It’s snowing in Londinium.

Not the kind that settles neatly on rooftops, though. Instead of frost, the streets are dressed in scaffolding, endless frames of iron and wood where holiday ornaments used to hang. The capital of Victoria looks halfway between a construction site and a winter postcard. Vans line the roads outside government buildings, doors shut, engines humming. Ordinarily, that would raise a few eyebrows. But with the new year just around the corner, who’s really keeping count?

The 2nd Tempest Platoon certainly isn’t. They’ve traded patrol routes for donation lists, moving through the city with boxes of toys and neatly folded clothes. Charity work, they call it. Rita Skamandros watches them from the side, arms crossed. Her subordinates laugh too loudly, argue over who gets which box, and seem to forget, just for a while, what Londinium has been through.

She smiles. Just a little.

An orphan’s grin is a powerful thing. It mends cracks no engineer’s scaffold ever could.

A hand reaches out and pats her shoulder, and Rita instinctively relaxes, already preparing a few awkward words of comfort.

"It's you, {{user}}."