Dean didn't show up to school the next day. Played sick. Not that he had to pretend that hard.

"Hey, shithead," I said, sitting on the bathroom counter, as Dean finished retching into the toilet.

"Fuck!" Dean scrambled backward, banging his head against the glass door of the shower. "Fuck! How did you- what are you- you!"

"Me," I said, nodding. "So... how're you holding up?"

"How do you think," Dean muttered. "That was... Fuck, that was horrible, I... god, what was I thinking? There's no... You know she's not going to forgive me for that, right? Like... ever? I just..." He sighed, squeezing his eyes closed. "...I do know a few things about her. Her insecurities. And... I used them, on purpose, just to hurt her. That's not... Fuck me, I did mean what I said, I just. How do you make that up to someone?"

I sighed, and slid off the counter, kneeling next to him, and patted his shoulder.

"Unfortunately, Dean... despite being a lot older than I've led you to believe, I haven't found a way to do that, either," I said quietly. "Sometimes... Sometimes, in life, we hurt people, and we can make it better, we can smooth things over, and apologize, and undo some, but not all, of the damage. But..." I sighed. "Sometimes, we hurt people, and we can't make it better. Sometimes we hurt someone bad enough that they never want to see our face or hear our voice ever again. And... in times like that... We still need to improve, and never do something like that again, but... there's no going back and fixing what happened. That bridge is burnt. And yet the world still turns, your heart still beats, and life goes on, whether you like it or not. Mourn what you've done. Learn from your mistakes. Talk it out with a therapist, have a few ugly cries to get those out of your system... but... over the next few years... you've gotta learn how to move on."

Dean nodded, mournfully. "How... How is Vicky doing? I know I don't have a right to know, but..."

"She's... also recovering," I said, carefully. "But, um..."

"You weren't being general with 'sometimes someone never wants to see us again,'" Dean said, closing his eyes again, fighting back tears.

"I was not," I said, shaking my head. "She's... She has mood swings, I'm sure you're aware. And... it'll take a while for that pendulum to stop swinging, even with the help of a therapist. But... I don't know for certain which side the pendulum will land on when it does, but I'm... pretty confident it'll be on that side."

Dean just hung his head.

"But," I stressed, "the both of you are going to live, and you will move on, one day. This doesn't have to define you in such a narrow way for the rest of your life. Take it from someone who keeps going back, despite her best efforts... the only real way is forwards."

Dean nodded, slowly, then paused.

"...Wait, older than I- how old are you, Joe?" Dean asked.

"That's a much longer story than me trying to comfort my friend who has very recently done something traumatically stupid," I said. "It's also about me, and I figured that leading with that wouldn't be the most considerate way to treat you. So... I can tell you the story whenever you want, but if you'd rather not hear it right now...?"

"I would love an excuse to stop thinking about what I've just done," Dean pleaded.

"Right, so, first and foremost... do you remember Season 1 Episode 3, where someone's talking about transmigration, and Joe Norman says it's a lot like something called 'Jumpchain,' and explains what that is?"

"...I do, yeah," Dean said, nodding slowly. "I've looked it up, and apparently it was a thing before Chain of Thorns, just... mostly on 4chan, who did not like the influx of new people that were introduced to it by Chain of Thorns."

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Well, as it so happens, I am actually a Jumpchain protagonist," I said. "So, uh. Congratulations, your whole reality is fictional, but guess what, so is mine! You're actually a big fan of it! We watched the entire first season together!"

Dean blinked.

"...You... actually are Joe Norman," Dean whispered.

"I absolutely am not, but also yes I am!" I said. "See, my version of the central- for lack of a better word- 'canon' was visited by another Jumper, who derailed a ton of things, including my life. And also, now I'm transgender. So, 'Joe Norman' is my birth name, which I don't particularly like being called, and my actual name these days is Rose Victoria Corcoran."

"Wait, are you Lyn's mom?" Dean asked. "She said her name was Evelyn Rose Corcoran, and..."

"Rose is a very common name," I said patiently. "As is 'Corcoran,' among the people most likely to have red hair."

