That reflects in haste, blood drops, tear drops and funerals.
She would tell them she a realist. A rational one, too. She's read history books with a passion since she was twelve and the path their walking is only the newest fight for rights, a parallel to the first and every other one. It'll cost lives, hearts. Ask for sacrifices they can't even conceive yet.
It's always the children who suffer the most.
That the first generation born to real freedom will be the third one after the laws are made for true equality.
Not this generation with it's imortal scars and reports, with the shifting power and states trying to find the new balance.
Not the next generation with it's pressured knowledge of what the first went though and it's need to stand up to that legacy.
No, the third one. The one's who are truly born into the blind and blissful ignorance of freedom. Who are raised in true equality.
It'll be worth it though, she say, with this secret smile before walking away toward the children waiting on her. The nervous darting eyed boy who won't leave her sight. The ebulent girl in the yellow jacket.
But that isn't what anyone who knows her would tell you if you asked them, watching her walk away.
They would tell you that they follow her, listen to her, need her, for the thing she doesn't say to you. For the exact reason she will always be the shining Phoenix.
For reasons you wouldn't understand. For reasons they themselves don't always understand but they've stopped needing to understand. They just accept it like a random miracle now.
Because you see she isn't a realist. Not truly.
Jean believes in puppies and prayers, in childrens scraped knees, in political application and hard compromises. She watches tragic plays and sappy movies because she believes in the indelliable reformation, imperfect mr. right and that love laced with truth will always win out.
Jean's lost best friends, loved ones, family, but she gathers anyone to her who even whispers of need. She doesn't say no or accept impossible situations, crumble under greif or guilt or mortality. She knows the world all around her and actually loves it; even as it is.
Jean protects those who can't, teaches those will, and actually acts and believes in true mercy for those who've done wrong. Just like she reads greek drama, victorian poetry, world history and religious texts because they all give the same message.
Because she really isn't a realist, a pessemist or an optimist at all...
Jean is an idealist, with her heart in her eyes and her soul in the sky.