The breach was very white and very empty. Kara found herself surrounded by a thick white mist that swirled around them in all directions. It made her kind of dizzy to watch it, which was a rare sensation for her.
"Selah?" she called, but her words were muffled and faint. Suddenly, the girl appeared at her side.
"Hey," she replied, her voice sounding as if it was very far away. "Are we breaching?"
"I guess. It's taking longer than any time that I've done it before."
"Is that a bad sign?"
"I'm not sure." Her mind was already jumping ahead to the 'what ifs'. She had just begun to envision an endless future of being trapped in there with Selah when the mist disappeared in an instant, and in front of them was a large, round hole.
"Huh," the girl said after a moment, her voice now clear.
"Are we supposed to... go through it?" Kara asked. She shrugged.
"You're the one who's done this before," she pointed out.
"I already told you, it wasn't like this then. That breach was designed by actual professionals, not a mad scientist and a twenty year old kid." She walked over to the hole and stuck her head inside, but she couldn't see anything other than darkness. Straightening again, she reached out her hand to the girl. "Let's go in together. I'm not taking a chance of leaving you wherever here is."
Selah took her hand, and they gingerly stepped into the hole together. As soon as they both touched it, it sort of sucked them in, and Kara felt as if she was spinning around rapidly, like the mist that had previously been filling the room.
"I don't like this very much," the girl yelled into the darkness, but as quickly as the spinning had started, it stopped. They tumbled down, landing awkwardly onto solid ground.
"Where are we?" Kara asked, after they had both caught their breath.
"I'm not sure."
"So you're telling me that when you built this machine, you didn't plan out where it was going to spit us out?" she demanded. Selah shrugged.
"I had other things on my mind."
"That is a very important factor, Selah. We could be in... Tokyo, or Frankfurt, or-"
"I'm not sure if I have to remind you of this, but you can fly faster than the speed of sound."
Kara was about to retort, but their bickering was cut short by an abrupt panel of light that pierced the darkness around her, shining directly onto her face. It took a minute or two for her eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness. Once they did, she saw a tall, blond man with a large mustache standing in front of her. He was wearing coveralls and holding a mop, and he had a very confused expression on his face. She looked around and realized that she and Selah were standing in a broom closet.
"Hallo?" he said in a very thick German accent.
"Frankfurt," the girl whispered, leaning over to Kara's ear. She elbowed her sharply in the ribs.
"Um, Anglais?" she asked.
"That's French," the girl informed her.
"Shoot, um."
"What are you doing in my broom closet?" the man asked in halting English.
"We were, um. Looking for the bathrooms," Selah supplied. "I guess that we must have gotten lost along the way. We'll be out of your hair now." The man slowly nodded, his eyes wide as they clumsily stepped out of the closet and began walking down a hallway.
"Are we seriously in Germany?" she demanded once they were out of earshot of the janitor.
"Maybe?" she tipped her head to one side and shut her eyes. "There's not many people nearby, but I think that the ones that I can hear are all thinking in English. It's hard to tell though, because thoughts don't really have a language." Kara spotted a plaque on the wall ahead of them with various directions on it, and she went over to read it.
"Selah, we're in the university," she said in an exasperated voice.
"Really?" the girl replied, opening her eyes and walking over to Kara. "I guess that makes sense. Maybe the layout of their university was different than ours, and so we wound up in the wrong place."
"Can you hear anyone? Are you sure that we're on the right Earth this time?"
"Hang on, let me check." Selah closed her eyes again, and she took a slow breath. Biting back a grin, she looked up to meet the hero's eyes. "J'onn says hi and also that Alex told him to tell us if we're not at the DEO in five minutes she's going to kill us."
Squealing, Kara pulled the girl into a bone-crushing hug, her heart swelling with relief.
"We did it!" she exclaimed.
"We did it," Selah repeated, her face finally free of all the worry that Kara had grown used to seeing on it over the past weeks.
.
Alex was there to meet them on the balcony as they landed at the DEO. Kara had been able to hear her heartbeat from several blocks away, and ever since she had first detected her sister, she had been reminding herself over and over to be gentle. She kept repeating it in her mind as she wrapped her sister in a hug. All that she wanted to do was to squeeze as tightly as she could, but she had already given Alex more than enough rib fractures over the years from her intense hugs.
"Kar," she breathed out, her voice trembling.
"I'm okay," she insisted. "Selah too. We're both okay." Alex pulled away, keeping her hands on Kara's shoulders as she looked over her sister, examining her for any injuries.
"What are you wearing?" she asked finally, frowning at the pink cardigan and long, floral skirt.
"Shoot," the hero muttered. "Selah, we forgot to give Linda her clothes back."
"That's fine," the girl replied. "She needed to diversify her wardrobe, now she has an excuse to."
"Linda?" she asked.
"It's a long story."
"For later. There's a lot of people in there who want to see you." Alex turned to look at Selah, who carefully looked back. Her grey eyes were filled with remorse. The agent took a long breath before pulling the girl into a tight hug, which she returned after a moment.
"I'm sorry," she whispered into Alex's shoulder.
