Kara usually liked Tuesdays. When she first lived with the Danvers, Eliza used to take her to the town pool every Tuesday after school. While she swam, she would pretend that she was flying instead. And when she and Alex were at separate colleges, they would talk on the phone every Tuesday night. Now, as an adult, she tended to order takeout most on Tuesdays, as a casual treat to continue the legacy of Tuesdays being very slightly special in the most mundane ways.

This Tuesday, however, was not a good one. This Tuesday had started far too early, when Lena had texted her at five in the morning asking very specific questions about what a Kryptonian response to dream powers would be, and how it might change for a half-Kryptonian like Selah. Since then, she had been trying to keep herself busy with little distracting tasks- picking up coffee for all the DEO agents, re-organizing Alex's desk drawers, connecting all of Lena's paperclips together, and then undoing it again after the CEO discovered the very long chain and scolded her. She flitted from task to task, doing anything and everything that she could think of to try to keep her mind occupied.

"Would you stop worrying so loudly?" Selah grumbled, pulling her out of her thoughts. "You're giving me a headache."

The girl was slouched on the cot in Alex's lab, reading a well-worn paperback that Lena had loaned her. She wasn't looking at Kara, but she could see dark circles under Selah's eyes, and the way that her whole body stiffened every time that there was a loud noise nearby. She was wearing a DEO tracksuit; the black fabric was baggy on her scrawny frame, and her short curls were loosely tied away from her face. Nia had braided it back in two French plaits that morning, but they were beginning to fall out. Kara was seated at the island, a worn notebook open in front of her. She was supposed to be making an outline of her next article in it, but so far all she had managed was to scribble the date down in the top corner.

"Sorry," she replied. "I'll try to be quieter."

"Your worrying is always so much louder than anyone else's," the girl said. "I could hear you from across town when you decided to watch Midsommar with Lena."

"That was a harrowing film," she clicked her pen shut, dropping it on the table and shutting her notebook firmly, immediately regretting it as she saw the girl wince again.

"I'm sure that it was."

"When did Alex say that she was going to be here?" she asked.

"Quarter after twelve," Selah replied robotically.

"What time is it now?"

"Ten after. Can I read my book, please?"

"No, Selah," Kara whined. "I need someone to stress-rant to, and you are being way too calm." The girl exhaled heavily, shooting an exhausted glance at the hero as she slipped a scrap of paper into the book to hold her place and closed it, setting it down on the cot beside her. "How are you not more perturbed right now?"

"Maybe some of us are just better at regulating our emotions," she suggested. The hero grabbed a roll of medical bandages off of the table and hurled them at Selah, who caught them easily. "That was rude."

"Alex and Nia are putting you into a medically induced coma in eighteen hours," she reminded Selah. "You should be perturbed."

"Technically it's not medically induced, it's Nia's Naltorian dream powers induced," the girl stated. "And at least now we're doing things. It's a much better feeling than when we were just waiting around for everything to start getting bad again."

"I know." The girl looked sharply up at the door, suddenly alert. Before she could ask her what she heard, the knob turned and Alex entered, holding several thick paper files.

"You're early," Kara said accusatorially.

"Oh, I'm sorry," the agent replied sarcastically, glancing at her watch. "I'll go stand in the hall for three minutes, I wouldn't want to interfere with your busy schedule."

"What is all that?" Selah asked, pointing to the files. Alex began setting them down on the island.

"Answers," she replied cryptically. The girl got up from the cot and leaned over the hero's shoulder to get a look.

"Answers to what questions?" she asked curiously.

"Business first," Alex said, slapping Kara's hand away as she tried to snag one of the folders. "Any seizures last night?"

"No. I feel the same as I did yesterday."

"Nia and Brainy have been running more simulations, just to give us a more complete idea of the logistics, and everything seems to be okay. Brainy also adjusted the psychic bridges so they'll run more efficiently. Things are pretty much where we'd like them to be at for tomorrow."

"And I'll be able to go in to check on her like I did before?" Kara asked.

"Yes. If we need to, any of us will be able to enter the mindscape."

"Okay," the hero said.

"Can we talk about the mysterious folders now?" Selah asked. Kara rocked on her heels, also clearly eyeing them, and Alex heaved an exasperated sigh.

"Do you remember how right after we found you, we were working to identify all the members of the Agenda?"

"I thought we stopped doing that because they were all murdered," Kara said.

"Not all of them. There were two survivors of the warehouse shooting other than Beta; the other director, and an unnamed doctor. We were never able to ID them, and once you two were taken, we switched our focus over to getting you back. But Brainy had been working at decoding some of the documents we recovered, and we got the results back this morning." Alex opened a folder and handed it to the girl, who opened it cautiously.

