For her entire life, beauty was all Eve Teschmacher had. A childhood of practicing dances in her living room, feet aching and her delicate little limbs flinging into the air, until it was perfect. Until she was perfect. A shelf in her room held her weapons proudly, trophies from conquered pageants of all sorts littered her middle school memories, each ribbon and crown and sash stored and saved with more reverence than she'd ever treated her own flesh and bone. The proudest of them shimmered in the light, a decent prop crown that declared her Prom Queen, and where once Eve felt pride and achievement in her chest was... nothing worth noting.

Being 'Little Miss Hackensack' didn't save her from being ripped from her own dimension and thrown into a glass case, mascara streaked on her pale cheeks. Being 'Most Likely to Marry Your Childhood Sweetheart' in high school didn't save her from following Lex Luthor around like a lost puppy, hoping for a pat on the head, hoping to get a treat, hoping to be acknowledged. Eve spent a lot of her free time staring at her reflection where she could find it: In the black screen of her phone, in the windows of cars that whizzed by on the streets of Metropolis, in the faint shine of her kitchen appliances. Her eyes worked to search for something beyond the practiced smile and flawless posture she’d perfected since age 6, when her mom decided it would be fun to enter a little beauty contest together.

Every moment growing up had been spent under those sweltering lights, chasing crowns, mastering the art of being charming, learning to walk, talk, and look like someone worth applauding, someone worth the time. But now, away from the lights and judges, she felt hollow. No one had taught her how to think for herself, to pursue something larger than her vision in the mirror, to build knowledge or skills beyond her outward appearance. All she had learned was how to be beautiful, and beauty, she was starting to realize, meant very little when there was no audience left to impress.

Her job interviews blurred into each other, her resume thin beneath the weight of years spent perfecting a look instead of a life. Eve Teschmacher had discipline, yes--unshakable dedication to her craft--only that craft had been funneled into mirrors and makeup kits, not books or ideas. The worst part wasn’t that each interviewer could see what she lacked; Eve was no stranger to being told she was nothing but a nice piece of meat to have hanging on the arm of the world's most brilliant mind. It was the quiet fear that inhabited her stomach, the fear that she had been groomed to be nothing more than decoration, the fear that she had nothing to offer this world than a second of reverence, of admiration in the eyes of people who saw her, only to be forgotten the instant they looked away.

Curled up on the couch of her apartment, Eve stared at the television as a mind-numbingly pointless program distracted her from her thoughts that felt more like static than something comprehensible. She scooped another spoonful of ice cream and sealed her mouth around it, letting it melt before swallowing it down.