#of knowing the details. of it not holding meaning beyond fondness and an echoed glimpse of someone.

[soothfog]

everyone say thank you stevie.

[aitseleci]

deceived pt. 2

details: angst, albedo x gn!reader | cw: death / injuries / blood 

word count: 1840 | part one !

note: do i like this? idk mixed feelings tbh  — didn’t bother to add a picture for this one. but like here is part 2 as many requested 

It’s been months since the day Albedo broke up with you. A relationship that Albedo didn’t cherish, as he states. As time continues to pass, your heart aches as you recall those joyful moments with each other. Your affectionate feelings still lingered on edge; holding closely to the past. The nostalgia had you at ease in times of distress. You’d still loved him. No words can express your desire to stop loving him. But what else can be done? You were nothing but a victim to his research. He used you and admitted it, after all. 

Melancholy thoughts seem to be on your mind lately. You wonder how Albedo was doing, how he’s been, what he’d accomplished. You’d still cared, in fact getting over him wasn’t a no brainer. Everywhere you looked reminded you of him. His own essence loiter among commodities. The residents of Mondstadt and Dragonspine didn’t assist in your healing; the reminisce of the things you two did together: exploring, sketching, finding materials, indulging the savory dish of Sunshine Sprat. He taught you how to recreate this dish, lecturing you how to properly cook the salmon. 

“You make sure that the salmon becomes a dark orange and stiff,” the blonde whispers as he observes you flipping the meat over the stove. You nodded, eyeing the salmon carefully, letting out giggles in response. 

“I can’t believe we’re so focused on salmon ‘Bedo.” 

“Hm, you think so?” he answers in an amused tone. 

Whenever he shows you his special dish Woodland Dream, the prince himself had a smiled painted in his eyes. Indeed proud of himself with his culinary masterpiece. He describes the dish to be sweet and tender  — a blooming flower with each bite. You can still remember the tangy flavor that danced on your tongue. Despite this savory dish, this prince seemly has a sweet tooth. To him, he finds the sugar rush that washes throughout his body quite pleasant. A childish nature that you didn’t expect yourself.  

“You find it pleasant... a sugar rush?”

He was hesitant averting his eyes from your stare, ���Well the ‘hyperactivity’ feeling, gives me a boost in energy... It's refreshing.”

“Hm, okay..” you smiled. How cute. 

Those wistful moments will remain to be daydreams of your little mind. It was a facetious act he pulled to test you. With the little hope you were attached to, you hope maybe Albedo didn’t mean what he said. At least a little. 

You didn’t bother going to Sucrose or Timaeus for your answer to your questions. Your relationship wasn’t public and doubted anyone would understand. Moving on shouldn’t be onerous, it’s not compared to your daily tasks. Ugh, you sighed in frustration. 

You were exploring the land of Dragonspine, wondering to find new discoveries. Despite Albedo’s influence to pique your curiosity of Dragonspine, your shrewdness needed to go beyond your understanding. It’s been a while since you stepped foot in the land of snow. Not after how much of his essence remained for your little heart. 

You trudge up along the path of Dragonspine, slowly recalling the time you had with Albedo. The crunching of the white snow underneath your feet, digging deep in the ground. The noises you can hear over the screeching winds. A path of fresh footprints laid behind you, displaying where you came from — not where you’re heading. In honesty, you don't know where you’re heading. All that was known was that you are going somewhere. Discover something. Get your mind off of him. 

The Adventurers’ Guild was still trying to post expeditions and catch the eyes of others. Though many adventurers have turned down these pleas. The cold condition was much too dangerous for them to handle, proper preparation was needed but expensive. Dragonspine was menacing for their safety and that was understood among the citizens. 

You briskly rubbed your hands for warmth. The icy winds swirled and sighed around you, sweeping against your skin. Sending chills throughout your body, the fabric of your clothing keeps you warm. Warm enough to make you at ease with the temperature, but not your cold thoughts of gloominess. 

“[y/n], you need my coat? It’s quite cold today, I wouldn’t want you to freeze,” Albedo sighs with the hinges of concern, already starting to slip off his coat.

“Huh, you sure, what about you?” 

A slight curve plastered on his face. An expression you don’t usually see besides his familiar blank expression. “Yes, I don’t exactly get cold and of course I insist.” 

