Chapter Text
Kara was your average assistant at first glance. Cardigans to keep warm in the air conditioned building year-round, slightly average overall looks, from the glasses to the height and blonde hair. But what people couldn’t see was what she tried every single day to hide. Kara has fibromyalgia and she doesn’t want to let it stop her from living her life, but it requires her to make some modifications here and there in order to appear as if she is not disabled by a chronic pain condition.
For those who don’t have fibromyalgia, it might appear as if Kara is completely healthy these days. She is 24, fairly well adjusted, and working for Cat Grant, Queen of all media. She balances a high-stress job with game nights among friends and time spent with her sister Alex, as well as other random volunteer work she does on her days off. However she has certain tells for her disorder if you look closer.
One example of this is that she is so used to having pain in her hands that she can withstand holding onto Cat’s ridiculously extra hot latte every morning as if it were nothing! The first time that she came up to give Cat her latte and it was too cold, she resorted to asking the barista to make the extra hot drink at 200 degrees instead of the normal 170.
Now a normal person would require a sleeve to hold such a drink. Cat however is a strong believer that cup sleeves are a tacky waste of paper that is an unacceptable use of environmental resources. It is this reason why Kara is the first assistant to not only successfully maintain her latte at an acceptable temperature, but hand it over as if it weren’t burning her hand without an extra layer there for heat protection. Cat makes a mental note, possibly impressed.
Normally latte runs are no issue for Kara, however on bad flare days her grip can be hard to control at times. She has had to resort to keeping a spare set of clothing in her desk drawer in order to make up for squeezing the cup too hard on days that she can’t judge her grip strength. Luckily nobody has said anything to the janitors who keep having to clean up the carpet after said spills, however she has learned to test her grip a few times before fully grabbing anything and normally avoids any disasters. One day she made it halfway up the elevator when her right hand decided it was going to twitch and throw the latte on the floor because Why Not??? It was after this incident that she started to request a carrying tray and decided that latte duty was a two hand kind of job. Incidents have been avoided numerous times with this method with the added bonus of making room for Kara to carry her own drink and a hot chocolate for Winn.
Sure enough, after a few months doing Ms. Grant’s coffee runs, Kara has it down to a tee! Her smiley demeanor means that everyone in the building tends to know her and like to ask how her day is going or will help her when it appears that she is overloaded carrying items. Her closest friends Winn and James are around all the time to help her with Ms. Grant’s strange requests day to day whether it be obtaining a signature from someone James has better connections to or an IT problem like the time that Kara was texting and dropped her phone only to step on it and crack the screen. Knowing it was probably best not to ask how this happened, Winn had her a backup phone within the hour and it was like nothing happened to the old one!
Grip control and heat resistance aren’t her only symptoms to handle. The best way she could describe her flares is if someone were to take a hot poker used to stoke a fire, and attach electrodes to it and stab that up along the nerves of her arms and legs the long way. This could last anywhere from 5 seconds to all day depending on the day and had no warning signals. After a flare, she was drained of energy but caffeine gave her a migraine so she just had to make it work. Occasionally, one hand would work better than the other so she picked up the fantastic ability to write with both hands!
The way Kara saw it, she had a superpower. The power to know her limits and push forward when possible with simple modifications, appreciating each thing her body let her do at least ten times more than the average person! Every day that her body cooperates is another day she can make a change in the world in some small way. Afterall, a few years ago she couldn’t even walk, let alone maintain a job. She was her own hero by getting back up, making it through rigorous physical therapy and testing, and making her way in the world again like nothing had stopped her in the first place.
Granted, Alex wasn’t always thrilled to hear that Kara was working for the Queen of all media, what with the whole fibromyalgia being a stress disorder and being Ms. Grant’s assistant being well known as the impossible job! But being a part of CatCo, working alongside such a powerful and inspiring woman was where Kara was happiest. She knew that every day that she helped Ms. Grant achieve what was on her schedule, she was helping to raise millions of dollars for important causes, and spreading information to massive numbers of people who would otherwise not have access to the news.
