“And what do I do with all of these pieces of myself, after I’ve broken apart the mirror and divided my personality out among the shards, so each one shows a different me?”

“Get to know them. Recognize them. Make peace with them. Love them. But above all else, care for and love Sveta Karelia. The you that comes together when all of the pieces are in place. That mirror isn’t broken, and it shows someone I care a hell of a lot about. Someone I respect.”

There were distant noises, the chalkboard screams of reality tearing, dogs barking, and the creaking of wood. A tree further down the hill toppled.

Sveta immediately started dabbing at her eyes with the corner of a sleeve, getting fixed up.

“Sorry,” she said. “This is so dumb, isn’t it? I’m okay now, I got luckier than I thought was possible, I got a body, and I feel like I know myself less than I did a year ago.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“It’s a part of me,” she said. “Even before I was a Case Fifty-Three. Did you know that? I think I dreamed it. So if I’m going to be mosaic, painter…”

“Justicar,” I supplied the answer.

She laughed, “No, I am not calling myself justicar. I have an iota of self respect. Defender instead. Then Caregiver. If I’m all those things, I’m Apologizer.”

The group below us was making their way up the hill. Periodically they did enough damage that a tree fell. Or… if I squinted and looked through foliage, they might have been walking on the fallen trees as a path across denser foliage.

“For the tie to your past?” I asked.

“Yes, but not just because I think I said something like it before Cauldron took me. Because I killed a lot of people, once.”

Gibbet was using her power. I could hear the creaking and the wood snapping.

“Whatever happens, I have your back,” I told her.

“Telling me to embrace my hate and call myself Justicar?” Sveta asked.

“Whatever I can do. Shoulder to lean on, anything.”

“I’m really glad they introduced us way back then,” Sveta told me. “We kind of danced around the subject, but… I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am now if we hadn’t met. Not with Weld, I know he left the first time and came back because you urged him to. I never would have met Breakthrough… I’d be over in Europe in the new Asylum there.”

“You kept me sane,” I told her. “You’re still doing it.”

“Seriously, Victoria. ‘Justicar’?”