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.
according to lynne i have sucked up all the inspiration in the apt, which is apparently a finite resource, so i guess i will be the one producing any writing today…….anyway here it goes. things i said when you met my parents. @narraboths said there was only one choice when i was given this prompt.
One second, Kara is flipping Lena’s omelette over in the pan with careful and steady precision, dancing to the Real Estate song pouring out of Lena’s way-too-big sound system, when the door opens.
It’s been three months of dating, two blissful months of having great sex, one month since Lena had insisted Kara take a key to her large off-campus apartment and told her to go get milk and kale on the way back from her radio journalism class. Kara had got the milk, some cookies, a giant bouquet of shitty grocery store flowers, and forgotten the kale, but Lena had kissed her anyway.
She had met Lena freshman year in their shared Intro to 18th Century Lit class, and they had been through a lot of nonsense to get to here – Kara had dated this shitty dude named Mike, Lena had nearly blown up their friendship group by dating James for three weeks sophomore year. But Kara had felt it this past summer, while Lena fell asleep on the phone because she was in Turkey with her brother and Kara listened. It would be this year that they would figure it out.
They had, and that was awesome. What was not awesome was Kara turning away from the electric stovetop and seeing someone other than Lena in the doorway, while wearing an FBI t-shirt reading Female Body Inspector (gifted from her sister in a fit of drunken Amazon shopping) and boxers covered in tiny little flying cupids. Last night, when Lena had taken them off of her before giving her some inspired head, she had said they were cute.
Imagine Alex’s plane isn’t brought down and Supergirl never comes to be.
J’onn is firmly Hank Henshaw, known alien opponent.
Kara is Cat Grant’s assistant with aspirations to, uhhhh, figure out her aspirations.
Kara’s on a coffee run when she hears something she hasn’t heard in a decade, a spoken word that shocks her so deeply she drops her coffee cup on the cafe floor. It’s a young voice screaming “help!” but the word is screamed in a language she learned as a child, one spoken on a planet light years from here.
She’s sprinting out the door before the barista is even done scolding her for the spill.
There are three people – well, two humans and a small, greenish creature Kara recognizes from her childhood textbooks – fighting in an alley. It’s clearly young and terrified, and the black-clad humans are rough as they pick it up and throw it down hard, earning another garbled scream.
Kara’s punching him before she can even really think about it, sending him sprawling into the trash. The other one pulls back from where he’d been holding the creature down to gawk at her only to snap back as well from her lightly placed kicked. They’re both out cold.
The creature stares at her and backs itself away, crawling on all fours and trembling, it’s gill-like facial features flaring up in an attempt to intimidate. Kara squats down low and holds her palms up, submissive, and says, “I’m not going to harm you,” in it’s language. Her words are rusty – it’s been years and years – but the creature perks up and lets out an excited trill. Much to her surprise, it latches on to her hand and begins dragging her quickly down the alley.
Kara just follows along, confused and increasingly concerned about who she just beat up and where she’s being taken, and soon finds herself in the middle of a very sketchy warehouse in an even sketchier part of town.
The critter begins to chirp away again, calling out words Kara’s childhood vocabulary don’t quite catch, and all at once the walls seem to shift around her and the empty place she was before is now swarming with aliens.
There are dozens of them all around her, some holding guns and knives, some just watching, and Kara realizes with a gasp just how much she messed up.
She shakes the critter’s hand off hers and moves to run only for her entrance to be blocked, and she wants to fly but she’s not even sure if she still knows how and now all of the aliens are continuing to speak in dozens of tongues she only vaguely recognizes and she’s about two seconds away from rushing the smaller one near the window when a loud voice calls in English,
“ENOUGH.”
Everyone goes silent, and an alien approaches her that looks almost human. There’s something off about their eyes, though, which give them away.
“You saved her from the feds,” the creature says. “You’re one of us, then?”
Kara’s mouth stutters a bit but no words come out – her instinct is to deny deny deny, but it’s been so long since she could just talk about her actual, real self, so she nods. The alien smiles, a smile too wide and sharp to be human.
“Thank you for doing that. Are there more from your planet here?”
She shakes her head, whispers, “all dead,” and the alien puts its slightly too large hand on her shoulder.
“We understand. Most of us came to escape death and inprisonment only to find the cycle continue on earth. But we can protect you, like you protected ours. We are a community. A resistance.”
Kara nods, her heart beating fast as the idea of a community, and says, “what are you resisting?”
“Those men who attacked you are from an evil group that tries to snuff out all aliens on this planet. They’re called the DEO.”
Kara can feel it in her pulse as it beats faster and faster, that feeling of purpose and meaning coming in to play. People like her are here and they need her help.
