When Selah arrived at the DEO the next day, she could feel Alex's presence almost immediately. Her powers were lessened by the cuffs, she couldn't psychically move things or conjure anything, but for the most part she could still hear thoughts. The agent's thoughts were louder than usual, and they seemed a bit more on edge. It made Selah feel guilty, knowing the stress that Alex had felt the previous night.
As the elevator doors slid open, she found Alex standing nearby, hands on her hips, clearly waiting for the girl to show up.
"Good morning," she said in a no-nonsense tone, striding over to Selah.
"Hi," the girl replied. "I'm sure that Nia reported back that I was very responsible last night."
"She did, and I appreciate that." Selah shoved her hands into the pockets of her hand-me-down jacket, not sure of what to say as she glanced up at Alex.
"I'm sorry," she finally stammered. "I shouldn't have..."
"It's okay. All that matters is that you're safe." Checking her watch, Alex began leading Selah into a hallway near the conference room. "Kelly will be all set up for you soon, are you ready?"
"Not really."
"Well, tough luck."
"You asked," the girl stated. Alex rolled her eyes.
"I'm already doing you a favor in not telling Kara. Don't push it." They arrived at a door, which Alex pulled out her keys to unlock. Selah's stomach lurched a little bit, but she didn't have much time to focus on it before Alex pulled her into a hug.
"What's this for?" she asked uncertainly.
"I'm just glad you're okay." Alex let go almost as abruptly as she had started the hug in the first place, but left a hand on Selah's shoulder. "I wanted to hug you earlier, but we just got some new recruits and I don't want them to know I have emotions just yet." A calm, lavender colored energy began rolling into the hall, which Selah guessed was Kelly, and she glanced at Alex nervously.
"Hey," Kelly said as she approached, greeting her girlfriend with a hug, which the agent happily returned.
"Hi," Alex answered. Pulling away from the hug, she turned to Selah. "You'll be fine," she promised. The girl nodded, and Alex smiled reassuringly as she left.
"You must be Selah," Kelly said, extending a hand out for the girl to shake. Selah did, albeit somewhat warily, hoping that the woman couldn't sense how nervous she was. "Let's head inside, okay?"
The girl followed her into the empty room. Alex had clearly tried to make it look less like an interrogation room by putting a few armchairs into it, but it still felt very institutional, and that didn't do much to calm Selah's nerves.
"It's nice to finally meet you," Kelly said as she sat in the chair that was further from the door and set her bag down beside it. "I've heard a lot about you from Alex, of course, but I've been excited to actually get to know you first hand."
"You too," the girl said, her throat dry. She realized a few seconds too late that she was still standing somewhat awkwardly in the doorway, so she shut the door and tentatively sat in the other chair, facing Kelly.
"So," the woman began, pulling a notebook out of her bag and flipping to an empty page. "As I'm sure you've assumed, Alex told me what happened last night. Do you want to dive right into that, or should we work our way up to it?" Selah shrugged. The clock ticked, narrating each second that passed, until Kelly finally unclicked her pen. "I know you've never done this before, but the main point of talk therapy is that you have to... talk during the sessions," she teased.
"I don't really know what to say. Aren't you supposed to tell me how all my trauma is rooted in my bad relationship with my mother and a sense of abandonment from my father, or something? That's why I have difficulty following authority figures, and vulnerability terrifies me?"
"Do you feel that way?"
"I don't know." The papers on Kelly's notepad rustled nervously, as uneasiness pulsated off of the girl. Despite the distraction, she didn't tear her gaze away from Selah, who was visibly uncomfortable. Her leg was bouncing aggressively enough that Kelly could already see an indentation forming on the floor beneath her sneaker, and her hands were tugging at the curls at the back of her neck.
"Do you want some water?" Selah jerked her head up in a nod, and Kelly stood, opening the minifridge in the corner. Taking out a bottle of cold water, she passed it to the girl. Despite having asked for it, she didn't seem to show much interest in drinking the water, and instead began peeling the label into little strips.
