Work Text:
i.
The first time, leaving Morgan Edge on a freight ship off the coast is impulsive, a reaction to his thinly veiled threat to Lena and the sneer he paints across his face when he sees Supergirl. Kara grabs him without a plan beyond ‘wipe the bravado off his face’, and she sets them down on the cargo ship more because he’s dangerously close to squirming out of her grip than any sort of forethought. Even as irritating as he is, she doesn’t want to actually hurt him. Much. It isn’t until she’s standing on top of the stack of shipping containers, throwing his own words back at him and surrounded by the open ocean, that she realises that maybe what Edge needs is some time and perspective to realise exactly who he was picking a fight with.
His cries of “You can’t just leave me here!” echo behind her as she flies away, and Kara’s surprised to find she’s grinning as she crosses over the coastline.
He’s back on dry land soon enough. Kara didn’t take his phone from him, and all it takes is one very annoyed call to the mayor before there’s a Coast Guard chopper on its way to retrieve him, radioing curt orders to a very confused ship captain.
The story makes Lena chuckle when Kara recounts it later, and the sound of it washes warmly through her as she realises how long it’s been since she’d heard Lena laugh.
“Do tell Supergirl that I can handle him on my own. I’m sure she has more important things to be doing,” Lena says as Kara stands to leave, but she’s still smiling and Kara shakes her head.
“I’ll tell her, but I think she enjoyed it. It’s fun poking holes in an ego like that,” Kara says, and Lena laughs again.
ii.
The second time is slightly more thought out, only because Kara has more than thirty seconds to decide how to deal with him. She’s with James and Lena in Cat’s old office, the three of them working through five years of CatCo’s quarterly reports. Lena’s translating them from Financial Legalese for James and Kara so they can translate the media jargon into something she can understand, and Kara can feel a headache building behind her eyes. Cat had made it look so easy, but between the three of them they’re working it out. Lena is an excellent businesswoman, and between them James and Kara know enough about the journalism and entertainment industry to fill in the gaps between a media empire and a tech development company.
They’ve been at it for hours, though, and Kara’s attention is starting to wander. Her gaze drifts around the room until she spots an unfortunately familiar face on one of the several screens behinds Cat’s desk. Edge is ranting angrily to a group of reporters, and the banner at the bottom of the screen reads “Takeover deal falls through: Edge outbid for CatCo majority.” Lena notices Kara’s inattention and follows her sightline to see what’s distracted her, and Kara feels her go still beside her as James unmutes the television.
Kara feels her gaze go flat as she watches the report, and when Edge starts using words like ‘duplicitous’, ‘underhanded’, and ‘illegal takeover’ she stands abruptly, shoving herself away from the couch in a jerky movement. Lena and James both look at her, Lena with her head tilted in confusion and James with his eyes widened in warning, and Kara catches herself with her hands at her collar before she remembers that Lena doesn’t know.
“I, um, bathroom…” she stutters out, backing towards the door.
She waits until Edge is out of the press pack, away from the view of the cameras before she grabs him, because they’re broadcasting live and Lena’s smart enough to put the pieces together if Kara disappears just as Supergirl shows up on her screen. Edge squeaks once when Kara first picks him up, then starts swearing and struggling, but once he realises the ground is falling away underneath him he falls silent and goes rigidly still.
Kara angles herself towards the harbour, because leaving Edge in the middle of the ocean had worked last time. He’d gone radio – and media – silent for days afterwards, which had given Lena the time she needed to wrap her head around the fact that she’d just spent millions of dollars on a company she didn’t actually know how to run. Kara had spent one evening talking her down from a deceptively understated freak-out, and she knows that the added pressure of Edge screaming to every reporter he could find wouldn’t have helped matters.
Edge tries to speak once, when he realises where they’re heading, but Kara speeds up until the wind snatches his words away. She deposits him roughly on the top of a stack of shipping containers, and lands beside him, grinning inwardly when the wind makes her cape flick out dramatically.
“You can’t do this again!” Edge declares, climbing to his feet clumsily as the boat shifts beneath them just enough to mess with his balance. “I’ll sue you!”
