16086/Titans 3023: Titans 2714!

Titans 3023: Titans 2714!
Date of Scene:	16 October 2023
Location:	The Chinese Autonomous Zone, 28th Century.
Synopsis:	The voyage of the future Titans stops off en route to the present to pick up another future Titan -- a nomad in time, Wally West, the Forever Hero.
Cast of Characters:	Donna Troy, Caitlin Fairchild, Wally West

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Donna Troy has posed:
    The Titans who have survived to 3023 are gathered, with one exception. The Flash, Wally West. To make things complicated, Wally is not technically alive in 3023, but he will be further into the future, and thus is one more piece required for the time-loop closing puzzle.

    Wally is a nomad in time. Having learned enough to use the Speed Force to move forwards in time safely, Wally had chosen to explore the future, forever jumping further and further forwards, witnessing era after era of Earth's development. By 3023 he has already become something of a legend; in future millennia he will become a myth, the Forever Hero.

    Wally can't be recruited in 3023, but the Titans are now travelling back in time in the direction of 2023 in Troia's Titan Travel-sphere, and thanks to the records held by the 31st century Titans accessed by Caitlin, they have good information on where to find him. It's the year 2714, the city of Tongren, in the Guizhou province of the Chinese Autonomous Zone, and according to the 31st century records, it was almost a disaster. In the sky above the city hangs a huge orbital platform that is no longer in orbit. Dying propulsors struggle to keep it suspended, but they're failing and the burning wreckage is just a few miles above the city of a million souls, with perhaps just an hour to go before the engines fail and it comes crashing down. In the sky above teams of metahumans capable of surviving the intense heat of the burning platform attempt to reverse the fall, but future history records they will fail. It is fortunate for the citizens that the seven hundred year old speedster was visiting this time zone and was able to help with the evacuation. The city itself is doomed, but the citizens have been saved.

    The metallic sphere, little bigger than a softball, that appears in the air above the city's main square is something Wally has seen before, though perhaps not memorably enough to recall what it is. The two figures who emerge from a glowing portal projected from the sphere are considerably more familiar. It is technically centuries since Wally has seen either of them, though from his perspective just a few years. Neither has change much physically though, so there's no doubt in Wally's mind. Here below a sky filled with fire, centuries from when he last spent time with anyone he'd known for any length of time, are two people he spent much of his adult life with - Caitlin Fairchild, and Donna Troy.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin had donned the armor of the Amazons. It was a comfort; a familiar action, performed thousands of times over the course of her millennia-long existence. The armor itself is no small amount of protection, even for someone with Caitlin's obdurate skin. But the *act* of garbing herself, the little rituals of prayer and purification, help her steel her heart and calm her rising emotions.

Two rules of keeping oneself sane during time-travel: no spoilers, and NO SPOILERS. History has a pretty good chance of righting itself if knocked a little off-course, but there's no telling when some small revelation might end up turning the whole boat around on itself. So that means keeping secrets off your tongue, *and* off your face.

When the portal opens, Caitlin steps out and shakes out her cloak. No weapons; too much temptation to jump into the fray with them in hand.

It's impossible not to take in the impending catastrophe for a few moments. Her eyes dart around and sorrow touches the corners of her mouth. "I think I'm up on the city-ship right now," she remarks to Troia, and looks skyward at the colossal disaster looming overhead. "Trying to turbocharge the generators to buy more time for everyone."

Her green-eyed gaze drops back to their immediate surroundings and she fiddles with the communicator in her left vambrace. "...OK. I've pinged the local emergency network. SL-5 quantum relays. I feel like I'm back in the Stone Age," she grumbles under her breath. "All right... there. I've pinged Wally privately with an SOS and our coordinates." She tries to compose herself with a cool, aloof expression, but the subtle trembling in her fingers betrays her calm.

Wally West has posed:
700 years.

That's how long Wally's been doing this. Well, only a few really. Since the early 2020's, or was it the 2030's? Hard to remember. Wally learned how to use the Speed Force without causing a Paradox, without creating countless other realities based on a single action. He became faster than he ever thought possible. Faster than even time itself to keep up with - at least it felt that way. The so-called Forever Hero found himself in the year 2714 in Chinese Autonomous Zone, looking to investigate the next stage of Earth's evolution, a leap ahead of the latter period of the 2600's. Tech has vastly improved and so has Wally's appearance. His hair is longer, notably down to about his jaw. He has a beard covering his face, surprisingly well-groomed. Instead of the Red and Silver, Flash is actually wearing a white suit with red accents, red accents that are nearly always a near-golden shade due to his constant use of the Speed Force. He doesn't wear a mask.

