"Do you have any sevens?" Kara asked Selah, her face serious. The two were playing cards together on Selah's cot- both blatantly cheating- on the second morning after the girl's surgery. She had recovered almost entirely; the cut had closed up and her powers had fully returned only a few hours after the surgery, but Alex had still insisted that she stay on bed rest for the first day.

"Go fish," Selah replied, grinning widely.

"Damn you!" Kara yelled, throwing her cards down angrily. "It's not fair, you can read minds!"

"You were x-raying my cards the whole time to see which ones I had," the girl countered, still smirking. "Do you want to play again?"

"I'd rather die," the hero muttered, indignantly picking the cards up off of the floor. "Do you want to get out of here?" She asked after a bit.

"For real?" Selah asked, looking up in surprise.

"Why not? We could get coffee, or just go for a walk if you'd prefer that."

"Am I..." the girl hesitated, biting her lip. "Am I allowed to just leave like that?"

"Of course!" Kara said emphatically. "I mean, maybe not on your own at first, but if you're with me then no one will give you any grief for it. We can double check with Alex to be sure, but I don't see why she'd have any issues with it."

"Because you're Supergirl?"

"And I have major sway around here, didn't you know," Kara said, dramatically grabbing her coat. "Speaking of which, have you signed those NDAs yet?"

"I signed the first ten and then I took a nap," Selah replied, standing up. "Where are we going to go?"

"Anywhere you want," Kara glanced at her watch. "We could go get second breakfast from Noonan's."

"Sure." Together they left the room and talked to Alex, who gave Kara a look but agreed to give them a half hour out of the DEO, with the understanding that when they returned, they had to have a talk regarding some leads on the doctors at the lab, and that if Selah had a seizure, Kara was to fly her back to the DEO immediately for monitoring. As they left the DEO and stepped out onto the sidewalk, Kara noticed Selah shiver slightly, and she swore that she felt a wave of energy come off of the girl, making the hair on her arms stand up.

"You good?" She asked, glancing over as they continued to walk.

"Yeah," Selah replied quickly. "Sorry, did I zap you?"

"Maybe?"

"When I get excited, I send out more psychic energy." She looked up at the sky and smiled. "I just haven't like, been outside in five years."

"Right," Kara said. "We can go back if it's too much for you," she offered.

"No, it's fine," Selah replied, and another wave of energy rolled over Kara, slightly stronger than the first one. "I never thought I would get to see the sky again."

"I'm really glad that you're happy, but we probably shouldn't hit too many strangers with psychic energy," Kara said, lowering her voice and bumping the girl's shoulder with her own.

"I guess not." Selah took a deep breath, and her smile widened. "Thank you."

"For what?" They reached a cross walk and Kara pressed the button. She couldn't help but smile seeing the girl so content and carefree.

"For doing all of this," Selah replied. "You've always been so nice to me since I came to the DEO."

"You deserve to have people in your life who care." The girl ducked her head down, still smiling as they crossed the street. "Besides, I know how it feels to be in a new situation and to not know who you can trust. When I first came to Earth, I had Alex and Eliza. They made me feel like I was safe and that this could be my home someday. I want you to feel that same stability."

They walked together in silence for a bit, Selah going out of her way to step on the extra crunchy leaves that were littered across the sidewalk. Kara hadn't seen the girl smile so much in the whole time that she had known her for.

"Can I ask you something?" she asked. Selah raised her eyebrows, waiting for the question. "How did you keep your powers at the lab if you didn't go outside in the sunlight?"

"Sun lamps," the girl answered, her smile fading a bit. "They would make me use my heat vision until I blew out my powers when they wanted to do surgery or tests, and then heal me up with the lamps when they were done. It was easier for them if I had powers, I think, because then I didn't need to sleep or eat as much. But they kept the tiara on so that I couldn't hear what they were thinking." She looked back up at the sky, tilting her face towards the sun. "Real sunlight is so much better than sun lamps," she said

"Agreed." They walked up in front of Noonan's, and Kara's stomach growled in anticipation. "This place is the best," she said. "I used to waitress here when I first moved to the city, and I instantly fell in love with the sticky buns."

"Yeah?" Selah asked.

"They're so good, it's going to change your life, I promise." Kara held the door open for the girl, but when she turned her head, she realized that she was still a few paces behind, standing frozen on the spot. "What's up?" she asked, letting the door close and going to Selah's side. Selah didn't reply, she merely looked at Kara, her face afraid. Kara put her arms around the girl's shoulders and carefully led her to a bench, where they sat down.

