|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2014 6:53 am
Avalon bit her lower lip, and looked around at the trees in the park. They were all very tall, very solemn, and very old; they towered, and beneath them even Avalon was quite small. Out beyond the trees, she could see the twinkling lights of buildings, and beyond those buildings, there were the stars. A fact popped into her head: the twinkling of stars was only atmospheric turbulence. In space, where she had never been, their glow would be constant. Gentle. "Okay," she said, sitting up a little straighter. Her stomach felt tight, like it was tied into knots, and her hands were clammy, and--she tucked them into her lap again, the fingers of one hand tight around the other. "Okay. They're nice? You promise they still like me?"
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2014 3:29 pm
Hvergelmir didn't need to analyze the fragments of the situation with Avalon that Babylon had told her about, when he was delirious and dying in her arms. The particulars didn't matter. She knew Finn well enough to know a few things for sure about him, and one thing she knew was that he didn't nurse hatred in his heart for people. He was steady, caring, generous. "Without a doubt," she assured Avalon. "He's one of my best friends -- and one of yours, too. Shall we write him a letter? I can think of one I think he'll really like." Hvergelmir tore a piece of paper out of Coney Island, wincing a little for the sacrilege as she did. At the top of the page, the poem began: Johnny Nolan has a patch on his a**
Kids chase him
...................thru screendoor summers
Thru the back streets
...........................of all my memoriesand so on. Around the margins, she composed their letter. Hi Babylon,
I found a friend of yours sitting on my bench in the park. I think you'll be happy to see her, and she could use a good friend too. She's been through a lot. Do you want to come see us?
Hugs,
HvergelmirShe looked over at Avalon, holding her pen out to the Earth page. "Okay, you see the ring on your finger? Rub this pen on the top, then press it against the letter, okay?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2014 3:46 pm
She read the letter--and the poem--over Hvergelmir's shoulder, narrowing her eyes distrust fully at the message. Would it really summon this Babylon? She considered saying no and running away, but... Hvergelmir was no liar. Hvergelmir was her friend, or at least as much of a friend as Avalon could claim to have. If all of her friends proved to be so kind, Ava figured she was in good luck. She took the piece of paper, gently pinching the corners between her fingers. The letter held no secret messages: only what Avalon had read over Hvergelmir's shoulder. Satisfied, she accepted the pen and rubbed it over the surface of her pretty golden ring. The color wasn't right, but it was borrowed ink. Avalon would live. Her signet ring left a solid impression on the paper, and the paper disappeared. "Where did it go," said Avalon, having jumped at the sudden vanishment. "What did I do wrong?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2014 3:54 pm
Hvergelmir smiled, relieved that that had worked just as it should. "You didn't do a thing wrong," she said. "Consider it your first piece of magic. Now we wait -- he'll either send us a letter back, or he'll come running. Close your eyes," Hvergelmir suggested fancifully. "If he's coming, you won't have to look for him. You'll sense it. You'll just know. That's your second piece of magic."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2014 5:53 pm
Babylon finally resigned himself to Avalon's disappearance, and he longed to look for her, but he knew that would be a dangerous path. Perhaps she would reappear and perhaps she would not and perhaps he would find out years from now what had become of her and that left a deep hurt at the pit of his stomach. He ought to be grateful for the one night they'd had together, that he'd gotten anything at all, but-- He'd had plans. For her. For himself. For them, together. And right now, with her incommunicado, he felt like he'd placed himself into an odd holding pattern of circling the city and looking for her and trying to reinforce his memories of her. It was pathetic, really. She'd call him pathetic if she knew. He wrote her letters and doubtless she thought he was pathetic for that. And then, in the last day, his letters to Vanya Morganstern had gone undelivered, and he felt his heart stutter. Babylon was in a deep funk when the letter from Hvergelmir arrived, and he didn't immediately move to read it. After a moment of great internal debate, he reached for it and scanned the page. It had been ripped from something, half of a poem he'd never read before. The actual body of the note was intensely cryptic, but what really set him off was the sigil stamped at the bottom. It was not Hvergelmir's star rising from a well. It was the apple of Avalon. His breath caught in his throat. As a general, Avalon's signet ring hadn't worked. Babylon leapt to his feet and set off immediately. Some ten minutes later, he approached Hvergelmir's bench. The girl beside her was intensely familiar, in a way that made his heart lurch. Surely this wasn't really happening-- Her aura said page. "Avalon?" he asked in quiet awe. "Avalon." He was afraid to touch her, in case the illusion shattered, but he wanted to wrap her in a hug and never let go. Turning to Hvergelmir, he mouthed, "How?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2014 6:26 pm