Why would he?

But in feels as though in a few moments, thousands are being evacuated by a golden blur. A huge orbital platform is falling out of the sky, a place of technology, science, and orbital research facilities. Many heroes of this era are trying to stop it. But even Wally, seeing the world as though frozen in time, can tell that they won't succeed.

But he will.

People are being pulled out of their homes, out of doctor's offices, even out of surgery - that Flash is /actively cleaning/ with some of his garnered experience throughout the centuries. "Okay, it'll have to do." and he's pulling them out too. Children and families, all pulled far enough outside of city limits that even with the thing to fall, the radius of destruction would never reach them.

In time, he's successful. The entire city has been evacuated and Wally doesn't even look tired. "Is everyone alright? Hope nobody's hungry, it'd be a lot to cook. God knows my burgers are spectacular-" yes, he's still on Cheeseburgers 700 years later. "-But you'd call it old-fashioned." He winks at the crowd, hoping to garner a laugh.

He looks to the skies. Hek nows they won't stop it. Yet he watches. Maybe a miracle can happen? He can't move buildings. He's fast, not strong. But...something else was coming. Something pings, he looks at his wrist as a yellow hologram opens and shows...an old thing, yet all too familiar. His eyes widen and suddenly he's gone in a golden blur. When he comes to a stop, he notices the metallic sphere open, with figures coming out of it. He stands up straight, tilting his head, yet ready for anything.

When Caitlin and Donna Troy emerge from it? Any kind of hesitance or distrust from him immediately /vanishes/.

"Cait? Don?"

He smiles big and wide, a golden blur towards the both of them, as if attempting to pull them both into a big hug, a low rumble of a laugh in his voice. "I haven't seen you guys in..." He tries to recall. "Years. You.." He looks at them both, grimly at the chaos around them.

"Heh, how have you been? Kinda caught me at a weird time." He points at the sky.

Donna Troy has posed:
    It's an oddity that while Caitlin is dressed in Themysciran finery, Donna is not. When Wally first met her, she was always wearing Themysciran armor, even before many in the world knew that was what it was. When she did finally move on from the traditional armor, back in the early 2020s, it was still a Themysciran hybrid. The armor she's wearing now shows no signs of Themysciran craft in it though; it's distinctly high-tech looking and the aesthetics look a little alien.

    "Longer for us than for you, Wally," Donna says with a faint smile. Perhaps less of a smile than Wally might have expected from such an old and close friend. "It's just Troia now though. I don't use the name Donna any more. But you know if you were missing Caitlin, you could have visited her." She turns to give Caitlin a half-smirk before turning back to Wally, and nodding her head heavenwards, towards the burning wreck floating above and staining the skies apocalyptic red with flame. "Apparently Caitlin is up there right now, trying vainly to stop it from falling. You might have called on her."

    Apparently Troia is a little less worried about saying something that might mess up the timelines than Caitlin, though to be fair the plan is to extract Wally from this point in time so spoilers probably aren't really an issue.

    Troia looks up at the falling platform for a few moments, then back down to Caitlin with an expression of faint amusement which seems very at odds with the catastrophe they're standing in the middle of. "We could go rescue you, Cait. What do you say?" she asks. "I'm pretty sure I could stop that thing from falling."

    It's a fair bet she doesn't really have any intention of disturbing the timeline that much, but even so it's not a very Donna-like thing to joke about a historical tragedy, even one where she knows Wally had already saved the day. The citizens of the city are going to be fine, but the property damage was extensive to say the least.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin's trying hard to be stoic. She really is. But Flash-family hugs happen too fast to plan a reaction for, so she falls back on her default state and hugs Wally back. The embrace lasts for a beat or two longer than expected, and when they break, Caitlin takes a half-step back as if forcing herself to create space from Wally. A complex number of emotions work over her face before she comports herself.

At Troia's rejoinder, Caitlin gives the Titan a sharp look. For a moment it seems like she's strongly entertaining the idea of punching Troia right in her smug face. Caitlin's knuckles relax a half a heartbeat later and she takes a slow, meditative breath to center herself.