Kara tilts her head and narrows her eyes, giving him a look of contempt that she learned from Cat Grant. “You can try,” she tells him, then takes a step backwards and lets herself fall as he snarls curses at her.
The entire trip takes her just over ten minutes, and Lena shoots her a quizzical look when she returns. Kara mutters something about having to use a bathroom on another floor, then brightens when she notices a new box of doughnuts on the table, no doubt delivered by one of Lena’s many assistants. She claims a jam-filled one as she drops back down next to Lena, happily noting that the ‘to-do’ pile is now significantly smaller than the ‘done’ one and her headache is gone.
iii.
It’s not until after the third time that it dawns on Kara what she’s been doing.
“You put him where?” Alex asks her incredulously, stopping in the corridor of the DEO to stare at her with wide eyes.
“On the cargo boom of that ship in the harbour.” Alex is still staring at her, face somewhere between amused and horrified. “They got him down,” Kara mumbles defensively, and Alex shakes her head and starts walking again.
“You put Morgan Edge, millionaire property developer, in a time-out?”
“No!” she objects, but then stops to think about it. “Um, actually… maybe?”
Alex shakes her head again as she unlocks her lab and ushers Kara through the door. “Lucy is gonna kill you. There’s no way this isn’t generating massive amounts of paperwork for her.”
Kara pouts and crosses her arms. “He was threatening Lena,” she mutters, and Alex rolls her eyes.
“He announced that he was investing in her competitors, Kara. I don’t think that counts as a threat.”
“He’s a bully. I don’t like bullies.”
“So your solution is to become a bigger bully?” Kara doubles down on the pouting, and Alex shakes her head again. “Would you be doing this if it was Cat instead of Lena?”
Kara scoffs. “I wouldn’t have the chance. Cat would’ve squashed him under the weight of his own ego by now.”
Alex concedes the point with a tilt of her head, but doesn’t let it drop like Kara was hoping. “James, then?” she presses, and Kara lets her weight drop back against the wall and refuses to meet her eye.
“Yes,” Kara says, but she’s lying and judging by the look on her sister’s face, Alex knows it. “I just…she’s trying so hard, Alex. To get away from what being a Luthor means. I’m worried Edge is gonna drag her down to his level.”
Alex’s gaze softens. “And putting him in ship-based time outs helps with that?”
“It makes him seem silly. And it makes her laugh.”
Alex rolls her eyes again. “Oh, well, if it makes your girlfriend laugh, then by all means continue humiliating the vindictive millionaire,” she says sarcastically, struggling to keep a straight face as Kara splutters.
“Wha—girlfriend? Lena isn’t—we don’t—she’s not…”
Kara’s still stuttering out denials as Alex laughs and pushes her towards the door. “Of course. My mistake,” she says, but there’s insincerity all over her face as the door slides shut between them.
iv.
The sixth time is probably, Kara admits, slightly less justified than the others. Edge is certain to have done something to deserve it, though, and if he hasn’t yet, he will soon. It’s pre-emptive, in case he does something when she’s not looking and absolutely not because she’d already been in a bad mood and seeing his smug face staring back at her from a billboard had annoyed her to the point where she’d gone looking for him.
Said bad mood is because of a string of violent robberies using alien weapons that the DEO was having trouble tracking down, Kara would insist if asked, and completely unrelated to the scene she’d interrupted at L-Corp, when she’d noticed that the light in Lena’s office was still on and had flown up to investigate.
What she sees when she gets there is James and Lena on the couch, and for one, brief, heart-stopping moment she thinks they’re kissing. But no, they’re merely sitting with their heads bowed together as James points at something on the tablet in Lena’s lap, and they both look up when Kara misjudges her height and clips the railing of the balcony with her boot.
