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Hvergelmir shut her eyes for a moment on this question, pursing her lips to kiss the tips of his fingers in turn. "I would keep a great deal," she affirmed, her breath soft on his gloved hand. "If it were mine to choose. Though I like you with long hair." Her teasing smile settled back into fondness, and she looked up. "If you choose to leave the Negaverse -- if that's what you want -- then the first time I say your name will be when it's yours to wear. But if you choose to stay, then I'll understand -- and I'll wait for you. I will love you till the last star tumbles from the sky. You. Whatever name you wear. Whatever comes."

She bit her lip and looked away shyly, leaving that hanging in the air for an awkward moment. "Oh," Hvergelmir recovered a moment later, "I'd almost forgotten -- I have a gift for you."

Kissing was, in some ways, exactly like Laney had always expected it would be, and in other ways, nothing she'd ever come to expect at all. Much like kissing a parent on the cheek, or like teenaged experiments on the back of her own hand, it was warm -- and though she knew her own lips were chapped from dry winter cold, it was soft, too, and very very gentle. She'd known these things, because they were obvious and she wasn't stupid, and kissing was always going to be nice.

It was a very different thing -- a thing she'd found harder to believe was particularly going to be likely in her life, and hadn't been able to give much credence to -- to actually be kissed by someone who did it because they wanted to, who did it as an expression of genuine tender, personal feeling. It was kissing, not as an action, but as an exchange of emotions, that was so much sweeter, so much more powerful than she'd expected, for all her dreamy, maudlin nature.

There was a feeling, like she supposed she'd seen writers describe, as though all the rest of the world dropped away. Hvergelmir supposed it wasn't some sort of mystical blankness that made this true, it was the incredibly fulfilling sensation of someone who'd taken a moment to close their eyes to the rest of the world to share their intimacy with you. It was the feeling of being wanted, and of wanting -- and of butterflies in her stomach, a not-unwelcome anxiety borne of hope and gravity, whatever that meant -- and of something else very visceral and very human, something that promised more; maybe; sometime; everything.

She didn't really know how to describe it. But it was nice. Was perfect.

Inexpertly, but with enthusiasm, she leaned up into the kiss, once-startled eyes fluttering closed. (That much, at least, she knew was what you did; you did not kiss someone and count their eyelashes at the same time.) One hand came to rest on the broad column of his neck, with his long hair brushing the backs of her knuckles -- and for a moment, she thought she could feel his pulse leaping beneath the pad of her thumb.

She broke off only when it seemed like the right way, the right time to do so -- which was all a mystery, all a sort of sensual guesswork divided by a need to draw an unimpeded breath -- and rested with the side of her nose nuzzled against Titan's, which was sort of a pleasant little experience on its own, too. "I've never kissed anyone before," she admitted with a dizzy, confidential smile -- and then the verdict: "I liked it."

She felt too close, too safe and too happy for self-consciousness to creep into this particular moment. Titan's smile, wide and pure, and the rosy flush of his skin made her toes tingle and scrunch up in her shoes. He really was impossibly handsome, when he smiled.

Not so dark in my company, then, Hvergelmir thought with a small, private note of triumph.

Your heart is safe in my keeping, she wanted to say. I'll hold it with both hands. What stayed her, though, was not a lack of sincerity -- but rather, a feeling that those weren't the right words, not with him. Anything given freely -- and she would've given him just about anything freely, she thought for a brief, brave moment -- would feel undeserved, to him. He saw himself as a fundamentally unworthy person, meriting so little that was good -- and what was more, what he wanted, consistent from their first meeting to now, was obvious and unchanged.

"I wish only to serve well."

His joy was not in possessing, but in earning. He would sooner have goals, tasks, contests set before him. Dragons needing slain.

Hvergelmir would find some way to oblige, then.

She set a kiss on his cheek like a challenge: this for now, more only if you please me.

"I'll have your best, then, and no less," she promised, feeling as wild and wicked in this little foray as any person who had ever dipped their first toe into the idea of flirting.

Kerberos. Kairatos. Ida. She hadn't spoken to many people about what she'd seen and dreamed, her visions of the future -- but those three, at least, she had. They'd had so much guilt, all of them. It was hard to bear, and painful to see.

"He came by a few weeks ago. It bothers him, I think, not to be the Royal Knight he remembers having been, not to have the power to protect people the way he wants to. Not to be able to just rush out and tackle a problem the minute it crops up, to have to sit and wait and wonder what he can do. But -- we're supposed to go out for coffee sometime soon -- he's doing better than Ida, at least."

Ida made her heartsick just to think about, gone to space and pulling away as sure as Aquarius already had, so many months ago. It was better not to.

Pale fingers tugged something out of the air: a long, shimmering ribbon, sheer and iridescent like her cloak. Cut, literally, from the same cloth. "Here," she said, rallying a little from her falter, "made with my own two hands. You should have it for your trip to the Rift, just in case. It won't do much, and it's only good once, but if you're hurt, just concentrate on it and it'll help a little."

Given she'd just handed him a sparkly pastel rainbow ribbon that she'd indicated was for the relief of boo-boos, she could imagine far too many people refusing it based on either its frippy appearance or else the apparently general need that people had to scorn anything that wasn't a sword or a death laser. Hvergelmir was no Mistral, after all -- all she had to give out were flimsy bits of healing magic, not nearly as useful as their communicator upgrades, and no one took those seriously. Hvergelmir guessed, in some way, she'd braced for skepticism.

Not with Titan, though. He'd accepted the ribbon like it really did mean something, completely gracious.

"Sir Percival never won the Holy Grail," she said reassuringly. "Neither did Sir Lancelot. For true knights errant, the proving is in the undertaking itself, rather than the result." She slid up and to her feet, pulling her shawl around herself once more. It was already cold again, absent Titan's radiant heat. "I'll wait for your safe return," she promised.