Before things get out of hand, she lifts a palm to refocus Wally's attention. "We're temporally displaced," she explains to Wally. "From 3023. There's been an incident, a temporal collapse. The origin point is in 2023 and it involves a number of the original Titans. We've already collected Lucky," Caitlin explains, referring to the former villain once known as Jinx. "We..." her lips curl into a brief, wry smile. "We thought we'd swing by and give you a ride back in time. Once we're done, we'll bring you right back here, ten seconds after we depart," she promises Wally.

Caitlin hesitates, then: "we literally can't do this without you," she admits, with a subdued tone.

Wally West has posed:
Wally happens to be hugging Cait a little tighter than he's hugging Don, and he holds onto her for that beat longer. When it's time to leave the embrace, Wally does let her go, taking that same step back, meeting her eyes. "Cait...it's..." He tries to find words, he fails rather miserably. "I missed you." He tells her with a soft voice. Then he remembers Donna is probably amusedly watching all this. "...both of you." Try and save Cait from some embarassment.

He turns his attention to Donna. "Nice armor. What happened to the Amazonian armor? Thought the two of you were inseperable." He asks, though he tilts his head as Donna tells him their journey was far longer than his. "Hard to imagine, unless you took the long way...which would make WAY more sense. Kept telling you in 2030 that time travelling devices are too dangerous." He tells her, and he looks up towards the floating city. "Cait...heh." He starts to chuckle. "Always had a feeling. Never could slow down." He tells Cait fondly upon hearing she's probably up in the city, though he looks at Donna.

"Don't mean to doubt your strength, Don, but that's a little Olympian of you. That city's gonna fall. I'm just happy I evacuated the city with plenty of time to spare. Not a great time to joke." He shows a strange maturity himself as he regards Donna, though a forgiveness rests in his eyes.

He turns his attention towards Cait as she explains to Wally they're temporally displaced. "...Re: temporal devices are dangerous." He tells them, "But you know that and found a better way." He says approvingly, a chuckle from him. Then his eyes widen. "Shit, that's intense." Temporal collapse? That's awful. Even worse, it's in 2023. "Well...I was hoping on wrapping up the year here." He looks around. "But...I've already done what I can. Rest is up to them." He gestures to the heroes in the skies. "Can't do too much, history books will start remembering me instead of them."

His features soften when Caitlin tells him they can't do this without Wally West.

"...twist my arm, why don't you." He shakes his head. "You both know I'm bad at saying no. Alright, I hope it's not a tight fit in there." He gestures to the machine.

The more things change, the more things stay the same: Wally's ALWAYS willing to help.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Troia's response to the Wally hug is a bit less warm than Caitlin's. Less warm than Wally is used to from Donna too, for that matter. It's not cold; she returns the hug. It's just a bit perfunctory, as if it hadn't been long at all since they'd last seen each other, perhaps.

    "Short version, something happened back in 2023 that caused an improperly closed temporal loop going forwards a thousand years," Troia elaborates. "It has the potential to collapse the chronological structure of the universe, and that would be a very bad thing. We were at ground zero of the time distortion in 2023 and everyone who's still..." Troia pauses, realizing that she was about to reveal to Wally that he'd still be alive three hundred years in the future, which she really shouldn't do. Apparently messing up the timeline is something she's only prepared to joke about. "The point is," she continues after a few moments pause, "We need to gather the people who were subject to the temporal distortion and take them back to the point of origin, then follow the loop forwards to be able to close it properly."

    Troia raises an warning finger to Wally. "We've got to be careful back in 2023. Things may be a little more flexible when it comes to time paradoxes than we used to think back then, but there's stuff Caitlin and I know about Time Travel that you probably don't, and there are extra risks to do with certain people who you've probably never heard about who are liable to get upset if we do anything too serious. Anyway the point is we need you to go back in time to 2023 with us."

    Troia gestures up towards the floating sphere. "We've got travel sorted out, you don't need to run backwards or anything. And you'll find there's plenty of space."

    There's no response to Wally's question about her armor, but the 'Olympian' comment elicits a smirk from Troia which she directs mainly at Caitlin. "Things have changed since we last met, Wally," is as much of an explanation as she deems necessary right now.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"Don't pay her any mind," Caitlin assures Wally, and lays a reassuring hand on his arm. "She's been absolutely impossible for the last five centuries. I gave up trying three centuries ago." There's a moment where Caitlin realizes she's still touching Wally and pulls her hand back (while trying not to LOOK like she's pulling her hand back).