“Supergirl,” Lena says warmly as Kara lands just outside the door like that’s what she’d meant to do all along, like she hadn’t been hovering outside watching her friends through the window like a creeper. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Ms Luthor, Mr Olsen,” Kara says, striding into the room and resolutely ignoring the feeling bubbling in her chest because it isn’t jealousy. “I saw the light on and wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”
Lena smiles, and Kara’s briefly distracted by how it lights up her face. “No rest for the wicked, I’m afraid. James was just helping me with some of the clauses in CatCo’s HR policies.” She motions to the spread of papers on the coffee table in front of them, and when Kara focuses she picks the word ‘fraternization’ off the screen of the tablet on her lap. “You’re welcome to join us, if you like,” she offers, which strikes Kara as odd when she thinks about it later, because Lena has no reason to think that Supergirl knows anything about corporate law.
She doesn’t notice that in the moment, though, because she’s focused on the way the pair of them are sitting close enough for their knees to bump together. She feels herself dropping into her Supergirl pose automatically as she eyes them, and shakes her head. “I wouldn’t want to intrude,” she says, her tone flatter than she intended but apparently out of her control, and the not-jealousy claws at her heart as they both blanch and shift away from each other.
Lena’s “You wouldn’t be,” is the only phrase she picks out of the jumble of words that follow as they trip over each other to deny that anything that could be intruded upon is happening, but Kara still takes a step back as Lena stands, her hands twitching like she wants to reach for the hero but is holding herself back.
“Don’t stay too late,” Kara murmurs, and then turns quickly and disappears out the door because she can see in James’s face that she sounds too much like Kara and not enough like Supergirl. Lena inhales to say something, but Kara’s airborne before the words pass her lips.
She leaps off the balcony feeling unaccountably irritable, and when she first sees the billboard she’s tempted to heat vision it into oblivion. She stops herself, though, and instead just keep her hearing tuned for Edge’s voice as she flies aimlessly through the city.
She feels somewhat vindicated when she finds him in a swanky bar, buying a drink for a woman who’s trying to politely decline. She waits until he’s paid the bored-looking bartender, then lands behind him and taps his shoulder. His eyes widen slightly in either surprise or anger, but before he can say anything, Kara hefts him into a fireman’s carry, smiles brightly at the woman he was harassing, and takes off the way she came.
Edge’s curses follow her across the water as she flies back to the city, but she finds that they buoy her spirit less than usual. She does one final pass of L-Corp on her way home, and she’s surprised to see that Lena’s office is dark. Movement down near the front door draws her eye, and she focuses her vision to see Lena leaving, alone save for the security guard, and the feeling in Kara’s chest eases.
She doesn’t miss the way that Lena scans the sky before dropping into her car, though if she spots her, Kara can’t tell.
v.
After the seventh time, the DEO gets a very plaintive message from the Coast Guard, routed through several channels and ultimately delivered by an amused Maggie, asking if Supergirl could please stop leaving the angry billionaire on boats because their helicopter pilots were starting to complain. Edge was not a grateful rescuee, and the task of flying out to retrieve him had apparently become something of a punishment detail.
The mayor is also doing the political version of screaming bloody murder, but Kara finds that she can bare his displeasure with enormous fortitude. She’s caught him staring at Lena’s breasts too many times to be overly bothered with what he thinks, and the fact that she’s indirectly making his like more difficult is only an added bonus, as far as she’s concerned.
She does feel bad for the Coast Guard pilots, though, and she makes a point of flying over to their headquarters and personally apologising to them. She gets a very polite lecture from the captain, a woman who seems like she’s not used to delivering polite lectures but is aware she’s talking to Supergirl, and Kara promises to stop leaving Edge in her jurisdiction.
She doesn’t promise to stop altogether, though. She spends the flight back thinking of another solution, and by the time Edge opens his stupid mouth to say something idiotic, she’s come up with another plan.
“The zoo? Really?” Lena says, muting the screen showing footage of Edge shying away from a curious baby penguin as Kara strolls into her office.
Kara shrugs, trying to supress her smile. “Supergirl said it seemed appropriate. She wanted to put him in with the other turkeys, but penguins were as close as she could find.”
Lena shakes her head gently, a strange expression playing across her face. “Please tell Supergirl that those poor animals don’t deserve that,” she says, and Kara frowns. She hadn’t thought of that. “Also, I feel like the Coast Guard is better equipped to deal with him than some poor zookeeper. They’re armed, for a start.”
