She Stands on the sun-warmed stone of her own memorial. Silver letters shine up at her from beneath her feet, her own name, Tala Masina Kelly, Immortalized for as long as time and erosion would allow. One day these letters would no longer be readable, but this spot would still hold significance to her.

Just to the side, her blood still stains the stone with its memory, seeped into the concrete where it lingers despite rainfall and efforts to clean it. The staines stare back up at her, And with its silence, it shouts a reminder of all the things that have changed, of all the things she has lost and sacrificed to make it this far.

Her memorial stone is clean, clean from dirt and debris and footsteps as if no one had dared to trod on the place where her ghost lingered, where the bloodstains still held a piece of her hostage.

And in a way they would have been right. A part of Kelly had been lost that day, and she had been shedding pieces ever since, but she is not frightened to stand on the place of her death, to look out with eyes, forever changed, over a scene that seems so similar despite so many years.

She chooses to stand here as a middle finger to fate.

The crowd is even larger than it was last time, security even more heightened.

Despite her newfound power as a maker, her secret service still makes an appearance, an honorary guard to the deathless.

The people that stand beside her are the same ones that stood beside her so many years before. Generals, admirals and supporting politicians. Her husband Hye, stands just to the side, and from the look on his face she can tell, he is having more trouble with this than she is. He looks nauseous, and even as she stares at the stain left behind by her death, he cannot look.

She isn't proficient in reading minds, but she can sense his distress from here. These steps mark the worst moment of his life, the most traumatic event that he has ever experienced, and now he is expected to stand here again. Hye never developed full blown posttraumatic stress, but that didn't mean he wanted to be here. She wishes to reach out, to hold his hand and comfort him, but he is too far away,

Thankfully, someone else is there to comfort him.

Admiral Vir, sensing her husband's distress, steps down a stair or two and rests his hand on Hye's shoulder. Adam is much taller than Hye, at least by five inches. He wears the sharp, black uniform of arcadia. The last time he had stood here, the uniform he wore had been grey with the colors of the UNSC. Behind him stands Sunny resplendent in her pearl armor.

The chairwoman of the galactic assembly is noticeably absent. The whole that she would have taken up is quickly filled by some unknown delegate or other, but still the hole has not been filled.

Rundi rarely declined an invitation to go to inauguration events of politicians, and when she said rarely, the truth of the matter was almost never. She exchanges a brief thought with Adam on the same subject.

He has noticed too.

And then there is a new addition.

One of her dearest friends.

Where Adam is like a son to her, Celex has forever rooted himself into the place of honor as her friend. She knows that he feels the same. You can't go through what they have gone through and not come out with a bond tighter than family.

He wears a suit today, and it seems so odd to see him like that. His hair is combed neatly back and pulled into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck. His hair is still a technicolor mess, and he doesn't bother to hide it, though he is very presentable. The suit looks good on him, and there are a few people in the crowd who can't help but notice.

Celex notices her noticing, and grins though he doesn't look at her. She knows he can sense her rolling his eyes.

Both of them feel as Adam flushes red.

The sky today is overcast, though there will be no rain. A large crowd is gathered, clustered before the steps of the presidential palace with great interest. Some of them seem nervous. Over their heads, she can see the picket line, stretching down a side street. Distant voices chant and wave their protest. They don't want her to be president, they don't think it's fair for a maker to govern over humans, and she can understand their position, though she doesn't really care.

She is more concerned about the state of the universe than their feelings, as rude as it might seem to say it.

A flag whips and snaps in the wind overhead. An electric charge is forming in the crowd, they know something is about to happen, and she can sense it too. Her security moves into position, their eyes scanning the very air around her as if expecting something to materialize from nowhere and attack.

They aren't exactly wrong.

She recognizes some of their faces, as men who had previously been on her detail when she had died, bleeding out here on the steps. She can sense the anguish in their thoughts, knowing that now they aren't needed, and before, they had been useless.

