Soulmates: Chapter XXX
(Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29)
The room was dark. Cat awoke to a dry throat, balm on her lips, and some faint surprise that she had awoken at all. The sense of surprise was incremental like a bruise in her conscience that pressed and announced the state of things; an ending meandering towards itself in its own good time.
It was coming undone now.
It was the hard to ignore feeling that Kara had brought her home here in dribbles over the months, by the canvas tote bag, until the hospital became somewhat hybrid because...there wasn’t a home to go back to at the end of this.
Silk pyjamas, curled on her side most days with little movement, in a different bed than her original room, Cat still had zero regrets—plenty of complaints. Not the change of scenery. This room was bigger and much more comfortable with real pillows and comforters that smelled like home, stayed smelling like home, vanilla and old books and a touch of essence, Kara laundered them with the right things—in just the right ways—despite it never being asked, not once.
The view beyond this window was better. Cat didn’t know it was possible. It looked over the lower side, at just the right angle, so she could see her building sprouting tall in the distance like a solitude creature in the skyline; her radiant, proud, towering life’s work.
In the world of treatment, timeframes and ordinate doctors, it was never a good sign when they pulled out stops. They ceased with incessant disapproval about the champagne; no side glances to the empty ice bucket, then the two giggling grown-ups indiscreetly discrete about it, with water marks on top of the ugly, dinged steel cabinet that had been hidden away beneath a patterned silk kimono to make it somewhat less ghastly. The doctors said nothing anymore. Things had gotten bad, all the paths ahead leading nowhere but champagne.
Cat saw it all for what it was and she did not mind.
The dog on sore knees and silver whiskers always found its good fortunes when the six cheeseburgers arrived for dinner after a long day of good, lovely things; Cat took the champagne, every drop, until her hands struggled somewhat, and then Kara proved most useful for that too.
Kara seemed to mind a great deal despite saying she didn’t mind at all.
Her refusal to leave seemed quite indicative. Against the adjacent wall there was a camping cot. Cat squinted and saw the huddled shape of a Kara-sized lump. Moonlight struck a distinct, bolting sheen of light through the cracked blinds. It fell across the blonde hair on the pillow as Kara laid turned to the wall. Cat saw the sleeping cot when she was awake in sporadic jaunts through the day, a distinct wrinkle in the made-up blankets, yet she had never seen Kara sleep much—if ever—at all.
Cat smiled and sincerely hoped that even through the hard times there were still lovely dreams for the foolish, optimistic, loyal Kara Danvers of the world. The girls who, despite crippling anxiety, run from their doldrum lives while shaking in their boots for what is waiting at the finish line. The ones with good hearts who say horrible things anyway. The people who, without merit or reward, stick it out until the very end.
She closed her eyes. Tiredness came with immediacy despite the good long sleep, which wasn’t anything new anymore. Laying there, she became aware of her body—the proximate parts of her skin. Her face. Her hands. Her lips. It was a comfort that Cat hadn't expected for the last stretch of her days, back when the news arrived last year, her mind immediately wandering, there while they talked prognosis, simultaneously not there, running through all sorts of sad notions.
This had never been considered. The clean, balmy tack of solid deodorant under her arms. Her face clean and moisturised—the full Korean programme—cleansed, swiped with toner, then serum and ampule, moisturised, then moisturised some more. She could tell from the slipperiness of the silk pants on her shins that her legs had been shaved too, which was silly, almost obsessive, and she rolled her eyes because it felt too much. Then it didn't feel silly. Cat sat with her thoughts, for the briefest moment, then hurried her mind elsewhere.
It got her throat a little tight otherwise.
Cat didn't need to ask some underpaid stranger to help her use the bathroom, that was the main thing, that had been the big fear. There was preservation to her dignity. A procedural silliness to it. Kara carrying her some days, dipping around the room, supporting her waist on others, joking about conga lines, but always hanging by the door for just a moment too long with something in her eyes.
“Yeah?” Cat glared the first time.
“Sometimes it takes looking at just the right woman, on just the right commode, to realise you do have a pee fetish after all—”
“Do you say that to all the girls?”
“Oh just the ones who get my name off their skin with a Bic lighter and some sense of determination for a better life. Shout if you need anything.” Kara always left it right there, on the line, precisely between silliness and respect.
The spritz of perfume. The little mirror set-up on the bed tray so she could check her lipstick. Things were coming undone, rapid and quickening. Catherine still felt entirely her own creature. She felt respected. She felt like a woman. She felt beautiful, human, and as though her life still had some good moments ahead too.