"You found the missing Agenda members?" she asked.

"We did." The file only had a few pieces of paper in it, with most of the words redacted. Selah flipped over the first piece of paper, and felt Kara tense up next to her when she saw the photograph on the next page.

"Lex?" she demanded.

"He listed himself as the primary medical researcher on the genetic studies that were done on Selah. When we ran his ID number through their system, it matched him up as also being the first director," Alex confirmed.

"I don't remember him ever being there," Selah said quietly.

"He wasn't on site very often, from what I can see. He usually worked remotely with samples that the other doctors sent him."

"Does Lena know about this?" Kara asked.

"I don't think so. I thought that you might want to be the one to tell her." The hero nodded stiffly, and Selah could see her jaw tighten as she closed the folder and set it down again.

"I'll go find her," she said, squeezing the girl's shoulder before she left. The door clicked shut behind her, but the nervous energy that had followed the hero didn't leave with her. Selah still felt something in the air around Alex, an uncertainty that buzzed and hummed. When she looked over at the agent, she saw that the corner of her mouth was turned down in the way that it always was when something was wrong.

She noticed the girl frowning suspiciously at her and she sat down, motioning for Selah to do the same.

"What is it? she asked, warily sitting on the stool across from the agent, who bit her lip.

"I know that you said your mother was the one who sent you to the Agenda," she began. Selah nodded. "They had a file on her as well." Alex glanced at the stack of folders next to her, and nodded at them. "Most of those are actually hers."

"What are you saying?"

"Somehow, Lex found a sample of your father's blood. I have no idea how he got it, but with that sample, the Agenda tried to create a device that could track him. It was very ambitious, especially since they started doing this research in the early 2000s. They only made a few prototypes, but they tried to see if they could use his DNA to pinpoint his location, or at least give clues as to who he was when he wasn't Superman."

"Did it work?"

"No. Like I said, there were only a few prototypes, and none of them could actually track Clark. However, the device was pretty good at identifying if a person was an alien or not, and Lex eventually passed a lot of that information on to Cadmus to help them find their test subjects."

"And they found my mother?"

"First they found you." Selah frowned.

"You said that this was the early 2000s, they didn't get me until I was fourteen."

"You are first mentioned in their files in 2009," Alex said delicately. "I don't know how they found you, Brainy said that file was corrupted beyond repair, but from what we could piece together, they ID-ed you and then they started surveilling your mother's house, probably with the intentions of taking you and sending you to Cadmus."

"Okay," the girl said slowly. "Why did that never happen?"

"I'm not sure. Like I said, there's a lot missing from the files, and it's hard to piece it all together."

"Can I read them?" Alex nodded, pushing the stack over to her. She began flipping through as the door opened, and Lena and Kara walked into the lab.

"Hi," Kara said, walking over to her sister and sitting beside her. Lena shut the door, but didn't enter the room.

"I didn't know," she said abruptly, wringing her hands. Selah glanced up, and saw the woman waiting anxiously by the light switches, her eyes stormy. The air around her was sharp and saturated.

"I know," she said softly. "Um, can you help me translate some of the science jargon here, I'm not a biophysicist." Lena nodded awkwardly. She waited for a few seconds to let the girl change her mind. Then finally, she sat next to her, taking the loose sheets of paper that Selah pushed over to her.

'Subject 037 has elevated readings of [redacted] and [redacted]' it said, 'and the findings are consistent with the base levels of 001. Subject is most likely a species based from a planet with a Colossus M System, high correlation with 001, possible genetic link.'

"001 is Kal-El?" Selah asked, looking up from the page. Alex nodded. "So if they linked me to Superman, why didn't they take me then? Why did they wait five more years?" Alex's eyes softened and she bit her lip, trying to figure out how to respond. "They took my mother?" the girl stated, reading it off of the agent.

"Yes. They first started documenting her in early 2010, in a new project called 'Echidna'."

"Echidna?" Kara asked. "Like the-"

"Not the animal." Alex replied. "Lex was very into Greek mythology. Most of their projects had code names based on myths."

"Who was Echidna?" Selah asked.

"The mother of monsters," Lena said quietly, looking down at her hands.

"The fertility projects that they did on you, Selah," the agent began. "They started with your mother." The girl leaned back in her chair, putting a hand over her mouth. Her face was unreadable, and she didn't look at anyone.

"And that's why they took her?"

"Yes." Selah began rolling up the corner of one of the papers in front of her, twisting it in her fingers.

"In 2010?" she asked. Alex confirmed with a nod. "I always thought that she left me," she said, to no one in particular. "Does my aunt know?"

