“My civilian life?” she asked.

“Yeah. Can we just leave it at that?”

“My time as a lawyer? It would have to be,” she said. “Because, believe me, I’ve spent the last two years coming to terms with how badly I failed as a mother.”

I tensed.

“Victoria,” my mom said. “Every time I think of you, I feel pride. I love the woman you became, as brave as you are. I worry desperately for you, but that’s worry borne of love. If you want me to tell you that you’re right about your sister, I will. She was ill, and I contributed to that illness by treating her as I did, when she was vulnerable and lost. We went to Shin to help her and guide her and as much as I spend every hour of every day feeling pride for you, I’m afraid for her, because she won’t accept guidance.”

“Mom,” I said. One word, to break the flow, to interrupt the stream of consciousness.

“Would you stiffen if I hugged you now?” she asked. “Or if I reached out?”

I didn’t respond.

“Why?” she asked.

“If—” I started. And then I couldn’t stop. “If I asked you… sorry Crystal.”

“Sorry?” Crystal asked.

“If I asked if Neil Pelham might be my dad…?” I asked. I looked at my mom. Carol Dallon, lawyer, fierce veteran superheroine, Carol who had survived three Endbringer fights. Brandish.

Tears appeared in her eyes.

“What?” Crystal asked.

“Twenty-one years ago, they…”

“My parents were together back then,” Crystal said, sounding horrified. “And you were with Uncle Mark.”

“Sorry,” I said again.

Tears ran down my mother’s cheeks, and she wiped them away, seemingly angry they’d appeared. I found myself hoping in the moment that the emotional outpouring was out of anger that I’d thought of something so unlikely or impossible.

“Not your father,” Carol said. “But I thought once that he might be.”

“He might be,” I echoed her.

“You had so much of him in you, and your power… for pretty much the entire year before your sister triggered, I was in dread. Neil was too. You—” she looked at Crystal, “—understand, please, it was that I spent so long unable to trust anyone. It took me years to warm up to anyone. Years to get close to Mark. But we had our rough patches, and then there was Neil, and I could trust him more easily because Sarah trusted him—”

It hurt to listen to.

Hurt because it hurt Crystal too. If it had been any hour except ass o’clock in the morning, the pre-dawn hours between the crystal hellscape and this conversation, I wouldn’t have said anything.

But I knew my mom. Knew she’d read through me, that she wouldn’t let this go.

“You never told any of us?” I asked. “Did it impact how you treated Amy? Did you think—”