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Time elapses. Rewind is allowed to leave her prison—er, hospital room. She needs to go around on a wheelchair, and it'll still take at least a month for her bones to mend completely, and she needs help to move around and do stuff. But she definitely won't complain about being able to eat real food more often (she is very thankful for the bot bringing her takeout), and she can keep riding along with paramedics even when she can't really move around a lot.
And one of these days, while she's in an ambulance, something lands on it, rocking the vehicle and startling her from her thoughts. The ambulance stops, and whatever it is makes noises as if it's moving and then jumps off it. Rewind twists to see through the window, and—
"Console, a really weird leafy monkey just jumped on the ambulance and then off it," she says into her comm.
Cool! So Sadde will learn and they'll play and it's terribly unlikely Sadde will win but he'll have fun anyway.
Bella wins. Bella apparently always wins at House Rules Risk.
"Only if I actually get to run it. I'm not nearly as good at regular Risk."
"Well, I'm sure I'd be terrible at regular Risk, too. Haven't had a whole lot of boardgame-playing in my life."
"Some people are really into board games, we're pretty low key, but House Rules Risk has been a my birthday thing for a few years now." She flops back in her chair. "Woo, only a year and a half till I'm an ex-Ward."
"At most! They might release you in a year to let someone else be Captain, you'll have been Captain for almost that long by then, it's a long time."
"Mmhm. I get the impression they want most Wards to get a taste of that so they can have something to aspire to when they're not Wards anymore."
"I'm a good fit for a coordinator/decisionmaking role but I resent the manipulation."
"...did you resent me for presenting boy or enby more often than girl around you when I was trying to win you over?"
"I was always free to tell you to shoo. I am not, meaningfully, free to quit the Wards till I graduate; they take a very dim view of that and I couldn't get a budget without going villain or at least Toybox until I was eighteen anyway."
"That's fair. But well, what's a year? Especially with such delightful company as myself. I'm pretty sure me they're going to hold for the full extra six months."
"Yeah, me they're not expecting to split, they might actually let me go when I have my birthday on the assumption that I'll just join right up like Dad... It's not intolerable or anything. Just chafes sometimes."
"Yeah, I know what you mean. I might just stay around anyway, for a while at least, to be around you and because Branding is actually good at its job."
"I'm hoping when I'm out they'll still let me work on Dad's suit."
"I'm pretty sure they won't let me go just like that. Even if officially I've left, they'll probably keep tabs on me. And increased surveillance is something I, in particular, would not like to be the target of."