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twilightreformation · 3 months

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Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.

Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.

He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.

Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.

But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.

Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.

Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.

So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?

Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.

Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.

Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.

Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.

Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.

Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.

But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?

Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.

Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.

So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.

Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.

At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.

The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.

Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.

All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.

Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.

But by GOD is he trying.

#the batman #this is so funny

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twilightreformation · 5 months

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the exit sign you see even in your dreams

title from the poem "there and back again" by n.m.h. (read on ao3)

Emily Young’s first thought, when she sees Leah Clearwater at her father’s funeral, is simple.

There’s a woman in a long black dress standing at Aunt Sue’s side, arms tucked tight around herself. Her hair is shorn grief-short by her ears. Emily’s gaze catches on the closed-eyed face, and—

She thinks it. Careless. Fast and fleeting.

(Unforgivable.)

Who is that?

The thing is, Emily doesn’t remember when she met her cousin.

She knows, of course. But it's the way you know any story about your childhood self. Gauzy and never quite real, forever entangled with your family's voices and grainy old photographs.

Well, one photo in particular—an oversaturated blur of her mom and Aunt Sue tucked together under a quilt in the big bed at Great-grandma Alice’s house. Her mom’s head rests on Aunt Sue’s shoulder, their grins a perfect pair of exhausted mirrors, and there’s a swaddled baby in each set of arms. (They were recreating some other photo from childhood, two cousins with their baby dolls—Emily’s only seen that one once or twice. Aunt Sue’s side of the family got all the photo albums when Alice died.)

From the blankets, her and Leah reach up with matching chubby fists. Not towards each other, not really, but sometimes Emily lets herself think it—that they knew each other even then. That…

Well.

There’s never been a time she didn’t know Leah.

You had your own little language when you were babies, her mom loves to say. We’d lay you down next to each other and wow you’d just chatter away—we had no idea what you were saying, but both of you sure did!

She tries sometimes, (more, these days), to find the hole in the story. Trawls back through memories for the moment—because there must’ve been a moment. There must’ve.

They didn’t live in the same town, didn’t grow up side-by-side for all that it felt like they did. There were long lonely care rides and frantic races to get the guest bedroom clean, stretches of months missing the T-shirts that Leah always accidentally stole.

So there has to be a moment. One when Emily was old enough to be a person, not just a toddler, and this girl she’d only met as a baby was a stranger…

But she always just ends up with memories of interlaced hands.

Giggles overlap, and even in memory she can’t distinguish which one is hers. Pictures boast two girls with legs tangled together in a tiny red Radio Flyer wagon, and she feels the rust sticking to her legs just below her shorts. Two miniature umbrellas lean precariously close, bursts of color in smoky gray rain.

(Leah’s was printed like a little red ladybug, and Emily’s was a frog. One day Leah’s tore walking home from the Blacks' house, and Emily sprinted over to shelter her cousin. They held that flimsy bright-green shield together all the rest of the way, sweaty hands colliding and elbows jostling each other’s sides—)

The problem is, she thinks, she met Leah when she was too young to know what meeting was. And now, when she goes back looking, there are no words for what she finds.

No—there was never anything to find.

All her life, Emily Young has known Leah Clearwater.

-x-

It’s only a split-second, less than a heartbeat, before neurons fire and memory connects and context clues jog things back into their agonizing place.

Of course it’s Leah, standing beside Aunt Sue with Seth’s hand on her shoulder.

Of course it’s Leah—she’s wearing the black blazer Emily helped her find in a thrift store for a debate team tournament two years ago. (There’s a bleach stain under the collar, Emily knows even though she can’t see it, hidden perfectly by the folds.)

Of course it’s Leah.

But sometime in that second where it wasn’t of course at all, Emily’s stomach plunges straight down to the center of the earth.

Recognition can’t reel it back in.

-x-

Great-Grandma Alice was the first person either of them knew who died, and they held hands through the whole funeral.

That morning, before they stumbled out of the car to reunite with Emily’s mom, (who’d been in La Push helping Aunt Sue take care of things for a month now), Emily's dad had gripped her shoulders tight and made sure she was looking him in the eyes.

