How would she act if I spat in her face? Would that stay with her? Would it play any part in her seemingly unending ability to twist her thoughts around and think there was chance of reconciliation?

What if I just picked up a telephone pole and demolished her legs? Arms too? Spine? Let her spend years in a hospital room, thinking back over all the decisions she’d made to date?

Would she get it then?

What if I used Tattletale? Leaned on a power for some biting, penetrating comments, found the thread of Amy’s argument and pulled on it until it unraveled?

Or Mockument? What would Amy do if I had Damsel’s teammate pull out a monstrous caricature of her? If I forced her to face it?

It would be easier than doing it myself, and I was pretty sure I could do it myself, if it came down to it. Break her psychologically, as much as taking a telephone pole to her spine would break her physiologically.

Given how dependent it would be on finding the right opportunity, and how difficult it would be to get Tattletale to Amy or enlist Mockument’s help, it probably came down to the telephone pole or breaking her down with words.

It would be unkind, it would be barbaric, it would be ugly. There would be ramifications, both in terms of the oversight from other capes, and in terms of what Amy was likely to do. Because someone brought to zero would expend everything they had in a final, desperate attempt to save themselves or restore equilibrium.

I knew because she had brought me to zero. I had experienced moments like that in the hospital.

Fuck me, this whole endeavor had opened doors. Best to stay away from Amy for a bit, because I didn’t want to actually do those things. It wouldn’t help, not in the long run.

Or was it the short term, with a collective gain in the long run? This thing with the giants was so monumentally stupid.

Whatever.

I turned off the water, then took my hands away from the wall.

Toweling off, I squeezed the water out of my hair, dried it, and began to get dressed, simultaneously braiding my hair.

Still there? I asked the void, my arms flat at my side, my hair still in the process of being braided. Good.

Might need you.

Sorry it’s been such a long road to get here.

You’re just a fragment of a fucked up, omnicidal alien who happens to have a symbiotic or parasitic relationship to me. You probably expected a different existence. So did I. We’re in this mess together.

I smiled.

I so didn’t want to go out there, face Amy even through a screen, or deal with the Wardens.

But there was a chance I could help people. A chance I could help my team.

A chance we could help my team.