He placed his coat on top of your shoulder, instantly feeling the warmth. The soft fabric rubbing against your cold skin. Your nose was occupied with his scent, filling you with wonder and interest. At times, his scent would be simple than complex. That day it was simple, calming and reassuring you with solace. 

You looked up to the sky, it was filled with ominous mackerel clouds. The dark sky was kissed by the high mountains and bare trees. The sudden wintry breeze whooshed passed you, overwhelming your body. You were missing the sunlight spilling its rays among the land of Mondstadt. How much time has passed? Who knew you would be homesick after wandering in the land of Dragonspine. And Albedo’s company, you couldn’t grasp the fact that he’s no longer in your life. The warmth and bliss of both the recollection of fond memories. Face lit up, feeling your own embarrassment in your cheeks. 

It’s been months, why can’t you get over him? 

“Ya!” the strange noise alerting you. You looked frantically trying to find the source of those gurgling sounds. It was deserted, the possibility of small rodents roaming around the area is surely high  — no wait; trying to think rationally. Then finally you see a monster camp right in front of you. 

You were ready to whip out elemental reactions and attack — oh no. Your vision illuminated its bright color. Still, nothing was released and hilichurl fighters were running at you. No way you were going to stand with this commotion, resorting to run for your life. As you huffed and puffed, accelerating your speed. The cold oxygen filling up your lungs, fingers were numb. Vision started to get foggy, decreasing your pace. You gaze down to notice red blood drizzled on the white blankets of snow. 

Blood? 

You felt the arrows that shot your head and leg. It must have been the hilichurl shooters. There were gashes on the back of your head and leg that began to rip you with pain. You touched the back of your head and felt the wet blood. With the energy in your had left, you continued — you looked back to see blurs of mitachurls with huge axes. Axes that can slice you in half. Your head and thoughts were swirling, unable to focus. Numbness seeped through your legs — stability was lacking. You were trembling, feeling your own body was out of your control. The snowy scenery swayed underneath you as your vision bathed in black spots. You collapsed in the snow, unable to pick yourself up. Legs and head were throbbing with agony and anguish. Pain that you never thought could exist, groaning in pain. The urge to scream came to you but no noise came out of your tired lips. You pushed yourself to crawl, eyeing a tree. Glancing back to see the monsters were leaving you alone. In the vast distances, struggling to hang on to dear life. Faint soft footsteps were heard, the soft slushing of the snow. Must have been an echo or from your imagination. Left alone suffering in the sub zero condition. Your mind was so foggy, eyes half-lit before seeing a glimpse of a familiar figure along the path. It was a blur of colors, you squinted in attempts for a clearer image. Just before you could make out what or who it was, darkness swallowed you whole; lying face down. 

“[y/n]!” 

You blacked out, unconscious in the cold. 

Albedo came running towards you, surely was shocked to see your body stiffly laying there. But noticing your wounds and the wet blood on your clothes — he had to take action. Still seeing that your vision was glowing, he didn’t worry as he checked your pulse. You were bleeding profusely, as Albedo swiftly wrapped you up with cloth he had on him. No words can explain how Albedo felt, as he threw your arms on his shoulders and back. Lifting your body up and holding on to your thighs; securing you. 

Albedo felt your pulse, beating with each running step. His pace started getting quicker, the desire to keep you alive. Not sure what to think of it besides the want to face you. His thought process was incoherent and he wanted it to be resolved.  

Little time. 

After sending you off, Albedo handed back to his camp, straight back to work. Focusing was an issue though. He had mixed feelings of frustration, unsure what these feelings could mean? He hoped you would be alright, but again, why would he care? Ever since the end of your relationship, Albedo noticed that he’s more sensitive than usual. Reactions seemingly to be more livid, stronger. New unfamiliar emotions that he can’t wrap his head around. This all left him at a dead end. 

He felt himself drowning in his own unwanted guilt. The princely blank face wasn’t there, instead contrasting it was the void of such strong rage. Teeth clenched, eyebrows arched. Face painted with pain and remorse. The look on your pale unconscious face... What was the source? His body heats up from this confusion, slamming his gloved hands on his desk. Palms sweating, soaking the leather, as he tossed them off. Papers and documents were flying everywhere, his arms swinging with tension. 

Is this what you're doing? It must be. 

Maybe as a vision bearer, you found a way to manipulate others. Nonetheless, Albedo needed answers. But with your crucial state, are you going to be alright? 

