Wishbone asks a lot of questions and thinks about it and concludes that it can probably be done. And that there probably is a place to send them back to, given the time delay between Alex's disappearance and their own arrival.

Well.

In that case he will mention it to Karen.

I guess I should probably go back, then? If we can.

The next couple hundred years here are gonna be - diplomacy and engineering problems. Hardly any stabbing.

Yeah, I feel like maybe my comparative advantages are.... possibly elsewhere.

Same. - also I'd forgotten I like none of these people. Let's get back to our world and hope it hasn't fallen apart too much in our absence.

Yeah. 

We, uh, going to try to find Ryan and ask him if he wanted to come along? He - seemed to kinda not like it here. To put it mildly.

Yeah. They don't even have it yet, just figured they could do it. We'll get him when they have it.

Sounds good.

...Azalea's gonna be so pissed.

- yeah, I guess we had a real bad couple weeks topped off by disappearing for over a year, that's rough.

Yeaaah. But hey, I'm alive still, maybe you get points for that?

I expect I am gonna get zero points. People - don't want their children to be heroes, they want their children to be happy. 

She's not my mom. - she'll probably be mad, though.

Yeah. Squeeze. 

Squeeze.

I guess this all sort of complicates the whole graduating from high school goal.

It seems like not doing stuff has not been great for your emotional processing, I guess you could instead try doing stuff.

Maybe.

What needs doing?

I meant once we're back, but I guess that applies here too. We're building, mostly.

- oh. It's just - everyone'll be a few months away from graduating, and stuff. I don't even know what people do when high school students disappear for a year.

Yeah you'll probably have to repeat a grade. 's okay.

Hardly the worst thing about any of this, I guess. Sucks how you can't put 'saved millions of people and prevented centuries of horrors' on a resume.

Yeah, I think Snyder might seem a little less - like he could possibly matter.

Yeah.

She does not particularly stop feeling like her heart has been cut out and her brain is like ten percent alive and her intestines have been tied into elaborate knotted shapes. She does decide that none of these are real disabilities and that they shouldn't be keeping her from trying to do things, though.  Anyway, it'd be annoying if she went home and couldn't even tell people what the effects of her decisions were, whether it seemed like anyone was any better off after she did what she did. Dennis'll ask, even if no one else does. 

With effort, she eventually washes herself off a little and puts her hair back up in a bun (because she is the slayer, even if there isn't anything else around here for her to slay). With effort, she eventually drags herself down to the actual dining hall for dinner.

The Elves are singing something joyous; Alex is sitting next to his counterpart at a fancy table at the top; when he sees her he abruptly vanishes from it, and is at her side a little while later.

You don't have to, like, stop talking to people. I was just gonna sit by a wall and watch people. Maybe eat something.