His hand touched her hair, then the side of her face.

“We worry,” he said.

“I’m not field leader for nothing,” she said, looking down. “I know what I’m doing.”

“I remember when you were small. The one year you were in public school, you had trouble fitting in, you intimidated the other children.”

“I was a stuck up rich bitch,” Brianna said.

“Never apologize for being better.”

“It’s not being better. It’s acting better. I was dumb, I paid for it when they gave me a hard time. That’s a lesson we all need to learn.”

He nodded, as if just now accepting that idea, ten years after the fact. “Do you remember that day I skipped work, and took you on the ferry?”

“Yes. It’s one of my cherished memories,” Brianna said.

“Do you remember how that day started?”

Brianna shook her head. Her long ponytail swept against the back of her neck and shoulders.

“It started in tears. You begged me not to make you go to school. You were so terrified you were making yourself sick, because the other girls teased you. I think it might have been your first time experiencing enemies. We talked about that.”

Brianna nodded. “Yeah.”

He reached over to push the things that had tangled around his arm away, before pulling back his hand.

His expression broke, calm confidence giving way to… she likened it to how he’d acted on camera, when their state had been hit by the flooding. She’d watched from a distance, because she’d been with Reach, then. Seeing her dad on camera, expressing his sadness over the dozens of deaths.

Except this was real.

She didn’t know what to say, or how to handle it.

“You’re here, eighteen and—you’ve grown so much. If I tried to say how proud I am of you, all of this would be over before I was out of things to say. I’m so, so proud of you.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand.

“Let me speak. I’m… crushed with guilt. I put you here.”

“I put myself here,” she replied, around the lump in her throat.

“No, I… I played my role in shaping you. Telling you to be brave, to aspire to big things, how to talk to people. We’ve never talked about it, but that day you got your powers…”

“That wasn’t you.”