There was a sigh of relief among several cohorts across the country was palpable, as news broke yesterday that Julian Assange has left the UK and looks set to come home.
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The relief came for freedom fighters, the legal team who have worked tirelessly to plead his case, and the journalists and pundits who have spent years reporting and commentating on a case that has finally, abruptly run out of steam.
The WikiLeaks founder will reportedly plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the US Justice Department that will allow him to walk free.
This will resolve a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents and centered on the publication of a trove of classified documents.
There is now light at the end of the tunnel of what has been a long and drawn out saga of what cannot by any stretch be called proper process.
Assange has been stuck in legal limbo for nearly 15 years, the last five of which have been in prison. But the long stretches of uncertainty and fears for his safety have been a quasi-imprisonment for the man who has ultimately become a polarising figure.
For some, he's a hero for free speech and the open flow of information. For others, he's a traitor and a criminal. His reputation was also tarnished by rape allegations in Sweden, which he has denied, and charges that were ultimately dropped.
Assange was first charged with crimes back in 2010 for publishing almost half a million classified US military and diplomatic cables.
He claimed at the time that the documents exposed war crimes, including the alleged killing of civilians by US soldiers in Afghanistan and Syria.
Through this, he became a household name, and "WikiLeaks" entered the modern lexicon.
His guilty plea, which must first be approved by a judge, is the rather abrupt conclusion to a criminal case of international intrigue, and to the US government's years-long pursuit of a man who has become a figurehead for press freedom.
He has long been a household name, and earned the ire of then-US president Barack Obama, who described Assange's actions as "deplorable", and claimed he had put lives at risk.
Since then, the US government has remained resolute in its pursuit of Assange.
This continued well beyond the acceptance of many that keeping Assange exiled or imprisoned served no real purpose for national security, and that there was nothing to be gained by extraditing him to the US, where he could have faced the death penalty.
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The Australian government, being obviously strongly opposed to that punishment, has continued to advocate on his behalf, with Prime Minister Albanese declaring he wanted Assange brought home.
But Assange's treatment at the hands of the US legal system leaves serious questions unanswered around the plight of whistleblowers, journalists and others.
Assange is an individual whose physical and mental health have suffered during more than a decade of legal battles, which includes seven years spent inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he sought asylum in 2012.
But as an individual, he represents a long-running fight for freedom of information. That pursuit of more openness and accountability from governments is far from over, even if this chapter can now draw to a close.
