Fiction love: villains who quasi-reform, but never actually turn nice. That sadistic manipulator who used to crawl inside your head and make you doubt your own worth and sanity is now the asshole on the team who snarks at everyone and likes exactly two (2) people, and refuses to grovel for anyone’s forgiveness but just keeps… quietly saving everyone. Because the people worth their time will notice.
They leave weird little gifts for the people they don’t hate. Nice(ish) gifts, not Jared Leto gifts. But, like, the most cheerful person on the team gets this soap. Attempts to confront them on the fact that they’re doing nice things for people will be ruthlessly mocked.
But they just. Keep helping these people they don’t even like that much.
Also I like this trope because like hell am I going to trust someone who went from trying to destroy me utterly as a person to trying to win me over and make me forgive them, but to see them go from wanting to destroy me to just sort of tolerating me, my backstabbing instincts are like, “Well, look at that, they only threatened to poison me twice this week, they really are trying.”
