Work Text:
What does it feel like to have everything?, the press asks him.
It’s not what he’d thought, that’s for sure. He couldn’t have imagined the warmth in the pit of his stomach when he was sworn in Chief of Detectives or Governor. Nor could he have expected the cold satisfaction of watching Dudley Smith fade away, absolute justice at last. The glow of a sun-soaked room, painted in blues and golds, in Bisbee, Arizona, three weeks every May - that has never even been a dream.
But they still ask him - are you happy? - and how can he fit any of that in a printable sound bite?
“Call no man happy until he is dead,” he quotes instead.
The papers love his scholarly leanings. Bud simply sends him a battered copy of the Oresteia with a post-script in Lynn’s flowing hand:
Death is softer by far, than tyranny. Be well, our tyrant.