"So far it's mostly leading to problems on the feeding myself front."

"Isn't America supposed to have food stamps or something? - not blaming you, just."

"Well, yeah, if you can go to a government office and prove that you have less than two thousand dollars in assets including your car. The kids get free lunches at school, but - yeah. And, look, it's not like things have been like this for that long, OK, I'm still - figuring stuff out."

They've kind of been like this for a while but she doesn't really wanna get into all that.

"How many kids are you looking after?"

"Two."

"Connor and..."

"Zana. Suzanna Tiu, Azalea's youngest."

"How much younger?"

"She's six. Connor's twelve."

"Huh. I think Azalea just didn't have her, in our timeline."

"Ah."

This makes some degree of sense, given the circumstances surrounding Zana's birth, but it's sad to think about anyway.

- he caught that but hadn't meant to. He decides not to ask.  "In our timeline Connor's father was dead by the time Karen's parents died, when Karen was fifteen. Karen survived because of her slayer powers and moved in with Azalea in Sunnydale."

"Oh. ...my parents are alive."

"Oh! That's good. I think there was a boating accident."

"Huh."

"How much money do you owe?"

"Like six thousand dollars."

(She should never ever ever ever have gotten into this situation, but she's in it now, and she's not gonna get out of it by pretending she isn't. The stabby embarrassment pain from talking about it is probably about what she deserves.)

"Okay. We'll get it sorted. Fast if we find my family and a little slower otherwise but no matter what we'll get it sorted."

"OK." She doesn't actually look at all cheered by this.

This is not surprising. He wishes he had a better sense of how money works; he doesn’t know how much jobs pay or anything.

Karen mopes for a bit.

"Shouldn't've asked for it," she says, eventually, even though this makes the stabby embarrassment pain worse. "Should've worked at, like, Wendy's, until the frosties killed me."

“That doesn’t especially sound better but I guess I’ll take your word for it.”

"Well, the frosties take longer about it and don't menace your kids. Also presumably at some point you get sick of them and go back to eating broccoli."

“I haven’t given a lot of thought to how Karen should live her life without superpowers but I wouldn’t go with Wendy’s. Taking care of kids in foster care, maybe?”

" - literally nobody would let me do that. And it doesn't pay enough to live on anyway."