"I'm sorry," she muttered. "I don't do well in situations like this."
"Yeah, that makes sense, you did just say that you're terrified of being vulnerable." Selah glanced up at Kelly, her expression guarded and unreadable. "We don't have to talk about anything that you don't feel comfortable with. Your body language is telling me that you're not comfortable right now, what can I do to help alleviate that?"
"Are you trained in like, psychoanalyzing non-verbal communication to figure out exactly what I'm thinking and feeling?" the girl asked suspiciously. Kelly bit back a smile.
"You seem to have some preconceived ideas about what therapists are like," she commented. "What exactly do you think I'm here to do?"
"You're going to tell me some Freudian crap about how everything I do is a defense mechanism and is rooted in my unconscious fears of never being worthy of love, and whenever I say anything, you'll go, 'hmm, how does that make you feel?' and also then you'll say that I only ever do the things I do because of my childhood trauma, and that it is predetermining all of my behavior, and then you'll tell me all the answers of how to fix all of it."
"Let's unpack that a little bit," Kelly said, chuckling. "First of all, for the most part, modern therapists don't practice Freud's theories. He had some weird ones. Also, I'm not here to give you a universal answer that will solve all of your problems. As a therapist, my job is primarily to ask questions and to state my observations, with the goal of that leading you to find those answers yourself. Frankly, I don't think I would ever be able to give you all the answers, because these are complex and multi-faceted issues, I doubt that anyone would be able to do that. What I can do, is help you to find an answer that you feel okay with."
"Okay," Selah said quietly. Her leg's bouncing slowed a little bit, but she was still tearing up the label from the bottle of water, dropping small bits of the paper onto the floor. "What observations have you made about me so far?"
"You don't trust very easily. That's not surprising, considering your past. You process your emotions physically, through things like repetitive tapping, tics, and fidgeting. This is probably a mechanism that you use to displace your negative emotions, and your stress, as opposed to expressing them directly. It could also just be a way for you to exert excess energy, as I think you're just kind of a sensory person. You've also directly told me that you dislike being vulnerable, and that you feel unworthy of love. Not to play into stereotypes, but that definitely would have ties to your relationship with your parents, and the feelings of abandonment and betrayal you have there. The people in your life who were supposed to love you unconditionally didn't give that to you, so you're afraid to give and receive love from anyone now, because you know how it feels to have it taken away from you. How did I do? Did I miss anything?"
"You forgot how I'm scared of authority figures because I don't want to let down people who I look up to."
"Right, because if you let them down, that results in them viewing you differently and potentially withholding affection. A fear of failure is very common in people with abandonment issues."
"Who says I have abandonment issues?"
"You did. Five minutes ago." Selah jutted out her chin and crossed her arms, but Kelly could tell she was holding back a smirk.
"Can I tell you something about traumatic experiences?"
"Let me guess, they're somehow based in phallic symbolism?"
"Okay, seriously. Stop with the Freud stuff." Selah finally cracked a smile, and Kelly shook her head, although she was glad that the girl seemed a bit more relaxed. "It's an insult to my profession."
"Sorry," the girl muttered, not looking very apologetic.
"Traumatic experiences," the therapist began. "Shape how we view the world, and how we recognize threats. You have been through so much trauma in your life, and that will desensitize your ability to identify a crisis. That's not to say that you don't feel things, or that you can't experience emotion, but it means that when bad things do happen, you don't usually respond in the way that the average person might."
The girl looked skeptical, so Kelly continued.
"Most people have receptors in their minds that pick up on warning signs, and potential danger, right?" Selah nodded slowly. "So if you were walking down a sidewalk, for example, if you turned a corner and found yourself face-to-face with a tiger, almost everyone's body would immediately initiate the fight or flight response. Their brain would assess the situation, probably decide that flight is the best option, and they would get themselves away from the tiger to someplace safe."
"And you're saying that my brain wouldn't do that?" Selah asked.
"I'm not definitively saying that. I'm sure that in an example as extreme as the one I gave, you'd be able to clearly see the danger. Well, at least you would if you were human."