He’d said I’m so sorry, sweetheart, and this is going to be so hard for your mama, and I know it’s hard but you have to be a big girl today—

So she’d sat determinedly ramrod-straight on her own chair through the whole service. Through all the songs sung and prayers recited and memories shared. She kept her ankles crossed and didn’t squirm, didn’t wriggle, didn’t start screaming even when she really really wanted to—

But she held on tight to Leah’s hand. It was the one little piece of herself that she let fall outside the boundary of the wobbly folding chair.

Later, everyone was milling together in the yard that just belonged to Great-Grandpa Caleb now, piling casseroles on the picnic tables and hugs on him. Everyone, except—

Leah kicked off one of her little black Mary Janes directly into Uncle Harry’s nose, and sprinted away.

Emily was across the crowd. She had one hand clutched tight in her dad's the other slowly squashing a little muffin that was supposed to taste like cinnamon and just tasted like dust. She heard the yelling first. Aunt Sue's voice ringing, Leah Mirabelle Clearwater, you get back here right now!

Then a glimpse of her cousin’s bright-red face, braids unraveling furiously as she ducked a whole net of arms—

Emily lost both of her shoes running after her.

They ended up in a thicket of mooseberry together, the big one in Mrs. Marjory’s yard down the street. (She’d grumble whenever she caught them in there, but then she’d come back with peanut butter cookies, so probably it all evened out—Emily wasn’t thinking about it, not that day.)

She got there later than Leah, pushed her way through a lace of already broken twigs. They scratched at her hair, clawed seams into her black tights. A shock-red berry burst under her fingers, smeared across the blanket of white flowers that had already fallen, wilted—

“Go away,” Leah sniffled. She was on the ground, back to Emily, knees clutched up to her chest. Spots of blood soaked through the torn white sock on her one shoeless foot. "You're bad at hiding. I don't want to get caught."

Emily crawled closer, into the heart of the hedge where it was just years and years worth of brown leaves crunching under her knees.

“I’m not bad at hiding.” Her face was too hot, pulling itself into a knot that hurt, but she couldn’t untangle it. “I’m not.”

Leah didn't move. Emily wanted to grab her by the shoulders, shake hard enough to roll her over and look her in the eyes. She wanted to slap her, hard and loud as the crack of breaking branches.

She wanted her friend. She wanted someone to hold her shaking, berry-smeared hands, to weave a bracelet onto her wrist, to brush the hair back from her sweat-matted forehead. (She wanted her great-grandmother to still be there.)

“I’m not,” she whispered, one last time, and curled downward into the leaves.

They broke under her, and it didn’t quite cover the sound of her sob as she laid her head on Leah’s shoulder.

There were twigs in her cousin’s hair. One of them scraped her cheek. There were tiny shudders running through her shoulders as Leah held herself still, unbreathing—

Leah rolled over, jolting Emily back up. Her hands whirled around Emily tight enough to choke. Suddenly it was her face pressed into Emily’s shoulder, her desperate grasp on the back of Emily’s dress.

“I know, Em,” she whispered, and then they were both crying together. Two muddy, grief-numb girls under withering leaves, wrapped too close together to ever pull apart.

-x-

Emily must stare for too long as the world plummets out from beneath her feet, because Leah’s eyes snap over and fix on her.

For a second Emily is twelve years old, lakeside sun splashing over her shoulders. Her cousin catches her eye as the twins’ little brother bounces around her, and they’ve spent the last two weeks smushed so thoroughly side-by-side that she can read everything the other girl won’t say in that single glance—

How dare you, screams the glint in those black eyes, the hint of red around them, tears she isn’t letting fall. How dare you, snarls the jut of Leah’s chin, her bloodless lips pressed tight, her hands laced together in front of her—

Emily’s mom keeps walking.

(She’s been here for a week now, drove down the night it happened. She’s been staying with Aunt Sue. Emily didn’t get to see her until this morning, when they met for coffee and Emily could hardly bear to raise her eyes from the scarred cafe table.)

Emily’s mom doesn’t falter. Doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t even seem to see that Emily’s feet have caught.

Leah doesn’t tilt her head. Doesn’t nod, or jut her chin, or anything. She doesn’t move.

