"Do you have any sevens?" Kara asked Selah, her face tense and serious. The two were playing cards together on the girl's cot- both blatantly cheating- on the second morning after her surgery. She had recovered entirely by now; the cut had closed up and her powers had fully returned only a few hours after the surgery ended, but Alex had still insisted that she stay on bed rest for the first day.
"Go fish," Selah replied, grinning widely.
"Damn you!" she yelled, throwing her cards down angrily. "It's not fair, you can read minds!"
"You were looking through all of my cards with your x-ray vision to see which ones I had," she countered, still smirking. "Do you want to play again?"
"I'd rather die," the hero muttered indignantly, picking up the cards off of the floor. "Do you want to get out of here?" she asked, piling the deck of cards up and setting it aside.
"For real?" the girl asked, looking up in surprise.
"Yeah, why not? We could get some coffee, or just go out on a walk if you'd prefer that."
"Am I..." she hesitated, biting her lip. "Am I allowed to just leave like that?"
"Of course, Kara replied emphatically. "I mean, maybe not on your own, at least 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," the hero said dramatically, grabbing her bag. "Speaking of which, have you signed all of those NDA forms for Alex yet?"
"I did the first ten and then I got bored, so I took a nap," the girl replied, standing up. "Where are we going to go?"
"Anywhere you want," Kara glanced at her watch. "We could go get a second breakfast from Noonan's."
"Sure." Together, they left the room and talked with Alex, who gave Kara a look but agreed to give them an hour out of the DEO, with the understanding that when they returned, they had to have a talk regarding some leads on the doctors from 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 building and stepped out onto the sidewalk, Kara noticed Selah shiver slightly, and she swore that she felt a wave of energy rush off of the girl, making the hair on her arms stand on end.
"You good?" she asked, glancing over as they began to walk across town.
"Yeah," she replied quickly. "Sorry, did I zap you?"
"Maybe?"
"When I get excited, I send off more psychic energy than usual." She looked up at the sky and smiled. "I just haven't like, been outside in five years."
"Right," she said. "We can go back if it's too much for you.
"No, it's fine," the girl replied, and another pulse of energy rolled over Kara, this one slightly stronger than the last. "I thought that I would never see the sky again."
"I'm really glad that you're so happy, but we probably shouldn't hit too many strangers with random psychic energy," the hero 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," she said.
"For what?" They reached a crosswalk and Kara let the girl press the button. She couldn't help but smile as well, seeing her so content and carefree.
"For doing all of this," she replied. "You've been really nice to me since I came to the DEO."
"Yeah, well you deserve to have people in your life who care about you." Selah ducked her head down, still grinning as they crossed the street. "Besides, I know how it feels to be thrown into a new situation where everything is new and scary, and you don't know who you can trust. When I first came to Earth, I had Alex and Eliza. I know that it's not quite the same, but I want you to have that same sense of stability."
They walked together in silence for a bit, Selah going out of her way to step on every crack in the sidewalk. Kara was certain that she had already smiled more in the ten minutes that they had been outside than in all the rest of the time that she had known her for.
"Can I ask you something?" she asked. The girl raised her eyebrows, waiting for the question. "How did you keep your powers in the lab if you never went out into the sunlight?"
"Sun lamps," she replied, her smile fading a little bit. "They would make me use my heat vision until I blew out my powers whenever they wanted to do surgery or tests, and then they'd 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 eat or sleep 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 a lot better than lamp-sunlight."
"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 be a waitress here when I first moved to the city, and I instantly fell in love with the sticky buns. I haven't been able to stay away since."
"Yeah?"
"They're so good, believe me, it's going to change your life." She 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 swing shut and going to Selah's side. The girl didn't reply, she merely looked up at Kara, her face afraid. The hero put her arms around her shoulders and carefully led her over to a park bench, where they sat down.
"Just breathe," she murmured. "Deep breaths. It's okay." After a moment, she seemed to gather herself again.
"Sorry," she croaked.
"It's okay,"
"The cashier," the girl began, looking towards Noonan's. Kara followed her gaze to see a red-haired woman behind the counter. She had dark red hair that was greying at the temples, and she looked to be in her early forties. "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 on and off when I was a kid. I just... didn't expect to see her."
