Chapter Text
This is the story of a penny.
It fell out of a man’s pocket, rotated twice, three times, then landed with a faint brassy tinkle on the ground. The man heard, stopped, picked it up, then continued to his desk.
In another world, the penny didn’t fall. He arrived at his desk three seconds earlier, and his supervisor, looking over the rows of cubicles, didn’t immediately spot him.
He didn’t see the man’s face and select him on a whim, call him into his office, and give him a promotion.
The man didn’t pack up his family and move out of Sternbild.
His daughter didn’t scream and rage and cry because it was the second half of her junior year, and wasn’t so upset that she didn’t call the boy she hoped would one day be her boyfriend.
In that other world, a young man was sitting in a café with the man’s daughter, trying to work up the courage to hold her hand. He never noticed the pale-haired boy sitting by himself. He went on to marry the girl, have a daughter, miss his wife’s death, and become part of a superhero team.
This is not the story of that world.
In this world, the penny dropped.