11675/So... what's new

So... what's new
Date of Scene:	20 June 2022
Location:	Roof - Titan's Tower
Synopsis:	Donna confesses a whole bunch of doubts, and Caitlin comforts. It's a bit of an inversion of their normal relationship, but only a bit.
Cast of Characters:	Donna Troy, Caitlin Fairchild

---

Donna Troy has posed:
    There are only so many places you can hide in the tower, which is perhaps why Donna hasn't been around the tower a whole lot since she came back. There's always something to do, somewhere to be. Things to do at the embassy, or something that the spaceport needs. Meetings with the Titans foundation, outreach work, business things -- all the kinds of things that the Titans normally do their best to put off or avoid entirely present a good excuse. When she has been around the tower, there has always been an excuse to have her nose buried in a tablet. So much Titans business to catch up on, when you haven't existed for a couple of months.

    Donna isn't being unfriendly. She's not avoiding people so much as she has avoided being in a situation with people where they might ask too many questions. She greets people, she has been training, she has eaten meals with other members of the team. She hasn't said anything that's /substantive/ though. She didn't even say anything about what she had been up to those few days after her return, other than that she had been home for a while. She certainly hasn't been talking about her experiences, or perhaps more properly her lack thereof, of the events that caused the tower to warp into a confusing labyrinth of altered reality.

    She hasn't even said anything about her fancy new armor. That's not like her.

    The fact that she is now sitting on the roof -- on the very edge of the roof, on the short wall that fences the tower roof to stop things or people falling off -- as she goes through yet more paperwork on a tablet no doubt has something to do with all this. Maybe it's just because it's a warm night and it's pleasant out, but more likely she's simply avoiding the danger of running into people who might ask questions where she to sit around the main room, as she normally would. It does however have the disadvantage that anyone coming to look for her can't be easily dodged without it being really obvious.

    There are, after all, only so many places you can hide in the tower.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
The door to the tower roof slides open; the bearings are getting a little worn and it makes the same grumbling protest it has for most of six years now. The tread of footsteps would be hard to mistake for anyone except Caitlin or Vic, and Vic would almost certainly be humming the Jaws themesong to himself if he were sneaking up on Donna.

Caitlin comes to a stop near Donna's spot on the ledge, on her left. She looks around at the scenery; the glittering water, the sparkling city. A deep breath brings a pleasant lungful of salt water and fresh, clean air.

In her hand is a pint of ice cream in a plain cardboard container, the lid removed and a spoon sticking out the top. She waves it vaguely near Donna's head to get her attention, to give her something to take in hand.

When Donna accepts the snack Caitlin eases down in a squat and transfers her weight to her palms so her legs can dangle off the side of the building, too. She leans back a little with her arms propping up behind her. It's a balmy, warm spring day, justifying comfortable khaki shorts and a black babydoll tee with a D20 in white in the center of her chest.

She doesn't say anything. Not yet. And she doesn't seem to be in a hurry to do so, either.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna takes the ice cream with a nod of thanks, placing the tablet she has been working on beside her. If you're going to be cornered, it is after all better to accept your fate with grace, and refusing ice cream in such a situation would simply be foolish.

    Caitlin knows by now that Amazons have a weakness for ice cream. It's not that Themyscirans hadn't discovered iced fruit deserts, but somehow the innovation of mixing frozen milk into the equation had escaped them. If you want to catch an Amazon, going armed with ice cream never hurts.

    Donna helps herself to a few spoons full before returning the carton back to Caitlin to take her turn at this rare delicacy. After a while she gives Caitlin a gentle nudge with her elbow. "You're such a nerd, you know Cait. I mean the tee shirt. Such a nerd."

    "Remember when you guys tried to introduce me to do Dungeons and Dragons? And I was all... 'why would I have to roll a dice to determine whether I can perform this task? It is a trivial matter. ' Or - 'There are only twenty possibilities represented by this dice. That is ridiculous! It implies it is impossible that you can fail at such a task less frequently than five times out of every hundred, yet I have not failed at such a task since I was a small child.' Drove Vic mad. I can still remember him desperately trying to remain patient as he told me 'for the hundred and seventh time Donna, you are playing a character who does not share your abilities.' Hank thought it was hilarious."

