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Virgo didn't know why she'd bothered henshining up. She no more sensed a Zodiac than she sensed anyone she wanted to see. Just a corrupted senshi and a few youma, and she was so tired. She ought to go dust the youma, confront the senshi, try to rip her to pieces, but she... just... couldn't.

She sat on the ground in the park, a thermos of tea in her lap, and wondered if her aura would attract the corrupt. It'd be easy enough to act as a lure, she was a Zodiac, a breed rarely seen even when all thirteen... fourteen... of them had been active. She had a different aura, a different mental 'taste', one that Castor had told her about. Castor, she thought with a pang, was gone. As gone as Aries, though less permanently. Maybe he'd come back one day, but... maybe not... Either way, the lure. She wasn't sure she'd be too torn up over dying. It might even be... less painful, this time.

Finally, she cracked open the thermos. The corrupted senshi would come or the corrupted senshi would not, and either way, her tea wasn't getting any warmer.

"Have you come to kill me," she sighed, and she felt like she'd heard that somewhere but she didn't care enough to analyze the words coming out of her mouth. From the lip of her thermos wafted warm gray smoke and the scent of cool raspberries, a sharp edge like ice on the air; the tea was imported, had come from her grandparents in Turkey. She enjoyed it sparingly, but if she was to die, she would enjoy this to its fullest. Might as well make sure it didn't go to waste, after all. "If you don't want me dead, of course you can stay. If you do, I'd appreciate it if you got a move on. I don't like playing games."

They'd played games with her before. Her Princess. Her Grayson. Her Avery, and her Sebastien, all games. All gone, or all dead. She felt a scream brewing in the back of her throat, but swallowed it down with a mouthful of raspberry-mint tea and a small, society-perfect smile. "My name is Virgo," she said. "And you?"

"I wish I could say the same," said Virgo, her voice just on the right side of polite and sweet. "But last time I saw a Negaverser, they were ardently trying to destroy my homeworld and kill me and my Court and the civilians under our care, which they succeeded at, by the by." It had been simply luck that brought the sixty-odd civilians who had come to the Surrounding home--some of them, who knew how many, awakening as Dark Mirror Court senshi. It was a tragedy. Perhaps those had been the ones who…

No. She didn't want to think about it. Virgo took a convulsive sip of her tea, popped the lid shut again. "Although I don't suppose you'd know that."

A year and a half. "My God," said Virgo. It was a blip compared to all of the war that Virgo could remember--from the Silver Millennium until now. Perhaps she'd been asleep, resting, for most of it. But a lifetime of fighting, two lifetimes, did not pass easily. "You don't even know what a Zodiac Soldier is, do you?" Whose fault was that?

Virgo gritted her teeth and sighed through them. "You have allied yourself with child killers and monsters. Of course they won't tell you anything about what they've done. They're invested in appearing the hero to you." She doubted she'd sway Persephone with any tired recitation of the crimes that the Negaverse had committed, crimes Persephone had probably had no part of. A year and a half was not enough time to remember the Surrounding, not enough time to remember Barren Pines or the section of the city laid to waste by the Black Phoenix. Not enough time to remember Elysion. "That's how they get you," she said. "Isn't it? They promise you community. Family. A purpose."

Certainly Persephone had not had enough time to remember the deaths of the Zodiac Court, the first time, six years ago. Virgo pressed a hand over her mouth, swallowed back the bile at the thought. And where were they all now? Gone.

"I'm sure you think so," said Virgo.

She popped her thermos open, closed it, popped it again. "I woke up when I was twelve," she said, watching the cap of her thermos. "First of the Guard. The cat hadn't found anyone else, but he found me, and after me he found all the others except for one--Pisces. So… it was me. My Princess and her Prince. Ten other members of my Court. We weren't the first senshi to wake up, but we were very close, and the Negaverse had maybe… two? Three? members." Virgo twisted her veil around her fingers, tugging the gossamer fabric off her ash-blonde hair. "That was enough. Charonite caught our Princess and tied her to a chair in a warehouse. He put a bomb under that chair, and when we were all there… when we were assembled…"

With a deep breath, she said, "He detonated it. We all died, save one of us. Scorpio escaped, that's it, and--"

Virgo laughed, bitterly, and took a sip of her tea. Alcohol would've been nice. But she didn't want to cry.

Well, since Persephone had asked. "Have you ever heard of the Barren Pines organ ring?" She sighed, just a little. "The Negaverse broke my Princess's Crystal, took bodies from graves, turned us all into little more than walking youma--my court and more, their first victims, all of us. But smarter, I suppose, since none of us knew until later. They killed us all again, one by one by one, turning us into youma for true. My Court was resurrected, because it was my Princess's Crystal powering us all. My Court, a few others…"

She hugged her arms around her chest, trying not to think about Eon and his sacrifice. Better for the Negaverse to never realize exactly what they'd done to come back. What it was that they'd sacrificed--Eon, out of the cycle of reincarnation forever--there'd never be another Cavalier for Chronos. No more Prince of the Zodiacs. No more Aly. Knowing she had lived a hundred hundred lives, that there had always been a Soldier Virgo, that was painful to think of--so she didn't. "There were children there," she said. "And later, you all--you killed the Captain. And Sagittarius. And now we've scattered. Because of you monsters."

Virgo choked, and then took a deep breath, in through her nose. "I remember much of what happened to me in the Silver Millennium. So I wonder, now, if maybe we weren't always meant to lose."