"I don't know how to fix any of this," Thian Lê remembers confessing, in the dead of night, while Meili was already asleep, and M̷a̷g̶d̷a̵l̸e̸n̴a̶ ̵N̸a̵v̴a̸r̶r̶o̴ The Serpent was the only soul listening to his prayer.

Each of these memories bring their own string of hurt: the price of failure, the price of success, the price of making a decision and seeing its cost. And he’d regretted some, wished to take back many, spent sleepless nights facing his own demons that twisted all his traumas and horrors into a new kind of pain, a new kind of mockery, and a new kind of reason for him to claim he’s trying to do the right thing.

Wren wouldn’t consider that the takeaway from her confession. Duty suggests she believes in the law; that her oath comes with loyalty to the very same system that ensured a father would stay behind bars as long as no one else could point the finger somewhere else. Moral responsibility assumes that she has superiority—that Wren Ji-Woo Quon, in all her failings and choices and attempts to never challenge those above—has the singular right to decide what is good and what is evil. It’s a black-and-white contrast, borders religious, when all she believed came in stars and comets.

”I’d consider it seeing promises through,” she says instead, and the correction feels satisfactory in her tongue.

Is this the price of revolution?

Penelope always thought she would be the one dying in its color.

Is this freedom: to face the product of all your decisions, in all its brutal facts and realities, and no longer turn away?

Is this freedom: to give it all up, in the name of something more personal — more important — to the person you are than the abstract beliefs of what it means to be a hero?