"Just breathe," the hero murmured. "It's okay." After a moment the girl seemed to gather herself again.

"Sorry," she croaked.

"It's okay," Kara replied.

"The cashier," Selah began, looking towards Noonan's. Kara followed the girl's gaze to a red haired woman who looked to be in her late thirties who was behind the counter, working the cash register. "She, um." Selah cleared her throat. "She's my aunt."

"You have an aunt?" the girl nodded, looking at the ground between her feet.

"She came to Earth at the same time as my mother. I lived with her for a little while, when I was a kid. I just... didn't expect to see her."

"Hey, it's okay." The girl looked at Kara, her eyes sad. "We can go to my place instead."

"But your sticky buns," Selah protested.

"I have a stockpile of them in my freezer. It's no problem." She stood up, offering a hand to the girl, who took it after a moment. "Besides, I just ordered a bunch of new teas that I have been dying to try out, you can be my guinea pig."

As they walked the three blocks to Kara's apartment, Selah's smile slowly returned, and there were several times where Kara caught the girl simply staring up at the sky, marveling at what she saw. She still felt a little shaken up about seeing her aunt. It had been so long, and she had accepted long ago that she would never see the woman again. It hadn't crossed her mind yet that she might now. She could tell that Kara was trying her best not to think about Noonan's or her aunt, but she could sense that the hero was confused and curious about what had happened.

Selah didn't quite know what she expected Supergirl's apartment to look like, but as she walked in, she decided that she pictured it to be nothing like Kara's loft, and yet somehow Kara's loft was so perfectly Kara.

"So what kind of tea do you want?" Kara asked, throwing her bag and coat down onto a chair, and crossing to the kitchen cabinets. "I have peppermint, ginger, lemon, chai, vanilla, oolong, green tea," she pulled out two mugs and filled them with water, which she zapped with her heat vision to boil them.

"Whatever you're having is fine," Selah replied, sitting down at the island as Kara puttered around with teabags. Eventually, the tea was made, and Kara brought the two mugs over, sitting next to the girl and placing a hand on Selah's knee.

"My mother was an empath," the girl said abruptly. "It's pretty rare, it's caused by a genetic mutation in about one in three million Andromedans. Empath Andromedans can use their telepathy to control other people's emotions, and it's much easier for them to weaponize their abilities. They can alter memories, delete information, essentially take over someone else's brain and shut it down." Selah cleared her throat, staring straight ahead, but not really looking at anything. "They're illegal on Andromeda," she continued. "All empaths are imprisoned or killed. It usually begins to exhibit itself in the mid to late teens, but my mother's manifested itself later than usual, so she managed to stay undetected from the government. Once her family realized what she was becoming, they decided to send her to Earth to protect her, instead of turning her in. My aunt Lea went with her. They landed on Earth when my mother was 21 and my aunt was 26. My mom got pregnant with me less than a year later, and they raised me together until I was five, when they had some big falling out. It was just me and my mom until I was ten, and then she disappeared. I went to live with my aunt until I was fourteen."

"And then after that, you went to the lab?" Kara asked. Selah looked at her for a long moment before nodding, taking a sip of her tea.

"My mother wasn't a good person," she said. "She was so angry about having to leave Andromeda, and her family. She had so much bitterness and anger inside of her-" Selah trailed off, her face unreadable. "My aunt was the only person that I felt like cared about me."

Kara pulled the girl into a hug. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"It's fine," Selah's voice was low. "I just wish that she had been there for me when I needed her to be." She cleared her throat again, looking down at her mug. "This is good tea."

"It's fair trade," the hero replied, sensing that the girl wanted to change the subject. "It comes from Nepal, and all the workers are paid fair wages."

"That's good."

They sat together drinking tea and eating thawed sticky buns, which Kara insisted tasted just as good as fresh ones, until it was time to return to the DEO. Kara gave the girl another hug as they stood up, squeezing her tightly.

"Ow," Selah grinned despite the complaint. "What was that for?"

"I'm glad I met you," Kara replied, smiling back. "You're a good kid."

"I'm not a kid," the girl jutted her chin out defiantly.

"Are too," Kara grabbed her coat, swatting Selah gently with her bag. "You're practically a fetus."

"I take back all the nice things I said about you earlier." Kara put an arm around the girl and they began to walk back to the DEO together, the hero intentionally choosing a route that wouldn't take them past Noonan's.

"Thank you again," Selah said as they reached the DEO.

"Don't mention it," Kara replied. "Anytime you want to have fair trade Nepalese tea with me, you are more than welcome."

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