Once the three of them trundle through the portal, Caitlin removes her cloak and hangs it from a convenient bulkhead. After giving Wally a few moments to get his bearings and look around, Caitlin tilts her head away from the command console to a part of the room slightly less immediately adjacent to whatever Timey-Wimey stuff that Troia is doing. She beckons Wally closer with a little curl of her fingers. "I'm trying to keep track of everyone's relative timelines," she explains to Wally, and moves her palms absentmindedly back and forth over each other in front of her. There's a little guarded caution to her words, hesitant to give away too much. "It's been about... seven years, your subjective time, that you've been travelling. Right?" Once acknowledged, she presses on. "I don't exactly remember what year you started jumping forward. Sometime around..." she wrinkles her nose in thought. "2050?" she guesses. "I'm..." she exhales wearily. "I don't mean to get right up in your business, but it's kind of important that you tell me what subjective date you're returning to when you're done travelling forward," she explains to him. "As exactly as you can. That will give me a reference point to work from so I know what I can or can't safely tell you."

Wally West has posed:
Donna's hug and how...not super warm it is is something that Wally for sure notices. He doesn't ask about it, instead he just tries to move on. Better not to talk about it, lest Donna try and shatter him in half or something like that. Yet, as soon as Donna gives him her version of what's been going on, Wally just listens, his eyes blinking. "Dunno, I know a few wild superbeings. Two of them are standing in front of me." He smirks at the pair of them. "Okay...so gathering the team present in 2023 and going back in time to help fix the distortion. Okay." Wally crosses his arms over his chest. 'Sounds complicated. But when are they not with the Titans?"

Titans being a literal team name at this point.

"Don't worry, Don. You know me, no spoilers." He lifts a finger over his lip and giving a little 'shhh' gesture. "Lips are sealed. Promise." He says seriously. He makes less jokes, which might be slightly concerning, but at least he's easier to make see a situation seriously. He looks at the floating sphere, still wondering when he saw it last, but he shrugs. "Heh, sounds good....and yeah, yeah they have."

He feels Caitlin touching his arm and he turns to look at her. "Don? Oh yeah. I had a slight feeling she'd become a bit smug in the future. I think it's the 'made by Greek Gods' thing." He winks at her, chuckling as he lifts his hand to touch her elbow. Then, he notices it around the same time, and he lets his hand drop and he tries to be respectful. He never forgot.../that/ conversation.

He walks into the sphere, looking around. "Man, you guys made this look homey." There's the joke. Though he approaches the control console at Caitlin's beckoning, standing a /little/ too close, but not overly so. He's probably just trying to get a better look. Probably.

"Something like that, yeah." He tells Caitlin. "Gets kinda lost in translation, sometimes. Feel like I've been doing it a lot longer." But in that time, he's discovered more about hte Speed Force than anyone before him. Maybe more than anyone after. "20...30? 2040? I think it was 2030." He tells Ciatlin, though he seems to look a little worried, putting a hand briefly on her shoulder. "I get it, don't have to apologize. But the more information I know, the better I can help." He smiles faintly. "Unless you're gonna change my destiny. That might be trouble."

Pause.

"Kidding." He looks at Donna. "Please tell me you guys have food."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin grimaces and almost-- *almost*-- grabs Wally by the front of his jumpsuit. The motion betrays just how on edge she really is. She manages to abort at the last second and it turns into a rib-thudding pat to his sternum.

"Wallace Rudolph West," she says, in her most dire Mom Voice. "I need to know /the exact year/ you jumped from, and a promise that you're going back to *that year*. No skipping forward. No 'guesses'. It's /important/, Wally," she stresses to him. "...Please," she adds, with true pleading in her voice.

Donna Troy has posed:
    It's lucky that Titan Travel Spheres are bigger on the inside than the outside, because they're very small on the outside. It looks like you could barely fit a hand inside one, let alone the three people who walk through the portal into the ship's interior. The dimensional dislocation is to be expected, but it's still a bit of a shock to actually enter inside, even when it's not for the first time. It's both strange and huge inside the travel sphere, an interior of strange curves and dizzying structures that looks more like some kind of organic architecture than the interior of a space ship. Wally's ironic comment is apt; you'd have to be pretty strange to consider it homey.

