you, James. Seeing myself out, Ms. Grant."

Cat looked at Kiera as the woman walked away. "Cavorting with war heroes?"

"Daisy's my new neighbor?" Kiera risked.

Cat hummed, interesting. Not the type she'd have thought Kiera would be interested in, but she could see the appeal. "She'll do, I suppose." She started walking toward her private elevator ignoring the stumbling assistant following in her wake. "Schedule an appointment with my therapist tomorrow morning, and I've changed my mind about lunch, no salad, I want sushi. You know my order, I want it on my desk when I get back from reminding the Tribune what a front-page story is."

////

Daisy had tripled the recipe she'd convinced Mrs. Rizzo to write down on cardstock for her. Between her serum-enhanced appetite and Kara's pure alien one, it was a lot of food. Also, cooking was turning out to be kinda fun. At least when she didn't burn it. The large metal mixing bowls were out, and she was pretty sure she'd organized everything she needed to do this though.

She spun the knife absently between her fingers as she stared at the onion. Thanks to a youtube instructional video she did know how to cut one now. The inevitable crying was not a thing she was looking forward to. Needs must though. It didn't take long, she'd sharpened Kara's knives on day two. It was tragic how dull they'd been. Had she possibly sharpened them to a point that was beyond what was needed for civilian cooking? Probably. But better too nice than not nice enough.

Once chopped she dumped it into the bowl with the sausage, and ground beef. Grabbing the nifty little doodad for crushing garlic she crushed a whole eight cloves of it before dumping it in. Mrs. Rizzo had been very clear. Fresh real garlic and onion, not just the powdered version in the bread crumb and seasoning mix. That done she cracked the eggs into the smaller bowl of dry seasonings and bread crumbs before using her fingers to mix it.

So slimy, but Daisy couldn't help smiling as she did it. This was…fun. It was fun, and it didn't really matter if she fucked up, and there was just something…satisfying about making something with her hands and it being good. The SHIELD hack of a therapist had been wild suggesting art therapy, but Daisy was pretty sure she was getting the point of why that'd been a suggestion.

As she dumped the egg and spices mix into the meat and started kneading it, she was kinda delighted by the weird way it squished between her fingers. It was really satisfying. Felt a bit like when she'd been a kid at St. Agnus happily making mud pies, well before they got punished for ruining their clothes and never did it again. But she could do it now.

Daisy might have spent longer mixing the thing than was necessary.

As she carefully rolled the mixture into balls and laid them out on the parchment-covered cookie sheets as instructed she felt kinda smug about remembering to actually pre-heat the oven this time. It'd been a bit awkward to have the lasagna put together and realize the oven should have been warm already. But she'd remembered. No awkward scrolling on her phone while waiting, fully constructed dinner just sitting on the counter.

It was definitely an unreasonable amount of round meatballs. She'd literally made 96 of the things. So she'd be doing a few different rounds in the oven. Whatever, at least neither of them would still be hungry. There might even be leftovers. Maybe. Daisy didn't mind, just sticking the two trays ready to go into the oven and setting the timer, remembering to set the timer was key.

With a quiet thrum of satisfaction, she walked over to the couch and grabbed her laptop. The new part-time job at RadioShack started soon, but until then, she had plenty of time to start laying out who the power players were in National City, and more broadly the country. Once she had that done, she'd break down known risks and start building a map of who in power was connected to what when it came to anti-alien agendas. Because this earth, this earth was kinda more and less fucked on the topic from what Daisy could tell.

More alien refugees, higher levels of associated crime from just the elevated numbers alone, and just existed in a way that was generating a more widespread response. The fact of the matter was those with power were aliens, enhanced humans being nearly non-existent meant there was no concept of humans able to stand up to and fight aliens. They were seen as too separate, too non-human. Made sympathy for aliens a harder sell.

Daisy could see it, the fear, on message boards, in the news, in the money being poured into defense. They didn't have a Tony Stark building weapons and suits that let him stand beside gods, they didn't have Captain America or a Hulk or any of the very human protectors that Daisy's Earth had. And it showed. The closest they seemed to have was Batman in Gotham. She'd only found out about him while charting out Bruce Wayne on the Excel sheet of the richest people in the country. Gotham was wild and Daisy wasn't touching that with a ten-foot pole for a while. But for crime rates like that there had to be something in the water…hopefully.

Well, they also had Lex Luthor. Lex had made a suit and weapons that frankly would have been stiff competition if not have ripped Tony Stark's apart. He was living proof humans could fight aliens and survive. And he was a monster and one the biggest influences on anti-alien hate groups not to mention just sentiment in general, on the planet. Instead of helping the lunatic made everything worse. And Daisy would bet a whole hell of a lot that Lex Luthor was tied to Cadmus.

