The reporter who ambushes her at the side door is very obviously somebody's coffee monkey sent out "until you get a quote, dammit" and looks just as miserable as her. Acne scars and badly greased hair. Still one more bad beat on the tail end of a shit day. And then he had to open his fucking mouth. "Uh, um, Mrs. deClair, what kind of statement were you making by, uh, stepping up to the police chief? Were you trying to prove how tough you are?"

She really shouldn't. "I want to go to sleep."

"W-what?"

She's on got so much fire in her and not near enough sleep to hold it back. "I want to go to sleep. I want to go up to my apartment and not have to worry about the police being mad I embarrassed them publicly. I want to wake up in the morning, make myself some tea, and not have to think about the world being run by shitheads and how best to use a single beam of light to show what they're doing. How to write to make people care. I want to make breakfast, and eat toast, and not cry when I open the news and see who's fucking who headlining and the article about the budget cuts meaning the periphery towns will get less regular train service so that somebody can fund the new horse racetrack. I want to be able to go down the street and not be a mom's teachable moment about how to interact with different people.

I want to live my [i]fucking life[/i] and only need to care a regular bit, because everyone else cares. Everyone cares and everyone wants to do something to make the world better and you don't have reactionary assholes stepping on everyone to get some height above the shit, and you don't have centrists trying to keep everything stable just long enough to get out of politics and into a cushy retirement as a consultant for Mumbai Holdings. I want everyone to be just as pissed as me about that, and that means we can all hold their damn feet to the fire 'till they behave."

"Scram."

*

She brushes her teeth, and rubs some antiseptic on the bruises on her chest. She disconnects her prosthetics, because she's going to have bad dreams after today, and sometimes they react to the bad dreams, so it's better to have ten minutes of terrible in the morning than wake up to a broken bed.

Then her phone bleeps.

[b]DancesWithMoths:[/b] hey
[b]DancesWithMoths:[/b] Taabish and me are getting married
[b]DancesWithMoths:[/b] finally
[b]DancesWithMoths:[/b] please come? it's in a week.
[b]DancesWithMoths:[/b] "only" gonna last two days

She doesn't dream after all. But maybe that's for the best, after that day.