"Okay, so let's say that my tiger has a power dampener and is going to shoot me," the girl supplied. "What happens then?"
"Trauma causes a dysregulation in your emotions. You might not immediately recognize a power-dampener-wielding tiger as a threat, as obvious as it seems, because your brain is already firing off danger responses to everything around you." Kelly saw Selah narrow her eyes, so she lifted up a hand before the girl could interrupt. "Again, that's not to say that you don't understand that this is a threat to you. You just might underestimate the severity of the situation, because maybe you heard a car door shut down the street, and you're thinking that someone could have gotten out of that car to sneak up behind you and try to abduct you. Or you're thinking about a conversation you had with a friend where they responded a little bit more curtly that usual, and you're afraid that you said or did something to upset them, and you don't know what it was, so you're scared that they're going to leave, since clearly you aren't a good enough friend to them if you don't even know what you did wrong. Maybe your brain was already firing off signals about the tiger from the time that you stepped onto the street, because in your experience, every corner has had a Bengal tiger lurking behind it, and it's safer for you to be always preparing for the worst as opposed to being caught off guard and ambushed. Does that sound familiar?"
"Maybe a little."
"I thought it might. And so when you have all of these thoughts going through your mind, conscious and unconscious, it creates a sort of numbness. It's like white noise, eventually you're so used to the constant sound that you forget what the quiet feels like. And all that time while you're feeling everything while simultaneously feeling nothing, it leaves you in a see-saw of either feeling overwhelmed or under-stimulated. There's no in between. When you feel overwhelmed, you find yourself falling back into old habits, because even if you know that they aren't necessarily healthy, they're familiar. And if you're under-stimulated, and need something different, you begin engaging in wild, dangerous behavior."
"Why do I do that?" Selah asked.
"I don't give answers, remember?" The girl deflated a little bit. "Why do you think that you do?"
"I'm not sure."
"In my assessment of this, I'd say that you have already lived through the worst. Do you feel like you're always preparing yourself for things to get bad again?" Selah nodded. "Alex told me that Kara ended up with the Agenda because they abducted her instead of you. How did that situation come to be?"
"I was walking home, and I sensed that Beta was nearby. I went to her, and I was going to turn myself in."
"You were going to go willingly?"
"Yeah."
"And you knew the danger in that situation? You knew what was going to happen, and what they were going to do to you?" The girl nodded again. "Then why did you choose to go back?"
"It was the right thing to do. The whole city was being put into danger because of me, and they didn't deserve that."
"Did you deserve it?"
"The bombings were happening because of me."
"That doesn't make it your fault, they were committing acts of terrorism in order to try to get you to do what they wanted," Kelly said. Selah didn't look at her, instead kicking the scraps of paper on the floor around with the toe of her sneaker. "They chose their actions, and in doing so, they chose the consequences that came with them. None of that was your fault." Selah briefly met Kelly's gaze, but quickly looked away. "So I'm going to ask you again, did you deserve what the Agenda did to you?"
"No."
"Did Alex tell you that I'm a veteran?" Kelly asked. Selah shook her head. "I am. I did two tours in Afghanistan. Early on in my second tour, I was selected to be trained in crisis negotiation, to learn how to help defuse dangerous situations. During my training, one of my colleagues, Micah, always said that he wouldn't be able to be a hostage negotiator or anything like that because he didn't have enough patience. He said it's like a game of Jenga for him, instead of walking on eggshells, doing your best to keep that tower up, he'd rather just knock it down and get it over and done with. Then, he doesn't have to deal with the rollercoaster of emotions and the uncertainty, and he can focus on cleaning up and rebuilding the tower instead."
"It's a good thing he never was a negotiator," Selah muttered. "I don't think that's a very good way to talk down a terrorist."
"Absolutely," Kelly laughed. "The biggest part about conflict resolution is walking that tightrope of uncertainty and working towards de-escalation. That's not an easy thing."
"So you're saying that me going back to the Agenda is the equivalent of me knocking down the Jenga tower?"
