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In the end, no one mourns for her, this she knows well. She saved the world, and in the process, became a threat greater than the one she helped snuff out. No, no one mourned for Khepri, or Weaver, or Skitter, for all the monstrous necessary things she’d done.
It’s quite funny, to think, that for all she was initially so disgusted by Cauldron, she thinks she might understand them best by this point. She had done everything they hoped to accomplish, everything they needed to do, all that they wished for. And in the end, she is more a monster than they ever were.
No one mourns for her. No one mourns for Khepri, or Weaver, or Skitter. For Taylor, maybe, but is there really anything of her left at all?
Can you hear her passenger? Are you still inside her? Are you gone now, attached to some other girl, who will use you to rise above as she once did? Are you dead, burned out, gone, time done, great deeds over with? Like her? Are you still there, trapped in her head, powerless, voiceless, trapped in the prison of her own being? Can you hear her? Does anybody hear her anymore? Did anyone ever hear her at all?
She had forgotten this she knows, forgotten this in between the rush of battle and intrigue and need. She has forgotten the soothing numbness of monotony, the beautiful freedom that comes from being out of control. She has forgotten what it means to be a person and not a queen, a human and not a god in the mortal flesh. She thinks, ironically, that maybe Piggot was right in the end about parahumans, and how very inhuman they are.
She knows, deep down in her bones, that this extra chance at life was meant to be a reward, a reprieve, a chance. She also knows she will not take it. She is changed, immensely, irrevocably from the idealistic little girl who believed with all her heart that if you just tried to do good, to be good you would be. She is changed from the little girl who believed that her heroes would save her.
It’s no matter, in the end really. She may not have access to her sister/mother/twin/partner/passenger/counterpart anymore, but she still has the lessons she imparted to her.
So by hook and by crook she’ll drag herself to the top. She’ll play the game again even if it kills her, even if it’s in a different form. Control is her right as the Queen Administer, and no one and nothing will stop her from getting what she deserves. Not anymore.