"I know." She pulled away, wiping at her eyes as she looked at Kara again. "It doesn't matter anymore. As long as you're both safe."
The next few hours were a flurry of hugging and crying as Nia, Brainy, J'onn and Lena saw Selah and Kara. Up until J'onn had received Selah's telepathic message, they had all still been trying to find the Agenda- a search that was not proving to be very successful, so the sudden reappearance of their missing friends was a shock to say the least. Selah had also contacted her aunt telepathically, and Lea came soaring into the DEO, tackling her niece in a hug.
"So you were on another Earth?" Alex asked over a slice of pizza that Brainy had ordered. They had given an abridged version of what had happened since they had left, not wanting to go into the gory details just yet. "Why didn't we think to investigate that?" she asked Brainy.
"I thought it was statistically improbable." He replied. "I didn't realize that the Agenda would have the technological skills to travel across the multiverse. Clearly I need to recalibrate."
"But that was it?" the agent pressed. "You were just somewhere else in the multiverse and we couldn't communicate? For two months?" Kara glanced over at Selah, who was running a hand over the chip implant in her neck and looking at the floor.
"We'll explain it all later," she told her sister. "For now, we should celebrate." Alex narrowed her eyes skeptically, but she let the subject fall as Brainy loudly announced he was going to order eight more pizzas.
.
"You two are okay?" the agent asked several hours later, once the party had finally died down. Selah and Kara had volunteered to help clean up, knowing that she would want to ask a lot more questions. All of the others had returned to their various homes, and Alex stood in the conference room, parallel to Kara and Selah. "I find it hard to believe that you were just chilling on another Earth for nearly two months." They exchanged another look and she sighed. "What aren't you telling me?"
"Beta sent us to that Earth," the hero said softly. "We were kept in a facility there."
"A facility?"
"Think... Cadmus. But Selah and I were the only prisoners."
"What did they do to you?" the agent asked.
"Barely anything to me. It was almost all Selah." she looked over to the girl, who was sitting silently on a chair and looking down on the floor.
"Selah?" she asked after a long pause.
"It was mostly the same as before. Lots of surgeries and testing. Sometimes they'd experiment with different weapons and how they affected me. We blew up most of their facility when we left so I can't imagine that they have much of the research left."
"Are you okay?" she repeated.
"There's a chip implanted in the back of my neck," she replied, running a hand over it again. "And uh," she placed her hands flat on the table. "I don't have thumbs."
"What?"
"Kara heat-visioned them off."
"What?" Alex picked up one of Selah's hands in her own and examined it before taking a long breath. "Do you want to go over to my lab?" The girl nodded mutely. "Kara, do you want to come or are you going to go home to get some rest?"
"I'll come," she instantly replied, the thought of leaving the girl putting a knot in her stomach.
Once in the lab, Alex pulled on a pair of gloves while the girl sat herself on the bed.
"I know you've explained the whole 'regrowing fingers' thing to me before," she said walking over to the cot. "But can we refresh here? Why didn't they regrow?"
"Is it because thumbs aren't fingers?" Kara interrupted.
"That's not-" Alex sighed. "You know that's not true, right?"
"Yes?" she said unconvincingly.
"I don't know why they haven't regrown," Selah answered. "I think because they healed up on their own, when my powers were gone." The agent began examining the girl's hands, bending her wrist and remaining fingers.
"I think that our best bet would be to try reopening the incision and then letting it heal with your powers," she said finally. "If you're open to that."
"I don't really want to be thumbless forever. I feel unevolved."
"Okay." Alex pulled off her gloves and threw them away. "I can do it at the same time as when we remove the chip." Selah nodded. "I would like it if you two stayed here overnight, just for observation. I'm not going home either, so we can take over a sparring room or something."
"Sounds good," Kara said, pulling her sister into the millionth hug of the evening. "Can we rewatch Veronica Mars?"
.
The evening air was cool on Selah's face as she flew high above the fields that spread out below her. She was pretty proud of herself as this was only her second time flying for a long distance, and she hadn't hit any birds or drones or trees or low flying planes. Alex had given her and Kara DEO sweatsuits to change into, so she finally had been able to get out of Linda's hand-me-downs. Despite the joy-filled reunion, she felt a knot of anxiety twisting in her stomach as she landed quietly on the grass at her location.
"Um," she said as she walked up to the house, unsure of what to say. Both Clark and Lois whirled around to see her standing on the dark back lawn of their house in Smallville. "Hi,"
"Who is this?" Lois demanded, turning to look at her husband.
"Selah, this is my wife, Lois. Lois, Selah." The woman raised her eyebrows at the girl's name.
"That Selah?" she asked.
"I can't imagine that it's a very common name," he replied. "I heard that you came back," he said to his daughter. "I'm sorry that I couldn't make it out to the party."
"It's okay," Selah replied.
"I'm really glad to see you, though. Are you okay?" he asked, walking over to the steps and standing at the top of them. "Are you safe?"
