It's different, over a hundred years away, but it doesn't feel too dissimilar. Tess has been a refugee from societal collapse and a fugitive from justice for over half her life now, and it's strange to think that the life in these pages seems more familiar to her than her own teenaged years. She's lost people. She's got someone she loves and can't really be with either, albeit for wholly different reasons. Hell, she's fallen out of love with people she idealized, people she thought had the right way of things.

Problem was she decided to go all-in instead of get the fuck out.

"Alright," she says, and she hates how unsure she sounds about it. She doesn't actually know who her innocents are. She has never really let herself think about it for longer than minute, here or there.

She swallows a lump in her throat.

"Is that why you're a warden? You set other wayward souls straight, you get your deal, you've paid back what you've done?"