3

Chapter 3

Notes:

Yo! So like, I'm almost done with this in the drafts. Which is exciting.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Kara was miserable and exhausted by the time she was flying home. It was late, she smelled like car oil, and her stomach felt like it was eating itself. But, even with that, she felt a wave of relief and peace as she floated through the open window. Her nose scrunched. "Did something burn?"

"Nope, don't think about it." Daisy popped up from the small breakfast nook that'd been turned into a kind of computer station. "On a totally and completely different note pizza should be here in about ten minutes. Also just don't worry about the trash all being out."

She laughed for the first time all day, a genuine smile on her face. "So you decided not to try and make dinner?"

"Yup, that is totally what happened." Daisy had the now familiar lopsided grin on her face, also looking completely unrepentant about the smell of what was definitely burned something. "By the way, for no reason other than whim I'm buying you a new soup pot."

Kara couldn't help how just addictingly warm and nice it was to come home to this instead of an empty apartment after a miserable day. "What did you try to make?"

"Curry, the lady at the grocery store assured me it was easy. I might have forgotten it was stewing? on the stove, while I was working." Daisy shrugged helplessly. "But in less 'confirming your smoke detectors work' news, I now legally exist. My new social security card should be in the mail. That said my legal birth name is now Mary Johnson but I changed it when I turned eighteen."

Kara dropped onto one of the kitchen stools. "Why the name change?"

"Because I had to find a baby who died at the right time for my age, then request said baby's birth certificate, which I got last week, then use that for a new social security card. Well, that and some hacking for other paperwork. But those are the big ones to make sure this identity holds up. And I'm not going by the name 'Mary'." Daisy's voice was full of kinda undeserved disgust. Mary was a perfectly nice name, at least Kara thought so.

She nodded though, she wasn't the one who was building an identity from scratch. "Are you sure you want to get a job at RadioShack?"

"It's benign, I'm actually qualified for it…sort of, and I do need a job." Daisy shrugged before she looked up at Kara curiously. "So on a scale of miserable to craptastic, how was your day?"

"The bank robbers cried when I got there." Kara slumped. "They hate me."

Daisy moved over to the cupboard and started pulling the hot chocolate mix out. "Did anyone get hurt at the bank robbery?"

"No, but the cops were going to protect the robbers from me." Kara let her head thunk on the counter. "I don't know how to earn their trust back."

Daisy put the kettle on before grabbing mugs. "Well, that's dramatic."

"What?" Kara looked up at her.

Daisy ripped open the chocolate packets dumping them in liberally. "There was a crime, you went to the crime, and lives were saved. It sucks but, you did what you meant to do. Come on, what else did you end up with?"

"I changed some people's oil on the side of the road and their flat tire. They didn't get out of the car." Kara poked at the oil stain on her sleeve.

Daisy was giving her a 'look'. "Why don't you go shower and get out of your suit for a bit, pizza should be here soon and I'll have hot chocolate ready?"

Kara felt properly grounded again as she curled in the armchair, mostly empty pizza boxes on the coffee table, her hands curled around a mug of hot chocolate. "It hurts how much they're afraid of me."

"Ya know you're looking at it all wrong," Daisy remarked from the couch.

She looked up at her, her brow pulled together. "What do you mean?"

"Public opinion is shit." Daisy waved a hand absently. "One day they'll sing your praises and the next they'll want your head." She was staring at her. "Look, why do you put on the cape and rescue people?"

Kara stared into her mug. "I was sent here to protect my cousin, but I can protect so many, do so much good."

"I mean, being hated sucks, but do you care more about helping them or being liked?" Daisy asked like that was just a normal question.

She straightened in slight outrage. "Helping people!"

"Then just do that?" Daisy picked at the fabric of her jeans. "I mean yeah, the beloved hero thing is…very cool. But do you need that?"

Kara slumped back into her chair, with a deep sigh. "Is it wrong to want it?"

"No," Daisy nudged one of the pizza boxes closer to her. "But maybe count saving people as worth more than if they cheer for you?"

Kara sipped at her hot chocolate only to pause. Rats, it was lukewarm. She zapped it with heat vision. "Did this ever happen to you?"

"The laser vision is so cool." Daisy set her own mug aside. "And I wasn't the hero on a lunchbox. Cause spy, it was about no one noticing us. Legally whether we were government or fugitives changed by the week. For about a week I had fans? There were posters…it was…unsettling."

Kara stared at her and it was…Daisy was like Alex sometimes. Not a lot, but the things she'd begun to see as 'agent' aspects showed up. "That sounds…lonely."