Kara only overhears the woman pleading with Mon-El thanks to superhearing, which she tries not to use these days. Maybe it’s that the voice is familiar, maybe it’s the drudgery of perimeter detail, or maybe Kara’s just had it with being a cog in the DEO’s machine.
They’re the public face of law and order now, since National City fell in the invasion. What few people remain don’t get much in the way of policing, but the DEO has taken over responsibility for most public services. There aren’t many resources, and people don’t much understand fairness when what they get is never enough.
Kara bites her tongue a lot, tells herself she’s lucky that Alex and Lena came up with a way to make her DNA pass for human. Being alien now is a death sentence, not that being human in a place like this makes anyone want to live.
“It’s not for me!” The woman insists, and Mon-El is clearly just as bored as Kara if he’s actually listening to a sob story. “It’s for my son, Carter.”
Witch!Maggie is raised with magic, but in secret. It’s passed down her mother’s line; how to make food filling and healing when times are lean, how to keep things out of the house, what to do when things slip in, and how to tell real people from Others. Her father doesn’t know, isn’t allowed to know; the age of science has made magic obsolete in most places.
But in the fields, the mountains, and the all the places electricity doesn’t smother every other kind of energy, magic thrives. Magic is necessary. Her father has to rely on science and evidence that can be verified by anyone and everyone. He can’t understand magic.
When Maggie is sent to her father’s sister, she keeps silent her small magics. She practices what she knows. She has to write down everything again; her mother didn’t slip her notebook into the suitcase. Maggie doesn’t want to think if it was a choice on her mother’s part.
Maggie wards every residence she calls her own. She keeps her skills up by working magic into her meals, keeps an Eye out for things that are neither human nor alien, and learns how to layer protective and notice-me-not magics into her clothing. Her patrol car, and later her Charger, are constant works in projects with weaving magic into machines. She never goes without her kevlar vest, but she doesn’t worry about grazes and headshots.
Her grandmother visits her once, and only once. She gives Maggie a candle that will never burn low. It’s meant to keep Maggie connected to the family magics. They light it together. Maggie never again sees her grandmother alive.
Maggie uses her magic on cases to follow energy trails, to hone in on ill intent and desperation and fear. She can pick out lies, can stare down suspects because they aren’t as scary or as clever as the Things in the cornfields of her childhood. She trades with pigeons treats for a direction to go in.
After her first two misadventures with Alex Danvers, Maggie waits for Alex to leave her jacket unattended before attacking it with enough protective magic to leak into every other piece of clothing it’ll touch over the next few days. The work leaves Maggie drained, but it’s worth it.
For Lucy, Maggie layers calm into Lucy’s uniform polos. Running a base is not easy, and while Lucy can handle it, Alex is, apparently, not the only idiot doing stupid shit to complete an objective.
Maggie always tries to get a hold their plates and take out boxes to pour magic into the food; health, safety, and relaxation are what she focuses on most. She plays with their hair, when she can, and hum the spells she can recall for faded nightmares and a restful sleep. (Never a sleep without nightmares; the mind needs to process things, this is known)
Maggie’s secret comes out when Alex is taken hostage. The attacking aliens abscond with her before Kara can reach the area. Kara can’t track Alex, and her sub-dermal tracker isn’t appearing. Maggie’s quick location spell points up.
Alex is on a spaceship. Maggie has no idea how to tell anyone that.
Not an hour after Alex is taken, she is delivered to the DEO by very apologetic aliens, who also turn themselves in. When Maggie runs over to Alex and wraps her in a hug, the aliens flinch away. They say, “We’re sorry. We will accept the punishment of taking who is yours.”
Alex, Lucy, Kara, and J’onn are giving Maggie confused looks. Maggie aims for the same. “What are you talking about?”
“We didn’t think humans remembered,” the aliens say. “We thought they have forgotten. But you remember, and you are powerful. We have no wish to challenge you.”
Maggie decides to use this to her advantage and deflect if possible. “Then please cooperate with us.”
They agree, and go with some agents without trouble.
Alex immediately focuses on Maggie. “They ran scans. They found some kind of energy on my gear, and it sure as hell isn’t kryptonite. Then they scanned the DEO. You lit up and made them PANIC. Babe, I don’t care what you are, I love you, but what is going on?”