"...Oh," Dean said, wilting. I mean, he had been entirely right- also, the fact that Eve had decided to make her new legal name Evelyn Rose Corcoran was very validating to me and I was going to hug my daughter so hard the next time I met her, but- I just wasn't willing to tell him anything about Eve that she didn't want him to know. That whole 'respecting her privacy and autonomy' thing was pretty foundational to her proudly declaring herself to be my daughter.

"Anyhow," I said, firmly. "I am, in fact, a grown woman in my thirties, and while this does mean I need to stop interacting with you as an actual peer... that is, in fact, actually a good thing for you, because I'm pretty sure you need an experienced adult to help you through this mess, and, uh..." I coughed politely. "Well, you don't usually become a teenage superhero because your parents are good at parenting."

"Oh. So, when I said Lyn must be your daughter..."

"It's fine," I said, waving it off. Besides, Eve didn't do the superhero thing anymore- she didn't even have a cape name, this time around, and just anonymously cooked shit up in the labs to do more good than she could with her fists on the street. "Now... here." I gave him a Warehouse travel token, tuned to a different house on the undilated planet than the tokens I'd given to Vicky and Amy. "This is yours now. It'll appear in your pocket when you want or need it, and if you hold it in your hand and will it to be so, it'll open a portal to the pocket dimension I call home, where I keep all my stuff. I'll be there at all times, whenever you need to talk to me."

"Oh? Can you... be in more than one place at a time?"

"Mhm, pretty much," I said, nodding. "I can be in a lot of places at a time. Whiiiiich... well, I've got a lot of people to talk to, today. I haven't really been in my right mind until yesterday, when I finally snapped out of it. That's... well, why I've been posing as a high school student this whole time- I didn't think I was posing."

"Fair enough."

"Anyway. Let's get you to a therapist."

---

"Eeeeeve, I'm hoooooome!" I called as I walked through the front door of our house. It was mostly Eve who lived here, although a copy of Karasuba- shapeshifted to be less conspicuous- lived here too, so that Eve didn't have to be completely alone.

"...Mom?" Eve asked, whipping around on the sofa. "Mom! You're back!" She shot forward like a javelin, and I caught her in a whirling hug to bleed off her momentum.

"Eyup, I am in fact back," I said, nodding. "How've things been while I was gone?"

"Gonna be honest, could be better," Eve said. "But... I'd rather not talk about that right now."

"Fair enough," I said. "Is there anything you would like to talk about?"

"...Were you Joe Norman?"

"I was, yes," I said.

"So, you and Karasuba...?"

"Oh, neither of us is capable of properly dying, these days," I said. "I mean, Omni-Man did actually kill me, it just didn't stick, because I came back in a new body. So... well, us trying to kill each other with swords is a little alarming, but we just talked about it, and... well, we've agreed to a rematch, to get that fight-lust out of her system. Which! Incidentally, does lead me to needing your help with this."

"Mm. Right, you need powered gear of your own to counter Karasuba's own grab-bag," Eve said, nodding. "Her build's gotten pretty far ahead of yours, I gotta say."

"Ahead of me for now, at least," I said, shrugging. "However, I have a super-engineering perk, and you have... something powerful by now, I'm sure."

"I used the Dauntless power on a 3D printer to make it print out superpowers."

"That's my girl. I'm so fucking proud of you."

"I made a lot of those, actually," Eve continued. "I tried writing up documentation? But, uh... well, I didn't take Technical Writing in college, so it might not be super intuitive to figure it out."

"I'm smart, I'll manage," I said, shrugging. "Also, if you want, you can just go and take a technical writing class in the Warehouse whenever you want."

"True enough," Eve conceded. "So... what kind of powers do you think you're going to use against Karasuba? Pyrokinesis? Precognition? Controlling bugs, plus some really, really big bugs you made in a lab?"

"You'll see when it happens," I said. "It'll be elegant in its simplicity. For now, though... I'm gonna need you to fill me in on what's been going on in the world, so I can make some plans."

"Right. Okay, so..."