And Sadde hangs up.

The week drags on. They mull over Tobias' words to them. Burden. Making this poor family go through this for Sadde's sake, mooching off them and not contributing at all. Pulling them into this legal battle, pulling Isabella into this legal battle, going on about how not even a real dom would go through this over Sadde's desire to deviate.

And it's all bullpoop. Sadde knows Isabella loves them, knows she's the dommiest dom to ever dom, this isn't pretend, and she's doing this because she cares.

But they're still being a burden on her family. Every meal, every shower, every night, every time Alex goes to school and Renée goes to work, every little reminder that they're imposing, echoing in their mind alongside Tobias' words.

No, they don't buy everything he said, but a stopped clock is right twice a day.

She arrives at the train station on Friday evening, looking somewhat distracted.

"Hi, lovely." Kiss. "You all right?"

"Yeah. Just, three months is a lot of time. ...a week is a lot of time, especially without you around."

Hug. "Well, train tickets every week would get to be a bit much, but I've got you all to myself for this weekend, at least."

Hug. So much hug. "Yeah, and I don't have a job anymore, so I can't afford even as much as I normally could."

Kiss. "I am sure eventually the economy will figure out something less sketchy to do about eclipsed who need their money now and not when we're majority age, but it's kind of struggling with the concept."

"Like what? Non-eclipsed in those situations go work at McDonald's, and eclipsed are strictly less useful when young 'cause we need to spend so much time thinking about magic..."

"We're a scarce public resource. Maybe the government should be dropping a lump sum on us for going through control training or something - wouldn't have helped you but I'd have the cash to spare at least -"

"Could have helped me, if they also had something to kids who ended up having to do it the old-fashioned way..."

"Little optimistic for the togetherness of a proposed government program, but maybe." Isabella leashes her and tugs her busward.

She is tugged and goes happily. "Bright side of all this is that I have a lot more free time to think about magic," she says, biting back a comment on not wanting to mooch off Isabella in this hypothetical scenario.

"Any progress?"

"Yeah, but it's not—it's more quantitative than anything, there aren't milestones. It's more like, I understand the way I have to do things more and more, and then at some point I notice I can use this understanding to actually do this thing but there wasn't a moment of understanding."

"Okay. Well, a week of work is still a week closer to everything you'll ever do."

"Mmhm. What about you?"

"Oh, I now have a precognitive range of five thousand years, obviously, I'm a genius."

She giggles. "Can you use that to cheat and tell me how to deage, immortalize, and resurrect people?"

"Yes. Yes I can. It goes like this: you think about magic a lot until you can pull it off."

"What, so I don't get to know all the answers to everything? That's disappointing."

"Sorry, pet."

"I'll live. Somehow."

"You'd better."

"But anyway, what are you working on? Precog already or is there any optimization to go first?"

"Precog for the dedicated practice time. Optimization is an incidental, happens while I'm organizing my thoughts or whatever."

"Dedicated practice time?"