Leave, her silence says, leave now. You don’t deserve to mourn with us.

“Em?” her mom says, finally turning.

There’s a lump in Emily’s throat, swelling and sour and poisonous.

Her scars burn like they’re splitting back open all over again, settling an ache into her cheekbone that grinds down to her teeth. Her muscles spasm with the pain, like it's the first days of learning them all over—

-x-

Uncle Harry had been the one waiting by her hospital bed the first time she woke up after…

After.

She jolted up with a scream on her lips.

(It didn’t hurt, but she could feel the stitches tugging in her face as her lips stretched, a promise of pain that she couldn’t quite find—)

Adrenaline sang in her veins. The last image, a black wolf in black woods, oozed together with blurred recollections of car backseats and bloodsplash and Aunt Sue, worried voices and excuses about a bear.

“Easy, Em,” Uncle Harry said, soft and steady as always. His hand settled cautiously on her arm. “Easy.”

When she was seven, staying a whole two and a half summer weeks with her aunt and uncle—without her parents! just her and Leah!—she crashed her bike.

She’d learned how to ride it months before that, even earlier than Leah, which of course had meant she'd had to win their race down the hill by the general store. But then her feet had tangled in the pedals, panic had seized her by the throat, and—

Aunt Sue was at work, so it was Uncle Harry who came panting down the hill in her wake, baby Seth on his hip.

Easy, he’d said, licking his thumb and wiping a smudge of blood off her cheek, Easy there, Em. It’s okay. You’ll be right as rain.

That day in that afternoon-gray hospital room, it was the same deep voice, the same words. But—

Under summer skies, he’d wrapped his one hand tight, just under her elbow, and pulled her up onto wobbling feet. By the hospital bed, he just brushed her arm, tentative around a nest of IV lines, a warm fingertips that trembled just the slightest bit.

Fourteen years before, Leah had turned around the second Emily fell, abandoned her bright-purple bike in the road with one tire still spinning. She’d sprinted back to Emily’s side, panic scrawling through every breath, and taken Seth out of her father’s arms so that he could pull Emily upright.

It was just Uncle Harry in the room, a lonely vigil in the chair. Leah had his eyes, the shape and the thick eyebrows and the one dimple that Emily had been so jealous of, but he wasn’t smiling now—

And he didn’t tell her it would be alright.

Of course, she thought, heart hammering. Because it wasn’t alright. Because—because oh, Leah, Leah, Leah, it would never be right again—

She thought, dizzily, of rain. Of splashing into a puddle in perfect unison with her cousin, hand in hand, shrieking as it splashed up over both of their knees.

“Stay with me, kiddo,” Uncle Harry said.

She was trying. Her head was full of cotton, her throat dry as bone. Outside the window sun streamed down, but she could hear a storm rattling the glass.

“The nurses are on their way, okay kiddo? And they say you’re gonna heal. It just might take some time.”

She had an answer to that maybe, but if it existed at all it was hopelessly stranded in the desert of her throat.

“Just time,” Uncle Harry said. Even with her pulse hammering and the hiss of rain against the ringing in her ears, Emily heard how lost he sounded.

-x-

“Em?” her mom repeats.

Leah looks away. Her eyes don’t flicker, her lips don’t curve, the stone set of her jaw doesn’t bend.

She does it easily. Carelessly. Like she can just look away, just like that. Like she didn’t just run Emily through with nothing but her eyes.

Leave, her thrown-back shoulders still scream. You don’t belong here, whisper the bloodless knuckles of her hands where they cling to her ribs.

“I—I’m sorry,” Emily says. “I—”

There are no words left.

There’s Seth turning to look at her now, tracking his sister’s bad mood back, tear-splotched face crumpling even further into itself when he finds her.

There’s Aunt Sue staring out over the line of mourners filing into her backyard with the shadow of a frown between her eyebrows.

There’s a ghost on the back deck.

He presses a kiss into his wife’s hair, and her eyes slip closed in relief. He leans a fishing pole next to the sliding glass door and reaches out to throw an arm around his son—who protests that he smells like fish, but he just laughs and pulls him in closer to ruffle his hair. He holds out a hand—

His daughter takes it. Fearlessly, teeth bared, she takes it and scrambles up onto the porch railing. Her feet are steady, her steps are sure. Unfailingly confident that her father will catch her if she slips.