"I think that living in instability is not an easy thing, and sometimes danger is easier to deal with than uncertainty."
"I just felt like if I kept waiting around to see what happened next, maybe it would have gotten better, and maybe the DEO would have been able to step in and control the situation. But it also could have gotten worse. And if it was going to get worse, at least I could know what exactly was going to be bad."
"So you chose the danger, because then you could prepare yourself for it, and you wouldn't be caught off guard."
"Yeah."
"What were you feeling last night, when you went into the drug cabinet? What was your motivation?"
"I don't want to be a selfish person. I don't like letting people down or being vulnerable because it makes me feel selfish. If I disappoint someone, then they have to compensate for my mistakes, and they have to deal with my mess, and I don't ever want to be someone else's problem. If I was better, if I was strong enough to beat Beta, she wouldn't be a threat anymore. I could have killed her before she took Kara, before she got me. I could have stopped all of this from happening. Or if I wasn't so easily manipulated by her, if I trusted in Alex's leadership, then I could have helped them get Kara back, and Beta would never have had the opportunity to implant herself in me. If I was stronger psychically, I would have had the strength to overpower her in the mindscape. I couldn't even beat her in my own mind. And now, after I failed all of those times, the problem is just snowballing and getting worse and worse, and pretty soon it won't just be my problem anymore. It won't be only me getting hurt, everyone that I care about will be hurt along with me. If I don't stop this, they're the ones who will face those consequences."
"So how did the sedatives come into play?"
"I was going to put myself back into the coma. Then it would have to end, one way or another."
"Those were some pretty strong sedatives."
"I wanted to make sure it was enough."
"I think you knew that it was more than enough." The girl stiffened. "You're smart enough to read a label, Selah." The girl's breaths were shaky and stuttered as she fixated once again on the floor.
"I wasn't going to take it all," she said weakly, after a few moments of heavy silence. Kelly didn't push any further.
"What about that choice alleviated some of the guilt for you?"
"Either way it would end. If I win, and I beat Beta, I would get to go back to normal life. And if not, she would be stuck. She wouldn't have been able to hurt anybody."
"So going back into a coma was your way of taking away her power?"
"Yeah."
"Did you consider the cost that comes with that?"
"If that's what it takes, I'm more than willing to make that sacrifice. I'm at peace with it."
"May I make an observation?" Kelly asked. Selah raised her eyebrows, waiting. "When I look at you, and watch how you behave as we are sitting here, I don't see peace."
"I am," she insisted unconvincingly. "I have to be."
"Selah, your worth is not defined or limited by what you can offer to others."
"It's not about my worth. I need to fix this mistake."
"Whose mistake is it?"
"What?"
"You keep referring to the whole situation as a mistake. Whose mistake was it?" Selah didn't have an answer. "Did you choose for any of this to happen?"
"No," she admitted.
"Did you ask for Beta to do these things to you?"
"No."
"At any point along the way, did you enjoy what was happening to you, or ask for it to continue?" Selah shook her head. "Then how is it your mistake? It seems like this situation was made for you, not by you."
"If I was stronger-" the girl began.
"It has nothing to do with your strength," Kelly interrupted. "This is not your fault."
"That doesn't make me feel any less guilty."
"I know. But making a drastic decision based off of your guilt and trauma is not a good idea. You say you're at peace with it. Are you really?" The clocked ticked, anticipating the girl's response.
"No," Selah whispered.
"How old were you when the Agenda got you?" Kelly asked, switching the topic.
"I had just turned fourteen."
"That's pretty young to go through something so traumatic." Selah shrugged. "If you could go back to fourteen year old Selah, what would you say to her?"
"I don't know."
"Would you tell her that she's going to be okay, or that there will come a time when these experiences no longer shape her? Would you offer her advice?"
"I don't know if I would even recognize her."
"Why not?" The girl sighed as she tried to sort out her thoughts.
