Welcome to Gaia! ::

Why was she trying to help him? Now there was a million dollar question if she'd ever heard one. Altruism was a subject of much philosophical debate, after all. What did one person get out of helping another? What was the true driving reason they did it? Was there really such a thing as selflessness, or was even the practice of selfless behavior a form of selfishness?

That wasn't what he was asking, though. He was asking why she was helping him, and Hvergelmir knew what the corrupted senshi meant by that.

"Because you look like you could use it," she said, honest and frank. "Because loneliness and unhappiness never drove anybody to anything good. Because killing people separates you from your humanity -- but connecting with people brings you closer to it. The last thing you need is to be alone. It's the last thing anyone needs."

She didn't move in reaction to his shrinking, or his extended arm -- just watched and waited.

"Besides," Hvergelmir added with a faint smile and a shrug, "if things are going to go the way they did, I'm not in any danger from you yet."

Hvergelmir blinked at Kerberos with what was obviously, more than anything else, amused skepticism. "Yeah, you sound really wedded to that stuff to me," she teased with gentle sarcasm. "I mean, look, I usually try not to tell people what I think they should be doing -- it's not my decision -- but, um, did you say 'having Metallia crystallize your boyfriend?' I'm just thinking maybe Jabba the Hutt and Han Solo weren't, like, a great romance and you should probably not encase any boyfriends in carbonite."

She sat fully on the ground, tucking her feet up under her. Moisture soaked up through the grass, slightly chilly on her shins, but she ignored it. "Everyone always has something else going on -- if you sit on your problems waiting for that perfect opportunity to talk about them, it's never going to come. The people who care about you will want to make time -- no matter what. And if you can't talk to them, I'm in this park three nights a week: come and find me. I'm here to listen." She shrugged, trying her best to look neither sad nor falsely cheery about her next comment. "I'll keep being here for a while yet. It's at least a year until..." At a loss for a polite word, she lifted one hand to gesture to the sides of her face, where she might someday have scars.

"Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays," she said. "But when you're ready, please consider talking to someone you care about, about... all of this. It doesn't have to be everyone -- just pick one person." Or else you might lose them, she wanted to say. They'll see you pulling away and they won't understand and one day they'll hate themselves because you're gone and they couldn't save you. Don't leave someone who loves you waiting forever for you to come home. Not that it was personal or anything. Not that she'd ever lost someone she adored to that isolation.

Hvergelmir sighed, looking at him curled up and looking so lost. "Don't stay out here," she suggested. "You'll catch a cold.."

In these circumstances -- faced with yet another young person rushing to write their life into a crash ending so soon -- Hvergelmir couldn't keep her heart from giving a sympathetic pang on Kerberos's behalf. The sad stories of this world -- the ways that Chaos ruined promising young souls -- were enough to break a person's heart.

Hvergelmir took Kerberos's hand and let him lead her to her feet -- then when that was done, she kept going, rising up onto her toes just a little to press a kiss to his forehead, to a bare patch of skin between the cracks.

"Don't stay the course," she said, giving his hand a squeeze before letting go and stepping back.