"I'm not sure. We only just found out this morning. And there's one other thing." Selah glanced up apprehensively. "Brainy also managed to trace where the anonymous tip came from, the one that led us to finding you in the first place."

"It was her?"

"Yeah. It was sent in using a landline from a motel room just outside of the city. We looked into all of the bookings from that weekend, and we watched all of the security tape footage. She was the only one staying there at the time."

The girl was still and motionless, doing her best to look at the files and not at anyone's faces. She didn't want to feel what they were thinking, especially when she didn't even know what she was thinking herself. She felt Kara move around the table, perching herself next to her on the armrest of Lena's chair.

"Are you okay?" she asked. Her voice was soft, and the girl gave a curt nod.

"Is it alright if I look over these some more?" she asked. The question was directed to Alex, but she didn't look at the woman, still firmly staring at the edge of the top file folder. The paper was ripped along the spine in a way that looked like the crescent moon, and she focused her mind on that.

"Of course," the agent replied.

.

"Alex?" The agent looked up, seeing Selah standing in the doorway. She hadn't heard her approaching, and was a little taken aback. A few hours had passed, and she had given the girl the all-clear to go home for the evening, so she was surprised to see that she was still in the DEO

"Is everything okay?" she demanded.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she replied. "Can I talk to you about something quickly?" Alex nodded her head, gesturing for the girl to come in. She entered, shutting the door behind her and sitting at the island across from the director. She began gnawing on her thumbnail, awkwardly resting her chin against the wrist cuff. The agent waited for an explanation as to why she had shown up unannounced, but with each passing moment, it seemed evident that Selah wasn't sure how to broach the topic.

"What's up?" she asked finally. The girl cracked a few of her knuckles and took a deep breath.

"My mother is still here, right?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Um," she paused, gathering her thoughts. "What is your plan with her?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, long-term. Is there anywhere else that she could go?" Selah asked awkwardly, trying to find the right words. Alex narrowed her eyes. "I'm not saying that she should be released, and I don't want to see her, at least not right now, but..." she trailed off, grabbing a pen from the desk and twisting it around in her hands.

"I'm not following," the agent said.

"I know that she hasn't made the best choices, and I certainly know that she can be dangerous. But I lived in a cell for long enough to know that nobody deserves that. And if she stays isolated and separate from the world, she won't ever have the opportunity to want to do better."

"We don't exactly have an alien criminal rehabilitation center if that's what you're asking," Alex replied, beginning to catch Selah's drift. "I know that your mother has been hurt, but she's also hurt a lot of other people. With the amount of power that she has, do you really think that it's a wise idea to give her more freedom and access to society?"

"I don't know," Selah said, ducking her head down as she ran her hand along the edge of the counter. Her forehead crinkled as she spoke, glancing back up at the agent. "My mother is... stubborn. She wasn't a good mother, even before the Agenda got her. If it's even possible for her to change, that's not something that she'll necessarily want to do, and it's not something that can be fixed easily. But I think that she at least deserves the chance to try." She put the pen back on the table and set her hands in her lap. "I get that I'm asking a lot, especially considering that I don't even have a full idea of what I'm asking. Like I said, I'm not looking for any kind of reconciliation with her, I just want her to get better."

"I'll talk to some of my agents," Alex said, careful not to promise too much.

"Thank you."

.

"At least it's not brain surgery." Kara's voice startled Selah out of her anxious daydreams and back to reality, but it took her a few moments to grasp what she had said.

"What?" she asked, blinking a few times. They were in Alex's lab again, the next morning. The island and the stools had been cleared out to make room for another cot that sat parallel to Selah's, which Kara was sitting on. It was just the two of them in the lab, Nia, Brainy, and Lena were on their way, and Alex had run out on a last-minute errand.

"The procedure," she clarified. "It's better than brain surgery, right?" Despite her best efforts, Selah couldn't help cracking a tired smile.

"I guess," she admitted. "Although Alex did pretty well with my brain."

"Yeah, you can't even see a scar," Kara quipped. Selah rolled her eyes. "Are you feeling okay about it all?"

"I don't know if I'm allowed to feel any other way."

"You can feel any way you want to." The girl drew in a long breath, chewing on her lip.

"I'm a little nervous," she admitted.

"I know."

"I get that this is our best plan, and our only plan, I just..." Selah shrugged, swinging her feet. "I wish that we had more time."