She needs to make sure that they don't continue to feel that way.

A man steps forward, and the crowd goes silent. Kelly reaches up to adjust her suit tie, and her hands glitch momentarily. Parts of her seem to glitch more than others these days. For the most part, she can keep her head and neck visible, but her hands seem to have a mind of their own.

The man turns to her, and she recognizes him too.

He swore her in last time.

He watched her die.

He remembers it vividly, and she can see his eyes as they dart around the air before her. There is a sharp whirring noise, as a massive blue shield crackles through the air to encase them in a dome of power. She would have protested, but the done isn't just for her. WIth so many important people gathered in one place, there is always the likelihood that something might happen, that Kazna might return.

Kelly might not die, but who's to say she wouldn't go after Adam, or Sunny, or the prime minister of mars.

The man stands before her, one step lower than she.

Their eyes meet.

A UN flag is proffered to her. The man holds it reverently between his two hands, folded neatly into a triangle, and as she looks at it, she realizes that the flag is marked with a spattering of little brown splotches. With her maker eyes she can see how the stains cling to the fiber, a delicate aerosol spray.

Blood.

Her blood.

They are using the same flag.

She is not sure how she feels as she reaches down to rest her hand on the blood stained flag. It doesn't feel different from a clean flag, but somehow it means more to her. She is glad that Hye doesn't know. He is trying to be supportive of her, but this moment is proving to be a bit too much for him.

He is thinking about fish

It makes her smile.

She can see Adam's hand tighten on Hye's shoulder as he inches closer, keeping her husband upright even as he struggles to handle the moment.

The crowd has gone perfectly silent now except for the distant protestors still chanting out their disapproval, but they are so far away it is almost impossible to hear what they are saying.

"Repeat after me."

"I Tala Masina Kelly as acting president of the United Nations, vow to protect humanity from all those who seek to destroy her."

She repeats the words for the second time one alive and one dead

"To uphold the rights and freedoms of all people across Earth." A part has been removed, she is no longer in charge of earth's colonies after many of them had seceded from the UN following the debacle that had been the Hunt administration. Speaking of Hunt, she can see him, standing off to the side, but to his credit he doesn't look so sour, and he nods to her when their eyes make contact.

The man is a snake and she knows it, everyone knows it.

He had colluded with kazna to get her killed, something that he was unlikely to admit, and there was no proof. Adam and Hye had wanted to expose the man, but there was no evidence, and Kelly had forbidden creating evidence where there was none.

It was no good.

Went hunt had done what he had done, he had genuinely believed that what he was doing was for the good of Earth. He had been sure that earth shouldn't get involved with international politics. Kazna had played him, and in the end he had been wrong. He had stabbed her in the back one time, but now that his presidency was over, he had neither the power nor the desire to do so.

He knew he had been beaten, and she had neither the time nor the energy to think about revenge.

The crowd before them holds its collective breath, the air sits in a charged and expectant silence. A beam of sun breaks through the clouds to make a brief pass over the crowd as they wait

"On my life and my honor."

As the words slip from her lips, the crowd begins to cheer, but she can hear the countdown begin in the heads of everyone around her, ticking by the minutes and seconds, and staring at the blood stain on the stairs. Hye can't contain himself and rushes forward over the stone, unconsciously stepping over the stain as he reaches for her. She takes him in her arms and holds him there for a long moment, and together they count down the seconds.

The seconds to her death.

The shield crackles around them.

Everyone holds their collective breath.

Even Hunt looks around nervously.

Adam and Sunny hold their spears at the ready, back to back.

But nothing happens.

A minute ticks by

And then two, and though her blood still stains the steps, she is alive, if not in the traditional sense, and she has made it.

And she has inherited a mess. She knows that the joy she feels and the victory will only last so long. Soon she will be at the forefront of a war no one wanted to be involved in.

But still.

She is what she always meant to be.

President of the UN, President of Earth.