[Location: Brown Mansion, Donna & You | Time: 9:37 PM, Friday]

The living room still smelled faintly of turpentine and incense, like memory and momentum had decided to settle into the furniture. Luna’s latest canvas leaned against the brick wall behind the couch, still drying. The colors were bold, kinetic — a vision of the sky breaking open into light. Her interpretation of what heroism felt like.

You sat with Donna on the old loveseat, one of her legs tucked beneath her, camera slung at her side even though she wasn’t shooting tonight. Her hair was a little longer now, streaked with silver that caught the lamp’s glow like starlight. You were holding your latest draft in one hand, but your focus was on the TV screen across the room, where a news anchor struggled to keep up with the footage live-streaming from the skyline.

“There,” Donna said, leaning forward slightly, touching the screen. “That’s Leo. Midair assist, above the collapsing fire escape.”

You squinted, heart climbing into your throat as your son — your son — weaved through falling debris like he’d been born with wind instead of blood. His voice cracked the silence of the scene just as a blast of sonic energy echoed outward, catching a plummeting civilian before they hit the ground.

Luna wasn’t far behind, cloaked in a suit she’d designed herself, etched with her artwork. She moved like shadow and grace, skating along the building wall with gravitational slings she’d engineered. As her brother cleared the falling debris, she painted a glowing sigil in the air, a kinetic rune that locked the structure in place.

The applause from the surrounding crowd came faintly through the audio, but it was the look they gave each other — barely a nod, but decades of legacy behind it — that made your throat tighten.

“Did we do the right thing?” you asked quietly, fingers tapping your thigh.

Donna reached for your hand and threaded her fingers through yours. “We taught them to hold the line. To tell the truth. To listen. And when the time came, we stepped aside and watched them take flight.”

You swallowed. “I know. It’s just… the world out there still scares me.”

“It scares them too,” she said. “But they know how to make something beautiful out of it. Leo’s voice, Luna’s brush — they create the peace they want to protect. You taught them how to build the future. I taught them how to defend it.”

You nodded slowly. “And they’re doing both.”

Donna leaned into your shoulder. Her touch still calmed you in ways even retirement never had. “They’re artists. They’re heroes. They’re ours.”

The screen shifted to an interview — a shaky cellphone recording of Leo being swarmed by fans after the rescue, people thanking him for his album, for his power, for his presence. In the background, Luna held up her phone, taking a photo of the moment, grinning wide.

Donna reached for her camera, raised it, and clicked. A picture of the screen, of your children, immortalized in another form of love.

“One for the wall?” you asked.

She smiled. “One for the legacy.”

And in that quiet moment — tucked between brushes and books, stories and snapshots, old dreams and new — you understood: they were no longer your little miracles. They were the world’s now.

And you’d never been prouder.