Cat closed her eyes and took herself for a brief waltz. She never used to sleep easy. She slept in this rare, sporadic and fraught way that dictated her understanding of how assistants should model themselves. Cat slept much easier now. It came to her as a form of escape; a prolonged dream of warm days, that she could pick up and put down, consistent and reliable; the mid-eighties, the first sports car she ever purchased—a boxy little thing with head lamps that came up mechanically from the hood when the engine started—and taut, tight twenty-something year old eyes in the rear-view mirror.
Good skin, great hair, and a silk navy blouse without tags in the collar anymore.
Her memories were worth reliving. The initial success of the magazine had brought a wave of correctness to her young, youthful life; there would be no more returns, no more tags, not ever, Catherine always knew what she wanted, always stood by it.
Plus it felt good spending money.
In her dreams it all came back to her, the early days, when money was a new thing and her attitude towards it was young, gauche and cavalier. Her life had gone from some humdrum, boring, cycling food menus back-and-forth to afford a Vanity Fair; into everything Catherine had ever dreamed overnight, with immediacy, all in the blink of an eye. Thirteen with ladylike ideas of herself one moment, twenty-three and put-together the next.
In her mid-twenties she lived very fine. A demitasse with her coffee in the morning. A caviar spoon—carved from precious mother of pearl with her name engraved along the handle—that coincidentally proved to be just the right size for a less than conservative blast of cocaine.
Catherine Grant never did think much of caviar.
In her dream, Cat dipped into an enormous bump with the Tiffany’s spoon, true to the old days as it had all once been, back when it was a procedural and professional thing to do; she drove, with the top down, men in suits with blowing ties in the passenger seats talking numbers for a local news network that she wanted to purchase.
It was the delicious, perfectly precise moment right at the very start of the CatCo expansion.
Cat rubbed her nose and didn’t care, not particularly knowing much about the mechanics of the business or what she was getting herself into, simply giddy and away with it all. It was a smash and grab way of living; an economic boom that had arrived precisely the same time she did, with skyscrapers sprouting up, stock prices up-ticking, Duran Duran and Pet Shop Boys, and it felt good to remember.
She wondered if that was what people had meant when they said life flashes before one’s eyes at the end. The best parts, the things that were worth remembering, they had come back to her in a loud, bright, and colourfully trumpeting hello; there were no hospice-shaped goodbyes, not in her nineteen-eighties.
Cat had never told Kara the majority of these things for her story spread. She regretted withholding some of the details. On some level, the messy things; the candour, the ruthless and cut-throat bad things she had done too would have made a much more exciting read.
One Kara wouldn't have enjoyed learning about.
Cat kept things abridged for the sake of her own image. Maybe just a bit to protect the little fool too—her little fool—who had come to believe in fairies and giants, and that Catherine Grant was somehow both of these things.
“Kara?” Cat murmured with her eyes still closed—aware time had moved.
“Mhm. I’m here. Are you ready for something to eat?”
There was a distinct pressure on her bed as though someone had sat down. Then a shift in weight, legs pulling up, until Cat felt someone laying beside her. She opened her eyes. It was daytime, bright and warm, Kara laying there in clean clothes and damp hair and a cheek settled against Cat’s ribs.
“I’m not hungry just yet.” Cat observed the distinct, persistent lack of hunger or thirst as a symptom of progress. “Is there a reason you’re laying all over me like some sort of remedial, drooling and rather overly personable puppy?”
“Because it’s a small bed and the best view of the television. Lena has a live broadcast interview airing this morning.” Kara nudged her to look at the photographs and exposition on screen, glancing up with the most tender and excited blue eyes. “I took her for lunch yesterday. She was so nervous about it but we practiced, and I think.” She didn’t seem so confidant. “Well. You know. I think…she’ll do great.”
“Ha!” Cat’s chest hurt from the push of her lungs. “She is terrible in front of cameras. The worst social anxiety. Enjoy the rest of your forever, kiddo.”
“Hush,” Kara said, the silly mood detectable, slinging an arm over Cat’s waist absentmindedly. “I still love that boy, Daddy, think I might just go ahead and be his wife one day.” She joked and parroted the hammy, transatlantic accent in all of the old classic films she had been forced to watch over the last few weeks.