Her disorder wasn’t the only thing she was hiding though. Speaking multiple languages was another useful tool she kept under her belt for the times when Ms. Grant wanted to contact international offices and check in on their progress. Instead of having to call in a translator to assist with the work, Kara just called up the offices in South America and would chat away with Angelina about the newest projects, asking what they needed help with and where Ms. Grant should be concerned. Ms. Grant would always be shocked with how informed she seemed about the goings on abroad until she found out that Kara was speaking directly with the head of each department instead of having a middle man help out.
She spoke Spanish, English, Russian, Gaelic, and was learning about 3 other languages which were less common when it came to the media empire on the side. Originally she had only put two languages on her resume, however on one of her brain fog days she had accidentally responded to Ms. Grant in Gaelic instead of English and from then on Ms. Grant had tasked her with contacting the offices in Ireland and Scotland as well, seeing as their accents were often heavy and clearly Kara had a grasp of the local dialects.
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It was a normal day as Ms. Grant’s assistant and Kara was half way through jotting down notes on a Ted talk that Ms. Grant asked her to watch and bring her the important highlights of, before a meeting, when Kara could no longer hold her pen in her right hand. She muttered irritatedly under her breath briefly while massaging the cramp out of her hand and decides to just give in and swap hands to her left, taking slightly longer to write, and having slightly shakier handwriting, but still acceptable enough to look like an adult wrote it.
After making it through the video and checking over her notes to see that they are properly concise and yet established all of the main points of the talk at hand, Kara approached her boss’s doorway and waited to be given permission to enter the room.
“Yes, Keira.” Ms. Grant said, while still looking down at the article she was re-editing after one of the idiots in the social events department had decided that spell check was no longer necessary.
Kara hastily approached the desk and placed her notes neatly on the edge so as not to disturb what Ms. Grant was working on.
“Here are those notes on the Ted talk that you requested.”
Ms. Grant looked up, and took the notes to scan over them for a moment.
“Who wrote the second half? Am I paying you to delegate your tasks to some side monkey or to do the job yourself?” she snapped.
“I..I wrote the whole thing!” Kara declared.
“There are two distinctly different handwritings on this page and you what? Think I’m an imbecile and won’t notice that you only wrote half?” her glare intensified in Kara’s direction.
“M..my hand was cramping from writing a lot this morning so...so I used my other one. I didn’t want to delay the work a.. and my left handwriting isn’t quite identical to my right handwriting yet. I’m sorry Ms. Grant.” She looked down sheepishly hoping this wouldn’t be the end of her job. Sure, her handwriting wasn’t as good as her elegant script normally is, but it was legible enough, she thought.
“Prove it.”
“I. What?”
“Don’t just stand there stupidly! I said prove it!” Ms. Grant shoved the paper and a pen towards Kara and looked at her expectantly.
“Oh!” Kara quickly rushed to take the materials. “What would you like me to write?”
“I don’t care! Just write something!”
Kara thought for a quick moment and decided to write down one of the lyrics to a song she had stuck in her head.
‘I’ve got memories, and travel like Gypsies in the night.’ with her right hand.
“This is my normal handwriting…”
“Yes! Yes! Get on with it!”
She took a deep breath and swapped hands, writing down the same line, ‘I’ve got memories, and travel like Gypsies in the night.’ only this time it is less slanted and slightly shakier. She stepped back and handed the page to Ms. Grant, hoping to not lose her job over this.
A simple, “Fine.” Is all she gets in return.
Cat waves her hand in dismissal and Kara takes her chance to escape quickly, hearing Cat yell to keep working as she is leaving the room.
Kara takes a deep breath as she sits back at her desk, massaging her hand briefly again trying to get it to stop cramping up and gets back to her email list that needs to be dealt with by four o’clock that afternoon.