“It’s not,” Amy said. “Like… it’s that, or I go home at five and most of the time I just stay home watching shows with episodes missing, or new shows that seem off because production values haven’t caught up, and new or old, I’ll watch something with a story and it’s just…”

Amy made a frustrated movement with her hands, clenching them.

Jessica looked at her.

“…Dull,” Amy said. It wasn’t the word she wanted, but she couldn’t think of the word she wanted.

“Not my thing either,” Jessica said. “It’s very hard for me to find television to watch. I’d like crime procedurals, but they tend to get too close to home. I find the dramas dull.”

“Dull’s the wrong word,” Amy said. “…Numb?”

“Numb?” Jessica asked, propping chin on hand, elbow on railing. Casual, removed from the professional.

“The emotional moments don’t land. I’ve seen and lived more intense things than anything I could watch.”

“No other hobbies you could pick up, nobody to meet? Just… say yes to all the emails?”

“I mean, I say no sometimes. I’m dating, you know. Kind of.”

“Are you?”

Amy nodded. She rested her forearms on the railing and her fingers rubbed at the tension in her hands, like they were trying to follow the lines of the tattoos and wipe them off with enough pressure and repetition. “That was a whole thing. I was upfront, let them know I was seeing someone with powers. They were worried about security, and grilled me about who she was. I thought… I don’t have a mask, no costume. Most people who know about cape stuff know who I am. It wouldn’t be fair to her, because I see her when she’s in civilian clothes.”

“How did they take it?”

“Not well, I guess. But I’ve stacked up a lot of brownie points, I’ve stuck to their rules, and the amnesty technically applies. I’m betting they know who she is, but they couldn’t say no to me without admitting the amnesty doesn’t apply equally to everyone. I pointed out that yes, I did go to the Birdcage, but I went voluntarily. If I didn’t have any powers at all and I checked myself into the loony bin, wouldn’t I be able to check myself out?”

“Not usually,” Jessica said.

“That’s moronic,” Amy said, more bitterly than she intended. “It was a temporary thing.”

“Going to the Birdcage could have been a permanent transition.”

Amy drank her iced tea, and the flavor and coldness of it shocked her. She’d held it this long and hadn’t actually had any of it. She watched the two women in the lobby leave. They looked close.

“They shouldn’t have let me demand to go there,” she said, quiet.