Avalon let out the breath she'd been holding when Hvergelmir confirmed she had done it right. Her first magic trick! She tried to smother a delighted smile, but couldn't. Nothing she knew told her that magic wasn't something incredibly common, but still--surely she was good at it, or something, to have performed some of it so soon. Eager to try another spell, she closed her eyes as Hvergelmir suggested. She covered her closed eyes with her hands, just in case closing them wasn't enough to make the magic work. "It's been forever," she said, two minutes in. "Are you sure he got it?" And then, perhaps thirty seconds later, "This is the longest forever of my whole life." A minute or so after that: "No, this is the longest of forevers." Moments before she sensed Babylon, she started, "How long is forev-- oh." She sensed someone at the edge of her mind. Not the bright starry glow of Hvergelmir next to her, but someone chilly. Like stepping into an air conditioned home after a few hours out in the sun. Avalon shivered, and fought the impulse to uncover her eyes. "I sense him," she whispered, reverently. This aura… It tugged at her mind and at the golden fog that kept her from remembering. She hissed out a breath through her teeth at the sharp sensation of frost in her mouth, but the pain was familiar, and that was welcome. "I sense him," she said. She wanted to jump up and dance around at this aura, she wanted to find whoever it was and hold them close and never, ever let them go-- He said her name, and she dropped her hands. She opened her eyes, and he was beautiful. The most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, and she didn't need to have seen very much to know that that would always be so. Her smile came easy and grateful to her face, a shy one that didn't show any of her teeth. "Hello, lover," she said, not sure where that word came from, but she knew it applied to this man. She waited for something more to pop into her head, something more than the crushing sense of familiarity without context, but it didn't. "I don't remember him," she said to Hvergelmir, "but he's mine. I know he's mine. He's…" Avalon hadn't stopped staring at him, and she got up a little uncertainly. "Aren't you mine," she asked, holding out both of her hands to him. "Aren't you?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 3:59 am
It was a strange reunion, the kind you could expect from a man who didn't understand and a woman who didn't remember. There was a little space between them, and the space was called uncertainty: and while the reunion wasn't Hvergelmir's -- she'd had hers a week ago, in the dry sand and dusty books and cold, astral hollow of Aquarius Outpost, and come home that much more miserable, for it -- nonetheless, she was here, and she liked to think of herself as a kind of a broker, and this bench as the place where she conducted business. So, looking at Babylon over Avalon's shoulder, she offered what she could to settle his uncertainty, to bridge the little space between them. "Princess Cosmos found her trapped in crystal," she answered his silently mouthed question. "She did what she could, but Avalon can't remember anything. It's gone. I told her what I knew, but -- I thought you'd know more. As someone who's her old friend." She gave him a careful, studied look at old friend, to make it clear she hadn't mentioned anything else Babylon had told her about his relationship with Avalon. She didn't know the details, and if that was something that had been too traumatic for Babylon to want Avalon to know about, he deserved that decision, not Hvergelmir. She liked to see Babylon smile. He was her friend, and smiled more often than most people she knew, and she liked that -- it was so bolstering. But he could do to smile more. After Mistral, they probably all could. She could only hope he had a smile in him for this. He deserved one.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 9:09 am
It was her. Beautifully, solidly Avalon, he thought, taking her hands in his and giving her fingers a careful squeeze. She did not vanish. She did not burst into dust. Instead, she called him lover and asked if he was hers, even if she couldn't remember any reasons why. The word sat oddly in his stomach. Last time Babylon had heard her call him that, it had been under drastically different circumstances. He remembered her half-lidded eyes, the rasp in her voice, and the flush across her chest. But that had been a woman with different memories. He banished the thought to focus on the Avalon in front of him, waiting for an answer. Her powered face never changed, even as she disappeared into new civilian glamours. As Avalon, he could see her features perfectly and comprehend them, as well. She was his best friend. She was the one he loved. Even if she didn't remember - well, he had a responsibility to her, in a way no one else did. Even if it was just as a friend. Even if what he'd had with General Avalon never reached that boiling point again. Smiling widely, Babylon said, "Yes, yes, I'm yours," and pulled the page into a tight hug. She was as tall as she ever was, and so his face went to her shoulder where he breathed in the sweet, clean smell of her hair. "I'm your Babylon," he said, clutching her tunic tightly. "I'm yours. Thank you, Hvergelmir." It wasn't the exact happy ending he'd imagined when he imagined Avalon purified - but it was good enough, and he'd take it. "I'm yours," he said, looking up at her. "And it is so good to see you."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 3:18 pm