"I had the team." Daisy's face flickered with the pain it did sometimes when her team came up. As fast as the emotion was there it was gone. "We were different kinds of heroes. I mean you wear primary colors with a skirt. My suit is made from high-grade kevlar, is black, and I have a gun."

She was curious at the thought of what that'd look like. "Did you bring your suit with you?"

"In the trunk of the car." Daisy smiled slightly. "Come on, something not terrible had to have happened today?"

Kara was searching for something to say when she heard the sirens. She looked up and met Daisy's eyes. "I-"

"Go on, I've got more computer programs to swear at." Daisy shot a look at her computer that said she really would be saying some very unkind things while adjusting her programs. "Try not to get a slushy thrown on you again. I think the couch still smells like grape."

And it was just…that simple. "It's not that bad." Kara pouted slightly before diving at full speed for her suit and then out the window. Maybe whoever needed help now wouldn't cry or throw whatever was in their hands at her?

////

Daisy was baffled and bemused by Kara Danvers. Like, at first she'd kinda considered this world was just weird, but it hadn't taken long to realize that no, this world was just as fucked up as her own was, Kara was just kinda bafflingly nice. And not in a normal way, in a way that was too trusting and hopeful. It was sweet but also was going to get the woman killed. So, well, she did owe her for the couch and an excuse not to be miserable and alone with her thoughts for weeks on end.

Hence, the fact one of the first things Daisy was using her newly updated for this universe computer programs for was to find out everything she possibly could about the DEO. And what she found was concerning. It'd take her another week to get into their servers directly. At the moment she was laying out a full backstory for her new identity. "There's no good excuse for multiple bullet wounds without a military or gang background, is there?"

Kara choked on her morning cup of coffee. "Bullet wounds!?"

"Yeah?" Daisy laughed at the expression on Kara's face. "Not all of us are bulletproof. I've had five actual bullet wounds from three shootings. That's not counting grazes obviously. Here," She rolled up her shirt enough to show her stomach. "My first two, then I have two in my left shoulder and one in my right leg."

Kara blurred as she moved so fast from the kitchen island to where Daisy was, hands fluttering alarmed panic. "Daisy!"

"Hey, it's fine. Healed up for a while." Daisy dropped the hem of her shirt and grabbed one of Kara's hands. "It happens, I'm fine now."

The nervous movement faded into something harder and braced for defense. "Who shot you?"

"A lot of people have shot at me…mostly Nazis, but the feeling is mutual there." Daisy pointed to her covered stomach. "But douchebag CEO, shoulder and leg were evil robots, other one in the shoulder was an alien murdering fascist terrorist." She tilted her head. "The stab scar in the same shoulder was from an evil alien murdering fascist terrorist robot. Even if you're invulnerable and just started out are you saying you've never gotten hurt?"

Kara didn't take the out with humor, concern still apparent, but she did nod. "Not often and it doesn't…last."

Daisy felt her brow raise, that was some grade A bullshit. "Yeah, you're new to this, but even if you heal it still hurts, and physical stuff isn't the worst you end up with."

"I," the breath hitched in the back of Kara's throat, grief blatantly on her face, "you're right."

She wished she hadn't pushed, hurting Kara, or reminding her of hurt hadn't been the point. "So, any magical backgrounds you can think of that aren't military or gangbanger to explain the scars in your world, or am I going to have to spend a week getting a military background in place?"

"Why would it take you that long to make a military background? Everything else has seemed really fast?" Kara's brow crinkled in confusion.

Daisy laughed, putting a bit more space between them. "Because the military has better servers, I'm going to have to get physical papers put in and to explain why no one remembers me I'm going to have to make my service record so classified. The Military thinks I was doing crazy classified bullshit with the CIA, they don't poke at the files. Which is going to take time."

"Classified?" Kara's crinkle deepened, clearly not understanding how military structures trained you to know when a thing was a 'do not think about it' situation.

Daisy closed her laptop while thinking about packing her bag to head out. She wasn't going to risk using Kara's wifi for this. "Spy agencies, military, it's all hierarchical and stuff is generally classified because the wrong people finding out can and will get people killed. So every probationary agent and military grunt gets it beaten into their heads not to look too hard at classified information. If they don't need to know, it's safer for them not to know. Not that I was ever good with keeping my nose out of things, but it's standard operating procedure."

"That makes sense, I think?" Kara offered slowly.

