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“Sylvite — I need to borrow you. One more time.” The words mattered little, for how they were spoken into an empty room. It was exhausting, even to send a cordial invitation through the void. To tug on Sylvite, the gentlest of asks he could manage with what lingered of his power.

It was better simply to offer her the ability to come to his location. To come see for herself. Not that she needed the confirmation, no, it would be for him. It was all to make it easier on *himself.*

Selfish to the end, even burnt out on emotions in general. How easily he lobbed back into feeling, quite literally, sick of them. Like ‘feeling’ was a disease he wanted very much to rid himself of while sat in the dead center eye of it all.

Besides? How did he send it in a text? On a tablet? This was nothing like a mission, except for all the ways that it was. That it would be.

Still…

“It’s better if she comes.” Because then he wouldn’t have to explain with words, in any measure. He could simply go about pointing and hinting vaguely at things.

Sylvite knew Slate better as a person - as a human being. Prehnite respected that, knowing that she had more of a moral soul left to her than most, and could better point out the things which marked Ochre's life as Slate. Which made him not a Senshi, or a Savior, but a human being.

Sylvite's mentor. Her friend.

Then the messy rest of what they would do. There was no other way round it then to sort it all out and have it be done.

Feelings — things — *finding a body*.

"You're right. I don't want to talk about him......" no more than he wanted to think on him, or feel, it was all belated and ostracizing enough to be laughable. How foolish did it seem to care so late into the game? Was there even any point in it?

There must have been. No, there had to be, and if there wasn't? He would make a point. He would become the point. Whetstone dredges of an idea that sharpened his despair while he played with the edges of his blade, slid thumb over serration until the tip of dagger between his fingers and the hilt tapping nervously over carpet. Afib staccato and dissonance that was loud over the quiet of his breathing.

"I want to bury him. Properly."

Puffy eyes, red rimmed and full of severity. Prehnite glared up at Sylvite, an edgeless thing for how the wetness clung to his cheeks from earlier.

"Thats what we did - what should've been done, and maybe I wasn't his friend like I should've been? So much as I was a cobbling of cowardice and self preserving bullshit...but?! Sylvite, he is *dead* and I don't *care* that he swapped sides, what wrong can a person do from beyond a grave? Except he doesn't even have one to lie in." a wet seethe hissed forth and the tip of the blade became embedded in the carpet. He twisted it and stared into the void that fell before him like static, like watching a T.V long after hours and cable had turned - seeing the radiation of the stars and it's sounds flicker in black-white peppered specks.

A glimpse into space...

"Slate was ours - for a very long time he was ours and that should mean something.....but you knew him better than me. So -- " a splay of hands - an opening - as if to say 'here we are', ransacking an abandoned city. It could've been Rome and it's Fall - there should've been fire and screams.

Instead there was dead silence, old dishes, empty cat bowls.

The blade he toyed with stayed where it'd dug itself a notch, from carpet into wood into - whatever façade of glue and holding lay below. He didn't know s**t about housing or apartments owned by kings. He did know that people were meant to be buried, burned, put into the ocean or earth. With their things, preferably -- because if Ochre wanted to leave? Well..then why should the Negaverse have any of what was left of him or his goodness?

The Negaverse didn't deserve it.

A mistake, after a decade? Earned a behedging - a shining public display of a demise - how ******** performative! Prehnite realized immediately that he was biased, that if it'd been anyone else? He wouldn't have batted an eye. Oh, but for Ochre? Hadn't he offered him anything over drinks? Hadn't he apologized for his lacking over - years - what meant nothing to the corrupt and likely everything to him.

He couldn't have the auburn haired boys starseed, knew it the moment he'd heard the words leave Sylvites mouth. He could have his body though, maybe. Do a last kindness and absolve himself of his own worst demons, just a little bit.

*Movement* and he nearly flinched, until he realized it was just that. Just Sylvite wrapping him into her small arms, such a simple thing. Like she was collecting the pieces of a broken plate. He'd always known she was better than the rest of them. Too good for their ilk, as a General -- as a friend?

How vastly different this was from their first meeting.

It was easier than it should have been, to return her hug, loose, awkward, because *hugs* were such a strange thing, but he did it gratefully. Even as he looked on at Sylvite with a strange kind of awe, as though she'd discovered a solution - No - *The Solution*. Solved for X a on a complicated problem which he hadn't realized a work around existed for.

Sylvite could talk about him.

That was different than him talking about Slate, that only required a listening ear and--and Prehnite was suddenly very sure that was something he would've liked. To listen, instead of speak. He did far too much of that, far too often. Speaking. Lecturing.

He nodded, ever so agreeably, squeezed her, just a bit, because he needed her to know what it meant without using words to express it, for her to give him that - her words - like a small gift of a precious thing. It was such a relief of a to have offered without the asking.