She was mostly sorting the rich and the powerful into categories of priority. Max Lord might be the highest priority to look into, but Lex Luthor wasn't far behind. Even if the psychopath was in prison already. People that rich didn't get hampered much by prison. SHIELD would have dumped him into a black site isolation cell and had his only interactions being scientific theory that would get passed on and chewed apart by scientists at the Academy. That, or they'd have just put a round between his eyes. Fury would have used him, Coulson would have had him put down. Daisy agreed with Coulson.

Still, not the most pressing issue and one she'd deal with later. Priority was skimming articles on Maxwell Lord. To the dipshit's credit, he didn't seem to be in deep with the military. So still likely semi-independent in his evil. The result of narcissism most likely. Give him a few more failures and a system would scoop him up though. But, arrogant narcissist was a thing she could work with. She wanted the DEO files on him, but first, she wanted into his systems.

Daisy tapped at her laptop. So, time to get a lock on someone low on the ladder in his corporation, getting their login credentials, then she could just walk in, log in, and install her own backdoor. She cracked her knuckles, time to go fishing and find someone who hadn't paid attention to internet safety lectures or training.

Daisy was amused and a bit baffled by how easy it was to scoop up marks digitally. It'd taken her an hour, but the meatballs were stewing in the red sauce on the oven, yes it had taken three pots to fit all of them, and she was down to a short list of twenty idiots at Lord Tech. So many people were willing to sign up for online coupon offers. Which left her to troll through social media with the new emails, usernames, and passwords she'd just hooked and see who was a naughty fucker who used the same credentials for everything.

And wow, an idiot by the name of Jeff Williams was a winner. To be fair, so were most of her fish she'd hooked. But Jeff was depressingly perfect because he was a lead for technical support according to his Facebook page. Sometimes she thought she'd seen the dumbest things, actual leadership for a multi-billion dollar technical company's computer support department being this dumb was…not as surprising as it should be. Miles's old joke 'hackers don't break in, they log in', was hilariously accurate.

Daisy was reading Jeff's Facebook page absently as she got the water boiling to actually make pasta. She eyed the amount of pasta. She may, possibly, be making too much food. Like more than one meal's worth of leftovers. Huh…well given time she'd get the hang of portion sizes? Probably? Wasn't like even if there were too many leftovers they'd last long.

She was stirring pasta when Kara came skidding in from where she'd just flown through the window. Daisy snorted at the expression on Kara's face. "I didn't mess anything up for you at Catco, right?"

"I think…Cat likes you?" Kara sounded absolutely baffled.

Daisy laughed. "She also thinks we're involved, or at least I'm trying to seduce you."

Kara's face went red, "What, no, that…what?"

"Probably my fault, also is James your ex trying to get back together with you, or am I throwing a wrench in your personal life there?" Daisy might have been overly hostile to James. If Kara actually wanted to date or was just starting to date the guy she could undo the shitty first impression.

Kara opened and then shut her mouth before dropping onto a stool by the kitchen island like a sack of putty, with an audible groan. "James is…complicated." She looked up at Daisy with a forlorn expression. "I ruined it."

Both of Daisy's brows went up, well that sounded like a story. And, just because James rubbed her the wrong way, didn't mean she wasn't aware that was her abandonment issues. Fuck therapy being useful. Cause he had the whole warm voice, was objectively attractive as hell, and clearly was successful, all things that were working for him. Very crush-worthy, honestly. "Well, I'm almost done with dinner, and I wouldn't mind listening?"

////

Kara felt embarrassed with herself as she shared the whole James saga over spaghetti and meatballs, which were delicious. It all sounded so stupid and ridiculously unimportant. She'd cringed at admitting she'd pined after him even when he'd had a girlfriend, that she'd hurt him while under RedK.

"Wait, you bruised his wrist and said something bitchy to him and you're counting that as malicious harm?" Daisy's fork lowered as she stared at her in disbelief. "Like you didn't even murder anyone while drugged out of your mind."

Kara blanched. "No, I hurt people and-"

"Ok, perspective here." Daisy waved her fork. "I got nabbed by another inhuman that had mind control. The whole thing was…terrible and not important right now. I can tell you another time. But I killed people, I helped build a supervillain planet-wide mind-control system by giving him my blood. My field partner? I shattered his ribs and beat him to a bloody pulp, I choked out my best friend, I set my boyfriend up to take the fall for my crimes. When he pleaded with me to stop I called people dying beautiful. And I was under that control a lot longer than your two days."

The air in her lungs froze, a faint layer of ice spreading across her lips as the horror of that registered.