"We'll have all the time we want after this," Kara reminded. "There'll be arguably too many game nights, you'll be so sick of us. And then we'll switch to movie nights, and the odd brunch, maybe." She did her best to keep her tone light and pleasant, knowing that the girl was already getting bogged down in her thoughts. The crease between Selah's eyebrows softened ever so slightly, and that encouraged Kara to keep talking. "Maybe next fall we can go to the fair. Alex says that it's cheating for me to use my powers on the carnival games, but I think that she's just mad that she can't beat me at ring toss."

"Probably." Kara could see that she was still unconvinced, so she leaned forward, putting a hand on the girl's knee and tapping on it gently, as a way of getting Selah to look at her.

"We still have plenty of time," she restated firmly. She nodded, breaking eye contact with Kara as the door opened and Lena and Nia entered.

"I just learned how to make Hollandaise sauce," Selah said. "That could be nice for brunch."

"Are you kidding? That would be perfect," she replied. "This one," she pointed at Lena, "keeps bringing spinach with her. It's beginning to feel like a personal insult. I'm thinking about uninviting her from all future get-togethers."

"You don't eat nearly enough vegetables," Lena said cooly, not looking up from her tablet screen. "It's concerning."

"I eat them sometimes," she protested.

"When's the last time that you ate a carrot?" Nia asked.

"Thanksgiving."

"We were in an underground prison cell through Thanksgiving," Selah reminded her.

"Well, then it was the Thanksgiving before that." Suddenly defensive, Kara crossed her arms and jutted her chin out. "Look, I don't even know why you guys have such a problem with my eating habits are, I literally don't need to eat vegetables ever, because I'm an alien."

"We had cucumber slices that one time at Linda's," the girl supplied. "That's a vegetable."

"Isn't it actually a fruit?" Nia asked.

"That's a stupid argument. I hate that argument," Kara replied. "It's green. It grows on the ground, you eat it in a salad. What part about that makes it a fruit?"

"The horticultural and botanical characteristics?" Lena said. "Technically it should be classified as a berry."

"Absolutely not."

"Are you going to go start a fight with some horticulturists and botanists?" Selah asked.

"You bet I am."

"Good. As you should." Alex and Brainy walked into the lab, shutting the door behind them, and the smile began to fade from the girl's face again. The mood in the room shifted, and she felt the others looking at her.

"I'm ready when you are," she said, glancing back at Nia, who nodded.

Kara stood up, making room for the woman to lie down on the second cot, and she sat on Alex's rolling stool next to Selah's bed instead. Brainy opened the box of psychic crowns. Lena took one out and began positioning it on Nia's forehead, and he picked up the second one, crouching beside Selah.

"I heard a rumor about your Hollandaise sauce," he said quietly, tucking a loose curl back into one of her braids and holding the crown against her skin. "I like to add a little bit of paprika and tarragon to mine. You should try it next time."

"I'll keep that in mind," she replied. He pushed the crown firmly against her forehead, sticking it on.

"I will see you soon, my friend," he said, smiling at the girl. Then, he stood again and went back over to Alex, squinting over her shoulder at the tablet.

"Still doing okay?" Kara asked. She nodded, although her throat was dry. "I'll be in as soon as the link is set up properly, and I'll be there with you as much as I can. You're not doing this alone."

"I know."

The girl held one of her arms out to the hero, and Kara swallowed hard before igniting her heat vision. She meticulously cut the cuff off of Selah's wrist, trying her best not to remember the last time she had done this, when they were in the cell at the Agenda. The broken power dampener clattered to the floor, and she silently gave her other arm to Kara.

Once both cuffs were off, Selah felt the overwhelming noise of the world come rushing back over her, and she winced, shutting her eyes. The loudest person in the room was Kara, probably because she was also the closest. Her worry was massive, much deeper than she would ever let on. Next was Nia, her mind constantly repeating a running commentary of: "I really hope this works. Will this work? I don't know if this will work. This has to work". Lena and Brainy and Alex were quieter; Lena was trying to guard her anxiety, but it still slipped through. Alex's thoughts were tense and shifting, and Brainy was fairly stoic, as usual, but Selah could also feel his fear. And behind them was the noise of all the other DEO agents, the people on the street, and the thoughts of an entire city, mingled together into a cacophony of white noise.

Selah had forgotten how loud it always used to be.

When her brain had become mostly re-accustomed to the sounds, she opened her eyes again. She looked first to Kara and then over at Nia, whose psychic crown was also on, and the woman smiled.

"Ready to go beat up the evil lady who lives in your mind?" she asked.

"I guess so. After this we should go storm National City's horticultural society. I've heard that Kara has some unresolved issues with them."

"I'd really love that." Selah smiled nervously, glancing around the room. Everyone was still staring at her.

"Well," she said, trying to keep her voice casual. "I'll see you guys on the flip side, I guess."

.

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