Kara never claimed to be the most talented hair stylist in the world, but she was passable. She worked at her cousin's salon when she was at Stanhope to help pay tuition, and she had learned how to trim her own hair herself with the kryptonite scissors when Alex went off to college, so she had some experience. She could manage quite well, but it was proving to be much more difficult to show that to an alien teenager who she rescued from an underground facility.

"Hey," she said to Selah, who refused to meet her eyes. "You told me you wanted to do this."

"I said that I might want it to be done in general," the girl corrected, fidgeting with a roll of Alex's medical bandages as she sat on her bed in the lab. "Not that I specifically wanted you to do it."

"You're right, my bad." Kara retorted. "Why don't I just drive you to the Quikkie Cutz down the road? I'm sure they'll do a bang-up job. Do normal scissors even work on your hair?" Selah didn't reply and continued avoiding eye contact.

"Selah." Kara said. The girl finally looked at her. "Please. I know it still hurts, and I want to help you move past that. I can do this, but only if you want me to." She looked away again, clearly torn.

"I want you to do it." She muttered. "Please."

"Okay," Kara said. She pulled a stool out from the island in the lab and patted it. Selah slowly moved towards it before sitting down. "Hey," Kara reminded. "Only if you want to." The girl nodded and Kara spread a towel over her shoulders, looking at her hair. Some pieces were long, going past her shoulders, but others barely passed her chin, while in a few spots it was sheared off to the scalp. She had just showered as well, so water droplets gathered on the ends and dripped onto the floor. Kara combed through Selah's hair a few times, looking at it before deciding what to do. Her finger grazed the metal port on the back of the girl's head for a brief moment, and she winced.

"I'm not really sure what to do with this, love." She admitted after a moment. Selah didn't reply, her hands fidgeting with a stray thread on the towel. "You okay?" She nodded slowly.

"Just reminds me of there, kind of. Don't love that."

"Only if you want to."

"I know." Selah replied. "Um. Can you maybe just take it all off?"

"All of it?" Kara asked. Selah nodded. "Like, shave it all off?" the girl nodded again.

"There's not much else that you can do, I'd imagine," she said. "Besides, Alex is going to cut my head open in a few days, and I'm sure that will make it easier for her."

"Okay," Kara said. "If that's what you want." She crossed over to the cupboards on the far wall and pulled out the Kryptonite enhanced clippers that Winn had made years ago when he was unsuccessfully trying to convince her to get an undercut

"You're positive?" Kara asked again as she plugged them in. Selah gave her a glowering look. "Okay, okay. Just making sure." Popping a guard onto the clippers, she turned them on, hesitating to give Selah a moment to back out if she wanted to. When none came, she slowly brought them to the top of the girl's forehead and pushed them back towards the crown, carefully cutting off a clean line of hair. Repeating this several times, she buzzed off the entire top section of Selah's head, leaving behind about an inch of hair, and began on the left side of her head.

"How are you feeling?" She asked, noticing the girl still fidgeting. Selah shrugged slowly.

"I don't know," she muttered. "Okay."

"Yeah?"

"They just would do this before they cut open my head to do stuff to my brain, so it's a little hard to not have that whole connotation." Kara paused for a moment, taking in what the girl said.

"Did they do more surgeries?" Kara asked. "Other than the port?"

"Surgery is a generous way to describe it. They put electrodes on my brain to map different areas and what they did. They injected stuff into it sometimes, I'm not sure what that was for. They'd mostly just poke around and see what happened." By now Kara had finished the left side of Selah's head and moved over to the right, pretending not to notice the small tears the girl angrily wiped away. "Can we not talk about that?"

"Of course." Kara focused her thoughts onto her task, hoping it would reassure the girl, and sped up her pace. Once she had finished, she set the clippers down and stood behind the girl, her hand resting on Selah's shoulder.

"Thank you." She whispered.

"Anytime." Kara replied. "Are you doing okay?" Selah pulled the towel off of her shoulders, putting it on the island, and she turned to face Kara.

"I think so." The hero gently brushed a few stray hairs off the girl's head and smiled slightly.

"If it makes you feel any better, you look pretty dope." She said. "Do you want to see?" Selah shook her head slowly.

"Not yet"

"Update?" Alex asked, already fearing the answer. It was late in the afternoon, almost time for the desk agents to go home, and frustration was beginning to build up in the director. There were still no leads about any of the scientists running the lab, and every time she tried to bring it up with Selah, the girl got significantly more fidgety and would only mutter out a few words. So far, she had only said that the lab had five male doctors and two female ones, that there was also a team of security guards, all men, and that there were three people who led the whole facility, referred to only as "The Directors".

"We might have something, ma'am," Vasquez said, walking over to Alex's desk. She handed the agent a tablet with a blurry photo of a woman on it. "We recovered this from a dashboard camera nearby the site. This was taken two weeks before we became involved."

"Can Brainy refine the photo to get us a clearer image?"

"He already did." Vasquez tapped the screen and the image shifted better into focus. The woman had light brown hair and dark eyes, and she looked to be in her mid thirties. "We're running facial recognition right now."

"Excellent," Alex said, studying the woman's face. "Good work, Vasquez. I'll try to talk to Selah to see if she recognizes her." Vasquez nodded, and Alex took the tablet, walking towards the lab. Her heart was pounding, and the frustration that she had been feeling earlier dissipated. Finally they had a lead. Finally something was going to happen.

"Hey," she said walking into her lab. Selah was sitting on the bed reading a book about astrophysics, which she set down upon hearing Alex.

"Hi," the girl replied, smiling slightly. She was looking much better lately; she had put some weight back on, so she no longer looked so skeletal, her cheeks had more color in them, and her newly short hair made her whole face seem more open and less guarded.

"I have to ask you something," Alex began carefully. Selah sensed where the conversation was going and automatically began twisting the blanket in her hand, looking away from the agent. "We got this photo of a woman near the lab while you were still there. Do you recognize her?" She handed the tablet to the girl, and Selah looked at it, her face unreadable. "Selah?" Alex prompted after a moment.

"Yeah," she replied, clearing her throat. "She was one of the doctors."

"Do you know a name?"

"They all had code names. Hers was Nova. She did a lot of research with my cells to find out stuff with my biology and where my powers came from." Alex took the tablet back and closed the image.

"Thank you," she said, feeling relief wash off of her in waves. "I'll update Vasquez." Selah picked up her book again, and the agent left the lab, returning to the atrium.

"Vasquez?" She asked, walking over to the desk.

"Yes Ma'am?" The agent replied, turning to face Alex.

"Selah confirmed that this was one of the doctors. She has a background in cell research and molecular biology. Her code name was Nova." Vasquez nodded and began typing on her computer. Alex returned to her desk and set the tablet down, her mind still on Selah. The girl had become slightly more distant towards her, which she presumed was because of the upcoming surgery. Alex had told her multiple times that she was allowed to change her mind, but she insisted that she wanted the port removed.

She knew that that the surgery would be more than triggering for the girl; she would have to be under a red sun lamp to remove her powers, and she would be knocked unconscious while they performed a major operation, and Alex was worried that all the progress that they had made would disappear. Selah was barely beginning to open up and move on past the incident, and now she had to go right back to where she started, powerless, scared, and injured. Kara had already promised that she would be there for the procedure and would stay with Selah the whole time, which seemed to relax the girl a little bit, but she still refused to make eye contact with anyone around her when the surgery was brought up. Alex just hoped that the trust that they had built up would be enough to carry them through to the other side.

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