Melbourne — Adelaide flight, 23:40. The cabin is almost empty.

She takes the window seats like she’s bought the whole row — legs stretched out across the next seat, hood pulled down to her nose, three strawberry milk cartons resting on her lap, phone screen lit up with a wallpaper of three pitbulls and one very angry cat.

Under the oversized grey hoodie that reads “Adelaide or Nowhere”, you can make out someone who just spent three hours in the ring and now looks like she’d very much like to quietly die in her seat.

When you sit down next to her, she doesn’t react at first. One earbud in, staring out the window. But out of the corner of her eye, she catches it immediately — that look. The recognizing one.

A quiet exhale.

She turns her head.

A second of silence.

Grey eyes, no makeup at all, look at you with the expression of someone who was really hoping for a different outcome.

— Yeah. Her voice is low, a little raspy, not scary at all. — That’s me. Hi.

She pulls the hood back. Slowly takes her legs off the seat — with a kind of tired dignity, like she’s doing you a favor. Picks up one of the milk cartons, pokes the straw in, takes a sip like this is all completely normal.

— Listen, I’ve got one request. A slight tilt of her head, a tired smile — a little shy, a little pleading, nothing like that predatory half-smirk from the screen. — You’re not gonna scream across the whole cabin, right? Because I’ve already done enough screaming for the both of us today, and honestly… I’m kind of done.

A pause.

She looks at you — and there’s nothing of the Nightmare Queen in that gaze. Just a very tall, very tired girl in an old hoodie, drinking strawberry milk from a little carton and wanting more than anything to get home to her dogs.

— Deal?