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 Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:13 am
She wasn’t really listening to Babylon; he was important, of course, she wasn’t ignoring him, but she was standing in front of the place that might hold Menachem’s bones. Once she had loved him, but that time was long ago, and even if she seemed doomed to repeat her own mistakes, he had apparently escaped that cycle. Lucky Menachem. Thinking about it too long would only make her sad, but she was sure that she deserved to feel sad, at some point she had to have earned the right to drown in self-pity for even a few moments out of one day.
Then she heard her name. No, not her name--not Elke--but her name. She straightened and turned to face that familiar voice, hardly daring to believe--but he was there. Conflicting impulses seized her: she wanted to laugh, or cry, or run to him, or something, but her feet felt rooted to the ground and her throat had seized up like a hand was squeezing it shut. “Menachem,” she choked out, because what else was there to say?
Virgo managed a few fumbling steps before she had to stop. “I missed you so much,” she said, pressing her hands over her face.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:20 am
Babylon stood back, because he was intuitive enough to know that there was more between Virgo and his ancestor than he would ever understand, and that was okay with him. He did not want to jump to conclusions about the matter and if there was anything that he absolutely needed to know, then he assumed she would tell him… in time.
He was a little bit surprised that she could see him, but then perhaps their past connection and her nature as a member of the Zodiac guard made things odd. Or perhaps Menachem had simply never deemed it worth his effort to appear to any guests before now. Babylon didn’t know what it was like to be a location-locked magical ghost. Maybe it was exhausting to appear to more than one person, or for a longer amount of time. He wasn’t going to question matters that went far above his head and seemed so intimately personal.
Menachem, for his part, paid no attention to the knight. He continued to stride forward, pausing just in front of Virgo, and he raised a hand but hesitated, as if unsure whether or not to touch her. Babylon could not remember his ancestor ever even trying to lay a hand on him, though he had seen him interact with with items in the study before, including documents brought from earth.
“I am glad that one of us yet lives,” said Menachem. “The boy was right to bring you here.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:33 am
Virgo watched Menachem with the kind of desperation that a starving man would give to water, like she was drinking him down with her eyes, committing him to what memory she could. “You got old,” she said, but it wasn’t a rebuke, there was no disgust in it, just… happiness. “I’m so glad.” Virgo had died when she was barely twenty-three, an adult in every way the Zodiac counted it, but still so young in a society where they could regularly expect to see a hundred years.
She reached out for his outstretched hand, hoping that she’d touch more than air--but of course she didn’t, her hand slipped through his and she hiccuped a little gasp of something miserable. It’s not fair, she thought, and then she said it out loud, “It’s not fair, everyone is--there’s just me anymore--I’m so glad to see you but I, I’m.” Virgo didn’t finish the sentence, aware of how selfish and childish she sounded, and that was the last thing she wanted to be. Not here. He’d last seen her as a grown woman, someone who had killed when she was as small as twelve. Elke couldn’t compare herself to Aria in terms of maturity.
“I can die three times and come back fine, but you just get once--how is that fair?” She scrubbed her veil under her eyes, took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m acting like a child. I’m--I’m so glad you’re here.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:34 am
Watching this unfold, Babylon began to feel deeply uncomfortable, like an eavesdropper trapped in a conversation they didn’t actually want to overhear. He turned away and stared up at the the nearest statue, the one that Virgo had said was Menachem’s father, and contemplated it deeply - the craggy brow, the square jaw, the lantern he held between his hands, reflecting blue light from the center of the room. He had the face of a man who was serious about his job, and maybe the sculptor was just being complementary and maybe they’d really captured something - in the case of the latter, he could see where his ancestor got it from.
Menachem nodded to Virgo, a quiet sadness coming over his features. “I did indeed,” he said quietly. Perhaps not as old as he might have lived to be, in a different generation, but- “I held out as long as I could,” he said. “I thought of what you always said it was the Zodiac’s duty to do - to hold the line, and I tried to do that here, but there was simply too much for me to hold back. They took the city. We fell.”
