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The winter night air was crisp and clear, lights above and below found in stars, streetlamps, and smatterings of Christmas decorations that some citizens hadn't quite gotten around to pulling down. An exasperating sight to some, but Kurma had no grudge against them. They were interesting. Bright. A remnant of the passed holidays, as if the city itself was having a bit of trouble letting them go.

He could relate to that.

Light-filled presences (and ones filled with darkness as well) weaved and fluttered around his awareness as he drifted in his vigil through the city. There was never a completely still or silent moment anywhere one could go, these days. Sometimes there were voices... names, easily forgotten, or arguments, that tended to all blur into the same old song, just played by different instruments. The streets and sidewalks were saturated with blood and magic, and as he turned another corner a broken streetlamp dimly flickered and buzzed behind him.

It took him a few more moments to notice that he had been walking. The tips of his boots were damp from a puddle he'd stepped in, and that plus the solid coldness of the concrete were seeping through into his feet. Usually he didn't keep so dutifully in obedience of gravity, but the how and why of his current state barely mattered a second, since the thick fog of overwhelming wrongness that had started coming in would have forced him to the ground regardless.

She was standing as if she had been expecting him. He hadn't even known that there would be anything left of her to wait for, or look at him has he numbly approached. Her presence filled the street with unnumerable sinking feelings, but her gaze would always be worse. Kurma could not take anything away from her, because there was nothing left, and the void was plain in her eyes -- not due to any change in them, but how she kept them fixed on the reason why.

He had dropped her, and now her skin ran through with cracks to show for it. Alkaid was broken. A bit of the color was draining from his face at the sight, and yet he could neither look away nor turn back. He had never been more aware of his own breath, the sound and sensation of his boots scraping against the concrete, as the form of the once-senshi became nearer and nearer.

Words were lost to him. The song of the stars above, more distant than ever. Without any rationale behind why he was doing it, Kurma had drawn himself up closely enough that he had to tuck his chin inward a bit to keep looking at her. His lamp was dropped and forgotten, rocking idly on the cold ground as his arms reached up and hands hovered close to either side of her. She looked so fragile. Barely even the lightest touch of his fingers ended up settling on her shoulders. And there was nothing he could do to put her back together.

Alkaid's form was churning with heat, and all he could think about was how the unnatural temperature must have been coming from her own star being devoured. Its voice had already been snuffed out. He wondered if anyone else had noticed that. In the grand scheme of things it was hard to separate any one from the millions of others, but an absence was painful in how it demanded attention.

She was still looking at him. Her hand had pressed down on his own -- trapping it between nothing and more nothing. What little instinct Kurma had to him was making dread threaten to boil up into terror; Alkaid was a dangerous place. It could swallow him whole. Part of him wanted desperately to get away, to break his eyes free of the trap she had pulled them into, but at the same time he couldn't muster up the will to move. He could feel Chaos-poisoned claws digging into him again, holding him in place, and tethering him to the image of what Alkaid used to be.

There were remnants there. In her shattered face, and in her voice. False, most likely, but powerful. Hypnotizing in their own way.

"What did you choose?" Kurma asked, just as quietly. His gentle grip faltered and shook at what the answer was bound to be.

Disbelief and sorrow deepened in Kurma's eyes as he listened to Alkaid recall the verdict she had passed onto herself. A sacrifice. Did she really know what for? He couldn't remove his hands from her, the incredible fire that consumed her from the inside had just about fused his fingers to her shoulders. She'd been blinded. The cause to which she had given herself was the very thing she had become. She didn't know.

The young senshi didn't know what she -- what they -- had done.

Twisted, abused, and manipulated as she had become... in one tiny way, or somewhere in those irredeemable depths of her being, she was still Alkaid. Still driven by a desire to help others. To guide them. To make the universe a better place to exist in, no matter what price she had to pay to do so.

"Of course they have," his voice finally struggled out, a coarse whisper that regretted his inability to say anything else.

He couldn't take that away from her, too.

Her touch was a lava flow seeping up the side of his face, fueled by the promise to consume everything senshi were supposed to stand for. Not her own promise -- the one she had given herself over to, in becoming corrupted beyond redemption. That, they were both painfully aware of. Kurma had underestimated just how aware she was. He was, however, sadly unsurprised at how willingly she had accepted it. Dark strands of his hair were threatening to entangle themselves in her fingers, and her eyes were arresting in their clarity.

In some ways the worst part was how sure of herself she was.

Finally, he let go. His hands immediately began cooling against the empty air as they slowly retreated to his sides. And then, with a voice that refused to steady, he said, "You're wrong."

Kurma was slowly surveying the full scope of the loss before him, for a second time. First Alkaid itself, and now its senshi, who still maintained a body... a face... a voice. "One star is not insignificant, Alkaid," he argued. "Otherwise, what would any sacrifice mean?" It was becoming a bigger struggle to speak by the second. He was thinking up the words against a backdrop of clenched teeth, and just forming them was painful. This was new.

I will be insignificant in a hundred years -- and in the grand scheme of things, that wasn't very long at all.

It was too much to bear. Kurma couldn't speak anymore. Even if he did have thoughts that could be formed into words, they would stop at the back of his throat and never have a chance of escape. At this moment, though, he had nothing to say. No guidance to provide. No wisdom to impart. No reassurance about the state of the universe, and how things would become as they should -- because they wouldn't, not for Alkaid.

Instead there was a deep, black, cloying sadness seizing up his insides. It was a foreign and unwelcome sensation. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt this way.

"I--"

It was threatening to overpower him.

"I can't--"

And it did.

Kurma backed away. He couldn't stand to look at her anymore. Gravity sagged around his shoulders as he struggled to take the tiny step that would turn him around. Light was consuming his form even as he did so, and in a bright flash, he was gone.


[fin?]