"I'm fine, yeah. Kara too. I'm sorry for showing up like this, I just wanted to say hi." She looked down at her hands, which were twisted together. "And uh. I need to talk to you about something." Clark and Lois again exchanged glances before she offered a smile to the girl.
"Why don't we take this inside?" she asked. Selah followed her father and his wife into their house, chewing on the inside of her lip as she walked up the steps to their porch. They opened a swinging screen door and walked into the kitchen. Clark sat down at the table, and Lois went to a cupboard, pouring three glasses of water that she set out. Then she sat next to him, and they waited expectantly as the girl hovered uncertainly in the doorway. Finally, she placed herself in a chair across the table from them.
"What's going on?" he asked. "Alex told me that you were fine, are you... not?" he asked.
"You can track anyone in the world based on their heartbeat, right?" Selah asked instead of answering.
"Yeah. Why?" she closed her eyes, and suddenly the kitchen was filled with a steady thrumming sound. The water's surface in the cups trembled along to the rhythm, and the silverware in the drawers rattled.
"Can you track this?" she asked.
"How is she doing that?" Lois whispered.
"Did I not mention that she has psychic powers?" he replied. She frowned. "It uh, must have slipped my mind." Eager for the distraction, Clark shut his eyes and began listening for the heartbeat. Selah let the noise fade, but kept her eyes shut and waited for her father's answer. "I can't find it," he said finally.
"You're sure?"
"Positive."
"Okay," she opened her eyes again to see Clark giving her a puzzled look.
"I don't quite understand what's going on," he admitted. "Kara can do that just as well as I can. Why didn't you ask her?"
"She's with Alex. And I didn't want to stress her out."
"Why would it stress her out?" he asked, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms. The girl sighed.
"That heartbeat belonged to the woman who took us. Beta. I don't know-" she trailed off, rubbing a hand over the slightly raised bump at the back of her neck.
"What aren't you telling me?" he pressed gently.
"I killed her. At least, I thought I did, but I never actually saw her die. And now I'm scared that she might still be alive, at least a part of her."
"How?"
"She psychically connected herself to me, so that she could gain my powers. After Kara and I escaped, I stopped hearing her, but now..."
"You do again?"
"Not exactly. I haven't heard words or anything, but I just get a feeling, and-" she trailed off again, fixing her eyes on the table.
"You haven't told Kara or Alex about this yet?"
"You're the first people I'm telling." Selah took a deep breath, and she shut her eyes again before continuing, "And I'm really hoping that it's just trauma or whatever, and I'm just being hypersensitive, but,"
"Hey," Clark said, and she looked up. "We will figure this out." He glanced at Lois, who nodded.
"Okay," Selah replied quietly. "Alex said she'd take the psychic chip out tomorrow, so I'm hoping that will help. Also she's hopefully going to give me thumbs again, but that's a long story for a different time."
"Keep me updated?" she nodded.
"What else?" he asked, reading her face.
"It's kind of... trivial with everything else that's going on, but..." She paused again. "I didn't have a doppelganger on the other Earth. I didn't exist there, because you didn't exist. I saw my mother, at least the other version of her, and afterwards, I found myself wishing that I could have seen you too." She kept her gaze fixed down, not daring to look up at Clark or Lois as she continued. "I remember thinking that it was ridiculous that I missed you, because I don't even know you that well, so why was I so curious to get to know a completely different version of you. But it's just... It made me think that..." she hesitated, cracking all of her knuckles. "I would like to know you. Any version of you." She finally lifted her head and was astonished to see tears glinting in her father's eyes. "I'm sorry," she stammered.
"No, don't apologize," he said. "I don't think that this has been a very easy journey for either of us. I didn't know that you existed, and you didn't know who I was. And now we're both here."
"Now we're both here," Selah echoed.
"I'm sorry that I haven't been there for you. To be honest, when Alex told me that you and Kara were back, I didn't come because I didn't know if you wanted me to be there. I was scared that having me around would remind you of all of the bad things that happened to you because of me being your father. I didn't want to hurt you more than I already have. But if you want me around, I'll be there. I want to be there."
"Okay." The girl took a deep breath, slowly exhaling. "Your kids are really lucky to have you," she said, looking up at both of them. He reached across the table and put his hand on top of hers.
"You're always welcome here, any time you want to come by, okay?" he said.
"Yeah, we have two teenage boys, so there's always plenty of food in the house," Lois added. "If you can excuse the table manners."
"Thank you." After a moment, she cleared her throat. "Um. I should probably be getting back to Kara, I told her I was going to my apartment to get extra socks."
"Why did you need extra socks?"
"I left before she could ask me that." Clark laughed.
"I'll stop by the DEO soon to see how things are going, okay?"
"Okay. Thanks again."
"Anytime," he replied, adding awkwardly, "I hope that you get your thumbs back soon."
"Oh, yeah it's not really a huge deal," she said. "I lose them more often than you'd think. Um. I'm going to go now."
"Okay."
"She inherited your composure," Lois said, elbowing her husband as the girl darted out of the kitchen and disappeared into the night.
"That's rude," he muttered, glancing over at his wife.
"So your daughter is a telepath?" she asked.
.
.
.
