“It’s dumb,” I said. “An hour and a half ago I was racing through the guts of the systems that drive our powers, powerless, escaping a bunch of things that looked like—the Dauntless Titan. Kronos. Apparatuses that extend from powers.”

I’d almost said they looked like Endbringers, but Endbringer was a heavy word when one Endbringer had killed Eric and…

And Neil.

Whoever Neil was to me.

“Scary,” Crystal said, her voice still a bit artificial, like she was trying to carry the weight of managing the tone of the three-person conversation.

“I saw things,” I said. “I saw things about my team, but that was at a different point, more the thing that can draw people together instead of driving them apart.”

“Some of it drove you apart?” Crystal asked.

“Not me and my team. Amy. Amy’s sickness, the depths of it. The fact she’s helping refugees. Hints about Teacher. Stuff about my therapist.”

“Amy is… a good reason to be touch-wary,” Crystal said, ever the diplomat.

My mom, though, the lawyer, the heroine who could patrol and spot trouble from blocks away in the gloom… her study of me was sharp.

“You didn’t shy away from Crystal,” my mom said.

“Can we drop it?” I asked.

My mom reached over. I didn’t pull away as she touched my upper arm, rubbing it.

“Apparently you can’t drop it,” she told me.

“What? I didn’t pull back.”

“But you tensed. You watched, wary, instead of making eye contact. You didn’t ease up as you normally might.”

“It’s been a while since I eased up when someone wanted to touch me,” I answered.

“You saw something about me?” she asked. “Hurting a villain more badly than necessary? Making a deal to give a scumbag a pass? What sort of things did these images or figures play-act for you? If you tell me, then at least I can defend myself.”

“Or, you know, we could respect that Victoria’s not ready to talk about it,” Crystal said.

“That seems like the cowardly way out,” my mother said.

“Cowardly?” I asked. I was ready to lash out, to say something, to retort. Not least because it felt it was my mom who was saying something she had been keeping inside for the last few years. Filters down, defenses down, the brain injury bringing things to the surface, without the poised, perfect, perfectly made-up Carol Dallon crafting every response.

Like she was calling the me that had struggled during and since the hospital a coward.

I shook my head, fierce, “Not getting into this. Sorry, Crystal.”

Crystal looked legitimately scared, seeing the feelings that were flaring up.

“There is too much going on these days,” my mother said. “We can’t have one more thing hanging over our heads. If this is about my actions as a heroine, I fully admit I haven’t been perfect.”

I shook my head.