He didn't even know what to say....and then she mentioned Jet.

"Oh, Sylvite -- I can and will say exactly how much it sucks," rough syllables of a promise, to any and all who would've listened to him, because he didn't believe Ochre to be exactly the kind of traitor the rest had been. Gany had lured him in -- yet there was no reason to argue it after the fact. It was long done, months ago, and now? "but how many people would know him -- who'd remember..." a shuddery little sigh, like a fire going out.

All the fuel he had to burn it on, all that *anger* so quickly smothered by a hug, however briefly.

"You tell whoever you want, and you talk. As much as you need to? Please." appreciative, of her being able to give him the missing pieces, of her quiet strength in that moment. She had the pieces he needed, she could give him the Slate she'd known, so different from his own - so much more.

And then? Then they would find him. She would help. That was the most important part. He wouldn't be doing it alone.

"Then -- then all the rest, but I think I'd like to know the Slate you knew? Your Ochre?"

He suddenly wished he hadn't mangled the former occupants couch, but the floor would always do just fine enough for him as any other surface would have. He didn't need to be comfortable in this, he almost didn't want to be. It was better to feel it all enough to get it 'out'.

Whatever it was.

Nebulous little things, all these feelings.

*He was kind and he saved me and I wish I'd been better to him!*

Words caught behind a beartrap of teeth, and Prehnite listened, silent and shaking and clinging uselessly. Listened still. To all the little tidbits of things he'd wanted to know - about Ochre - about Sylvite too, apparently.

Kind, Ochre was always kind. Slate was a kitten caught up in a world of malice. Pentacles for piercing the veil of the future, how little that meant when it all circled back to the one thing. When his starseed was held captive by -- by them. What could be done with it, for it?

But to find the body and make a better end out of the mess.

It was all Prehnite could think to do, and he felt both vindicated and wretched for it, because Ochre - Slate - whatever he'd become as Sheikh for brief seconds of a time? Even then he'd likely been nice enough to let Jet take his head from his shoulders -- kindness personified. That rung true, was the sticking point that grated his every nerve. That kindness had died and gone unnoticed and uncared for - it wasn't ******** fair at all.

"It's not fair." a lowly sniffle of words to supplant 'it's my fault'. To superimpose over the idea of having failed, because he hadn't tried. A selfish and callous child that'd grown into a cowardly complacent man.

They'd make it right.

"I went drinking with him, once. After I came back." he didn't mean to say that "He saved me, years before that." not that either "He was alone here, and I let it be that way. Even if I knew...I don't know half the things here that are his or their significance and meaning --- I didn't get to know him like you did, and I'm jealous of that." hissed the words and let them rankle loud between his ribs and burn his lungs as he held an angrier breath, he hated to cry. It was ugly, irritating, he was never good at it.

"Because he was kind..." and because he was kind he deserved better than what he'd gotten. If not in death than at least after.

They had to give him that.

That was specifically why he needed Sylvite there, her aid and understanding and knowledge of a persons kindness. She'd always been the best of them. He knew it. Whoever'd thought lowly of her was a fool, Ochre was right to nurture her care - a bright pink soul amidst men who were hollowed out and resigned to fates labeled rank and file; comradery over treason. Brotherhood above betrayal, except where so much of it was false.

Prehnite simply liked to be on the winning side. No matter whether it was 'right', that'd always been the way of it. Would be until the end of him, he was sure of this like he was that the sun would rise for at least another millennium or two.

His capelet came in handy, for once, loose spiral of a thing was worth wiping his face on. He could use the tail of it to blot his tears into, better than his hands now. Espescially since he felt suddenly shy for speaking when he'd said he wouldn't. Wary and wondering if he should be thanking her -- for coming - staying - agreeing to help?

For speaking so plainly and listening.

Asterisks on all of the above, little boxes to check off later after the heavy task that lay before them was done.

He had to keep that in the middle of his mind - a focal point - while he smoothed invisible wrinkles out of leather and cloth. Prehnite slowly straightened himself into something resembling a general instead of a puddle of pink and purple wrapped greens. Used the time to find a response --

Found a laugh instead. "Can we do both?" so surprising, to hear her offer a reprieve...an escape from feeling, or maybe to simply consume them at the bottom of a boozy shake; far more calories than alcohol. Equally as delicious going down.

"We should do both, and then -- you can do the stuff you're best at. I believe you'll have it handled within the week, because by the end of it I'll have a-a plot. An old parcel of land ready to have something done with it, finally." there was nothing prehnite could think it better for in that moment than that.

"If you can think of anything else to bring besides a body...." and Prehnite held out his hand once more, a gentleman's offering to whisk them away from the terribleness that was suddenly much less so. The apartment was just an empty place. The ghosts less lingering -- eased. "...we'll make a list of it. Over ice-cream and alcohol?"