Daisy grinned up at her as she moved to fill up a travel mug with coffee for the day. "Want me to pour you one too?"

"No thank you, I have to pick up Cat's latte before work. I just get myself one since I'm already there." Kara had a pleased smile at the offer though.

Daisy shrugged, as she poured herself coffee. "Anyways if I want records that are redacted and classified in a way that won't look wrong but tip off anyone looking that they know why, they won't be worried about it, and they'll actively cover for me. Which is helpful. So, I'll have to do some research, but your military seems pretty par for my world's. I'll probably go with Airforce Special Reconnaissance. Special Ops and regularly running classified operations behind enemy lines and doing things to damage enemy operations. A lot of what they do is not the kind of thing the government wants anyone to know that they do. And the kind of soldier to end up doing very delicate dirty work for the CIA. If I notate the files right, it'll look like I was a highly trained and specialized soldier dropped in very politically delicate regions working on mission objectives that aren't put entirely to paper. The kind of things that if it got out the United States would be in some very hot water. And thus the kind of thing anyone with the clearance to touch is going to avoid like the plague because they don't want to get implicated."

"We do that?" Kara sounded offended.

Daisy looked at her…friend? This kinda felt like friends. "You work with a classified para-military organization that is connected to an alien chop shop?"

"No, I know the government does bad things. But you just make it sound so…habitual?" Kara had a weight of understanding when she said she 'knew', but also more exhausted than anything when she said 'habitual'.

Daisy softened. "Yeah, it's fucked up. But sometimes it's necessary and international powers vying for things is…complicated and messy. It's rarely neat or clean. And nobody's hands are clean in the business. But duplicity and fucked up shit are going to be under the surface if you scratch at it enough for any government agency. I dedicated my life to SHIELD, and we tried to be the good guys, but a lot of the time…I don't know. It didn't feel like we were more than I think any of us wanted to admit." So those therapy appointments Mack had made her go to before he let her leave had probably been a good thing.

"You're not very cheerful in the mornings," Kara said as she placed her black glasses on her face, but she didn't sound upset as she said.

Daisy bit her lip, hesitating. "I'm sorry?"

"Don't apologize, it's nice, I think?" Kara nodded in decision, it was nice. "Everyone acts like I don't understand things, or I can't handle them. I just…you just explain things. It's different, but good different."

Daisy got that, nobody who wasn't an asshole liked dumping the rookie in the deep end. And it was becoming really clear that the media's understanding of Supergirl being a rookie was dead on. It made something prickle with discomfort though, that Kara didn't seem to just know things or have a close-knit enough team to cover for her so that she could have a non-traumatic learning curve. And after mind control, the non-traumatic method was dead in the water. But she'd only been sleeping on Kara's couch for a week. She could be wrong, she didn't think she was though.

"Well, I can report back on job openings for RadioShack and if the taco truck you spotted yesterday is any good."

Kara laughed before darting forward and hugging her tightly, really tight.

It was a bit of a jolt just how much it was, but it was nice. Sure, probably too tight for most people, but not for her. Admittedly the air from her lungs had been a bit squished out. But serum. So she just breathed it back in as she cautiously hugged her back. "Is this a hint I should bring you tacos to work if they're good?"

Daisy frowned as she looked through the Excel spreadsheet of the timeline of her hypothetical self. It was having to be a whole hell of a lot more detailed than she pretty much ever bothered with. But well, if she wanted any kind of long-term existence it had to be perfect. It was a good test of her acclimation to computer systems and the bureaucracy of this universe before she risked getting a look under the hood of the DEO though. Still, building a whole new identity was interesting.

Mary Grace Johnson, tragic late-term miscarriage was now, legally, a live birth who'd been given up for adoption in a closed adoption. Mary Grace Johnson was then adopted by the Chapman family. The Chapman's were ideal as they didn't have extended family and had died tragically in a car wreck about a year after the miscarriage of Mary Johnson. All tragic in the abstract way deaths in accidents were. But, wonderfully convenient.

From there 'Mary' bounced through thirty-eight foster homes and two Catholic orphanages before the age of fifteen. Then run away and missing, before then popping back up for a GED test at age eighteen. It was close enough to reality to barely be a lie at all, and kids got lost in the system with mucked-up paperwork all the time. Faking that trail would take an afternoon or two to solidify.

'Mary Grace' then changed her name the day she turned eighteen before signing up with the Air Force. Now, Daisy Skye Johnson, the cover hit the hard part. Thanks to her new birth certificate she was twenty-six in this world. That was eight years in the Air Force before medical discharge. Before that though…just so much paperwork was going to have to get put in place, and or notated in such a way it made sense for why it wasn't where it was supposed to be.