“Alright. You don’t like Turner Classic Movies. We can watch other things if you’re going to be fucking petulant.”
“Not true.” Kara gawked, her brow furrowing. “Why do you think I put them on?”
Cat smiled, not saying anything, trying very hard not to think too much about anything, just watching the television as it all went by, and the interview carried alright enough.
Lena remembered her name.
Surprisingly, she even remembered Kara’s too.
Now the world knew Lena Luthor had found love again and Kara Danvers, soon to be Luthor, would be wearing white in the spring.
“What colour do you think I should wear for your wedding?” Cat felt a certain sudden possession on her soul. Aware she wasn’t going to make the day, just not quite ready yet. “I think floral, maybe something with a little colour?” she whispered.
Kara didn’t say anything for a moment, she laid there, cheek to her ribs, arm slung like a seat belt, thinking about it or holding in her tears, but Cat had grown somewhat expert in not thinking about things, and so she didn’t think about it.
“Navy blue,” Kara quietly replied, an absolute certainty in the rasp of her voice. “You should wear that navy silk blouse, and the matching-coloured pants. I would like that. Will you sit close to the front?”
The smoke struck and the sting grew tense.
“Well, I am Catherine Grant”—she said the line often, it was different this time, meant something very different altogether—“I should be as close to the front as possible.”
It was Kara who cried first, which felt more of a surprise than it should have been. Cat had not seen any tears, for months, for this whole thing, not since the argument on the doorstep.
It had been a good thing.
Yet there Kara finally was, a little contained mess, and Cat felt a warmth flood her heart at the sight of these little stinging tears and the corner of her blanket suddenly repurposed as a hanky.
“It’s okay.” The whimpers on her ribs huffed in breaths that tickled. “We’re going to have so much fun at your wedding. You’ll see. But, you know, I don’t think I’ll be drinking on the day.” Cat wasn’t very good at joking but she kept her tone as bouncy and light as she could. “Will you have two glasses when they get you dressed in the morning? One for you, one for me?”
“You’re the meanest woman I ever met and I want you there on my wedding day.” Kara grabbed a slender wrist and brought it around herself. Cat didn’t know what to do, but she allowed herself to be turned into a seat belt, quite determined to keep the little girl safe for now. “It’s supposed to be you and me. On my wedding day. And I…” Cat grew tense. “I’m getting dressed in the morning and I don’t know what to do, what shoes to wear, feeling ugly and awkward, because I always feel ugly and awkward. But you would be there. You would do the thing you do.”
Kara inhaled and seemed to decide if she couldn’t have the real thing, they would just have to make a wedding day, here and now; put it in her heart and tuck it away for later.
“You grab my shoulders and do the awful mean thing you do with words—but in the Catherine Grant way—that puts everything into perspective.” Kara nuzzled with the saddest smile one woman could possess. “And we look in the mirror together at my wedding dress. It’s not me and my mom. Or, me and my sister. It’s supposed to be you and me—” The tears marched in and they didn’t stop this time. “And I get to see myself different because you fixed whatever thing I didn’t realise needed fixing, something only you could fix, and suddenly I get to feel beautiful and attractive and put-together and ready for it all, like I can go and marry Lena Luthor, because you are there.”
“It’ll be your glasses and your earrings.” Cat moved some hair off her face with gentle fingers. “Take your glasses off and make sure your earrings match either the bouquet or your eyes. And, in God’s name, whatever you do please don’t release doves. It’s tacky and gross—”
“You’re the most hateful person I know.”
“You’re the most irritating, foolish and blindly-optimistic woman I have ever had the displeasure of tolerating an elevator ride with much less the final months of my life.” Cat rolled her eyes, then dramatically softened her tone. “And I want to be there on your wedding day too, Kara, very much, so for now I’m saying that I am going to be there.”
“You’re going to be there.” Kara understood what was being asked of her. “Cat?”
“I figured it out—by the way.”
“The thing you said you had originally figured out for your article?”
“Mhm.” Kara nodded. “The thing I was trying to…capture.”
“No.” Cat felt angry. “We agreed. I understand it’s your story too. I understand it’s a big request—but it’s one you agreed too. I do not want reporters making insinuations or asking Lena for the rest of her life whether there was a rift between us after she proposed to ‘my soulmate’ while I was dying of cancer. Does that sound like a fluffy, nice portrait piece for either of you?”
