There were not many times in her twenty-seven years of life that Penelope Figgins had been absolutely terrified. She prided herself on being a person of remarkable strength and character. She did not fear struggle; she embraced it. Penny sought out challenges if only to show people how perfectly adept she was at handling them. If a friend had a personal or financial problem, she was always the first to dispense advice, going so far as to see that person’s problem out to resolution. Problems were things for Penny to fix. She thrived on it. But terror – sheer terror – was not a problem she felt equipped to handle.

In the time following her battle in the park with Painite, Penny had been forced to face a rather crude fact: she was not infallible. If that manhole had not been there, if she had not fallen precisely the way that she did when her body met the sludgy water at the end of that long fall, the girl who worked at DCNN would be dead. It was the first time that Penny had been forced to think about the likelihood of her own death in real, tangible terms.

Before, she only had to worry about the random acts: car crashes, plane crashes, random acts of violence. Now, by virtue of her birthright, Penny had entered an entirely new echelon of risky behavior. Esabel had tried to impress this upon her back on Pluto, but it only resonated with Penny now. Each time she thought to transform into Cimmerian, Penny would find her gut pinched by a seizing fear. She was like an equestrian after a particularly nasty fall – too nervous to get back on the horse just yet.

The morning that Kam spent taking care of her had been mortifying for her. Penny liked taking care of others. She didn’t know how to process such dependence. With Kam, it wasn’t like with anyone else. He was like a brother to her, and she trusted him implicitly, right from the start. Together, they were forging an understanding of this crazy situation. Without him, Penny felt lost. She had not been aware of how much she cared about him until that night with Painite in the park. Her first thought was of him. When things got bad, she prayed that he would show up.

In the days following, Penny felt like a ghost of herself, even if it wasn’t outwardly visible. She still showed up for work as she always. She still smoked and drank and cursed. She made loud, boisterous jokes and flitted around the station in her normal flurry of activity. It was when she sat alone in her office that the gravity of what almost happened hit her. Her eyes would blur, remembering the sight of the spear sailing toward her, how she narrowly bent to avoid it.

Sitting at her desk now, Penny had a hard time concentrating on the script in front of her. It was not normal for her to be this way. Normally, she struggled to focus on things that weren’t work. The buzzing of her cellphone on her desk snapped her back to reality. She stared at the name “Gracie” blinking at her from the blue-lit screen. After a moment, she answered, “Hey, Gracie.” One hand rested lightly on an unopened pack of cigarettes on the desk.

“Pen, hey,” said the voice on the other line. “I’ve been calling all day. Lose your phone?”

It was Penny’s younger sister. She was 25-years-old and married to her high school sweetheart. She taught elementary school an hour away, and her husband was a lawyer. They had a little girl, and Grace was pregnant with a second child, a boy this time. It was the kind of life that Penny’s parents had wanted for their girls. Her mother had been a traditional homemaker with a part-time secretarial position. She encouraged her children to be maternal, loving. Grace had embraced the position with open arms; Penny prickled against it. Their father wanted whatever made his daughters happy. He always supported Penny. Her mother was less accepting. She wanted happiness for her daughter, but did not understand how she could be happy without a husband and children. It had always been a sore spot for them.

“You’re busy,” Grace said suddenly, voice low. “You’re always busy, but I get it – you’re too busy right now to talk to me.”

Penny sat up. “No, no, that’s not it. Sorry, just got distracted. I’ve got time – what’s up?” Someone came up to Penny’s window and held up a clipboard of papers. She waved them away.

“Annaliese’s first communion is this Sunday. You never called me back about it. Are you coming? Dad is bringing Mom up for it. Greg is cooking out. It’s going to be nice,” Grace said.

Their mother. She had been sick lately, getting older. Leaving the house was rare for her. Penny’s dad spent his day with her, taking care of her. Penny visited sometimes, but it got harder each time. She didn’t like watching her mother deteriorate. It didn’t help that Mrs. Figgins chose the most opportune moments to get in a zinger about how disappointing it was that she might die before Penny ever had children, or how hard it would be on her soul that she might never get to see her oldest girl walk down the aisle. As much as Penny wanted to let it roll off her shoulders, she couldn’t. It hurt.

Grace cleared her throat. “No, I get it. You’re too busy for us. It’s fine.”

“I didn’t even answer yet, Grace, goddamn,” she said, brow wrinkling. “Give me a chance.”

On the other end of the line, her sister sighed. “I don’t want a repeat of her birthday, Pen. I don’t want to get her hopes up.” Penny grimaced. Two months ago, she had promised her niece that she would come to her birthday party and that they would ride on the ponies together. Time got away from her, and she forgot to go. A late-breaking story came in. Penny rolled with it, ignoring all else. She tried to explain it to Annaliese, but children don’t appreciate excuses.

