“I was talking about my dad earlier,” Kid Win told me. “That one good day. I’m supposed to meet him later, you know, but I don’t have all of the memories of him. I don’t remember his face. I don’t remember his voice. Whatever part of me he was trying to support or hold onto that day? I don’t think it’s there.”

“You can salvage it,” Dennis said. “All the data’s there, except…”

“Sorted differently,” I said. “Something else’s filing system. Something else’s priorities.”

“Yeah.” Eyes in a tinted red metal glanced downward, pupils a gold light that emanated from the inside the orb, the tracery of etchings around the pupil bearing a similar effect.

“I’m sorry, Christopher,” I said. “I hope it works out okay and that he’s understanding, and that it’s mostly painless. If nothing else, I can’t imagine he won’t be happy to have you back.”

“A part of me,” Kid Win said. “And I don’t hope it’s painless. Painless means I’m not human enough to care.”

I saw Dennis nod a bit.

“Point conceded,” I said. “Sorry about comparing us. That’s… pretty damn heavy.”

“I’m not looking for concessions,” Kid Win said. “I don’t want to make this a competition. I think we’ve all had to deal with ‘heavy’.”

“Dying and coming back,” Dennis said. “Dealing with everyone else dying. And…”

He stopped as he looked at me.

“Family stuff.”

“Family stuff. Yeah,” he said, wrinkling his nose, snorting a bit.

It was meant as a deflection, a little joking acknowledgment, but it felt like a profoundly sad moment, because it wasn’t how the Dennis I knew would have responded. I resisted the urge to look at Vista to see how she’d taken it. She’d talked to him long enough to pick up on it, and she’d known him far better than I had.

“That family stuff?” I spoke up. “It gets into that control I was talking about. Having the tools. Having the knowledge to tackle all of this. My entire family consists of control freaks and people who have no control, who get swept up in life and powers and everything else.”

“Ugh,” Vista made a sound. “I can guess your mom’s the control freak. Your dad’s swept up.”

“Amy’s swept up. Crystal’s swept up,” I said. “Distinction being that they’re not totally helpless. They do have choices. Crystal made good choices. My dad’s making pretty neutral ones, or non-choices. And for the record, I’d say my Uncle Mike is a control freak, strict lines and rules, family disappoints, betrays, or seems problematic? He cuts contact.”

“That’s present tense. He’s still around?” Vista asked.

“Alive, retired from cape life. Yeah.”

“Cool.”