"Hey, it's okay." She looked up at Kara, her eyes sad. "We can go to my place instead."
"But your sticky buns," she protested.
"I have a stockpile of them in my freezer. It's no big deal." She stood up, offering a hand to Selah, who took it uncertainly. "Besides, I just ordered a bunch of new teas that I've been dying to try out, so you can be my guinea pig. Do you like tea?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
As they walked the three blocks to Kara's apartment, the girl's smile slowly returned, and there were several times when Kara caught her simply staring up at the sky, marveling at what she saw.
"Would you pay attention to where you're walking," she asked, nervously looking at the busy street that was only a few feet away.
"I can see the street through your mind, so long as you're looking at where we're supposed to be going."
"Okay, well they don't know that," Kara pointed out, gesturing at the cars. "And I'm sure that you are making all of them very anxious."
"Fine," the girl said, rolling her eyes as she tipped her head back down to be level with the street. She still felt a little bit shaken up about seeing her aunt. It had been so long, and she had accepted ages ago that she would never see the woman again. It hadn't crossed her mind yet that now she could. She could tell that Kara was doing her best not to think about Noonan's or her aunt, but she could feel the hero's confusion and curiosity around all that had just happened.
They approached a brownstone building on a corner lot, and the hero ushered her in through the door and onto the elevator. Selah wasn't quite sure what she imagined Supergirl's apartment would look like; it wasn't something that had ever crossed her mind before, but she wasn't expecting there to be so many cat paintings and little knickknacks. She looked around at all the colorful tea towels and books stacked on end tables as Kara threw her bag and keys down, walking over to the kitchen cabinets.
"So what kind of tea do you want?" she asked, opening a cupboard. "I have peppermint, ginger, lemon, chai, vanilla, mint, oolong, green tea..." she pulled out a few mugs, filled them with water, and zapped them with her heat vision, instantly boiling them.
"Whatever you're making is fine with me," Selah replied, sitting down on a stool at the island as Kara puttered around with teabags. Eventually the tea was made, and Kara brought two mugs over, sitting down next to the girl.
"My mother was an empath," she said abruptly, taking her steaming mug. "It's a pretty rare condition in Andromedans, it's caused by a genetic mutation in about one in three million people. Empath Andromedans can use their telepathy and their psychic powers to control other people, especially their emotions. It's much easier for them to weaponize their abilities, and they can essentially take over someone else's mind and shut it down." The girl cleared her throat, staring straight ahead but not really looking at anything in particular. "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 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 instead of turning her in, to protect her. Her sister Lea went with her. They landed when my mother was 21 and my aunt was 26. And then my mom got pregnant with me less than a year later, and they raised me together when I was really small. Then they had some kind of big falling out, and 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 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 her home and her family. She had so much bitterness and anger inside of her..." she trailed off, her face unreadable. "My aunt was the only person in my life who seemed to care about me."
"I'm sorry," Kara said, as she put a hand on the girl's knee.
"It's fine," she said, her voice low. "I just wish that she had been there for me when I needed her to be, you know?" She cleared her throat again, looking down at her half-full mug. "This is good tea."
"It's fair trade," the hero replied, sensing that she wanted to change the subject. "It comes from Nepal, and it's ethically grown and all the workers are paid fair wages."
"That's good."
They sat together drinking their tea and eating thawed sticky buns, which Kara insisted were as good as the fresh ones, until it was time to return to the DEO. She gave the girl a hug as they stood up, squeezing her tightly.
"Ow," Selah said, grinning despite her complaint. "What was that for?"
"I'm glad that I met you," she replied, smiling back. "You're a good kid."
"I'm not a kid."
"Are too," Kara said, picking up her bag and gently swatting the girl with it. "You're practically a baby."
"I take back all of the nice things that I said about you earlier." The hero put an arm around her, and they began to walk back to the DEO together, intentionally choosing a route that wouldn't take them past Noonan's.
"Thank you again," she said as they reached the DEO.
"Don't mention it, kid," Kara replied. "Any time that you want to have fair trade Nepalese tea with me, my door is open, okay?"
.
.
.
