Violet and Bob didn't talk for a few days.

Helen, Dash, and Jack-Jack were wise enough not to bring up the night of the arrest to either of them until they had sorted things out. The father and daughter had gotten into a few disagreements of a similar nature before, and it was best just to let them deal with it themselves. They weren't people that handled external interventions well.

They purposefully avoided each other in the house on the rare occasion that Violet was at the Parr house. Therefore, she had elected to spend a couple days with the Rydingers, learning how to make flautas and milanesa from Silvia and Shelly respectively, and talking with Tony about the conflict in-between cooking lessons from his mothers. (She had decided it was better to tell her boyfriend than to try and hide it from him; he'd be able to read her mind, anyway)

The conversation went about as she had expected it to. He told her what she already knew deep down: she had to talk with her dad about it at some point. This wasn't something that could go unresolved.

So, when she went back home, Violet resolved to do just that.

It was the day before Thanksgiving now, and the house was quiet. It wasn't a busy holiday for the Parrs; they had no immediate family to invite over, and they didn't like the holiday itself that much, anyway. Lucius and Honey were the same way. Maybe it was just a super thing.

Violet was sorting through the polaroids she had accumulated in the past few months; dozens of pictures of architecture, plant life, and her loved ones were scattered haphazardly on her comforter.

She told herself she'd talk to her father once she was done sorting. But she didn't have a system to sort the pictures by, or anything like that; she was stalling, and she couldn't admit it to herself.

Violet picked up a photo of herself. In the picture, her brows were furrowed, and her mouth was open in mid-sentence, her hands held in front of her in protest. Her features were blurred, like she was going through a vortex of some kind.

Dash had taken this picture about a month ago. They had been messing around, wasting polaroids with goofy faces, and he had snatched the camera away from her.

As she was contemplating the image in her hand, someone knocked on her door, and she tensed. She looked up - it was her father.

Bob smiled hesitantly. "Hey, sweetie. Is it, uh... is it okay if I come in for a few minutes?"

He looked sheepish. He had made that face around her before, and Violet knew what it meant; he wanted to talk to her.

So. He beat her to the punch. She sighed quietly at her need to make it into a competition.

She nodded and Bob inched himself into the room, his massive shoulders shrinking in on themselves.

Violet set the photo down in front of her and pushed a few of the others aside so her father had a place to sit on her bed. The mattress caved slightly under the weight of his muscles.

The two sat in silence for a moment. Violet fiddled with the lens cap on her camera that was sitting nearby. Bob stared at his hands.

Bob was the one to break the silence. "I feel like I should explain myself."

Violet's gaze stayed on her camera, but her attention was towards her father. "Yeah. Me too."

He looked up at her, his eyebrows twitching downward. He took a deep breath. "You know, that I was, uh... in the war. In the 40's. Right?"

And that's when it hit Violet. Why her dad had been so defensive. Why they had argued in the first place.

As the puzzle pieces put themselves together in her mind, she rubbed her forehead and grimaced. "God. I hadn't even thought about that til just now."

It was the truth. Violet had gotten so caught up in her anger towards Syndrome that she hadn't remembered her father's past while she was arguing with him.

The entire reason that supers existed was because of World War II, and her father was one of the first supersoldiers created. Born from a test tube, starting life with the brain and body of a young adult.

It wasn't something either of her parents talked about often, but being created by the government solely for the purpose of being an instrument of war couldn't have been easy. There's no way it could have been easy. Killing people every day. Existing only to fight.

She looked up at him now, her eyes turning big as plates. "I'm sorry."

Bob held a hand up. "No, honey, it's okay. I just wanted to explain things."

He picked up a photo that was laying on Violet's comforter, the same one she had been holding, bringing it close to his face to examine it (he had forgotten his glasses in the other room).

He smiled briefly. "This is a cool picture of you."

"Yeah." She smiled back, but she was distracted from her photographs now. "Dash took it. That's why it's kinda blurry. I don't know."

Bob looked at the photo for a moment longer and sighed. As he set it back down beside him, he made eye contact with Violet. "You know I killed people in that war."

"Yes, Dad. I know." She frowned. "Mom did, too."

"Yes, your Mom did, too." He looked back down at his hands. "But not as many as me. She was a pilot, stretching into enemy planes and landing them on the ground, and I was on the front lines. A few of us supers were created with front line combat in mind, myself included."