“Cat.” Kara pushed up on her arms. Cat glanced, noticed the tautness, the biceps, the blonde hair sitting crooked in her blue eyes. “You said you didn’t want an obituary and I don’t want to write it. You were right, with what you said, and I want to put that perspective in the story. Most of all because I am selfish and it…keeps you alive, forever, beyond always.”
“I’m always right, be specific.”
“Soulmates.” Kara had this emphatic look in her eyes. “It’s bullshit. It’s…” Kara paused. “I think it’s not the universe designing perfect marriages. You could have more than one perfect marriage, or more than one great love. Look at Lena. I met other people too. I even met a woman once who loved two boys, both called Harry, and I think she preferred the wrong one more.” Kara’s eyes flickered and brought thoughts together into words.
Cat grinned too big for her cheeks.
“The first one tattooed her name on his arm just so she would talk to him,” Kara whispered, astounded and romanticising new things. “Isn’t that the most beautiful little thing you ever heard?”
“Maybe.” Cat nodded. “So, hurry it along. If it’s not romance—then what?”
A slow smile, a deep inhale, the optimist blinked slowly and looked like a scared little girl who needed to believe her own dreamy outlook.
“I think it’s a buddy-system.” Kara propped her chin on her hand and stared off. “I think we come from star dust, on some great adventure, some big school bus trip down to earth, and that’s your person—your unconditional person—on your birthmark.” Kara adjusted her weight, lifted the hem of her shirt and trailed a finger over something that had once been important. “It’s not romance. It’s not even love sometimes. It’s the person who understands how to care for you in the right ways in the exact moment you need it. And you, ballsy and knowing everything, decided you weren't in the business of taking care of people.” Her expression exaggerated as though it were enough explanation.
Cat didn’t understand Kara’s point.
“Sorry if it still gives you a boo-boo in your feelings?”
“It doesn’t.” Kara scoffed, impressed by it this time. “You were only nineteen years old, and you knew, despite all of human history and the entire world insisting you...force yourself into the idea of marriage?” Kara smiled. “In your very Catherine Grant way—you set your eyes on bigger things. You did it all for yourself. You were selfish, and you were better off for it, you had the biggest life and chased all your dreams. I think…” Kara inhaled. “I think people should fall in love more, with different people, different things, for different reasons at different points in their life. Not just take the safe bet or the road mapped out for them. I think you are my buddy-up person. I think I’m yours. We found each other to take care of right when we both needed a little help, and that?” There was a forced calmness in her tight throat. “That is a happy ending, it's our happy ending, because nobody in my life has ever got it quite so right as helping me grow the way you have, Catherine.”
It struck her right in the heart.
“You sound like you have found your story.” Cat pushed a smile. “I don’t think I was ever wife material. I think, probably, I made a much better…” She sighed and didn’t know what to say. “I liked listening to your perspective, but I don’t think I’m much of a buddy either.”
“Just my person then.” Kara patted her hand, teeth on the rim of her lip as she staved off the tears. “A person I probably would have married if I had been born thirty-years earlier.” She tilted her head and left it at that.
“Mhm. Well, let’s just get you to the alter of your actual wedding.”
“She is going to be quite the bride,” Kara grinned.
Here it was, Cat realised.
“You’ll be a good girl won’t you?”
“For Lena?” Kara softened. “I’ll eat healthy and take care of myself just so I outlive her, yeah. I think she’s earned that much.”
“No, no.” Cat shook her head and—for the first time in her life—felt stupid. “Just, in general. You’ll be a good girl, and find all those different things to fall in love with, and never lose your optimism and keep trying to do good things for people?”
“Like you do?” Kara gave her the sarcastic look.
“Mhm.” Kara smiled sweetly and pecked the back of Cat’s hand with a chaste kiss. “Will you be a good girl? You’ll get home safe—wherever it is we’re all going in the end. Tell everyone I said hello?”
“Still a pretty little girl to me.” Kara was not joking and her expression said as much too.
Cat felt those words puncture through her soul.
“Thank you.” Cat stroked Kara’s hair. “Really. For everything, for coming around, but for that too. I can’t even remember the last time somebody dared to speak to me like that.”
“Well, you are a pretty little girl,” Kara murmured as she settled a cheek back on her belly. “You should consider yourself lucky. If I had been born thirty years earlier? Your life would have looked a lot different. I could have married a pretty little girl like that.”
“Nah,” Cat said with a shake of her head. “I'm selfish, Kara, not made for taking care of others—never was made that way.”