"People tell me all the time that I'm tough, or I'm brave, or I'm the strongest person that they know," Selah began, crinkling her eyebrows. "And a part of me always wants to tell them, like, 'thanks, I really wish I didn't have to be.' I survived. And I don't take that lightly, I just..."
"Part of you didn't," Kelly supplied.
"That fourteen year old kid, she's not me, and she never will be. And I'm not her, not anymore. She had dealt with some stuff, sure. Having a mother like mine will do that to you, but she still had hope for things. She had ideas and plans laid out for a future that I'll never have. I don't even want those things anymore, my priorities aren't the same as hers. But she knew what she wanted, and how to get there."
"What kind of priorities did she have?"
"I wanted to graduate high school." She laughed quietly. "And to move somewhere far away from National City. I wanted my mom to care about me. Even just a month ago, I was telling Kara how someday I want all of the normal people things, and I want things to feel okay."
"Do you not feel that way anymore?"
"I don't know. I don't know what I feel."
"Imagine that instead of you talking to your younger self, that you were visited by twenty-five year old Selah. What do you want her to tell you?" Selah chewed her lip, and her leg began to bounce slightly again.
"You know how Nia can dream the future?" the girl said abruptly.
"Yeah."
"If I could choose any power, I'd want that. I'd give anything to just know for sure how things end, and what's going to happen. I'd want twenty-five year old me to just say that... things turn out okay. I'd want her to tell me what I'm supposed to do, and what the right choice is."
"Selah," Kelly said gently. The girl slowly met her eyes, squirming slightly at the intensity. "You do not have to see your future to know whether or not you deserve to have one." Selah swallowed hard, shutting her eyes.
"What if I make the wrong decision?"
"Then we address the effects of that choice, learn from it, and move on."
"But it's not that simple," Selah insisted. "If I choose wrong, that means I will put everyone that I care about into danger. And I won't be around anymore to fix any fallout from that choice, I don't get to move on, and neither will anyone else."
Selah jumped as a sudden knock came at the door, and Alex's face appeared in the small window.
"Hey," she said, opening the door a little bit. "Sorry to interrupt. I scheduled another EEG for Selah this afternoon, but it got pushed forwards. Are you okay to get that done quickly now?"
"Yeah," the girl said, a bit too eagerly. "If, um, that's okay with you, Kelly?"
"Of course," Kelly replied, shutting her notepad. "Thank you for being vulnerable with me, Selah. I know that wasn't easy for you. We definitely covered a lot for you to process and think over. Do you want to meet with me again tomorrow morning, for us to circle back on some things you might want more clarification on?"
The girl blinked, cracking a few of her knuckles before she responded, looking the woman directly in the eye.
"Yeah. I think that would be good."
"Okay."
.
Nia flinched as another clap of thunder shook the apartment, this one louder than the last. The power went out in the building most times that it stormed, so she was rummaging through cupboards trying to find all the candles that she could. She had taken candle making classes for the past three (three!) summers in Parthas, so she was certain that there were plenty of candles hiding somewhere, but so far all she had managed to find were half melted stubs and an unopened bacon scented one that Brainy had gotten her as a joke. Shutting a cupboard in annoyance, she was glad to have a distraction as she heard a knock on the door. Running out of the kitchen, she opened the front door to find a slightly rain-soaked Kara.
"Is Selah here?" the hero asked.
"Yeah, she's in her room," Nia replied, a little confused. Kara often would visit, but she usually texted before showing up. "Do you want me to get her?"
"No, I'll just go see her." the woman nodded, swinging the door open fully to let her into the apartment.
"Is everything okay?" she asked, tossing a book of matches onto the couch as she followed Kara down the hallway.
"Yeah, I just wanted to talk to her." Kara replied, knocking lightly on Selah's door. After a moment, the girl pulled it open.
"Kara?" she asked. "What's going on?"
"Can I come in?" Selah made eye contact with Nia, who was still standing behind Kara in the hall, but the woman only shrugged. The girl quietly stepped back, and Kara entered the room, closing the door behind her. Selah's room was still barely decorated, and a few books littered the floor. She kicked some of them under the bed in an effort to clean up, before leaning against the wall next to the bed. Kara stayed standing near the door, trying to gather what she wanted to say.