Kara smiles at that. “I don’t know. Zookeepers are used to dealing with animals,” she points out, and Lena laughs.
vi.
The eleventh – or twelfth? Kara’s lost track – time is more out of necessity than anything else. Lena’s holding a press conference, despite Kara’s best attempts to talk her out of it because Lena plus cameras has proven to attract trouble, a risks not minimised by the fact that she’s publicly invited Edge. It was yet another move in the complicated game of power between them, apparently incomprehensible to anyone without a business degree and insane amounts of money.
Kara’s in the press pack, towards the back but close enough to the stage that Lena can see her. She’s ostensibly there as a representative from CatCo, but she knows James sent someone else to actually cover the event because he knows Kara’s attention will be elsewhere.
Lena’s almost a full page into her speech, which might be a record, when a tingle of warning runs down Kara’s spine. A familiar metallic click from somewhere behind her alerts her, and she’s already turning when she hears the bang. She instinctively catches the tiny object that shoots past her face, but she doesn’t register what it is until someone at the back of the crowd screams “Gun!”
Time seems to slow as the press pack dissolves into chaos and Kara’s reflexes kick into high gear. There’s a flash in the corner of her vision, and she turns to see another bullet flying towards the podium, gliding almost serenely through the air in Kara’s super-speed-enhanced eyes. She’s painfully aware that she’s dressed as Kara, not Supergirl, and surrounded by people, but a quick glance over her shoulder tells her exactly where the bullet will hit Lena if she doesn’t stop it, and she leaps to catch it without further hesitation.
The first bullet makes a dull clinking sound as she drops it to close her fist around the second, though the sound is lost to anyone without superhuman hearing. There’s nothing but chaos around her, and Kara spares half a second to glance over her shoulder again and freezes. Lena had ducked down behind her lectern when the shooting had started, but Kara can still see her. And Lena can see Kara. Her eyes are wide and focused not on the hooded figures slowly advancing towards her, but instead on Kara’s hand, and Kara’s brain short-circuits in panic until another bullet slams into her shoulder.
It snaps her back into fight-mode, and she uses the momentum of the impact to spin around and scramble towards the stage, diving under it at a hopefully believably human speed, even though she’s pretty sure that ship has sailed at this point. She’s shed her clothes and into her suit in half a second, and she shoots out the other side, hoping that nobody’s paying enough attention to notice Supergirl emerging from the same place Kara Danvers is hiding.
She hovers low over the battlefield, keeping herself between Lena and the hooded figures. There’s six of them, and they all have an odd sheen to their skin that makes Kara squint. A quick glance with her x-ray vision reveals metal and wires instead of flesh and blood, and Kara almost rolls her eyes because of course angry robots would show up at Lena’s press conference. They’re moving in mindless unison, shooting in a steady rhythm, though only three of them are focused on Lena. The other three are headed towards Edge, where he’s cowering behind a statue, and it’s clear that both of them are targets.
Kara leans forwards and hits one of the robotic attacker with her heat vision, but they’re obviously heat resistant because her target barely slows. The others are still advancing steadily, and although they’re ignoring the civilians, they’re also terrible at aiming and there are several people with gunshot or shrapnel wounds. Kara takes about half a second to decide that the best course of action is to move Lena somewhere else, both because the robots might stop shooting if they lose sight of their target, and because the need to keep her safe is pounding through Kara’s chest.
She swoops backwards towards Lena and wraps an arm around her waist. “Hold on to me,” she says, but Lena’s arms are already snaking around her shoulders. She takes off, feeling more bullets ping off her back, and is just about to shoot off when she spots Edge. The statue he’s hiding behind has almost been pounded to dust, and she knows that by the time she’s put Lena somewhere safe and come back it might be too late.
Later, in the privacy of her own head, Kara will admit that she almost, almost left him. His actions over the last few months had firmly convinced her that the world would be a better place without him in it, but at the last second she finds she can’t do it. Breathing a curse at herself, she changes direction and swoops over to him, slipping her free hand under his stomach and hefting him up under her arm.
