“The Red Queen,” I said.

It was Amy, in full battle dress, such as it was. Marquis stood beside her, and Dot perched on her shoulder.

A long, long line of Earth Bet and Earth Gimel cars were making their way in through the portal, bumper to bumper, the snow nearby red from all of the brake lights.

Refugees. I knew what she’d been arguing for, now.

And she would save so many lives by having won that argument, by having made the promises she’d made.

I hated that I couldn’t hate her for it.

“Carol Dallon,” the words left my lips.

My mom, startling in how she was younger than I was now, less tight and precise in her movements than I’d ever known her to be. Even with the brain injury, she moved with more control and less abandon.

Her hand reached up, fingers running through beard. And my dad had never had a beard. An Uncle Neil that was Tristan’s age pushed young Carol up against the wall, kissing her.

“It’s lies you know,” Tattletale said. “Inconsistent information, jumping to conclusions, filling in blanks wrong. Start from a faulty premise. In this case, I think I thought of all of you heroes in suits with way too much white in the design as being oversexed and deranged. I was right on one count.”

The image became Amy again, wearing her Panacea costume for warmth, working furtively in a room too dark to even see what she was doing, arms wet with blood up to the elbows. She wiped her hand over the gore and there was only pink skin streaked with blood after the hand moved away.

A hand, my hand, gripped hers.

That frustrated, panicked feeling felt like it was swelling, reaching out to grab all of the other emotions that had gotten tangled up, too dangerous to even think about, like the sun was too bright to stare directly into.

At least, I thought, and the words were meant to be humor, a way of shrugging off this bad feeling. At least I don’t have to see my mom and Uncle Neil fucking.

It didn’t work as humor, didn’t put a smile on my face or ease the weight that felt like it had settled directly onto my heart, suppressing each beat.

“It’s lies,” Tattletale said, standing between me and the biggest crystal.

Off to the side, claws longer than I was raked crystal with a nails-on-blackboard sound.

“Aren’t the guesses those crystals made of smoke?” I asked, indicating the nearest one.

Tattletale sighed, but she didn’t correct me or convince me otherwise.

My mom and Uncle Neil. Twenty-one years ago, if I had to guess.

It was all so shitty. The number of people I could count on—