Your mother’s wedding ring has turned into whichever one she picks to match her jewelry for the day. Your father comes home late at night a few times a week, covered in lipstick kisses and drunkenly shushing you. As if you had the heart to snitch on him anymore.

The Vought training room, where both loving parents once gathered to watch you practice your powers, only held one or the other—if you were lucky. Tv dinners over reruns of Buster Beaver became battlegrounds for petty squabbles, before stopping entirely. You were still in bibs and pigtails at that point.

The plastic is in their red-carpet smiles: Crimson’s a bit too sharp, Ben’s almost visibly in pain. This is your childhood, blurred and lost in saturation, as throngs of fans squeal about chemistry and couple goals. You can’t see past the grimace and the single point of contact between a canyon of space. Nor can you bring yourself to look at their newest promotional stunt.

Maybe, just maybe, the distance isn’t as awful as the fights. Soldier Boy’s thundering voice and powerful hand, slapping or slamming whatever was closest—but not you, never you with his soulful eyes and your mother’s smile. Crimson’s shrill accusations would follow, her claw-like fingernails reaching for his smug face. All couples are like this, you told yourself, as the bickering feels more exhausted and targeted than you swear it did before. Well-disguised pain fills your father’s eyes when it ends, and the embers of terrifying hatred seethe in your mother’s.

Gossip flies around the Tower: problems borne of flashing cameras and bitter tears slipping into champagne. America’s perfect union slowly imploding behind mahogany penthouse doors.

As a supe, you’re taught to prepare for the worst. Every other time, that entailed brutal training drills and scheming how to hide the damage of Gunpowder’s new tv you just exploded. But now you’re trying to decide which parent you’ll choose when this all goes south.