Both passengers secured, she soars up to the nearest skyscraper and sets down on the roof. She lets Lena go slowly, allowing her time to find her feet and holding her until she’s sure her legs will support her. Edge, she drops unceremoniously, and he yelps as he hits the ground on his hands and knees.
“Wait here,” she murmurs to Lena, then glances down at Edge. “Stay,” she tells him, and he glares balefully at her as she takes off.
“Welcome to time-out,” she hears him tell Lena as she swoops back to where the robots are still marching and shooting towards their targets, despite the fact the two CEO’s were well out of range.
The metallic assassins prove surprisingly durable, and it takes Kara a while to shut them all down. By the time they’re all disabled, she more than a little worried that she’ll return to the roof to find that Lena and Edge have killed each other, but as she gets closer she can hear them sniping back and forth. If they weren’t two people whose combined net worth could buy several small countries, Kara would have called it bickering.
Lena sees her first, and her smile is hesitant. “Supergirl,” she says with an odd note to her voice, and Kara remembers suddenly that Lena saw her. She saw Kara Danvers doing thing Kara Danvers absolutely shouldn’t be able to do, and Kara can see in her eyes that there’s no escaping the conversation that’s about to happen.
“It’s about time,” Edge says, and Kara almost jumps because she’d forgotten he was there. She glares at him flatly, then turns to Lena, offering her a hand.
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience, Ms Luthor,” she says, mostly for Edge’s benefit.
“That’s quite all right, Supergirl,” Lena replies, taking Kara’s hand and wrapping her other arm around her shoulder. Kara’s arm settles around her waist, and they’re lifting gently off the roof when Edge jumps to his feet.
“Hey, what about me?” he demands, and Kara twists in the air so she can shoot him a Cat Grant Look of Utter Contempt.
“I am not sorry for your inconvenience,” she tells him, and pulls Lena into the sky.
vii.
Kara doesn’t know the last time is the last time until after it’s happened.
She’s flying past Edge’s office on her way to L-Corp, planning to steal Lena for lunch, because that’s a thing she can do now, and she tunes in on Edge’s voice more out of habit than anything else. She catches him mid-rant, and it takes her a moment to work out that he’s berating his assistant, who’s a lovely woman that Kara’s met a couple of times in both her personas. He sounds like he’s been at it for a while, and his assistant is stifling sobs, so Kara sighs and changes direction.
Edge has a balcony like Lena’s, but he’s started keeping the door to it locked, not that it helps. Kara just wrenches it open, and Edge whirls around to face her as she strides in.
“Oh for—” he starts, but Kara covers his mouth with her hand and physically holds his jaw shut.
“Aren’t you tired of this?” she asks him, but doesn’t give him a chance to answer. “Sorry Nancy, I just have to borrow your boss for a moment,” she says to his assistant, who’s doing a very poor job of hiding her grin, and lifts Edge up over her shoulder.
She leaves him on the roof of LordTech, partly because Lena will find it funny and partly as a message to Maxwell Lord, in case he ever shows his face again. Edge swears after her as she flies off, and she notes with some interest that his curses are becoming more creative.
It’s just under a week later, as Kara is curled up with Lena on her couch, when Lena’s phone chimes. She frowns down at it for a moment then laughs, and Kara tilts her head at her quizzically.
“Morgan Edge is relocating his company,” Lena explains, tilting her phone so Kara can read the headline. “He’s moving to Gotham, says this city isn’t profitable enough.”
Kara grins. “More like he got tired of the Supergirl Rooftop Tour. Or you humiliating him in the business world.”
“I doubt he’ll enjoy Gotham, then,” Lena says with a smile. “Bruce Wayne is much less friendly than I am.”
Kara laughs again, and Lena reaches out to cup her cheek.
“My hero, chasing off the bad guys,” she murmurs, and leans in to kiss Kara breathless.
Two days later, Winn sends Kara a screenshot of an article, and Kara laughs so hard she almost falls off her chair.
“Morgan Edge found tied to bridge; Batman claims responsibility.”