"You've been avoiding me," the hero said finally. "And that's okay, you don't have to be around me all the time, and constantly telling me everything, I just... I need to know if you're okay."
"I'm okay," the girl said softly, looking away as the thunder rumbled again.
"Something is wrong. I can tell."
"It's just been weird coming back to reality, I guess." Selah reached into the pocket of her hoodie and pulled out a figure-eight shaped piece of plastic that she began twisting in her hands.
What's that?" Kara asked, pointing at it.
"Uh, Kelly gave it to me. Apparently I have a tendency to fidgeting?"
"Really?" Kara replied, in mock surprise. "I hadn't noticed at all." Selah rolled her eyes. "Wait, you've been talking with Kelly?"
"Yeah. Alex made me."
"Why?" The girl looked slightly caught off guard at the question.
"She didn't say anything to you?"
"I wasn't aware that there was something that she needed to tell me about," the hero said suspiciously. Selah avoided looking at her, and instead sank down onto the bed, still playing with the fidget toy. "Selah?"
"I almost did something. I didn't do it, but Alex found out."
"What kind of a something?"
"A stupid, reckless something." Kara dropped her bag by the door and sat next to Selah on the unmade bed.
"What's going on?"
"You know how Alex made sedatives for me so that she could do operations and stuff?" Kara sensed the direction that Selah was going in, and pursed her lips. "I just thought, if I was to go back into the coma, Beta wouldn't be able to hurt anyone."
"Selah," the hero sighed. "Why didn't you talk to me about this?"
"I didn't know how to. You worked so hard to get me here, I didn't know how to say I was thinking about going back."
"Why would you even think that's an option? That's not a sustainable solution to this problem." Rain drummed against the windowsill, and Kara pushed. "It was just to put you back into the coma? Nothing more?" The girl didn't reply. Shutting her eyes, Kara put her arms around Selah and held her tightly.
"I," she began, but the hero shushed her.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm okay. And I'm not going to do it, I didn't even want to, really. I just... wanted to want it?"
"That is never going to be the answer," she insisted. "Ever."
"Yeah," Selah muttered lamely.
"Is that why you've been avoiding me?"
"I haven't been avoiding you," Selah tried. Kara crossed her arms. "I didn't want to be avoiding you."
"But you were."
"I just..." Selah dropped the fidget toy onto the bed, rubbing her eyes with the palms of her hands. "You know how I had dreams or hallucinations or whatever in the coma?"
"Yeah."
"I saw you a lot. And I know none of that was real, and that this is real, but it's hard for me to remember that sometimes. And sometimes I see you, and I get scared, because I think that you're Beta. And then I feel bad for feeling that because I know that you're not Beta, and that you have been nothing but kind to me for the whole time I've known you, so you don't deserve that reaction, but..." her words died off into silence. "You have been the most consistent, most kind, genuine and caring person I have ever had in my life. You stuck by me through everything, and never gave up on me or blamed me for any of this, even the stuff that was absolutely my fault. You're so important to me, and I'm so grateful for you, but whenever I see you, I flinch. And on instinct, I want to run. You don't deserve that, but I can't stop being scared."
"That reaction isn't your fault," Kara said gently. She put her hands on Selah's shoulders, staring directly at the girl. "And I get that this has been hard for you, I can't even imagine how hard it's been, but I am here. I am real, I am with you, and I'm not leaving. I am never going to leave. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Good. Now, with that said, tomorrow evening, I will be ordering an exorbitant amount of Vietnamese takeout and ice cream. I expect you to be there."
"It just feels weird to be doing normal-people things right now," the girl admitted, poking at the cuffs on her wrists.
"You deserve to be a normal person. You can't put everything on pause until we get this figured out."
"Can I think about it?"
"Think about it all you want, but if you're not at my loft by seven I will show up here and kidnap you."
"Fine," she caved. "You'd better get spring rolls though."
"Duh."
.
.
.