Bringing it up now was a low blow. “I had to work, Grace,” she said, a bite in her voice.

“You always have to work.”

“My job has deadlines.”

“So does mine, and I never forget about your important dates.”

“I don’t think putting stars on kids’ papers is as demanding as delivering the news to the public every ******** night,” Penny snapped. The second the words left her mouth she tried to will them back, but it was too late.

Grace muttered something lowly. “Penny, I know I don’t have a big fancy job fueled by bullshit and back-biting like you do.” Penny tried to interrupt, but her sister just raised her voice. “But you know what I do have? Family. I’m there for them because I love them, and if you’re not careful, then you will have nothing but that damn job – and it’s not going to support you or love you or take care of you when you’re sick, okay? You can do this to me, fine. I’m used to it. But Anna? Anna loves you so much, and every time you bail on her, it breaks her heart. So if you’re not coming, then just don’t. But don’t lie to that little girl and then disappoint her again.”

There was a pregnant pause. Grace was waiting for something, but Penny didn’t know what to say. These past few days had been incredibly confusing for her. After too long, Grace hung up. Penny kept the phone to her ear for a few moments afterward and then slowly eased it down. She knew that she ******** up a lot when it came to her family, but she was not in the headspace to deal with it. She was trying to achieve her dream. That meant long hours and sacrifices. She trusted that they would love her enough to accept this. Lately, her sister had begun more and more bitter toward her constant need to prioritize work over family. What did they expect? Penny had always been this way. She was always the leader of every club, a girl who took more pleasure in packing her resume than searching for a date to the prom. Why was it suddenly a problem now?

Penny knew the answer, even if she wouldn’t admit it to herself. It was Annaliese’s birth and her mother’s illness. It was the fact that they had been dealing with this for almost six years now. She promised over and over that her schedule would get normal soon, but it never did. She just got busier. In the past year, Penny had grown farther apart from her sister than she had ever been before. They might have been stepsiblings, but they had always loved each other like sisters. They had been there for one another growing up. With her new Knighthood, she didn’t know if she would ever be able to close that widening gap. There was too much separating them. The closer she came to understanding what it meant to have a destiny, the less connected she felt to the family that she had been raised by.

How could they understand what she was going through? It occurred to her quietly that if this whole disturbance in Destiny City had happened earlier it would be her mother fighting crime, not her. It was hard to picture the frail woman as any kind of hero. Could Grace understand that the blood in her veins was different, that it meant something else, that it meant that she was destined for something that Grace and Annaliese would never know?

A lump rose in her throat. She swallowed it down, choked back the bile until she could breathe again. Penny was a creature born to adapt. She would overcome this, just as she overcame everything. Steady fingers reached for the pack of cigarette. She clapped the box against her palm and then peeled off the plastic. The foil crinkled under her touch, and she pulled free a cigarette, placing it in her mouth. It was lit a moment. Penny breathed in the smoke, took a deep, head-rushing drag and closed her eyes.

When she did, she saw Painite stabbing forward with her spear.

Her eyes flashed open. “s**t,” she said, rubbing her eyes with two fingers. Penny leaned forward and rested her head on her desk, one cheek smashed up against the proposal for a few news segments in development. Someone knocked at her door. She shot up sharply. It was the girl from before. The cigarette was quickly snuffed out, and then she stashed the ashtray in her drawer. It had been dumb to light up during daylight hours. She had enough strikes against her for violating the building’s smoking policy already. After casually spritzing an excessive amount of perfume, Penny waved the patient intern into her office, took the clipboard, and signed off on various things.

As the girl began to exit, she paused in the doorway. “Are you okay, Miss Figgins?” she asked, nerves rattling her voice. “I’ve never seen you stressed enough to smoke in here.” Many of the interns regarded Penny this way. She had a bit of reputation, and she had always liked this. She stared at this brave intern, one brow arching slowly upward.

Her lips pulled together. “If you tell anyone that I was smoking in this office, I’ll have you fired,” she said flatly. The intern’s eyes widened a bit, she murmured an apology, and then disappeared.

Alone again, Penny picked up the script that had been neglected on her desk. A deep breath pushed past her lips. She tried to forget about her sister, about the phone call, even about little Anna. Right now, she could not handle her family’s scrutiny, even if it meant missing out the Anna’s communion. There had been plenty of things she had missed so far. What was another memory? What was another treasured family outing? These were the things that troubled her, and she refused to dwell on them not then. With another calming breath, Penny lifted her pen from the desk and promptly did what she was best at: losing herself in her work.