    Nor do the ships controls really resemble anything conventional. The 'console' that Troia goes to is a protrusion from a curvilinear column stretching up from this area of floor into a ceiling high above, with nothing that looks like a display, readout or input device attached to it. She rests her hands on the bumps and ridges of the console for a few moments while she /thinks/ at the ship. When she's done she steps over to join Wally and Caitlin, either failing to notice or simply choosing to ignore as inconvenient any subtext in their behavior to each other. The wall beside them shimmers and seems to go transparent, revealing a view of the city below, which is a little odd because there's no way that's an exterior bulkhead. It's probably a display of some type. It would take a few moments observing to notice that everything visible in the scene below is moving backwards, at a slowly accelerating rate.

    Troia stands before the window, or display, or whatever precisely it is, watching time go into reverse below, arms crossed behind her back in a rather military sort of stance. "We can drop him exactly where we found him Cait," she says, eyes fixed on the exterior. "Or rather a few seconds afterwards. So long as we don't leave him at an earlier time point it doesn't really matter. He's just going forwards, after all. No causality issues that way."

    She does at last look around. "Oh and Wally? The thing about being 'made by Greek Gods' is that means you *are* a 'Greek God'. It just took me a long time to accept that." Yeah she's heard every word. "Put your hand on the wall and think about cheeseburgers," she says. "The ship might give you one. Or bury you in them. Or do something else. If you're hungry it might be better to wait until we hit 2023, it'll only be a few hours."

Wally West has posed:
Wally sees it coming a mile away.

He waits for a moment, waiting for Caitlin to either strike him or just thud him. It's a thing he's learned over the years, not that Caitlin would ever truly hurt him nor would he suspect as such. But when the open-handed..whatever was coming, is just a not-so-threatening rib-thudding pat to his sternum, Wally's chest *thuds* with the pat. Whew, too close for comfort. But Caitlin's mom voice puts him on slight edge, his eyes widening in surprise as she demands him to tell her /exactly/ when he left at the exact moment and time. She asks him to promise that's exactly where he's going back to once this soujourn is complete. She's practicaly begging.

Wally's eyes meet hers for a moment. It's been a HOT MINUTE since anyone has used his full name. Mostly he's either known as the Flash or just Wally to friends. He looks like he might man up and defend himself, and potentially make this situation a WHOLE lot worse. But instead, he answers. "I left in 2031. I promise, I'll return to that year, to that time, down to the second." No doubt it begs the question: what happens if I don't?

BUt he doesn't ask it.

Instead, he looks around at the Time Sphere, taking note of his spaciousness. Dimensional dislocation was a strange effect, that it looked much smaller on the outside than it actually was on the inside. He looks at the wall as it goes transparent and Wally looks like he's flinching like he might fall, but the sphere remains exactly as it is. "Huh." is Wally's only real response. Time starts to go into reverse. The sphere already doing it's work as it warps space time and takes them through the ebbs and flows of the cosmos, breaking every rule while breaking nothing else.

Despite Donna's words, he looks again back at Cait, silently, not angry...just curious. He turns back to Donna as she informs him of the Greek Gods. "Yeah...all their flaws included." He mutters to himself. "Well, are you the God of...something?" He asks curiously, before he hears he can put his hand on the wall for food. "Worth a shot. Be good to get the metabolism going, been a few days." and he's /still/ that fast? "Learned to use the Speed Force to sustain myself far longer than normal. But at least one cheeseburger would help." He puts his hand on the wall.

Cheeseburgers? Wherefor art thou?

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
It is very, very hard to tell if Caitlin is pleased or upset by the date Wally gives her. Her lips thin and all she can do is shake her head apologetically at Wally. "Thank you," she says, and though it comes out in a near-inaudible whisper, there is sincere gratitude in her eyes. "I'll..." she looks at Troia's back, and what she sees only seems to upset her. Caitlin shakes her head and looks back to Wally. "Someday, I'll explain," she promises him.

The Amazon gives Wally's arm another gently apologetic squeeze and deferentially steps around him so she can retrieve her cloak. "I'm going to get some sleep," she remarks. "Wake me when we're at our next stop."

Without waiting for an acknowledgement from Troia, she looks back at Wally and after a beat, nods awkwardly at him. Then she's gone, walking down the impossible corridor to disappear into her assigned berth.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Goddess of the Moon and holder of the Oracle of Gaia," Troia answers Wally. "Well, /a/ goddess of the Moon. It's complicated. And not really important."