Albedo never felt this rage towards anyone: his master, Alice, Klee, Sucrose, Timaeus, The Knights of Favonius...

If only times were different. 

Weeks, months had passed, you were pronounced dead from your fatal wounds. On your deathbed, the glow of your vision had dimmed to a gray color. You were truly gone. Word got out and Albedo couldn’t pull himself together. Your death has left a void in many lives and memories. 

If only he cared. 

The blonde was choking with despair, gasping for a change... hope. As he flipped through the sketches of you, he stared blankly at your face. The little details that made you, you. He repeatedly muttered incoherent words: If only, if only.

There it was a sketch of you and your smile, if only he could see it one last time. He sighed, letting his head drop. His blonde hair was unkempt as he exhaled heavily. 

Once that first tear fell on the paper, more followed. 

If only he loved you. 

© aitseleci 2021 ✰ do not modify or repost

[stillthewordgirl]

LOT/CaptainCanary fic: (I Don’t Believe in) Destiny (ch. 8 of 11)

Leonard Snart is back, finally pulled from the timestream where he's spent the last four years. But he wasn't alone, and the repercussions of that will echo through the Legends, the Time Bureau, and beyond.

And maybe, just maybe, they'll bring everything around full circle.

Can also be read here at AO3 and here at FF.net.

Ch. Eight: A Tiny Moment of Truth

For a while, after she steps out of the portal back in her office, Ava considers not telling Druce what Sara had said to her about the Legends’ plans for the Vanishing Point.

She’s still not sure why Sara had told her, after all. Was it a trick? She can’t even consider that Sara would actually betray her team. That would never happen. But this Snart? Maybe…

She wants to believe that the crook is a passing fling--but she’d also recognized that fond look in Sara’s eyes. For all their differences and their agreement to split, she misses having that look focused on her.

And the hell of it is, Ava thinks, standing in her office and staring out the window, that Snart had looked at Sara the same way. And he’d removed himself from their conversation, when everything about his posture had said he didn’t want to. He sure as hell hadn’t done that for Ava’s sake, or because he’d been scared. He’d done it for Sara.

Does he really love her? Does she really love him?

The thought hurts.

Ava, you have a choice to make.

A choice not to tell Druce? But Sara wouldn’t have told her then. She must want Druce and Ava and the bureau agents to be there.

Why?

*

The next week is, quite frankly, one of the strangest of Leonard’s life.

For the most part, since his return, he’s been an outsider plopped into the middle of the current Legends’ lives and routine, with a number of people he knows almost nothing about and an unexpected role as the captain’s unexpected lover. But it hasn’t mattered so much, given how whirlwind it’s all been. He’s used to rolling with the punches.

But this week? This week lets him get a glimpse of what their lives have been like, the dynamic Sara and Mick and the others live with on a daily basis now.

They have a chore and dinner rotation now, and there’s a thriving market in trading duties going on. Those who can and like to cook can almost always find a way to get rid of most other chores, something Leonard—who'd been responsible for making sure that he, Lisa, and, often, Mick ate reasonably for much of their youth—appreciates. He cooks up an excellent (if he does say so himself) stir-fried chicken with rice his first night on dinner duty and lets the offers to trade roll in.

(Sara, who admits she can barely boil water without burning it, is rather smug—at least until she realizes Leonard has every intention of driving just as hard a bargain with her as with everyone else. And offering to trade certain favors doesn’t work, especially when Constantine happily and shamelessly offers to do the same—and Leonard makes a mostly joking show of considering it.)

Everyone, at this point, knows that Mick is a writer. Zari is the proud owner of the right to read any finished works first, but there’s generally a clamor to pass around manuscripts before he sends them out, something Leonard gets to witness the first night they’re parked there. Leonard’s a little regretful that that particular right is no longer his, but he’s so pleased to see Mick’s work getting appreciated that he just waits his chance to read with everyone else.

Constantine, apparently always fond of a challenge, has decided that seducing an android is next on his list. Gideon seems fairly amused by this. Although she never—to Leonard’s best guess—takes him up on his suggestions, she flirts back with increasing skill, something that amuses the other Legends a good deal.

Raymond and Nora are besotted with each other, but that doesn’t keep Nora from puncturing Ray’s ego and occasional tendency to lecture good-naturedly on his pet topics whenever she can. Leonard is rather delighted with this, really, and the two trade zingers at every opportunity.