    She grins a little at her old friend, but breaks away quickly to look out over the waters of the bay. On the horizon, the sea glints with the reflected light of Gotham on the far side. "Is this where you say 'I told you so', Cait? I won't complain.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin accepts the container and utensil back and scoops out a little for herself. It's buttercream strawberry; the preserved strawberry is shot through the sweet cream like some exotic granite. It's at the perfect temperature, too, nicely chilled but not needing force to chisel it free. She listens quietly while Donna recollects, eating tiny bites to make it last just that much longer.

At Donna's question, she purses her lips, then plants the spoon upright in the ice cream like a little flag and hands it back to Donna. "I don't even know where to /begin/, let alone knowing if I warned you about this in any way," she says with a dry humor. "'I told you so' is for, like, that thing with the authentic Thai chili sauce."

Caitlin inhales a breath of air, holds it for a beat, and exhales steadily. The wind's in their faces, and her loose-combed hair flies pennant-like behind her in the breeze.

"The last month or two is... even by our standards, that's pretty weird. It's you, but it's not-you. Wonderland leaking into reality--" she shakes her head, cutting off the words with a wry laugh. "Your... alt-u... you, was just the worst," she admits to Donna. "She was very polite but so dismissive. And Rae was no help. She just sulked in her room the whole time. ...I guess that part's fairly normal," she concedes.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "When you came to Themyscira the first time," Donna begins. "Well, the second time really. 'Cos you came back here for a couple of weeks in the middle. But a few days before you left properly, I... I kind of told you everything." She shakes her head. "The kind of conversation we should have had five years before, but we couldn't because I had to..." she breaks away, blinking. "Huh. Funny that. I had to lie and not tell you the lies I'd been told." She gives a flick of her hand as if to dismiss the tangent. "Anyway. We were sitting in the throne room, just talking. You said mom must have seen something in me to adopt me. I told you that didn't make sense, I was just a baby like any other baby. It was all just chance. Luck."

    "So you were right. I mean not in... not the way you meant, but yeah it wasn't chance. Or... I don't know. Maybe we're /both/ wrong, because she didn't pick me out at all. I was handed over to her."

    She sighs softly, and runs a hand through her thick, dark hair. "I remember bits of it. Fragments here and there, like a dream. You know how... you wake up, and you try to remember a dream, and it's like trying to hold water in your hand? However tightly you press your fingers together, the best you can do is hold on to a few of the memories for a few moments, and try to memorize remembering them as you watch them drip away."

    She gives a light snort. "Wow, I really mangled that metaphor, didn't I. But you get the idea. It's weird. I remember bits here and there like it was a dream, but at the same time I'm remembering someone who wasn't me. Kind of remembering in the third person I guess."

    She tilts her head down and to one side, looking at Caitlin fully at last, and after a few moments she shakes her head. "I'm sorry Cait. For putting you through that. I mean I don't know if... to what extent it was me doing it, and to what extent it was something done to me. Or... I'm not sure in this instance the uh... the distinction makes sense. I'm sorry you had to deal with it."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin nods thoughtfully in response to Donna's apology, staring out over the distance ahead of her. She picks up the container of ice cream and takes a bite or two while Donna's talking, plants the spoon in it again and sets it down between them. "Fisherfolk," she says, and cuts her gaze sideways to Donna. "You thought you had a Tragic Backstory, all your family lost to sea during a vicious marlin attack or something. And then you laughed at me when I said you and Diana look alike," she reminds her. The corners of her lips tug into a flickering smile. "Which it makes sense now, though. Right? I was right and I didn't know it. Your powers, the way you were raised, even how much you and Diana look alike."

She lets silence reign for a few long counts, the heels of her sneakers *thudding* a lazy rhythm against the top of the tower. "So. You're a goddess," she says. "Wow. I mean, does it feel any different? Do you feel any different?" She looks over at Donna. "I mean, the Alt-You, she was much more in tune with it. She used magic the way Rae does, like it's easier than using her hands. What does that ... I mean, I don't--" she breaks off with an exasperated sigh, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, I'm struggling to wrap my head around that. The Theoi, being around them, it was... such an experience. Kinda... familiar, kinda strange, all at once. But very spiritual."