Her story was old hat, after the story that had come before it. She only smiled as he wrapped his hands around hers, tight and comforting, eyes only for him. "You're beautiful," she offered, rocking uncertainly back onto her heels. "I like your… your you. It's very you." She froze at the hug, and then wrapped her arms around his shoulders, a hand carding through his hair. He smelled good, like campfire smoke and sunlight, a strange conquest with the feeling in her mind at the thought of him… Her Babylon. That sat right, in her chest, just under her heart. It beat there like the slow pulse of waves coming in to shore. "I know you," she said, her voice low and soothing as she kissed his forehead, then his cheeks. "You're my Babylon." She didn't remember, but she knew him. In her heart of hearts, she knew him. She was so very, very tired. "Can I go home with you," she asked, because--anywhere with Babylon, that would be her home. As long as he was near, she would be-- they would be--safe.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 4:15 pm
They looked happy together. Relieved. Like two people who had found each other after a long, long journey -- which she supposed they were. She was happy for them. It was nice to be able to draw a moment of comfort out of the misery of times like these -- however tempered it was by amnesia, for one, or by memory, for the other. At Avalon's question, Hvergelmir looked at Babylon again, silently questioning. Did he want to take Avalon home with him? He lived in that complex with other powered people -- probably a good place for her, and Laney couldn't exactly offer her crash space -- but it was still a big decision. If he wasn't okay with it, they'd work out someplace else.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 4:32 pm
He'd seen her a week ago, and she'd been dark and cold and beautiful. Avalon was warmer now, but beautiful still. Babylon bit his tongue against moving straight to saying he loved her, because he worried that would be too much pressure and too soon - she barely remembered him as it was. But her lips were soft and warm on his forehead and cheeks, and he wasn't sure how to proceed. Luckily, she asked if they could go home, and Hvergelmir reminded him that they weren't alone, so he didn't have to figure out how to talk about his feelings right at the moment. Kaatje wouldn't turn them away, right? Florence Court had been founded for exactly this reason - to support the at-risk and the newly purified. "Yeah," he said, shifting slightly in the embrace to settle his arm around her waist and stand beside her. "Yeah," he said. "I can take you home. Some sleep would probably do you good." Was it bad that he was still secretly afraid to wake up and have this all been a dream?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 4:40 pm
Avalon beamed at him, and wiggled free of his arm so she could cross the little grassy space between herself and Hvergelmir. She engulfed the small Cosmos squire in a hug, bending down enough to set her cheek against the bouffant of Hvergelmir's soft white hair. "Thank you," she said, "Once I learn how to do the letter-magic on my own I'll write you all the time, I promise." With her farewells said, she trotted back to Babylon, a hand stretching out for his before she'd taken even a step. "I want to go home now, please," she said, "and I want you to definitely not leave. Is that okay? Will you stay with me?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 8:18 pm
Hvergelmir had always loved hugs. If she'd never expected one from Avalon, of all people, that was immaterial. Circumstances changed in this war all the time, and far be it from her to have any reservations about one of the few times when fate decided to throw a gift in their laps. There had been so many failures, so many tragedies lately. Whatever this was, it was good news. Hugging Avalon felt so nice, when she thought of it like that. "I'll see you soon," she promised. "Both of you."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 8:51 pm
Babylon gave Hvergelmir a hug as well, grateful for all she'd done tonight - whatever her part in events may have been. Then, turning, he took a firm hold of Avalon's hand and it felt natural and it felt right. "Yeah," said Babylon, as they began to walk away. "I promise." He'd failed her before. He wouldn't again. Romeo Wilco And I think that is a wrap.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
