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Pale eyes went wide as Chaonis stepped between them. It hadn't been expected, and she stared up at him as he again insisted they just drop it all. Something she would have been perfectly alright with if it hadn't meant him leaving with Grus.

He said her name, caught her eye, and she looked back at him helplessly. She didn't know what to do.

Even worst, Grus wasn't willing to simply walk away. The desperate insistence in her voice had Navi looking past Chaonis at the other woman. Glinda.. The good witch, the pure soul that had fallen for the reckless prince. It should have been funny, considering, but Navi wasn't laughing. It felt to her like the story was beginning to unravel around them. She is winsome, she wins him..

Her chest heart, and her eyes were beginning to burn. She dropped her gaze, standing there with thin arms raising to wrap around herself as Grus demanded to know what was going on and who she was. Had it been any other situation she'd have been proud to announce herself and her intentions, but right this moment she was walking on egg shells. Saying nothing, doing nothing.

Instead she waited, listening for what Chaonis would say. For the explanation he would provide. Wondering if it would be truth, or some story concocted to save face.

Grus wasn't like Chaonis. She didn't lock away how she felt, or avoid her feelings because they made her uncomfortable. If she was sad, well then she was sad, or embarrassed. She experienced the whole spectrum of the emotional rainbow.

Now her heart was filled with dread as he kept quiet for what seemed like forever. He was lying to her, or at least keeping the truth covered with something. Something that was cracking at a time that he was not ready for.

When he touched her arm, she looked at his hand for a minute, while he spoke. Her eyes shot upward with his confession, and widened while her face paled. They weren't enemies. They weren't fighting. Suddenly the closeness of their contact when she first saw them meant something more. Grus shivered.

They were together

"You guys..." she said quietly, looking at Navi not with mistrust, but with disbelief. "You're a thing." The word was thrown accusingly into the air between the three of them.

It was not very often that Chaonis had to come to terms with his choices. He did not like having to face the consequences of what was supposed to be a consequence free lifestyle. He lived hard and fast because he did not want to slow down enough to feel bad about anything.

One upon a time he could look at a person he had disappointed, he had gotten hurt because of his recklessness, and he could walk away from it without another thought. Maybe this was just another way being a Senshi had changed him, for better or worse. Because now, seeing the pain on the faces of the two girls near him, he knew he had made a terrible mistake.

What that mistake was, specifically, he could not settle on. There were so many options, and each one left him feeling like an a*****e.

For a moment he left it to silence, hearing Grus' question in his ears and knowing it was not his place to expect Navi to reply. This was his problem, something he had made happen, or allowed to happen, or something like that. He had no excuse to offer, it was not like there was magic involved. She had no spell over him, save what came naturally to them both, what kept drawing them back to one another.

But his feelings for Grus were honest as well. From her he got true friendship and a sense of happiness. From her he was able to feel like a young man his age should. Goofy, flirty, and happy. With Navi, their affair was passionate and intense, built on rivalry and stubbornness, but an intensity he had not been able to escape. Had not really tried to.

"Yeah, we're a thing. Grus, I'm... I'm sorry. I didn't think to... I didn't want you to find out like this. ********, I didn't want you to find out. I... I'm not good at s**t like this, but I didn't..." he clenched his hands into fists, staring at his feet so hard he might burn holes through his shoes, "I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't know what would be worse, telling you or not. Navi..."

He looked at the Dark Mirror Senshi but he didn't know what she could do here. This was a situation he had created, and it occurred to him that now he had made it even more awkward for her. As if being on different sides of the war was not bad enough, now he was dragging other senshi, other feelings and relationships, into what was meant to be a secret.

Navi felt like the world had frozen, or maybe just the rooftop she was currently standing on top of. Maybe their tiny little world had just stopped, while everything else around them was going about business as usual. Her heart was in her throat, eyes hot, and as the scene unfolded before her she felt the first scalding tears roll down her cheeks.

It probably should have hurt, learning that Chaonis had another girl he cared about, thought about, when he wasn't with her. She waited to feel jealous, to feel slighted, but no such feelings came as she stood back, a by stander to Grus' pain. Her own life was sliced down the middle, powered, civilian. They seldom crossed. Even after Grant had been inducted into the Dark Mirror Court.

Maybe later, when she'd had time to process the information, but not then and there.

The stretch of silence that followed Chaonis' admission was painfully awkward, and she had to fight not to fidget on the spot when Grus' gaze turned to fall on her. If looks could kill she would have dropped dead on the spot.

