WC: 1,043

Late afternoon sunlight flickered lazily through the leaves of the forest. The air was heavy with May humidity. Bugs floated about on the breeze, searching for nectar. The birds were busier, building their nests and hunting for food for their babies, but that all played out far away, in the tree branches and the sky beyond. The loudest sound on the forest floor was that of a squirrel scurrying through the undergrowth.

All that changed when Cybele appeared out of nowhere and immediately collapsed to her knees in a pile of leaves, the first truly choked sob leaving her chest.

The orders had implied retreating to Negaspace, she knew, but when she’d tried to think of a safe space in that split second, this was what had come to mind. It wasn’t the four walls of her barracks room, or the dark, twisted passageways of the castle.

The tears themselves only lasted so long. There was still something that sat cold and heavy in her chest where the feelings should be. Some of it, she thought, was the Chaos, but the rest was a wall that she’d built there herself. As she sat there, shaking uncontrollably for fifteen minutes even after her eyes were dry, she realized that the wall was beginning to crack.

It was not so bad that she could not patch it up. She had become an expert at pushing her emotions away, and she could do it again. If that failed, she could teleport back to Negaspace, apologize for her moment of weakness, and ask for suggestions with processing her corruption.

But Ganymede’s words echoed in her head.

There were other options. This was a crossroads.

When Cybele decided she was going to let herself think, she brushed off her knees, powered down, and began the several mile walk to town. She had never been one to wallow. She needed something to do while she rolled recent events around in her head.

She wouldn’t need a town run if she was just going back to the barracks, she told herself. Still, that option was quickly losing its appeal. Benitoite would need to cool his head, at the very least. It was nice out here, and it would be easier to think clearly away from all the pressures of the city.

By the time she’d reached the store, she decided that she would at least spend the night in the woods. Perhaps she’d decided more, deep down. She’d been careful with money, but there was still only so much saving that could happen in the eight months she’d spent in the Negaverse. Still, she bought a tent without hesitation, and a sleeping bag, and water, and granola bars, and dried fruit, and a bag to carry it all in.

She had similar supplies in the barracks, but the General’s parting words gave her pause. She did not think that she wanted to be stabbed, or called traitor.

Although there was more to it than what had happened at the Farnsworth, she admitted to herself as she vanished through the tree line again, hunting for a place to camp. Benitoite might have been the first to raise his voice at her, but the smaller aggressions had been there for some time. Faustite might have been quick to ask for her services in the operation, but that hadn’t stopped the looks he’d shot her, back in the barracks. She would always be the one who had broken his wrist, no matter how much she fought for him or insisted that she was a new person wearing a dead one’s face. She’d seen Sylvite give her similar looks in between the smiles, sometimes. Rakovanite admitted that she was an acquisition, a tool, and he treated her as such. Even Geocronite, the one that seemed to care the most about her life, had implied that she had not truly earned the rank she held.

Eventually, she pitched her tent, but she did not make a fire. She did not think that she wanted to be found. That hesitation made her more of a traitor, but she was not sure that she cared.

If she was honest with herself, she knew what she wanted.

She’d told herself that the Negaverse had chosen her and that they would value her if she did the job. There was some truth to that, and yet the coolness there remained. Alya, on the other hand, had not hesitated to call her his friend. He hadn’t so much as raised his voice against her even when she’d tried to kill his friend. Ganymede, too, had only seemed to care about her well-being no matter the gravity of the situation.

Thinking about that made her chest ache in a way she could not explain. The memory of the battle was similar. It hadn’t been at all like her tenuous relationship with the Negaverse. She’d chosen to be there, risking her life for her friend. The memory wasn’t clear, but Cybele thought that she’d helped, and she knew that Ganymede had saved her life.

She found herself crying again as she made a cold dinner.

Purification wasn’t some easy answer, though. The Chaos and the wall in her chest made the crimes that she’d committed difficult to process, but they still existed. There were those who would fly into a rage at the sight of her, like two of the senshi that she’d seen today. Perhaps even the ones who had been kind to her so far would give in to her constant insistence that she was beyond help.

Without the Chaos holding her together, there was a chance she’d fly into a rage at the sight of herself.

All that might be a price worth paying if she could feel a little more human and fight at the side of friends once more. She now knew the answer to Alya’s question from so long ago. She wasn’t okay. Not like this.

She still wasn’t sure if all this was something that could be fixed, even by Ganymede’s offer, but as she crawled into her sleeping bag, she decided that it was worth asking about.

What she wanted, deep down, was a place to belong, and that would never be the Negaverse.