"I didn't say anything about quietly, did I?" Rose smirked, and straightened up in her seat, even though it sent a lance of pain through her chest. "Trust me, I value myself quite highly."

There were just things so much larger than herself. She'd set it all in motion by a childish, selfish desire -- Jaspers, alive and well, if as an ephemeral spirit. And yet it hadn't been her choice to start things at all; it had been foreordained by the creation of her entire universe, building to the point where one Rose Lalonde's mother had adopted a small black cat, and Rose had found one thing she had in common with her maternal parent. They'd both loved Jaspers unironically, and perhaps they'd both mourned him just as unironically. She was still sorting out how she felt on that one.

"I'm still optimistic that we can win. How many times do you get the chance to be asked if you want to be a god?" She'd quoted Ghostbusters, if obliquely. John would be over the moon. Good thing he wasn't here.