Maggie looks at the four people who had stood by her for this long. Everything she has brought into their lives, good and bad, they have seen through to the end. “Do you believe in magic?”
upon learning Shuri is 16 in Black Panther, I quietly revise all my original shipping plans from “adults” to “Shuri is a hopeless baby lesbian with a crush on every single Dora Milaje and soon a big useless enormous crush on MJ, who is like a semi competent but mostly just grungy bisexual with a super popular twitter account that Shuri is obsessed with and MJ is s t o k e d about everything about Wakanda and tweets that she’s doing her senior research project on Wakandan tech and T’Challa, who follows his baby sister’s online crush’s twitter so he can forward Shuri the most embarrassing tweets that will make her furious (“YES BROTHER I DID SEE THAT SELFIE AND I DON’T NEED YOU TO REMIND ME OFF IT”), is like “this is the moment I was born for. This is why I became king” and tweets MJ like “we’re doing youth outreach, come to Wakanda, my very talented and smart and accomplished sister will give you a personal tour :)” and MJ and Shuri simultaneously die”
the Dora Milaje prepping for MJ’s visit by giving Shuri different and conflicting romantic advice until Okoye tells them it is against their sacred duty to torment the princess into a crush-induced panic attack because she cannot decide between her top twelve outfits and cool confident quips for making a good first impression
MJ meanwhile with Peter is repeatedly punching him in the arm because he just told her that he met T’Challa and she’s furious this hasn’t come up before, and also he’s Spider-man, but that’s not nearly as important as KING T’CHALLA WHAT, DID HE TALK ABOUT HIS SISTER AT ALL, MJ’S BEEN FOLLOWING ARTICLES ABOUT HER FOR YEARS AND SHE SEEMS DOPE AND CUTE AS HELL
Shuri, so excited and nervous that 10 percent of her attention is freaking out about how she can smell MJ oh no she smells so good, and 70 percent is on trying not to jitter so hard she thrums into a new plane of existence (and then the remaining 20 percent for figuring out cold fusion, nbd): HELOO M-UH-MMM- MICHELLE. DO YOU PREFER TO BE CALLED MICHELLE AND WELCOME TO MY BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY OF WAKANDA. WOULD YOU LIKE TO PHOTO WITH IT FOR YOUR INTERNET FRIENDS. I AM SHURI. YOU MUST KNOW THAT ALREADY. HAHA MY BROTHER TOLD YOU ABOUT ME. I WILL MURDER HIM.
MJ, who has spent the last ten minutes hiding in the bathroom applying deodorant to basically every non-face part of her body because she can’t stop sweating oh my god stop sweating you’re sweating on a three hundred year old chair in a sitting room in a palace in fuckin WAKANDA, and who is so stressed that she’s transcended the human for and is now astral projecting somewhere behind her own body, distantly pitying this new york punk gremlin who thought Formal Plaid was a good idea talk to a real ass honest to god genuine princess with a beautiful smile holding a small cat robot that she hand designed this afternoon on a whim: dope. I love murder. call me MJ
A year later, and I’m still not feeling the actual smut, but I think you’ll all enjoy (and maybe relate to) the lead up! Special thanks to @sapphicscholarwrites and BearsInCastles for the inspiration!
Googling didn’t help much. Alex didn’t really care what kind of advice that Maxim had for men… some of those tips sounded familiar and lack luster, as if every drunken hook up she’d ever had read the same articles.
After she checked the dates, she probably shouldn’t have been surprised, to be perfectly honest. They likely had.
Cosmo’s latest attempts were less than helpful. More recent attempts at inclusion were certainly creative, but as Alex flipped the magazine sideways, she wasn’t entirely sure they were anatomically possible. At least not for her current level of flexibility.
Maggie did yoga, she might have been able to bend that way, but it looked more painful than fun.
I’ll be honest, I have no idea where I would put them in that.
While I do read a/b/o stuff, I’m very critical of it when I do, and will turn back if it’s going a way I don’t like, which is, tbh, very easy for a/b/o stuff. I mostly look for stuff that gets into the world of it, and is less about the actual sex stuff. So, it isn’t really a universe setting I think about much.
For where Lucy/Maggie/Alex could go, I think arguments could go any way. I’m sure most people would go Alex Omega, Maggie Beta, Lucy Alpha because that matches the top/vers/bottom pattern a lot of people write them in.
But, as I said, arguments could be made for any combo, esp with how the plot goes, if it is a new thing to humans, if any suppressants are involved, stuff like that.
I see your tags of Alex as a beta being new and interesting and give you this AU in which Alex and Maggie don’t meet as they do in canon:
Alex has to hide her disappointment when she learns she’s a beta. No one cares about betas. Alphas are the large and in charge ones, and omegas are the only ones alphas ever look at. Neither wants a beta when there’s a chance to get the other. She knows she’s just gonna have to settle for another beta. And, sure, there might be a beta she actually falls in love with, but she is bitter about being ignored by 2/3’s of the population.
(Sometimes, Alex can convince herself she would’ve made a shit alpha and too desperate an omega.)
Question of Smoke 