She's just going to keep crying a little longer.

"It's okay, I guess it was kind of a shock."

"Yeah. I knew they had a pretty big fight, once...they made up a few months later. I guess the making up isn't guaranteed."

"Yeah."

"It's so sad though. He's been through so much...he's fine, now. He's happy. But I don't think the one of him in your universe ever got to be. And maybe that's his own fault but it's still sad."

"Book doesn't seem to speculate a ton about his psychological health..."

"He wouldn't have been, I don't think. Maybe he wasn't always miserable but if he was living like that, in and out of prison, doing things like that...I know my dad. He wouldn't have been happy."

"So... why didn't he just do something else?"

"Based on what I'm seeing here? Because he thought his happiness was less important than what he thought he was accomplishing. Because terrible things had happened to him, truly terrible things, and even my version of him didn't really believe happiness was an option until he had it."

"...Your dad is a little screwed up."

"He survived the Holocaust. Screwed up happens."

"Mmhm."

"What?"

"...The Tactical School physical combat instructor is that old?" asks Aegis, squinting at the page. "Gonna have to ask him about that."

"He's your physical combat instructor? Wow. Maybe don't tell him you found a universe where Magneto isn't a supervillain, they don't even get along that well when they're on the same side. Or you could, if seeing him react sounds like your idea of fun."

"It sounds hilarious, actually, but I don't think I'm going to tell a soul about this place. Howlett's a cool guy but somebody'd notice if I went chatting about it to get reactions."

"Fair enough. Everyone back home--and by everyone I mean my close personal acquaintances, not the general public--knows about Milliways because my sister and I bring tech home for genius guy to reverse engineer."

"Yeah, I'm super, super tempted to do something like that with my alt's tab but the International Fleet is sort of spotty on the... not being evil idiots...? thing? Like, I'm by and large fine, but I wouldn't trust them to handle 'Tactical School student who is coincidentally resistant to telepaths conjures a lot of tech from goddamn nowhere' better-than-uselessly, and that's where I am, so I can't just take home a heap of things and run away with it..."

"That sounds frustrating."

"Yeah. I don't know if I'd actually wake up with my power drugged away and my exo taken for security reasons but it occurred to me. Even though anti-mutie drugs are super illegal."

"They had better be! Wow, when you said you didn't trust them to be better than useless I was imagining bureaucratic dithering and an ocean of red tape, not human rights violations."