He did not seem surprised by the hand passing through him, but in turn, he very carefully placed a hand upon Virgo’s shoulder. His balance was careful. Delicate. “I did not wait when I heard the surrounding fell,” he said quietly. “I knew it was only a matter of time, and that when they came, they would come for every senshi and every knight. I took Phoebus to earth and hid him as soon as I had a chance.”
He nodded towards Babylon, who was still determinedly not paying attention to this tearful reunion. “I did what was best for the line.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:35 am
“You held out a long time,” she said, because he was much older than he had been when she had last seen him, maybe twenty years. “I am proud to be--to be whatever I am to you, now.” The news about Phoebus drove her silent again, and she smiled and let her hands fall away from her face. She’d only ever seen him once, just once--
The full implications of what Menachem had said sunk in, then. She looked at Babylon, green eyes wide. “Is he--no. You had other children. Your daughters.” Her words denied it, but she was already willing Babylon to turn around, just so she could see if he had anything of her past self in him. “Phaedra had the boy that she was interested in when I left that last time,” she said. “Surely Phoebus wasn’t the only one to--to live?”
Everything she wanted for Menachem, the moment she’d remembered the fullness of their time together, had been long life and happiness. A life where a father might have outlived his children was no life at all, and yet--her son might have lived. Might have passed his father’s station down the generations until it reached this one, and the man who was fated to renew the city. She wanted that to be true. “I’m sorry, Menachem,” she said.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:38 am
“Phaedra and Liora would not leave the city,” intoned Menachem. “They said it was their duty to fight alongside me to the very last, and I was proud to have such brave daughters.” It was a thousand years ago now - he’d had a long time alone in his city to watch the dust settle and think on all his choices. “The line was smart. They kept good records. I know that it continued through Phoebus, and the more I reflect on it, the more I know I would not have wished it any other way.”
Babylon walked to the next statue in the line, and stared up at the ancient woman’s hooded face.
“You did not deserve to die so young,” he said. “I am glad to see you here and looking so well. I find more and more that I must be content with how things have turned out in this day and age. Being discontent will not change them. The line continued. I had my doubts - he is different than I would have imagined my successor to be. But he has proven himself. He lit the lamps, and perhaps one day you and he will see the city flourish once more.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:38 am
It would be right and proper for a Zodiac senshi to be stoic in the face of this news, but Virgo wanted very much to just sit down and cry. Maybe for hours. Because these were her friends who were dying, people she’d known as a child and as she grew up, and that was a different kind of pain than the deaths of her fellow Zodiacs. She had gone into her relationship with Leo knowing he would someday die and it would not be peaceful; and the same for every other Zodiac, except the Prince and Princess, who could have been expected to live through as many as three cycles of the Guard. “I’m shorter than I was,” she told him, like that mattered even a little bit. “Weaker. And I haven’t learned anything at all.”
She smiled up at Menachem. “I tried dating Leo again. That never works out, but I always seem to forget… but you’re right, about your successor. He’s been a great friend to me.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:42 am
Menachem’s mouth quirked into a smile, an almost paternal expression. “You are young yet,” he said “And youthful indiscretion is not only expected but advised. Every knight in this hall was once a page, and now they are the greatests among our citizenry. So too, you will grow. Perhaps not in stature, but in experience. I believe that there is justice in the cauldron, and balance to all things.”
Carefully, he bent to brush his lips against her forehead, the motion calculated to maintain the illusion of his presence. “Maybe this time you will grow old, and then someday, when it is your proper time, we will be reunited.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:43 am
“You always say that,” she sighed, “even when I was with you, you said that.” With you--it barely described the feelings she’d once known for Menachem. But it was all she was willing to say with Babylon so close by.
When he bent down to kiss her forehead, she watched, and smiled a sad little smile. “I’ll look after your successor for you,” she said, and then--she glanced at Babylon--she added, quietly, “Our descendant. It sounds so odd.” But it made her feel… warm, too. She liked imagining her tiny blond son growing up, safe and sound. “I’ll see you again,” she promised, “someday. Even I have to run out of second chances.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:44 am
“Keep him out of trouble,” Menachem said, and he seemed much lightened by the conversation. “I am glad I could share this with you. And perhaps I will still see you a few more times. I have told him to visit often. To keep the lights on. The city is his now and I am trying not to intervene, but for you… I would make an exception.”