“I can’t,” Emily says, and turns to run.

-x-

The thing is—

-x-

“No, it goes under,” Emily told Leah, “just like a braid.”

Her cousin’s nose wrinkled as she looked up, away from the tangle of pink-yellow-blue threads taped down to the footboard of Emily’s bed.

“Braids have three pieces, this is nothing like that.”

“Yeah, but—okay, here, here, just let me do it.”

“You can’t make your own friendship bracelet!” Leah slapped her hand away, and Emily tried to protest, but she was already laughing.

-x-

“Em, trust me! It’s gonna be okay!”

All around Leah, the sea shone—green and huge, stretching out to fathomless blue at the blur of the horizon, splashing into silver foam as her cousin threw her hands up to wave at her.

Emily edged closer to the stony lip of the cliff. It wasn’t that tall, really, she told herself. Just a quick little jump. Leah had already done it.

“You got this!” her cousin hollered again, and despite herself, her hammering heart, Emily could feel a smile curling her lips.

Brave like Leah, she told herself, and flung herself out into the breathtaking sky before she could think another word.

-x-

“Are you picking your bridesmaids now too?” Leah teased, flopping upside down over the edge of her bed. Her hair poured over the glossy magazine spread of white dresses.

“Hey,” Emily protested, swiping at her—but then she made the mistake of looking up. Leah’s eyes were bugged out, huge and dramatic. A giggle bubbled up in Emily’s stomach.

“Whatever,” she said, rolling onto her back. “I don’t even need to pick. I know it’ll be you.”

-x-

“It’s gonna be okay, Leah. We’ll find him.”

“Yeah,” Leah said—but her eyes stayed on the Clearwater’s empty fireplace, her shoulders hunched in on themselves into a silhouette lonely and sharp as a knife.

Emily paused at the edge of the couch.

There was ice still curling in her fingertips. Spring was damp and frozen-over this year, and the heater in Emily’s car on the fritz, so the drive down to La Push had been miserable even without the memory of Leah’s panic over the phone, clutching at Emily’s lungs—

“Hey,” she said, stooping to gather up the wool blanket that had lived on the arm of this couch for as longer than she could remember. “We will. Your mom’s even coordinating the search party, right? If anyone’s got finding superpowers…”

Leah’s snort was half-hearted at best. She still didn’t look up.

Emily shook the blanket out, and wrapped it tight around her. She kept her arms draped around Leah with the fabric, sinking down onto the cushions beside her.

All around them, the shadows breathed—filling the silence, pressing down heavy on the room. Floorboards sighed. Outside, the porchlight buzzed. Leah held her breath, so Emily did too.

“We were going to leave together,” Leah said finally, small and thin. “He deferred his acceptance to Seattle, and we were…we were going to…”

Her voice didn’t break so much as fall, spinning down and down into the depths of the dark.

Emily clung tighter, and finally Leah melted onto her shoulder.

-x-

“Can you bring that pink lemonade cake recipe when you all come down? Seth hasn’t shut up about it since the last time you made it, and—”

Emily wound the phone cord around her wrist and leaned over to see if she could reach her recipe portfolio across the counter. “I thought you were ignoring his birthday this year?”

Leah scoffed on the other end of the phone. “I mean, I said that.”

“Sibling thing?” Emily teased, catching one of the ribboned corners. “Thank goodness I don’t know what that’s like.”

“I think you count as basically my sister at this point,” Leah said, “remember how my parents grounded you last time you were visiting?”

“Ooh, yeah, am I even allowed to bake in your dad’s kitchen anymore?” She dragged the book closer and started rifling through. “’Cause he did seem pretty mad about—”

“I still think he should’ve just been glad I knew we have a fire extinguisher,” Leah groused immediately, and Emily burst into a laugh.

-x-

“I’ll kick his ass for you,” Leah said. Emily choked on the changing shape of her sob, caught halfway to a laugh.