Fortunately, she had done equivalents for the training schools including basic a US SOF airman had to complete to get in. Actually been dumped at a couple of the training schools early on by May. Hence, why she'd chosen it, what they did was hella classified without even earmarking the files for it. She could drop a digital trail in the CIA servers that Daisy Johnson had been a potential recruit on leaving the Airforce only for a mission where she vanished behind enemy lines for six months only to turn up tortured and physically damaged in a way their psych evals would have disqualified her over. The issue was the training schools. That was going to be the shit show for hard files to prove she'd been there.

Which, was why she was here, laying out a plausible timeline of elementary, middle, and high school placements and grades following the trail of foster placements. After which laying out an entire eight-year military career. Fuck, she was going to have to give herself a couple of different medals…what were the equivalents for the ones she technically had marks for in her SHIELD documents? Not that they got physical medals, but that stuff did get notated.

Daisy flipped into the SHIELD files that were on her laptop while sipping on her now, vaguely lukewarm coffee only to nearly choke. Jesus, when the actual fuck did Coulson stick this shit in there? Well…it wasn't going to be total bullshit…she was going to have to reduce the number of medals for this shit to be believable. Wait, Mack got the President to officially pardon her for the LMD shooting Talbot thing? And oh that was a medal of honor…when the…oh, Coulson got that approved after Chicago and the saving the world thing before he left for Tahiti. It was weird she had some of these…legally.

It took her an hour to build out a military career and match it as close to her SHIELD file as possible. She now had four purple hearts and a number of medals that was slightly alarming but told the story of an exceptional soldier taken out of the game due to a mission that went so FUBAR it'd been covered up and shoved into the graveyard of bodies in the USA's closet of secrets. But, she had an outline. The stuff from her new background dating to before age 18 was done.

Stretching Daisy shut her laptop and groaned. It was going to be so much work to make this legit. Just…so much. This was so much easier when she'd had military contacts and could just call them up and force them to stick paperwork where it should be. Or well, shouldn't be. Daisy looked up at the blue sky. Catfishing administrative servicemen to get them to do it for her it was. Such a pain. This was going to take two weeks to be perfect, and a week to be serviceable.

She was taking a break and she had promised Kara tacos. Offered and intended to follow through since Kara had seemed weirdly fine with her stopping by her office. Kara was way too trusting. Daisy was definitely doing a good hard look at the DEO the second she was able to. She had some favors to repay, and she was pretty sure how to get started.

////

Kara felt small as she sat at her desk trying to make Cat's therapist appointments work. It was terrible, Cat had gone out to sushi, leaving Kara trapped at her desk with an avalanche of emails to get through and no time to go and get herself lunch. Her lunchtime had already been taken up by a pile up on the highway and without being able to use fetching Cat's lunch as an excuse to acquire food she was trapped. Did she still have granola bars in her desk?

"Who is that?" Winn uttered in disbelieving confusion from his desk.

Kara looked up, prepared to jump to attention to accept a delivery for Cat only to pause and then beam, standing up. "Daisy! You didn't have to actually come! But I'm so glad you did, are those tacos?!" And she could smell the delicious taco goodness.

"Well, I did promise." Daisy casually raised the absolutely bulging bag of tacos up, an amused grin on her face. "And I needed to stretch my legs a bit anyway."

Kara would have hugged her, but that'd have squished the tacos. "You're the best!"

Notes:

Can I just say how much I hated how they handled the RedK storyline? Like it happened, Kara makes one public fight/sacrifice the next episode and everyone loves her again. And also, like...Kara very clearly post RedK makes it really clear she's a hero to save people, not for the praise, even if she does enjoy and like being loved. And then later seasons they keep acting like Kara doing it for the praise is one of her flaws and like...no? She equates praise with having done it right, which is not good. Praise as a measure of how good she's doing. She takes people not liking her way too personally, she has no distance there. She's a people pleaser, it's a positive trait and a flaw in her. But the show kept acting like she had to grow past just doing heroics for the praise and like...that was never her problem.

And partially, the RedK thing fading off because of Livewire of all villains is ridiculous when Myriad is right there as the thing to prove Supergirl's goodness to the general public. Its...its right there, like two episodes away. It hurts me how much stronger that would have made Kara's hope speech if it's her begging for them to believe her and have hope even knowing the public is still suspicious of and doubting her.