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There was a part of Nembus--Dahlia--that wished that everything would feel distant to her in that sort of dreamlike fashion, that it didn't feel like such an immediate yesterday even with the fact that she was now disconnected with it, but there was another part of her that didn't. Dahlia wanted to remember. She wanted to feel all of it, understand all of it, experience all of it. It let her know what she had done, but it also let her know what the others who were still in the Negaverse were experiencing and why they might have felt so dedicated to it. Of course, she did wish that she didn't remember taking starseeds so much--

But she was glad to hear that the guilt didn't haunt Brielle. It wasn't the best thing to have haunting. It made it hard to wake up in the morning if it grew too strong, didn't it-- "I guess it is sort of like a dream, isn't it? A dream that Cosmos -- or Ganymede, in your case -- woke us back up from by taking that air of Chaos off." Or maybe a nightmare, more like--

She giggled at the way the mask looked in the mirror. Goopy, but she could already feel the cool refreshment of it--

"I appreciate that, I do," even if it was hard for Dahlia to understand why anyone would be proud of her for finally taking the choice she really should have made years ago. "And I appreciate your offer to help me find the real me. I," she bit her lip, "I don't know if I'll ever know what that is. Humanity feels..." she didn't know how else to describe it, and she chuckled quietly, "like something I'm not."

She moved out of the way for Brielle.

"I think my general felt similarly. Sympathize with him a lot."

All she had known about Ganymede from the side of the Negaverse was that she was one of Order's royals -- one of the only royals, from what she understood. 'The Princess' was a common moniker. It was interesting to see her from the other side, to see the love that people like Brielle clearly had for her.

Perhaps she would ask more about her later. Order didn't have leaders, so far as she understood, but it might be good to understand who their most powerful members were...

Dahlia sat on the edge of the tub, this time, watching Brielle as she worked on slathering her face with the same face mask. She could feel the mask pinching just a bit, but it was a refreshing kind of pinching. She could see why Brielle had recommended it-- "Existential sounds right," she murmured, careful not to interrupt Brielle. It was a good question. What did being human mean? What did being connected to humanity mean? What did having a human life mean, and did she even really have one of those?

It was easy to fall into an existential spiral, especially when Brielle mentioned the comment of childhood -- by Cosmos, the childhood -- "I think so. Doing spa days feels like something I've seen human friends do." She knit her brows, worrying over her bottom lip for a moment and wincing when she accidentally tasted some of the mask. "The childhood thing. Delilah had a whole story she had made up to tell people. Made excuses that she lived on the West Coast so no one really asked about her youth. Pretended her family still lived there, too."

She stood back up, brushing off her legs. "A picture sounds like a good idea, yes." A picture was another way to not forget.

A rough childhood was a note that Dahlia made to herself. Maybe it'd discourage questions better if she didn't pretend it was just that she lived in a faraway area so most of the people wouldn't have any context to make it worth even asking. She made a mental note of that. Originally she had been debating picking up Delilah's excuse and adopting it as her own, but perhaps taking that kind of method might be a better one--

No one asked about rough childhoods.

At least, they didn't in stories. Usually, the rough childhood came out in a dramatic scene of some sort--

"Yeah. It's easier, right? Don't have to pretend we have childhoods we remember because we don't. They understand that they should focus on different things." And yet, Dahlia desperately wanted something she remembered. She wanted to have that sense of normalcy, that sense of growing up, that sense of having those experiences of going to prom, going to high school dances, bringing something into show-and-tell, having those classroom bullies she couldn't stand--

Dahlia followed Brielle, happily leaning in toward her and giving a soft, gentle smile that betrayed the seriousness of their conversation. It was sweet, and she waited for Brielle to take the picture before she continued talking, starting with a, "Send that to me?"

She needed some of those pictures.

"Delilah tried to forge some friendships in her life. She had been close to a few people, a few names. There was a time she was invited to a fancy restaurant with Waru because he thought she was the best person to invite, and that's nice. I think they got pretty deep." Dahlia pondered this, for a moment, wondered if she would have to try and do the same things to attempt to feel more human. It was worth a try, at least. The masks were worth a try, too. "If anything, though, the doing things with the friends makes you feel less alone, right? It's nice to be with other people like us, too."

She leaned back a bit.

"At least we have those experiences in common."