Hazel eyes snapped towards the Senshi of Chaos as Grus' whispered, then shouted at him. Pale lips parting as if she meant to offer some sort of advice, some words of comfort. Anything to make this situation less horrible then it was, but nothing back out. She honestly didn't know what to say.

Of course.. With the rising of power that seemed to be collecting around the Eternal of Feathers words would do little good. Shining eyes widened as the other girl realized what was happening, and she moved automatically as Grus shouted, warms thrown wide to release that power in an expanding ring of burning feathers. "No!"

Her hand touched the side of Chaonis' armor, and she threw herself against him, arms wrapping around his torso as she buried her face against his chest and placed herself very firmly in the line of fire. She could have saved herself, could have called her winds again and deflected the feathers, but she'd chosen to protect the Senshi of Danger. There wasn't time to deflect the attack now, but that didn't mean she didn't try. Calling out her attack as she rushed to call the wind around them, to keep those burning feathers from reaching them. Setting their hair and clothing whipping around them.

Her legs shook with the power drain, but she remained standing, staring wide eyed at the two wrapped around each other. Her hands shook violently as they went to cover her open mouth. Every freckle on her face was visible in stark contrast to her white skin. She looked ill.

“I….” she whispered, letting her tears flow freely. Her whole body now shook, and she shut her eyes tightly, covering them with her hands and splaying her fingers out. He apologized, yet he protected Navi. Always protecting. Even if it meant lying to her, or to them both.

“I trusted you.” She said quietly, turning on her heel and running for the ledge, jumping blindly and sprinting away from Navi and Chaonis. Her lungs felt like they were going to pop, and she released a sob as she ran, winding and twisting this way and that in an effort to put as much distance between her and her victims as possible. She had seriously overreacted. How could she attack them like that!?

Once she thought herself far enough away, she found an alley and powered down. Her signal would be lost to anyone trying to chase her. Castille slid down the brick wall, panting in between sobs. Once on the ground, she folded her legs to her chest, placing her eyes against her knees and crying until her breath came in shuddering gasps, and the tears had long since dried from her hot face. When she finally looked up, it took a full minute for her eyes to adjust to the streetlight’s illumination. It was way past time for her to go home, but she was so tired…

Her henshin pen lay next to her on the ground, sparkling dully in the lamplight. She stared at it a moment. If she had never become a senshi...She picked up the pen and grasped it tightly, knuckles going white.

Castille flung the pen from her, letting it bounce away into the alley. It rolled to a stop near a garbage can, the white and crimson colors glittering like a cat's eye in the dark.

The Eternal Senshi of Danger had never been in such a terrible position before. Usually, no matter how bad it got, he was detached enough to not care. He could watch others run away in horror and sadness, and he would not feel a thing for them. But this was so wholly different, he did not know what to do with himself.

He watched Grus run away, but he couldn't chase her. What was he going to say? He could tell her not to run away, but she had every right to. He could tell her that he cared about her, but that would just hurt her further. He could not tell her that he was making a mistake, even if he was. What he felt for Navi was strong and impossible for him to draw away from, and most of the time he did not even try. How could he ask Grus to understand it, when he did not?

He didn't deserve her feelings, though he treasured her for who she was to him. For him. She made him want to be better, and she taught him about himself in ways that no one else had been able to. Grus made him a good person.

But evidently not good enough.

He looked at Navi, reaching up to touch her face. She was his Elphaba, a star crossed lover if ever there was one. He kissed her on the cheek, then backed up a few steps.

"I have to go. I'm sorry. I have to... go... somewhere." He wasn't sure where. He just needed to get out of there, go be on his own and deal with all these emotions that were assaulting him. He hated the way he felt so helpless, losing the control he worked so hard to maintain.

Chaonis watched her, and for a moment he thought she would let him go, and they would be able to talk about it later. When everything wasn't so fresh and new and painful. His hopes were not entirely on the money, though, because her grip on him did not loosen.

He shuddered.

"You..."

He loved her? It was not that the sentiment was surprising. Maybe, in his way, he knew that was the best word for that force that seemed to draw them together so very often. That magnetism neither of them could ignore. But to hear her say it, to acknowledge not just to herself, but to him as well, and to put such a clean name on it...

It made his world stop for a moment, and he wasn't sure what to do with himself. His brain was completely empty, his chest feeling so dense and heavy that he could hardly hear his own pulse in his ears, though now he knew his heart was beating impossibly fast.

Could he say it back? He felt it, he knew it was right.

"I... I know..." he said, watching her. "Me too." It was as close as he knew how to get, being the man that he was, with the attitude that he had. He had spent all his life avoiding things like this.