Her eyes cut sideways towards Donna. "Don't smite me or anything, but I am having a hard time painting you with that brush. I've had to hold your hair back while you were sick. It undercuts the--" she gestures vaguely with one hand, looking for the word. "/Majesty/ of it all."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna winces visibly at the words -- the accusation, it almost feels like to her. 'You're a goddess'. The denial is quick to her lips. "I'm not. I'm just... me. I mean it's no different from Diana or Cassie. And as for that alternative version of me... that's not me. Maybe it's who I might have been, but it's not who I am. Look, it's kind of..."

    Donna sighs deeply, shoulders raising slowly and falling fast. Her eyes defocus, staring nowhere. "I think it's more like a job, you know? Rather than genetics. You don't just become divine because of having a parent or two who were divine. I'm not sure it's even a requirement. But whatever it is, I'm not."

    "It feels different, yeah. But not... I mean nothing has actually changed. Except what I know. It feels different to know that I'm not who I thought I was. It feels different because... because things I thought made sense to me don't any more. I don't know how to /deal/ with this information, Cait. I don't know how to process it. When I try to look at it dispassionately, my reason tells me -- it makes no difference. Nothing has actually changed. So why should it even bother me? But it does. It does bother me."

    She tilts her head back in Caitlin's direction, studying her old friend's face. Looking for hints of... something. Of Caitlin /looking/ at her differently. "I told mom and Di that... that it's fine. I wanted them to know that I'm not mad at them for not telling me. I know that wasn't really their choice. But... but that doesn't /fix/ things Cait. And I don't even know what's broken. They must have been worrying, all this time, about how I would react when I found out. So I reassured them as much as I could. But I can't reassure myself. Half of me is saying that nothing has really changed except I have a little more data about the first few weeks of my life than I ever had before. The other half of me is saying that everything has changed."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin slowly lays back, propping the sole of her shoe against the rooftop's low edge and letting the other leg continue to dangle. She takes just a moment to pull her loose hair around to rest on her shoulder and interlaces her fingers behind her head so she can look up at the sky. It's not quite as flawless nor blue as the skies over Themyscira, but with the warm weather and the right breeze, it can almost pass for it.

"You feel like you've got to re-do everything you've ever done," Caitlin says, making it more statement than question. "Every decision, every snap judgement, every time you lashed out or screwed up or did something you regret. You have to unpack your whole life minute by minute and ask yourself 'am I anything more than the sum of my parts?' And the answer is never satisfying. Eventually you just ... stop agonizing about it. Because if all you do is sit around going 'what if I had been raised elsewhere', 'what if my past hadn't been taken from me', 'what if', 'what if', 'what if'."

Her foot skates off the rooftop's ledge, the barest suggestion of a gesture of angry resentment. "But you can't go back and change the past, and you can't undo it, and if you dwell on it for too long you start getting really depressed and irrationally blaming people for things they didn't have much control over, either. And that's not really fair to them."

It's entirely possible Caitlin's reflections are not totally focused on Donna's current woes.

Donna Troy has posed:
    It's entirely impossible that Donna wouldn't notice. "Meaning I should snap out of it, Cait? That I shouldn't feel sorry for myself, that there's nothing exceptional about what I'm going through? That I'm not the only member of the team who has woken up one day to find that everything they believed about their life was a lie and they had to reassess... everything? The observation hadn't escaped me Cait."

    She breaks away, leaning forwards to stare down over the edge of the tower, to the ground below. Her hands come up, fingers running through her hair on either side of her head, and meeting behind her neck, where they twine together. Her paired hands rub the back of her skull for a moment, then she looks up with a serious expression. "Yeah I know. Terry's been in /exactly/ the same position." She breaks into a teasing grin, but it looks forced.

    "I've been through it in my head, Cait. I mean... all this time, I thought I was incredibly lucky to be adopted, to be given the opportunity to become an Amazon. All my life I have been motivated to /repay/ that. So what does it mean to learn I was given to mom to raise basically as a... a hostage to the Titans' good behavior? Yeah it's easy enough to answer that it doesn't matter, because I believe in Themyscira. I believe in what we are doing with my whole heart. And yeah, then I can start questioning that and telling myself -- yeah, but that's how I was raised to think. I believe that because I was manipulated into believing it. And after /that/, I can start asking myself if that makes any difference. We're all a product of our environments. Does it matter how large a role chance played in that environment? You can reduce everything to what-ifs, and it serves no purpose. It informs nothing. I get that."