Nembus had frequently been someone who could have been labeled as lonely. She had been lonely in the Negaverse, when so few people could identify with her, and the ones who did kept leaving. She had been lonely in her life outside of the Negaverse, whatever ghost life it had been, when every conversation she had to attempt to backfill with various things she had heard or read or attempted to absorb or steal. The irony was that her loneliness had finally started to ease back just when she had realized she couldn't stay in the Negaverse.

"I sympathize with that loneliness, I think. It makes sense that a lot of us might feel it." Their experience was horribly unique. Even memories buried by trauma could be resurfaced in the right situations. For them, there was nothing.

A lost life, forever.

Being human might have been an existential concept, but it was one that she was so desperate to understand. Being alive was too, in some ways. What counted as alive? What counted as autopilot? What counted as acting in the ways she was told a human should act? Was that just faking it until it felt real, or was it destined to always be something fake? "I think I'd like more terrible pictures. Journal entries. Scrapbooks. Things that can remind me of what I did, just in case I somehow forget again." She found herself gripping onto the edge of her skirt, her knuckles turning white.

She attempted to ease off that grasp.

"What's really being alive, though? Like feeling that energy, I get that, but what part of that energy is just there because I feel like it should be there?" She stopped herself from biting her lip again, though she did chew the interior of it for just a moment. "I feel like I'm observing my life, in a lot of ways. Like I'm an outsider attempting to understand what it is."

Dahlia smiled at Brielle. "But it feels like you have more of a grip on that."

Saved.

It was a frequent terminology she had heard used for those who had been forced as she had been and as Brielle had been. They were given the impression that those of the other side were bad, that the Negaverse would take care of them, that in return they were expected to serve the Negaverse in whatever way was best-deemed fit. For Brielle, that had been as a hired assassin. For Dahlia, it had been as a member of -- something was so blurry there -- her general's team, working as a secretary, and then as an Information gatherer and an energy gatherer and a starseed--

It had been hard to blame the Negaverse, even when Dahlia began to realize that the Negaverse was inexcusable. It was just what they did. It wasn't everyone. Some of the people were trying. They had brought her in because otherwise, they would have killed her, and that really was saving her, wasn't it? She had been rescued by Metallia's Grace, and she shouldn't let it bother her so much that her life was an empty hole.

She reached over and gave a supportive squeeze to Brielle's leg, if Brielle let her.

Therapy. It was probably something Dahlia needed, but she wasn't even sure who she could approach about her unique situation without lying. She was almost certain there had to be therapists somewhere on their side by now. It would almost seem like a failure if there wasn't, considering what the Negaverse could do, but-- She nodded her acknowledgment, tucking the concept of that away for later.

"I'm glad you were able to find something that's helping you feel alive. People, therapy, a side that actually cares for you and a home to live in that isn't infested with youma-rats." Dahlia offered a gentle smile of her own. "I empathize with all of that. Strongly. Was also told that I had been saved. That everything was fine. And I later found out that in some ways they had, even though I hadn't wanted it. The plan was to kill me."

Nembus did consider that original form of herself dead now. Just not in the way she would have preferred, not with this mockery of whoever she was piloting her body--

"And I had accepted that eventually I would likely be fed to Metallia once my use ran out. Senshi aren't a natural part of her force, after all, even if we had grown more accepted. The youma didn't like us, and it was always important to respect the youma." She rocked in her spot before pulling her legs underneath herself. "Still have that fear, yeah? That one day I'll no longer be useful, either."

She bit her lip, shaking her head in displeasure when she accidentally took a little bit of the charcoal mask with her. "Maybe you haven't had the exact same emotions as me, but talking to you helps. It's that commonality. Those similar feelings. Those things we understand that few others do, yeah?"

Brielle had a fair point -- and from what little Dahlia knew of what happened when she had been supposedly "saved", it was much the same for her -- that it could hardly count as saving when she had wanted something entirely different. To be forced to serve another faction with hardly any memories at all when she would have rather simply died felt like something of a curse. On one hand, at least the starseed went on.

On the other...

As Cybele--Brielle, Brielle--gave her pillow a squeeze, Dahlia squeezed her leg just a bit more. Felt like it was an appropriate way to show her support, right? And to hear her desire to be useful, too, it rang to something in her and also made her feel like their experiences were more similar than it may have seemed on the outset.

