Take What You Want

dhaskoi:

Cat still has a balcony and it
still has one hell of a view.  It may not
be quite as impressive as the view from the office in the building that still
has her name on the side, but Washington D.C at night is nothing to scoff
at.  Especially when you can see the
White House in the distance and know you’re one of the people who keeps the
place running.

Sometimes Cat thinks the balcony
was a mistake.  If she’s honest with herself,
she only wanted it for the unspoken promise it embodies.  There are things that can still happen so
long as she has a balcony.  Possibilities
that still exist, however unlikely they may be.
An apartment without a balcony would have been an admission, one that
she hardly dares put into words.  Instead
she has a balcony that never serves its intended purpose.  What hurts more?  A dream unfulfilled or a dream surrendered?

Still, when the last of the work
is done and she’s showered and cleansed and changed into her pyjamas, a few minutes
observing the D.C skyline by night with a glass of scotch in hand makes a nice
ritual to close out the day.  And if
she’s foolish enough to indulge in a moment or two of nostalgia, no one but her
will ever know.

Telling herself that thoughts
this maudlin are a sign of the mid-life crisis she refuses to have, Cat turns
to head inside and go to bed when the unexpected occurs.  For a moment she imagines it was summoned by
her errant thought.

The familiar whoosh of displaced
air and rustle of a cape alert Cat to a familiar presence before the shadow
falls across her balcony.  A smile is
already curling at her lips as she turns to face her surprise visitor, a
suitable quip coming to mind.

The smile fades and the witty
remark dies in her mouth as she takes in the scene.

It’s Kara of course, and yet
not.  Cat knows at once what she’s
looking at, even as a hard ball of ice forms in her stomach and chills her from
the bone out.

It’s there in the hard set of her
shoulders, the imperiously raised chin and the cocky tilt to her hips as she
floats over Cat, just high enough that Cat must crane her neck to look to look
into dark, dark eyes.  The warning signs
are etched so deep in Cat’s memory that she doesn’t need to see their black
fury to know what’s happening.  Looking
into those eyes is just the last piece of evidence that eradicates any doubt and
crystallises the knowledge that this is a reality she must deal with, not a
nightmare she can hope to wake up from.

“Not happy to see me, Kitty Kat?”
Kara says, almost purring.

Even in
this awful moment, Cat can’t help but give her credit for making the pun purely
with the tone of her voice.

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