    She blinks a few times. Her eyes flicker to one side and then the other, indecisive, then she looks away. "Honestly Cait, you want to know what really bothers me about this? I mean... there's lots of small things. Things that I know I have to figure out and reassess. And I hate... I hate not feeling sure of myself. I'm not used to that. But the worst thing? It's... it feels... it's /humiliating/. I just... I feel dumb not to have realized. No. To have denied it. Because... I have been."

    She gives a shake of her head, and suddenly her eyes are filled with tears. It's hardly the first time Caitlin has seen her cry. It might seem a little surprising, especially in an American cultural context, that tears would come so readily to the eyes of someone who seems as tough as Donna normally does, but raised on Themyscira, the only child on the island, there had never really been a reason for her not to express her emotions fully.

    "I knew there was... that something wasn't right, Cait. But I hid away from that. I pretended to myself it didn't matter, it wasn't... Gods Cait, you remember that conversation, and you said how my life was like a Disney princess? How could I have been so dumb as to not realize that was bullshit? And maybe if I had just /listened/, I wouldn't have..." she waves a hand in the direction of the door. "Done all of that. Inconvenienced everyone because of my... whatever it was. How could I have let myself be so gullible, Cait?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin sits up as Donna's tone shifts maudlin and bitterly introspective. She lets Donna vent because Donna /needs/ to vent, because her heart's overflowing with angry uncertainty and there is a dearth of people at the intersection of Donna's trust, confidence, and familiarity.

When those bitter tears start to flow Caitlin reaches over and gathers Donna into a hug. One arm loops around to rest her palm on Donna's opposite shoulder and the other tucks Donna's head against Caitlin's collarbone. Dark cloth absorbs tears well and Caitlin makes quiet soothing sounds in the back of her throat, some deep-seated instinct that even all her programming failed to erase.

She gives Donna all the time she needs to get her aplomb back, and even offers her a clean tissue from her pocket. Caitlin politely observes the distant shorelines in the meantime.

"Y'know-- without wandering into a lot of philosophy-- the most important detail is that your mom never treated you differently," she points out. "She didn't lock you in a tower or leave you to your own devices in some dusty corner of the palace. She could have been completely indifferent to you, but she wasn't. Neither was Diana. And-- I know it's dumb, but if the experiment was 'could someone be the bridge between these cultures', then they were performing the experiment as well as they possibly could."

She reaches over to Donna, pushes a few hanging black curls away from her damp cheeks to tuck behind one ear. "Telling you what your destiny was, would have compromised the whole process. They wanted to see what would happen if someone with all of the legacy and power of New Kronus, was raised to with the best examples of courage and selfless service. I don't know what sort of power you're going to come in to, now or later, but your mom's only real job was training you to be that bridge. The fact that she and Diana chose love you as much as they do-- that's something that could only have come from in here." Two fingers tap Cait's chest above her heart. "And if they love you for who-- or despite what you are-- that all comes from who *you* are." She reaches over and gently thumps her middle finger against Donna's sternum. "In here."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna rests her head on Caitlin's shoulder, grateful for the comfort of her oldest friend, not shying for a moment from the embrace but letting herself accept it fully, and what it signifies. When the flow of tears slows and she feels she is a at least a little more in control of herself again, she draws it all in with a shuddering breath, and shakes her head slightly against Caitlin's collarbone.

    "It's a nice way of looking at it Cait," she replies eventually. "But that's just more Disney princess stuff. They didn't want any of that. They weren't interested in /me/. In making me better, or bridging anything. It was about appeasement. The Olympians didn't want to fight the Titans, the Titans didn't want to fight the Olympians. The Titans gave me up to appease the Olympians, the Olympians gave me a home on Themyscira to appease the Titans. Everything good that has come of it was... was... I can't think of the word. Acci... incidental. Mom was an acceptable option to both parties. The fact that she was so good and so kind to me didn't come into anyone's thinking. So... so yeah. In that respect I /was/ lucky."

    She takes a few deep breaths, her rib cage rising and falling, but otherwise sitting very still. When she speaks again, her voice is more level. "You know why this happened? Why there was a risk of a war? Because there was a prophecy about me when I was born. That the life of the child would be interwoven into the very fate of the Titans. That's why they couldn't just give me up, and why the Olympians were prepared to compromise. And it was all a misunderstanding. Can you imagine how the Titans and Olympians must have reacted when they heard about /us/, Cait?"

