@notaplane continued from here
“Tried.” Repeated--quiet and serious. Unwavering.
It’s hardly the first time the 40th floor of CatCo has been invaded due to an increasingly incompetent security staff. Normally it’s accompanied by debris or fires or a few dramatic monologuing villains flourishing into her office, knocking over papers and spouting metaphoricals about the erasure of humanity and restoring balance and blah, blah, blah.
It was a tiring diatribe ten years ago at Max’s first holiday party, it’s just as exhausting, now, even if he had the poise to leave the majority of her office, intact.
Save for one lone assistant who’s always been particularly dangerous with that little schedule binder of hers, and has just flexed the muscle to prove it.
(Really, there’s a reason Max could never win at chess, he could never see far enough past his third leg to strategize past the first tip; men).
“The world is...full of grays. Evils. Vague moralities and even vaguer reasons that help...enable some of humanity to do horrible, unspeakable things.”
Normally, also, she’s a little battered and bruised, stumbling up from the ground with a surprising amount of grace for a woman in heels, but as is she’s uninjured and still graceful, quietly coming to stand up the moment Kara dipped down, that knowing feeling settling deep--deep--in her gut.
A fear, but not of the gun--not of the bullets--because today is just another Thursday, oh, no, there’s something else that presses down on her chest. And Cat dusts off her once-impeccable skirt as she shifts upwards onto the pinpoint of heels, calmly coming closer, one hand raising up like it might be able to stem the shake of shoulders, or the faint quiver of rage rolling off of breath.
“Oppression of the press is always a top-notch priority of small-minded people, Kara. How else would they push their agenda, other than to shut down the people that would fight? It’s not the first attempt on my life--you’ve been there for a few--but you haven’t been there for all of them. Which is a shame given the muscles you’re apparently hiding under cardigans with that swift stationary T.K.O.” And it would be impossible to get between Kara and the gun, but she slowly comes as close as she can, hand hovering over her wrist. “But it’s not just the lives of the great that the wicked take away, Kara. It’s their souls. It’s their ability to remember what is good and right--to remember why we fight in the first place. You do,” A breath, “Have a choice. And you don’t want it to be this.”