"It was different than your RedK that brought your darkest, worst impulses, it didn't change who I was like that, it just made me love him. His happiness, his wants, his everything was the most important thing in the world. All the grief and pain, everything that hurt in my head just was gone. I was perfectly happy. I went through withdrawal after Andrew died freeing me from Hive. But Lincoln, after I'd hurt our friends, hurt him, betrayed him in every way, he still loved me."

Daisy held her gaze, the weight left Kara speechless. "Lincoln died to protect me from what had happened, he shouldn't have, it should have been me, but he didn't care. And I don't know a lot about your life, but from what you've said, that's how your sister loves you. Probably how your J'onn loves you. If the cute photo dude has an ego that is taking you being less mean to him than most drunks at last call, he's not in love with you enough to be worth being this upset over. And like sure, maybe someday he could be, but he's not now. And if you want to date him, date him. Bruised ego or not he's into you, and I get it, he's hot. But don't twist yourself up in knots over nothing."

Kara couldn't help it, she reached out catching Daisy's free hand. "I'm sorry."

"It was two and a half years ago." Daisy turned her hand over, squeezing Kara's hand back. "What I'm trying to say, probably badly, is you're way too upset about something that isn't even your fault. And if he can't see that, it's his problem." She shrugged and pulled her hand back with a soft expression. "But I'm down for wingmanning if you want? He definitely cared about my existence."

She bit at her lip looking down into her half-empty bowl of dinner. "So much is happening and I don't…know?"

"Let me know if you change your mind." Daisy agreed easily. She smiled at her playfully. "But hot photojournalist is your type?"

"That's…I…maybe? I just felt all fluttery when I met him and he was so nice." Kara's shoulders slumped. "But then it's just been hard, and I feel stupid. Every time I try and do anything about it it goes wrong. Alex kept saying I just needed to take initiative but when I tried it just went terribly."

Daisy refilled Kara's glass of wine. "And being a superhero doesn't help. I managed one actual relationship in seven years of working as an agent. And it was a year of flirting before us being together for less than a month and then Hive." She paused, shifting slightly. "Dating with all the hero shit going on is like expert mode from hell."

That wasn't as long as Kal had been doing it, but the difference in length of time was only a few years. And Kara hurt at the reminder of the grief that came with being a hero. Grief had been Kara's companion since she was thirteen. "I wouldn't give up my ability to help people for anything. I love what I do, it matters. Even if they hate me, and I get hurt, that I bleed, it's worth it."

"You talk down so many bad guys, don't you?" Daisy was smiling at her.

Kara felt proud at that. It was stupid, but she felt proud cause she had, hadn't she? "Sometimes."

"The cape is very cool too, we weren't as big into capes in my world." Daisy tilted her head slightly. "We're depressing…just way too much. Come on, there has to be a rom-com and ice cream or something?"

Kara half snorted half giggled, she wasn't wrong. "Does your world have Disney?"

"Yup, Mulan, Fox and the Hound, Aladdin, and Robin Hood for life." Daisy grinned, "You?"

"I love all of them! But Snow White is my favorite!" Kara polished off her bowl of dinner. "Do you have the Lion King?"

Daisy nodded, "I cried when Mufasa died when we watched it on movie nights as a kid."

"So did I, I cried during a lot of Disney movies," Kara admitted.

Both of Daisy's hands rested on top of the table. "Pixar, I gross sobbed over Wall-E."

"Yes! It's just so sad, and his little robot hands!" Kara gestured to emphasize her point.

Daisy nodded, "And he's cleaning up garbage by himself and the loneliness. I started sniffling five minutes in and it didn't get better till the human characters showed up."

"I cry in the Notebook every time. It probably makes me a bad feminist but the end!" Kara had feelings about the end of the Notebook.

Daisy didn't seem exasperated like Alex over the romance film passion. "No, I get it. Not my favorite genre, but I get it. Sometimes the toxic mess is so good."

"Human relationships are so different and I was fascinated by it and now I just love it." Kara explained. "Also the harmony for the traffic light song? I could listen to it all day."

Daisy blinked, and then her face lit up. "Oh my god, your Notebook is a musical?! Please say you own it. That's amazing, do you know how many times I've had to watch that movie and your version involves singing? Wait, what other movies are musicals? Is The Devil Wears Prada a musical?"

Kara laughed, "I own it, and no, The Devil Wears Prada isn't a musical."

"Titanic?" Daisy eagerly asked as she slid to her feet, grabbing dishes. "What about The Godfather?"

"What's Titanic? And the Godfather isn't a musical, it's one of Alex's depressing movies." Kara pouted, rats, of course, her new friend would like Alex's movies.

Daisy blinked, "You didn't have a Titanic?"

"What's a Titanic?"

"TERMINATOR IS A MUSICAL!?"