    "The Lampad told me, you know. She told me on the stairs. That there was a prophecy about me, and that it was a joke. She said I'd laugh when I heard about it, but I'm not laughing."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"/I/ proposed 'The Incredibles', and as I remember, I got outvoted," Caitlin reminds Donna with a passing tone of lofty superiority.

She smirks a little ruefully, shaking her head, and looks out at the water once more. "Lampad. Golly. She really had us going, didn't she," Caitlin admits. "I might punt her into orbit next time I see her. Or fold her into a pretzel."

She frets her upper lip between her teeth, ruminating on things. "I mean, I can keep telling you 'I know exactly how you feel', and it's not going to make it hurt less," Caitlin says as apologetically as she can. "No one's motivations are perfect. Alex, Uncle Billy-- they were part of the lie. They did it all because Uncle Billy owed Daddy from their time in the service. He promised him he'd take care of me. But Uncle Billy could have just... cut me loose with fifty bucks in some hickburg in Missouri. Or turned me over to the DEO or--" she shudders. "NOWHERE. But he didn't. Him and Peanut, they made me part of the family. If they really felt like it was just a transactional sort of debt, I wouldn't have a brother a day past me graduating high school. Yeah, it sucks, but--" she shrugs a little plaintively. "If you come out of a bad situation and people love you anyway, you know they *really* love you."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "I think she was trying to help in her own way," Donna says. And then "Incredibles was a terrible name. Everyone says so." She's quiet for a while after that, thinking over everything that Caitlin has said. After days of avoidance, she's at least comfortable with trying to deal with it here, alone with Caitlin. There are some ways in which she feels closer to and trusts Caitlin even more than Hippolyta or Diana.

    "When I flew back home, there were two things I knew I needed to do," Donna says eventually, her voice pretty much level again. "To tell mom that I wasn't angry with her, that I didn't blame her. And to go to the /naos pantheion/ and... I dunno. Demand an explanation I guess. But I couldn't... I didn't want to try planning either of those out in advance. Thinking about what to say and ending up second-guessing myself. So I tried to just kind of not think about anything."

    "Instead I found myself thinking about two things. One was Rae. What she had to give up for my sake. The other was you. How much you've been beating yourself up over the whole angel thing. How you blamed yourself for letting Michael fool you. But you know what? It was /Michael/. I mean that's... you were basically primed your whole life to accept what he was saying to you. And if he did try to deceive you, I mean his basically twin brother is supposed to be the father of lies, right? And then there's me. The only person who ever fooled me was myself, Cait. Mom didn't tell me the truth, but she never /lied/ to me. She couldn't, could she? I'd have known. I did this to myself. I mean anything about it that's actually important, that actually changes anything, it's because I spent my whole life fooling myself."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin makes a face when Michael is mentioned. It's still a sore topic with her. It probably always will be. She shifts her seat a little, looking down at her feet and letting her red hair partially obscure her features. "Yeah, well... speaking of ... crappy prophecies," she says with a sigh. "It's not exactly the New Revised version, but it's kind of ... horrifying," she gets out, "to discover you're part of a secret apocalyptic prophecy that's only written down in the version they keep in the Pit."

"I still haven't unpacked that," she admits, a beat later. "I don't know if I ever will. Was I doing the right thing? Was I doing the thing I was destined to do? Michael was... he left everything so confusing. So /unclear/." She examines her wrists, sliding the bracers of the Aegis down a half-inch to scratch at badly-healed purple scars from where Michael had smote the previous pair of bracers. "At least you were meant to ... bring peace, I guess. Even if you got kinda screwed in the process."

She looks over at Donna, and flashes a tight, wan smile; apologetic even, and she straightens up as if trying to slough off the topic of her own inadequacies and focus on Donna's current issues. To that end, she rotates and punches Donna in the shoulder. Just hard enough to make a point.

"/That/ was for ditching me," she informs the princess. "If you got to the island and had to throw down with Athena-- or worse, the Queen-- you would have *really* regretted not bringing me along."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "I was meant to bring peace about as much as a baseball bat is meant to play an entertaining game of baseball," Donna objects, but Caitlin's punch lands before she's able to elaborate on her metaphor.

