Welcome to Gaia! ::

He managed a wry grin briefly before wincing again at the way the expression had pulled his lips and shifted his face. Sailor Arachne had known his name. The Senshi of Spiders had said things, known things that only Lysander would have. In saying what he had there'd been no mistaking that Lysander Caldwell and Sailor Arachne were one and the same.

"He was pissed that I didn't tell him about Richterite and kept insisting that I'd chosen the Negaverse over him. We were kids, Luc. They'd recruited me before I'd even met him. If I chose it over anything, over anyone..." He brought his free hand up, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "s**t, it's not like he told me he was a ******** senshi-- No offense."

"Not exactly?" When Lucien broke it down it seemed so simple, but it had been infinitely more complicated down by the retention pond. "He punched me the first time because I told him that I was the officer in charge of the operation that lead to his friend's death. The second time," he snorted softly, shaking his head slowly, "I asked him if he was mad at me for leading the operation, mad at his friend for cutting contact with him or mad at himself for not being there when his friend needed him. I wasn't lying when I said I egged him on." If anything, that had just been putting it mildly.

"Dunno if it makes it any better, but I didn't just let him hit me the second time-- Knocked his a** onto the ground and tried to get him to understand that wasn't the innocent caught up in the crossfire that he wanted to think he was and it just... ******** went downhill further from there. He made it sound like it should have been so easy to just walk away from something that, based on the lack of memories and the need for a new identity, is the magical mafia."

Arachne hadn't understood and there really hadn't been a way to make him understand, especially not with emotions running as high as they had been. The Senshi of Spiders wouldn't have given him the chance to try and make sense of things. From what he was saying it seemed as though he thought everything was just black and white without any of the grey areas in between.

"Who I was... It wasn't ever about him. It was about me and my choices."

"It's easy to view the other side as always being 'wrong' if you haven't gotten to know any of them. I can't-- <********>, I don't remember any of it, but I told Cordelia that they weren't all bad. I wouldn't have lied to her about something like that Luc." He also liked to think that he was proof that people recruited into the Negaverse weren't all bad. Some of them were no more than children, still in highschool as he had been, with full lives ahead of them.

"There are assholes on both sides of this war, from what I've been told. Some of them are misguided and others are just ******** nuts. I thought I was getting the chance to be a part of something important. The agent who brought me in lead me to believe that we were going to make a difference. It was idealistic, but at the time it was something that I needed to believe." It had given him a glimmer of hope when he'd felt hopeless for too long and he couldn't actually explain how the sway of Chaos had continued to make it seem like the 'right' thing up until it had become painfully clear that it wasn't.

"You know that the whole joining the Negaverse thing wasn't because you weren't a better friend, right?"

"I thought I'd figured it out enough to have it under control. I thought I was tougher than whatever I might have been feeling." He snorted softly as he shook his head, shifting to slouch against the couch cushions in a way that let him tilt his head back a bit more comfortably. It was a little easier that way to ignore the nudge to his shin, one eye opening to peer over at Luc for a moment.

"Do you remember those weird snow globes that Christmas at Hillworth? Everything started that Christmas..." Whatever spiral had taken him down deeper had started with the snow globes and had just continued from there. "I haven't felt that way since the night Castor cleaned the Chaos from my starseed. I remember the despair and the darkness, but I couldn't tell you what pushed it all to that point. I don't think that anything anyone had done would have made a difference while I was still who I was before." It likely sounded mad as hell, but Lucien was at least listening to him and, despite whatever disagreements they may have had, he was trying to understand.

"For what it's worth, I feel better now... Not a damn clue as to what's going to happen if Mag Mell runs into Arachne again, though." On the plus side, if Lysander saw him as Arin there was a chance he wouldn't recognize him as the same person.

"Avoid him? And here I was thinking about posting a flyer to let him know where he could find me if he wanted to give punching me in the face another go." He snorted softly, the sound coming out as an attempt to laugh that just made his head hurt all over again.

"Ow, s**t... On second thought? Avoiding him might not be such a bad idea. At least until I can use snark without the entire side of my face aching." He shifted the ice pack against his jaw for emphasis.

quote="Grymoire"]

He groaned softly as he lowered the ice from his face in order to make it easier to sit up. He pulled himself up off of the sofa, brushing his fingers back through his hair while glancing at his friend. "Not entirely sure there's anything I can do about the snark. Natural defense mechanism."

Arin shifted on his feet, making sure that he had his balance decently enough to head for the kitchen. "With my luck I'm going to wake up with my face buried in a pillow without anything to keep me from tossing and turning."

"You'd just have to convince her it wasn't your fault." He called back over his shoulder as he snagged a fresh ice pack out of the freezer, adding on a softly spoken 'good night, Luc' that he was certain enough his friend wouldn't hear.

Once back in his own room he nudged the door shut so that he could start getting ready for bed.