“No, hey, I mean it.” Leah grabbed Emily’s hand, and wove her fingers tightly through hers. She’d been out running just before Emily got here, and her skin was warm.

It had been a joke ever since they were kids—Leah would dash outside barefoot in the middle of January snow, and Emily wouldn’t leave the house unless she had three layers of jackets with her—

“Em. You deserved better. Tell me you know that.”

“I don’t know.” The lump in her throat swelled, and she swiped her free hand furiously across her eyes. It didn’t help, she could still feel them burning. “I mean, I knew he wasn’t, like, a great guy. I should’ve ended things sooner, I just…”

“You wanted to be happy,” Leah said fiercely, her grip tightening. “Em, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

A shudder tore down Emily’s shoulders. She yanked her hand away from Leah’s, and buried her face in her knees.

Bedsprings creaked, and Leah’s weight vanished from the end of the bed. Good, fine, Emily thought—but the tears were already starting up again, and she was so fucking tired of crying about this boy—

When she came up for air, Leah was waiting cross-legged at her feet, holding a glass of water. Emily’s heart ached.

“I don’t deserve you,” she whispered, reaching out.

“Of course you do,” Leah said. Her smile was fragile, but she took Emily’s hand again, and her grip was as steady as ever. “We’re cousins, right?”

-x-

“Yeah, but I don’t need to make money being a teacher.” Emily leaned into Leah’s shoulder, ignoring her eye-roll. “I’ll just mooch off of you when you’re a successful big-city lawyer.”

“Like I even wanna go to law school.” Leah elbowed Emily in the ribs, so lightly that Emily just leaned harder.

“Come on, I was at your first debate tournament. And you’re gonna get a basketball scholarship, you know you are, so don’t even—”

“You need to stop reading my mind,” Leah said, but there was a smile playing around the corner of her lips.

“Only when you stop doubting yourself,” Emily sang—then yelped away when Leah lunged for her pillow and swung it toward her.

-x-

“I’m not crying about it,” Leah said, but even over the phone Emily could tell her best friend’s voice was thick with tears. She closed her eyes and wished desperately she could drive back down to La Push—but she’d been down just last weekend for Rachel and Rebecca’s going-away party, and she had a shift at the marina this weekend—

“It’s okay if you are,” she said, trying to make her voice as soft as possible, “I’m gonna miss Rachel and Rebecca too.”

“I just…” Leah exhaled, and Emily could hear her nails tapping nervously against the phone. “Do you ever think about how everything’s changing right now? I don’t know, sometimes I’m worried that…”

She trailed off into static, and a faint rustle. Emily pictured her swapping the phone from ear-to-ear, biting the inside of her cheek like she always did when she got nervous.

“Hey,” she said, firm, once the silence stretched too long for Leah to be formulating a response. “I know it doesn’t change how much it sucks that they’re gone. But I promise that I’m not going anywhere.”

Leah’s watery laugh cracked halfway through, and she was sobbing on the other end of the phone.

-x-

“You girls take care of each other now,” Aunt Sue said, hands on her hips.

Emily nodded, a little shiver running down her spine at the responsibility—they were going to the park by themselves! no grown-ups!—but she could feel Leah practically bouncing at her side.

“We promise,” she told her aunt, jutting up her chin.

Aunt Sue smiled, faint and fond. “Alright. I’m trusting you.”

Emily squeezed Leah’s hand. Her cousin squeezed back without a second of hesitation.

“We’ll be okay,” she said, and her voice was even brighter than the summer sun.

-x-

Five years and fourteen hundred miles from the funeral, Emily Young will finally stop running.

She will be sore and a little shaky from a long drive she took alone, neck cricked from the curve of the seat, heart climbing out of her throat along with all the air from her lungs.

An apology will curl on her tongue as she locks the car and shuffles through gray parking lot snow, rehearsed in the rearview mirrors as she drove and the cracked motel glass last night; but also in the hollow spaces of her wedding photographs, in the falter of her fingers halfway through a phone number before remembering the voice she wanted to hear wouldn’t be on the other end of it…

She will tuck her hands into her coat pockets against bitter wind, but it will fail to hide the way they tremble.

She will recognize Leah the second she steps into the cafe.

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