Alt Assistant AU #3
The moment an aggressive investor gets into Lena's face, Kara immediately squares up. One moment she's discreetly taking notes for the meeting, and the next she's staring down a pompous middle aged man in an overpriced suit. Her rage simmers, and though he sees it and momentarily quails, he stubbornly keeps up the front.
"Sit down, Mr. Ferber," Lena says smoothly.
Despite the even cadence of her boss's voice, Kara can hear the displeasure behind the words. Not for the man who moved to intimidate her, but for Kara, who had unwittingly undermined Lena's ability to handle herself under fire.
Kara almost feels bad about it.
Sure enough, after the meeting concludes, Lena leads the way back to her office with a low "my office, now" as she passes.
Following obediently, Kara braces herself as the door swings shut behind her. But instead of the rage she expects, Lena's temper is ice cold.
"Do that again," she says, her words shapr and precise, "and you will no longer have a position at LuthorCorp. Do you understand me?"
Kara, for the first time in ages, fiddles with her glasses. "Understood."
"Get out."
She immediately slips out of the room, feeling the sting of the reprimand for the rest of the afternoon.
It turns to anger as the sun dips below the horizon, and after Lena's final meeting heads towards the elevator, Kara barely waits for the doors to slide shut before she slips into Lena's office to brief her on the next day's meetings.
"I'm not going to stand by and watch some asshole lay his hands on you," she says with an edge in her voice. "Fire me all you want."
"You overestimate Ferber's mettle, Ms. Danvers."
"And you underestimate the lengths they'll go to remind you that you're lesser than them."
"Nor do I need to list off my qualifications to defend myself--"
"Lena--"
"Additionally, I would have thought you'd be pleased to see someone knock me down a peg."
The accusation nearly knocks Kara off her feet. It hits her in the chest, making her stomach drop out from under her.
"Whatever I've said to you in the past," Kara clips out before the lump in her throat strangles her, "I would never wish harm on anyone. Let alone you."
"Could've fooled me."
In an instant, Kara has crossed the invisible boundary of the Lena's desk between them, taking Lena's wrist in a firm, assured grip.
"Then I was wrong," she delivers, her voice a thrum in her chest. "And an idiot."
Lena shoots a shocked glance down at Kara's hand, then flashes her gaze up to meet Kara's. The air suddenly thickens, charged with something unspoken at their sudden proximity.
Instead of pulling away, Kara leans in.
"There are some things I am willing to risk in this universe," she says. "You are not one of them."
She remains there, holding Lena's gaze for a long moment before finally letting her hand slip away.
"Have a good night, Miss Luthor."
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Palestinian men should not have to repeatedly hold up pictures of their family struggling through a genocide, for us to care about them. Fundraisers conducted by/for Palestinian men, should not have to repeatedly refer to their mothers, sisters, wives and children, to make us realize their humanity, their vulnerability. Enough. Isn't it enough after so many months? Hadn't it always been enough?
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i think perhaps the most annoying/exhausting phenomenon in existence is when something kind of genuinely sucks but it has, like, a female lead or whatever so half the people that are saying it sucks are nightmare people that unironically call things "woke garbage" and the other half are people that just like. have a basic sense of story structure and knowledge of character arcs as a concept that quite reasonable think this thing sucks. BUT it gets assumed that 100% of people who think it sucks are in that first half and then there's a backlash TO the backlash and all along it's still not a good fucking story. I call this "The twilight phenomena" because it got a lot of hate because of a mockery of teenage girls when it had well deserved hate for the like racism and misogyny and the throwaway detail that a grown ass man is somehow romantic soulmates with a quite literal baby.
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