He tapped a finger carefully upon the lit bauble at the center of her collar. “Know that you have my love, Aria,” he said. “And Babylon will always be a home to you, for as long as you wish to return to it.”
With a final smile, he turned to go, disappearing back into the gloom from which he had emerged. Babylon looked away from the statues, and then moved to join Virgo where she stood towards the room’s center. “Uh, hey,” he said quietly. “I was really trying to give you guys privacy, but. Um.” He wasn’t sure how to best say it kind of sounded like you were banging my ancestor and we might be related without sounding entirely crass.
He settled for, “I’m glad you got to talk to him.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:44 am
She laughed, and maybe it was a quiet, sad laugh, but it was a laugh. More than Babylon had gotten from her in the present day. “I love you, too,” she said, and her wave goodbye was a quiet tick-tock before her hands dropped down to knot together at the leather lacing below her breasts. She barely noticed Babylon for a moment, but she wasn’t rude by nature and turned to look at him when he spoke.
Babylon did not look much like the tiny newborn she remembered. But they had the same blue eyes--Babylon blue, she thought, with a smile she couldn’t quite suppress. The line had continued, and this Babylon was part of it, and her home city was safe and sound. “I’m glad, too. Thank you, Babylon.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:49 am
“Do you want to-” he started, and then trailed off, and stared off towards the light for a moment. “Have you ever seen-?” he asked. “I don’t know what it is. Menachem said - he said it was a drop of a star, and a gift from Cosmos, and that everything about it was just legends, and that the lantern and the light are the same…”
What he was really trying to do was stall until he figured out how to word what he really wanted to ask, and what he really wanted to ask went back to the bits of conversation he’d overheard. Babylon fiddled with his lantern, spinning it on its golden chain. “I really didn’t want to eavesdrop,” he said. “Because I know that whatever you said to him and he said to you, it’s personal? So I’m sorry that I’m, like, fumbling around being curious like this but- I get the feeling you two weren’t just good friends.”
Which was really as polite as he thought he could be about it, and he worried it might be too subtle. “Who is Phoebus?” he added, the question nagging at him.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:56 am
"Why couldn't it be all of those things," Virgo wondered aloud, twisting the golden chain of her Light between her fingers. Menachem had told her those stories, a long time ago. She had heard other tales during her lifetime on the Surrounding, a thousand thousand explanations of magic--wells that saw back into time and observatories that could not be reached alone, but could see anywhere. "Or none of them. Who knows?"
She stared at him for a long moment, trying to process his question. "Of course we weren't just good friends," she said. "We were comrades in arms, we fought the same fight--"
He asked about Phoebus and she smiled, just a little. "My son," she said. "He was such a small baby. I only ever saw him once."
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:57 am
Babylon nodded. Whether or not he knew its exact nature, the light burned. Perhaps, in time, there would be new legends about where it came from. Maybe Virgo knew the stories more vividly than he did.
Her answers left him feeling a bit hollow. He felt like she was omitting something, avoiding what he already suspected - which could very well be confirmation, although he’d rather not assume. Virgo had already said that in the past, his ancestor had been something like twenty years older than her - and perhaps he’d misunderstood their conversation and their connection and maybe he hadn’t.
Who Phoebus was only complicated matters, as it had sounded as though he was part of the Babylon line, and there was really only one way to take that. “Who was his father?” he asked, watching Virgo fuss with her pendant. “If you don’t mind my asking.” It seemed odd that Sailor Virgo, in her ancient incarnation, would have had a child at all, based on what he knew about the Zodiacs as an institution.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:57 am
Cornered. Oh, well. Theoretically, he would have found out eventually. That didn’t make it less awkward for her to admit to right here, right now. “Menachem,” she said, “we were… close, and sometimes things happen, that might not have otherwise--”
Except hadn’t she always wanted to be close to him? Hadn’t she always wanted him to be close to her, written to him most out of anyone left on Babylon? “I loved him. I think I still do. I’m glad that he got to live to be old. And I’m sorry that Phae and Liora didn’t get to. It isn’t fair. But it is what it is.” She tried to smile, but the expression felt strained. “You have eyes like Phoebus did,” she said. “Babylon blue.”
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