That desire to be useful, to be needed, to serve the faction that had rescued them from the depths of the Negaverse and Chaos--

"Feel like I should be quite nearly worshiping Cosmos," noted Dahlia, with a quiet giggle, "but I'm not sure she'd appreciate that. So instead, feels like I should just do the things that seem important to her. Take care of Earth. Take care of that place in space that shares my name. Push back Chaos. Show Order and Her that they hadn't made a mistake in me. And," laughter followed.

"Yes, just kill the youma. Though I think I might be nicer to the half-youma. I feel like I have more in common with them than less. That inhumanity is almost the same, you know? They lose access to humanity. Not their memories, but much of this type of form," gestured to herself with her free hand, paused for a moment.

"Do you know if they can be saved like us?"

Perhaps there was something about being purified by someone who had been so good and pure to trust them even despite what they had done that could inspire devotion. Dahlia certainly felt it for Cosmos and would understand it if Brielle stated the same for Ganymede.

-- Ask Cosmos. It wasn't a bad idea. Dahlia didn't want to call her down for every little thing, but it felt like figuring out if the half-youma could be rescued from Chaos and their monstrous merger was something worth pondering. She wanted to know how she could do it, how she could help. The name Faustite drew immediate recognition on her face, but she kept quiet as Brielle talked about what her relationship was with him.

He didn't choose to be in the Negaverse. He didn't choose to give up his human life. He didn't want to be a half-youma.

It spoke to something Dahlia had detected from him, and jabbed in further that they did have something in common. That inhumanity was shared between them, their desire to not be there in the Negaverse was something shared. But then -- he did that, and it made her worry over her bottom lip.

"You were very nice to me, Cybele." She was supposed to say Brielle. She was supposed to say -- gave up, moved on, Nembus and Cybele felt more natural to her. "There was nothing you did that scared me off. Encouraged me. And things you said echoed to another person I knew that purified out, too. It felt right."

She wrung her hands.

"Faustite was my general, actually. He has a whole team now? Albite, me, Lilith, Alkmene, Caledonite, Haymitch -- a cat! And I think it was getting bigger! I remember them all. Got close to them. I felt a commonality with Faustite. you know? Neither of us really wanted to be there when I got reassigned. Could feel it. But he's very good at his job. And I think part of him is dedicated because he doesn't feel like there's anything else."

Dahlia was just talking, now, and she couldn't quite stop with the thoughts that bubbled up about the man she called her general just a few weeks ago. "He's a good guy, under all of that. Takes care of his team. He's who I was thinking of when I asked if half-youma could be saved. I worry he'll never want to be, though."

She knit her brows.

"But it would be good to know that in general, too."

To be honest, she did want to save Albite too. To her, Albite had always felt like a good man, someone who just wanted the best for everyone, someone who had made active effort to include her and help give the experiences that made her feel more alive. There was a jarring disconnection when she realized she couldn't quite articulate some of those things they had done, but they had spoken enough in their powered forms--

She supposed that was part of purifying, though, wasn't it? That memory loss.

You could talk to him.

It seemed as appealing as it seemed dangerous. There was a deep part of her that did believe Faustite could be convinced, especially with what Cybele had experienced of him. If there was really that commonality there, perhaps she could convince him yet that a better place to be was away from that. Didn't know if he'd listen to her, though. Felt like a dangerous proposal, especially with him having people on the other side that he was at least responsible for.

But Brielle would like that, too.

Dahlia followed Brielle, quietly responding with, "Think I'd like that, too. Being able to get through to him, that is. Don't have any interest in joining for a second time. I'll just have to be careful." She'd need to devise some strategies. It felt too early to attempt powering up with any regularity, as much as she yearned to slip back into the skin that made more sense to her. Too early to not simply end up dead as soon as she tried, her head rolling across-- She'd need an escape route for sure. Maybe a way to call for backup--

But the conversation was left behind when they crossed the threshold to the bathroom, where she waited for Brielle to wash the mask off her face.

"Do you think these actually worked? It definitely feels dried on my face," patted her face, too, to confirm that. "I don't really remember if I ever did these as a civilian," not really something Delilah thought to track, "but it feels like it worked, at least."

She looked over Brielle, watching her.

"What do you think? Do you feel refreshed?"