Charlie, though she decries Leonard’s taste in music, decides he’s quite all right anyway after Mick regales her with stories of some of their escapades in both crime and prison. The shapeshifter, Leonard thinks, isn’t nearly so tough as she likes to appear, but well, neither are he and Mick at this point.

Heywood, who Leonard eventually concedes to call Nathaniel, still eyes Leonard warily, but they reach a truce over the ship’s historical library and, perhaps oddly, bad sci-fi movies.

And over it all is Sara, more a long-suffering big sister to most of them than a mom, for the most part, for all her jokes otherwise. She referees and praises, scolds and organizes, and Leonard’s pretty sure they’d all do anything for her.

He thinks he probably looks a bit besotted, too. He doesn’t care. They end every day tumbling into bed with each other, and the captain’s quarters are increasingly considered “theirs.”

In all, the Legends plan and train like a team. They tease like siblings. They live, and eat, and squabble like a family.

It’s like a good crew planning a heist; it’s like life at its best when he and Lisa and Mick were younger. And Leonard’s increasingly aware that he doesn’t want to lose this. He doesn’t care if he looks like he’s lost his touch, that it seems like he’s gone soft. The dreams and nightmares of the timestream have given him a new perspective on the life he could lead...and he wants it.

He’s fairly driven to succeed at the Vanishing Point anyway, but that’s even more of a push. He throws himself into his “lessons” with Nora and Constantine, for all that none of them are really sure what they’re doing.

“It’s like trying to teach someone to swim when they’re standing in the ocean waves and you’re a mile away,” the warlock admits morosely after one frustrating session midweek. He leans back a bit precipitously in the chair he’d claimed in the rec room where they’ve been meeting. “You have this odd energy about you, and you can feel it. But I really can’t quite see it, mate, and even I don’t dare quite tell you what to do with it. It’s erratic. You could send this whole ship back to the Stone Age without meaning to.”

Nora sighs, gathering her legs up underneath her as she sits on the sofa. “At least we know that you can feel it and grasp it now,” she tells Leonard. “But John’s right...”

“Of course I am, love.”

“...we don’t have any good way of testing it out.” She bites her lip. “I wonder if this would work better with the ship in the timestream.”

After a second, Constantine sits up, nearly losing his balance. “That’s brilliant. Gid...”

“I truly hate to nix that idea, Ms. Da...Nora.” Gideon’s been trying to remember to use first names at everyone’s request. “But I’m uncertain how the timestream would react to that. It might be a perfectly safe experiment. Or...” She pauses. “...it might cause turbulence. Time waves or a temporal storm. Or worse.”

“Not good, then, love?” Constantine sighs.

“Not good at all, John.”

After a long few minutes of thoughtful silence, though, there’s a noise at the door, and Gideon’s android avatar walks in. Constantine puts the front two legs of his chair on the floor with a whump.

“No worries, we weren’t going to try anything hasty,” he tells her. “Or could you just not go a few hours without seeing me?”

Nora rolls her eyes at Leonard, who smirks.

Gideon gives him a sweet smile. “I see you all the time, John,” she informs him in an equally sweet-as-sugar tone. “Ship, remember? Even when you...”

“Ah, you don’t have to divulge all the gory details, love.” He winks at Leonard. “Unless the others want to hear them, of course.”

“Well, I certainly don’t,” Nora cuts in tartly. “Hello, Gideon. Do you have a suggestion for us?”

“I do, actually.” The android puts a thin white candle in an old-fashioned candlestick down on the table. “Mr. Sn...Leonard. If you can feel the temporal energy about you now...do you think you could use just a tiny bit?”

Now, that’s interesting. “Maybe,” Leonard acknowledges, getting up and strolling over to the table. “What are you up to, Gideon?”

“I’m suggesting starting small scale.” She pulls a box of matches from the pocket of the dress she’s wearing—humanoid Gideon had been rather appalled how many of the patterns for female clothing in her databanks hadn’t had pockets. “Think of the timestream as a body of water, of sorts—a river with an enormous capacity, or a constantly moving ocean. It’s very powerful, and very deadly, and if you mess with it unprepared, you will drown.”

Leonard leans against the table, studying her. “Unless you’re a...Waverider,” he points out after a moment. “To continue your metaphor.”

