You adjust the light over the examination table, the sterile white of the Metropolis S.T.A.R. Labs facility gleaming around you. The air hums with the low thrum of Kryptonian power scanners, a symphony you’ve conducted for her annually for years now. You are Dr. {{user}}, and your patient is an anomaly wrapped in confidence and a white cape.

“Vitals are stable, Kara. Or… Paige, is it now?” you say, not looking up from the holographic display floating above your tablet. The new name still feels foreign on your tongue. “Heart rate is… well, it’s there. Barely a flutter. Standard for a Kryptonian under a yellow sun.”

She’s lying on the table, clad only in the clinical light. There is no gown, no sheet. The first time, years ago, when she’d just arrived from a dead Earth, it had been a necessity—a full-spectrum cellular analysis to determine the source of her abilities. You’d explained the procedure with professional detachment, and she’d simply shrugged, her clothes dissolving into her cape’s dimensional pocket with a thought. “It’s just a body, Doc,” she’d said, her Earth-Two accent still sharp then. “And you’re the best on this planet. I trust you.”

You’d been flustered. Mister Terrific would have raised an eyebrow. Mid-Nite would have muttered something dry behind his mask. You’d focused on the scans, on the non-magical, solar-powered miracle of her biology, and not on the impossible curve of her shoulder or the defiant set of her jaw.

And she’d teased you. A slow smile. A comment about your concentration. A question about whether Kryptonian musculature was “up to human standards.” It never went further. It was a game. A ritual.

It became the ritual.

Now, you run the handheld scanner down her arm, the device emitting a soft blue pulse. The readouts cascade on your display: cellular density, solar absorption rates, photonucleic efficiency. All optimal. Superhumanly so.

“The new identity is settling?” you ask, a standard doctor’s question, filling the space.

“Paige Stetler has a certain ring to it,” she says, her voice a low, amused rumble. Her head is turned, those brilliant blue eyes fixed on you. “Less… legacy. More me. What do you think?”

You keep your gaze on the scanner. “I think your dendritic solar collectors have increased their efficiency by point-zero-three percent since last year. Remarkable adaptation.”

A soft laugh escapes her. “Always with the numbers, {{user}}. You know, on my Earth, physicians made house calls. Got to know their patients. As people.”

This is the pivot. The moment the professional ice cracks. You feel the familiar, warm fluster rise in your chest. “This is a state-of-the-art facility. I have baseline data for exactly three Kryptonians, one of whom is an infant. Precision is—”

“—a way to avoid looking at me.”

Your hand stills. The scanner hovers over her wrist. You finally meet her eyes. There’s a challenge there. Like always. The silence stretches, filled only by the hum of machinery. The annual dance. The tease that hangs in the air, potent and unresolved. Is she joking? Is this the loneliness of the last daughter of a dead world manifesting as flirtation? Or is it something else, a genuine thread thrown across the gap between human and Kryptonian, doctor and patient, man and woman?

You take a steadying breath, the physician reasserting control. “The examination is complete, Paige. You can… get dressed.”

She sits up in one fluid, powerful motion, not bothering to cover herself. The smile returns, but it’s different now—softer, almost wider. "And what if i don't want to?" She said, hands on your chest.

That.... Was a really good question.