    Troia watches Wally's attempt to persuade the ship to feed him for a few moments before turning back to the window, watching as time flows backwards. "You know why our team was called 'The Titans', Wally? It was my idea. Somewhere in my subconscious I always knew what I really was. Even as a child, I was looking for an outlet. A way to be what I was meant to be. It took a long time for me to really understand that though. To accept that I could be much more than just Donna Troy. I could be an actual Titan. All I had to do was admit to myself what I always was."

    She glances back at the pair, eyes flickering from Wally to Caitlin as Caitlin makes her way to find somewhere comfortable to get some rest. She nods her head towards Caitlin's back. "It'll be about three hours subjective time," she calls after the retreating redhead. "Sleep well, Cait."

    Troia turns back to the view through the window. "We.... did good," she says, slowly, taking a deep breath. "The Titans. I'm... I'm proud of what we did. What we achieved. And I'm proud that what we made lasted and grew beyond anything we planned." It sounded almost like a concession at first, but as she grows into the topic there's a clear echo of the old passions that were so familiar a part of Donna. "Wally... I needed to grow up eventually. This is what I was always meant to be. The longer I resisted it, the longer I went without fulfilling my potential. I'll never regret helping to found the Titans. The /human/ Titans. We can all be proud of what we did. But the longer I went on doing it, the longer I pretended I wasn't who I really am, the longer I was failing to be all that I could be. And to help as much as I could help. It's all part of the same thing, Wally. Just on a smaller scale. We all have to grow up eventually."

    She looks back with a soft sigh to where Wally is still unable to persuade the Travel Sphere to provide cheeseburgers. There must be some knack to it. "It works sometimes," she says with a shrug. "I'm sorry, I'm not used to entertaining visitors. Lucky is around somewhere, let's go find her. I'm sure she can magic you up something to eat."

Wally West has posed:
Someday she'll explain? She better! She just leeft him on a LEGENDARY cliffhanger. But that's the immature part of Wally's subsconscious. Instead, he just meets Caitlin's eyes and watches sadly as she seems to go off to sleep. He returns her nod and gives her a little wave. "Goodnight, Cait. Sleep well..." and he finds himself reacting warmly to the squeeze to him, meeting her eyes. "We'll talk later, okay?" He tells her, and even as she walks away, it leaves him with Donna.

"I should..."

He shakes his head. "I think I'll let her rest."

It lets him focus on Donna for a moment. Despite her divine brush with a messiah complex, Wally is somehow able to meet Donna's eyes and listen to everything she said. After a moment, Wally speaks. "We all did grow up. The problem was, you forgot what made us Titans in the first place. It wasn't our Godhood, or our actual connections to powers beyond the ken of normal people." His tone serious, his eyes not quite hard, but with a certain...wisdom.

"You just became what they made you to be. We were Titans because we /had/ humanity. We were good because of it. We /did/ good because of it. I hope you find it again."

Wally tells her softly. "You were the best of us because of it. We went forward. I think you might've gone backwards. But it's your path. Your life. I only really observe, lately."

At least in Wally's opinion, but he shakes his head. "It's fine. I'm not used to having any. Time travel and all." With each century, usually the people before ahve very much so passed on. "Last time 'Lucky' conjured me anything, it gave me food poisoning for a week..."

Goddess of the Moon huh? Sounds fancy. Does that mean he replaces Hermes?

Donna Troy has posed:
    For all that this future Troia seems very certain of herself, she lets Wally say his piece without interruption, and she does listen. When he's done she gives a small shrug, blinks a few times and looks away again.

    "Wally... The Titans, the /human/ Titans, aren't gone without me. You're still you. Caitlin's still Caitlin. You don't need me to be human so that you can be. That isn't lost, Wally. That will never be lost as long as you and Cait and the others go on. You have heart enough for all of us. But there was so much I couldn't do as Donna that I can do now. Maybe you'd all prefer if I was still Donna. Maybe... maybe I would too. But the universe needed Troia more."

    Troia turns away from the window and walks towards the interior of the Travel Sphere. "Lucky has lived a thousand years since you last met her, Wally. I'm pretty sure she can avoid giving you food poisoning this time. Let's go find her, I'm sure she'll be glad to see you again."