“This is a really cheery birthday talk, isn’t it?”

“I wanted to let you know we fought hard. I’m not the best public speaker, but I tried to tell them, in the hopes it would make a difference. Your father tried too.”

“Dad was there? With you?”

“We both tried. I don’t know if it mattered. There were people more eloquent than us.”

But they’d been there, and they’d been a ‘both’, an ‘us’. That was… actually really touching. Missy wasn’t even sure how to process it. There was some resentment in the mix, that they hadn’t been able to do that nine years ago, but… her parents had agreed on this, and they never agreed on anything. They’d never worked together on anything.

“Cool,” she murmured. Which summed it up. Not too excited or grateful when it would’ve felt like a betrayal to the Missy Biron of the last almost-decade to forget all the stuff of the past, but… it was cool.

“I was so mad at those anti-parahuman people that I could have strangled them.”

“It was never about them, Mom. Which was part of the problem, but that wasn’t what that night was about.”

“It felt like it.”

“They never had the power or the presence until that night. It was about us. How we’d situated ourselves in regard to you. Our parents, our friends, our nay-sayers. Each of us making the decision whether we’d trust you, after stopping for once and taking stock of everything we’d done up to that point. Were we okay? Had we done enough? Had we made amends for wrongs and were we contributing to something better?”

“I hope that decision was easy for you. You’ve been a hero.”

“I’ve been distant. I’ve been a bit of a cog in the machine. I don’t think a lot of people in Gimel even knew I existed, because I was out following orders and doing stuff where they couldn’t see it. It wasn’t so easy for me. So, um, thanks for reminding them I exist.”

“Of course.”

“It was harder for some. We made our individual calls. For those who were okay with where they stood in the grand scheme of it all, it didn’t feel like sacrifice. But even they couldn’t say that. Because the moment they started acting like it was a given they’d be saved, they’d defeat the point of it. For others, it was a sacrifice. Then all of us, together, stood before all of you, together.”

“It feels different. Quieter. There’s some dialogue. Like this, here.”

Missy shrugged. “I hope so.”

“The capes are mostly here in Gimel and most of the rest of us are on the corner worlds, but it feels better? There’s more dialogue, it feels like you’re all more involved than when we shared the city.”