Those were things she could watch out for. The awe, the hate, the seeming perfection, the perspective or lack thereof. Early work, past classes, upbringing, everything in her life up to this point had primed her to watch those things. She could point to just about any bad incident in her upbringing or past and think of the big lesson she’d taken to heart.

This… she’d always thought capes were cool. It felt like just yesterday that she’d been Kenzie’s age, utterly enchanted by the idea of getting powers and doing something. That moment when she saved people. The moment when the villain was about to win. The moment when bystanders depended on her, or clapped for her because she’d won. She’d been enchanted by the magical powers of one book, the biological alteration scenario of a television series. When she reflected on the fantasies of childhood and adulthood both, it was the moments that stuck with her. Endless replays in her head of a given monumental scene, the crux of a decision.

Not even all good moments, either. Just moments, the key scenes. When she’d wanted to be a lawyer, it had been with a mind to having those moments in the courtroom. When she’d started working with the capes, a part of it was that she’d wanted to be adjacent to those moments.

Tonight had had a few of them. She’d been adjacent.

Except they weren’t any moments. Time didn’t stop, and there was no room to think about each decision. Events came, they went, things moved on, people adapted, conversations led to them and from them.

Standing here in the cold, glasses so fogged up and amber-tinted she couldn’t even see through them, she wondered if she was trying to stand in that current and find or create a moment.

But it couldn’t be manufactured. There was no moment here, only a checklist of things to do, each thing with its own priority.

Best not to leave Kenzie alone too long, either. She cleaned her glasses of condensation while walking from her car to the building.

Her hands remained in her pockets even though the steps of the fire escape were narrow. She knocked, and it was Victoria who opened the door.

“You don’t need to knock,” Victoria said.

“I’m thinking I should take Kenzie home.”

“Okay.”

“Let me get my stuff,” Kenzie said. “I want to take stuff home to work on.”

“Go easy,” Victoria said. “Don’t work on your things too late, or spend too much time watching feeds.”

“Okay, I can take stuff to work on in the morning though, right?”

“Not too much,” Natalie said. “Whatever you can take in one trip. We’re all tired and we don’t want to be going back and forth from the car to unload.”

“Okay. One trip, hmm.”

“I’ll take one bag,” Natalie said.