Gideon dimples at him. “Indeed,” she agrees, carefully selecting a match. “However, a small cup of water is a different matter. It may hold enough to drown you, if used very carelessly, but it is considerably safer.” She strikes the match, then lights the candle as Nora drifts over to watch.

Leonard frowns at it, then lifts an eyebrow at her. “You want me to try to...be a cup of water.”

“No...” Constantine sounds intrigued. “She wants you to try to control the equivalent of one.” He gives Gideon an impressed look. “I am surrounded by brilliant women on this ship.” Then, unable to resist, he gives Leonard a wink too. “And men, of course, mate. Don’t be hurt.”

Leonard ignores him, watching the candle as wax starts to run down the sides. “ ‘Fraid I’m going to need a little more information.”

“Try controlling just a little temporal energy,” Gideon tells him, motioning to the candle. “And turn time, just around this candle, back just a few minutes. To before I lit it.”

Leonard blinks. “Just like that?”

Constantine gets to his feet. “Won’t that be a lot harder than doing something larger?” he asks. “Such fine detail work?”

“Just because you tend to be a blunt instrument, John, doesn’t mean that everybody else is.”

Leonard hears Nora’s giggle in response, but he’s focusing on the candle, intrigued.

Feeling the crackle of energy around him, ebb and flow, time itself, holding him steady in the nothing.

A presence? Not quite. But not quite...not.

Blue light, all around him.

He reaches out, with his mind like Nora had told him, and grasps...a handful. No more. Lets a little trickle out. And then he stares at the flame—flickering, restless, beautiful; Mick might have had a point all these years—and flings that mental hand out, toward it.

Something shifts. Nora gasps, and Leonard distantly hears Constantine curse. And the candle...the wax stops, then flows backward, gathering back up into a single pristine column, and the flame winks out.

And then things feel normal again.

Leonard lets out an unsteady breath, then looks around. Nora and Constantine are staring at him and both look shocked, even the unflappable warlock. Gideon is smiling.

“Yes,” she says with satisfaction. “Just like that.”

*

Mick used to hate remembering his time as Chronos. So much so that he'd pretend that he barely remembered it. Even to the point of appearing actively dim—even more than his usual act—to the others on board.

He does remember it, though, or at least a good bit of it. Sometimes the details are distant—Gideon had told him once that the human brain simply wasn’t meant to live through that kind of time—and he’s still capable of losing pieces, but he remembers.

(No one, not even Snart, realizes just how much Gideon had talked him through the time after he’d returned to the team. She understood like none of the others did—she’d been at the mercy of the Time Masters too, before Hunter “freed” her, in a way. That’d been when he’d first started thinking of her as another person, and not just a ship.)

It’s funny, but he doesn’t mind as much now when Blondie wants to pick his brain about what he knows, the things he’d learned through all that time, though some of it’s now foggy indeed. And it’s kind of worth it to watch the others’ faces.

He’s just done that, held forth on temporal theory for a good five minutes and watched Blondie, Haircut, and New Girl go from interested to impressed to just a little blank as he gets out of the realm of what they really know, even Haircut. He smirks a little, smugly, at them after, planning to wait a minute or two and then explain it.

But then everything gets interrupted when Spooky Girl and British both nearly run on to the bridge, both looking excited and maybe a little alarmed.

“You didn’t feel anything? Out here?” Spooky Girl asks urgently, looking at all of them. Mick shakes his head, glancing at the others, whose confusion over his speech are now fading into confusion about what’s going on. (Damn it.)

British laughs a little wildly. “Gideon,” he says breathlessly, turning to shake a finger at the android, who’s following them side by side with Snart, “you are brilliant. Stunningly so.”

Gideon smiles at him serenely. “Yes,” she says, “I know.”

Snart’s wearing an expression that doesn’t seem to know whether it wants to be satisfied or shaken. Mick studies him, concerned, and gets a half-shrug in return.

“What happened?” Blondie says urgently, looking from Gideon to Snart. “Do I have to start yelling to get someone to tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Mr. Snart used a small portion of temporal energy to successfully walk back time by a few minutes,” Gideon announces to her. “Just in a very small portion of the ship, it’s true. But he did it.” She folds her arms. “Now, he just has to work his way up.”

