oh I'm obsessed with this question... let's see. Sartha as a handler would be terrifying, tbh. all of that hero charisma, but fundamentally evil instead. I think she'd be almost as good as Handler herself, but in a very different way. much warmer. she'd still have that smug, rough edge that drives people crazy. the kind of girl you look at and immediately fall in love with - and she's an expert at worming her way even deeper into your head until you convince yourself that anything's worth doing, if it's for her. even more than with Handler classic, it would be all about winning her approval. earning her attention. living and dying for a look or a smile from her. she'd feel more human Handler, until you're in too deep to pull away, and then you realize that she was playing you all along (and you love her anyway). a total obsession magnet. that said, it's really hard to imagine would get her to become that. she really was the best of the rebels, until Handler

Leinth would be the opposite. one of the things that Handler teases out of her in Hunting Hound (ch. 2 especially) is her capacity for judgment and violence against Sartha once she sees what Sartha has become. I think that as a handler, that tendency would be turned up to 11. she'd be very cruel and very, very sadistic, but in a way that's hard to desist because she's so skilled at looking into you and picking out all the reasons you secretly think you deserve to be hurt. she'd keep playing on that, until your guilt eats up all the rest of you until her punishments, with their false promise of forgiveness, are the only things that make sense. and for her, I think what could turn her into a handler is losing her optimism. in Hunting Hound, she has a lot of faith in Sartha. faith in other people is Leinth's bedrock - but if she was let down badly enough over and over again, I can imagine her losing her rebel spark. maybe at that point, she could be convinced to turn on the rebels just so she can show them how flawed they truly are