    Donna rubs her arm and glares at Caitlin, a brief look of obvious mock anger before, oddly out of character, she breaks into a pout. "I wasn't gonna fight anyone," she says, sounding possibly just a little contrite. "Certainly not mom. I was going to go tell her everything was okay, remember? That I wasn't angry with her? Though I swear, just for a second or two, her guards looked really nervous when I arrived at the palace."

    "As for Athena, or whichever of the patrons -- no. I just... I'm not sure." She gives a shake of her head. "Not sure what I was going to say to them. I just -- I guess an explanation, an /acknowledgement/, you know? None of the Patrons have ever spoken to me, Cait. Not once. When I went before, when I became an Amazon, it was /Hera/, not one of the patrons. But you know what? I found the place straight away. No fighting to get there, no days of travel, just straight there. Nobody was there. None of them came."

    Donna stops rubbing her arm, looking faintly dazed for a few moments before she turns to Caitlin, tilting her head. "Hey. Cait. You just hit me. You know, if I really am a goddess now, you just punched a goddess. That's like blasphemy or something."

    Donna manages to keep a straight face for slightly less than two seconds before she is no longer able to hold back a loud snort of amusement. "Gods, Cait. This is stupid. And you know what's even more stupid? My mind ties itself in knots every time I want to swear. I mean saying 'great Hera!' or 'Gods!' or whatever. It just feels really weird all of a sudden. The only answer is American swears. I'm gonna have to demand an exemption from your swear jar on religious grounds, sorry."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin smiles as some of Donna's ebullient good nature returns, shaking her head at Donna's repartee. She even giggles despite herself when Donna starts laughing, the amusement infectious and the return to humor an appealing turn. "Nah, the swear jar stays," Caitlin tells Donna. "I don't begrudge someone some bad language if they smack their thumb with a hammer. I just don't want the new kids slipping into the habit of swearing all the time in lieu of, y'know. Communicating. With real words."

She smirks a little and it fades to something thoughtful while she looks at Donna's face. "The first time I met the Theoi, I was so nervous. I didn't know what to expect. Thor is... I mean, there are times I wonder about him. He can summon lightning and fly and does the trick with his hammer. But I've seen plenty of other people do wild and remarkable stuff. He's not even the only person I know who can use magic."

"Odin is... Odin reminds me of Athena. You look at him and there is something awe-inspiring about it. It makes me nervous. I don't get that around Thor. Or around you." She nudges Donna with an elbow. "Maybe that's something to think about. Whatever it is about you that... makes you more human, I guess. Makes us both human. More than we were just meant to be."

She exhales heavily with a steady gust between her lips that carries off the tower's edge and towards the city. "I do miss flying," she says, wistfully. "I mean all the rest of it, the ... power, the grace Michael gave me. That was all pretty cool. I felt so strong and so empowered. But the flying was the thing I missed the very most. 'course Michael probably did that because he knew I couldn't turn down a package offer with that on the table. Not exactly a credit to my resistance to temptation."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Let's just assume I've done the spiritual equivalent of smacking my thumb with a hammer for a little while then," Donna suggests by way of compromise. There's some validity in what she has to say -- for Caitlin it's surely a relief that Donna tends to calling on Greek deities, one way or the other, when expostulating. Better a 'gods!' than a 'fuck!'. On the other hand Caitlin was a little scandalized when her Themysciran improved enough to know what Donna meant whenever she yelled '/Heras maztos/', and '/gamo/' has probably made its way onto Caitlin's swear list by now.

    "Thor's too busy having fun to bother with that god nonsense," Donna avers with confidence. "And I'm just me. Cait -- /Cassie/ is Zeus' daughter. Cassie. It doesn't... it doesn't mean anything, okay?"

    "As for Michael..." Donna shrugs, and wraps her arms around Cailtin's shoulders. "He was a jerk. But the only thing you didn't turn down was the opportunity to do what he tricked you, briefly, into thinking what was for the best. He might be a jerk, but he's not stupid. He knew that there was nothing he could bribe you with other than the possibility of making the world a better place."

    "As for flying, that's not really something you have to miss. I mean you're a great pilot, and..." Donna's grip tightens, and suddenly she kicks hard against the parapet, pushing herself and Caitlin off into space. They pair bob down a few feet before Donna's flight catches them up and they soar away through the sky, leaving behind only Caitlin's momentary yelp of surprise, and Donna's mischievous cackle.