That’s the cue for everyone to start talking at once. Mick himself lets out a long breath. He knows that he’d been starting to get worried that Snart wouldn’t be able to do what Mary Xavier had claimed he’d be able to do, but he hadn’t quite realized that everyone else on the ship had been just as worried. Including Snart, that usually arrogant and oh-so-proud SOB.

This isn’t much. It isn’t even close in scale, and they only have a few more days. But suddenly, Mick’s sure this will work. The Time Bastards won’t even know what hit them.

If anyone can do it, Snart can.

*

Druce is pleased by Ava’s news. So pleased that she immediately regrets telling him, even despite her conviction that Sara had wanted her to do so.

“He’ll be right where we need him to be, then,” the Time Masters says, satisfaction in his voice, as he paces Ava’s office. “They’re playing right into our hands.” He glances again at Ava. “If you’re sure of this, director, this is even better than delivering Mr. Snart into my hands here. You are sure of it?”

Ava stifles her urge to snap. She folds her arms and looks down her nose at him. “Very sure,” she responds, knowing her tone is clipped, an attempt to remind Druce that he’s still a prisoner. Technically. “Now, Master Druce, I believe it’s time for you to give me some information as well.” She powers on as Druce gives her an inquiring look. “Snart. He didn’t steal anything physical, did he? What does he have to do with the Oculus?”

Druce gives her a very patronizing smile, one that immediately raises her hackles, though Ava fights to conceal that reaction.

“Very good, my dear,” he says, facing her. “No, Mr. Snart…‘stole,’ shall we say…an enormous amount of temporal energy from the Oculus wellspring and the timestream. More than enough to, when regained, take us all back to the correct time, harness the supernova for the wellspring, and create the Vanishing Point as it should be.”

Ava keeps her expression steady as she continues to watch him. “And how, precisely, will you obtain that energy from him?”

Druce’s smile gets, if possible, even more condescending. “There’s a fine human tradition of power through sacrifice, you know,” he says. “That should work nicely.”

Ava only waits a beat, as if she’s not surprised—and on some level, she’s not, though she’s still struggling with it—before nodding curtly. “I’ll get a team together,” she says brusquely. “The best of the best.” The ones I trust most.

But Druce actually chuckles at her. “No need,” he says. “I already have a…team. Ten of your best agents. I’ve even already explained the whole thing to them.” He pauses. “Would you like to be the 11th, Director Sharpe? It seems you have earned it.”

Ava can only stare at him.

*

It’s one thing to know that Leonard should be able to do what Mary had said. It’s quite another thing to see him do it.

They can’t do too many test runs, especially not ones of great size—he’ll need the largest share of temporal energy for the Vanishing Point. But Gideon insists that smaller-scale tests should continue to allow Leonard to get a feel for the idea, and he’ll know what to do when the time comes.

And that’s why Sara’s standing in a field outside the ship with only a day to go, watching him undo any damage the other Legends have done.

He’d undone the blaze Mick had caused first, mainly because it’d threatened to spread. (Sara had laid the law down after that—nothing that could cause trouble if Leonard couldn’t fix it.) Then he’d righted the dead aspen Ray had knocked over and put all the leaves back on a living one when Zari had dislodged them with a ridiculously hard gust of wind.

Charlie, grinning, had shifted into a fox and trotted off into the undergrowth and emerged with feathers on her ruddy muzzle, licking her chops. Leonard had taken one look at her expectant look and said, flatly, “No.” Whatever unfortunate bird she’d consumed had gone un-resurrected.

That was just as well, Sara thinks uneasily. That was a particular can of worms she did not want them to open.

But now, Gideon had brought him one last challenge—a rock, a flat piece of limestone—with the flat fossilized impression of a leaf in it. She’d simply handed it to him with a smile.

A small thing, but potentially, Sara knows, very, very old. She watches, holding her breath, as Leonard studies it, closes his eyes…

And hands a green leaf, fresh as if it were newly plucked from a tree that surely no longer exists, back to Gideon.

Ray, watching, whoops and high-fives Nate, while Mick simply nods in satisfaction. The others celebrate more or less according to their personalities as Sara finally takes a breath, a long, slow one, and lets it out.

Leonard looks at her, an odd expression on his face—not the smile she’d almost expected, but then, she’s not smiling either. Despite the victory, despite the optimism. This is all too real, and it has the possibility of changing all too much.

Her own words, from years ago now, echo in her head.

For better or for worse.