Violet held her breath. Her parents almost never talked about their time on the battlefield. She would never push them to, either; it hurt both of them to talk about. But it was interesting, and she didn't want to miss anything he was going to tell her.

Bob nodded slowly, like he was repeating something to himself that he had repeated thousands of times. He repeated, "I killed people. A lot of people. I don't remember their faces. I just remember uniforms." He sucked in air through his teeth. "And that's shaped how I view justice today. I hope you understand that."

"I do." She reached over and put her hand on his shoulder.

Bob laid his hand over hers. "I don't think what I did during the war was necessarily wrong. The people fighting in the opposite side of that war were supporting an evil cause. And I don't think what you were going to do was necessarily wrong, either."

Violet nodded. "I've thought about it a lot, and... I still think I would do it. If given a chance to do it in a responsible way, you know?" Her mouth tasted bitter from the simply reminder of Syndrome. "And that's how I view justice. I think that's how I've always viewed it."

"I know. And that's okay. You're your own super now." Bob made eye contact with her again, his eyes grim. "But, regardless, killing doesn't feel good. Not even if it's someone who doesn't deserve to live. I guess I don't want that on your conscience, Vi. You're still my little girl."

He continued, tears forming in his eyes. "But, I, uh... I want you to do what you feel is right. You're old enough to decide right from wrong. And I trust your judgement. I'm just telling you why I do hero work the way I do."

There wasn't any sound in the room for a few moments, save for the distant chatter of the television coming from the living room.

Violet smiled sadly. "You're trying to protect me."

"Yeah." He chuckled. "I guess that's it."

"I'm strong, Dad. I'll be okay."

"You are strong. Just like your mother."

"And you. Just like you."

Violet would never admit it, but she loved hugs. They made her feel safe. Protected. Protective. It was nice, because she was usually the one doing the protecting.

Her dad was one of the best huggers she knew. Hugs from Bob Parr were the safest, securest hugs in the world.

And that's why, when Bob hugged Violet, she began tearing up.

The two of them let tears fall in silence for another few moments. She was dwarfed by his massive arms, but he held on as tightly as he could without hurting her.

She sniffed. "I'm sorry I brought up the other supers the other day. That wasn't okay."

"It's okay, sweetie. You're right. It's not fair."

They pulled apart from each other and sat in silence for a moment.

Bob reached into his shirt pocket, thumbing out a few photographs. Just by a quick glance, Violet could tell they were old prints. A decade or two old, at the very least. He must have pulled them out of some photo album before he came to talk to her.

He held the topmost one out towards her. "You know, I think you and Simon would have gotten along."

Violet took the photo, and saw that it was of a man; he was pushing his glasses up, and he had a stern kind of expression. He was the only one in the picture, and it looked like the table he was sitting at was in some kind of board room.

She held the picture delicately in her fingertips, like it would crumble to dust if she made one wrong move. "This was Gazerbeam, right?"

"Yeah." He chuckled softly. "He was just as fiery as you, when he wanted to be. He fought for the rights of supers his entire life, even after the ban."

Bob looked at the next picture fondly. "You would have liked Blazestone, too. Her name was Bridget. Had a thing with your Uncle Lucius for a little while - in another world, she may have been your aunt."

He set that photo next to him so it rested among the others on Violet's bed. It pictured a woman laughing, obviously caught off-guard by the photographer. The sound of her laugh almost rung through time; it looked so strong and confident.

Bob's stack of photographs was seemingly endless; a woman with a round, warm face named Stormicide. The same woman doing another's hair; this new woman had sharper features, and Bob called her Psycwave. A curly-haired man in a formal suit preparing for an opera; this was Phylange. A nervous-looking guy named Downburst, twiddling his thumbs. A group of supers posing with Dicker, all of them beaming. The list went on and on.

And, as Violet saw these souls brought back to life, she felt tears well up in her eyes for the second time that day.

Another evening, another week, another month, she would have felt the need to avenge their pointless deaths. She would have felt anger bubbling up in her chest at the injustice.

But here, with her father, who knew all of these people by name (Betty, Clara, Peter, Adam, Simon, countless, countless more), she just felt a mix of pain, homesickness, and the happiness that comes with familiarity.